A Quantum Algorithm To Locate Unknown Hashes For Known N-Grams Within A Large Malware Corpus

Quantum computing has evolved quickly in recent years and is showing significant benefits in a variety of fields. Malware analysis is one of those fields that could also take advantage of quantum computing. The combination of software used to locate the most frequent hashes and $n$-grams between benign and malicious software (KiloGram) and a quantum search algorithm could be beneficial, by loading the table of hashes and $n$-grams into a quantum computer, and thereby speeding up the process of mapping $n$-grams to their hashes. The first phase will be to use KiloGram to find the top-$k$ hashes and $n$-grams for a large malware corpus. From here, the resulting hash table is then loaded into a quantum machine. A quantum search algorithm is then used search among every permutation of the entangled key and value pairs to find the desired hash value. This prevents one from having to re-compute hashes for a set of $n$-grams, which can take on average $O(MN)$ time, whereas the quantum algorithm could take $O(\sqrt{N})$ in the number of table lookups to find the desired hash values.Comment: IEEE Quantum Week 2020 Conferenc

The Staffing of Presidential Assistants: Their Effects on Presidential Success in the House of Representatives

This paper examines the Congressional success of United States Presidents based on the reported Congressional Quarterly Presidential Box Scores. Their individual success is examined as an effect of the senior staff member a President chooses and whether they are chosen from the campaign, personal experience, or previous administrations. It is important for a President to consider the origins of these staffers as these Assistants to the President act as the body of the President’s administration. The econometric analysis presented reveals several interesting results. First, the predominance of a President to choose staff members from his campaign shows no significant impact on his Congressional relations and success. Second, staff members chosen from personal experience have a negatively correlated hindrance on success. Finally, those members chosen for their experience in previous administrations has a positive impact on Presidential success. This research is used to supplement the existing, qualitative research on the subject through regression analysis

UNH Observatory Exoplanet Transit Depth Limit

Using the University of New Hampshire Observatory, we performed multiple exoplanet transits observations on a variety of systems. Of these transits, those performed with ideal weather conditions were chosen to do extensive analysis on. The transit chosen for initial analysis was HAT-P-56b. We then used Z-Score values, along with the average mean and standard deviation collected from multiple transits to determine a minimum possible transit depth of 7.4 +/- 0.6 mmag. This value will allow UNH to access exoplanet transit observation and / or confirm potential exoplanets, thus making the UNH Observatory more research capable. A follow up threshold transit around 7 mmag will be performed and show that our limit is achievable

The critical pulling force for self-avoiding walks

Self-avoiding walks are a simple and well-known model of long, flexible polymers in a good solvent. Polymers being pulled away from a surface by an external agent can be modelled with self-avoiding walks in a half-space, with a Boltzmann weight $y = e^f$ associated with the pulling force. This model is known to have a critical point at a certain value $y_c$ of this Boltzmann weight, which is the location of a transition between the so-called free and ballistic phases. The value $y_c=1$ has been conjectured by several authors using numerical estimates. We provide a relatively simple proof of this result, and show that further properties of the free energy of this system can be determined by re-interpreting existing results about the two-point function of self-avoiding walks.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur