SciTokens: Capability-Based Secure Access to Remote Scientific Data

The management of security credentials (e.g., passwords, secret keys) for computational science workflows is a burden for scientists and information security officers. Problems with credentials (e.g., expiration, privilege mismatch) cause workflows to fail to fetch needed input data or store valuable scientific results, distracting scientists from their research by requiring them to diagnose the problems, re-run their computations, and wait longer for their results. In this paper, we introduce SciTokens, open source software to help scientists manage their security credentials more reliably and securely. We describe the SciTokens system architecture, design, and implementation addressing use cases from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) projects. We also present our integration with widely-used software that supports distributed scientific computing, including HTCondor, CVMFS, and XrootD. SciTokens uses IETF-standard OAuth tokens for capability-based secure access to remote scientific data. The access tokens convey the specific authorizations needed by the workflows, rather than general-purpose authentication impersonation credentials, to address the risks of scientific workflows running on distributed infrastructure including NSF resources (e.g., LIGO Data Grid, Open Science Grid, XSEDE) and public clouds (e.g., Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure). By improving the interoperability and security of scientific workflows, SciTokens 1) enables use of distributed computing for scientific domains that require greater data protection and 2) enables use of more widely distributed computing resources by reducing the risk of credential abuse on remote systems.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, PEARC '18: Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing, July 22--26, 2018, Pittsburgh, PA, US

Automatische Vermittlung zwischen Interaktionsstilen

Die Wiederverwendung von Softwarekomponenten wird häufig durch Inkompatibilitäten behindert. Ein Problem dabei sind unterschiedliche Interaktionsstile. Es soll ein System entwickelt werden, das automatisch zwischen verschiedenen Stilen vermitteln kann

Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders is now a fully open access journal

AbstractWith the publication of the first articles of this 2012 volume, the Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders enters the exciting world of open access publishing. The Journal will now be published by BioMed Central, (part of Springer Science+Business Media) as a fully open access journal. This change will mean that all articles will be made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, will be available to readers throughout the world without subscription charges or registration barriers, and be indexed in both PubMed and PubMed Central

A peeling theorem for the Weyl tensor in higher dimensions

A peeling theorem for the Weyl tensor in higher dimensional Lorentzian manifolds is presented. We obtain it by generalizing a proof from the four dimensional case. We derive a generic behavior, discuss interesting subcases and retrieve the four dimensional result.Comment: 11 pages, 0 figure

Value co-creation in the delivery of outcome-based contracts for business-to-business service

Working paperThis study introduces the concept of outcome-based contracting (OBC) as the mechanism for firms to focus on delivering value-in-use, and as the driver for value co-creation as the firm would need to jointly deliver outcomes with the customer. The paper analyses two OBC-type contracts between the UK Ministry of Defence and two of its industrial partners. We find that in delivering to outcomes and achieving value-in-use, the state-dependent nature of value in usage „pushes back‟ into the organization, requiring the firm to re-evaluate the way they are structured to receive changes from customer state-dependencies so as to deliver a better service. Our analysis presents seven generic attributes of value co-creation (AVCs) essential for the capability to deliver value-in-use. These are behavioral alignment, process alignment, congruence in customer expectations, congruence in firm expectations, empowerment and perceived control, behavioral transformation, and complementary competencies. The attributes discovered through qualitative data were matched with previous academic literature and operationalized and a measurement instrument was developed. The instrument was then validated by performing an exploratory and second order confirmatory factor analysis.This research was made possible through the joint funding of the Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (UK) and BAE Systems on the Support Service Solutions: Strategy & Transition (S4T) project consortium led by the University of Cambridge. The authors gratefully acknowledge the staff of BAE Systems and MBDA as well as members of the ADAPT IPT, 16th Regiment, ATTAC IPT, MoD and the RAF who have all contributed substantially towards this research

Absorption of Vector Dark Matter Beyond Kinetic Mixing

Massive vector particles are minimal dark matter candidates that motivate a wide range of laboratory searches, primarily exploiting a postulated kinetic mixing with the photon. However, depending on the high energy field content, the dominant vector dark matter (VDM) coupling to visible particles may arise at higher operator dimension, motivating efforts to predict direct detection rates for more general interactions. Here we present the first calculation of VDM absorption through its coupling to electron electric (EDM) or magnetic (MDM) dipole moments, which can be realized in minimal extensions to the Standard Model and yield the observed abundance through a variety of mechanisms across the eV\,-\,MeV mass range. We compute the absorption rate of the MDM and EDM models for a general target, and then derive direct detection constraints from targets currently in use: Si and Ge crystals and Xe and Ar atoms. We find that current experiments are already sensitive to VDM parameter space corresponding to a cosmological freeze-in scenario, and future experiments will be able to completely exclude MDM and EDM freeze-in models with reheat temperatures below the electroweak scale. Additionally, we find that while constraints on the MDM interaction can be related to constraints on axion-like particles, the same is not true for the EDM model, so the latter absorption rate must be computed from first principles. To achieve this, we update the publicly available program EXCEED-DM to perform these new calculations.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figures; v2: updated to match published versio

Algebraic specifications and refinement for component-based development using RAISE

There are two main activities in Component-Based Development: component development, where we build libraries for general use, and component integration, where we assemble an application from existing components. In this work, we analyze how to apply algebraic specifications with refinement to component development. So we restrict our research to the use of modules that are described as class expressions in a formal specification language, and we present several refinement steps for component development, introducing in each one design decisions and implementation details. This evolution starts from the initial specification of a component as an abstract module, and finishes with the final deployment as fully implemented code. The usage of formal tools helps to assure the correctness of each step, and provides the ground to introduce complementarytechniques, such as bisimulations, for the process of component integration.Facultad de Informátic

Push-Button Tools for Application Developers, Full Formal Verification for Component Vendors

Software developers have varying abilities and develop software with differing reliability requirements. Sometimes reliability is critical and the developers have the mathematical capabilities to perform interactive theorem proving but this is not usually the case. We believe that most software developers need easy to use tools such as run-time assertion checkers and extended static checkers that can help them produce more reliable application-specific code cheaply. However, these lightweight approaches are not sufficient to allow the safe reuse of software components. To safely reuse software components we need comprehensive descriptions and assurances of correctness. These requirements can be provided for by full formal verification with the additional costs justified by the economies of scale. Our Omnibus verification tool provides integrated support for all these different types of verification. This paper illustrates these concepts through a sorting implementation

A Hierarchical Model of Design Knowledge

Despite the central role of knowledge in design, there is a dearth of research on the typology, intrinsic structure and composition of design knowledge. This results in an indeterminate epistemological picture of design outcomes. To address the need for effective conceptualizations, I propose a hierarchical model of design knowledge, which stratifies the different bodies of knowledge into ranked levels. I illustrate some of the benefits of the model and compare it with existing hierarchical models of knowledge in non-design fields of inquiry