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Periodical road manhole cover measurement is extremely important to ensure road safety and reduce traffic disasters. This letter proposes an effective method for delineating road manhole covers from mobile laser scanning point cloud data. To improve processing efficiency, first, road surface points are segmented and rasterized into georeferenced intensity images. Then, object-oriented patches are generated through superpixel segmentation and further fed to a convolutional capsule network classifier for manhole cover detection. Finally, manhole covers are accurately delineated through a marked point process of disks. Quantitative evaluations on three data sets show that an average completeness, correctness, quality, and ${F} _{1}$ -measure of 0.965, 0.961, 0.929, and 0.963, respectively, are obtained. Comparative studies with three existing methods confirm that the proposed method performs superiorly in delineating manhole covers of varying conditions and on complex road surface environments.

Purpose Travel companies are increasingly hosting online communities to extend their initiatives of customer relationship management and gain additional insight into their business. While the benefits to companies from hosting online communities are clear, another closely related issue has not been given comparative attention: Why do customers engage voluntarily in online travel communities? The purpose of this paper is to answer the question by developing and testing a conceptual model that exploring the influence of socialization interactions on customer engagement with the community. Design/methodology/approach Hypotheses were tested by applying structural equation modeling based on survey data collected from an online travel community (n=665). Findings The results supported the research hypotheses and demonstrated that socialization interactions (i.e. information and social exchange) in the online travel community are important catalysts for customer engagement. Originality/value The contribution of this study is twofold. First, from a theoretical perspective, it offers new insights into the conceptualization of customer engagement and its antecedents in the context of the online travel community. Second, from a pragmatic perspective, the conceptual model derived from this research aids practitioners in stimulating customer engagement from the perspective of socialization interactions.

An electronic voting (e-voting) system allows voters to cast their votes secretly and securely over a public channel. Security is the critical issue that should be considered in such a system. In this paper, we propose a heterogeneous deniable authentication (HDA) protocol for e-voting systems. The proposed protocol allows a sender in a certificateless cryptography (CLC) environment to transmit a message to a receiver in a public key infrastructure (PKI)environment. Our protocol admits security proof in the random oracle model under the bilinear Diffie–Hellman (BDH) and computational Diffie–Hellman (CDH) assumptions. Additionally, our protocol provides batch verification, which can accelerate the verification of authenticators. Comprehensive analysis shows that our protocol is highly suitable for practical e-voting systems.

Power grid is becoming more and more smart and complex. It is necessary for us to measure, monitor and manage smart devices in power grid. In case of fault, the power grid equipment will suffer serious damage and cause great economic losses. A Cloud-based Wide-area Measurement System approach is proposed for fault detection in this paper. Fault detection using cloud-based WAMS can be divided into two main parts: Edging detection and Cloud detection. In edging devices, we try to find out the suspected local faults in power grid. In Cloud, we try to probe global faults by analysis of global features collected from edges.

Timing of food intake has become a critical factor in determining overall cardiometabolic health. We hypothesized that timing of food intake entrains circadian rhythms of blood pressure (BP) and renal excretion in mice. Male C57BL/6J mice were fed ad libitum or reverse feeding (RF) where food was available at all times of day or only available during the 12-h lights-on period, respectively. Mice eating ad libitum had a significantly higher mean arterial pressure (MAP) during lights-off compared to lights-on (113 ± 2 mmHg vs 100 ± 2 mmHg, respectively; P 0.05); however, RF induced a diurnal rhythm of MAP (79 ± 3 mmHg vs 95 ± 2 mmHg, lights-off vs lights-on phase; P, Graphical Abstract Graphical Abstract

Loss of endothelin (ET) control of Na + reabsorption results in salt-sensitive hypertension. Diet-induced obesity such as via high fat (HF) diet can produce salt-sensitive hypertension. The goal of this study was to determine if obesity produced by HF diet impairs the renal ET system. Male SD rats were fed either HF (45 Kcal% fat) or normal fat (10 Kcal% fat, NF) diet at 6 weeks of age and for 8 weeks duration. Telemetry transmitters were implanted for systolic blood pressure (SBP) and activity monitoring. During the last 2 weeks of the diet, HF and NF rats were sub-divided into 2 groups to receive an additional high salt (4% NaCl, HS) diet or continue on normal salt (0.3% NaCl, NS) diet. Urine was collected and food and water intakes monitored in 12-hr increments the final 2 days. All groups maintained a diurnal BP pattern. However, rats on HF had significantly higher SBP compared to NF (146 ± 1 vs 138 ± 2 mmHg during the active period, p=0.003, n= 12/group). 12-hr urine volume or Na + excretion values were similar between groups. However, urinary ET-1, a measure of intrarenal ET-1 production, was significantly lower in the HF compared to NF controls (0.92 ± 0.15 vs 1.52 ± 0.09 pg/12hrs, p= 0.0007, n= 12/group). Relative mRNA expression of ET-1 in the renal cortex collected at ZT12 was significantly lower in the HF vs. NF (0.8 ± 0.1 vs 1.3 ± 0.2, p= 0.008, n= 6/group). A similar reduction of ET-1 mRNA was observed in the OM of HF rats. However, there was no change in ET-1 mRNA in the IM of HF rats compared to NF (0.8 ± 0.1 vs 1.0 ± 0.2, p= 0.28, n= 8/group). HS diet led to a further increase in SBP in HF vs the HF/NS group (152 ± 2 vs 147 ± 1 mmHg, p=0.04, n= 8/group) while addition of HS to the NF group showed no significant increase in SBP (145 ± 2 vs 140 ± 3 mmHg, p=0.37 n= 6/group). The NF/HS group had a significant increase in active-time ET-1 excretion compared to NF/NS (4.0 ± 0.4 vs 1.5 ± 0.2 pg/12hrs, p

