4,184 research outputs found
Insecurity of position-based quantum cryptography protocols against entanglement attacks
Recently, position-based quantum cryptography has been claimed to be
unconditionally secure. In contrary, here we show that the existing proposals
for position-based quantum cryptography are, in fact, insecure if entanglement
is shared among two adversaries. Specifically, we demonstrate how the
adversaries can incorporate ideas of quantum teleportation and quantum secret
sharing to compromise the security with certainty. The common flaw to all
current protocols is that the Pauli operators always map a codeword to a
codeword (up to an irrelevant overall phase). We propose a modified scheme
lacking this property in which the same cheating strategy used to undermine the
previous protocols can succeed with a rate at most 85%. We conjecture that the
modified protocol is unconditionally secure and prove this to be true when the
shared quantum resource between the adversaries is a two- or three- level
system
Increasing prevalence of asthma diagnosis and symptoms in children is confined to mild symptoms
BACKGROUND: The prevalence of childhood asthma is increasing but few studies have investigated trends in asthma severity. We investigated trends in asthma diagnosis and symptom morbidity between an eight year time period in a paired prevalence study.
METHODS: All children in one single school year aged 8-9 years in the city of Sheffield were given a parent respondent questionnaire in 1991 and 1999 based on questions from the International Survey of Asthma and Allergy in Children (ISAAC). Data were obtained regarding the prevalence of asthma and wheeze and current (12 month) prevalences of wheeze attacks, speech limiting wheeze, nocturnal cough and wheeze, and exertional symptoms.
RESULTS: The response rates in 1991 and 1999 were 4580/5321 (85.3%) and 5011/6021 (83.2%), respectively. There were significant increases between the two surveys in the prevalence of asthma ever (19.9% v 29.7%, mean difference 11.9%, 95% confidence interval (CI) 10.16 to 13.57, p<0.001), current asthma (10.3% v 13.0%, mean difference 2.7%, 95% CI 1.44 to 4.03, p<0.001), wheeze ever (30.3% v 35.8%, mean difference 5.7%, 95% CI 3.76 to 7.56, p<0.001), wheeze in the previous 12 months (17.0% v 19.4%, mean difference 2.5, 95% CI 0.95 to 4.07, p<0.01), and reporting of medication use (16.9% v 20%, mean difference 3.0%, 95% CI 1.46 to 4.62, p<0.001). There were also significant increases in reported hayfever and eczema diagnoses.
CONCLUSIONS: Diagnostic labelling of asthma and lifetime prevalence of wheeze has increased. The current 12 month point prevalence of wheeze has increased but this is confined to occasional symptoms. The increased medication rate may be responsible for the static prevalence of severe asthma symptoms. The significant proportion of children receiving medication but reporting no asthma symptoms identified from our 1999 survey suggests that some children are being inappropriately treated or overtreated
A Field Test Study on Instrumented Soil Nail Installed in Cut Slope
Soil nailing is a technique routinely used in Hong Kong whereby closely spaced steel bars are installed into a slope so that its stability conditions can be improved. A full-scale field test has been carried out by The Department of Civil Engineering of The University of Hong Kong to study the development of passive load along the full length of soil nails when subjected to induced rise in groundwater table. The cut slope was formed to a very steep angle of 55° and 10 m high in completely decomposed volcanic material. Grouted curtain was also formed behind, at the bottom and on both ends of the slope in order to form an impermeable barrier that would allow groundwater table to increase artificially by injecting water into slotted PVC pipes. Nine number of soil nails (in regular 2 m c/c spacing of 3 rows and 3 columns) of 6 m long high yield steel bar were installed at 15° from horizontal into the formed cut slope. Instrumentation included strain gauges along the nails, inclinometers, piezometers, and settlement prisms. This paper describes the method of construction and the load developed along the soil nails when the groundwater table was raised to the ground surface. It was found that the measured passive load along the soil nail was smaller than the commonly assumed design parameters, an indication that substantial savings can be achieved if mobilization of shearing resistance along the full length of the soil nail was considered in routine design. Finite element analysis has also been carried out to compare the measured load with the simulated load and the stability factor is compared with the factor of safety at each stage of loading
Large optical gain from four-wave mixing instabilities in semiconductor quantum wells
Based on a microscopic many-particle theory, we predict large optical gain in
