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Log-based public key infrastructure(PKI) refers to a robust class of CA-attack-resilient PKI that enhance transparency and accountability in the certificate revocation and issuance process by compelling certificate authorities (CAs) to submit revocations to publicly and verifiably accessible logs. However, log-based PKIs suffer from a reliance on centralized and consistent sources of information, rendering them susceptible to split-world attacks, and they regrettably fail to provide adequate incentives for recording or monitoring CA behavior. Blockchain-based PKIs address these limitations by enabling decentralized log audits through automated financial incentives. However, they continue to face challenges in developing a scalable revocation mechanism suited for lightweight clients. In this paper, we introduce BRT, a scalable blockchain-based system for certificate and revocation transparency. It serves to log, audit, and validate the status of certificates within the transport layer security (TLS)/secure sockets layer(SSL) PKI domain. We designed an audit-on-chain framework, coupled with an off-chain storage/computation system, to enhance the efficiency of BRT when operating in a blockchain environment. By implementing a blockchain-based prototype, we demonstrate that BRT achieves storage-efficient log recording with a peak compression rate reaching 8%, cost-effective log updates for large-scale certificates, and near-instantaneous revocation checks for users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Chinese dairy products, various saccharides including sugar substitutes are often added to modified milk or milk beverages to enhance flavor or increase benefits. That might result in the formation of furfural compounds due to the Maillard reaction between reducing sugars and proteins during heat treatment of milk. The contents of furfural compounds in dairy products vary depending on the type and proportion of sugars added, as well as the strength of heat treatment. Three monosaccharides, four disaccharides and two polysaccharides were selected to study the influences of saccharides on furfurals in modified milk. Kinetics parameters for the formation of furfural compounds were also studied under pilot processing conditions. The contents of furfurals in milk increased with the addition of monosaccharide, in the following order (from high to low) of type: fructose > galactose > glucose, and increased with the decrease in the polymerization degree of the added saccharides. The resulted prediction equations could be used to estimate the contents of furfurals in modified milk added with glucose, maltose or glucan after heat treatment at 115 °C–135 °C. This paper could provide a reference for the prediction and control of furfurals when applying saccharides in the dairy industry. • Furfural compounds in modified milk added with various saccharides were studied. • The influences of saccharide type, addition ratio and heat processing were studied. • Contents of furfurals in modified milk could be estimated by prediction equations. • It may be helpful for control of furfurals in modified milk added with saccharides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revocation functionality and hierarchy key delegation are two necessary and crucial requirements to identity-based cryptosystems. Revocable hierarchical identity-based encryption (RHIBE) has attracted a lot of attention in recent years, many RHIBE schemes have been proposed but shown to be either insecure or bounded where they have to fix the maximum hierarchical depth of RHIBE at setup. In this paper, we propose a new unbounded RHIBE scheme with decryption key exposure resilience and with short public system parameters, and prove our RHIBE scheme to be adaptively secure. Our system model is scalable inherently to accommodate more levels of user adaptively with no adding workload or restarting the system. By carefully designing the hybrid games, we overcome the subtle obstacle in applying the dual system encryption methodology for the unbounded and revocable HIBE. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first construction of adaptively secure unbounded RHIBE scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Without the design for inherent security, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is vulnerable to prefix/subprefix hijacks and other attacks. Though many BGP security approaches have been proposed to prevent or detect such attacks, the unsatisfactory cost-effectiveness frustrates their deployment. In fact, the currently deployed BGP security infrastructure leaves the chance for potential centralized authority misconfiguration and abuse. It actually becomes the critical yield point that demands the logging and auditing of misbehaviors and attacks in BGP security deployments. We propose a blockchain-based Internet number resource authority and trustworthy management solution, named BGPcoin, to facilitate the transparency of BGP security. BGPcoin provides a reliable origin advertisement source for origin authentication by dispensing resource allocations and revocations compliantly against IP prefix hijacking. We perform and audit resource assignments on the tamper-resistant Ethereum blockchain by means of a set of smart contracts, which also interact as one to provide the trustworthy origin route examination for BGP. Compared with RPKI, BGPcoin yields significant benefits in securing origin advertisement and building a dependable infrastructure for the object repository. We demonstrate it through an Ethereum prototype implementation, and we deploy it and do experiment on a locally-simulated network and an official Ethereum test network respectively. The extensive experiment and evaluation demonstrate the incentives to deploy BGPcoin, and the enhanced security provided by BGPcoin is technically and economically feasible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The therapeutic effect of chemical lumbar sympathectomy (CLS) on ischemic diseases of the lower limbs varies greatly among individuals. The time to peak (TTP) response in contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) can reflect the perfusion disorder of the calf skeletal muscle and the collateral circulation. In this study we evaluated the predictive value of CEUS in patients treated with CLS for end-stage atherosclerotic occlusive disease of the lower extremity (ASO-LE). Methods: This was a prospective study that included patients with end-stage ASO-LE and moderate to severe pain who had undergone a CEUS examination and CLS procedure and who were observed for 12 months after surgery. The patients' characteristics and prognostic factors, including lower limb pain score, skin temperature, walking distance, and ulcer and gangrene healing, were recorded. Results: Fifty-eight patients with a mean age of 66.24 (range 58–78) years were included in the study, of whom 42 (71.41%) were men. Following the CLS procedure, the numerical rating scale (NRS)-measured pain decreased significantly, and the skin temperature of the affected limb increased significantly (P < 0.05). The satisfaction rate of lower limb pain relief 1 year after operation was 53.45%. Correlation analysis showed that preoperative TTP response was correlated with the NRS score and skin temperature of the affected limb at 6 months and 12 months post surgery (P < 0.05). The binary logistic regression analysis indicated that a longer preoperative TTP response was associated with a higher risk of poor pain relief after CLS (odds ratio 1.126, 95% confidence interval 1.058–1.205). The receiver operating characteristic curve showed that preoperative TTP response had a certain predictive value on CLS treatment effect, with a sensitivity and specificity of 81.5% and 83.9%, respectively. When the preoperative TTP response was > 77.5, the risk of poor response after CLS increased. Conclusions: Preoperative TTP response was able to predict the therapeutic effect of CLS to a certain extent, and thus may aid physicians in determining the choice of CLS treatment for patients with ASO-LE. Trial Registration: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry: ChicTR1900028424 (principal investigator: Yue Wu; date of registration: 21 December 2019). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite greater attention being paid to sensitive-information leakage in the cyberdomain, the sensitive-information problem of the physical domain remains neglected. Anonymous users can easily access the sensitive information of other users, such as transaction information, health status, and addresses, without any advanced technologies. Ideally, secret messages should be protected not only in the cyberdomain but also in the complex physical domain. However, popular steganography schemes only work in the traditional cyberdomain and are useless when physical distortions of messages are unavoidable. This paper first defines the concept of cross-domain steganography, and then proposes EasyStego, a novel cross-domain steganography scheme. EasyStego is based on the use of QR barcodes as carriers; therefore, it is robust to physical distortions in the complex physical domain. Moreover, EasyStego has a large capacity for embeddable secrets and strong scalability in various scenarios. EasyStego uses an AES encryption algorithm to control the permissions of secret messages, which is more effective in reducing the possibility of sensitive-information leakage. Experiments show that EasyStego has perfect robustness and good efficiency. Compared with the best current steganography scheme based on barcodes, EasyStego has greater steganographic capacity and less impact on barcode data. In robustness tests, EasyStego successfully extracts secret messages at different angles and distances. In the case of adding natural textures and importing quantitative error bits, other related steganography techniques fail, whereas EasyStego can extract secret messages with a success rate of nearly 100%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]