Distributed Relay Protocol for Probabilistic Information-Theoretic Security in a Randomly-Compromised Network

We introduce a simple, practical approach with probabilistic information-theoretic security to mitigate one of quantum key distribution's major limitations: the short maximum transmission distance (~200 km) possible with present day technology. Our scheme uses classical secret sharing techniques to allow secure transmission over long distances through a network containing randomly-distributed compromised nodes. The protocol provides arbitrarily high confidence in the security of the protocol, with modest scaling of resource costs with improvement of the security parameter. Although some types of failure are undetectable, users can take preemptive measures to make the probability of such failures arbitrarily small.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures; added proof of verification sub-protocol, minor correction

Jogos lógicos de tabuleiro como instrumento pedagógico e recreativo para todas as idades

O Programa de Extensão da UFRGS “Jogos Lógicos de Tabuleiro” (LoBoGames) iniciou, informalmente, em 2012, com atividades pontuais e como uma das oficinas promovidas pelo Projeto de Extensão “Atelier Pedagógico”, sendo registrado em 2013 como um Projeto de Extensão próprio, e como Programa de Extensão no biênio 2014/2015. O crescente interesse do público em geral em relação às atividades propostas tem surpreendido, com potencial de aplicação nos mais diversos eixos de atuação como atividade recreativa, escolar educativa, socialização de grupos, formação de lideranças, dentre outros

A 40-Year Cohort Study of Evolving Hypothalamic Dysfunction in Infants and Young Children (<3 years) with Optic Pathway Gliomas

Despite high survival, paediatric optic pathway hypothalamic gliomas are associated with significant morbidity and late mortality. Those youngest at presentation have the worst outcomes. We aimed to assess presenting disease, tumour location, and treatment factors implicated in the evolution of neuroendocrine, metabolic, and neurobehavioural morbidity in 90 infants/children diagnosed before their third birthday and followed-up for 9.5 years (range 0.5–25.0). A total of 52 (57.8%) patients experienced endo-metabolic dysfunction (EMD), the large majority (46) of whom had hypothalamic involvement (H+) and lower endocrine event-free survival (EEFS) rates. EMD was greatly increased by a diencephalic syndrome presentation (85.2% vs. 46%, p = 0.001)), H+ (OR 6.1 95% CI 1.7–21.7, p 0.005), radiotherapy (OR 16.2, 95% CI 1.7–158.6, p = 0.017) and surgery (OR 4.8 95% CI 1.3–17.2, p = 0.015), all associated with anterior pituitary disorders. Obesity occurred in 25% of cases and was clustered with the endocrinopathies. Neurobehavioural deficits occurred in over half (52) of the cohort and were associated with H+ (OR 2.5 95% C.I. 1.1–5.9, p = 0.043) and radiotherapy (OR 23.1 C.I. 2.9–182, p = 0.003). Very young children with OPHG carry a high risk of endo-metabolic and neurobehavioural comorbidities which deserve better understanding and timely/parallel support from diagnosis to improve outcomes. These evolve in complex, hierarchical patterns over time whose aetiology appears predominantly determined by injury from the hypothalamic tumour location alongside adjuvant treatment strategies

B-type natriuretic peptide-induced delayed modulation of TRPV1 and P2X3 receptors of mouse trigeminal sensory neurons

Important pain transducers of noxious stimuli are small- and medium-diameter sensory neurons that express transient receptor vanilloid-1 (TRPV1) channels and/or adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-gated P2X3 receptors whose activity is upregulated by endogenous neuropeptides in acute and chronic pain models. Little is known about the role of endogenous modulators in restraining the expression and function of TRPV1 and P2X3 receptors. In dorsal root ganglia, evidence supports the involvement of the natriuretic peptide system in the modulation of nociceptive transmission especially via the B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) that activates the natriuretic peptide receptor-A (NPR-A) to downregulate sensory neuron excitability. Since the role of BNP in trigeminal ganglia (TG) is unclear, we investigated the expression of BNP in mouse TG in situ or in primary cultures and its effect on P2X3 and TRPV1 receptors of patch-clamped cultured neurons. Against scant expression of BNP, almost all neurons expressed NPRA at membrane level. While BNP rapidly increased cGMP production and Akt kinase phosphorylation, there was no early change in passive neuronal properties or responses to capsaicin, \u3b1,\u3b2-meATP or GABA. Nonetheless, 24 h application of BNP depressed TRPV1 mediated currents (an effect blocked by the NPR-A antagonist anantin) without changing responses to \u3b1,\u3b2-meATP or GABA. Anantin alone decreased basal cGMP production and enhanced control \u3b1,\u3b2-meATP-evoked responses, implying constitutive regulation of P2X3 receptors by ambient BNP. These data suggest a slow modulatory action by BNP on TRPV1 and P2X3 receptors outlining the role of this peptide as a negative regulator of trigeminal sensory neuron excitability to nociceptive stimuli. \ua9 2013 Vilotti et al

