Attacking Group Protocols by Refuting Incorrect Inductive Conjectures

Automated tools for finding attacks on flawed security protocols often fail to deal adequately with group protocols. This is because the abstractions made to improve performance on fixed 2 or 3 party protocols either preclude the modelling of group protocols all together, or permit modelling only in a fixed scenario, which can prevent attacks from being discovered. This paper describes Coral, a tool for finding counterexamples to incorrect inductive conjectures, which we have used to model protocols for both group key agreement and group key management, without any restrictions on the scenario. We will show how we used Coral to discover 6 previously unknown attacks on 3 group protocols

Susceptibility of Chardonnay grapes to sunburn

Research Not

Reconstructing pedigrees: some identifiability questions for a recombination-mutation model

Pedigrees are directed acyclic graphs that represent ancestral relationships between individuals in a population. Based on a schematic recombination process, we describe two simple Markov models for sequences evolving on pedigrees - Model R (recombinations without mutations) and Model RM (recombinations with mutations). For these models, we ask an identifiability question: is it possible to construct a pedigree from the joint probability distribution of extant sequences? We present partial identifiability results for general pedigrees: we show that when the crossover probabilities are sufficiently small, certain spanning subgraph sequences can be counted from the joint distribution of extant sequences. We demonstrate how pedigrees that earlier seemed difficult to distinguish are distinguished by counting their spanning subgraph sequences.Comment: 40 pages, 9 figure

The internal-external respiratory motion correlation is unaffected by audiovisual biofeedback.

This study evaluated if an audiovisual (AV) biofeedback causes variation in the level of external and internal correlation due to its interactive intervention in natural breathing. The internal (diaphragm) and external (abdominal wall) respiratory motion signals of 15 healthy human subjects under AV biofeedback and free breathing (FB) were analyzed and measures of correlation and regularity taken. Regularity metrics (root mean square error and spectral power dispersion metric) were obtained and the correlation between these metrics and the internal and external correlation was investigated. For FB and AV biofeedback assisted breathing the mean correlations found between internal and external respiratory motion were 0.96±0.02 and 0.96±0.03, respectively. This means there is no evidence to suggest (p-value=0.88) any difference in the correlation between internal and external respiratory motion with the use of AV biofeedback. Our results confirmed the hypothesis that the internal-external correlation with AV biofeedback is the same as for free breathing. Should this correlation be maintained for patients, AV biofeedback can be implemented in the clinic with confidence as regularity improvements using AV biofeedback with an external signal will be reflected in increased internal motion regularity

Economic inequalities in burden of illness, diagnosis and treatment of five long-term conditions in England: panel study

We compared the distribution by wealth of self-reported illness burden (estimated from validated scales, biomarker and reported symptoms) for angina, cataract, depression, diabetes and osteoarthritis, with the distribution of self-reported medical diagnosis and treatment. We aimed to determine if the greater illness burden borne by poorer participants was matched by appropriately higher levels of diagnosis and treatment

Characteristics of women who practice yoga in different locations during pregnancy

Objectives: Yoga practice during pregnancy is gaining increasing popularity. This study examined the characteristics of pregnant women who practiced yoga in regard to the different locations (at home, in yoga classes, or both). Design: The study sample was drawn from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (ALSWH), a national longitudinal study of women to investigate multiple factors affecting health and wellbeing of women over a 20-year period. Setting: Postal survey. Participants: Women born between 1973 and 1978, who were randomly selected from the national Medicare database and identified as being pregnant or having recently given birth (n=2316). Outcome measures: Relationships between yoga use (attending yoga classes and/or practising yoga at home) and women's characteristics (demographic measures, pregnancy-related health concerns, health service utilisation, attitudes to complementary and alternative medicine). Results: Practising yoga both at home and in classes was associated with perceiving complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as preventative (odds ratio (OR)=1.62); perceiving CAM as affording health control (OR=1.50); experiencing sadness (OR=1.72); preparing for labour (OR=2.31); birthing in a birth centre (OR=7.97); and experiencing less vomiting (OR=0.38). Practising at home only was associated with perceiving CAM as affording health control (OR=1.76); perceiving CAM as promoting a holistic health approach (OR=1.65); and birthing in a birth centre (OR=3.54). Practising in classes only was associated with experiencing stress (OR=1.97); and birthing in a birth centre (OR=4.85) (all p<0.05). Conclusions: The findings suggest that the location in which a woman practices yoga is associated with attitudinal, health-related and birth environmental factors

Apollo asteroids (1566) Icarus and 2007 MK6: Icarus family members?

Although it is more complicated to search for near-Earth object (NEO) families than main belt asteroid (MBA) families, since differential orbital evolution within a NEO family can cause current orbital elements to drastically differ from each other, we have found that Apollo asteroids (1566) Icarus and the newly discovered 2007 MK6 are almost certainly related. Specifically, their orbital evolutions show a similar profile, time shifted by only ~1000 yr, based on our time-lag theory. The dynamical relationship between Icarus and 2007 MK6 along with a possible dust band, the Taurid-Perseid meteor swarm, implies the first detection of an asteroidal NEO family, namely the "Icarus asteroid family".Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, to appear on Astrophysical Journal Letters (journal info added

The prevalence of smoking and the knowledge of smoking hazards and smoking cessation strategies among hiv positive patients in johannesburg, south africa

Background: While the detrimental effects of smoking among HIV positive patients have been well documented, there is a paucity of data regarding cigarette smoking prevalence among these patients in South Africa. Objectives: To establish the frequency, demographics, and knowledge of harmful effects and of smoking cessation strategies among HIV-positive patients in Johannesburg, South Africa. Methods: A prospective cross-sectional survey, using a structured questionnaire interview, of HIV-positive patients attending the HIV Clinic at the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital between 1 July 2011 and 31 October 2011. Results: Of 207 HIV positive patients attending an ARV roll-out clinic, 31 (15%) were current smokers (23% of the males and 7.5% of the females) and a further 45 (21.7%) were ex-smokers. Most of the current smokers (30/31 patients) indicated their wish to quit smoking, and among the group as a whole most patients were aware of the general (82.5%) and HIV-related (77.8%) risks of smoking and of methods of quitting smoking. Despite this, however, most (61.8%) were not aware of whom they could approach for assistance and advice. Conclusions: Given the relatively high prevalence of current and ex-smokers amongst HIV positive patients there is a need for the introduction of smoking cessation strategies and assistance at HIV-rollout clinics in South Africa