Blocking Java Applets at the Firewall

This paper explores the problem of protecting a site on the Internet against hostile external Java applets while allowing trusted internal applets to run. With careful implementation, a site can be made resistant to current Java security weaknesses as well as those yet to be discovered. In addition, we describe a new attack on certain sophisticated firewalls that is most effectively realized as a Java applet

Polar orbit electrostatic charging of objects in shuttle wake

A survey of DMSP data has uncovered several cases where precipitating auroral electron fluxes are both sufficiently intense and energetic to charge spacecraft materials such as teflon to very large potentials in the absence of ambient ion currents. Analytical bounds are provided which show that these measured environments can cause surface potentials in excess of several hundred volts to develop on objects in the orbiter wake for particular vehicle orientations

Unzipping an adsorbed polymer in a dirty or random environment

The phase diagram of unzipping of an adsorbed directed polymer in two dimensions in a random medium has been determined. Both the hard-wall and the soft-wall cases are considered. Exact solutions for the pure problem with different affinities on the two sides are given. The results obtained by the numerical procedure adopted here are shown to agree with the exact results for the pure case. The characteristic exponents for unzipping for the random problem are different from the pure case. The distribution functions for the unzipped length, first bubble, and the spacer are determined.Comment: Published version, uses revtex4, 14 page

Open Questions in Classical Gravity

We discuss some outstanding open questions regarding the validity and uniqueness of the standard second order Newton-Einstein classical gravitational theory. On the observational side we discuss the degree to which the realm of validity of Newton's Law of Gravity can actually be extended to distances much larger than the solar system distance scales on which the law was originally established. On the theoretical side we identify some commonly accepted but actually still open to question assumptions which go into the formulating of the standard second order Einstein theory in the first place. In particular, we show that while the familiar second order Poisson gravitational equation (and accordingly its second order covariant Einstein generalization) may be sufficient to yield Newton's Law of Gravity they are not in fact necessary. The standard theory thus still awaits the identification of some principle which would then make it necessary too. We show that current observational information does not exclusively mandate the standard theory, and that the conformal invariant fourth order theory of gravity considered recently by Mannheim and Kazanas is also able to meet the constraints of data, and in fact to do so without the need for any so far unobserved non-luminous or dark matter.Comment: UCONN-93-1, plain TeX format, 22 pages (plus 7 figures - send requests to [email protected]). To appear in a special issue of Foundations of Physics honoring Professor Fritz Rohrlich on the occasion of his retirement, L. P. Horwitz and A. van der Merwe Editors, Plenum Publishing Company, N.Y., Fall 199

Quantum Nonlocality: Not Eliminated by the Heisenberg Picture

It is argued that the Heisenberg picture of standard quantum mechanics does not save Einstein locality as claimed in Deutsch and Hayden (2000). In particular, the EPR-type correlations that DH obtain by comparing two qubits in a local manner are shown to exist before that comparison. In view of this result, the local comparison argument would appear to ineffective in supporting their locality claim.Comment: Final version; to appear in Foundations of Physic

Ghost Interference with Optical Parametric Amplifier

The 'Ghost' interference experiment is analyzed when the source of entangled photons is a multimode Optical Parametric Amplifier(OPA) whose weak limit is the two-photon Spontaneous Parametric Downconversion(SPDC) beam. The visibility of the double-slit pattern is calculated, taking the finite coincidence time window of the photon counting detectors into account. It is found that the coincidence window and the bandwidth of light reaching the detectors play a crucial role in the loss of visibility on coincidence detection, not only in the 'Ghost' interference experiment but in all experiments involving coincidence detection. The differences between the loss of visibility with two-mode and multimode OPA sources is also discussed. PACS: 42.65.Yj, 42.50.Dv, 42.65.L

Structural basis of template-boundary definition in Tetrahymena telomerase.

Telomerase is required to maintain repetitive G-rich telomeric DNA sequences at chromosome ends. To do so, the telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) subunit reiteratively uses a small region of the integral telomerase RNA (TER) as a template. An essential feature of telomerase catalysis is the strict definition of the template boundary to determine the precise TER nucleotides to be reverse transcribed by TERT. We report the 3-Å crystal structure of the Tetrahymena TERT RNA-binding domain (tTRBD) bound to the template boundary element (TBE) of TER. tTRBD is wedged into the base of the TBE RNA stem-loop, and each of the flanking RNA strands wraps around opposite sides of the protein domain. The structure illustrates how the tTRBD establishes the template boundary by positioning the TBE at the correct distance from the TERT active site to prohibit copying of nontemplate nucleotides