Proper Authentication Research Articles

MSC: A Unique Chameleon Hash‐Based Off‐Chain Storage Framework for Metaverse Applications

ABSTRACTBlockchain has evolved into a secure and trustworthy environment for decentralized applications, offering the advantages of tamper‐resistant, while simultaneously introducing on‐chain overhead issues. The development of metaverse related smart contracts on blockchain has given rise to a compelling research inquiry concerning the secure reduction of on‐chain storage overhead. In this research, the Metaverse Off‐chain Storage Framework based on Chameleon hash (MSC), a unique framework for decentralized system based on chameleon hash, supports code or stored data updates without changing on‐chain data is presented. The index of decentralized applications' data is calculated using the Chameleon hash to ensure that the index remains unchanged during the data modification process. Simultaneously, data can be stored outside of the blockchain with proper authentication mechanisms in place. The experimental results have shown that MSC exhibits reduced on‐chain storage requirements when compared to similar frameworks. Furthermore, MSC significantly reduced overhead as compared to the direct storage of data within a smart contract.

Blockchain based secret key management for trusted platform module standard in reconfigurable platform

SummaryThe growing sophistication of cyber attacks, vulnerabilities in high computing systems and increasing dependency on cryptography to protect our digital data, make it more important to keep secret keys safe and secure. A few major issues of secret keys, like incorrect use of keys, inappropriate storage of keys, inadequate protection of keys, insecure movement of keys, lack of audit logging, insider threats and nondestruction of keys can compromise the whole security system severely. In this work, we propose a field programmable gate array (FPGA)‐based trusted platform module (TPM) framework for operating system companies and OS users, utilizing blockchain to address NIST‐recommended secret key management issues. The security processor used in OS user machines is partitioned into three areas such that processor area, confidential area, and crypto area. The isolated secret key memory in confidential area, along with a private blockchain (BC) can log the life cycle of secret keys of TPM standard. We have also implemented a special custom bus interconnect, which receives custom crypto instructions from Processing Element (PE). During the execution of crypto instructions, the architecture ensures that secret keys are present in confidential area and crypto area but never in the processor area. The movements of secret keys between confidential area, and crypto area are recorded cryptographically after the proper authentication process controlled by the proposed hardware‐based private BC framework. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first attempt to implement a blockchain‐based framework between OS company and OS users to address NIST recommended secret key management issues of TPM standard hardware environment. The additional cost of resource usage and timing complexity we spent to implement the proposed idea is nominal. The proposed architecture is implemented with Xilinx EDA tool using FPGA board.

Internet of Things (IoT) Data Communication Challenges, and Solutions

IoT has become an integral part of our lives, and data communication is one of the most important aspects of IoT. IoT devices can exchange data with each other via secure communication channels. This study aimed to review the IoT data communication challenges and solutions This paper attempts to address the key challenges and solutions for effective IoT data communication, starting by exploring the current challenges of IoT data communication related to scalability, reliability, and security, potential solutions to these challenges, such as using a mesh network, centralized servers, and edge computing. In addition, the paper discusses the importance of proper authentication and authorization techniques to ensure secure communication between IoT devices. The potential of IoT data communication is vast and has the power to fundamentally transform our society. It is an exciting time to be involved in this field, and the future looks promising for the advancement of IoT data communication.

Comparison on resilience and energy efficiency of authentication schemes in IoT networks

AbstractNetwork security is one of the primary concerns when deploying IoT applications. A proper authentication scheme can strengthen network security and resilience against malicious attacks. The quantitative comparison among authentication schemes is rarely found. Thus, it is difficult to choose the appropriate authentication scheme objectively. This paper presents a quantitative comparison of three authentication schemes, including blockchain‐based authentication, a widely discussed new approach for IoT security. This paper focuses on network‐level simulation instead of the protocol, providing a different angle when evaluating an authentication scheme. The simulations include five common topologies in IoT networks under five different attack strategies. The results show that the blockchain‐based scheme has the most substantial resilience compared to PKI‐based and PSK methods, while the computational cost is 1% less than the PKI‐based method. In addition, the PSK method is most energy efficient as its computational cost is only around 1% of PKI‐based and blockchain‐based methods.

