Unconventional research in USSR and Russia: short overview

This work briefly surveys unconventional research in Russia from the end of the 19th until the beginning of the 21th centuries in areas related to generation and detection of a 'high-penetrating' emission of non-biological origin. The overview is based on open scientific and journalistic materials. The unique character of this research and its history, originating from governmental programs of the USSR, is shown. Relations to modern studies on biological effects of weak electromagnetic emission, several areas of bioinformatics and theories of physical vacuum are discussed

Enhanced secure key exchange systems based on the Johnson-noise scheme

We introduce seven new versions of the Kirchhoff-Law-Johnson-(like)-Noise (KLJN) classical physical secure key exchange scheme and a new transient protocol for practically-perfect security. While these practical improvements offer progressively enhanced security and/or speed for the non-ideal conditions, the fundamental physical laws providing the security remain the same. In the "intelligent" KLJN (iKLJN) scheme, Alice and Bob utilize the fact that they exactly know not only their own resistor value but also the stochastic time function of their own noise, which they generate before feeding it into the loop. In the "multiple" KLJN (MKLJN) system, Alice and Bob have publicly known identical sets of different resistors with a proper, publicly known truth table about the bit-interpretation of their combination. In the "keyed" KLJN (KKLJN) system, by using secure communication with a formerly shared key, Alice and Bob share a proper time-dependent truth table for the bit-interpretation of the resistor situation for each secure bit exchange step during generating the next key. The remaining four KLJN schemes are the combinations of the above protocols to synergically enhance the security properties. These are: the "intelligent-multiple" (iMKLJN), the "intelligent-keyed" (iKKLJN), the "keyed-multiple" (KMKLJN) and the "intelligent-keyed-multiple" (iKMKLJN) KLJN key exchange systems. Finally, we introduce a new transient-protocol offering practically-perfect security without privacy amplification, which is not needed at practical applications but it is shown for the sake of ongoing discussions.Comment: This version is accepted for publicatio

Stabilization of grid frequency through dynamic demand control

Frequency stability in electricity networks is essential to the maintenance of supply quality and security. This paper investigates whether a degree of built-in frequency stability could be provided by incorporating dynamic demand control into certain consumer appliances. Such devices would monitor system frequency (a universally available indicator of supply-demand imbalance) and switch the appliance on or off accordingly, striking a compromise between the needs of the appliance and the grid. A simplified computer model of a power grid was created incorporating aggregate generator inertia, governor action and load-frequency dependence plus refrigerators with dynamic demand controllers. Simulation modelling studies were carried out to investigate the system's response to a sudden loss of generation, and to fluctuating wind power. The studies indicated a significant delay in frequency-fall and a reduced dependence on rapidly deployable backup generation