3,731 research outputs found
Monitoring tropical cyclone intensity using wind fields derived from short-interval satellite images
Rapid scan visible images from the Visible Infrared Spin Scan Radiometer sensor on board SMS-2 and GOES-1 were used to derive high resolution upper and lower tropospheric environmental wind fields around three western Atlantic tropical cyclones (1975-78). These wind fields were used to derive upper and lower tropospheric areal mean relative vorticity and their differences, the net relative angular momentum balance and upper tropospheric mass outflow. These kinematic parameters were shown by studies using composite rawinsonde data to be strongly related to tropical cyclone formation and intensity changes. Also, the role of forced synoptic scale subsidence in tropical cyclone formation was examined. The studies showed that satellite-derived lower and upper tropospheric wind fields can be used to monitor and possibly predict tropical cyclone formation and intensity changes. These kinematic analyses showed that future changes in tropical cyclone intensity are mainly related to the "spin-up" of the storms by the net horizontal transport of relative angular momentum caused by convergence of cyclonic vorticity in the lower troposphere and to a lesser extent the divergence of anticyclone vorticity in the upper troposphere
The role of the equivalent blackbody temperature in the study of Atlantic Ocean tropical cyclones
Satellite measured equivalent blackbody temperatures of Atlantic Ocean tropical cyclones are used to investigate their role in describing the convection and cloud patterns of the storms and in predicting wind intensity. The high temporal resolution of the equivalent blackbody temperature measurements afforded with the geosynchronous satellite provided sequential quantitative measurements of the tropical cyclone which reveal a diurnal pattern of convection at the inner core during the early developmental stage; a diurnal pattern of cloudiness in the storm's outer circulation throughout the life cycle; a semidiurnal pattern of cloudiness in the environmental atmosphere surrounding the storms during the weak storm stage; an outward modulating atmospheric wave originating at the inner core; and long term convective bursts at the inner core prior to wind intensification
Secret-Sharing for NP
A computational secret-sharing scheme is a method that enables a dealer, that
has a secret, to distribute this secret among a set of parties such that a
"qualified" subset of parties can efficiently reconstruct the secret while any
"unqualified" subset of parties cannot efficiently learn anything about the
secret. The collection of "qualified" subsets is defined by a Boolean function.
It has been a major open problem to understand which (monotone) functions can
be realized by a computational secret-sharing schemes. Yao suggested a method
for secret-sharing for any function that has a polynomial-size monotone circuit
(a class which is strictly smaller than the class of monotone functions in P).
Around 1990 Rudich raised the possibility of obtaining secret-sharing for all
monotone functions in NP: In order to reconstruct the secret a set of parties
must be "qualified" and provide a witness attesting to this fact.
Recently, Garg et al. (STOC 2013) put forward the concept of witness
encryption, where the goal is to encrypt a message relative to a statement "x
in L" for a language L in NP such that anyone holding a witness to the
statement can decrypt the message, however, if x is not in L, then it is
computationally hard to decrypt. Garg et al. showed how to construct several
cryptographic primitives from witness encryption and gave a candidate
construction.
One can show that computational secret-sharing implies witness encryption for
the same language. Our main result is the converse: we give a construction of a
computational secret-sharing scheme for any monotone function in NP assuming
witness encryption for NP and one-way functions. As a consequence we get a
completeness theorem for secret-sharing: computational secret-sharing scheme
for any single monotone NP-complete function implies a computational
secret-sharing scheme for every monotone function in NP
AssessingOpportunities and Barriers to Reducing the Environmental Footprint of Natural GasDevelopment in Utahâs Uintah Basin
Development of natural gas resources in the United States has increased dramatically over the past two decades, a boom driven by favorable prices, new technological developments, and growing interest in domestic sources of energy with a smaller carbon footprint than coal or oil. Most of the expansion in U.S. natural gas production has been from so-called âunconventionalâ reserves in which extensive natural gas resources trapped in continuous sandstone and shale formations can now be extracted using modern directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies. The Uintah Basin in northeastern Utah has been one of several areas in the U.S. where major tight sands and shale gas plays have been the focus of recent natural gas exploration and development
Just Care: Healthcare on the Margins
Inequality is one of the most significant issues facing contemporary society. This is evident upon a close examination of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Health Data report âU.S. Health Care System from an International Perspectiveâ. This report documents a number of critical deficits with respect to accessibility and quality of health care in the United States compared to the other 33 member nations in the OECD study. The U.S. spends over two and a half times more than the majority of developed countries while providing significantly fewer physicians, hospital beds, and a slower increase in life-expectancy per person than most other OECD countries. The findings of the OECD report raise normative claims regarding public health policy and the delivery of medical care in the U.S. We maintain that nations have the moral responsibility to provide just care for the marginalized, poor, indigent, and undocumented persons. Such care follows from a number of basic claims about the nature of health care, the dignity of persons, and the moral/social fabric of a nation. These claims are undermined by the pursuit of profit leading to the disparity in health care. The existence of health care organizations that succeed in providing âjust careâ demonstrates that such care is both achievable and represents a positive alternative to the dominant for-profit model of health care delivery. In fact, such work begs the question of equity and justice. A nation that spends $8,233 per capita per year on health care owes its citizens and non-documented workers greater accessibility and a higher quality of care than is currently provided
MSH2 missense mutations alter cisplatin cytotoxicity and promote cisplatin-induced genome instability
Defects in the mismatch repair protein MSH2 cause tolerance to DNA damage. We report how cancer-derived and polymorphic MSH2 missense mutations affect cisplatin cytotoxicity. The chemotolerance phenotype was compared with the mutator phenotype in a yeast model system. MSH2 missense mutations display a strikingly different effect on cell death and genome instability. A mutator phenotype does not predict chemotolerance or vice versa. MSH2 mutations that were identified in tumors (Y109C) or as genetic variations (L402F) promote tolerance to cisplatin, but leave the initial mutation rate of cells unaltered. A secondary increase in the mutation rate is observed after cisplatin exposure in these strains. The mutation spectrum of cisplatin-resistant mutators identifies persistent cisplatin adduction as the cause for this acquired genome instability. Our results demonstrate that MSH2 missense mutations that were identified in tumors or as polymorphic variations can cause increased cisplatin tolerance independent of an initial mutator phenotype. Cisplatin exposure promotes drug-induced genome instability. From a mechanistical standpoint, these data demonstrate functional separation between MSH2-dependent cisplatin cytotoxicity and repair. From a clinical standpoint, these data provide valuable information on the consequences of point mutations for the success of chemotherapy and the risk for secondary carcinogenesis
Data-Oblivious Graph Algorithms in Outsourced External Memory
Motivated by privacy preservation for outsourced data, data-oblivious
external memory is a computational framework where a client performs
computations on data stored at a semi-trusted server in a way that does not
reveal her data to the server. This approach facilitates collaboration and
reliability over traditional frameworks, and it provides privacy protection,
even though the server has full access to the data and he can monitor how it is
accessed by the client. The challenge is that even if data is encrypted, the
server can learn information based on the client data access pattern; hence,
access patterns must also be obfuscated. We investigate privacy-preserving
algorithms for outsourced external memory that are based on the use of
data-oblivious algorithms, that is, algorithms where each possible sequence of
data accesses is independent of the data values. We give new efficient
data-oblivious algorithms in the outsourced external memory model for a number
of fundamental graph problems. Our results include new data-oblivious
external-memory methods for constructing minimum spanning trees, performing
various traversals on rooted trees, answering least common ancestor queries on
trees, computing biconnected components, and forming open ear decompositions.
None of our algorithms make use of constant-time random oracles.Comment: 20 page
- âŠ