A Research Paper on Basic of Computer Network

Abstract: Computer networks facilitate the interconnection of systems for the purpose of exchanging digital information. Essentially, they comprise a collection of devices linked together through various connections. Distributed processing is employed in computer networks, wherein tasks are divided among multiple computers. However, one of the most pressing challenges faced by networks is the threat of resource attacks.This research paper delves into the fundamental concepts of computer networks, which are essentially a collection of devices interconnected via links. These devices, or nodes, encompass a variety of entities ranging from personal computers and phones to servers and networking hardware. Computer networks enable various applications to access resources such as the World Wide Web, shared application and storage servers, printers, fax machines, as well as email and instant messaging applications. They play a pivotal role in facilitating information sharing across diverse tasks.Computer networks can be classified into two types: open systems and closed systems. Open systems are easily connected to networks and are primed for communication. Conversely, closed systems require proper authentication and are not as readily connected to other networks..

Comprehensive Design Analysis of Economical E‐Bike Charger with IoT‐Empowered System for Real‐Time Parameter Monitoring

The demand for electrically powered transportation is increasing exponentially due to high fuel prices and global environmental issues. The use of electric bikes is increasing rapidly within urban mobility. The current E‐bike chargers are expensive and fail to provide proper authentication, real‐time monitoring, parameter analysis, health maintenance alerts, etc. To meet future demand, the paper presents detailed design procedures and experimental analysis of smart, user‐friendly, economical, and green charging solutions for electric bikes. The research provides an IoT‐based cheap charging facility for different workplaces, organizations, and highway rest areas. Real‐time pricing and parameters are sensed using an IoT module and observed online with a monitoring interface via the ThingSpeak platform. The parameters are visualized using both simulation and hardware analysis. The detailed power converter and high‐frequency transformer design procedure with mathematical equations are presented in the article. The proposed design improves reliability, security, timely maintenance, and system health conditions. The research provides economical off‐board charging stations with smart interfaces that can be accessed by users or service providers through the data cloud. The low‐cost smart charging stations promote the use of electric vehicles and decrease the charging anxiety of users. The proposed scheme reduces emissions problems, improves the air quality index, and facilitates people with affordable and reliable transportation.

An efficient IoT group association and data sharing mechanism in edge computing paradigm

Despite its benefits and promising future, security and privacy challenges for the IoT wireless communication of edge computing environment remain unaddressed. As a result, proper authentication mechanisms are critical, especially in the extreme scenario where some edge facilities are not functional. For the above consideration, in this paper we develop an efficient IoT group association and updating mechanism in edge computing paradigm. The proposed scheme can provide data transmission and communication guarantees for special practical scenarios. The group key updating process in our architecture only necessitates minor changes on the EI side, whereas the decryption information of some IoT devices remains constant if the devices have not been revoked. The proposed strategy can accomplish the desired security features, according to the security analysis.

Advanced Authentication and Access Control for Encrypted Images in the 3D Cube Domain

Image encryption techniques have been widely employed to protect the privacy of images during transmission and storage. However, the challenge lies in providing secure authentication and access control mechanisms for encrypted images in the 3D cube domain. This research focuses on addressing the issue of authentication and access control for encrypted images within the context of 3D cubes. The 3D cube domain provides a unique and efficient representation for image encryption, allowing for enhanced security and privacy. However, ensuring proper authentication and access control mechanisms while maintaining the encryption's integrity and efficiency poses significant challenges. The proposed methods will aim to provide strong authentication mechanisms to verify the integrity and authenticity of encrypted images, preventing unauthorized access and tampering. By addressing the critical issue of authentication and access control in the 3D cube domain, this research aims to contribute to the development of more secure and reliable image encryption solutions. The outcomes of this research will have implications in various domains, including secure image transmission, cloud storage, and digital rights management, where protecting the confidentiality and access control of encrypted images is of utmost importance.