Early life stress (ELS) is an independent risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease in adulthood in both humans and rodent models. Maternal separation and early weaning (MSEW), a model of ELS, produces mice with an increased risk of cardiovascular dysfunction in adulthood, despite resting blood pressures (BP), heart rates (HR), and body weights comparable to normally reared controls. Autonomic regulation of HR and BP is an important component of the homeostatic response to stress but has not been investigated in MSEW mice. We hypothesized that exposure to MSEW impairs autonomic function at baseline and in response to an acute psychosocial stressor in adult male mice. C57Bl/6J litters were randomly assigned to MSEW or normally reared control conditions. MSEW litters were separated from dams for 4 h on postnatal days (PDs) 2-5, 8 h on PDs 6-16, and weaned at PD 17. Control litters were undisturbed until weaning at PD 21. At 9 weeks old, telemeters were implanted in MSEW (n=16) and control mice (n=12). During cage switch stress (CSS), mice were moved to a soiled, unfamiliar cage for 4 h. HR, systolic BP (SBP), diastolic BP (DBP), and activity (monitored by telemetry) were similar between control and MSEW mice at baseline and during CSS (p>0.05, 2-way ANOVA). Spectral analysis of HR, SBP, and DBP indicated that HR variability (HRV) total power was lower in MSEW mice during the 12 h inactive period compared to controls (18.9±1.1 ms 2 vs. 27.5±3.1 ms 2 ; p=0.0033, 2-way ANOVA) at baseline. HRV low frequency (LF) power was also lower during the 12 h inactive period in MSEW mice (4.2±0.4 ms 2 vs.6.6±0.9 ms 2 ; p=0.009). At baseline, 12 h and 24 h DBP variability LF/high frequency (HF) ratio, normalized LF, and normalized HF power were lower in the MSEW group (p

Histone deacetylase (HDAC) enzymes regulate transcription through epigenetic modification of chromatin structure, but their specific functions in the kidney remain elusive. We discovered that the human kidney expresses class I HDACs. Kidney medulla-specific inhibition of class I HDACs in the rat during high-salt feeding results in hypertension, polyuria, hypokalemia, and nitric oxide deficiency. Three new inducible murine models were used to determine that HDAC1 and HDAC2 in the kidney epithelium are necessary for maintaining epithelial integrity and maintaining fluid-electrolyte balance during increased dietary sodium intake. Moreover, single-nucleus RNA-sequencing determined that epithelial HDAC1 and HDAC2 are necessary for expression of many sodium or water transporters and channels. In performing a systematic review and meta-analysis of serious adverse events associated with clinical HDAC inhibitor use, we found that HDAC inhibitors increased the odds ratio of experiencing fluid-electrolyte disorders, such as hypokalemia. This study provides insight on the mechanisms of potential serious adverse events with HDAC inhibitors, which may be fatal to critically ill patients. In conclusion, kidney tubular HDACs provide a link between the environment, such as consumption of high-salt diets, and regulation of homeostatic mechanisms to remain in fluid-electrolyte balance., Kidney histone deacetylase activity is necessary for maintaining fluid-electrolyte balance during environmental insults such as a high sodium diet.

Baroreflex function is an integral component maintaining consistent blood pressure. Hypertension is often associated with baroreflex dysfunction, and environmental risk factors such as high salt diet exacerbate hypertension in subjects with baroreflex dysfunction. However, the interactions between high salt diet, baroreflex dysfunction, and hypertension are incompletely understood. The endothelin system is another potent mediator of blood pressure control especially in response to a high salt diet. We hypothesized that the endothelin B (ET(B)) receptor activation on adrenergic nerves decreases baroreflex sensitivity. We utilized male ET(B) receptor deficient (ET(B)-def) rats that express functional ET(B) receptors only on adrenergic nerves and transgenic (TG) controls to evaluate baroreflex function during normal (0.49% NaCl) and high (4.0% NaCl) salt diets. In conscious rats equipped with telemetry, ET(B)-def rats had an increased lability of systolic blood pressure (SBP) compared to TG controls as indicated by higher standard deviation (SD) of SBP under both normal (10.2±0.6 vs. 12.4±0.9 mmHg, respectively, p=0.0001) and high (11.7±0.6 vs. 16.1±1.0 mmHg, p=0.0001) salt diets. In anesthetized preparations, ET(B)-def rats displayed reduced heart rate (p genotype=0.0167) and renal sympathetic nerve (p genotype=0.0022) baroreflex sensitivity. We then gave male Sprague-Dawley rats the selective ET(B) receptor antagonist, A-192621 (10 mg/kg/day), to block ET(B) receptors. Following ET(B) receptor antagonism, even though SBP increased (131±7 before vs. 152±8 mmHg after, p

Background The novel estrogen receptor, G‐protein–coupled estrogen receptor ( GPER ), is responsible for rapid estrogen signaling. GPER activation elicits cardiovascular and nephroprotective effects against salt‐induced complications, yet there is no direct evidence for GPER control of renal Na + handling. We hypothesized that GPER activation in the renal medulla facilitates Na + excretion. Methods and Results Herein, we show that infusion of the GPER agonist, G1, to the renal medulla increased Na + excretion in female Sprague Dawley rats, but not male rats. We found that GPER mRNA expression and protein abundance were markedly higher in outer medullary tissues from females relative to males. Blockade of GPER in the renal medulla attenuated Na + excretion in females. Given that medullary endothelin 1 is a well‐established natriuretic factor that is regulated by sex and sex steroids, we hypothesized that GPER activation promotes natriuresis via an endothelin 1–dependent pathway. To test this mechanism, we determined the effect of medullary infusion of G1 after blockade of endothelin receptors. Dual endothelin receptor subtype A and endothelin receptor subtype B antagonism attenuated G1‐induced natriuresis in females. Unlike males, female mice with genetic deletion of GPER had reduced endothelin 1, endothelin receptor subtype A, and endothelin receptor subtype B mRNA expression compared with wild‐type controls. More important, we found that systemic GPER activation ameliorates the increase in mean arterial pressure induced by ovariectomy. Conclusions Our data uncover a novel role for renal medullary GPER in promoting Na + excretion via an endothelin 1–dependent pathway in female rats, but not in males. These results highlight GPER as a potential therapeutic target for salt‐sensitive hypertension in postmenopausal women.

Deniable authenticated encryption (DAE) is a cryptographic primitive that supports data confidentiality with deniable authentication in an efficient manner. The DAE plays a significant role in location-based service systems for privacy protection. In this paper, we construct a certificateless DAE (CLDAE) scheme. The CLDAE is based on certificateless cryptosystems (CLCs), which avoids the need to manage public key certificates in public key infrastructure (PKI)-based cryptosystems and key escrow problems in identity-based cryptosystems (IBCs). Our design utilizes hybrid methods: tag-key encapsulation mechanism (TKEM) and data encapsulation mechanism (DEM). This technique is more suitable for location-based applications. We show how to construct a CLDAE scheme utilizing a certificateless deniable authenticated tag-KEM (CLDATK) and a DEM. We also design a CLDATK scheme and provide formal security proof using the random oracle model (ROM). We conduct a comprehensive performance analysis, which shows that CLDAE is highly efficient in terms of communication overhead. We also provide an application of the CLDAE for a location-based service (LBS) system.

A multi-server environment is an important application paradigm in the Internet of Things (IoT). It enables a user access services from different vendors without having to go through multiple registration. The privacy of one who desires to access these services is often crucial. In order to access this service in a manner that assures user privacy, a user needs to be anonymously authenticated independent of the vendors' services. However, existing identity-based anonymous schemes are only suitable for the client-server domain. Moreover, these schemes provide conditional anonymity which presupposes that if an adversary discovers the user's private key, the identity can easily be recovered and misused. To avoid this situation, a new unconditional anonymity identity-based user authenticated key agreement scheme for IoT multi-server environment is introduced in this paper. Our protocol applies a ring signature to allow users to anonymously authenticate themselves in the severs without revealing their identities. Hence, an adversary cannot recover the user's identity even when the user's private key is known. We further provide a security proof in the random oracle model. Compared with the existing protocols, our proposed scheme is well fitting for mobile phone applications and guarantees the privacy of users in IoT multi-server domain.

In a mobile client–server environment, a low-power mobile device wants to access a strong server to get some kind of services. User authentication and key establishment are two basic security requirements for this environment. Without the user authentication, an unauthorized user can access the server and gets the services. Without the key establishment, the communication between the user and the server will be disclosed. Recently, some user authentication and key establishment protocols were designed. However, all of them are homogeneous since the client and the server belong to the same cryptosystem. That is, both the client and the server belong to public key infrastructure or identity-based cryptosystem or self-certified cryptosystem. Such design does not comply with the characteristic of mobile client–server application. In this paper, we design a heterogeneous user authentication and key establishment protocol using a signcryption scheme. In this protocol, the client uses identity-based cryptosystem and the server uses the public key infrastructure. As compared with existing works, our protocol has the lowest cost in computation and communication.

The concept of deniably authenticated encryption (DAE) is presently significant in cryptography due to its security properties and wide range of application. It achieves deniable authentication and confidentiality in a simultaneous manner. It has merited application in e-voting systems, e-mail systems and confidential online negotiation. Although several DAE schemes have been proposed recently, we point out that those constructions are either weak against masquerading attacks or inherent key escrow problem. As a remedy, we propose a certificateless deniably authenticated encryption (CLDAE) scheme that is provably secure. Typically, we can obtain this goal using the “deniable authentication followed by certificateless encryption” approach. However, this approach is computationally expensive and complex to design since it is a combination of two cryptographic constructions. In contrast, our CLDAE scheme is a single cryptographic construction but it concurrently accomplishes the requirements of public key encryption and deniable authentication at a relatively lower cost. For instance, our simulation results at 80 bits of security level shows up to be approximately 43.3 and $$30.4\%$$ respectively faster than two “deniable authentication followed by certificateless encryption” schemes. Moreover, the communication overhead of our CLDAE scheme is 12.9 and $$34.9\%$$ lesser than that of those two schemes respectively. Finally, to demonstrate the significance of our CLDAE scheme, we apply it to a real world application such as e-voting system.

Recently, how to retrieve the encrypted data efficiently from a cloud storage system becomes a hot topic. Public key encryption with keyword search (PEKS) can allow one to search the encrypted data with a keyword efficiently. Due to the booming of post-quantum cryptography, we propose public key encryption with keyword search from lattice assumption, which can resist quantum computer attacks. We delegate a particular cloud server to search the results, thus only the designated cloud server can finish the test process. Our scheme has been proved ciphertext indistinguishability in the standard model, which can reflect its security in the real world. To the best of our knowledge, our scheme is the first construction based on lattice in the standard model, which is a step stone in the post-quantum cryptographic communication.

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are expected to play an important role in monitoring the health information and creating a smart, reliable, and ubiquitous healthcare system. Only authorized users can access the network since the collected data by the WBANs are used to diagnosed and treated. However, it is still a challenging task to design a cost-effective and secure access control scheme because of inherent characteristics of the WBANs, such as open medium channel, limited resources of sensor nodes, and the absence of fixed infrastructure. In this paper, we first propose a novel certificateless signcryption scheme, and then, design a cost-effective and anonymous access control scheme for the WBANs using the novel signcryption. The proposed access control scheme achieves anonymity, confidentiality, authentication, integrity, and nonrepudiation. Compared with existing three access control schemes for the WBANs, our proposed scheme has the least computational cost and total energy consumption for the controller.

