Linguistic Replacement in the Movies

In this paper, I discuss the use of the English language in movie dialogues where, logically, other languages would have been used by the fictional characters. A shared characteristic of many Hollywood movies (as well as countless other fictional narratives, written or performed) is the notion of linguistic replacement. Even when the depicted story would realistically have taken place in a different linguistic setting, the language(s) are replaced by the base language of narration; in my case, English. Using a taxonomy of semiotic strategies proposed by Petr Mareš as a point of departure, I discuss examples of linguistic replacement from a corpus of twelve recent, commercially successful Hollywood movies with European and American settings. I argue that even though the different strategies (e.g. the use of L2 accents or the presence of the replaced language in filmed writing) fulfill more complex symbolic functions than that of compensatory realism, there has been a recent shift away from linguistic replacement altogethe

Unpicking PLAID: a cryptographic analysis of an ISO-standards-track authentication protocol

The Protocol for Lightweight Authentication of Identity (PLAID) aims at secure and private authentication between a smart card and a terminal. Originally developed by a unit of the Australian Department of Human Services for physical and logical access control, PLAID has now been standardized as an Australian standard AS-5185-2010 and is currently in the fast track standardization process for ISO/IEC 25182-1.2. We present a cryptographic evaluation of PLAID. As well as reporting a number of undesirable cryptographic features of the protocol, we show that the privacy properties of PLAID are significantly weaker than claimed: using a variety of techniques we can fingerprint and then later identify cards. These techniques involve a novel application of standard statistical and data analysi

On Symmetric Encryption with Distinguishable Decryption Failures

We propose to relax the assumption that decryption failures are indistinguishable in security models for symmetric encryption. Our main purpose is to build models that better reflect the reality of cryptographic implementations, and to surface the security issues that arise from doing so. We systematically explore the consequences of this relaxation, with some surprising consequences for our understanding of this basic cryptographic primitive. Our results should be useful to practitioners who wish to build accurate models of their implementations and then analyse them. They should also be of value to more theoretical cryptographers proposing new encryption schemes, who, in an ideal world, would be compelled by this work to consider the possibility that their schemes might leak more than simple decryption failures

Some remarks on Lucas-Based cryptosystems

We review the well-known relation between Lucas sequences and exponentiation. This leads to the observation that certain public-key cryptosystems that are based on the use of Lucas sequences have some elementary properties their re-inventors were apparently not aware of. In particular, we present a chosen-message forgery for `LUC' [Smith, 1993] and [Smith and Lennon, 1993], and we show that `LUCELG' and `LUCDIF' [Smith, 1994] and [Smith and Skinner, 1994] are vulnerable to subexponential time attacks. This proves that various claims that were made about Lucas-based cryptosystems are incorrec

Environmental dissemination of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae in rivers in Switzerland

The aquatic environment takes on a key role in the dissemination of antimicrobial-resistant Enterobacteriaceae. This study assesses the occurrence of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae (CPE) in freshwater samples from rivers, inland canals, and streams throughout Switzerland, and characterizes the isolated strains using phenotypic and NGS-based genotypic methods. CPE producing KPC-2 (n = 2), KPC-3 (n = 1), NDM-5 (n = 3), OXA-48 (n = 3), OXA-181 (n = 6), and VIM-1 (n = 2) were detected in 17/164 of the water samples. Seven Escherichia coli had sequence types (STs) that belonged to extra-intestinal pathogenic clonal lineages ST38, ST73, ST167, ST410, and ST648. The majority (16/17) of the carbapenemase genes were located on plasmids, including the widespread IncC (n = 1), IncFIIA (n = 1), and IncFIIB plasmids (n = 4), the epidemic IncL (n = 1) and IncX3 (n = 5) plasmids, a rare Col156 plasmid (n = 1), and the mosaic IncFIB, IncR, and IncQ plasmids (n = 3). Plasmids were composed of elements that were identical to those of resistance plasmids retrieved from clinical and veterinary isolates locally and worldwide. Our data show environmental dissemination of high-risk CPE clones in Switzerland. Epidemic and mosaic-like plasmids carrying clinically relevant carbapenemase genes are replicating and evolving pollutants of river ecosystems, representing a threat to public health and environmental integrity

The dual control of TFIIB recruitment by NC2 is gene specific

Negative co-factor 2 (NC2) is a conserved eukaryotic complex composed of two subunits, NC2α (Drap1) and NC2β (Dr1) that associate through a histone-fold motif. In this work, we generated mutants of NC2, characterized target genes for these mutants and studied the assembly of NC2 and general transcription factors on target promoters. We determined that the two NC2 subunits mostly function together to be recruited to DNA and regulate gene expression. We found that NC2 strongly controls promoter association of TFIIB, both negatively and positively. We could attribute the gene-specific repressor effect of NC2 on TFIIB to the C-terminal domain of NC2β, and define that it requires ORF sequences of the target gene. In contrast, the positive function of NC2 on TFIIB targets is more general and requires adequate levels of the NC2 histone-fold heterodimer on promoters. Finally, we determined that NC2 becomes limiting for TATA-binding protein (TBP) association with a heat inducible promoter under heat stress. This study demonstrates an important positive role of NC2 for formation of the pre-initiation complex on promoters, under normal conditions through control of TFIIB, or upon activation by stress via control of TBP