UK report calls for protection of genetic privacy

DNA gathered from a used coffee mug could lead to serious breaches of a person's genetic privacy. The UK government's Human Genetics Commission now recommends making theft of genetic information a criminal offence, writes Michael Gross.     

Blockchain-assisted authentication and key agreement scheme for fog-based smart grid

Cluster Computing - In recent times, the research works on the integration of fog computing with blockchain to address the issues such as higher latency, single point of failure, and centralization...     

Efficient privacy-preserving anonymous authentication scheme for human predictive online education system

Cluster Computing - In recent years, online education systems (OES) are improved tremendously with the development of information communication technology. Also, OES provides the opportunity for...     

一种个人DNA数据隐私保护算法的改进

DNALA是一种个人DNA数据隐私保护的方法。该方法能有效的实现对个人DNA数据的隐私保护,但前期数据预处理复杂,而且后期处理精度不高。本文针对DNALA的这些缺点进行改进,形成了Savior算法。Savior算法在数据预处理阶段用双序列比对代替了DNALA中的多序列比对,在随后的处理中用随机爬山法代替了DNALA中的贪心策略,从而克服了原算法的缺点。对比实验说明:在达到同样的保护强度时,Savior对数据的改动小于DNALA,数据预处理耗费的时间小于DNALA。     

Mutual authentication scheme of IoT devices in fog computing environment

The radical shift in the technology with the advent of connected things has led to the significant proliferation in demand for IoT devices, commonly called ‘smart devices’. These devices are capable of data collection, which can help in umpteen applications, particularly in healthcare. With the tremendous growth in these resource-constrained end devices, there has been a substantial increase in the number of attack varieties. Since these end devices deal with the sensitive data that might cause severe damage if not handled properly. Hence, defending its integrity, preserving its privacy, and maintaining its confidentiality as well as availability is of utmost importance. However, there are many protocols, models, architecture tools, etc. proposed to provide security. Nevertheless, almost every solution propound so far is not fully resilient and lacks in giving full protection to the system in some way or the other. So here, we have proposed a lightweight anonymous mutual authentication scheme for end devices and fog nodes.

     

A novel privacy protection of permissioned blockchains with conditionally anonymous ring signature

With the rapid development of permissioned blockchains, the problem of privacy leakage within permissioned blockchains is increasingly serious. In this paper, for the privacy problem in permissioned blockchains, a novel privacy protection method has been put forward. In this novel method, the ring signature is used to protect the privacy of the user in permissioned blockchains. On the other hand, the unconditional anonymity of ring signature may be abused maliciously by the adversary. Conditional anonymity is considered to improve the ring signature. Therefore, based on conditionally anonymous ring signature, permissioned blockchains privacy protection scheme has also been laid down. Furthermore, the effects of smart contract for transaction flows are considered. The asynchronous signing transaction process is proposed. The security of the scheme has been formally reduced to the Discrete Logarithm assumption. The comparison with the state-of-the-art and simulation experiment have also demonstrated that the proposed scheme is efficient and practical.

     

FunGene-DB: A web-based tool for Polyporales strains authentication

Polyporales are extensively studied wood-decaying fungi with applications in white and green biotechnologies and in medicinal chemistry. We developed an open-access, user-friendly, bioinformatics tool named FunGene-DB (http://www.fungene-db.org). The goal was to facilitate the molecular authentication of Polyporales strains and fruit-bodies, otherwise subjected to morphological studies. This tool includes a curated database that contains ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 rDNA genes screened through a semi-automated pipeline from the International Nucleotide Sequence Database (INSD), and the similarity search BLASTn program. Today, the web-accessible database compiles 2379 accepted sequences, among which 386 were selected as reference sequences (most often fully identified ITS sequences for which a voucher, strain or specimen, has been deposited in a public-access collection). The restriction of the database to one reference sequence per species (or per clade for species complex) allowed most often unequivocal analysis. We conclude that FunGene-DB is a promising tool for molecular authentication of Polyporales. It should be especially useful for scientists who are not expert mycologists but who need to check the identity of strains (e.g. for culture collections, for applied microbiology).     

Synthesis of oligodeoxynucleotides containing 2-thiopyrimidine residues--a new protection scheme.

A method is described for the incorporation of 2'-deoxy-2-thiouridine (dS2U) and 2'-deoxy-2-thiothymidine (dS2T) into oligodeoxynucleotides at predetermined positions. This requires N3 or O4-acylation of dS2U and dS2T with toluoyl chloride. These base-protected thiopyrimidines are completely stable toward the aqueous iodine oxidation reagent used in the phosphoramidite DNA synthesis method. The toluoyl protecting group is removed during the standard post-synthetic ammonia treatment. This novel protection strategy allows dS2U and dS2T to be efficiently incorporated into oligodeoxynucleotides at predetermined sites without the usual problem of desulfurization and decomposition. Several 14-mers containing the Eco-RI recognition site (dGGCGGAAXXCCGCC and dGGCGGAAXXCGCGG, where X represents dT, dS2U or dS2T) have been synthesized and characterized by base composition, thermal denaturation, CD spectroscopy and endonuclease substrate activity.     

Distinguishing territoriality and privacy: Two studies

Two studies were designed to explore differences between human territoriality and privacy. Study I was designed to determine whether subjects would distinguish between settings offering (1) privacy, (2) territory, (3) both, or (4) neither, and whether they would be prepared to sacrifice privacy for territory (or vice versag in choosing settings for certain specified activities. Results showed that subjects did make these distinctions. Study II was a laboratory experiment designed to explore the separate psychological effects of territory and privacy. In it, subjects first territorialized individual experimental rooms then half completed dependent measures (focusing on attribution) in their new territories, while half worked in comparable rooms they had not seen before. Subjects were also divided so that half had privacy while completing the measures, while half had none. Results indicated that privacy led subjects to attribute their behavior less to the influence of others, and, independently, subjects working on their own territories attributed their behavior more to own personality. Private environments were also reported as being more stimulating and free, and subjects were more creative there.