5,447 research outputs found
State of Alaska Election Security Project Phase 2 Report
A laska’s election system is among the most secure in the country,
and it has a number of safeguards other states are now adopting. But
the technology Alaska uses to record and count votes could be improved—
and the state’s huge size, limited road system, and scattered communities
also create special challenges for insuring the integrity of the vote.
In this second phase of an ongoing study of Alaska’s election
security, we recommend ways of strengthening the system—not only the
technology but also the election procedures. The lieutenant governor
and the Division of Elections asked the University of Alaska Anchorage to
do this evaluation, which began in September 2007.Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell.
State of Alaska Division of Elections.List of Appendices / Glossary / Study Team / Acknowledgments / Introduction / Summary of Recommendations / Part 1 Defense in Depth / Part 2 Fortification of Systems / Part 3 Confidence in Outcomes / Conclusions / Proposed Statement of Work for Phase 3: Implementation / Reference
Defending Against Firmware Cyber Attacks on Safety-Critical Systems
In the past, it was not possible to update the underlying software in many industrial control devices. Engineering
teams had to ‘rip and replace’ obsolete components. However, the ability to make firmware updates has provided
significant benefits to the companies who use Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), switches, gateways and
bridges as well as an array of smart sensor/actuators. These updates include security patches when vulnerabilities are
identified in existing devices; they can be distributed by physical media but are increasingly downloaded over
Internet connections. These mechanisms pose a growing threat to the cyber security of safety-critical applications,
which are illustrated by recent attacks on safety-related infrastructures across the Ukraine. Subsequent sections
explain how malware can be distributed within firmware updates. Even when attackers cannot reverse engineer the
code necessary to disguise their attack, they can undermine a device by forcing it into a constant upload cycle where
the firmware installation never terminates. In this paper, we present means of mitigating the risks of firmware attack
on safety-critical systems as part of wider initiatives to secure national critical infrastructures. Technical solutions,
including firmware hashing, must be augmented by organizational measures to secure the supply chain within
individual plants, across companies and throughout safety-related industries
Vibration Alert Bracelet for Notification of the Visually and Hearing Impaired
This paper presents the prototype of an electronic vibration bracelet designed to help the visually and hearing impaired to receive and send emergency alerts. The bracelet has two basic functions. The first function is to receive a wireless signal and respond with a vibration to alert the user. The second function is implemented by pushing one button of the bracelet to send an emergency signal. We report testing on a prototype system formed by a mobile application and two bracelets. The bracelets and the application form a complete system intended to be used in retirement apartment communities. However, the system is flexible and could be expanded to add new features or to serve as a research platform for gait analysis and location services. The medical and professional potential of the proposed system is that it offers a simple, modular, and cost-effective alternative to all the existing medical devices with similar functionality currently on the market. The proposed system has an educational potential as well: it can be used as a starting point for capstone projects and demonstration purposes in schools to attract students to STEM disciplines
NIKEL_AMC: Readout electronics for the NIKA2 experiment
The New Iram Kid Arrays-2 (NIKA2) instrument has recently been installed at
the IRAM 30 m telescope. NIKA2 is a state-of-art instrument dedicated to
mm-wave astronomy using microwave kinetic inductance detectors (KID) as
sensors. The three arrays installed in the camera, two at 1.25 mm and one at
2.05 mm, feature a total of 3300 KIDs. To instrument these large array of
detectors, a specifically designed electronics, composed of 20 readout boards
and hosted in three microTCA crates, has been developed. The implemented
solution and the achieved performances are presented in this paper. We find
that multiplexing factors of up to 400 detectors per board can be achieved with
homogeneous performance across boards in real observing conditions, and a
factor of more than 3 decrease in volume with respect to previous generations.Comment: 21 pages; 16 figure
The Waveform Digitiser of the Double Chooz Experiment: Performance and Quantisation Effects on PhotoMultiplier Tube Signals
We present the waveform digitiser used in the Double Chooz experiment. We
describe the hardware and the custom-built firmware specifically developed for
the experiment. The performance of the device is tested with regards to
digitising low light level signals from photomultiplier tubes and measuring
pulse charge. This highlights the role of quantisation effects and leads to
some general recommendations on the design and use of waveform digitisers.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in JINS
Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Pathfinder
A pathfinder version of CHIME (the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping
Experiment) is currently being commissioned at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical
Observatory (DRAO) in Penticton, BC. The instrument is a hybrid cylindrical
interferometer designed to measure the large scale neutral hydrogen power
spectrum across the redshift range 0.8 to 2.5. The power spectrum will be used
to measure the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) scale across this poorly
probed redshift range where dark energy becomes a significant contributor to
the evolution of the Universe. The instrument revives the cylinder design in
radio astronomy with a wide field survey as a primary goal. Modern low-noise
amplifiers and digital processing remove the necessity for the analog
beamforming that characterized previous designs. The Pathfinder consists of two
cylinders 37\,m long by 20\,m wide oriented north-south for a total collecting
area of 1,500 square meters. The cylinders are stationary with no moving parts,
and form a transit instrument with an instantaneous field of view of
100\,degrees by 1-2\,degrees. Each CHIME Pathfinder cylinder has a
feedline with 64 dual polarization feeds placed every 30\,cm which
Nyquist sample the north-south sky over much of the frequency band. The signals
from each dual-polarization feed are independently amplified, filtered to
400-800\,MHz, and directly sampled at 800\,MSps using 8 bits. The correlator is
an FX design, where the Fourier transform channelization is performed in FPGAs,
which are interfaced to a set of GPUs that compute the correlation matrix. The
CHIME Pathfinder is a 1/10th scale prototype version of CHIME and is designed
to detect the BAO feature and constrain the distance-redshift relation.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures. submitted to Proc. SPIE, Astronomical
Telescopes + Instrumentation (2014
Study to determine potential flight applications and human factors design guidelines for voice recognition and synthesis systems
A study was conducted to determine potential commercial aircraft flight deck applications and implementation guidelines for voice recognition and synthesis. At first, a survey of voice recognition and synthesis technology was undertaken to develop a working knowledge base. Then, numerous potential aircraft and simulator flight deck voice applications were identified and each proposed application was rated on a number of criteria in order to achieve an overall payoff rating. The potential voice recognition applications fell into five general categories: programming, interrogation, data entry, switch and mode selection, and continuous/time-critical action control. The ratings of the first three categories showed the most promise of being beneficial to flight deck operations. Possible applications of voice synthesis systems were categorized as automatic or pilot selectable and many were rated as being potentially beneficial. In addition, voice system implementation guidelines and pertinent performance criteria are proposed. Finally, the findings of this study are compared with those made in a recent NASA study of a 1995 transport concept
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