Fault Injection Attack Emulation Framework for Early Evaluation of IC Designs

Fault injection attack (FIA) has become a serious threat to the confidentiality and fault tolerance of integrated circuits (ICs). Circuit designers need an effective method to evaluate the countermeasures of the IC designs against the FIAs at the design stage. To address the need, this article, based on FPGA emulation, proposes an in-circuit early evaluation framework, in which FIAs are emulated with parameterized fault models. To mimic FIAs, an efficient scan approach is proposed to inject faults at any time at any circuit nodes, while both the time and area overhead of fault injection are reduced. After the circuit design under test (CUT) is submitted to the framework, the scan chains insertion, fault generation, and fault injection are executed automatically, and the evaluation result of the CUT is generated, making the evaluation a transparent process to the designers. Based on the framework, the confidentiality and fault-tolerance evaluations are demonstrated with an information-based evaluation approach. Experiment results on a set of ISCAS89 benchmark circuits show that on average, our approach reduces the area overhead by 41.08% compared with the full scan approach and by over 20.00% compared with existing approaches. The confidentiality evaluation experiments on AES-128 and DES-56 and the fault-tolerance evaluation experiments on two CNN circuits, a RISC-V core, a Cordic core, and the float point arithmetic units show the effectiveness of the proposed framework.

A New Method to Estimate Peak Signal to Noise Ratio for Least Significant Bit Modification Audio Steganography

Audio steganography is implemented based on three main features: capacity, robustness, and imperceptibility, but simultaneously implementing them is still a challenge. Embedding data at the Least Significant Bit (LSB) of the audio sample is one of the most implemented audio steganography methods because the method will give high capacity and imperceptibility. However, LSB has the lowest robustness among all common methods in audio steganography. To cater to this problem, researchers increased the depth of the embedding level from fourth to sixth and eighth LSB level to improve its robustness feature. However, consequently, the imperceptibility feature, which is commonly measured by Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), is reduced due to the trade-off between imperceptibility and robustness. Currently, the lack of study on the estimation of the PSNR for audio steganography has caused the early assessment of the imperceptibility-robustness trade-off difficult. Therefore, a method to estimate PSNR, known as PSNR Estimator (PE), is introduced to enable early evaluation of imperceptibility feature for each stego-file produced by the audio steganography, which is important for the utilisation of embedding. The proposed PE estimates the PSNR based on the pattern collected from the embedment at different levels. From the evaluation, the proposed method has 99.9% of accuracy in estimating PSNR values at different levels. In comparison with the Mazdak Method, the proposed method performs better in all situations. In conclusion, the proposed PE can be used as a reference for embedding and further reducing the calculation complexity in finding the feasible value to minimise the trade-off between robustness and imperceptibility.

Specific Recognition of β-Galactofuranose-Containing Glycans of Synthetic Neoglycoproteins by Sera of Chronic Chagas Disease Patients

Chagas disease (CD) can be accurately diagnosed by detecting Trypanosoma cruzi in patients’ blood using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). However, parasite-derived biomarkers are of great interest for the serological diagnosis and early evaluation of chemotherapeutic efficacy when PCR may fail, owing to a blood parasite load below the method’s limit of detection. Previously, we focused on the detection of specific anti-α-galactopyranosyl (α-Gal) antibodies in chronic CD (CCD) patients elicited by α-Gal glycotopes copiously expressed on insect-derived and mammal-dwelling infective parasite stages. Nevertheless, these stages also abundantly express cell surface glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-anchored glycoproteins and glycoinositolphospholipids (GIPLs) bearing nonreducing terminal β-galactofuranosyl (β-Galf) residues, which are equally foreign to humans and, therefore, highly immunogenic. Here we report that CCD patients’ sera react specifically with synthetic β-Galf-containing glycans. We took a reversed immunoglycomics approach that entailed: (a) Synthesis of T. cruzi GIPL-derived Galfβ1,3Manpα-(CH2)3SH (glycan G29SH) and Galfβ1,3Manpα1,2-[Galfβ1,3]Manpα-(CH2)3SH (glycan G32SH); and (b) preparation of neoglycoproteins NGP29b and NGP32b, and their evaluation in a chemiluminescent immunoassay. Receiver-operating characteristic analysis revealed that NGP32b can distinguish CCD sera from sera of healthy individuals with 85.3% sensitivity and 100% specificity. This suggests that Galfβ1,3Manpα1,2-[Galfβ1,3]Manpα is an immunodominant glycotope and that NGP32b could potentially be used as a novel CCD biomarker.