Cloud computing offers a huge resource pool by centralizing various resources with the rapid growth of digital data. Data storage is the most acceptable service in cloud computing. As one of the key technologies of cloud storage service, data deduplication technology allows cloud servers to save storage space by deleting redundant data. In order to protect data privacy, data holders generally encrypt their data first, and then upload the encrypted data to the cloud server, which clearly brings a new challenge for cloud data deduplication, as traditional deduplication technology cannot deduplicate encrypted data. Existing solutions have various security issues. They cannot flexibly support data access control, and also require data users to remain online. In this paper, we propose an identity-based proxy re-encryption data deduplication scheme using identity-based proxy re-encryption (IB-PRE) and identity-based proof of ownership (IB-PoW). The proposed scheme integrates cloud data deduplication with access control. By detailed security analysis and performance evaluation, we show that the proposed scheme is security, efficient and effective.

Wireless body area networks (WBAN) is a promising technology in E-health systems. It provides a mechanism to collect and transmit human body’s psychological data by miniature wearable or implantable sensors. However, how to protect the security and privacy of the collected psychological data remains a major concern. In this paper, we design a biometric identity-based privacy-preserving scheme, where a user’s identity can be constructed from its biometric information. We then present an access control scheme for WBAN utilizing the proposed design. The proposed access control scheme provides confidentiality, authentication, integrity, non-repudiation and anonymity in the random oracle model. Performance evaluation shows that our proposed design has advantages in terms of computation/communication cost and energy consumption.

Hypertension is a prevalent pathology that increases risk for numerous cardiovascular diseases. Because the etiology of hypertension varies across patients, specific and effective therapeutic approaches are needed. The role of renal sympathetic nerves is established in numerous forms of hypertension, but their contribution to salt sensitivity and interaction with factors such as endothelin-1 are poorly understood. Rats deficient of functional ETB receptors (ETB-def) on all tissues except sympathetic nerves are hypertensive and exhibit salt-sensitive increases in blood pressure. We hypothesized that renal sympathetic nerves contribute to hypertension and salt sensitivity in ETB-def rats. The hypothesis was tested through bilateral renal sympathetic nerve denervation and measuring blood pressure during normal salt (0.49% NaCl) and high-salt (4.0% NaCl) diets. Denervation reduced mean arterial pressure in ETB-def rats compared with sham-operated controls by 12 ± 3 (SE) mmHg; however, denervation did not affect the increase in blood pressure after 2 wk of high-salt diet (+19 ± 3 vs. +16 ± 3 mmHg relative to normal salt diet; denervated vs. sham, respectively). Denervation reduced cardiac sympathetic-to-parasympathetic tone [low frequency-high frequency (LF/HF)] during normal salt diet and vasomotor LF/HF tone during high-salt diet in ETB-def rats. We conclude that the renal sympathetic nerves contribute to the hypertension but not to salt sensitivity of ETB-def rats.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a general formulation of the quadrature element method (QEM). The method is then used to investigate the free vibration of functionally graded (FG) beams with general boundary conditions and different variations of material properties. Design/methodology/approach The quadrature elements with arbitrary number of nodes and nodal distributions are established on the basis of two types of FG Timoshenko beam theories. One called TBT-1 takes the cross-sectional rotation as the unknown function and the other called TBT-2 uses the transverse shear strain as the unknown function. Explicit formulas are provided via the help of the differential quadrature (DQ) rule and thus the elements can be implemented adaptively with ease. Findings The suitability and computational efficiency of the proposed quadrature elements for the vibration analysis of FG beams are demonstrated. The convergence rate of the proposed method is high. The elements are shear-locking free and can yield accurate solutions with a small number of nodes for both thin and moderately thick beams. The performance of the element based on TBT-1 is better than the one based on TBT-2. Originality/value The present QEM is different from the existing one which exclusively uses Gauss–Lobatto–Legendre (GLL) nodes and GLL quadrature and thus is more general. The element nodes can be either the same or different from the integration points, making the selection of element nodes more flexible. Presented data are accurate and may be a reference for other researchers to develop new numerical methods. The QEM may be also useful in multi-scale modeling and in the analysis of civil infrastructures.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been widely used in many applications recently. As an important application of the WSNs, the wireless medical sensor networks (WMSNs) could improve health-care quality and have become significant in the modern medical system. WMSNs devices typically have limited computing, storage and communication capabilities. To enhance the capabilities of WSNs, cloud-assisted WMSNs have been introduced, and they can provide more efficient processing of cloud users’ medical data records stored in the cloud. The integrity of medical data records is very important since these data will be used to provide a medical diagnosis and other medical treatments. In this paper, we propose an efficient integrity verification scheme for medical data records in cloud-assisted WMSNs. Based on elliptic curve digital signature algorithm, we construct linearly homomorphic authenticator, so that the third party auditor (TPA) can verify the the integrity of medical data records without bringing in new security threats. TPA does not need to retrieve the entire medical data records, thus can dramatically reduce the communication and computation overhead. Moreover, we further extend our scheme to support batch integrity verification for multiple cloud users simultaneously. In particular, to achieve efficient medical data dynamic operations, using index hash tables, our scheme can execute dynamic operations efficiently. Performance comparison shows that our scheme is more light-weight, and can be used much more practically in cloud-assisted WMSNs.

