419 research outputs found
Naturally Rehearsing Passwords
We introduce quantitative usability and security models to guide the design
of password management schemes --- systematic strategies to help users create
and remember multiple passwords. In the same way that security proofs in
cryptography are based on complexity-theoretic assumptions (e.g., hardness of
factoring and discrete logarithm), we quantify usability by introducing
usability assumptions. In particular, password management relies on assumptions
about human memory, e.g., that a user who follows a particular rehearsal
schedule will successfully maintain the corresponding memory. These assumptions
are informed by research in cognitive science and validated through empirical
studies. Given rehearsal requirements and a user's visitation schedule for each
account, we use the total number of extra rehearsals that the user would have
to do to remember all of his passwords as a measure of the usability of the
password scheme. Our usability model leads us to a key observation: password
reuse benefits users not only by reducing the number of passwords that the user
has to memorize, but more importantly by increasing the natural rehearsal rate
for each password. We also present a security model which accounts for the
complexity of password management with multiple accounts and associated
threats, including online, offline, and plaintext password leak attacks.
Observing that current password management schemes are either insecure or
unusable, we present Shared Cues--- a new scheme in which the underlying secret
is strategically shared across accounts to ensure that most rehearsal
requirements are satisfied naturally while simultaneously providing strong
security. The construction uses the Chinese Remainder Theorem to achieve these
competing goals
Acute phase proteins and stress hormone responses in patients with newly diagnosed active pulmonary tuberculosis
INTRODUCTION : Despite the high burden of disease, there
have been surprisingly few studies of the acute phase and
plasma catecholamine/cortisol stress hormone responses in
patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis. We wished to
document acute phase reactant and stress hormone
responses in patients with newly diagnosed, active pulmonary
tuberculosis and to compare these responses to
those of a group of surgical/medical cases with conditions
other than tuberculosis.
METHODS : This was a prospective study of consecutive
patients with newly diagnosed pulmonary tuberculosis,
admitted to a tertiary hospital in Johannesburg, South
Africa, documenting demographic, clinical, routine laboratory,
acute phase protein and stress hormone responses
relative to those of the control group.
RESULTS : TB patients had a higher body temperature and
pulse rate, as well as a platelet counts, ferritin, CRP and
dopamine levels, with a tendency to higher cortisol levels
compared to the control group. Conversely, they had a lower BMI, haemoglobin, leucocyte count, MCV and epinephrine
levels than the control group.
CONCLUSIONS : Patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis
were documented to mount an acute stress response which
was more intense than that of a control group of patients
with surgical/medical conditions other than tuberculosis.National Research Foundation of South Africahttp://link.springer.com/journal/4082016-02-28hb201
Mott insulators in an optical lattice with high filling factors
We discuss the superfluid to Mott insulator transition of an atomic Bose gas
in an optical lattice with high filling factors. We show that also in this
multi-band situation, the long-wavelength physics is described by a single-band
Bose-Hubbard model. We determine the many-body renormalization of the tunneling
and interaction parameters in the effective Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian, and
consider the resulting model at nonzero temperatures. We show that in
particular for a one or two-dimensional optical lattice, the Mott insulator
phase is more difficult to realize than anticipated previously.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, title changed, major restructuring, resubmitted
to PR
Violation of the Wiedemann-Franz Law in a Large-N Solution of the t-J Model
We show that the Wiedemann-Franz law, which holds for Landau Fermi liquids,
breaks down in a large-n treatment of the t-J model. The calculated ratio of
the in-plane thermal and electrical conductivities agrees quantitatively with
experiments on the normal state of the electron-doped Pr_{2-x}Ce_xCuO_4 (x =
0.15) cuprate superconductor. The violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law in the
uniform phase contrasts with other properties of the phase that are Fermi
liquid like.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Typos corrected, one added reference, revised
discussion of experiment on 214 cuprate material (x = 0.06
Quantum corrections to the ground state energy of a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate: A diffusion Monte Carlo calculation
The diffusion Monte Carlo method is applied to describe a trapped atomic
Bose-Einstein condensate at zero temperature, fully quantum mechanically and
nonperturbatively. For low densities, [n(0): peak
density, a: s-wave scattering length], our calculations confirm that the exact
ground state energy for a sum of two-body interactions depends on only the
atomic physics parameter a, and no other details of the two-body model
potential. Corrections to the mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii energy range from
being essentially negligible to about 20% for N=2-50 particles in the trap with
positive s-wave scattering length a=100-10000 a.u.. Our numerical calculations
confirm that inclusion of an additional effective potential term in the
mean-field equation, which accounts for quantum fluctuations [see e.g. E.
Braaten and A. Nieto, Phys. Rev. B 56}, 14745 (1997)], leads to a greatly
improved description of trapped Bose gases.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure
Finite temperature scaling theory for the collapse of Bose-Einstein condensate
We show how to apply the scaling theory in an inhomogeneous system like
harmonically trapped Bose condensate at finite temperatures. We calculate the
temperature dependence of the critical number of particles by a scaling theory
within the Hartree-Fock approximation and find that there is a dramatic
increase in the critical number of particles as the condensation point is
approached.Comment: Published online [6 pages, 3 figures
Aging without disorder on long time scales
We study the Metropolis dynamics of a simple spin system without disorder,
which exhibits glassy dynamics at low temperatures. We use an implementation of
the algorithm of Bortz, Kalos and Lebowitz \cite{bortz}. This method turns out
to be very efficient for the study of glassy systems, which get trapped in
local minima on many different time scales. We find strong evidence of aging
effects at low temperatures. We relate these effects to the distribution
function of the trapping times of single configurations.Comment: 8 pages Revtex, 7 figures uuencoded (Revised version: the figures are
now present
Long Distance Contribution to and Implications for and
We estimate the long distance (LD) contribution to the magnetic part of the
transition using the Vector Meson Dominance approximation
. We find that this contribution may be significantly
larger than the short distance (SD) contribution to and could
possibly saturate the present experimental upper bound on the decay rate, eV. For the decay , which is driven by as well, we obtain an upper bound on the branching ratio from . Barring the possibility that the Quantum Chromodynamics
coefficient be much smaller than 1, also implies the approximate relation .
This relation agrees quantitatively with a recent independent estimate of the
l.h.s. by Deshpande et al., confirming that the LD contributions to are small. We find that these amount to an increase of in
the magnitude of the transition amplitude, relative to the SD
contribution alone.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX fil
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