scholarly journals Steganography and Steganalysis in Voice over IP: A Review

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 1032
Author(s):  
Zhijun Wu ◽  
Junjun Guo ◽  
Chenlei Zhang ◽  
Changliang Li
Keyword(s):  
Linear Prediction ◽  
Voice Over Ip ◽  
Transport Layer ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Voice Communication ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Privacy Leakage ◽  
Adaptive Codebook ◽  
Prediction Coefficient

The rapid advance and popularization of VoIP (Voice over IP) has also brought security issues. VoIP-based secure voice communication has two sides: first, for legitimate users, the secret voice can be embedded in the carrier and transmitted safely in the channel to prevent privacy leakage and ensure data security; second, for illegal users, the use of VoIP Voice communication hides and transmits illegal information, leading to security incidents. Therefore, in recent years, steganography and steganography analysis based on VoIP have gradually become research hotspots in the field of information security. Steganography and steganalysis based on VoIP can be divided into two categories, depending on where the secret information is embedded: steganography and steganalysis based on voice payload or protocol. The former mainly regards voice payload as the carrier, and steganography or steganalysis is performed with respect to the payload. It can be subdivided into steganography and steganalysis based on FBC (fixed codebook), LPC (linear prediction coefficient), and ACB (adaptive codebook). The latter uses various protocols as the carrier and performs steganography or steganalysis with respect to some fields of the protocol header and the timing of the voice packet. It can be divided into steganography and steganalysis based on the network layer, the transport layer, and the application layer. Recent research results of steganography and steganalysis based on protocol and voice payload are classified in this paper, and the paper also summarizes their characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages. The development direction of future research is analyzed. Therefore, this research can provide good help and guidance for researchers in related fields.

A Review of Drug Side Effect Identification Methods

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (26) ◽  
pp. 3096-3104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuai Deng ◽  
Yige Sun ◽  
Tianyi Zhao ◽  
Yang Hu ◽  
Tianyi Zang
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Drug Side Effects ◽  
Important Indicator ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Key Points ◽  
Network Methods ◽  
Future Research Directions ◽  
The One ◽  
Approved Drugs

Drug side effects have become an important indicator for evaluating the safety of drugs. There are two main factors in the frequent occurrence of drug safety problems; on the one hand, the clinical understanding of drug side effects is insufficient, leading to frequent adverse drug reactions, while on the other hand, due to the long-term period and complexity of clinical trials, side effects of approved drugs on the market cannot be reported in a timely manner. Therefore, many researchers have focused on developing methods to identify drug side effects. In this review, we summarize the methods of identifying drug side effects and common databases in this field. We classified methods of identifying side effects into four categories: biological experimental, machine learning, text mining and network methods. We point out the key points of each kind of method. In addition, we also explain the advantages and disadvantages of each method. Finally, we propose future research directions.

scholarly journals A Review of Dynamic Balancing for Robotic Mechanisms

Robotica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bin Wei ◽  
Dan Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Future Research ◽  
Dynamic Balancing ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages

SUMMARYThe authors summarize the main dynamic balancing methods of robotic mechanisms in this paper. The majority of dynamic balancing methods have been presented, and there may be other dynamic balancing methods that are not included in this paper. Each of the balancing methods is reviewed and discussed. The advantages and disadvantages of each method are presented and compared. The goal of this paper is to provide an overview of recent research in balancing. The authors hope that this study can provide an informative reference for future research in the direction of dynamic balancing of robotic mechanisms.

scholarly journals Validity of the Gender Dysphoria diagnosis and incidence trends in Sweden: a nationwide register study

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Malin Indremo ◽  
Richard White ◽  
Thomas Frisell ◽  
Sven Cnattingius ◽  
Alkistis Skalkidou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gender Dysphoria ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Medical Intervention ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Incidence Trends ◽  
Interaction Terms ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Nationwide Register Study

