6,448 research outputs found
Physical-Layer Security: Combining Error Control Coding and Cryptography
In this paper we consider tandem error control coding and cryptography in the
setting of the {\em wiretap channel} due to Wyner. In a typical communications
system a cryptographic application is run at a layer above the physical layer
and assumes the channel is error free. However, in any real application the
channels for friendly users and passive eavesdroppers are not error free and
Wyner's wiretap model addresses this scenario. Using this model, we show the
security of a common cryptographic primitive, i.e. a keystream generator based
on linear feedback shift registers (LFSR), can be strengthened by exploiting
properties of the physical layer. A passive eavesdropper can be made to
experience greater difficulty in cracking an LFSR-based cryptographic system
insomuch that the computational complexity of discovering the secret key
increases by orders of magnitude, or is altogether infeasible. This result is
shown for two fast correlation attacks originally presented by Meier and
Staffelbach, in the context of channel errors due to the wiretap channel model.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. Submitted and accepted to the International
Conference on Communications (ICC) 2009. v2: equivalent to the version that
will be published in the conference proceedings. Has some altered notation
from version 1 as well as slight changes in the wording to make the paper
more readable and easier to understan
Kinetic analysis of an efficient DNA-dependent TNA polymerase.
alpha-l-Threofuranosyl nucleoside triphosphates (tNTPs) are tetrafuranose nucleoside derivatives and potential progenitors of present-day beta-d-2'-deoxyribofuranosyl nucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs). Therminator DNA polymerase, a variant of the 9 degrees N DNA polymerase, is an efficient DNA-directed threosyl nucleic acid (TNA) polymerase. Here we report a detailed kinetic comparison of Therminator-catalyzed TNA and DNA syntheses. We examined the rate of single-nucleotide incorporation for all four tNTPs and dNTPs from a DNA primer-template complex and carried out parallel experiments with a chimeric DNA-TNA primer-DNA template containing five TNA residues at the primer 3'-terminus. Remarkably, no drop in the rate of TNA incorporation was observed in comparing the DNA-TNA primer to the all-DNA primer, suggesting that few primer-enzyme contacts are lost with a TNA primer. Moreover, comparison of the catalytic efficiency of TNA synthesis relative to DNA synthesis at the downstream positions reveals a difference of no greater than 5-fold in favor of the natural DNA substrate. This disparity becomes negligible when the TNA synthesis reaction mixture is supplemented with 1.25 mM MnCl(2). These results indicate that Therminator DNA polymerase can recognize both a TNA primer and tNTP substrates and is an effective catalyst of TNA polymerization despite changes in the geometry of the reactants
Neutron capture rates and r-process nucleosynthesis
Simulations of r-process nucleosynthesis require nuclear physics information
for thousands of neutron-rich nuclear species from the line of stability to the
neutron drip line. While arguably the most important pieces of nuclear data for
the r-process are the masses and beta decay rates, individual neutron capture
rates can also be of key importance in setting the final r-process abundance
pattern. Here we consider the influence of neutron capture rates in forming the
A~80 and rare earth peaks.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, appears in the Proceedings of the 14th
International Symposium on Capture Gamma-Ray Spectroscopy and Related Topic
Valence bond glass on an fcc lattice in the double perovskite Ba2YMoO6
Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Coding for Cryptographic Security Enhancement using Stopping Sets
In this paper we discuss the ability of channel codes to enhance
cryptographic secrecy. Toward that end, we present the secrecy metric of
degrees of freedom in an attacker's knowledge of the cryptogram, which is
similar to equivocation. Using this notion of secrecy, we show how a specific
practical channel coding system can be used to hide information about the
ciphertext, thus increasing the difficulty of cryptographic attacks. The system
setup is the wiretap channel model where transmitted data traverse through
independent packet erasure channels with public feedback for authenticated ARQ
(Automatic Repeat reQuest). The code design relies on puncturing nonsystematic
low-density parity-check codes with the intent of inflicting an eavesdropper
with stopping sets in the decoder. Furthermore, the design amplifies errors
when stopping sets occur such that a receiver must guess all the channel-erased
bits correctly to avoid an expected error rate of one half in the ciphertext.
We extend previous results on the coding scheme by giving design criteria that
reduces the effectiveness of a maximum-likelihood attack to that of a
message-passing attack. We further extend security analysis to models with
multiple receivers and collaborative attackers. Cryptographic security is
enhanced in all these cases by exploiting properties of the physical-layer. The
enhancement is accurately presented as a function of the degrees of freedom in
the eavesdropper's knowledge of the ciphertext, and is even shown to be present
when eavesdroppers have better channel quality than legitimate receivers.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure
Individual Realization Laser-Doppler Technique Applied to Turbulent Channel Flow
Measurements of the mean and turbulence intensity of the streamwise velocity component in a fully developed, two-dimensional channel flow of water are presented. The measurements were made with the individual realization laser Doppler technique and emphasize the near-wall region of the flow. A dual-scatter optical arrangement was used which employs 90° scattering and yields a probe volume whose length normal to the wall is 0.0075 inches. A correction has been made to the data that accounts for the statistical biasing which occurs in the individual realization technique. The corrected data demonstrate that the individual realization technique can yield accurate velocity estimates in the near-wall region where turbulent fluctuations are large
X-ray Observations of High-B Radio Pulsars
The study of high-magnetic-field pulsars is important for examining the
relationships between radio pulsars, magnetars, and X-ray-isolated neutron
stars (XINSs). Here we report on X-ray observations of three such
high-magnetic-field radio pulsars. We first present the results of a deep
XMM-Newton observation of PSR J1734-3333, taken to follow up on its initial
detection in 2009. The pulsar's spectrum is well fit by a blackbody with a
temperature of 300 +/- 60 eV, with bolometric luminosity L_bb = 2.0(+2.2
-0.7)e+32 erg/s = 0.0036E_dot for a distance of 6.1 kpc. We detect no X-ray
pulsations from the source, setting a 1 sigma upper limit on the pulsed
fraction of 60% in the 0.5-3 keV band. We compare PSR J1734-3333 to other
rotation-powered pulsars of similar age and find that it is significantly
hotter, supporting the hypothesis that the magnetic field affects the observed
thermal properties of pulsars. We also report on XMM-Newton and Chandra
observations of PSRs B1845-19 and J1001-5939. We do not detect either pulsar,
setting 3 sigma upper limits on their blackbody temperatures of 48 and 56 eV,
respectively. Despite the similarities in rotational properties, these sources
are significantly cooler than all but one of the XINSs, which we attribute to
the two groups having been born with different magnetic fields and hence
evolving differently.Comment: 18 pages, 2 tables, 5 figures, accepted for publication in the
Astrophysical Journa
Explicit Integration of the Full Symmetric Toda Hierarchy and the Sorting Property
We give an explicit formula for the solution to the initial value problem of
the full symmetric Toda hierarchy. The formula is obtained by the
orthogonalization procedure of Szeg\"{o}, and is also interpreted as a
consequence of the QR factorization method of Symes \cite{symes}. The sorting
property of the dynamics is also proved for the case of a generic symmetric
matrix in the sense described in the text, and generalizations of tridiagonal
formulae are given for the case of matrices with nonzero diagonals.Comment: 13 pages, Latex
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