A Three-Factor-Based Authentication Scheme of 5G Wireless Sensor Networks for IoT System

Internet of Things (IoT) is an expanding technology that facilitate physical devices to inter-connect each other over a public channel. Moreover, the security of the next-generation wireless mobile communication technology, namely 5G with IoT, has been a field of much interest among researchers in the last several years. Previously, Sharif et al. had suggested an IoTbased lightweight three-party authentication scheme proclaiming a secured scheme against different threats. However, it was found that the scheme could not achieve user anonymity and guarantee session key security. Additionally, the scheme fails to provide proper authentication in the login phase, and it s unable to update a new password in the password change phase. Thus, we propose an improved three-factor-based data transmission authentication scheme (TDTAS) to address the weaknesses. The formal security analysis has been proved using the Real-or-Random (RoR) model. The informal security analysis demonstrates that the scheme is secure against several known attacks and achieves more security features. In addition, the comparison of the work with other related schemes demonstrates the proposed scheme has less communicational and storage costs.

VaccineChain: A checkpoint assisted scalable blockchain based secure vaccine supply chain with selective revocation

In the present era of the pandemic, vaccination is necessary to prevent severe infectious diseases, i.e., COVID-19. Specifically, vaccine safety is strongly linked to global health and security. However, the main concerns regarding vaccine record forgery and counterfeiting of vaccines are still common in the traditional vaccine supply chains. The conventional vaccine supply chains do not have proper authentication among all supply chain entities. Blockchain technology is an excellent contender to resolve the issues mentioned above. Although, blockchain based vaccine supply chains can potentially satisfy the objectives and functions of the next-generation supply chain model. However, its integration with the supply chain model is still constrained by substantial scalability and security issues. So, the current blockchain technology with traditional Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus is incompatible with the next-generation vaccine supply chain framework. This paper introduces a model named “VaccineChain” - a novel checkpoint-assisted scalable blockchain based secure vaccine supply chain. VaccineChain guarantees the complete integrity and immutability of vaccine supply records to combat counterfeited vaccines over the supply chain. The dynamic consensus algorithm with various validating difficulty levels supports the efficient scalability of VaccineChain. Moreover, VaccineChain includes anonymous authentication among entities to provide selective revocation. This work also consists of a use case example of a secure vaccine supply chain using checkpoint assisted scalable blockchain with customized transaction generation-rule and smart contracts to demonstrate the application of VaccineChain. The comprehensive security analysis with standard theoretical proofs ensures the computational infeasibility of VaccineChain. Further, the detailed performance analysis with test simulations shows the practicability of VaccineChain.

Blockchain-based decentralized supply chain system with secure information sharing

Supply chain management (SCM) has become an important way for the companies to improve the production efficiency and reduce the management cost. However, the existing SCM system is usually built and performed with the semi-trusted certificate authority, which may be susceptible to the collusion attack and tampering attack launched by the malicious certificate authority, resulting in illegal modification of product provenance record. Moreover, the lack of transparent and mutual trust among the stakeholders in the SCM system remains a great challenging issue. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based decentralized supply chain system with secure information sharing, which can ensure the security of product provenance record without relying on any fully trusted intermediary. In our system, two validation mechanisms, i.e., one-way validation mechanism and transaction-based validation mechanism are built to help the stakeholders to perform the validation of product provenance record without accessing their original content. Furthermore, the blockchain-based smart contract is used to achieve secure registration, proper authentication and fair payment for all stakeholders, where the valid stakeholders can pay for the purchased products, automatically and reliably. Security analysis and performance evaluation demonstrate that our proposed scheme is secure, feasible and efficient with a limited and reasonable computation cost.

A secure protocol for patient monitoring in wireless body area networks

SummaryRecently, an authentication scheme was presented for health‐care in IoT for WBANs by Fotouhi et al. Authors asserted their scheme to be free from a number of attacks. Here, we find that Fotouhi et al.'s scheme suffers from insider attack, fails to provide proper authentication and bears inefficient password update phase. Therefore their scheme has security pitfalls that can lead to further security breaches. We remove the weaknesses of Fotouhi et al.'s scheme and hence propose a user authentication scheme for patient care. Our scheme is suitable for providing special care to patients in the healthcare industry. The proposed scheme facilitates health professionals to access the real‐time data of patients under treatment for some diseases. It also safeguards the medical staff from catching an infection from the patients by minimizing the need to come in direct contact with the patients. We justify the security of our proposed scheme by applying the random oracle model to it. The proposed scheme is compared with some related works to judge its efficacy over the compared counterparts.

