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Background: On October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack on the State of Israel and kidnapped 251 people into captivity to the Gaza Strip. Several months later, as part of a humanitarian exchange deal, 105 hostages were released in five phases and admitted to one of six hospitals throughout the country for treatment. Shamir Medical Center (SMC) was one of these facilities. This study aims to describe the structure, process and outcomes of establishing a comprehensive, multi-step, operational protocol for receiving hostages returning from captivity. Method: The process of preparing SMC as a receiving center, the establishment of procedures for implementation of the medical protocol, and the assessment of multi-disciplinary team preparedness and implementation and outcomes in an institutional protocol are described. Results: 24 returning hostages were received at SMC. Social workers, dietitians and translators were used by 100% of the majority group of returning hostages from the same country of origin and the sole individual from the other country of origin utilized a dietitian, social worker, ENT consultations, and a hearing test. Among the majority group, orthopedic and dermatological consultations were utilized by 17.4% and 13% received an ENT consultation. Of the administered imaging, 13% received a chest X-ray, 8.7% received a limb X-ray, 17.4% received a head CT scan, and 4.3% received an abdominal CT. In addition, 21.7% were provided antibiotic therapy. Protocol efficacy was measured by assessing time to various operational aspects of protocol implementation and medical procedures such as mean hours to room assignment, primary physician evaluation and social worker session. No correlation between age and operational variables was found. Conclusion: This novel operational protocol was successfully implemented and may serve as a framework for managing similar unpredictable sensitive events in the case of future need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic voting consistently fails to supplant conventional paper ballot due to a plethora of security shortcomings. Not only are traditional voting methods mediocre in terms of transparency, audit, and costs, but they also encompass a principal-agent problem, where acting governments have real capability for tampering. Here, I propose Proof of Work by user devices to fortify integrity of votes as cast and seed-isolated time-based one-time passwords to force observable polling stations. Coupled with end-2-end verifiability, the measures proposed are intended to completely decentralize the voting process. A state would only issue single-use authorizations to vote, while an untrusted publisher would collect and publish two unrelatable lists: votes and voters. Eventually, anyone could tabulate results. Content distribution networks are shown to be instrumental security providers. Weaknesses of proposed architecture are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background On October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack on the State of Israel and kidnapped 251 people into captivity to the Gaza Strip. Several months later, as part of a humanitarian exchange deal, 105 hostages were released in five phases and admitted to one of six hospitals throughout the country for treatment. Shamir Medical Center (SMC) was one of these facilities. This study aims to describe the structure, process and outcomes of establishing a comprehensive, multi-step, operational protocol for receiving hostages returning from captivity. Method The process of preparing SMC as a receiving center, the establishment of procedures for implementation of the medical protocol, and the assessment of multi-disciplinary team preparedness and implementation and outcomes in an institutional protocol are described. Results 24 returning hostages were received at SMC. Social workers, dietitians and translators were used by 100% of the majority group of returning hostages from the same country of origin and the sole individual from the other country of origin utilized a dietitian, social worker, ENT consultations, and a hearing test. Among the majority group, orthopedic and dermatological consultations were utilized by 17.4% and 13% received an ENT consultation. Of the administered imaging, 13% received a chest X-ray, 8.7% received a limb X-ray, 17.4% received a head CT scan, and 4.3% received an abdominal CT. In addition, 21.7% were provided antibiotic therapy. Protocol efficacy was measured by assessing time to various operational aspects of protocol implementation and medical procedures such as mean hours to room assignment, primary physician evaluation and social worker session. No correlation between age and operational variables was found. Conclusion This novel operational protocol was successfully implemented and may serve as a framework for managing similar unpredictable sensitive events in the case of future need.

The malicious mining pool can sacrifice part of its revenue to employ the computing power of blockchain network. The employed computing power carries out the pool mining attacks on the attacked mining pool. To realize the win-win game between the malicious mining pool and the employee, the paper proposes an Employment Attack Pricing Algorithm (EAPA) of mining pools in blockchain based on game theory. In the EAPA, the paper uses mathematical formulas to express the revenue of malicious mining pools under the employment attack, the revenue increment of malicious mining pools, and the revenue of the employee. It establishes a game model between the malicious mining pool and the employee under the employment attack. Then, the paper proposes an optimal computing power price selection strategy of employment attack based on model derivation. In the strategy, the malicious mining pool analyzes the conditions for the employment attack, and uses the derivative method to find the optimal utilization value of computing power, employees analyze the conditions for accepting employment, and use the derivative method to find the optimal reward value of computing power. Finally, the strategy finds the optimal employment computing power price to realize Nash equilibrium between the malicious mining pool and the employee under the current computing power allocation. The simulation results show that the EAPA could find the employment computing power price that realizes the win-win game between the malicious mining pool and the employee. The EAPA also maximizes the unit computing power revenue of employment and the unit computing power revenue of honest mining in malicious mining pool at the same time. The EAPA outperforms the state-of-the-art methods such as SPSUCP, DPSACP, and FPSUCP.