the probe and background-free four-wave mixing directions caused by excitonic
instabilities in semiconductor quantum wells. For a single quantum well with
radiative-decay limited dephasing in a typical pump-probe setup we discuss the
microscopic driving mechanisms and polarization and frequency dependence of
these instabilities
A note on the realignment criterion
For a quantum state in a bipartite system represented as a density matrix,
researchers used the realignment matrix and functions on its singular values to
study the separability of the quantum state. We obtain bounds for elementary
symmetric functions of singular values of realignment matrices. This answers
some open problems proposed by Lupo, Aniello, and Scardicchio. As a
consequence, we show that the proposed scheme by these authors for testing
separability would not work if the two subsystems of the bipartite system have
the same dimension.Comment: 11 pages, to appear in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and
Theoretica
On the "Fake" Inferred Entanglement Associated with the Maximum Entropy Inference of Quantum States
The inference of entangled quantum states by recourse to the maximum entropy
principle is considered in connection with the recently pointed out problem of
fake inferred entanglement [R. Horodecki, {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. A {\it 59}
(1999) 1799]. We show that there are operators , both diagonal and non
diagonal in the Bell basis, such that when the expectation value is
taken as prior information the problem of fake entanglement is not solved by
adding a new constraint associated with the mean value of (unlike
what happens when the partial information is given by the expectation value of
a Bell operator). The fake entanglement generated by the maximum entropy
principle is also studied quantitatively by comparing the entanglement of
formation of the inferred state with that of the original one.Comment: 25 Revtex pages, 5 Postscript figures, submitted to J. Phys. A (Math.
Gen.
Slope Stability Evaluation for an Existing Steep Cut in Weathered Volcanics, Hong Kong
This case study concerns an investigation of a major existing soil slope. It is a 60m (197 ft) high cutting slope, at 40 degrees to 60 degrees to the horizontal, exhibiting a considerably greater degree of stability than was obtained by a series of geotechnical investigations and analyses. The common practice of correlation between widely spaced borings is shown to be inappropriate at this site because of the highly variable ground conditions. Rather, the comprehensive geological comprehensive engineering investigation carried out has enabled a detailed appreciation of the distribution and nature of weathered materials at the site. Transitional materials with soil-like appearance and weak rock properties have been identified. Based on this information, slope stability evaluation was carried out with more realistic results and with greater confidence
RELBET 4.0 user's guide
This manual describes the operation and use of RELBET 4.0 implemented on the Hewlett Packard model 9000. The RELBET System is an integrated collection of computer programs which support the analysis and post-flight reconstruction of vehicle to vehicle relative trajectories of two on-orbit free-flying vehicles: the Space Shuttle Orbiter and some other free-flyer. The manual serves both as a reference and as a training guide. Appendices provide experienced users with details and full explanations of program usage. The body of the manual introduces new users to the system by leading them through a step by step example of a typical production. This should equip the new user both to execute a typical production process and to understand the most significant variables in that process
Security of quantum bit string commitment depends on the information measure
Unconditionally secure non-relativistic bit commitment is known to be
impossible in both the classical and the quantum world. However, when
committing to a string of n bits at once, how far can we stretch the quantum
limits? In this letter, we introduce a framework of quantum schemes where Alice
commits a string of n bits to Bob, in such a way that she can only cheat on a
bits and Bob can learn at most b bits of information before the reveal phase.
Our results are two-fold: we show by an explicit construction that in the
traditional approach, where the reveal and guess probabilities form the
security criteria, no good schemes can exist: a+b is at least n. If, however,
we use a more liberal criterion of security, the accessible information, we
construct schemes where a=4 log n+O(1) and b=4, which is impossible
classically. Our findings significantly extend known no-go results for quantum
bit commitment.Comment: To appear in PRL. Short version of quant-ph/0504078, long version to
appear separately. Improved security definition and result, one new lemma
that may be of independent interest. v2: added funding reference, no other
change
- âŠ