The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging field consisting of Internet-based globally connected network architecture. A subset of IoT is the Internet of Healthcare Things (IoHT) that consists of smart healthcare devices having significant importance in monitoring, processing, storing, and transmitting sensitive information. It is experiencing novel challenges regarding data privacy protection. This article discusses different components of IoHT and categorizes various healthcare devices based on their functionality and deployment. This article highlights the possible points and reasons for data leakage, such as conflicts in laws, the use of sub-standard devices, lack of awareness, and the non-availability of dedicated local law enforcement agencies. This article draws attention to the escalating demand for a suitable regulatory framework and analyzes compliance problems of IoHT devices concerning healthcare data privacy and protection regulations. Furthermore, the article provides some recommendations to improve the security and privacy of IoHT implementation.

Censorship is becoming increasingly pervasive on the Internet, with the Open Net Initiative reporting nearly 50 countries practicing some form of censorship. Previous work has reported the existence of many forms of Internet censorship (e.g., DNS tampering, packet filtering, connection reset, content filtering), each of which may be composed to build a more comprehensive censorship system. Automated monitoring of censorship represents an important and challenging research problem, due to the continually evolving nature of the content that is censored and the means by which censorship is implemented. UBICA, User-based Internet Censorship Analysis, is a platform we implemented to solve this task leveraging crowdsourced data collection. By adopting an integrated and multi-step analysis, UBICA provides simple but effective means of revealing censorship events over time. UBICA has revealed the effect of several censorship techniques including DNS tampering and content filtering. Using UBICA, we demonstrate evidence of censorship in several selected countries (Italy, Pakistan, and South Korea), for which we obtained help from local users and manually validated the automated analysis. This work has been carried out thanks to a Google Faculty Research Award for the project UBICA (User-Based Internet Censorship Analysis).

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miRNAs are 20–22 long nucleotide non-coding ribonucleic acid molecules critical to the modulation of molecular pathways. Immune evasion and the establishment of a suitable tumor microenvironment are two major contributors that support tumor invasion and metastasis. Tumorigenic miRNAs support these two hallmarks by desensitizing important tumor-sensitive regulatory cells such as dendritic cells, M1 macrophages, and T helper cells towards tumors while supporting infiltration and proliferation of immune cells like Treg cells, tumor-associated M2 macrophages that promote self-tolerance and chronic inflammation. miRNAs have a significant role in enhancing the efficacies of immunotherapy treatments like checkpoint blockade therapy, adoptive T cell therapy, and oncolytic virotherapy in cancer. A clear understanding of the role of miRNA can help scientists to formulate better-targeted treatment modalities. miRNA therapeutics have emerged as diverse class of nucleic acid-based molecules that can suppress oncogenic miRNAs and promote the expression of tumor suppressor miRNAs.

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