Blockchain is a technology that is rapidly gaining prominence and finding applications in various sectors such as banking, supply chain, healthcare, and e-governance. The consensus algorithm employed in a blockchain network is crucial as it directly impacts the network's performance and security. Different consensus techniques exist, including Proof of Work (PoW), Proof of Stake (PoS), Robust Proof of Stake (RPoS), and Delegate Proof of Stake (DPoS), each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. In this work, we propose a new consensus algorithm called Delegated Proof of Stake with Exponential Back-off (DPoSEB). DPoSEB utilizes a stake-based selection of delegates and employs an exponential back-off technique to mitigate collisions among nodes within the network. Each delegate is assigned a random sleep time, and the node with the shortest wake-up time is chosen to mine the block for that particular round. However, collisions among nodes can still occur. To provide a fair chance for each delegate node, collided nodes are assigned an exponential back-off time. We implement our proposed algorithm on an Ethereum-based private blockchain network. To evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed work, we compare it with existing consensus mechanisms such as PoS (version 2) and Delegated RPOS with downgrading (DDRPOS) using different scenarios in terms of transaction latency, waiting time, and fairness as evaluation metrics. The results reveal that DPoSEB performs better than POS and DDRPOS.

Consensus mechanism (CM) is the heart and soul of blockchain, for it allows nodes in a blockchain network to reach an agreement on the state of system execution. Among the CMs, the right for constructing the next new block is regarded as the most important one since it is required for the blockchain to grow so that transaction data can be recorded in it. Proof-of-work (PoW) is an efficient CM since it allows all the nodes to participate equally in the competition for the right. However, high energy consumption makes PoW less desirable for applications. Moreover, application-oriented blockchains should employ CMs that could reflect some main characteristics of the applications to facilitate the development of other mechanisms, such as the incentive mechanisms. Proof-of-contribution (PoC) is an effective, application-oriented CM since the right for constructing the next new block is determined by contributions made by the nodes and the node that has accumulated the highest contribution value (CV) gets the right. PoC is a general-purpose CM since the behavior of nodes can be characterized in the form of contributions. However, the deterministic nature of PoC as the result of ranking nodes based on CVs may lower efficiency since nodes could fail to function due to network delay, node failure or node's simply dropping out of the network. This paper proposes to design highly effective and efficient CMs by integrating PoC with PoW, which we refer to as PoCW. In PoCW, nodes compete for the right for constructing the next new block based on PoW after being assigned different difficulty values (DVs) based on the ranking of their CVs. Since assigning DVs strictly according to the ranking of CVs would make PoCW resemble PoC while assigning the same DV to all the nodes would make PoCW the same as PoW, PoCW could be designed as a class of CMs through applying different DV assignment strategies to meet the effectiveness and efficiency requirements of a variety of applications. We can further apply the same principle at finer levels of granularity by dynamically grouping nodes along the ranking of CVs and then applying different DV assignment strategies to different groups. The paper will first describe a generic PoCW without involving node grouping and then present the design of a general PoCW through applying an example node grouping method to demonstrate the feasibility of PoCW as a general-purpose CM for blockchain-based applications. Experiments were also conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and the efficiency of PoCW as well as its advantages over comparable CMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain is a technology that is rapidly gaining prominence and finding applications in various sectors such as banking, supply chain, healthcare, and e-governance. The consensus algorithm employed in a blockchain network is crucial as it directly impacts the network's performance and security. Different consensus techniques exist, including Proof of Work (PoW), Proof of Stake (PoS), Robust Proof of Stake (RPoS), and Delegate Proof of Stake (DPoS), each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. In this work, we propose a new consensus algorithm called Delegated Proof of Stake with Exponential Back-off (DPoSEB). DPoSEB utilizes a