A Novel Trust-Aware Geographical Routing Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are vulnerable to a wide set of security attacks, including those targeting the routing protocol functionality. The applicability of legacy security solutions is disputable (if not infeasible), due to severe restrictions in node and network resources. Although confidentiality, integrity and authentication measures assist in preventing specific types of attacks, they come at high cost and, in most cases, cannot shield against routing attacks. To face this problem, we propose a secure routing protocol which adopts the geographical routing principle to cope with the network dimensions, and relies on a distributed trust model for the detection and avoidance of malicious neighbours. A novel function which adaptively weights location, trust and energy information drives the routing decisions, allowing for shifting emphasis from security to path optimality. The proposed trust model relies on both direct and indirect observations to derive the trustworthiness of each neighboring node, while it is capable of defending against an increased set of routing attacks including attacks targeting the indirect trust management scheme. Extensive simulation results reveal the advantages of the proposed model.     

Performance of MIMO-WCDMA Multicellular Networks with Ideal Power Control

The goal of the study presented in this paper is to investigate the performance of a multiple input multiple output network using the wideband code division multiple access physical layer protocol. In this context, several transmission techniques are evaluated by executing independent Monte Carlo simulations in parallel with the help of a developed hybrid system—link level simulator. Moreover, the performance of a proposed technique that is based on the maximization of the desired signal of a Mobile Station (MS) to the total amount of interference caused to the rest of the network is evaluated as well. As results indicate, this technique can achieve up to 45 % transmission power gain for high data rate services compared to the case where only the maximization of the desired MS’s signal is considered.     

On the Identification and Quantification of Ergothioneine and Lovastatin in Various Mushroom Species: Assets and Challenges of Different Analytical Approaches

In recent years, mushrooms have drawn the attention of agro-industries and food-industries as they were considered to be valuable natural sources of health promoting compounds such as β-glucans, ergothioneine, and lovastatin. The detection and quantification of such compounds by implementing reliable analytical approaches is of the utmost importance in order to adjust mushrooms’ cultivation conditions and maximize the production in different species. Toward this direction, the current study focuses on the comparison of ultraviolet–visible (UV–Vis) spectrometry and liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) methods (a) by evaluating the content of ergothioneine and lovastatin in mushrooms and (b) by highlighting any possible substrate-based interferences that hinder the accurate determination of these two compounds in order to propose the technique-of-choice for a standardized bioactive compounds monitoring. For this purpose, mushrooms produced by three species (i.e., Agaricus bisporus, Pleurotus ostreatus, and P. citrinopileatus) on various cultivation substrates, namely wheat straw (WS), winery (grape marc (GM)), and olive oil (OL) by-products, were examined. Among the two applied techniques, the developed and validated LC–MS methods, exhibiting relatively short analysis time and higher resolution, emerge as the methods-of-choice for detecting ergothioneine and lovastatin in mushrooms. On the contrary, UV–Vis methods were hindered due to co-absorbance of different constituents, resulting in invalid results. Among the studied mushrooms, P. citrinopileatus contained the highest amount of ergothioneine (822.1 ± 20.6 mg kg⁻¹ dry sample), whereas A. bisporus contained the highest amounts of lovastatin (1.39 ± 0.014 mg kg⁻¹ dry sample). Regarding the effect of different cultivation substrates, mushrooms produced on OL and WS contained the highest amount of ergothioneine, while mushrooms deriving from GM-based substrates contained the highest amount of lovastatin.     

T3C: improving a decision tree classification algorithm’s interval splits on continuous attributes

This paper proposes, describes and evaluates T3C, a classification algorithm that builds decision trees of depth at most three, and results in high accuracy whilst keeping the size of the tree reasonably small. T3C is an improvement over algorithm T3 in the way it performs splits on continuous attributes. When run against publicly available data sets, T3C achieved lower generalisation error than T3 and the popular C4.5, and competitive results compared to Random Forest and Rotation Forest.     