Delivering outpatient virtual clinics during the COVID-19 pandemic: early evaluation of clinicians’ experiences

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has put health systems across the world under significant pressure. In March 2020, a national directive was issued by the National Health Service (NHS) England instructing trusts to scale back face-to-face outpatient appointments, and rapidly implement virtual clinics.MethodsA multidisciplinary team of change managers, analysts and clinicians were assembled to evaluate initial implementation of virtual clinics at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. In-depth interviews were conducted with clinicians who have delivered virtual clinics during the pandemic. An inductive thematic approach was used to analyse clinicians’ early experiences and identify enablers for longer term sustainability.ResultsNinety-five clinicians from specialist services across the trust were interviewed between April and May 2020 to reflect on their experiences of delivering virtual clinics during Wave I COVID-19. Key reflections include the perceived benefits of virtual consultations to patients and clinicians; the limitations of virtual consultations compared with face-to-face consultations; and the key enablers that would optimise and sustain the delivery of virtual pathways longer term.ConclusionsIn response to the pandemic, outpatient services across the trust were rapidly redesigned and virtual clinics implemented. As a result, services have been able to sustain some level of service delivery. However, clinicians have identified challenges in delivering this model of care and highlighted enablers needed to sustaining the delivery of virtual clinics longer term, such as patient access to diagnostic tests and investigations closer to home.

Risk Factors for Subtypes of Children with Speech Sound Disorders Classified by Linguistic Symptoms

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to investigate 22 risk factors for speech sound disorders (SSDs) and to find out whether there are differences in risk factors for each subtype of SSDs of Dodd’s model.Methods: Sixty-two children with SSDs aged 3-9 years participated in the study, and 22 risk factors reported in literature were investigated through parental interviews and a nonverbal intelligibility test. Children with SSDs were divided into children with articulation disorders, phonological delays, and consistent/inconsistent phonological disorders.Results: As a result of the principal component analysis, 22 risk factors were classified into 1) language and gross motor development, 2) gender and early development, 3) otitis media with effusion, 4) socioeconomic status, and 5) family history. Among all risk factors, only general developmental delay around 2 years of age showed a significantly different frequency among subtypes of SSDs.Conclusion: This study directly investigated the risk factors of children with SSDs and classified a number of risk factors into five categories. This study suggests that if children show early general developmental delays, they should be closely monitored and early evaluation and interventions should be planned.

An Interdisciplinary Partnership Approach to Improving the Digital Literacy Skills of Nursing Students to Become Digitally Fluent, Work-Ready Graduates

Digital transformation and the development of a digitally fluent nursing workforce are necessary for engagement with digital technologies in healthcare settings. For this purpose, educators aim to develop workforce-ready graduates equipped with disciplinary knowledge, expertise, and digital capabilities supportive of further professional development. Having identified a subset of nursing students with low levels of digital literacy, the nursing faculty engaged with library services and the academic skills unit to develop and embed a sustainable Nursing Digital Literacy Module in the graduate entry to practice nursing program. This paper reports on the model created and early evaluation of the student uptake of the module.

Large-Scale Evaluation of Collision Cross Sections to Investigate Blood-Brain Barrier Permeation of Drugs

Successful drug administration to the central nervous system requires accurate adjustment of the drugs’ molecular properties. Therefore, structure-derived descriptors of potential brain therapeutic agents are essential for an early evaluation of pharmacokinetics during drug development. The collision cross section (CCS) of molecules was recently introduced as a novel measurable parameter to describe blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeation. This descriptor combines molecular information about mass, structure, volume, branching and flexibility. As these chemical properties are known to influence cerebral pharmacokinetics, CCS determination of new drug candidates may provide important additional spatial information to support existing models of BBB penetration of drugs. Besides measuring CCS, calculation is also possible; but however, the reliability of computed CCS values for an evaluation of BBB permeation has not yet been fully investigated. In this work, prediction tools based on machine learning were used to compute CCS values of a large number of compounds listed in drug libraries as negative or positive with respect to brain penetration (BBB+ and BBB− compounds). Statistical evaluation of computed CCS and several other descriptors could prove the high value of CCS. Further, CCS-deduced maximum molecular size of BBB+ drugs matched the dimensions of BBB pores. A threshold for transcellular penetration and possible permeation through pore-like openings of cellular tight-junctions is suggested. In sum, CCS evaluation with modern in silico tools shows high potential for its use in the drug development process.

Development of an instrument to assess self-management capacity of patients receiving peritoneal dialysis: CAPABLE

Background: Treatment of kidney failure with peritoneal dialysis (PD) at home implies that the patient and/or their caregiver develop a series of skills and basic knowledge about this therapy. There is not a specific inventory of the patient’s abilities to safely perform the PD procedure at home. The objective of this study was to describe the development of an instrument that allows measuring the self-management capacity of patients receiving PD, locating the performance areas that justify the need for intervention by a caregiver. Methods: This is a qualitative study developed in three phases: The first phase was the identification of performance areas through bibliographic search and validation of the results with focus groups of experts in PD. The second phase was the design of a system to measure self-management capacities. The third phase was a pilot test of the preliminary version of the instrument applied in 20 incident PD patients. Results: Three domains were identified to evaluate the fundamental components of self-management capacity: cognitive and sensory, each one evaluated with four items and motor domain evaluated with eight items. After applying the instrument, we found that 15 patients (75%) did not require support from the caregiver in any of the items. PD patients and nurses found the tool valuable, easy to understand and applicable in the early evaluation of a PD patient. Conclusions: We developed an easy-to-administer instrument to measure the self-management capacity of patients receiving PD. This inventory could locate areas that require specific support from a caregiver. Planning an individualised and focused education and training process could result in better health outcomes.