stake-based selection of delegates and employs an exponential back-off technique to mitigate collisions among nodes within the network. Each delegate is assigned a random sleep time, and the node with the shortest wake-up time is chosen to mine the block for that particular round. However, collisions among nodes can still occur. To provide a fair chance for each delegate node, collided nodes are assigned an exponential back-off time. We implement our proposed algorithm on an Ethereum-based private blockchain network. To evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed work, we compare it with existing consensus mechanisms such as PoS (version 2) and Delegated RPOS with downgrading (DDRPOS) using different scenarios in terms of transaction latency, waiting time, and fairness as evaluation metrics. The results reveal that DPoSEB performs better than POS and DDRPOS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In healthcare systems, blockchain technology plays a crucial role in transmitting COVID-19 data among multiple entities. Over time, various blockchain-based medical applications have emerged to handle medical information confidentially. One such system is the Scalable eHealthChain system (SeHealthChain), which utilizes a sharding scheme consisting of transaction chain and reputation chain structures to enhance throughput and security. However, the system employs a modified Raft-based Synchronous Consensus Scheme (RSCS) for generating the transaction blockchain, which can potentially introduce illegitimate transactions to the Hyperledger fabric network if a rogue node transfers them to the orderer. This poses a significant security risk in the worst-case scenarios. Additionally, as the hash rate fluctuates exponentially, the generation period of transaction blocks and computation difficulty increase. To address these issues, this article proposes an Optimized SeHealthChain (OSeHealthChain) system. It integrates a Tuna Swarm Optimization Algorithm (TSOA) with the modified RSCS to dynamically adjust the blockchain parameters in response to significant changes in the hash rate. The TSOA optimizes two variables, namely the Block Interval (BI) and Difficulty Adjustment Interval (DAI) of the Proof-of-Work (PoW) for the transaction blockchain, based on objective functions that consider the Standard Deviations (SD) of the mean BI and difficulty. By selecting appropriate variables, the system generates new transaction blocks with minimal nodes and overhead, effectively validating transactions and blocks to enhance the security level. Extensive simulations show that the OSeHealthChain achieves a throughput of 3918tps and a user-perceived latency of 63.8s for 1000 nodes, outperforming the SeHealthChain, eHealthChain, Permissionless Proof-of-Reputation-X (PL-PoRX), and hybrid Proof of Stake-Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (POS-PBFT) algorithms in blockchain systems. It also achieves throughputs of 7051tps, 6418tps, and 6290tps for simple, camouflage, and observe-act attacks, respectively, with 1000 nodes and a shard dimension of 200 during 20 epochs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of its versatility across various applications, Blockchain has emerged as a technology garnering significant interest. It has effectively addressed the challenge of transitioning from a low-trust, centralized ledger maintained by a single third-party to a high-trust, decentralized structure maintained by multiple entities, often referred to as validating nodes. Consequently, numerous blockchain systems have arisen for a multitude of purposes. Nevertheless, a considerable number of these blockchain systems are plagued by significant deficiencies concerning their performance and security. These issues have to be rectified before the realization of a widespread adoption. An essential element within any blockchain system is its foundational consensus algorithm, a crucial determinant of both its performance and security attributes. Consequently, to tackle the shortcomings observed in various blockchain systems, the hardware implementation of a series of established and innovative consensus algorithms was carried out as part of this work. This paper aims to compare and analyze the different consensus methods in blockchain, namely PoS (Proof of Stake), PoW (Proof of Work) and PoA (Proof of Authority) using VHDL (Very High-Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language). Each of these methods has unique characteristics that influence the validation of transactions and the addition of blocks to the blockchain. In this context, we aim to demonstrate the importance of optimizing consensus execution time via IPs (Intellectual Property) in VHDL. We also evaluate their impact on security, scalability and performance for IoT applications.

