Low-speed aerodynamic characteristics of a twin-engine general aviation configuration with aft-fuselage-mounted pusher propellers

An investigation was conducted to determine the aerodynamic characteristics of an advanced turboprop aircraft model with aft-pylon-mounted pusher propellers. Tests were conducted through an angle-of-attack range of -8 to 28 degrees, and an angle-of-sideslip range of -20 to 20 degrees at free-stream conditions corresponding to Reynolds numbers of 0.55 to 2.14 x 10 to the 6th power based on mean aerodynamic chord. Test results show that for the unpowered configurations the maximum lift coefficients for the cruise, takeoff, and landing configurations are 1.45, 1.90, and 2.10, respectively. Nacelle installation results in a drag coefficient increase of 0.01. Increasing propeller thrust results in a significant increase in lift for angles of attack above stall and improves the longitudinal stability. The cruise configuration remains longitudinally stable to an angle of attack 5 degrees beyond the stall angle, the takeoff configuration is stable 4 degrees beyond stall angle, and the landing configuration is stable 3 degrees beyond stall angle. The predominant effect of symmetric thrust on the lateral-directional aerodynamic characteristics is in the post-stall region, where additional rudder control is available with power on

Exciton transport in naphthalene alloys: A transition from percolation to diffusion

Steady-state singlet excitation transport in ternary naphthalene crystals (C10H8/C10D8/[beta]-methylnaphthalene) fits diffusion models at 4.2 K, but not at 1.8 K, where it fits a percolation model.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/23773/1/0000009.pd

Optical detection of the Pictor A jet and tidal tail : evidence against an IC/CMB jet

Date of Acceptance: 12/06/2015New images of the FR II radio galaxy Pictor A from the Hubble Space Telescope reveal a previously undiscovered tidal tail, as well as a number of jet knots coinciding with a known X-ray and radio jet. The tidal tail is approximately 5″ wide (3 kpc projected), starting 18″ (12 kpc) from the center of Pictor A, and extends more than 90″ (60 kpc). The knots are part of a jet observed to be about 4′ (160 kpc) long, extending to a bright hotspot. These images are the first optical detections of this jet, and by extracting knot flux densities through three filters, we set constraints on emission models. While the radio and optical flux densities are usually explained by synchrotron emission, there are several emission mechanisms that might be used to explain the X-ray flux densities. Our data rule out Doppler-boosted inverse Compton scattering as a source of the high-energy emission. Instead, we find that the observed emission can be well described by synchrotron emission from electrons with a low-energy index (p ∼ 2) that dominates the radio band, while a high-energy index (p ∼ 3) is needed for the X-ray band and the transition occurs in the optical/infrared band. This model is consistent with a continuous electron injection scenario.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Gaps present a trade-off between dispersal and establishment that nourishes species diversity

We took advantage of two natural experiments to investigate processes that regulate tree recruitment in gaps. In the first, we examined the recruitment of small and large saplings and trees into 31 gaps resulting from treefalls occurring between 1984 and 2015 in the 2.25-ha core area of a 4-ha tree plot at Cocha Cashu in Peru. In the second, we identified the tallest saplings recruiting into 69 gaps created during a violent wind storm in February 2000. In the established tree plot, we were able to compare the composition of saplings in the disturbance zones of gaps prior to, during, and subsequent to the period of gap formation. Recruitment in gaps was compared with that in "nofall" zones, areas within the plot that had not experienced a treefall at least since the early 1980s. Our results confirmed earlier findings that a consistently high proportion (~60%) of established saplings survived gap formation. Light demanding species, as proxied by mortality rates, recruited under all conditions, but preferentially during periods of gap formation, a pattern that was especially strong among gap pioneers. Similar results were noted, separately, for small and large saplings and trees recruiting at >= 10 cm dbh. One hundred percent of previously untagged trees recruiting into gaps in the first post-disturbance census were gap pioneers, suggesting rapid development. This conclusion was strongly supported in a follow-up survey taken of 69 gaps 19 months after they had been synchronously created in a wind storm. Ten species of gap pioneers, eight of which are not normally present in the advance regeneration, had attained heights of 6-10 m in 19 months. The 10 gap pioneers were dispersed, variously, by primates, bats, birds, and wind and reached maximum frequency in different-sized gaps (range 1,000 m(2)). Both gap size and limited dispersal of zoochorous species into gaps serve as filters for establishment, creating a complex mosaic of conditions that enhances species diversity