AbstractThe aim of this study was to examine the validity of the Gender Dysphoria (GD) diagnoses in the Swedish National Patient Register (NPR), to discuss different register-based definitions of GD and to investigate incidence trends. We collected data on all individuals with registered GD diagnoses between 2001 and 2016 as well as data on the coverage in the NPR. We regarded gender confirming medical intervention (GCMI) as one proxy for a clinically valid diagnosis and calculated the positive predictive value (PPV) for receiving GCMI for increasing number of registered GD diagnoses. We assessed crude and coverage-adjusted time trends of GD during 2004–2015 with a Poisson regression, using assigned sex and age as interaction terms. The PPV for receiving GCMI was 68% for ≥ 1 and 79% for ≥ 4 GD-diagnoses. The incidence of GD was on average 35% higher with the definition of ≥ 1 compared to the definition of ≥ 4 diagnoses. The incidence of GD, defined as ≥ 4 diagnoses increased significantly during the study period and mostly in the age categories 10–17 and 18–30 years, even after adjusting for register coverage. We concluded that the validity of a single ICD code denoting clinical GD in the Swedish NPR can be questioned. For future research, we propose to carefully weight the advantages and disadvantages of different register-based definitions according to the individual study’s needs, the time periods involved and the age-groups under study.

A large-scale analysis of HTTPS deployments: Challenges, solutions, and recommendations

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Qinwen Hu ◽  
Muhammad Rizwan Asghar ◽  
Nevil Brownlee
Keyword(s):  
Secure Communication ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Transport Layer ◽  
Security Level ◽  
Secure Socket Layer ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Large Scale Analysis ◽  
Government Websites ◽  
Encrypted Communication ◽  
Specific Implementation

HTTPS refers to an application-specific implementation that runs HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) on top of Secure Socket Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS). HTTPS is used to provide encrypted communication and secure identification of web servers and clients, for different purposes such as online banking and e-commerce. However, many HTTPS vulnerabilities have been disclosed in recent years. Although many studies have pointed out that these vulnerabilities can lead to serious consequences, domain administrators seem to ignore them. In this study, we evaluate the HTTPS security level of Alexa’s top 1 million domains from two perspectives. First, we explore which popular sites are still affected by those well-known security issues. Our results show that less than 0.1% of HTTPS-enabled servers in the measured domains are still vulnerable to known attacks including Rivest Cipher 4 (RC4), Compression Ratio Info-Leak Mass Exploitation (CRIME), Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption (POODLE), Factoring RSA Export Keys (FREAK), Logjam, and Decrypting Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) using Obsolete and Weakened eNcryption (DROWN). Second, we assess the security level of the digital certificates used by each measured HTTPS domain. Our results highlight that less than 0.52% domains use the expired certificate, 0.42% HTTPS certificates contain different hostnames, and 2.59% HTTPS domains use a self-signed certificate. The domains we investigate in our study cover 5 regions (including ARIN, RIPE NCC, APNIC, LACNIC, and AFRINIC) and 61 different categories such as online shopping websites, banking websites, educational websites, and government websites. Although our results show that the problem still exists, we find that changes have been taking place when HTTPS vulnerabilities were discovered. Through this three-year study, we found that more attention has been paid to the use and configuration of HTTPS. For example, more and more domains begin to enable the HTTPS protocol to ensure a secure communication channel between users and websites. From the first measurement, we observed that many domains are still using TLS 1.0 and 1.1, SSL 2.0, and SSL 3.0 protocols to support user clients that use outdated systems. As the previous studies revealed security risks of using these protocols, in the subsequent studies, we found that the majority of domains updated their TLS protocol on time. Our 2020 results suggest that most HTTPS domains use the TLS 1.2 protocol and show that some HTTPS domains are still vulnerable to the existing known attacks. As academics and industry professionals continue to disclose attacks against HTTPS and recommend the secure configuration of HTTPS, we found that the number of vulnerable domain is gradually decreasing every year.

scholarly journals Involvement of Probiotics and Postbiotics in the Immune System Modulation

Biologics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-110
Author(s):  
Neslihan Yeşilyurt ◽  
Birsen Yılmaz ◽  
Duygu Ağagündüz ◽  
Raffaele Capasso
Keyword(s):  
Immune System ◽  
Pharmaceutical Industry ◽  
Intestinal Microbiota ◽  
Health Benefits ◽  
The Body ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Immune Systems ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Immune System Modulation ◽  
Molecular Patterns