The increasing complexity of cloud computing has prompted a greater emphasis on protecting the privacy, integrity, and security of data stored and processed in the cloud. Data privacy is safeguarded through access control, but existing models such as Role Based Access Control (RBAC) and Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) rely on a centralized server. If this server is compromised, it poses significant risks to data security. To address this issue, there is a need for Distributed ABAC (DABAC) system for OpenStack services based on blockchain. The unique features of blockchain enables access control systems which ensures data integrity and privacy. Additionally, blockchain offers a level of transparency for both the resource owner and a user. In this work, we propose a smart contract based ABAC system. We implemented the proposed work using an Ethereum blockchain and OpenStack cloud. Furthermore, we evaluated two consensus algorithms for scalability analysis of DABC mechanism. The results demonstrate that DABAC performs better than ABAC in ensuring fine-grade access control with proof of stake consensus algorithm providing better scalability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between July 2021 and November 2022, the federal archaeological office of Bremen (Landesarchäologie) excavated the site of a former cemetery for Soviet Prisoners of War (POW) and forced labourers. The remains had officially been reinterred at an honorary cemetery in Bremen in 1948. Only a small part of this article is about what the excavation revealed and rather its purpose is to reflect on the situation that has arisen between Landesarchäologie and two citizen's initiatives at the time of the official closure of the excavation. We set out how local conflicts can emerge when an archaeological excavation is associated with a highly pollitical topic. We also explore how to manage the public interest while, at the same time, attempting to protect the personal dignity of the buried individuals. We engaged with the historical responsibility the city takes for its industrial sites and its past profit from forced labour and discuss the (often unfamiliar) societal function of the work of archaeologists. The research project aims to identify the people buried and to investigate the status of health provision, food supply and overall daily living in the Soviet POW camps in Bremen by linking the results of archaeology, bioanthropology and historical sources in a database.

Proof of work (PoW) is one of the most widely used consensus algorithms in blockchain networks. It mainly uses the competition between mining nodes to obtain block rewards. However, this competition for computational power will allow malicious nodes to obtain illegal profits, bringing potential security threats to blockchain systems. A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is a major threat to the PoW algorithm. It utilizes multiple nodes in the blockchain network to attack honest miners to obtain illegal rewards. To solve this problem, academia has proposed a DDoS attack detection mechanism based on reinforcement learning methods and static game modeling methods based on mining pools. However, these methods cannot effectively make miners choose the strategy with the best profit over time when facing DDoS attacks. Therefore, this paper proposes a dynamic evolutionary game model for miners facing DDoS attacks under blockchain networks to solve the above problems for the first time. We address the model by replicating the dynamic equation to obtain a stable solution. According to the theorem of the Lyapunov method, we also obtain the only stable strategy for miners facing DDoS attacks. The experimental results show that compared with the static method, the dynamic method can affect game playing and game evolution over time. Moreover, miners' strategy to face DDoS attacks gradually shifts from honest mining to launching DDoS attacks against each other as the blockchain network improves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The advancements in communication speeds have enabled the centralized financial market to be faster and more complex than ever. The speed of the order execution has become exponentially faster when compared to the early days of electronic markets. Though the transaction speed has increased, the underlying architecture or models behind the markets have remained the same. These models come with their own disadvantages. The disadvantages are usually faced by non-institutional or small traders. The bigger players, such as financial institutions, have an advantage over smaller players because of factors such as information asymmetry and access to better infrastructure, which give them an advantage in terms of the speed of execution. This makes the centralized stock market an uneven playing field. This paper discusses the limitations of centralized financial markets, particularly the disadvantage faced by non-institutional or small traders due to information asymmetry and better infrastructure access by financial institutions. The authors propose the usage of blockchain technology and the data highway protocol to create a decentralized stock exchange that can potentially eliminate these disadvantages. The data highway protocol is used to generate new blocks with a flexible finality condition that allows for the consensus mechanism to configure security thresholds more freely. The proposed framework is compared with existing frameworks to confirm its effectiveness and identify areas that require improvement. The evaluation of the proposed approach showed that the improved highway protocol boosted the transaction rate compared to the other two mechanisms (PoS and PoW). Specifically, the transaction rate of the proposed model was found to be 2.2 times higher than that of PoS and 12 times higher than that of the PoW consensus model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet of Things (IoT) is used to describe devices with sensors that connect and exchange data with other devices or systems on the Internet or other communication networks. Actually, the data not only represent the concrete things connected but also describe the abstract matters related. Therefore, it is expected to support trust on IoT since blockchain was invented so