2,934 research outputs found
Security assessment of the Spanish contactless identity card
The theft of personal information to fake the identity of a person is a common threat normally performed by individual criminals, terrorists, or crime rings to commit fraud or other felonies Recently, the Spanish identity card, which provides enough information to hire online products such as mortgages or loans, was updated to incorporate a near-field communication chip as electronic passports do. This contactless interface brings a new attack vector for criminals, who might take advantage of the radio-frequency identification communication to virtually steal personal information. In this study, the authors consider as case study the recently deployed contactless Spanish identity card assessing its security against identity theft. In particular, they evaluated the security of one of the contactless access protocol as implemented in the contactless Spanish identity card, and found that no defences against online brute-force attacks were incorporated. They then suggest two countermeasures to protect against these attacks. Furthermore, they also analysed the pseudo-random number generator within the card, which passed all the performed tests with good results
High Energy Cosmic Rays from Neutrinos
We discuss recent models in which neutrinos, which are assumed to have mass
in the eV range, originate the highest energy cosmic rays by interaction with
the enhanced density in the galactic halo of the relic cosmic neutrino
background. We make an analytical calculation of the required neutrino fluxes
to show that the parameter space for these models is constrained by horizontal
air shower searches and by the total number of background neutrinos, so that
only models which have fairly unnatural halo sizes and enhanced densities are
allowed.Comment: 14 pages, 3 ps figures. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Potential benefits of melatonin in organ transplantation: a review
Organ transplantation is a useful therapeutic tool for patients with end-stage organ failure; however, graft rejection is a major obstacle in terms of a successful treatment. Rejection is usually a consequence of a complex immunological and nonimmunological antigen-independent cascade of events, including free radical-mediated ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI). To reduce the frequency of this outcome, continuing improvements in the efficacy of antirejection drugs are a top priority to enhance the long-term survival of transplant recipients. Melatonin (N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine) is a powerful antioxidant and ant-inflammatory agent synthesized from the essential amino acid L-tryptophan; it is produced by the pineal gland as well as by many other organs including ovary, testes, bone marrow, gut, placenta, and liver. Melatonin has proven to be a potentially useful therapeutic tool in the reduction of graft rejection. Its benefits are based on its direct actions as a free radical scavenger as well as its indirect antioxidative actions in the stimulation of the cellular antioxidant defense system. Moreover, it has significant anti-inflammatory activity. Melatonin has been found to improve the beneficial effects of preservation fluids when they are enriched with the indoleamine. This article reviews the experimental evidence that melatonin is useful in reducing graft failure, especially in cardiac, bone, otolaryngology, ovarian, testicular, lung, pancreas, kidney, and liver transplantation
Flavor SU(3) breaking effects in the chiral unitary model for meson-baryon scatterings
We examine flavor SU(3) breaking effects on meson-baryon scattering
amplitudes in the chiral unitary model. It turns out that the SU(3) breaking,
which appears in the leading quark mass term in the chiral expansion, can not
explain the channel dependence of the subtraction parameters of the model,
which are crucial to reproduce the observed scattering amplitudes and resonance
properties.Comment: RevTeX4, 4 pages, 3 figures, 2 table
Gemini Observations of Disks and Jets in Young Stellar Objects and in Active Galaxies
We present first results from the Near-infrared Integral Field Spectrograph
(NIFS) located at Gemini North. For the active galaxies Cygnus A and Perseus A
we observe rotationally-supported accretion disks and adduce the existence of
massive central black holes and estimate their masses. In Cygnus A we also see
remarkable high-excitation ionization cones dominated by photoionization from
the central engine. In the T-Tauri stars HV Tau C and DG Tau we see
highly-collimated bipolar outflows in the [Fe II] 1.644 micron line, surrounded
by a slower molecular bipolar outflow seen in the H_2 lines, in accordance with
the model advocated by Pyo et al. (2002).Comment: Invited paper presented at the 5th Stromlo Symposium. 9 pages, 7
figures. Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Scienc
Specifying and Analysing SOC Applications with COWS
COWS is a recently defined process calculus for specifying and combining service-oriented applications, while modelling their dynamic behaviour. Since its introduction, a number of methods and tools have been devised to analyse COWS specifications, like e.g. a type system to check confidentiality properties, a logic and a model checker to express and check functional properties of services. In this paper, by means of a case study in the area of automotive systems, we demonstrate that COWS, with some mild linguistic additions, can model all the phases of the life cycle of service-oriented applications, such as publication, discovery, negotiation, orchestration, deployment, reconfiguration and execution. We also provide a flavour of the properties that can be analysed by using the tools mentioned above
Stability and Decay Rates of Non-Isotropic Attractive Bose-Einstein Condensates
Non-Isotropic Attractive Bose-Einstein condensates are investigated with
Newton and inverse Arnoldi methods. The stationary solutions of the
Gross-Pitaevskii equation and their linear stability are computed. Bifurcation
diagrams are calculated and used to find the condensate decay rates
corresponding to macroscopic quantum tunneling, two-three body inelastic
collisions and thermally induced collapse.
Isotropic and non-isotropic condensates are compared. The effect of
anisotropy on the bifurcation diagram and the decay rates is discussed.
Spontaneous isotropization of the condensates is found to occur. The influence
of isotropization on the decay rates is characterized near the critical point.Comment: revtex4, 11 figures, 2 tables. Submitted to Phys. Rev.
Prospects for observations of high-energy cosmic tau neutrinos
We study prospects for the observations of high-energy cosmic tau neutrinos
(E \geq 10^6 GeV) originating from proton acceleration in the cores of active
galactic nuclei. We consider the possibility that vacuum flavor neutrino
oscillations induce a tau to muon neutrino flux ratio greatly exceeding the
rather small value expected from intrinsic production. The criterias and event
rates for under water/ice light Cerenkov neutrino telescopes are given by
considering the possible detection of downgoing high-energy cosmic tau
neutrinos through characteristic double shower events.Comment: 10 pages, Revtex, 3 figures included with eps
Vortex phase diagram in trapped Bose-Einstein condensation
The vortex phase diagram in the external rotation frequency versus
temperature is calculated for dilute Bose-Einstein condensed gases. It is
determined within the Bogoliubov-Popov theory for a finite temperature where
the condensate and non-condensate fractions are treated in an equal footing.
The temperature dependences of various thermodynamic instability lines for the
vortex nucleation are computed to construct the phase diagram. Experiments are
proposed to resolve a recent controversy on the vortex creation problem
associated with the quantized vortex observation in Rb atom gases.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure
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