A Survey on Emerging Trends of Cyber Threats to Academic Research

Hackers target universities for the sensitive and proprietary information stored in their systems. Cutting edge research conducted by university researchers makes them a prime target to cyber attackers. Universities, by nature, support open networks and access concepts to their stakeholders. Recent attacks attempted to exploit this open strategy to compromise or steal institutions’ data, research innovations, intellectual property and sensitive personally identifiable information (PII). This research study proposes a methodology for threat modeling and presents an example attack tree depicting a phishing attack to compromise the university network and steal sensitive information in research. A black-box threat model is proposed to categorize and rank cyber-threats to academic research. Furthermore, we provide a set of best practices to prevent and mitigate information security threats to academic research

Ultra-narrow and widely tunable Mn^(2+) Emission from Single Nanocrystals of ZnS-CdS alloy

Extensively studied Mn-doped semiconductor nanocrystals have invariably exhibited photoluminescence (PL) over a narrow energy window of width <= 149 meV in the orange-red region and a surprisingly large spectral width (>= 180 meV), contrary to its presumed atomic-like origin. Carrying out emission measurements on individual single nanocrystals and supported by ab initio calculations, we show that Mn PL emission, in fact, can (i) vary over a much wider range (~ 370 meV) covering the deep green-deep red region and (ii) exhibit widths substantially lower (~ 60-75 meV) than reported so far, opening newer application possibilities and requiring a fundamental shift in our perception of the emission from Mn-doped semiconductor nanocrystals.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Scalable synthesis of highly exfoliated, water-dispersible boron nitride nanosheets for nano-fibrillated cellulose membrane toughening

A very simple solid-state Diels Alder reaction of bulk boron nitride (BN) with maleic anhydride followed by ultrasonication in an aqueous solution was used to mass production of maleic acid functionalized highly exfoliated water dispersible single and few layers of boron nitride nanosheets (BNNS-MA). We demonstrate that as-synthesized BNNS-MA can be used to reinforce and toughen nano-fibrillated cellulose membranes.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Antimagnetic rotation and sudden change of electric quadrupole transition strength in 143Eu

Lifetimes of the states in the quadrupole structure in 143Eu have been measured using the Doppler shift attenuation method as well as parity of the states in the sequence has been firmly identified from polarization measurement using the Indian National Gamma Array. The decreasing trends of the deduced quadrupole transition strength B(E2) with spin, along with increasing J (2) /B(E2) values before band crossing, conclusively establish the origin of these states as arising out of antimagnetic rotation. The abrupt increase in the B(E2) values after the band crossing in the quadrupole band, a novel feature observed in the present experiment, may indicates the crossing of different shears configurations resulting in re-opening of shears structure. The results are well reproduced by numerical calculation within the framework of semi-classical geometric model.Comment: 6 pages, 4 postscript figure

Evidence of a new shell closed nucleus governing slow quasi-fission

Mass distributions of fission fragments arising from the slow quasi-fission process have been derived by comparing the measured distributions with the theoretical distributions based on compound nuclear fission model for several reactions. The mass-distributions corresponding to quasi-fission events for all the systems show the following common features: (1) they are double peaked with fixed peak-centroids and nearly same width at different incident energies, (2) the yield of quasi-fission events decreases with the increasing projectile energy, and (3) peak corresponding to lighter fragment is observed at A $\sim$ 96 for all the systems, whereas the peak of heavier fragment increases linearly with the mass of the di-nuclear system. All the above observations are quite similar to the ones observed in well known asymmetric fission of actinides, thus providing clear evidences of shell effect in slow quasi-fission where the lighter fragment is possibly nuclei around $^{96}$Zr, a new doubly magic nucleus. This finding has great implications in the study of nuclear reactions, structure and particularly in super-heavy element synthesis where quasi-fission is synonymous

High-spin spectroscopy of I-122

High-spin states in I-122 have been investigated using the Cd-116(B-11,5n)I-122 reaction at a beam energy of 65 MeV and gamma-ray coincidence events were recorded with the INGA spectrometer. The level scheme of I-122 has been extended up to spin I = 30. Experimental features, such as band-crossing frequencies, aligned angular momenta, signature splitting, and B(M1)/B(E2) ratios have been used for configuration assignments to low-energy band structures. Maximally aligned states involving all eight particles outside the Sn-114 core and states with one particle antialigned have been identified. Cranked Nilsson-Strutinsky calculations have been used to interpret high-spin structures