that trusted IoT could be possible or, recently, even metaverse could be imaginable. However, IoT systems are usually composed of a lot of device nodes with limited computing power. The built-in unsolved performance and energy-consumption problems in blockchain become more critical in IoT. The other problems such as finality, privacy, or scalability introduce even more complexity so that trusted IoT is still far from realization, let alone the metaverse. With general Proof of Work (GPoW), the energy consumption of Bitcoin can be reduced to less than 1 billionth and proof of PowerTimestamp (PoPT) can be constructed so that a global even ordering can be reached to conduct synchronization on distributed systems in real-time. Therefore, trusted IoT is possible. We reintroduce GPoW with more mathematic proofs so that PoPT can be optimal and describe how PoPT can be realized with simulation results, mining examples and synchronization scenario toward trusted IoT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data management becomes essential component of patient healthcare. Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) performs a wireless communication between E-medical applications and human being. Instead of consulting a doctor in the hospital, patients get health related information remotely from the physician. The main issues in the E-Medical application are lack of safety, security and privacy preservation of patient's health care data. To overcome these issues, this work proposes block chain based IoMT Processed with Hybrid consensus protocol for secured storage. Patients health data is collected from physician, smart devices etc. The main goal is to store this highly valuable health related data in a secure, safety, easy access and less cost-effective manner. In this research we combine two smart contracts such as Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance with proof of work (PBFT-PoW). The implementation is done using cloud technology setup with smart contracts (PBFT-PoW). The accuracy rate of PBFT is 90.15%, for PoW is 92.75% and our proposed work PBFT-PoW is 99.88%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zcash is a proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrency that has gained attention due to its promise of enhanced user privacy. Notwithstanding, Zcash's thorough acceptance notably depends on how profitable its mining process can be. To tackle this issue, we propose an analytical model to compute the mining hashrate under solo mining to achieve a liquid revenue equal to the minimum wage in the United States. In the sequence, we then estimate how profitable Zcash solo mining is based on that computed mining hasrate. Our proposed model spans crucial parameters of the whole mining process. In the experiments, we compare Zcash with the popular Bitcoin and also present a competitive analysis encompassing the ten top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. Final results highlight that: (i) Zcash owns a value of hmin which is about eight orders of magnitude smaller than that of Bitcoin in all investigated scenarios, which refer to the ten least and most expensive american states in terms of electricity tariff; and (ii) Zcash is the second best cryptocurrency for solo mining among the aforementioned ten cryptocurrencies, being the only one whose protocol implements the concept of zero-knowledge proofs. Within this context, our key contribution is to provide the scientific literature with valuable insights to formally pave the way to develop practical analytical models for PoW-cryptocurrency systems, which may be chiefly valuable regarding competitive analyses in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition to eGovernment creates challenges in terms of the confidentiality and security of sensitive data of citizens and organizations. Information systems require the implementation of appropriate security mechanisms to ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data. Blockchain technology has the potential to transform public services, enabling administrations to organize processes and manipulate information in an innovative way. Blockchain’s high level of security is an advantage over other tools and technologies used in data processing. This study examines how blockchain technology can contribute to the development of the new generation of eGovernment services and proposes an ecosystem model based on SSI (Self-Sovereign Identity) authentication and Smart Contracts between citizens and administrations. The results can be a starting point for the development of national initiatives to use the blockchain as a platform for communications and transactions in the public sector. Blockchain based electronic services provide enhanced security for governments, citizens and businesses.

We study whether paternal trauma is transmitted to the children of survivors of Confederate prisoner of war (POW) camps during the US Civil War (1861-1865) to affect their longevity at older ages, the mechanisms behind this transmission, and the reversibility of this transmission. We examine children born after the war who survived to age 45, comparing children whose fathers were non-POW veterans and ex-POWs imprisoned in very different camp conditions. We also compare children born before and after the war within the same family by paternal ex-POW status. The sons of ex-POWs imprisoned when camp conditions were at their worst were 1.11 times more likely to die than the sons of non-POWs and 1.09 times more likely to die than the sons of ex-POWs when camp conditions were better. Paternal ex-POW status had no impact on daughters. Among sons born in the fourth quarter, when maternal in utero nutrition was adequate, there was no impact of paternal ex-POW status. In contrast, among sons born in the second quarter, when maternal nutrition was inadequate, the sons of ex-POWs who experienced severe hardship were 1.2 times more likely to die than the sons of non-POWs and ex-POWs who fared better in captivity. Socioeconomic effects, family structure, father-specific survival traits, and maternal effects, including quality of paternal marriages, cannot explain our findings. While we cannot rule out fully psychological or cultural effects, our findings are most consistent with an epigenetic explanation.

