Identity Management Research Articles

Techno-Economic Green Optimization of Electrical Microgrid Using Swarm Metaheuristics

In electrical power engineering, elements such as reliability analysis, modeling, and optimization for complex systems are of the utmost importance. Although there exist myriad studies regarding reliability optimization with conventional methods, researchers are still seeking to find more efficient and accurate methods to address the issue of the redundancy allocation problem. To that effect, an ideal power energy management approach is put forward for the operation of a hybrid microgrid system with different kinds of productions. In the present study, we suggest three algorithms in order to optimize the series-parallel power energy system: the Firefly (FA), Bat (BA), and Interior Search (ISA) algorithms. Moreover, the reliability estimate of the system is solved with the Ushakov algorithm (UMGF). The components may completely fail, which decreases their performance rate. Furthermore, the optimization results are achieved using objective functions that include the total cost of the system, emission gases (NOX, SO2, and CO2) of the power production from fuel cells, diesel generators, and gas turbines, and take into consideration the dependability indices. Devices used in power subsystems are characterized based on their dependabilities, performances, capital costs, and maintenance costs. Reliability hinges on a functioning system, which naturally entails meeting customer demand; as a result, it is influenced by the accumulated batch curve. This method provides an idea with regards to the economic cost optimization of microgrid systems. Finally, we present the results of numeric simulations.

Zero Trust and the future of cybersecurity in healthcare delivery organizations

Digital care transformation, the proliferation of disruptive technologies and the changing hybrid workforce have forced the evolution of traditional information technology network boundaries of healthcare organizations. The new landscape has rendered legacy existing perimeter defined and based cybersecurity solutions inadequate to meet increasing regulatory and federal demands for highly secure access management. Emerging compliance requirements, coupled with the concerning increase in healthcare data breaches, ransomware attacks, and security incidents targeting the healthcare sector, have transformed our historic notion of trust into an organizational vulnerability. A “Zero Trust” approach to information security is driven by an imperative to “never trust, always verify,” and requires strict, rigorous and continuous identity verification to minimize trust zones and their associated risk of security breach. Healthcare delivery organizations need to appreciate the importance of a Zero Trust strategy in reducing vulnerabilities, strengthening health system information security, and preventing successful security breaches, while also recognizing how identity and access management serves as the foundation of achieving Zero Trust.

Management of Perforated Sigmoid Colon Cancer in an Incarcerated Inguinal Hernia Using a Combined Abdominal and Inguinal Approach.

The ideal management of perforated colorectal cancer in the hernia sac remains a challenge for general surgeons. We report such a case requiring a combined-incision surgical approach and two-stage operation. A male patient in his 80s presented with fatigue and a bulge in his left groin. Contrast-enhanced CT scan revealed a sigmoid colon perforation within the left inguinal hernia sac. A combination of midline abdominal and inguinal incisions was performed for the iliopubic tract repair and Hartmann procedure. Six months later, the recurrent inguinal hernia was repaired using the Kugel mesh. The treatment strategy for colonic perforation into the inguinal hernia remains nonstandardized, compared to those for nonperforated cases. Combined inguinal and midline abdominal incisions might be necessary for infected lesion removal and colon mesentery resection; using mesh to repair hernia is a rare option. Hernia repair using mesh can be performed in two stages when recurrence occurs.

Airway management in “tubeless” spontaneous-ventilation video-assisted thoracoscopic tracheal surgery: a retrospective observational case series study

BackgroundSurgeon and anesthetist share the airway in a simpler way in the resection and reconstruction phase of tracheal surgery in tubeless spontaneous-ventilation video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (SV-VATS). Tubeless SV-VATS means stable spontaneous ventilation in the resection and reconstruction phase to anesthesiologist, and unobstructed surgical field to surgeon. What’s the ideal airway management strategy during “Visual Field tubeless” SV-VATS for tracheal surgery is still an open question in the field.MethodsWe retrospectively reviewed 33 patients without sleeve and carina resections during the study period (2018–2020) in our hospital. The initial management strategy for these patients was spontaneous ventilation for intrathoracic tracheal resection and reconstruction. We obtained and reviewed medical records from our institution’s clinical medical records system to evaluate the airway management strategy and device failure rate for tracheal resection in Tubeless SV-VATS.ResultsBetween 2018 and 2020, SV-VATS was first attempted in the 33 patients who had intrathoracic tracheal surgery but without sleeve and carina resections. All patients underwent bronchoscopy (33/33) and 8 patients (8/33) received partial resection before surgery. During the surgery, the airway device comprised either a ProSeal laryngeal mask airway (ProSeal LMA) (n = 27) or single lumen endotracheal tube (n = 6). During the resection and reconstruction phase, Visual Field tubeless SV-VATS failed in 9 patients, and breathing support switched to plan B which is traditional ventilation of a single lumen endotracheal tube for cross field intubation (n = 4) and ProSeal LMA alongside a high-frequency catheter (high-frequency jet ventilation, HFJV) (n = 5) into the distal trachea ventilation. Preoperative respiratory failure or other ventilation-related complications were not observed in this cohort.ConclusionBase on current analysis either ProSeal LMA or endotracheal tube is an effective airway management strategy for tubeless SV-VATS with appropriate patient selection. It also provides breathing support conversion option when there’s inadequate ventilation.

