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The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging paradigm focusing on the connection of devices, objects, or “things” to each other, to the Internet, and to users. IoT technology is anticipated to become an essential requirement in the development of smart homes, as it offers convenience and efficiency to home residents so that they can achieve better quality of life. Application of the IoT model to smart homes, by connecting objects to the Internet, poses new security and privacy challenges in terms of the confidentiality, authenticity, and integrity of the data sensed, collected, and exchanged by the IoT objects. These challenges make smart homes extremely vulnerable to different types of security attacks, resulting in IoT-based smart homes being insecure. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the possible security risks to develop a complete picture of the security status of smart homes. This article applies the operationally critical threat, asset, and vulnerability evaluation (OCTAVE) methodology, known as OCTAVE Allegro, to assess the security risks of smart homes. The OCTAVE Allegro method focuses on information assets and considers different information containers such as databases, physical papers, and humans. The key goals of this study are to highlight the various security vulnerabilities of IoT-based smart homes, to present the risks on home inhabitants, and to propose approaches to mitigating the identified risks. The research findings can be used as a foundation for improving the security requirements of IoT-based smart homes.

This article examines the scholarship of John Allegro on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the role his status as a scholar has played in the reception of his The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. While the Dead Sea Scrolls play no prominent role in the book, people promoting Sacred Mushroom and its unorthodox proposals stress that Allegro is a respected scholar with great philological acumen by appealing to status as an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls. But Allegro’s contribution to the field is much more mixed than is often acknowledged by proponents of Sacred Mushroom. Allegro was also one of the first to promote the corrosive conspiracy theory that the rest of the editorial team was being controlled by the Vatican. Recognizing that Allegro’s scholarship is infused with a kind of conspiratorial ideation helps understand his method and approach in Sacred Mushroom—that the evidence that Christianity began as a sacred mushroom cult was intentionally obscured by New Testament authors. To agree with Allegro, one must grant that the evidence is hidden and below the surface. The renewed popularity for Allegro’s work, which is out of sync with his reputation among Qumran scholars, can be understood as one example of the broader phenomenon of the popularity of conspiratorial theories in contemporary culture

The advent of molecular breeding is advocated to improve the productivity and sustainability of second-generation bioenergy crops. Advanced molecular breeding in bioenergy crops relies on the ability to massively sample the genetic diversity. Genotyping-by-sequencing has become a widely adopted method for cost-effective genotyping. It basically requires no initial investment for design as compared with array-based platforms which have been shown to offer very robust assays. The latter, however, has the drawback of being limited to analyse only the genetic diversity accounted during selection of a set of polymorphisms and design of the assay. In contrast, genotyping-by-sequencing with random sampling of genomic loci via restriction enzymes or random priming has been shown to be fast and convenient but lacks the ability to target specific regions of the genome and to maintain high reproducibility across laboratories. Here we present a first adoption of single-primer enrichment technology (SPET) which provides a highly efficient and scalable system to obtain targeted sequence-based large genotyping data sets, bridging the gaps between array-based systems and traditional sequencing-based protocols. To fully explore SPET performance, we conducted a benchmark study in ten Zea mays lines and a large-scale study of a natural black poplar population of 540 individuals with the aim of discovering polymorphisms associated with biomass-related traits. Our results showed the ability of this technology to provide dense genotype information on a customized panel of selected polymorphisms, while yielding hundreds of thousands of untargeted variable sites. This provided an ideal resource for association analysis of natural populations harbouring unexplored allelic diversities and structure such as in black poplar. The improvement of sequencing throughput and the development of efficient library preparation methods has made it feasible to carry out targeted genotyping-by-sequencing experiments cost-competitively with either random complexity reduction systems or traditional array-based platforms, while maintaining the key advantages of both technologies.

The purpose of this retrospective study was to evaluate cylinder axis agreement between manifest refraction (MR), cycloplegic refraction (CR), Allegro Oculyzer ІІ and Allegro Topolyzer-Vario. We included 82 patients (32 males and 50 females, 28.1 ± 8.7 years old), with 156 eyes scheduled for wavefront optimized laser refractive surgery, photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) in 50 eyes and laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis (LASIK) in 106 eyes, for correction of simple, myopic, hyperopic or mixed astigmatism. Cylinder axis was determined under manifest and cycloplegic refractions and using Allegro Occulyzer ІІ and Allegro Topolyzer-Vario platforms. Cylinder axis agreement was assessed by intraclass correlation coefficient, Pearson correlation coefficient and by the method described by Bland and Altman. Intraclass correlation coefficient and Pearson correlation coefficient showed statistically significant cylinder axis agreement between manifest refraction, cycloplegic refraction, Allegro Oculyzer ІІ and Allegro Topolyzer-Vario (p <0.001). Despite statistically significant cylinder axis agreement between the four measuring tools, 4 of 156 eyes (2.5%) showed unexpected discrepancy between Allegro Oculyzer ІІ and Allegro Topolyzer-Vario cylinder axis. Although cylinder axis shows statistically significant agreement between manifest refraction, cycloplegic refraction, Allegro Oculyzer ІІ and Allegro Topolyzer-Vario, unexpected discrepancies occur.

In his book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970), John Marco Allegro claimed that an obscure, 12th century CE fresco of the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Plaincourault Chapel in Mérigny, France, provided evidence of the persistence in Christian Europe of an underground sacred mushroom sect that had survived since New Testament times. At the heart of Allegro’s claim is the mushroom-like appearance of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the picture. Following up on Allegro’s claim, a small group of writers, led by Boston University’s Carl A. P. Ruck, spent decades seeking to validate Allegro’s theory by seeking out other examples of psychedelic mushrooms hidden in early Christian and Medieval art. The present article centers its discussion on the claims put forward by Allegro and his followers about the Plaincourault tree, but also about other images concerning which they have made similar claims. It concludes that the claims of Allegro and his followers concerning the Plaincourault tree fail due to their tendency to overpress similarities while ignoring differences.