Recent studies suggest that timing of food intake plays pivotal roles in regulating many physiological processes, such as lipid metabolism, immune responsiveness, and blood pressure (BP). Whether BP rhythms are altered by timing of food intake remains unknown. Here we sought to test the hypothesis that feeding during the inactive period (reverse feeding or RF) disrupts BP rhythms in mice. Male C57Bl/6J mice (WT, 12-16 wk old, n=11) and Bmal1 knockout mice (Bmal1KO, 12-16 wk old, n=7) were placed in metabolic cages maintained in normal 12 hr light/dark periods. Mice had free access to food and water for 3 days, followed by 6-days of RF with free access to water. Food and water intake were monitored twice per day at the beginning of active (lights off, 7pm-7am) and inactive (lights off, 7pm-7am) periods (AP and IP). As expected, mean arterial pressure (MAP via telemetry) was significantly higher in AP compared to IP when WT mice were fed ad libitum (113 ± 2 vs. 100 ± 2 mmHg, respectively, p

Wireless sensor network (WSN) plays an important role in military sensing and tracking, target tracking, and environment monitoring. To query of the network to get useful information from anywhere and anytime, we need to integrate the WSN into the Internet as part of the Internet of Things (IoT). In this case, it is an important task to design an access control scheme that can authorize, authenticate and revoke a user to access the WSN. In this paper, we propose a heterogeneous signcryption scheme to control the access behavior of the users. We give the formal security proof of our scheme in the random oracle model. An important characteristic of our scheme is to allow a user in a certificateless cryptography (CLC) environment to send a message to a sensor node in an identity-based cryptography (IBC) environment. We give an access control scheme for the WSN in the context of the IoT using the proposed signcryption scheme. As compared with existing two access control schemes using signcryption, the computational cost of sensors in our scheme is reduced by about 22% and 53%, respectively and the energy consumption of sensors in our scheme is reduced by about 33% and 54%, respectively.

Secure communication is an important task for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Signcryption is a good choice to guarantee the security of resource-constrained WSNs since it simultaneously achieves confidentiality, authentication, integrity and non-repudiation at a low cost. In this paper, we propose a heterogeneous signcryption scheme for secure communication from the WSNs to an Internet server. In our scheme, the WSNs belong to the certificateless cryptosystem (CLC) and the server belongs to the public key infrastructure (PKI). The CLC has neither key escrow problem nor public key certificates and is very suitable for the WSNs. The PKI is also suitable for the server since the PKI technique has been widely adopted in the Internet security. We prove that our scheme has the existential unforgeability against adaptive chosen message attack under q-strong Diffie---Hellman and modified inverse computational Diffie---Hellman problems and indistinguishability against adaptive chosen ciphertext attack under bilinear Diffie---Hellman inversion problem in the random oracle model. As compared with the existing three certificateless signcryption schemes (i.e., YL, BF and WC), our scheme respectively costs a 28.4, 58.3, and 68.2 % less in computational time and a 26.9, 56.6, and 67.3 % saving in energy consumption (the length of transmitted message is 100 bits).

Valence-Arousal model can represent complex human emotions, including slight changes of emotion. Most prior works of facial emotion estimation only considered laboratory data and used video, speech or other multi-modal features. The effect of these methods applied on static images in the real world is unknown. In this paper, a two-level attention with multi-task learning (MTL) framework is proposed for facial emotion estimation on static images. The features of corresponding region were automatically extracted and enhanced by first-level attention mechanism. And then we designed a practical structure to process the features extracted by first-level attention. In the following, we utilized Bi-directional Recurrent Neural Network (Bi-RNN) with self-attention (second-level attention) to make full use of the relationship of these features adaptively. It can be concluded as a combination of global and local information. In addition, we exploited MTL to estimate the value of valence and arousal simultaneously, which employed the correlation of the two tasks. The quantitative results conducted on AffectNet dataset demonstrated the superiority of the proposed framework. In addition, extensive experiments were carried out to analysis effectiveness of different components.

Kidney function follows a 24-hour rhythm that is subject to regulation by so-called circadian clock genes. Previous studies suggested a potential role of circadian gene Bmal1 in regulating renal excretory function and blood pressure, yet the mechanism is not completely clear. Our lab showed that high salt diet induces a phase shift in Bmal1 expression in the renal inner medulla that is dependent on endothelin B receptor (ET B ) function. In addition, the ET B receptor-mediated natriuretic effect is time-of-day- and sex-dependent. We recently generated a mouse model that lacks Bmal1 expression in principal cells of the renal collecting duct, which has the highest concentration of ET B receptor. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that Bmal1 in the collecting duct regulates blood pressure in a sex-dependent manner. Male (n=8-9) and female (n=6) collecting duct Bmal1 knockout (CD Bmal1 KO) and floxed control (flox) mice were implanted with telemetry transmitters, and fed normal salt (0.49% NaCl) diet (NS) for 6 days, followed by 6 days of high salt (4% NaCl) diet (HS). After this period, mice were treated with an ET B receptor antagonist (A-192621; 30mg/kg/day) for another 6 days. At the end of the study, we performed cosinor analysis on telemetry data collected throughout the study. Under NS, male CD Bmal1 KO showed significantly lower 24-hr mean arterial pressure (MAP) compared to flox (105±1 vs 112±1 mmHg, p=0.01). However, we did not observe any significant differences in the MAP of female mice (106±1 vs 108±1 mmHg, p=0.26). Under HS, MAP of male CD Bmal1 KO was significantly lower compared to flox (107±1 vs 114±1, p=0.01). No significant differences were observed in female mice (109±1 vs 110±1 mmHg, p=0.63). In male CD Bmal1 KO, the increase in MAP in response to the ET B receptor antagonist was significantly attenuated compared to flox (124±1 vs 130±1 mmHg, pBmal1 KO and flox (130±1 vs 127±2 mmHg, p=0.33) during ET B blockade. There were no differences in the amplitude of diurnal MAP between genotype in either sex on any diet. These data suggest that collecting duct Bmal1 plays an important role in blood pressure regulation in male, but not female, mice.