Identity management in the face of HIV and intersecting stigmas: A metasynthesis of qualitative reports from sub-Saharan Africa.

While stigma experienced by people living with HIV (PLWH) is well documented, intersectional stigma and additional stigmatized identities have not received similar attention. The purpose of this metasynthesis is to identify salient stigmatized intersections and their impact on health outcomes in PLWH in sub-Saharan Africa. Using Sandelowski and Barroso's metasynthesis method, we searched four databases for peer-reviewed qualitative literature. Included studies (1) explored personal experiences with intersecting stigmas, (2) included ≥1 element of infectious disease stigma, and (3) were conducted in sub-Saharan Africa. Our multinational team extracted, aggregated, interpreted, and synthesized the findings. From 454 screened abstracts, the 34 studies included in this metasynthesis reported perspectives of at least 1258 participants (282 men, 557 women, and 109 unspecified gender) and key informants. From these studies, gender and HIV was the most salient stigmatized intersection, with HIV testing avoidance and HIV-status denial seemingly more common among men to preserve traditional masculine identity. HIV did not threaten female identity in the same way with women more willing to test for HIV, but at the risk of abandonment and withdrawal of financial support. To guard against status loss, men and women used performative behaviors to highlight positive qualities or minimize perceived negative attributes. These identity management practices ultimately shaped health behaviors and outcomes. From this metasynthesis, the Stigma Identity Framework was devised for framing identity and stigma management, focusing on role expectation and fulfillment. This framework illustrates how PLWH create, minimize, or emphasize other identity traits to safeguard against status loss and discrimination. Providers must acknowledge how stigmatization disrupts PLWH's ability to fit into social schemas and tailor care to individuals' unique intersecting identities. Economic security and safety should be considered in women's HIV care, while highlighting antiretrovirals' role in preserving strength and virility may improve care engagement among men.

Toward Trusted and Swift UAV Communication: ISAC-Enabled Dual Identity Mapping

The UAV network has recently emerged as a capable carrier for ubiquitous wireless intelligent communication in the B5G/6G era. Nevertheless, the separation of dual identity raises challenges from the perspective of communication efficiency and security, including tedious communication feedback and malicious Sybil attacks. Meanwhile, thanks to the emerging integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) technology, the sensing ability incorporated in communication advances crucial opportunities for accurately and efficiently mapping identity from dual domains. This tutorial discusses the exciting intersection of ISAC and the future intelligent and efficient UAV network. We first describe the motivation scenario and present the framework of the proposed novel ISAC-enabled dual identity solution. The detailed modules of identity production, mapping, management, and authentication are discussed. By endowing UAVs with an advanced capability: opening their eyes when communicating with each other, we detail three typical applications and the advantages of our proposal. Finally, a series of key enabling techniques, open challenges, and potential solutions for ISAC-enabled dual-domain identity are discussed. This tutorial for the intelligent and efficient UAV network brings new insight on providing dual-domain identity via ISAC technology, with an eye on trusted and swift communication research tailored for the 6G UAV network.

PBidm: Privacy-Preserving Blockchain-Based Identity Management System for Industrial Internet of Things

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is revolutionizing plenty of industrial applications by utilizing large-scale smart devices in manufacturing and industrial processes. However, IIoT is facing the disclosure of identity privacy. The identity information is precious and critical, thereby inspiring a line of follow-up privacy-preserving studies, i.e., anonymous credential protocols, or privacy-preserving identity management schemes. However, they are either too anonymous to be used in the IIoT environment, or the system is highly centralized, which implies the risk of a single point of failure. In this article, we propose <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">PBidm</small> , a privacy-preserving blockchain-based identity management scheme for IIoT. Specifically, by leveraging blockchain and diversified cryptographic tools, <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">PBidm</small> can fully support the desirable properties, i.e., unforgeability, blindness, unlikability, traceability, revocability, and public verifiability. Then, we provide security analysis to ensure reasonable security assurance. Finally, we present a performance evaluation of the proposed scheme to demonstrate the practicability in IIoT applications.