John Allegro’s The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross posits that early Christianity derived from fertility cults involving psychedelic mushroom use. Though widely discredited by scholars when it was first published, the theory persists in popular culture and entheogenic discourse. This article evaluates the scholarly reception, methodological flaws, and enduring cultural impact of Allegro’s thesis, particularly its role in the broader psychedelic mysteries hypothesis. Although Allegro’s linguistic methodology has been rejected by most experts, his work has contributed to renewed interest in the role of entheogens in religious traditions, with some scholars attempting to salvage Allegro’s intuitive insights while distancing themselves from his linguistic excesses. Due to its foundational methodological flaws, however, Allegro’s work is best viewed as a historical curiosity rather than a reliable source for contemporary entheogenic scholarship.

A newly discovered derivation of Schubert from Beethoven is presented: the piano sonata in B major D.575 IV from the piano sonata in A-flat major Op.26 II. A method for finding thematic derivations is first outlined. The present derivation shows Schubert learning to compose thematic material by following Beethoven’s example. The article increases our knowledge of Schubert after his early mastery of vocal composition, as he earnestly worked to learn the piano solo side of his craft. He needed to master three main areas: logical manipulation of abstract musical material rather than text-based expression, sonata-allegro and related forms rather than song forms, and writing for the physical technique of solo piano performance rather than for voice with piano accompaniment. He had apparently received little or no training in those areas, and it is very instructive to see him making his own way.

Due to their abundance and relative ease of genotyping, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are a commonly used molecular marker for contemporary population genetic and genomic studies. A high-density and cost-effective way to type SNP loci is Allegro targeted genotyping (ATG), which is a form of targeted genotyping by sequencing developed and offered by Tecan genomics. One major drawback of this technology is the need for a reference genome and information on SNP loci when designing a SNP assay. However, for some non-model species genomic information from other closely related species can be used. Here we describe our process of developing an ATG assay to target 50,000 SNPs in Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, using a reference genome from domestic sheep and SNP resources from prior bighorn sheep studies. We successfully developed a high accuracy, high-density, and relatively low-cost SNP assay for genotyping Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep that genotyped ~45,000 SNP loci. These loci were relatively evenly distributed throughout the genome. Furthermore, the assay produced genotypes at tens of thousands of SNP loci when tested on other mountain sheep species and subspecies.

Background Speed congenics is an important tool for creating congenic mice to investigate gene functions, but current SNP genotyping methods for speed congenics are expensive. These methods usually rely on chip or array technologies, and a different assay must be developed for each backcross strain combination. “Next generation” high throughput DNA sequencing technologies have the potential to decrease cost and increase flexibility and power of speed congenics, but thus far have not been utilized for this purpose. Results We took advantage of the power of high throughput sequencing technologies to develop a cost-effective, high-density SNP genotyping assay that can be used across many combinations of backcross strains. The assay surveys 1640 genome-wide SNPs known to be polymorphic across > 100 mouse strains, with an expected average of 549 ± 136 SD diagnostic SNPs between each pair of strains. We demonstrated that the assay has a high density of diagnostic SNPs for backcrossing the BALB/c strain into the C57BL/6J strain (807–819 SNPs), and a sufficient density of diagnostic SNPs for backcrossing the closely related substrains C57BL/6N and C57BL/6J (123–139 SNPs). Furthermore, the assay can easily be modified to include additional diagnostic SNPs for backcrossing other closely related substrains. We also developed a bioinformatic pipeline for SNP genotyping and calculating the percentage of alleles that match the backcross recipient strain for each sample; this information can be used to guide the selection of individuals for the next backcross, and to assess whether individuals have become congenic. We demonstrated the effectiveness of the assay and bioinformatic pipeline with a backcross experiment of BALB/c-IL4/IL13 into C57BL/6J; after six generations of backcrosses, offspring were up to 99.8% congenic. Conclusions The SNP genotyping assay and bioinformatic pipeline developed here present a valuable tool for increasing the power and decreasing the cost of many studies that depend on speed congenics. The assay is highly flexible and can be used for combinations of strains that are commonly used for speed congenics. The assay could also be used for other techniques including QTL mapping, standard F2 crosses, ancestry analysis, and forensics.

Leading risk assessment standards such as the NIST SP 800-39 and ISO 27005 state that information security risk assessment (ISRA) is one of the crucial stages in the risk-management process. It pinpoints current weaknesses and potential risks, the likelihood of their materializing, and their potential impact on the functionality of critical information systems such as advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). If the current security controls are insufficient, risk assessment helps with applying countermeasures and choosing risk-mitigation strategies to decrease the risk to a controllable level. Although studies have been conducted on risk assessment for AMI and smart grids, the scientific foundations for selecting and using an appropriate method are lacking, negatively impacting the credibility of the results. The main contribution of this work is identifying an appropriate ISRA method for AMI by aligning the risk assessment criteria for AMI systems with the ISRA methodologies’ characteristics. Consequently, this work makes three main contributions. First, it presents a comprehensive comparison of multiple ISRA methods, including OCTAVE Allegro (OA), CORAS, COBRA, and FAIR, based on a variety of input requirements, tool features, and the type of risk assessment method. Second, it explores the necessary conditions for carrying out a risk assessment for an AMI system. Third, these AMI risk assessment prerequisites are aligned with the capabilities of multiple ISRA approaches to identify the best ISRA method for AMI systems. The OA method is found to be the best-suited risk assessment method for AMI, and this outcome paves the way to standardizing this method for AMI risk assessment.