The complexity of the entire process of supply chain management (SCM) is quite cumbersome and traditional way of handling it is devoid of proper authentication and security and very often suffers from human errors in dealing with flaws in quality control process of SCM. While it may have started with shipment tracking, the outcome of using IoT on supply chains has spread to every link in the chain. For instance, manufacturers are employing Internet-enabled sensors in production to find product faults, resulting in higher-quality production runs. Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) is a security mechanism that exploits the unique, unrepeatable physical characteristics of hardware components to generate distinct cryptographic keys or identifiers, typically for a semiconductor device like an Internet of Things (IoT) device. The unique identification of IoT devices along the supply chain is implemented by using PUFs as tamper-resistant IDs. Blockchain, the distributed, immutable ledger, on the other hand is the disruptive technology that provides higher security as compared to traditional centralized systems. The integration of PUF and blockchain proves to be quite interesting while handling the above issues of authentication. A smart contract on the blockchain is a software code that executes spontaneously as and when the conditions of the contract or agreement are satisfied. Hence after authentication process the results are fed to blockchain smart contract for the final validation. This paper presents a novel permissioned blockchain smart contract-based lightweight authentication scheme for SCM using PUF of IoT known as SPUFChain. Informal and formal security analysis (using AVISPA and BAN logic) of the proposed framework show its potential to combat several attack scenarios like man-in-the middle, non-repudiation, impersonation, replay attacks and many other security features as compared to other related schemes. The processing time (~13.8ms) is better than existing lightweight scheme for blockchain-based SCM as well.

The integration of blockchain into industrial environments promises secure and verifiable data exchange; however, existing permissioned blockchain (PBC) frameworks, such as Hyperledger Fabric and Quorum, impose overheads that are unsuitable for resource-constrained systems. This article introduces LowCapChain (LCC), a lightweight PBC designed for manufacturing nodes, such as programmable logic controllers, robotic arms, and smart sensors. LCC integrates Merkle ledger compression, elliptic-curve cryptography-based proof-of-membership, and delegated fault-tolerant consensus to enable secure operations without full ledger replication. Implemented in a robotic metal stamping facility using Raspberry Pi edge nodes, LCC achieves 964 transactions per second with 108 ms consensus latency and memory usage below 55 MB. Compared with Hyperledger Fabric, LCC reduces mean consensus latency by 61% and cryptographic overhead by up to 81%. Compared with Quorum, the reductions are 54% and 76%, respectively. Scalability tests confirmed near-linear throughput growth across 10–200 nodes, and fault tolerance experiments verified block finalization under validator failure. These findings establish LCC as an efficient architecture for embedded industrial systems, offering a pathway toward scalable Industry 4.0 adoption with energy savings inferred from reduced CPU cycles rather than directly measured power.

Background: In medical imaging, classifying images of colon cancer pathology is still an essential challenge, especially for facilitating early diagnosis and successful intervention. Recently, Vision Transformer (ViT) models have demonstrated great promise for a variety of computer vision tasks, including the classification of medical images. However, the lack of annotated medical datasets and the intrinsic unpredictability of histopathology pictures sometimes restrict their performance. Objective: This study aims to enhance the performance of ViT models in colon cancer pathology classification by introducing a targeted data augmentation strategy, with a particular focus on rotation-based augmentation. Methods: We proposed a data augmentation pipeline that uses controlled changes to improve the number and diversity of training data. Like Rotation, Flip and Geometry are emphasized to replicate the real-world tissue orientation variations that are frequently seen in colon pathology slides. 10,000 JPEG pictures of colon cancer pathology, each with a resolution of 768 x 768 pixels, are used to train the models. We use models trained with and without the suggested augmentation pipeline to compare ViT performance across accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity in order to assess the impact of augmentation. Results: According to study results, rotation-based augmentation enhances ViT performance, achieving up to 99.30% accuracy and 99.50% sensitivity while preserving training times. In real-world pathology settings, where slide orientation varies greatly and can affect categorization consistency, these enhancements are especially pertinent. Conclusion: The proposed rotation-centric data augmentation technique enhances the performance of the ViT model in the classification of images showing colon cancer pathology.

In the realm of smart manufacturing, equipment plays a pivotal role, impacting the efficiency and quality of production. Ensuring equipment availability and optimal performance is crucial, necessitating effective maintenance strategies. This paper addresses the complexities of smart device maintenance, which often involves collaboration between multiple entities like device owners, manufacturers, suppliers, and external maintenance services. To enhance this cooperative maintenance, we propose a novel maintenance system based on permissioned blockchain technology, offering superior security and reliability compared to conventional cloud-based platforms. Our contributions include developing an integrated maintenance system framework for smart manufacturing, which facilitates interactions among diverse stakeholders. Additionally, we have developed a prototype of this maintenance system, serving as a practical model for real-world application. Our research primarily demonstrates the practicality and advantages of using permissioned blockchain for maintenance systems in the manufacturing sector, paving the way for more secure, efficient, and collaborative maintenance practices.