Intestinal microbiota interacts with other systems, especially the immune system, which is responsible for protecting the body by recognizing “stranger” (pathogen associated molecular patterns-PAMPs) and “danger” (damage-associated molecular patterns-DAMPs) molecular motifs. In this manner, it plays an important role in the pathogenesis of various diseases and health. Despite the use of probiotics that modulate the intestinal microbiota in providing health benefits and in the treatment of diseases, there are some possible concerns about the possibility of developing adverse effects, especially in people with suppressed immune systems. Since probiotics provide health benefits with bioactive compounds, studies are carried out on the use of products containing non-living probiotic microorganisms (paraprobiotics) and/or their metabolites (postbiotics) instead of probiotic products. It is even reported that these microbial compounds have more immunomodulatory activities than living microorganisms via some possible mechanism and eliminates some disadvantages of probiotics. Considering the increasing use of functional foods in health and disease, further studies are needed with respect to the benefits and advantages of parabiotic and/or postbiotic use in the food and pharmaceutical industry as well as immune system modulation. Although probiotics have been extensive studied for a long time, it seems that postbiotics are promising tools for future research and applications according to the recent literature. This review aimed to evaluate the interaction of probiotics and postbiotics with the immune systems and also their advantages and disadvantages in the area of food-pharmaceutical industry and immune system modulation.

scholarly journals A Systematic Literature Review of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods for Sustainable Selection of Insulation Materials in Buildings

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 737
Author(s):  
Indre Siksnelyte-Butkiene ◽  
Dalia Streimikiene ◽  
Tomas Balezentis ◽  
Virgilijus Skulskis
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Systematic Literature Review ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Energy Performance ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Multi Criteria Decision Making ◽  
Insulation Materials ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Selection Of

The European Commission has recently adopted the Renovation Wave Strategy, aiming at the improvement of the energy performance of buildings. The strategy aims to at least double renovation rates in the next ten years and make sure that renovations lead to higher energy and resource efficiency. The choice of appropriate thermal insulation materials is one of the simplest and, at the same time, the most popular strategies that effectively reduce the energy demand of buildings. Today, the spectrum of insulation materials is quite wide, and each material has its own specific characteristics. It is recognized that the selection of materials is one of the most challenging and difficult steps of a building project. This paper aims to give an in-depth view of existing multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) applications for the selection of insulation materials and to provide major insights in order to simplify the process of methods and criteria selection for future research. A systematic literature review is performed based on the Search, Appraisal, Synthesis and Analysis (SALSA) framework and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement. In order to determine which MCDM method is the most appropriate for different questions, the main advantages and disadvantages of different methods are provided.

scholarly journals Low-temperature-processed metal oxide electron transport layers for efficient planar perovskite solar cells

Rare Metals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jia-Xing Song ◽  
Xin-Xing Yin ◽  
Zai-Fang Li ◽  
Yao-Wen Li
Keyword(s):  
Solar Cells ◽  
Electron Transport ◽  
Low Temperature ◽  
Metal Oxide ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Perovskite Solar Cells ◽  
Transport Layer ◽  
Electron Transport Layer ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Low Temperature Preparation

Abstract As a promising photovoltaic technology, perovskite solar cells (pero-SCs) have developed rapidly over the past few years and the highest power conversion efficiency is beyond 25%. Nowadays, the planar structure is universally popular in pero-SCs due to the simple processing technology and low-temperature preparation. Electron transport layer (ETL) is verified to play a vital role in the device performance of planar pero-SCs. Particularly, the metal oxide (MO) ETL with low-cost, superb versatility, and excellent optoelectronic properties has been widely studied. This review mainly focuses on recent developments in the use of low-temperature-processed MO ETLs for planar pero-SCs. The optical and electronic properties of widely used MO materials of TiO2, ZnO, and SnO2, as well as the optimizations of these MO ETLs are briefly introduced. The commonly used methods for depositing MO ETLs are also discussed. Then, the applications of different MO ETLs on pero-SCs are reviewed. Finally, the challenge and future research of MO-based ETLs toward practical application of efficient planar pero-SCs are proposed. Graphical abstract

scholarly journals Going virtual: youth attitudes toward and experiences of virtual mental health and substance use services during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa D. Hawke ◽  
Natasha Y. Sheikhan ◽  
Karen MacCon ◽  
Joanna Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Substance Use ◽  
Youth Mental Health ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Clinical Samples ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Substance Use Services ◽  
Youth Attitudes ◽  
Virtual Services