Online malware scanners are one of the best weapons in the arsenal of cybersecurity companies and researchers. A fundamental part of such systems is the sandbox that provides an instrumented and isolated environment (virtualized or emulated) for any user to upload and run unknown artifacts and identify potentially malicious behaviors. The provided API and the wealth of information in the reports produced by these services have also helped attackers test the efficacy of numerous techniques to make malware hard to detect. The most common technique used by malware for evading the analysis system is to monitor the execution environment, detect the presence of any debugging artifacts, and hide its malicious behavior if needed. This is usually achieved by looking for signals suggesting that the execution environment does not belong to a native machine, such as specific memory patterns or behavioral traits of certain CPU instructions. In this paper, we show how an attacker can evade detection on such analysis services by incorporating a Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm into a malware sample. Specifically, we leverage the asymptotic behavior of the computational cost of PoW algorithms when they run on some classes of hardware platforms to effectively detect a non bare-metal environment of the malware sandbox analyzer. To prove the validity of this intuition, we design and implement SCRAMBLESUIT, a framework to automatically (i) implement sandbox detection strategies, and (ii) embed a test evasion program into an arbitrary malware sample. We perform a comprehensive evaluation of SCRAMBLESUIT across a wide range of: 1) COTS architectures (ARM, AppleM1, i9, i7 and Xeon), 2) malware families, and 3) online sandboxes (JoeSandbox, Sysinternals, C2AE, Zenbox, Dr.Web VX Cube, Tencent HABO, YOMI Hunter). Our empirical evaluation shows that a PoW-based evasion technique is hard to fingerprint, and reduces existing malware detection rate by a factor of 10. The only plausible counter-measure to SCRAMBLESUIT is to rely on bare-metal online malware scanners, which is unrealistic given they currently handle millions of daily submissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain technology considers the central technology that is used within many applications used frequently with human life. And the primary core of the blockchain is the consensus algorithm which may affect the security of the chain as well as the required resource consumption which affect mainly the blockchain performance directly. In recent years many consensus algorithms have been used and proposed such as proof of work (PoW) and proof of stake (PoS) and many others. However, these algorithms still need some improvement to the security and system resource consumption which will reduce the need for a huge amount of energy and save the environment as well as let the blockchain be useable within low computation ability devices such as the internet of things devices (IoT). This paper proposes a new consensus algorithm that ensures the integrity and authorization of nodes participating in the validation of the transaction and only a predefined number of nodes chosen randomly to participate in block addition which reduces the need for high computations power for mining and voting. The proposed algorithm needs lower time and computation costs comparable to the standard POW algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenges in providing e-health services with the help of Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is done by connecting to the smart medical devices. Through IoMT sensor devices/smart devices, physicians share the sensitive information of the patient. However, protecting the patient health care details from malware attack is necessary in this advanced digital scenario. Therefore, it is needed to implement cryptographic algorithm to enhance security, safety, reliability, preventing details from malware attacks and privacy of medical data. Nowadays blockchain has become a prominent technology for storing medical data securely and transmit through IoMT concept. The issues in the existing research works are in terms of insecurity, non-reliability, remote hijacking, hacking of password and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. In order to overcome these issues, this work is focused on the double layer encryption model using PoW consensus with Crypto Hash algorithm (PoW-CHA). This proposed work concentrates on secured storage of medical data via IoMT transmission. It ensures transparency, decentralization, security, immutability and preserving privacy, and precisely detecting the malware attack. The accuracy of PoW-CHA is 98% compared to PoW and Crypto Hash algorithm. Moreover, it takes minimum computation time for PoW-CHA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological advancements in block chain (BC)-based frameworks have empowered scientists to create innovative inventions such as e-casting ballots. The traditional agreement models utilized proof-of-work (PoW) in the Bitcoin that affected energy utilization and bargained the adaptability for the ballot framework. The existing works evaluates the trust basically only on the centralized party as it was not feasible because of the dynamic changes in the pervasive social networking (PSN) topology and their characteristics. The present research work proposes a block chain based trust evaluation model for the PSN based BC. The proposed hybrid proof of stake-trust (PST) BC is based on the proof-of trust (PoT) and also the proof of stake (PoS) overcomes the issues that are occurring in the e-vote casting. The trust evaluation is performed for public verification and becomes transparent for each node of PSN. The advantage of the proposed method is that a new block will be designed for trust evaluation during the block generation. The process of sharding erases the workload when the network works fast for the individual nodes provides the sum