Wireless body area network (WBAN) provides a medium through which physiological information could be harvested and transmitted to application provider (AP) in real time. Integrating WBAN in a heterogeneous Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem would enable an AP to monitor patients from anywhere and at anytime. However, the IoT roadmap of interconnected 'Things' is still faced with many challenges. One of the challenges in healthcare is security and privacy of streamed medical data from heterogeneously networked devices. In this paper, we first propose a heterogeneous signcryption scheme where a sender is in a certificateless cryptographic (CLC) environment while a receiver is in identity-based cryptographic (IBC) environment. We then use this scheme to design a heterogeneous access control protocol. Formal security proof for indistinguishability against adaptive chosen ciphertext attack and unforgeability against adaptive chosen message attack in random oracle model is presented. In comparison with some of the existing access control schemes, our scheme has lower computation and communication cost.

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) comprises a number of sensor nodes and the portable mobile device such as smartphone. It is used to monitor the physical condition and provide a reliable healthcare system. Utilizing the wireless communication network, sensor nodes collect the physiological data of one patient to the portable mobile device and the latter analyzes and transmits them to the application providers. Therefore, the personal data confidentiality and user privacy are cores of WBANs. Recently, Shen et al. presented a multi-layer authentication protocol for WBANs, which is lightweight and much easier to implement. However, we observe that their authentication between sensor nodes and the portable mobile device could ensure the forward security property only when the sensor nodes are changed (add or delete). When the sensor nodes are constant, the security property is not satisfied. Meanwhile, the authentication between the portable mobile device and application provider is prone to mutual impersonation attack, so the critical goal of mutual authentication can not be achieved. In this paper, an improved two-layer authentication scheme is proposed to remove the flaws. The analysis shows that our method is more secure and could withstand various attacks.

Based on the physical neutral surface, an N-node novel weak form quadrature beam element is proposed and the explicit formulas for computing the stiffness and mass matrices are given. The proposed element is then used to analyze the dynamic behavior of the functionally graded material (FGM) beams under a moving point load. Both elasticity modulus and mass density vary exponentially across the thickness. Investigations show that the maximum dynamic magnification factors are independent of the power-law exponent k at a fixed nondimensional parameter α. This finding may be useful in design and engineering applications.

An authenticated encryption (AE) scheme simultaneously achieves two security goals: confidentiality and authenticity. AE can be divided into symmetric AE and asymmetrical (public key) AE. In a symmetric AE scheme, deniability is gained automatically. However, a public key AE scheme can not gain deniability automatically; on the contrary, it provides non-repudiation. In this paper, we address a question on deniability of public key AE. Of course, we can achieve this goal by "deniable authentication followed by encryption" method. However, such method has the following two weaknesses: (1) the computational cost and communication overhead are the sum of two cryptographic primitives; (2) it is complex to design cryptographic protocols with deniable authentication and confidentiality using two cryptographic primitives. To overcome the two weaknesses, we propose a new concept called deniable authenticated encryption (DAE) that can achieve both the functions of deniable authentication and public key encryption simultaneously, at a cost significantly lower than that required by the "deniable authentication followed by encryption" method. This single cryptographic primitive can simplify the design of cryptographic protocols with deniable authentication and confidentiality. In particular, we construct an identity-based deniable authenticated encryption (IBDAE) scheme. Our construction uses tag-key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) and data encapsulation mechanism (DEM) hybrid techniques, which is more practical for true applications. We show how to construct an IBDAE scheme using an identity-based deniable authenticated tag-KEM (IBDATK) and a DEM. We also propose an IBDATK scheme and prove its security in the random oracle model. For typical security level, our scheme is at least 50.7 and 22.7 % faster than two straightforward "deniable authentication followed by encryption" schemes, respectively. The communication overhead is respectively reduced at least 21.3 and 31.1 %. An application of IBDAE to an e-mail system is described.

Based on the classical beam theory (CBT) and differential quadrature (DQ) rule, an N -node novel weak form quadrature functionally graded (FG) beam element is established. Both Young’s modulus and mass density of the beam materials vary exponentially through the thickness. The element node points can be different from the integration points. Either Gauss–Lobatto–Legendre (GLL) quadrature or Gauss quadrature can be used to obtain the element stiffness matrix and mass matrix. Detailed formulations are given. Convergence study is performed. For verification, results are compared with available solutions in literature. It is shown that the proposed thin beam element can yield very accurate frequencies with relatively small number of nodal points. New accurate results are presented for functionally graded beams with nine different boundary conditions. The tabulated results will be a reference with which other researchers can compare their results during developing new numerical method.

Recently, the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) has drawn considerable attention from both industry and academia. In the IoT, millions of objects with sensors collect data and send the data to servers that analyze, manage and use the data in order to construct some kinds of smart systems, such as smart grid, intelligent transportation systems, healthcare systems and even smart city. It is critical to establish a secure channel between the sensors and servers in order to ensure the correctness of collected data. If the collected data is tampered, the results of data analysis is unbelievable, and may even bring serious disaster. In this paper, we propose a heterogeneous ring signcryption scheme for secure communication from sensors to servers. We prove that this scheme has the indistinguishability against adaptive chosen ciphertext attacks (IND-CCA2) and existential unforgeability against adaptive chosen messages attacks under the computational Diffie---Hellman problem in the random oracle model. Our scheme has the following advantages (1) it simultaneously achieves confidentiality, integrity, authentication, non-repudiation and anonymity in a logical single step; (2) it is heterogeneous and allows a sensor node in an identity-based cryptography to send a message to a server in a public key infrastructure. These features make our scheme suitable for data transmission in the IoT.

