Matrix-based pairwise key establishment in wireless mesh networks using deployment knowledge

Due to the nature of wireless transmission, communication in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) is vulnerable to many adversarial activities including eavesdropping. Pairwise key establishment is one of the fundamental issues in securing WMNs. This paper presents a new matrix-based pairwise key establishment scheme for mesh clients. Our design is motivated by the fact that in WMNs, mesh routers are more powerful than mesh clients, both in computation and communication. By exploiting this heterogeneity, expensive operations can be delegated to mesh routers, which help alleviate the overhead of mesh clients during key establishment. The new scheme possesses two desirable features: (1) Neighbor mesh clients can directly establish pairwise keys; and (2) Communication and storage costs at mesh clients are significantly reduced.

Towards parameter-less 3D mesh segmentation

This thesis focuses on the 3D mesh segmentation process. The research demonstrated how the process can be done in a parameterless approach which allows full automation with accurate results. Applications of this research include, but not limited to, 3D search engines, 3D character animation, robotics environment recognition, and augmented reality.

A longitudinal study of quality of life among people living with a progressive neurological illness

This study investigated predictors of quality of life (QOL) of people with progressive neurological illnesses. Participants were 257 people with motor neurone disease (MND), Huntington’s disease (HD), multiple sclerosis (MS), or Parkinson’s. Participants completed questionnaires on two occasions, 12 months apart. There was an increase in severity of symptoms for people withMND, negative mood for people with HD and Parkinson’s, and social support satisfaction for people with MS. Regression analyses were conducted to determine predictors of QOL for each group. Predictor variables were length of illness, symptoms (physical symptoms, control over body, cognitive symptoms and psychological symptoms), mood, relationship satisfaction and social support. Predictors of QOL were severity of symptoms for people withMND, HD and MS; negative mood for people withMNDand Parkinson’s; and social support satisfaction for people with MS. These results demonstrate the importance of illness severity and mood in predicting QOL, but also indicate differences between illness groups. The limited role played by social support and relationship is a surprising finding from the current study.

Matrix-based pairwise key establishment with pre and post deployment knowledge for wireless mesh networks

The nature of wireless transmission leads to vulnerabilities to many malicious activities, and communication in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) must be protected by proper security measures. This paper focuses on symmetric pair wise key establishment and presents a new matrix-based pair wise key establishment scheme for mesh clients. In WMNs, mesh routers are much more powerful than mesh clients, both in communication and computation. By taking advantage of this heterogeneity, our new scheme delegates energy-consuming operations to mesh routers when establishing pair wise keys for mesh clients. Additionally, neighbor mesh clients in our scheme can directly establish pair wise keys with significantly reduced communication and storage costs, due to the use of both pre and post deployment knowledge.

Sex as a determinant of relapse incidence and progressive course of multiple sclerosis

The aim of this work was to evaluate sex differences in the incidence of multiple sclerosis relapses; assess the relationship between sex and primary progressive disease course; and compare effects of age and disease duration on relapse incidence. Annualized relapse rates were calculated using the MSBase registry. Patients with incomplete data or <1 year of follow-up were excluded. Patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis were only included in the sex ratio analysis. Relapse incidences over 40 years of multiple sclerosis or 70 years of age were compared between females and males with Andersen-Gill and Tweedie models. Female-to-male ratios stratified by annual relapse count were evaluated across disease duration and patient age and compared between relapse-onset and primary progressive multiple sclerosis. The study cohort consisted of 11 570 eligible patients with relapse-onset and 881 patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis. Among the relapse-onset patients (82 552 patient-years), 48 362 relapses were recorded. Relapse frequency was 17.7% higher in females compared with males. Within the initial 5 years, the female-to-male ratio increased from 2.3:1 to 3.3:1 in patients with 0 versus ≥4 relapses per year, respectively. The magnitude of this sex effect increased at longer disease duration and older age (P < 10−12). However, the female-to-male ratio in patients with relapse-onset multiple sclerosis and zero relapses in any given year was double that of the patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis. Patient age was a more important determinant of decline in relapse incidence than disease duration (P < 10−12). Females are predisposed to higher relapse activity than males. However, this difference does not explain the markedly lower female-to-male sex ratio in primary progressive multiple sclerosis. Decline in relapse activity over time is more closely related to patient age than disease duration.