Forward–backward quasi-Newton methods for nonsmooth optimization problems

The forward–backward splitting method (FBS) for minimizing a nonsmooth composite function can be interpreted as a (variable-metric) gradient method over a continuously differentiable function which we call forward–backward envelope (FBE). This allows to extend algorithms for smooth unconstrained optimization and apply them to nonsmooth (possibly constrained) problems. Since the FBE can be computed by simply evaluating forward–backward steps, the resulting methods rely on a similar black-box oracle as FBS. We propose an algorithmic scheme that enjoys the same global convergence properties of FBS when the problem is convex, or when the objective function possesses the Kurdyka–?ojasiewicz property at its critical points. Moreover, when using quasi-Newton directions the proposed method achieves superlinear convergence provided that usual second-order sufficiency conditions on the FBE hold at the limit point of the generated sequence. Such conditions translate into milder requirements on the original function involving generalized second-order differentiability. We show that BFGS fits our framework and that the limited-memory variant L-BFGS is well suited for large-scale problems, greatly outperforming FBS or its accelerated version in practice, as well as ADMM and other problem-specific solvers. The analysis of superlinear convergence is based on an extension of the Dennis and Moré theorem for the proposed algorithmic scheme.     

Long‐Time Behavior,Invariant Measures,and Regularizing Effects for Stochastic Scalar Conservation Laws

We study the long‐time behavior and regularity of the pathwise entropy solutions to stochastic scalar conservation laws with random‐in‐time spatially homogeneous fluxes and periodic initial data. We prove that the solutions converge to their spatial average, which is the unique invariant measure of the associated random dynamical system, and provide a rate of convergence, the latter being new even in the deterministic case for dimensions higher than 2. The main tool is a new regularization result in the spirit of averaging lemmata for scalar conservation laws, which, in particular, implies a regularization by noise‐type result for pathwise quasi‐solutions.© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Evaluating routing metric composition approaches for QoS differentiation in low power and lossy networks

The use of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) in a wide variety of application domains has been intensively pursued lately while Future Internet designers consider WSN as a network architecture paradigm that provides abundant real-life real-time information which can be exploited to enhance the user experience. The wealth of applications running on WSNs imposes different Quality of Service requirements on the underlying network with respect to delay, reliability and loss. At the same time, WSNs present intricacies such as limited energy, node and network resources. To meet the application’s requirements while respecting the characteristics and limitations of the WSN, appropriate routing metrics have to be adopted by the routing protocol. These metrics can be primary (e.g. expected transmission count) to capture a specific effect (e.g. link reliability) and achieve a specific goal (e.g. low number of retransmissions to economize resources) or composite (e.g. combining latency with remaining energy) to satisfy different applications needs and WSNs requirements (e.g. low latency and energy consumption at the same time). In this paper, (a) we specify primary routing metrics and ways to combine them into composite routing metrics, (b) we prove (based on the routing algebra formalism) that these metrics can be utilized in such a way that the routing protocol converges to optimal paths in a loop-free manner and (c) we apply the proposed approach to the RPL protocol specified by the ROLL group of IETF for such low power and lossy link networks to quantify the achieved performance through extensive computer simulations.     

Simulation of the interaction between an edge dislocation and ⟨111⟩ interstitial dislocation loops in α-iron

ABSTRACT

The dependence of the interactions of intermediate-size ½<111> self-interstitial atom (SIA) loops with an edge dislocation on strain rate and temperature was investigated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations for the interatomic potential derived by Ackland et al. (A97). For low temperatures (T?=?1?K), the mechanisms of the interactions were in agreement with recent literature. It was shown that a second passing of the dislocation through the loop led to a different mechanism than the one that occurred upon first passing. Since these mechanisms are associated with different SIA loop sizes, and since the loop lost a number of SIAs upon first interaction, it was deduced that the dividing threshold between large and small loops (rendering them strong or weak obstacles, respectively) is at the vicinity of the loop size studied (169 SIAs). For higher temperatures (T?=?300?K), the strain rate dependence proved strong: for low strain rates, the dislocation absorbed the loop as a double super-jog almost immediately and continued its glide unimpeded. For a high strain rate, the dislocation was initially pinned due to the formation of an almost sessile segment leading to high critical stress.