Background Acute psychosocial stress provokes increases in circulating endothelin‐1 ( ET ‐1) levels in humans and animal models. However, key questions about the physiological function and cellular source of stress‐induced ET ‐1 remain unanswered. We hypothesized that endothelium‐derived ET ‐1 contributes to the acute pressor response to stress via activation of the endothelin A receptor. Methods and Results Adult male vascular endothelium‐specific ET ‐1 knockout mice and control mice that were homozygous for the floxed allele were exposed to acute psychosocial stress in the form of cage switch stress ( CSS ), with blood pressure measured by telemetry. An acute pressor response was elicited by CSS in both genotypes; however, this response was significantly blunted in vascular endothelium‐specific ET ‐1 knockout mice compared with control mice that were homozygous for the floxed allele. In mice pretreated for 3 days with the endothelin A antagonist, ABT ‐627, or the dual endothelin A/B receptor antagonist, A‐182086, the pressor response to CSS was similar between genotypes. CSS significantly increased plasma ET ‐1 levels in control mice that were homozygous for the floxed allele. CSS failed to elicit an increase in plasma ET ‐1 in vascular endothelium‐specific ET ‐1 knockout mice. Telemetry frequency domain analyses suggested similar autonomic responses to stress between genotypes, and isolated resistance arteries demonstrated similar sensitivity to α 1 ‐adrenergic receptor‐mediated vasoconstriction. Conclusions These findings specify that acute stress‐induced activation of endothelium‐derived ET ‐1 and subsequent endothelin A receptor activation is a novel mediator of the blood pressure response to acute psychosocial stress.

An electronic voting (e-voting) system allows voters to cast their votes secretly and securely over a public channel. Security is the critical issue that should be considered in such a system. In this paper, we propose a heterogeneous deniable authentication (HDA) protocol for e-voting systems. The proposed protocol allows a sender in a certificateless (CL) cryptography system to transmit a message to a receiver in a public key infrastructure (PKI) system. Our protocol is provably secure in the random oracle model under the bilinear Diffie-Hellman (BDH) and computational Diffie-Hellman (CDH) assumptions. Additionally, our protocol provides batch verification, which can accelerate the verification of authenticators. Based on these features, our protocol is highly suitable for practical e-voting systems.

The weak form quadrature element method (QEM) combines the generality of the finite element method (FEM) with the accuracy of spectral techniques and thus has been projected by its proponents as a potential alternative to the conventional finite element method. The progression on the QEM and its applications is clear from past research, but this has been scattered over many papers. This paper presents a state-of-the-art review of the QEM employed to analyze a variety of problems in science and engineering, which should be of general interest to the community of the computational mechanics. The difference between the weak form quadrature element method (WQEM) and the time domain spectral element method (SEM) is clarified. The review is carried out with an emphasis to present static, buckling, free vibration, and dynamic analysis of structural members and structures by the QEM. A subroutine to compute abscissas and weights in Gauss–Lobatto–Legendre (GLL) quadrature is provided in the Appendix.

Novel formulation is presented by using the discrete singular convolution (DSC) for free vibration analysis of circular thin plates with uniform and stepped thickness. Different from the commonly used ones in literature, regularity conditions are not needed at the circular plate center point to avoid singularity. DSC circular and annular thin plate elements are established. For the DSC circular plate element with radius of R1, the stiffness equation is first formulated in region [−R1, R1] with even number of nodes and then reduced to region [0, R1] by using either symmetric or anti-symmetric conditions. The proposed DSC circular and annular plate elements are used for obtaining frequencies of uniform/stepped circular thin plates or annular thin plates with different boundary conditions. Comparison of the present DSC results to existing analytic and numerical solutions verifies the proposed formulations. The present research extends the DSC method to free vibration of circular thin plates with stepped thicknesses.

Experiments determined whether the combination of endothelin A (ETA) receptor antagonist [ABT-627, atrasentan; (2R,3R,4S)-4-(1,3-benzodioxol-5-yl)-1-[2-(dibutylamino)-2-oxoethyl]-2-(4-methoxyphenyl)pyrrolidine-3-carboxylic acid] and a thiazide diuretic (chlorthalidone) would be more effective at lowering blood pressure and reducing renal injury in a rodent model of metabolic syndrome compared with either treatment alone. Male Dahl salt-sensitive rats were fed a high-fat (36% fat), high-salt (4% NaCl) diet for 4 weeks. Separate groups of rats were then treated with vehicle (control), ABT-627 (ABT; 5 mg/kg per day, in drinking water), chlorthalidone (CLTD; 5 mg/kg per day, in drinking water), or both ABT plus CLTD. Mean arterial pressure (MAP) was recorded continuously by telemetry. After 4 weeks, both ABT and CLTD severely attenuated the development of hypertension, whereas the combination further reduced MAP compared with ABT alone. All treatments prevented proteinuria. CLTD and ABT plus CLTD significantly reduced nephrin (a podocyte injury marker) and kidney injury molecule-1 (a tubulointerstitial injury marker) excretion. ABT, with or without CLTD, significantly reduced plasma 8-oxo-2'-deoxyguanosine, a measure of DNA oxidation, whereas CLTD alone had no effect. All treatments suppressed the number of ED1(+) cells (macrophages) in the kidney. Plasma tumor necrosis factor receptors 1 and 2 were reduced only in the combined ABT and CLTD group. These results suggest that ABT and CLTD have antihypertensive and renal-protective effects in a model of metabolic syndrome that are maximally effective when both drugs are administered together. The findings support the hypothesis that combined ETA antagonist and diuretic treatment may provide therapeutic benefit for individuals with metabolic syndrome consuming a Western diet.

