Verified password generation from password composition policies

Password managers (PMs) are important tools that enable the use of stronger passwords, freeing users from the cognitive burden of remembering them. Despite this, there are still many users who do not fully trust PMs. In this paper, we focus on a feature that most PMs offer that might impact the user’s trust, which is the process of generating a random password. We present three of the most commonly used algorithms and we propose a solution for a formally verified reference implementation of a password generation algorithm. We use EasyCrypt to specify and verify our reference implementation. In addition, we present a proof-of-concept prototype that extends Bitwarden to only generate compliant passwords, solving a frequent users’ frustration with PMs. This demonstrates that our formally verified component can be integrated into an existing (and widely used) PM.This work was partially funded by the PassCert project, a CMU Portugal Exploratory Project funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), with reference CMU/TIC/0006/2019 and supported by national funds through FCT under project UIDB/50021/2020

The stressed prefrontal cortex. Left? Right!

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays an important role in the integration of cognitive and affective behavior and regulating autonomic and neuroendocrine functions. This region of the brain, which may be considered analogous to the RAM memory of a computer, is important for translating stressful experience into adaptive behavior. The PFC responds to stress and modulates the response to stress through regulation of the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN) which, in turn, controls sympathoadrenal and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) activity. Interestingly, the latter convey the signals that link the CNS with the immune system. The present review highlights findings that contribute to elucidate the involvement of the PFC in the control of behavioral and neuroendocrine responses to chronic stress. It also considers the implications of these regulatory links for disorders of the nervous and immune systems.Authors’ work was in part supported by grants from the Portuguese J.J. Cerqueira et al. / Brain, Behavior, and Immunity 22 (2008) 630–638 635 government Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)—Project PTDC/SAU-NEU/72699/2006—and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation—Project JG/0495

Gene knockdown in Paracoccidioides brasiliensis using antisense RNA

Paracoccidioides brasiliensis is a thermal dimorphic fungus which at host environment exhibits a multinucleated and multibudding yeast form. The cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying these phenotypes remain to be clarified, mostly due to the absence of efficient classical genetic and molecular techniques. Here we describe a method for gene expression knockdown in P. brasiliensis by antisense RNA (aRNA) technology taking advantage of an Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation (ATMT) system. Together, these techniques represent a reliable toolbox that can be employed for functional genetic analysis of putative virulence factors and morphogenic regulators, aiming to the identification of new potential drug targets.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal (FCT) - Ref. PTDC/BIA-MIC/108309/2008, Ref. SFRH/BD/33446/2008)

Automating psycholinguistic statistics computation: procura palavras

This article describes psycholinguistic lexical databases available in various languages, including English, Spanish and Portuguese. These lexical databases are important for re- searchers in Psycholinguistics and other related areas, providing a pool of experimental materials and allowing for an efficient process of selection of these experimental materials. The process of gathering statistics is slow, resulting in a small pool of materials in the short-term. The need to find an alternative method to gather limited or yet unavailable statistics for a specific language led us to consider gathering statistics from other languages and to compute their triangulation. Our aim was to automatize the computation of statistics such as Fa- miliarity, Imageability, Age of Acquisition and Written Word Frequency for that specific language. We will describe the process of preparing this data and tri- angulating and comparing statistics for some languages in an at- tempt of finding a relationship between them. The results were analysed considering correlations between each statistic in each pair of languages and by computing the mean of absolute dif- ferences between each language’s values.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - "European Portuguese words” (PTDC/PSI-PCO/104679/2008)National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF)Operational Agenda for Competitiveness Factors (COMPETE)European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)