Search Results (3)

Vehicular Ad hoc networks (VANETs) as spontaneous wireless communication technology of vehicles has a wide range of applications like road safety, navigation and other electric car technologies, however its practicability is greatly hampered by cyber-attacks. Due to message broadcasting in an open environment during communication, VANETs are inherently vulnerable to security and privacy attacks. However to address the cyber-security issues with optimal computation overhead is a matter of current security research challenge. So this paper designs a secure and efficient certificate-less aggregate scheme (ECLAS) for VANETs applicable in a smart grid scenario. The proposed scheme is based on elliptic curve cryptography to provide conditional privacy-preservation by incorporating usage of time validated pseudo-identification for communicating vehicles besides sorting out the KGC (Key Generation Center) escrow problem. The proposed scheme is comparatively more efficient to relevant related research work because it precludes expensive computation operations likes bilinear pairings as shown by the performance evaluation. Similarly, communication cost is within the ideal range to most related works while considering the security requirements of VANETs system applicable in a smart grid environment. Full article

Over the last few decades, interaction and collaboration with stakeholders and communities in the design and development of our environment have become integral parts of landscape architecture practice. This article explores the position of this kind of designing in postgraduate landscape architecture education in Europe. An analysis of the international master’s curricula in landscape architecture of 29 universities across Europe shows there is some attention paid to participatory, collaborative, and transdisciplinary design in several, but not all programs. However, participatory, collaborative, and transdisciplinary design is an important topic in the current discourse amongst landscape architecture scholars. This may indicate an increase in attention to the topic in European landscape architecture education curricula in the (near) future. Full article

Cronobacter spp. are opportunistic pathogens of the Enterobacteriaceae family. The organism causes infections in all age groups, but the most serious cases occur in outbreaks related to neonates with meningitis and necrotizing enterocolitis. The objective was to determine the in silico and in vitro putative virulence factors of six Cronobacter sakazakii strains isolated from powdered milk (PM) in the Czech Republic. Strains were identified by MALDI-TOF MS and whole-genome sequencing (WGS). Virulence and resistance genes were detected with the Ridom SeqSphere+ software task template and the Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database (CARD) platform. Adherence and invasion ability were performed using the mouse neuroblastoma (N1E-115 ATCCCRL-2263) cell line. The CRISPR-Cas system was searched with CRISPRCasFinder. Core genome MLST identified four different sequence types (ST1, ST145, ST245, and ST297) in six isolates. Strains 13755-1B and 1847 were able to adhere in 2.2 and 3.2 × 10⁶ CFU/mL, while 0.00073% invasion frequency was detected only in strain 1847. Both strains 13755-1B and 1847 were positive for three (50.0%) and four virulence genes, respectively. The cpa gene was not detected. Twenty-eight genes were detected by WGS and grouped as flagellar or outer membrane proteins, chemotaxis, hemolysins, and invasion, plasminogen activator, colonization, transcriptional regulator, and survival in macrophages. The colistin-resistance-encoding mcr-9.1 and cephalothin-resis-encoding bla_CSA genes and IncFII(pECLA) and IncFIB(pCTU3) plasmids were detected. All strains exhibited CRISPR matrices and four of them two type I-E and I-F matrices. Combined molecular methodologies improve Cronobacter spp. decision-making for health authorities to protect the population. Full article