This paper presents the numerical modeling and simulations of PZT-induced Lamb wave propagation in plate-like structures by using the spectral finite element method. A novel spectral plate finite element, which can efficiently model the three-dimensional (3D) behavior of Lamb waves, is proposed. In the formulation, linear displacement distributions in the thickness direction are assumed for both the PZT layer and the base plate. A way to avoid the thickness locking is proposed and used in the formulations. Two examples, one for the validation of the proposed two-dimensional (2D) spectral finite element and the other for the demonstration of crack detection in plates, are presented and discussed. The contact between the two faces of crack is considered. Numerical results show that (1) only the anti-symmetric mode is prone to thickness locking thus remedy should be made only on this part, (2) the proposed 2D spectral finite element can adequately model the Lamb wave propagation in plate-like structures and the complex scattering for the crack, and (3) crack location can be well determined by a PZT-induced Lamb wave-based diagnosis algorithm.

Summary Metabolic syndrome (MetS) and chronic kidney disease are global health issues. Metabolic syndrome induces hypertension and commonly results in renal damage. The optimal therapy for hypertension in MetS is unknown. Thiazide diuretics are first-line therapy; however, these drugs may have untoward effects. In the present study we investigated the effects of azilsartan (AZL), chlorthalidone (CLTD) and their combination on blood pressure and renal injury in a rodent model with features of MetS. Dahl salt-sensitive rats were fed high-fat (36% fat), high-salt (4% NaCl) diet. Groups were then treated with vehicle, AZL (3 mg/kg per day), CLTD (5 mg/kg per day) or AZL + CLTD. Mean arterial pressure was recorded continuously by telemetry. After 26 days, rats were killed humanely and their kidneys were harvested for histology. Both AZL and CLTD attenuated the rise in blood pressure compared with vehicle and the combination further reduced blood pressure compared with CLTD alone. All treatments reduced proteinuria and albuminuria. Nephrinuria was prevented only in groups treated with AZL. Nephrinuria was 57% lower and proteinuria was 47% lower with combination therapy compared with AZL alone. All treatments reduced the number of inflammatory cells in the kidney. In conclusion, in our model, AZL and CLTD lower blood pressure and exhibit renal protective effects. Treatment with AZL offers additional protection, as evidenced by lower nephrinuria and plasma monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 levels. Combination therapy afforded the greatest protective effects and may be the best choice for hypertensive therapy in MetS.

In this paper, we present an effective fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) from ring learning with errors (RLWE) assumption without using Gentry’s standard squashing and bootstrapping techniques. Our FHE scheme is to modify the recent FHE scheme of Brakerski. We use the re-linearization technique to reduce the length of ciphertext considerably, and use the modulus reduction technique to manage the noise level and decrease the decryption complexity without introducing additional assumptions. Furthermore, with the key-homomorphic property, we extend our FHE scheme to a threshold fully homomorphic encryption (TFHE), which allows parties to cooperatively decrypt a ciphertext without learning anything but the plaintext. The TFHE scheme can be protected from related-key attacks, as long as we add extra smudging noise during sensitive operations.

Deniable authentication is an important security requirement for ad hoc networks. However, all known identity-based deniable authentication (IBDA) protocols are lack of formal security proof which is very important for cryptographic protocol design. In this paper, we propose a non-interactive IBDA protocol using bilinear pairings. Our protocol admits formal security proof in the random oracle model under the bilinear Diffie-Hellman assumption. Our protocol is faster than all known IBDA protocols of its type. In addition, our protocol supports batch verification that can speed up the verification of authenticators. This characteristic makes our protocol useful in ad hoc networks.

Deniable authentication is an important security requirement for many applications that require user privacy protection, since the sender can deny that he/she has signed the message. Considering the importance of communication efficiency, in this paper, we explore the novel deniable authenticated encryption, which outperforms the existing ones in terms of communication costs and ciphertext size. Our protocol meets all the security requirement of message confidentiality and deniable message authentication. Our protocol is based on identity cryptography and can avoid the public key certificates based public key infrastructure (PKI). Our protocol is provably secure in the random oracle model.

While cardiac functional recovery is attenuated in the elderly following cardiac surgery with obligatory global myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (I/R), the underlying mechanism remains incompletely understood. We observed previously that human and mouse myocardium releases heat shock protein (HSP) 27 during global I/R. Extracellular HSP27 induces myocardial inflammatory response and plays a role in postischemic cardiac dysfunction in adult mouse hearts. This study was to determine the role of extracellular HSP27 and Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) in the attenuated functional recovery in aging mouse hearts following global I/R. Hearts isolated from aging (18–24 months) and adult (4–6 months) mice were subjected to ex vivo global I/R. Augmented release of HSP27 in aging hearts was associated with greater production of cytokines (TNF-α and IL-1β) and worse functional recovery. Anti-HSP27 suppressed the inflammatory response and markedly improved functional recovery in aging hearts. Perfusion of recombinant HSP27 to aging hearts resulted in greater cytokine production and more severe contractile depression in comparison to adult hearts. TLR4 deficiency abolished cytokine production and functional injury in aging hearts exposed to recombinant HSP27. Interestingly, aging hearts had higher TLR4 protein levels and displayed enhanced TLR4-medi-ated NF-κB activation following HSP27 stimulation or I/R. Extracellular HSP27 and TLR4 jointly enhance the inflammatory response and hamper functional recovery following I/R in aging hearts. The enhanced inflammatory response to global I/R and attenuated postischemic functional recovery in aging hearts are due, at least in part, to augmented myocardial release of HSP27 and elevated myocardial TLR4 levels.