Microservice Security Metrics for Secure Communication, Identity Management, and Observability

Microservice architectures are increasingly being used to develop application systems. Despite many guidelines and best practices being published, architecting microservice systems for security is challenging. Reasons are the size and complexity of microservice systems, their polyglot nature, and the demand for the continuous evolution of these systems. In this context, to manually validate that security architecture tactics are employed as intended throughout the system is a time-consuming and error-prone task. In this article, we present an approach to avoid such manual validation before each continuous evolution step in a microservice system, which we demonstrate using three widely used categories of security tactics: secure communication, identity management, and observability. Our approach is based on a review of existing security guidelines, the gray literature, and the scientific literature, from which we derived Architectural Design Decisions (ADDs) with the found security tactics as decision options. In our approach, we propose novel detectors to detect these decision options automatically and formally defined metrics to measure the conformance of a system to the different options of the ADDs. We apply the approach to a case study data set of 10 open source microservice systems, plus another 20 variants of these systems, for which we manually inspected the source code for security tactics. We demonstrate and assess the validity and appropriateness of our metrics by performing an assessment of their conformance to the ADDs in our systems’ dataset through statistical methods.

Government Digital Communication Management in Facing the Health Crisis (Case Study on the Covid-19 Pandemic in Provincial Government)

This research is motivated by problems with government communication in the Covid-19 pandemic situation that occurred in Indonesia, in a pandemic situation there was an information overload which resulted in unclear information being received by the provincial government from stakeholders so that the government's digital communication management experienced problems. The purpose of this study is to understand and analyze the digital communication management model that has been implemented by the government in handling information during the Covid-19 Pandemic and find the ideal digital communication management model to deal with the pandemic that occurred at the provincial level. The research methodology uses a post-positivist paradigm with a qualitative research type and a case study approach. The theory used in this study is Karl Weick's organizational information theory and is complemented by the four-step communication management model from Cutlip, Center and Broom. The results of the study found that the government had used a digital communication management model during the Covid-19 pandemic, but its implementation needed to be optimized in digital tools, digital communication competencies and also the organizing information system

Z-plasty in post-burn contracture of hand among pediatric patients.

Objective: To find out the frequency of hand burn and the effectiveness of Z-plasty in post-burn hand contractures. Study Design: Descriptive Cross-sectional study. Setting: Department of Pediatric Surgery, Khawaja Muhammad Safdar Medical College, Sialkot. Period: January to December 2021. Material &amp; Methods: A preformed proforma was used, consisting of 4 parts, the first part including demographic data like age and gender, second part consist of patient’s history, consisting of presenting complaint, its duration, past history of any medical or surgical illness or comorbidity. Third part consisted of physical clinical examination of the hand (fingers and palm) while fourth part was for post-operative complications of reconstructive procedure, Z-plasty. The data was analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version-20. Results: The most commonly affected age group was less than 6 years of majority of them, 53.3%, were male. The most common cause was thermal burns as compared to electrical burns. Among 91.1% of the participants, the right hand was affected more. Majority of the cases (48.9%) reported single finger burn, followed by multiple fingers (31.1%) and very few (20%) were having palm burns. Segregating the single figure, results showed that little finger was affected in 20% of cases No post-operative complications, like skin necrosis, wound dehiscence, hematoma or infection, were noted. Conclusion: It can be concluded that post-burn hand contractures and hand deformity was common among children. Z-plasty with/without skin grafting is an ideal surgical management to subside the contracture of hand.

Differential expression of exosomal miRNAs and proteins in the plasma of systemic lupus erythematous patients

Systemic lupus erythematous (SLE) is a complex chronic autoimmune disease with difficult early treatment and accurate diagnosis. Circulating exosomes containing proteins, lipids and nucleic acids can be ideal diagnostic biomarkers and disease management strategies for SLE. Our aim was to examine the unique expression profiles of circulating exosomal miRNAs and proteins in patients with SLE patients.Using RNA-sequencing and proteomic approaches, we compared the expression patterns of exosomal miRNAs and proteins in the plasma of SLE patients and healthy subjects, and discussed the underlying signaling network of circulating exosomes. We also summarize common molecules (miRNAs and proteins) and pathways shared by our plasma exosomes, as well as previously reported data (PBMC, T cells, B cells and plasma).We identified groups of differentially expressed exosomal miRNAs and proteins in the plasma of SLE patients and healthy controls. We obtained consensus molecules (39 miRNAs, 14 proteins) and 21 signaling pathways that are common in our current study and previous reports.Common molecules (miRNAs and proteins) and pathways shared by our plasma exosomes data and other circulating components data reported previously indicate their potential application in the clinical treatment and diagnosis of SLE disease.