Interpretable surface-based detection of focal cortical dysplasias:a Multi-centre Epilepsy Lesion Detection study

One outstanding challenge for machine learning in diagnostic biomedical imaging is algorithm interpretability. A key application is the identification of subtle epileptogenic focal cortical dysplasias (FCDs) from structural MRI. FCDs are difficult to visualize on structural MRI but are often amenable to surgical resection. We aimed to develop an open-source, interpretable, surface-based machine-learning algorithm to automatically identify FCDs on heterogeneous structural MRI data from epilepsy surgery centres worldwide. The Multi-centre Epilepsy Lesion Detection (MELD) Project collated and harmonized a retrospective MRI cohort of 1015 participants, 618 patients with focal FCD-related epilepsy and 397 controls, from 22 epilepsy centres worldwide. We created a neural network for FCD detection based on 33 surface-based features. The network was trained and cross-validated on 50% of the total cohort and tested on the remaining 50% as well as on 2 independent test sites. Multidimensional feature analysis and integrated gradient saliencies were used to interrogate network performance. Our pipeline outputs individual patient reports, which identify the location of predicted lesions, alongside their imaging features and relative saliency to the classifier. On a restricted 'gold-standard' subcohort of seizure-free patients with FCD type IIB who had T1 and fluid-attenuated inversion recovery MRI data, the MELD FCD surface-based algorithm had a sensitivity of 85%. Across the entire withheld test cohort the sensitivity was 59% and specificity was 54%. After including a border zone around lesions, to account for uncertainty around the borders of manually delineated lesion masks, the sensitivity was 67%. This multicentre, multinational study with open access protocols and code has developed a robust and interpretable machine-learning algorithm for automated detection of focal cortical dysplasias, giving physicians greater confidence in the identification of subtle MRI lesions in individuals with epilepsy

Pseudouridylation defect due to DKC1 and NOP10 mutations causes nephrotic syndrome with cataracts, hearing impairment, and enterocolitis

Research UK Innovation and Project; Cancer Research U

Design Weaknesses in Recent Ultralightweight RFID Authentication Protocols

Part 1: AuthenticationInternational audienceIn this paper we focus our attention on the design of several recently proposed ultralightweight authentication protocols and show that the underlying methodology is not sound. Indeed, the common feature of these protocols lies in the use of transforms, which are the main building blocks. We analyze these transforms and show that all of them present some weaknesses, which can be essentially reduced to poor confusion and diffusion in the input-output mappings. Then, exploiting the weaknesses of the transforms, we describe impersonation attacks against the ultralightweight authentication protocols in which they are used: precisely, RCIA, KMAP, SLAP, and SASI$$^{+}$$+. On average, an attack requires a constant number of interactions with the targeted tag, compared to the allegedly needed exponential number in the informal security analysis. Moreover, since the weaknesses are in the transforms, the attack strategies we describe can be used to subvert any other protocol that uses the same transforms or closely-related ones

Single-layered chrysotile nanotubes: A quantum mechanical ab initio simulation

Chrysotile single-layered nanotubes, obtained by wrapping the Mg3Si2O5OH4 lizardite monolayeralong the n,-n hexagonal lattice vector, are simulated at the ab initio level by using an all electron6-31G basis set and the B3LYP functional for n varying from 14 to 24 the nanotube radius Rreferred to the oxygen connecting the Mg and Si layers increases from 20 to 35 Å. Because of thefull exploitation of the helical symmetry, recently implemented in the CRYSTAL code, the computational cost for the full self-consistent field SCF and gradient calculation increases only bya factor of 2 and 1.2, respectively, when passing from the lizardite monolayer 18 atoms and 236AOs atomic orbitals in the unit cell to the 24, 24 tube 864 atoms and 11 328 AOs. The total energy of the tubes is always larger than that of the lizardite monolayer; the difference E decreases very rapidly with n; for the largest tube here considered n=24 E is as small as 2.7 kJ/mol per formula unit f.u.; extrapolating to larger n values, at about R=50 Å, E becomes smaller than 1 kJ mol f.u. Very large energy gains are observed for small n values during optimization after rolling, mainly due to the rotation of the SiO4 tetrahedra that are in the inner part of the cylinder “normal rolling”; such a rigid rotation accounts for about 85% of the overall relaxation energy. “Inverserolling” tubes SiO4 on the external wall of the tube are shown to be less stable than the corresponding “normal” tubes