of their alternative parts. Therefore, the model utilizes the agreements for generating the safe process that guarantee the precision to vote it from the time of the election results. The present research work utilizes the proof of stake-trust based BC resulted in security improvement. The model improves the adaptability and execution of the BC based on the ballot framework provided a secured voting system for the government. The proposed PST-BC model showed better results in terms of latency as 15/s when compared with the existing models merkle hash tree -bloom filter that obtained 107.3/s and performance constraints based electron of 18/s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020, archaeological excavations, exhumations, and field research were conducted at two mass grave sites near Zokniai and Armalėnai (Fig. 1) in order to locate, exhume, document, identify where possible, and respectfully bury the human remains. Archaeological field methodology was employed during the excavation and exhumation phases; the visual examination data, supplemented by osteological data obtained using anthropological methodology, was separately recorded for each individual using a standardized format. A total of 1927 individuals were exhumed, documented, and buried. The Zokniai investigation revealed that the burial site originated in late 1941 and contained POWs who were either in transit or performing harsh labour at the airport; many had died from gunshot lesions and mistreatment. The stationary camp inmates at Armalėnai were buried in late 1942 - early 1943, their deaths presumably being the result of exhaustion and disease. Both investigations illustrate how interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeology and anthropology can offer forgotten people greater respect and recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decentralization for data storage is a challenging problem for blockchain-based solutions as the blocksize plays a key role for scalability. In addition, specific requirements of multimedia data call for various changes in the blockchain technology internals. Considering one of the most popular applications of secure multimedia streaming, i.e., video surveillance, it is not clear how to judiciously encode incentivization, immutability, and compression into a viable ecosystem. In this study, we provide a genuine scheme that achieves this encoding for a video surveillance application. The proposed scheme provides a novel integration of data compression, immutable off-chain data storage using a new consensus protocol namely, Proof-of-WorkStore (PoWS) in order to enable fully useful work to be performed by the miner nodes of the network. The proposed idea is the first step towards achieving greener application of a blockchain-based environment to the video storage business that utilizes system resources efficiently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain is a new methodology to handle multiple business issues, financial issues, health issues, and so on. A few years ago the trust-less computerized cash Bitcoin is now a trustworthy technique because of the block chain. Blockchain has consequently spread past its fundamental explanation as a creating number of associations and accomplices. Blockchain is considered the development to be a promising strategy for tending to existing business difficulties and upset mature endeavors. This study contemplates the reputation of square chain development to those of related signs of progress, for instance, computerized monetary standards and Bitcoin. The objective of this exploration is to decide the current situation with blockchain innovation in writing, as well as the significant examination and application regions where the square chain can be beneficial. As demonstrated by this survey, the blockchain's assurance, security, and decentralization give immense benefits to a wide extent of fields and focuses. This article likewise uncovers that blockchain research has recently started, with a couple of humble investigations in ventures like the Internet of Things, energy, banking, medical services, and government, all of which stand to benefit lopsidedly from its execution. One computerized record is a blockchain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In order to improve the revenue of attacking mining pools and miners under block withholding attack, we propose the miner revenue optimization algorithm (MROA) based on Pareto artificial bee colony in blockchain network. MROA establishes the revenue optimization model of each attacking mining pool and revenue optimization model of entire attacking mining pools under block withholding attack with the mathematical formulas such as attacking mining pool selection, effective computing power, mining cost and revenue. Then, MROA solves the model by using the modified artificial bee colony algorithm based on the Pareto method. Namely, the employed bee operations include evaluation value calculation, selection probability calculation, crossover operation, mutation operation and Pareto dominance method, and can update each food source. The onlooker bee operations include confirmation probability calculation, crowding degree calculation, neighborhood crossover operation, neighborhood mutation operation and Pareto dominance method, and can find the optimal food source in multidimensional space with smaller distribution density. The scout bee operations delete the local optimal food source that cannot produce new food sources to ensure the diversity of solutions. The simulation results show that no matter how the number of attacking mining pools and the number of miners change, MROA can find a reasonable miner work plan for each attacking mining pool, which increases minimum revenue, average revenue and the evaluation value of optimal solution, and reduces the spacing value and variance of revenue solution set. MROA outperforms the state of the arts such as ABC, NSGA2 and MOPSO.