The rapid worldwide deployment of the Internet and Web is the enabler of a new generation of e-healthcare applications, but the provision of a security architecture that can ensure the privacy and security of sensitive healthcare data is still an open question. Current solutions to this problem (mostly built on static RBAC models) are application-dependent and do not address the intricate secur...

Bioenergy, made available from materials derived from biological sources, has been widely considered as one of the major renewable and sustainable energy sources to enhance energy security and mitigate climate change [Beringer et al., 2011; Fargione et al., 2010]. Food grain is currently the most popularly used biomass feedstock for biofuel production, e.g., maize (Zea Mays L.) grain for bioeth...

Postharvest insect pests threaten the nutritional and financial security of smallholder farmers in the developing world. Hermetic storage, a technology that protects grain against insects by blocking their supply of oxygen, alleviates the problem of insect-caused losses. PICS (Purdue Improved Crop Storage) bags represent one hermetic technology that improves food availability and incomes of far...

RONALD P. CANTRELL AND TIMOTHY G. Reeves (“The cereal of the world’s poor takes center stage,” Perspectives, 5 April, p. 53) correctly point out that the availability of the rice genome sequence has the potential to contribute to food security through the improvement of rice, the staple crop in the diets of half the world’s population. They also point to its contribution to future improvement o...

Highly shared resources over multiple grid platforms make insecurity and privacy abuse major obstacles hindering general-purpose Grid applications. A scalable grid system demands the allocation and release of resources dynamically. A distributed Grid security (GridSec) architecture is introduced to meet these demands. The architecture is built with distributed firewalls, packet filters, securit...

The UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) funded BRIDGES project (Biomedical Research Informatics Delivered by Grid Enabled Services) has developed a Grid infrastructure to support cardiovascular research. This includes the provision of a compute Grid and a data Grid infrastructure with security at its heart. In this paper we focus on the BRIDGES data Grid. A primary aim of the BRIDGES data...

In spite of several World Food Summits during the past decade, the number of people going to bed hungry is increasing and now exceeds one billion. Food security strategies should therefore be revisited. Food security systems should begin with local communities who can develop and manage community gene, seed, grain and water banks. At the national level, access to balanced diet and clean drinkin...

We present a security mechanism designed for use with object-based multi-user applications. This mechanism the private access channel provides the same level of fine grain object-based security as the capability scheme. Whereas capabilities have been applied only to limited sets of objects with identical operations, we propose a generic protection mechanism that can be applied to any object, wh...