External Ventricular Drainage: A Practical Guide for Neuro-Anesthesiologists.

External ventricular drainage is often considered a life-saving treatment in acute hydrocephalus. Given the large number of discussion points, the ideal management of EVD has not been completely clarified. The objective of this study was to review the most relevant scientific evidence about the management of EVD in its main clinical scenarios. We reviewed the most recent and relevant articles about indications, timing, management, and complications of EVD in neurocritical care, with particular interest in patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), and intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) using the following keywords alone or matching with one another: intracranial pressure, subarachnoid hemorrhage, traumatic brain injury, intraventricular hemorrhage, external ventricular drainage, cerebrospinal shunt, intracranial pressure monitoring, and ventriculoperitoneal shunt. In the management of EVD in SAH, the intermittent drainage strategy is burdened with an elevated risk of complications (e.g., clogged catheter, hemorrhage, and need for replacement). There seems to be more ventriculoperitoneal shunt dependency in rapid weaning approach-managed patients than in those treated with the gradual weaning approach. Although there is no evidence in favor of either strategy, it is conventionally accepted to adopt a continuous drainage approach in TBI patients. Less scientific evidence is available in the literature regarding the management of EVD in patients with severe TBI and intraparenchymal/intraventricular hemorrhage. EVD placement is a necessary treatment in several clinical scenarios. However, further randomized clinical trials are needed to clarify precisely how EVD should be managed in different clinical scenarios.

Group Membership and Deviance Punishment

Deviance Punishment is an important issue for social-psychological research. Group members tend to punish deviance through rejection, ostracism and – more commonly – negative judgments. Subjective Group Dynamics proposes to account for social judgement patterns of deviant and conformist individuals. Relying on a group identity management perspective, one of the model’s core predictions is that the judgment of a deviant target depends on group membership. More specifically, the model predicts that deviant ingroup members should be judged more negatively than outgroup ones. Although this effect has been repeatedly observed over the past decades, there is a current lack of sufficiently powered studies in the literature. For the first time, we conducted tests of Subjective Group Dynamics in France and the US to investigate whether ingroup deviants were judged more harshly than outgroup ones. Across six experiments and an internal mini meta-analysis, we observed no substantial difference in judgment between ingroup and outgroup deviant targets, d = -0.01, 95% CI[-0.07, 0.06]. The findings’ implications for deviance management research are discussed.

IoT Device Identity Management and Blockchain for Security and Data Integrity

IoT Device Identity Management and Blockchain for Security and Data Integrity

Problems of information support in the management of innovation activities of Russian knowledge-intensive and high-tech enterprises

The current conditions of general economic instability necessitate the activation of national RD, which raises a number of issues related to innovation. One of such issues is the issue of improving the process of innovation management in the aspect of information and related problems. The need to improve the ID management process comes from the idea of increasing the production potential and scientific level of the enterprise, which determines the level and technological equipment with the means and capacities of information processing necessary for making managerial decisions. At the same time, it is important to increase the level of innovation activity of knowledge-intensive and high-tech enterprises, while applying modern management and information technologies, using hardware and software bases and current forms of information presentation. The article will consider the innovative activity of knowledge-intensive and high-tech enterprises in the form of the management process of complex systems with a large number of interrelated elements in the conditions of competition, risks and various factors of information diversity. Thus, one of the determining factors in the development of innovation activities of knowledge-intensive and high-tech enterprises today is the improvement of information and communication technologies for information support of ID management, which directly affect the innovation potential and innovative activity of such enterprises.

Pass-through Effects of Oil Prices on LATAM Emerging Stocks before and during COVID-19: An Evidence from a Wavelet -VAR Analysis

Vector Auto regression model (VAR) a time -varying parameter is applied to study the effect of oil price shocks on the returns of stocks in the LATAM (Latin American) markets. Coherent Wavelet analysis highlights possibilities of connectedness of the oil price and LATAM stock markets through the presence of different patterns in a time series. The structural demand shocks standard deviations during the COVID-19 era remain high and the pass-through effects on stock returns due to oil prices differ for different time frames. The fundamental linkages are demonstrated due to oil market specific demand. The main motive of the research work is to identify the influence of oil price on stocks and identify the fundamental source of contagion. A random effects model is applied to the panel data of LATAM markets with the Global stock market index, MSCI (Morgan Stanley Capital International World Index), domestic money market rates and currency exchange rates during the period of study, 15 March 2019 to 31 July 2021 with 684 observations of controlled non-observed characteristics from individual country. The findings of this research recommend the pass-through effect of the oil prices on the stock market returns are based on time frequency. The contribution of this paper helps the policy makers to restore the confidence amongst the investors in the stock markets and strategies to be adopted by the investors to mitigate the risk by ideal portfolio management.

A blockchain-based framework for trusted quality data sharing towards zero-defect manufacturing

There is a current wave of a new generation of digital solutions based on intelligent systems, hybrid digital twins and AI-driven optimization tools to assure quality in smart factories. Such digital solutions heavily depend on quality-related information within the supply chain business ecosystem to drive zero-waste value chains. To empower zero-waste value chain strategies with meaningful, reliable, and trustful data, there must be a solution for end-to-end industrial data traceability, trust, and security across multiple process chains or even inter-organizational supply chains. In this paper, we first present Product, Process, and Data quality services to drive zero-waste value chain strategies. Following this, we present the Trusted Framework (TF), which is a key enabler for the secure and effective sharing of quality-related information within the supply chain business ecosystem, and thus for quality optimization actions towards zero-defect manufacturing. The TF specification includes the data model and format of the Process/Product/Data (PPD) Quality Hallmark, the OpenAPI exposed to factory system and a comprehensive Identity Management layer, for secure horizontal- and vertical quality data integration. The PPD hallmark and the TF already address some of the industrial needs to have a trusted approach to share quality data between the different stakeholders of the production chain to empower zero-waste value chain strategies.

Management of National eID Infrastructure as a State-Critical Asset and Public-private Partnership: Learning from the Case of Estonia

In the management of national electronic identity (eID) infrastructure, cooperation between public and private parties becomes more and more important, as the mutual dependencies between the provision of e-services and the provision of the national public key infrastructure (PKI) continuously increases. Yet, it is not clear which key factors affect the public-private collaboration in the eID field, as existing studies do not provide insight into this particular matter. Therefore, we aim to identify the factors that affect public-private partnership (PPP) in the field of eID. We also describe feasible formats that help to improve the cooperation between the two sectors, based on insights from the case of Estonia. In service of that study, we conducted twelve qualitative interviews with high-level experts representing several parties from the public and the private sector. By conducting a thematic analysis of the interviews, we identified five key factors for successful PPP in the eID field, i.e., engagement, joint understanding, two-way communication, clear role division, and process orientation. Furthermore, we generalize our results by discussing, in how far the found cooperation formats can be used by stakeholders to manage state-critical information technology (IT) infrastructure components similar to eID such as mobile phone services, data transmission services and digital signature services.

Doma racional de bovinos como perspectiva para o ensino do bem-estar animal

Animal welfare has been gaining prominence on the world stage in recent years. This observation highlights the need of production systems to adapt to rational cattle taming techniques when carrying out management. There is a growing demand for reconciling ethics, animal health, productivity and profitability within breeding systems. Visibility at the level of well-being has also shown the lack of work, research and human resources capable of adapting management actions to the premises of well-being. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the concept of taming, ethology and bovine welfare, which culminate in the teaching of techniques used by specialists to achieve the ideal management of cattle. The objective of this review is to describe the rational taming of cattle to expose its importance as a perspective for teaching animal welfare.

Current concepts in the treatment of first-time patella dislocation in children and adolescents.

Lateral dislocation of the patella is a common injury in children. It can occur in previously healthy and anatomically normal knees, but there are several abnormalities that predispose to patellar instability. Magnetic resonance imaging is an essential part of assessing for associated injuries and risk of further instability. Treatment aims to prevent redislocation, residual instability, osteoarthritis, and allow return to previous activities. The purpose of this review was to assess evidence for management of first-time patella dislocation in children and adolescents. Literature review was performed, accompanied by the current best practice by the authors. Non-operative treatment is preferred, except where there are associated injuries such as osteochondral fractures that would benefit from surgery. The exact method of ideal non-operative management is not clearly defined but should focus on restoration of range of movement and strength with bracing as indicated. There seems to be a trend toward operative intervention that may well be inappropriate. Further prospective studies are required with focus on the younger patient to fully understand if there is an at-risk group that would benefit from early surgery. level III.