Morphological, anatomical and molecular characterisation of the leaves of Isoberlinia doka Craib and Stapf and Isoberlinia tomentosa (Harms) Craib and Stapf

Background: Isoberlinia (Craib and Stapf) is a genus with high economic and pharmacological values.Aim: This study aimed at establishing the morphological, anatomical and molecular characterisation of the leaves of I. doka and I. tomentosa, which were conducted for proper authentication.Setting: The leaves of I. doka and I. tomentosa were obtained from Shika, kaduna State, Nigeria.Method: Morphological and anatomical characters were determined according to standard procedures, while molecular identifications were performed using ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase (rbcl) gene and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) DNA barcode’s region.Result: Morphological studies revealed similar features for both species except for the shiny leaves of I. doka and rough abaxial surfaces of I. tomentosa because of the presence of trichomes. Variations were observed in their epidermal features, stomatal index, stomata frequency, presence or absence of trichomes, trichomes frequency and their quantitative anatomical features. The quantity and quality of DNA measured at A260/280 ratio using nanodrop spectrophotometer were 29.1 ng/μL and 1.74 ng/μL for I. doka, respectively, while the I. tomentosa concentration and purity were 71.1 ng/μL and 1.85 ng/μL, respectively. Agarose gel electrophoresis revealed two DNA bands with 700 bp (rbcl) and 600 bp (ITS). The sequence analysis revealed maximum identity with National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) GeneBank Isoberlinia species. Evolutionary analysis supported the monophyletic origin of the genus Isoberlinia. The morphological and anatomical characters of I. doka and I. tomentosa leaves have provided a significant taxonomy tool for proper authentication of this plant.Conclusion: The findings ascertained that ITS and rbcl served as an improved and efficient tool for species identification of these studied species and could serve as potential DNA barcodes for these taxa.Contribution: This article suggests that further studies the on screening of these plants, for various pharmacological potentials, might be useful for new drug development.

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Blockchain-enabled K-harmonic framework for industrial IoT-based systems

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)-based systems have become an important part of industry consortium systems because of their rapid growth and wide-ranging application. Various physical objects that are interconnected in the IIoT network communicate with each other and simplify the process of decision-making by observing and analyzing the surrounding environment. While making such intelligent decisions, devices need to transfer and communicate data with each other. However, as devices involved in IIoT networks grow and the methods of connections diversify, the traditional security frameworks face many shortcomings, including vulnerabilities to attack, lags in data, sharing data, and lack of proper authentication. Blockchain technology has the potential to empower safe data distribution of big data generated by the IIoT. Prevailing data-sharing methods in blockchain only concentrate on the data interchanging among parties, not on the efficiency in sharing, and storing. Hence an element-based K-harmonic means clustering algorithm (CA) is proposed for the effective sharing of data among the entities along with an algorithm named underweight data block (UDB) for overcoming the obstacle of storage space. The performance metrics considered for the evaluation of the proposed framework are the sum of squared error (SSE), time complexity with respect to different m values, and storage complexity with CPU utilization. The results have experimented with MATLAB 2018a simulation environment. The proposed model has better sharing, and storing based on blockchain technology, which is appropriate IIoT.

DEVELOPMENT OF A DEEP LEARNING MODEL FOR PROFILING AND PREDICTING TRAFFIC OFFENDERS

Traffic violation has been a big challenge to mankind as many of the accidents recorded over years is as a result of traffic violation. The traffic violation monitoring systems deployed in developing countries lack adequate authentication of road users, no efficient and effective profiling system of offenders and offences, as such, traffic agents cannot generate instant traffic history of an offender. The monitoring of traffic offenders in developing countries has a lot of challenges including; lack of proper authentication of vehicles and users, lack of substantive traffic system that suits the management of traffic offenders’ profile in both rural and urban areas, lack of predictable modules to forecast the tendency of an offender to cause accident in the future, poor means of communication between traffic agencies and vehicle users, poor traffic offence awareness for vehicle users and lack of a dependable traffic offenders profile database. The area of traffic offender identification using fingerprint and NIN and predicting the possibility of the traffic offender committing more traffic offence in the nearest future has not be researched on and this forms the research gap this paper is set to cover. Therefore, this thesis is providing a solution by development of a deep learning model for profiling and predicting traffic offender’sfocuses on developing a traffic offenders profiling and prediction system using deep learning algorithm to predict the likelihood of an offence to be committed by a road user.The proposed system developed a model that will profile traffic offenders in both urban and rural settings, create a traffic offender’s database that will interact with existing national databases to authenticate traffic offenders, provides a module that will predict the likelihood of a road user to commit severe traffic blunder in the future and provide intelligent information necessary for timely action by law enforcement agencies. The system also createdan SMS based traffic awareness module that handles traffic offences communication between traffic agents and offenders. These designs are implemented using a websystem developed with PHP, MySQL and JavaScript. The System Design followed the OODM methodology for componentization of the system modules giving room for coupling, decoupling, modification, encapsulation and reuse, as well as easy maintainability. Unified Modeling Language was extensively used to simplify the explanation of the system modules. The software performance was tested using accuracy of traffic offender prediction and Confusion Matrix was adopted for the thesis. For the purpose of this thesis, dataset was collected from data-world (https:// data. world/ health data ny/qutr-irdf) and the data is an excel sheet dataset for Traffic offenders. The result obtained from the new system developed shows 95% accuracy of the deep learning technique for predict the likelihood of a road user to commit traffic blunder in the future.

