Dermcidin-Peptide: Membran-Interaktion und Wirkspektrum

Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass die alpha-helikalen Dermcidin-Peptide DCD-1L und SSL-25 aufgrund ihrer amphiphilen Struktur abhängig von der Zn2+-Konzentration an biologische Membranen binden. Ohne Ausbildung stabiler oligomerer Poren überwinden die Peptide anschließend die Membran, ohne diese zu Schädigen. Dies konnte an Lipidvesikeln sowie an lebenden Zellen nachgewiesen werden. Das 48-mere DCD-1L überwindet im Gegensatz zu dem 25-meren SSL-25 die Membran kooperativ

VirtualStack: Green High Performance Network Protocol Processing Leveraging FPGAs

In times of cloud services and IoT, network protocol processing is a big part of the CPU utilization today. Foong et al. proposed the rule of thumb for TCP, that a single-core CPU needs about 1 Hz clock frequency to produce 1 bit/s worth of TCP data packets. Unfortunately, CPU speed has stagnated around 5 GHz in recent years resulting in a upper limit of 5 GBit/s throughput with single-threaded network processing. Further, CPU featuring such high clock rates (e.g., Intel Core i7-8086K) have rated TDP around 95 W, resulting in very high power consumption for high throughput situations. Meanwhile, industry offers some hardware acceleration for TCP as part of their server network cards, to relief the server CPUs and increase the energy efficiency. However this is just a small support as state and management still needs the CPU of the host system. In this paper, we present an approach based on field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) to not only free up CPU cycles but provide a scaleable and energy efficient concept to fully utilize high-speed network interfaces, whereby maintaining the flexibility of software solutions. For our evaluation, we utilized the NetFPGA Sume, proofing to achieve the linerate of connected SFP+ ports while power consumption stays below 6 W. By leveraging the network protocol virtualization, the hardware acceleration approach is not only deploy-able but stays flexible enough to adapt new networking paradigms quickly

Effects of the Level of Detail on the Recognition of City Landmarks in Virtual Environments

The reconstruction of city landmarks is central to creating recognizable virtual environments representing real cities. Despite the recent advances, it is still not clear what level of detail (LOD) to adopt when reconstructing those landmarks for their correct recognition, and if particular architectural styles represent specific challenges in this respect. In this paper, we investigate the effect of LOD on landmark recognition, generally, and on some architectural styles, specifically. The results of our user study show that higher LOD lead to a better landmark identification. Particularly, Neoclassical-style buildings need more details to be individually distinguished from similar ones

How Long Do Vulnerabilities Live in the Code? A Large-Scale Empirical Measurement Study on FOSS Vulnerability Lifetimes

How long do vulnerabilities live in the repositories of large, evolving projects? Although the question has been identified as an interesting problem by the software community in online forums, it has not been investigated yet in adequate depth and scale, since the process of identifying the exact point in time when a vulnerability was introduced is particularly cumbersome. In this paper, we provide an automatic approach for accurately estimating how long vulnerabilities remain in the code (their lifetimes). Our method relies on the observation that while it is difficult to pinpoint the exact point of introduction for one vulnerability, it is possible to accurately estimate the average lifetime of a large enough sample of vulnerabilities, via a heuristic approach. With our approach, we perform the first large-scale measurement of Free and Open Source Software vulnerability lifetimes, going beyond approaches estimating lower bounds prevalent in previous research. We find that the average lifetime of a vulnerability is around 4 years, varying significantly between projects (~2 years for Chromium, ~7 years for OpenSSL). The distribution of lifetimes can be approximately described by an exponential distribution. There are no statistically significant differences between the lifetimes of different vulnerability types when considering specific projects. Vulnerabilities are getting older, as the average lifetime of fixed vulnerabilities in a given year increases over time, influenced by the overall increase of code age. However, they live less than non-vulnerable code, with an increasing spread over time for some projects, suggesting a notion of maturity that can be considered an indicator of quality. While the introduction of fuzzers does not significantly reduce the lifetimes of memory-related vulnerabilities, further research is needed to better understand and quantify the impact of fuzzers and other tools on vulnerability lifetimes and on the security of codebases

All in One! User Perceptions on Centralized IoT Privacy Settings

IoT devices deliver their functionality by accessing data. Users decide which data they are willing to share via privacy settings interfaces that are typically on the device, or in the app controlling it. Thus, users have to interact with each device or app which is time-consuming and settings might be overlooked. In this paper, we provide a stepping stone into a multi-device interface for adjusting privacy settings. We present three levels of information detail: 1) sensor name 2), sensor name and information about captured data and 3) detailed information on each collected data type including consequences. Through a pre-study with 15 participants, we found that users prefer the access to detailed information because this offers the best decision support. They also wish for a clear status communication, a possibility for rule-based settings, and delegation options

CameraReady: Assessing the Influence of Display Types and Visualizations on Posture Guidance

Computer-supported posture guidance is used in sports, dance training, expression of art with movements, and learning gestures for interaction. At present, the influence of display types and visualizations have not been investigated in the literature. These factors are important as they directly impact perception and cognitive load, and hence influence the performance of participants. In this paper, we conducted a controlled experiment with 20 participants to compare the use of five display types with different screen sizes: smartphones, tablets, desktop monitors, TVs, and large displays. On each device, we compared three common visualizations for posture guidance: skeletons, silhouettes, and 3d body models. To conduct our assessment, we developed a mobile and cross-platform system that only requires a single camera. Our results show that compared to a smartphone display, larger displays show a lower error. Regarding the choice of visualization, participants rated 3D body models as significantly more usable in comparison to a skeleton visualization

ThermalPen: Adding Thermal Haptic Feedback to 3D Sketching

Sketching in virtual 3D environments has enabled new forms of artistic expression and a variety of novel design use-cases. However, the lack of haptic feedback proves to be one of the main challenges in this field. While prior work has investigated vibrotactile and force-feedback devices, this paper proposes the addition of thermal feedback. We present ThermalPen, a novel pen for 3D sketching that associates the texture and colour of strokes with different thermal properties. For example, a fire texture elicits an increase in temperature, while an ice texture causes a temperature drop in the pen. Our goal with ThermalPen is to enhance the 3D sketching experience and allow users to use this tool to increase their creativity while sketching. We plan on evaluating the influence of thermal feedback on the 3D sketching experience, with a focus on user creativity in the future