The rapid growth of Internet of Vehicles (IoV) has brought huge challenges for large data storage, intelligent management, and information security for the entire system. The traditional centralized ...management approach for IoV faces the difficulty in dealing with real-time response. The blockchain, as an effective technology for decentralized distributed storage and security management, has already showed great advantages in its application of Bitcoin. In this paper, we investigate how the blockchain technology could be extended to the application of vehicle networking, especially with the consideration of the distributed and secure storage of big data. We define several types of nodes such as vehicle and roadside for vehicle networks and form several sub-blockchain networks. In this paper, we present a model of the outward transmission of vehicle blockchain data, and then give detail theoretical analysis and numerical results. This paper has shown the potential to guide the application of blockchain for future vehicle networking.
The emerging mobile edge computing (MEC) evolutionarily extends the cloud services to the network edge. In order to efficiently coordinate distributed edge resources, software defined networking ...(SDN) at the network edge has been explored to realize the integrated management of communication, computation, and cache (3C) resources. However, many research efforts, in software-defined edge networks, are mainly devoted to 1C or 2C resource sharing. Motivated by high service performance and user demands, we propose a user-centric edge resource sharing model for software-defined ultra-dense network (SD-UDN) where multiple MEC servers around small base stations (SBSs) can share their 3C resources through OpenFlow-enabled switches. In particular, the service models of MEC servers and users are formulated to optimize the service process by minimizing the service delay, which is NP-hard. To address this NP-hard issue, a service association model is constructed based on design structure matrix (DSM), and a simulated annealing algorithm is employed to further optimize the service association model for reducing time complexity and offering a nearoptimal solution. Compared with traditional 1C or 2C resource sharing, the proposed edge resource sharing model can guarantee lower service delay for users.
To offload and alleviate the heavy base station (BS) traffic load caused by the rapidly growing video services, device-to-device (D2D) communication, as one of the most indispensable technologies of ...the future cellular networks, can be potentially exploited by mobile users to distribute videos for a BS. In this paper, an effective pricing-based multicast video distribution system and a grid-based clustering method are proposed to support the distribution. Moreover, with the consideration of users' mobility and social characteristics, we classify them into multicast and core types by studying the user stay probability and familiarity. In particular, core users can cooperate with the BS to distribute videos to the multicast users through intracluster D2D multicast. However, core users cannot selflessly help the BS to distribute videos; instead, they will evaluate their personal benefits before distributing the videos to the multicast users. Further, a Stackelberg game-based pricing mechanism is proposed to inspire the core users to distribute videos. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed mechanism can not only effectively alleviate the BS traffic load, but also significantly improve the effectiveness and reliability of video transmission.
The residue of Chinese Herbs has been increasing at a rapid rate with the development of Traditional Chinese Medicine. As the residue become solid waste, serious second pollution can result to waters ...and soil. In the meanwhile, substance abuse had led to an antibiotic's accumulation in aquatic ecological environment. In this study, a residue from a Chinese herbal medicine, Flueggea suffruticosa, was used to prepare biochar for antibiotics pollution control. The biochar was modified by zinc chloride (Zn-BC) and used as an adsorbent to remove tetracyclines (TCs) from water. The surface area of Zn-BC was 1556 m2/g, and tetracycline (TC), chlortetracycline (CTC), and oxytetracycline (OTC) were chosen as target pollutants to detect the adsorptive capacity of Zn-BC. The adsorption process can be described by the pseudo-second-order model and Langmuir model, and the influences of pH and ionic strength on adsorption were also investigated. According to the Langmuir model, the maximum adsorption capacity of Zn-BC to CTC, TC and OTC was 200.0, 188.7 and 129.9 mg/g. Hydrogen bonding and electrostatic interaction played dominant roles in the adsorption process and the adsorption process was spontaneous. The biochar derived from the Chinese herbal medicine residue is an effective adsorbent for removing TCs from wastewater.
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•A Chinese herbal medicine residue, Flueggea suffruticosa, was used to make biochar.•The biochar was modified by zinc chloride and the surface area was 1556 m2/g.•The Zn-BC was used to adsorb tetracycline, chlortetracycline, and oxytetracycline.•The maximum adsorption capacity to TC, CTC and OTC was 188.7, 200.0 and 129.9 mg/g.•Hydrogen bonding and electrostatic interaction play dominant roles in the adsorption.
With the popularization of intelligent terminals, especially current trends, such as "Industrie 4.0" and the Internet of Things, mobile crowdsensing is becoming one of the promising applications ...built on smart devices in mobile networks. However, the existing mobile crowdsensing models are mostly based on a centralized platform, which is not fully trusted in reality and results in the existence of fraud and other security problems. Furthermore, the data quality collected through crowdsensing is varied, and the location privacy is difficult to guarantee, especially at the worker selection stage. To solve these two problems, an effective blockchain-based location-privacy-preserving crowdsensing model, CrowdBLPS, is proposed in this article. First, the idea of a blockchain is introduced into this model. The decentralized structure and the consensus approach are applied to realize the nonrepudiation and nontampering of information. Second, to improve the data sensing quality and protect worker privacy, a two-stage approach, including the preregistration stage and the final selection stage, is proposed. Finally, we further implement a prototype on the Ethereum public testing network, and the experimental results show the feasibility, availability, and reliability of CrowdBLPS.