Abstract Background During the COVID-19 pandemic, youth mental health and substance use services rapidly moved to virtual modalities to meet social distancing requirements. It is important to understand youth attitudes toward and experience of virtual services. Objective This study examined the attitudes toward and experiences of virtual mental health and substance use services among youth drawn from clinical and non-clinical samples. Method Four hundred nine youth completed a survey including questions about their attitudes toward and experience of virtual services. The survey included quantitative and open-ended questions on virtual care, as well as a mental health and substance use screener. Results The majority of youth with mental health or substance use challenges would be willing to consider individual virtual services, but fewer would consider group virtual services. However, many have not received virtual services. Youth are interested in accessing a wide variety of virtual services and other supportive wellness services. Advantages and disadvantages of virtual services are discussed, including accessibility benefits and technological barriers. Discussion As youth mental health and substance use services have rapidly gone virtual during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential that we hear the perspectives of youth to promote service utilization among those in need. Diverse, accessible, technologically stable virtual services are required to meet the needs of different youth, possibly with in-person options for some youth. Future research, engaging youth in the research process, is needed to evaluate the efficacy of virtual services to plan for the sustainability of some virtual service gains beyond the pandemic period.

scholarly journals Robustness and Sensitivity Tuning of the Kalman Filter for Speech Enhancement

Signals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 434-455
Author(s):  
Sujan Kumar Roy ◽  
Kuldip K. Paliwal
Keyword(s):  
Kalman Filter ◽  
Speech Enhancement ◽  
Linear Prediction ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Model Parameters ◽  
Noise Variance ◽  
Noisy Speech ◽  
Kalman Gain ◽  
Whitening Filter ◽  
Prediction Coefficient

Inaccurate estimates of the linear prediction coefficient (LPC) and noise variance introduce bias in Kalman filter (KF) gain and degrade speech enhancement performance. The existing methods propose a tuning of the biased Kalman gain, particularly in stationary noise conditions. This paper introduces a tuning of the KF gain for speech enhancement in real-life noise conditions. First, we estimate noise from each noisy speech frame using a speech presence probability (SPP) method to compute the noise variance. Then, we construct a whitening filter (with its coefficients computed from the estimated noise) to pre-whiten each noisy speech frame prior to computing the speech LPC parameters. We then construct the KF with the estimated parameters, where the robustness metric offsets the bias in KF gain during speech absence of noisy speech to that of the sensitivity metric during speech presence to achieve better noise reduction. The noise variance and the speech model parameters are adopted as a speech activity detector. The reduced-biased Kalman gain enables the KF to minimize the noise effect significantly, yielding the enhanced speech. Objective and subjective scores on the NOIZEUS corpus demonstrate that the enhanced speech produced by the proposed method exhibits higher quality and intelligibility than some benchmark methods.

scholarly journals A Review of Remote Sensing Image Dehazing

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (11) ◽  
pp. 3926
Author(s):  
Juping Liu ◽  
Shiju Wang ◽  
Xin Wang ◽  
Mingye Ju ◽  
Dengyin Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Research Focus ◽  
Image Dehazing ◽  
Surface Information ◽  
Haze Removal ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Extra Information ◽  
Removal Technique

Remote sensing (RS) is one of the data collection technologies that help explore more earth surface information. However, RS data captured by satellite are susceptible to particles suspended during the imaging process, especially for data with visible light band. To make up for such deficiency, numerous dehazing work and efforts have been made recently, whose strategy is to directly restore single hazy data without the need for using any extra information. In this paper, we first classify the current available algorithm into three categories, i.e., image enhancement, physical dehazing, and data-driven. The advantages and disadvantages of each type of algorithm are then summarized in detail. Finally, the evaluation indicators used to rank the recovery performance and the application scenario of the RS data haze removal technique are discussed, respectively. In addition, some common deficiencies of current available methods and future research focus are elaborated.

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