High-performance Thin-layer Chromatography Fingerprinting Analysis of Punarnavadi Kwatha

Introduction: Punarnavadi kwatha is one among the commonly used medicine in Ayurvedic practice, mentioned in Chakradatta in sopha chikitsa. Main indications of Punarnavadi kwatha are Sarvanga sopha (generalised oedema), Udara (ascites), Kasa (cough), Soolam (colicky pain), and Swasa (dyspnoea) associated with Pandu (anaemia). For the purpose of quality assurance and uniformity, scientific verification of Ayurvedic medications is important. Usage of modern analytical techniques helps in the proper authentication of medicines. In the present study, highperformance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) fingerprinting of Punarnavadi kwatha aimed to assess the different phytoconstituents. Materials and Methods: Methanolic extract of Punarnavadi kwatha was subjected to HPTLC fingerprinting using the solvent system toluene:ethyl acetate:formic acid (6:3:0.5). Toluene is a least polar solvent, ethyl acetate is mid polar solvent and formic acid is highly polar so in this solvent system, maximum separation of compounds took place. Results and Discussion: The number of peaks obtained at visualization 254 nm was 8 and total area of compounds in is 30309.5. Visualization at 366 nm, number of peaks was 12 and total area is 42473.2. Conclusion: Thus, the study revealed that HPTLC fingerprinting of formulations can be used in the quality control of ayurvedic medicaments. The maximum separation of compounds occurred at this solvent system.

Pharmacognostical and Preliminary Phytochemical Evaluation of Atalantia monophylla DC. root and stem

Background: Atalantia monophylla DC. (Syn. Limonia monophylla L.), family Rutaceae, root and stem have been reported for their use in rheumatism, arthritis, antidote to snake-bite, cough, allergies, skin diseases and as an antidote to snake-bite through ethnomedicinal claims. Present study reports a details pharmacognostic and preliminary physiochemical and phytochemical aspects of A. monophylla root and stem. Material and methods: The root and stem samples were collected after proper authentication from Athagarh forest Odisha India. Macroscopic observations were made with naked eyes, microscopy, powder microscopy, physicochemical and qualitative analysis and HPTLC studies of root and stem were carried out following Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of India recommended and others standard protocols. Results and Discussion: Root were 5-7cm in length; flattened, L-shaped, easily peel-able and thick, outer yellowish brown and inner yellow in colour with rootlets and scars. Stem cylindrical, striated, greenish brown in colour. Diagrammatic transverse section of root and stem shows circular in shape, outer cork, cortex followed by central stellar region and circular in nature, outer epidermis followed by hypodermis, cortex, vascular bundle and centrally located large pith respectively. Microscopic powder character of root and stem shows prismatic crystal, parenchyma cell with oil globule, simple starch grains, brown content and rhomboidal crystal, pitted parenchyma cells, brown content, oil globule, simple and compound starch grains respectively. Qualitative phytochemical analysis of root and stem shows the presence of carbohydrates, glycosides, saponins, alkaloids, tannins and flavonoids. HPTLC study of root and stem shows 22 and 25 spots at short (254nm) and 24 and 27 spots at long (366nm) ultraviolet respectively. Conclusion: The results obtained from pharmacognostical, phytochemical, physicochemical characteristic along with HPTLC studies are the diagnostic tool of A. monophylla plant and will help in standardization of its root and stem in terms of its quality, strength, purity.