To relieve the current overload of cellular networks caused by the continuously growing multimedia service, mobile edge collaboration, which exploits edge users to distribute videos for base station ...(BS), provides an effective way to share the heavy BS load. With the emergence of mobile edge technologies for Internet-of-Things applications, such as device to device and machine to machine, how to exploit users' social characteristics and mobility to minimize the number of transmissions of BS and how to improve the quality of experience of users have become the key challenges. In this paper, we study two aspects that are critical to these issues. One is the two-step detection mechanism, namely the establishment of virtual communities and collaborative clusters. Specifically, we take into consideration user preference for content and location. First of all, a virtual community is established, which exploits the coalition game based on the user's preference list to dynamically divide users into multiple communities. Then, to take full advantage of the temporary link established between users, a grid-based clustering method is proposed to manage the video requesting users. On the other hand, we propose a scalable video coding sharing scheme based on user's social attributes. This approach makes video distribution more flexible at the edge of mobile network through collaboration among users, and effectively reduces transmission energy consumption of transmitters. Numerical results show that the proposed mechanism can not only effectively alleviate the BS load, but also dramatically improve the reliability and adaptability of video distribution.
Eva-1 homolog A (EVA1A) is regarded as TMEM166 (transmembrane protein 166) or FAM176A (family with sequence similarity 176) and a lysosome and endoplasmic reticulum-associated protein involved in ...regulating autophagy and apoptosis. EVA1A regulates embryonic neurogenesis, cardiac remodeling, islet alpha-cell functions, acute liver failure, and hepatitis B virus replication. However, the related mechanisms are not fully clear. Autophagy is a process in which cells transfer pathogens, abnormal proteins and organelles to lysosomes for degradation. It plays an important role in various physiological and pathological processes, including cancer, aging, neurodegeneration, infection, heart disease, development, cell differentiation and nutritional starvation. Recently, there are many studies on the important role of EVA1A in many physiological and pathological processes by regulating autophagy. However, the related molecular mechanisms need further study. Therefore, we summarize the above-mentioned researches about the role of EVA1A in physiological and pathological processes through regulating autophagy in order to provide theoretical basis for future researches.
The ubiquitous nature of a connected health system imposes challenges with regard to the design of system architecture, security, and privacy. Different from traditional centralized systems, a ...distributed blockchain-based security protection architecture is proposed. In particular, smart contracts, as an intelligent protocol in the blockchain technology, are exploited to automatically achieve system confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity. Research challenges related to security and privacy issues in our proposed architecture are then analyzed, followed by potential solutions. Finally, security performance simulations and analyses are conducted to validate and evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed security architecture.
Ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury is characterized by a limited blood supply to organs, followed by the restoration of blood flow and reoxygenation. In addition to ischemia, blood flow recovery can ...also lead to very harmful injury, especially inflammatory injury. Autophagy refers to the transport of cellular materials to the lysosomes for degradation, leading to the conversion of cellular components and offering energy and macromolecular precursors. It can maintain the balance of synthesis, decomposition and reuse of the intracellular components, and participate in many physiological processes and diseases. Inflammasomes are a kind of protein complex. Under physiological and pathological conditions, as the cellular innate immune signal receptors, inflammasomes sense pathogens to trigger an inflammatory response. TheNLRP3 inflammasome is the most deeply studied inflammasome and is composed of NLRP3, the adaptor apoptosis-associated speck-like protein containing a caspase recruitment domain (ASC) and pro-caspase-1. Its activation triggers the cleavage of pro-interleukin (IL)-1β and pro-IL-18 mediated by caspase-1 and promotes a further inflammatory process. Studies have shown that autophagy and the NLRP3 inflammasome play an important role in the process of I/R injury, but the relevant mechanisms have not been fully explained, especially how the interaction between autophagy and the NLRP3 inflammasome participates in I/R injury, which remains to be further studied. Therefore, we reviewed the recent studies about the interplay between autophagy and the NLRP3 inflammasome in I/R injury and analyzed the mechanisms to provide the theoretical references for further research in the future.
Autophagy is a vital cell mechanism which plays an important role in many physiological processes including clearing long-lived, accumulated and misfolded proteins, removing damaged organelles and ...regulating growth and aging. Autophagy also participates in a variety of biological functions, such as development, cell differentiation, resistance to pathogens and nutritional hunger. Recently, autophagy has been reported to be involved in diabetes, but the mechanism is not fully understood. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a colorless, water-soluble, flammable gas with the typical odor of rotten eggs, which has been known as a highly toxic gas for many years. However, it has been reported recently that H2S, together with nitric oxide and carbon monoxide, is an important gas signal transduction molecule. H2S has been reported to play a protective role in many diabetes-related diseases, but the mechanism is not fully clear. Recent studies indicate that H2S plays an important role by regulating autophagy in many diseases including cancer, tissue fibrosis diseases and glycometabolic diseases; however, the related mechanism has not been fully studied. In this review, we summarize recent research on the role of H2S in regulating autophagy in diabetic-related diseases to provide references for future related research.
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