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Scalability prevents public blockchains from being widely adopted for Internet of Things (IoT) applications such as supply chain management. Several existing solutions focus on increasing the transaction count, but none of them address scalability challenges introduced by resource-constrained IoT device integration with these blockchains, especially for the purpose of supply chain ownership management. Thus, this paper solves the issue by proposing a scalable public blockchain-based protocol for the interoperable ownership transfer of tagged goods, suitable for use with resource-constrained IoT devices such as widely used Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. The use of a public blockchain is crucial for the proposed solution as it is essential to enable transparent ownership data transfer, guarantee data integrity, and provide on-chain data required for the protocol. A decentralized web application developed using the Ethereum blockchain and an InterPlanetary File System is used to prove the validity of the proposed lightweight protocol. A detailed security analysis is conducted to verify that the proposed lightweight protocol is secure from key disclosure, replay, man-in-the-middle, de-synchronization, and tracking attacks. The proposed scalable protocol is proven to support secure data transfer among resource-constrained RFID tags while being cost-effective at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) are recently reported to play a more critical role in allergic diseases. We previously identified that mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) elicited therapeutic effects on allergic airway inflammation. Small extracellular vesicles (sEV) derived from MSCs possess striking advantages including low immunogenicity and high biosafety, and is extremely promising cell-free therapeutic agents. However, the effects of MSC-sEV on ILC2s are still unclear. Additionally, scalable isolation protocols are required for the mass production of homogenous MSC-sEV especially in clinical application. We previously reported that induced pluripotent stem cells-derived MSCs were the ideal cellular source for the large preparation of MSC-sEV. Here we developed a standardized scalable protocol of anion-exchange chromatography for isolation of MSC-sEV, and investigated the effects of MSC-sEV on ILC2 function from patients with allergic rhinitis and in a mouse ILC2-dominant asthma model. The characterization of MSC-sEV was successfully demonstrated in terms of size, morphology and specific markers. Using flow cytometry and human Cytokine Antibody Array, MSC-sEV but not fibroblasts-sEV (Fb-sEV) were found to significantly inhibit the function of human ILC2s. Similarly, systemic administration of MSC-sEV but not Fb-sEV exhibited an inhibition of ILC2 levels, inflammatory cell infiltration and mucus production in the lung, a reduction in levels of T helper 2 cytokines, and alleviation of airway hyperresponsiveness in a mouse model of asthma. Using RNA sequencing, miR-146a-5p was selected as the candidate to mediate the above effects of MSC-sEV. We next revealed the uptake of ILC2s to MSC-sEV, and that transfer of miR-146a-5p in MSC-sEV to ILC2s in part contributed to the effects of MSC-sEV on ILC2s in vitro and in a mouse model. In conclusion, we demonstrated that MSC-sEV were able to prevent ILC2-dominant allergic airway inflammation at least partially through miR-146a-5p, suggesting that MSC-sEV could be a novel cell-free strategy for the treatment of allergic diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Symmetric Dicke states are a generalization of W-states that display interesting properties. These properties enable one to generate arbitrarily large symmetric Dicke states using opera-tions on finite (2k) number of qubits. This paper formulates explicitly some basic results needed for this purpose. These results are synthesized into a generic Scalable Entangling Protocol. Examples are provided to illustrate the approach generality. A concomitant graphical repre-sentation allows fast comprehension of the protocol inputs, operations and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, routing protocols for wireless mesh networks have been investigated in terms of scalability and a scalability routing protocol has been developed for wireless mesh networks. Developed protocol, Ad-hoc on Demand Scalable Routing Protocol (ADSRP), has been activated whenever it needs to find a route. The protocol prevents packet loss due to scalability in network. Moreover, it needs less routing overhead than the others. It does not need unnecessary route request packets using heuristic route. The protocol enables scalability of network with low cost. ADSRP has been tested using ns-2 simulation tool and experimental results have been compared with Ad-hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Ad-hoc On Demand Multipath Distance Vector (AOMDV) protocols extensively. Obtained results show that the developed protocol is successful for wireless mesh networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a new application-level clustering algorithm capable of building an overlay spanning tree among participants of large multicast sessions, without any specific help from the network routers. The algorithm and associated protocol are shown to exhibit scalable properties [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]