Polynomial based key predistribution scheme in wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have the ability to integrate with other networks while providing a fast and cost-saving deployment. The network security is one of important challenge problems in this kind of networks. This paper is focused on key management between mesh and sensor networks. We propose an efficient key pre-distribution scheme based on two polynomials in wireless mesh networks by employing the nature of heterogeneity. Our scheme realizes the property of bloom filters, i.e., neighbor nodes can discover their shared keys but have no knowledge on the different keys possessed by the other node, without the probability of false positive. The analysis presented in this paper shows that our scheme has the ability to establish three different security level keys and achieves the property of self adaptive security for sensor networks with acceptable computation and communication consumption.

Sustainability analysis and resource management for wireless mesh networks with renewable energy supplies

 There is a growing interest in the use of renewable energy sources to power wireless networks in order to mitigate the detrimental effects of conventional energy production or to enable deployment in off-grid locations. However, renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, are by nature unstable in their availability and capacity. The dynamics of energy supply hence impose new challenges for network planning and resource management. In this paper, the sustainable performance of a wireless mesh network powered by renewable energy sources is studied. To address the intermittently available capacity of the energy supply, adaptive resource management and admission control schemes are proposed. Specifically, the goal is to maximize the energy sustainability of the network, or equivalently, to minimize the failure probability that the mesh access points (APs) deplete their energy and go out of service due to the unreliable energy supply. To this end, the energy buffer of a mesh AP is modeled as a G/G/1(/N) queue with arbitrary patterns of energy charging and discharging. Diffusion approximation is applied to analyze the transient evolution of the queue length and the energy depletion duration. Based on the analysis, an adaptive resource management scheme is proposed to balance traffic loads across the mesh network according to the energy adequacy at different mesh APs. A distributed admission control strategy to guarantee high resource utilization and to improve energy sustainability is presented. By considering the first and second order statistics of the energy charging and discharging processes at each mesh AP, it is demonstrated that the proposed schemes outperform some existing state-of-the-art solutions.

Protein-enriched diet, with the use of lean red meat, combined with progressive resistance training enhances lean tissue mass and muscle strength and reduces circulating IL-6 concentrations in elderly women: a cluster randomized controlled trial.

Physical inactivity, inadequate dietary protein, and low-grade systemic inflammation contribute to age-related muscle loss, impaired function, and disability.

The effects of progressive resistance training combined with a whey-protein drink and vitamin D supplementation on glycaemic control, body composition and cardiometabolic risk factors in older adults with type 2 diabetes: study protocol for a randomized c

While physical activity, energy restriction and weight loss are the cornerstone of type 2 diabetes management, less emphasis is placed on optimizing skeletal muscle mass. As muscle is the largest mass of insulin-sensitive tissue and the predominant reservoir for glucose disposal, there is a need to develop safe and effective evidence-based, lifestyle management strategies that optimize muscle mass as well as improve glycaemic control and cardiometabolic risk factors in people with this disease, particularly older adults who experience accelerated muscle loss.

A cross-layer key establishment scheme in wireless mesh networks

Cryptographic keys are necessary to secure communications among mesh clients in wireless mesh networks. Traditional key establishment schemes are implemented at higher layers, and the security of most such designs relies on the complexity of computational problems. Extracting cryptographic keys at the physical layer is a promising approach with information-theoretical security. But due to the nature of communications at the physical layer, none of the existing designs supports key establishment if communicating parties are out of each other's radio range, and all schemes are insecure against man-in-the-middle attacks. This paper presents a cross-layer key establishment scheme where the established key is determined by two partial keys: one extracted at the physical layer and the other generated at higher layers. The analysis shows that the proposed cross-layer key establishment scheme not only eliminates the aforementioned shortcomings of key establishment at each layer but also provides a flexible solution to the key generation rate problem. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.