Predicate Encryption for Circuits from LWE

In predicate encryption, a ciphertext is associated with descriptive attribute values x in addition to a plaintext μ, and a secret key is associated with a predicate f. Decryption returns plaintext μ if and only if f(x)=1. Moreover, security of predicate encryption guarantees that an adversary learns nothing about the attribute x or the plaintext μ from a ciphertext, given arbitrary many secret keys that are not authorized to decrypt the ciphertext individually. We construct a leveled predicate encryption scheme for all circuits, assuming the hardness of the subexponential learning with errors (LWE) problem. That is, for any polynomial function d=d(λ), we construct a predicate encryption scheme for the class of all circuits with depth bounded by d(λ), where λ is the security parameter.Microsoft Corporation (PhD Fellowship)Northrop Grumman Cybersecurity Research ConsortiumUnited States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Grant FA8750-11-2-0225)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Awards CNS-1350619)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Awards CNS-1413920)Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Fellowship)Microsoft (Faculty Fellowship

Ring-LWE:applications to cryptography and their efficient realization

© Springer International Publishing AG 2016. The persistent progress of quantum computing with algorithms of Shor and Proos and Zalka has put our present RSA and ECC based public key cryptosystems at peril. There is a flurry of activity in cryptographic research community to replace classical cryptography schemes with their post-quantum counterparts. The learning with errors problem introduced by Oded Regev offers a way to design secure cryptography schemes in the post-quantum world. Later for efficiency LWE was adapted for ring polynomials known as Ring-LWE. In this paper we discuss some of these ring-LWE based schemes that have been designed. We have also drawn comparisons of different implementations of those schemes to illustrate their evolution from theoretical proposals to practically feasible schemes

Lafora disease E3-ubiquitin ligase malin is related to TRIM32 at both the phylogenetic and functional level

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Malin is an E3-ubiquitin ligase that is mutated in Lafora disease, a fatal form of progressive myoclonus epilepsy. In order to perform its function, malin forms a functional complex with laforin, a glucan phosphatase that facilitates targeting of malin to its corresponding substrates. While laforin phylogeny has been studied, there are no data on the evolutionary lineage of malin.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>After an extensive search for malin orthologs, we found that malin is present in all vertebrate species and a cephalochordate, in contrast with the broader species distribution previously reported for laforin. These data suggest that in addition to forming a functional complex, laforin and perhaps malin may also have independent functions. In addition, we found that malin shares significant identity with the E3-ubiquitin ligase TRIM32, which belongs to the tripartite-motif containing family of proteins. We present experimental evidence that both malin and TRIM32 share some substrates for ubiquitination, although they produce ubiquitin chains with different topologies. However, TRIM32-specific substrates were not reciprocally ubiquitinated by the laforin-malin complex.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We found that malin and laforin are not conserved in the same genomes. In addition, we found that malin shares significant identity with the E3-ubiquitin ligase TRIM32. The latter result suggests a common origin for malin and TRIM32 and provides insights into possible functional relationships between both proteins.</p

An Improved BKW Algorithm for LWE with Applications to Cryptography and Lattices

In this paper, we study the Learning With Errors problem and its binary variant, where secrets and errors are binary or taken in a small interval. We introduce a new variant of the Blum, Kalai and Wasserman algorithm, relying on a quantization step that generalizes and fine-tunes modulus switching. In general this new technique yields a significant gain in the constant in front of the exponent in the overall complexity. We illustrate this by solving p within half a day a LWE instance with dimension n = 128, modulus $q = n^2$, Gaussian noise $\alpha = 1/(\sqrt{n/\pi} \log^2 n)$ and binary secret, using $2^{28}$ samples, while the previous best result based on BKW claims a time complexity of $2^{74}$ with $2^{60}$ samples for the same parameters. We then introduce variants of BDD, GapSVP and UniqueSVP, where the target point is required to lie in the fundamental parallelepiped, and show how the previous algorithm is able to solve these variants in subexponential time. Moreover, we also show how the previous algorithm can be used to solve the BinaryLWE problem with n samples in subexponential time $2^{(\ln 2/2+o(1))n/\log \log n}$. This analysis does not require any heuristic assumption, contrary to other algebraic approaches; instead, it uses a variant of an idea by Lyubashevsky to generate many samples from a small number of samples. This makes it possible to asymptotically and heuristically break the NTRU cryptosystem in subexponential time (without contradicting its security assumption). We are also able to solve subset sum problems in subexponential time for density $o(1)$, which is of independent interest: for such density, the previous best algorithm requires exponential time. As a direct application, we can solve in subexponential time the parameters of a cryptosystem based on this problem proposed at TCC 2010.Comment: CRYPTO 201