A Multi-Pronged Technique for Identifying Equisetum palustre and Equisetum arvense-Combining HPTLC, HPLC-ESI-MS/MS and Optimized DNA Barcoding Techniques.

The most prominent horsetail species, Equisetum arvense, has an array of different medicinal properties, thus the proper authentication and differentiation of the plant from the more toxic Equisetum palustre is important. This study sought to identify different samples of E. arvense and E. palustre using three analytical methods. The first method involved the use of HPTLC analysis, as proposed by the European Pharmacopoeia. The second, HPLC-ESI-MS/MS, is capable of both identification and quantification and was used to determine the Equisetum alkaloid content in each sample. A third method was DNA barcoding, which identifies the samples based on their genetic make-up. Both HPTLC and HPLC-ESI-MS/MS proved to be suitable methods of identification, with HPLC-ESI-MS/MS proving the more sophisticated method for the quantification of alkaloids in the Equisetum samples and for determining the adulteration of E. arvense. For DNA barcoding, optimal primer pairs were elucidated to allow for the combined use of the rbcL and ITS markers to accurately identify each species. As new DNA marker sequences were added to GenBank, the reference library has been enriched for future work with these horsetail species.

Ensure the dynamic identity and PUF based authenticated key settlement approach for the IoT infrastructure

With technological advancements, the dependency on the Internet of things (IoT) has increased. The spectrum of IoT application domain becomes larger day by day. It converts the existing services into smart services. The evolution brings lot of security challenges hand in hand with IoT paradigms. This is due to the limitation of IoT devices like, low computational capabilities, small storage medium, less power back up and low processing speed, etc. To overcome these limitations, a proper authentication technique must be required to do the trust management in a heterogeneous IoT environment and secure all kinds of traffic. In this research document, a dynamic identity-based authentication approach is introduced for IoT environment, which utilizes very lightweight physical unclonable function, one-way hashing function and exclusive-OR(XOR) function to make the scheme lighter. Broadly accepted the Real or Random (RoR) model and the Burrows Abadi Needham logic (BAN logic) are used here, to check the security and the correctness of the devised protocol. In addition to that, the software simulation tool, Automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) has proved that, the recommended protocol is safe and secure from various attacks. Furthermore, the comparative performance analysis exhibits the supremacy of the recommended scheme over the analogous schemes w.r.t computational power, memory usage, and communication overhead.

Pharmacognostical and phytochemical screening of root and fruit of Ficus semicordata Buch.-Ham. Ex Sm. – An extra pharmacopoeial drug

Abstract Introduction: Root and fruits of Bhumi Udumbara (Ficus semicordata Buch.-Ham. ex Sm.) are traditionally used in the treatment of aphthous complaints, leprosy, headache, abdominal diseases, bladder ailments, visceral obstruction, and various disorders. Aim: Present study reports the microscopic including powder microscopy, physiochemical and preliminary phytochemical characters of root and fruit of F. semicordata. Materials and methods: Root and fruit of the plant, after proper authentication, were evaluated following standard pharmacopoeial recommended procedures. Results: Striking characters of the F. semicordata root is the presence of profusely branched root-like structures, nearer to the trunk, and reaches the ground as a supporting root (aerial root or false root). The diagrammatic section of the root, circular in outline, made up of an outer cork, followed by cortex, vascular bundle, and central pseudo pith. Fruit is shortly peduncled, in pairs or clusters, globose in shape, hispid and warted surface, reddish brown in color. Loss on drying at 110°C was found to be 10.54% and 11.73% of root and fruit respectively. High-performance thin-layer chromatography results showed 2 peaks at 254 and 366 nm of root and 3 peaks at 254 and 1 peak at 366 nm of fruit respectively. Conclusion: F. semicordata is a small or medium-sized evergreen tree, bears a supporting root (aerial root or false root) nearer to the trunk region. Root reddish brown in color with smooth surface, prominent nodes, and internodes, presence of fruits over nodes and internodes is the key identifying character. Stone cells found in root and the presence of pollen grains, simple starch grains, and compound starch grains in fruit are the diagnostic characteristics of F. semicordata.