Secure architectures for pairing based public key cryptography

Along with the growing demand for cryptosystems in systems ranging from large servers to mobile devices, suitable cryptogrophic protocols for use under certain constraints are becoming more and more important. Constraints such as calculation time, area, efficiency and security, must be considered by the designer. Elliptic curves, since their introduction to public key cryptography in 1985 have challenged established public key and signature generation schemes such as RSA, offering more security per bit. Amongst Elliptic curve based systems, pairing based cryptographies are thoroughly researched and can be used in many public key protocols such as identity based schemes. For hardware implementions of pairing based protocols, all components which calculate operations over Elliptic curves can be considered. Designers of the pairing algorithms must choose calculation blocks and arrange the basic operations carefully so that the implementation can meet the constraints of time and hardware resource area. This thesis deals with different hardware architectures to accelerate the pairing based cryptosystems in the field of characteristic two. Using different top-level architectures the hardware efficiency of operations that run at different times is first considered in this thesis. Security is another important aspect of pairing based cryptography to be considered in practically Side Channel Analysis (SCA) attacks. The naively implemented hardware accelerators for pairing based cryptographies can be vulnerable when taking the physical analysis attacks into consideration. This thesis considered the weaknesses in pairing based public key cryptography and addresses the particular calculations in the systems that are insecure. In this case, countermeasures should be applied to protect the weak link of the implementation to improve and perfect the pairing based algorithms. Some important rules that the designers must obey to improve the security of the cryptosystems are proposed. According to these rules, three countermeasures that protect the pairing based cryptosystems against SCA attacks are applied. The implementations of the countermeasures are presented and their performances are investigated

Protargol Synthesis: An In-House Protocol

The protargol staining method has proved to be indispensable for revealing the cellular structures of a variety of protozoa, especially the flagellates and ciliates. Protargol provides permanent stains of a variety of cellular structures: nuclei, extrusomes, basal bodies, and microfilamentous constituents of cells. Together with the older silver nitrate methods, protargol impregnations have provided the basis for the detailed descriptions of nearly all ciliates to date. The performance of commercially available preparations has varied widely. Recently, suppliers have stopped stocking the effective forms of protargol resulting in a worldwide shortage. Thus, it has become necessary for protistologists to explore on-site synthesis of this critically important agent. An optimum protocol for synthesis of protargol should be rapid, relatively inexpensive, simple enough to be done by non-chemists, and achievable without specialized equipment. In this article, the authors briefly review the interesting history of protargol and describe a protocol, based on the early studies of neuroanatomists, that yields a protargol producing impregnations of ciliates comparable to those obtained with previously available commercial preparations

Morphology and SSU rRNA Gene Sequences of Three Marine Ciliates from Yellow Sea, China, Including One New Species, Uronema heteromarinum nov. spec. (Ciliophora, Scuticociliatida)

The morphology, infraciliature, and silverline system of three marine scuticociliates, Uronema marinum Dujardin, 1841, U. heteromarinum nov. spec. and Pleuronema setigerum Calkins, 1902, isolated from coastal waters off Qingdao, China, were investigated using living observation and silver impregnation methods. Due to the great confusion in the species definition of the well-known species U. marinum, we have documented a detailed discussion/comparison and believe that most of the confusion is due to the fact that at least 2 closely-related sibling morphotypes exist which are often not recognized. Based on the data available, U. marinum is strictly defined as follows: marine Uronema ca. 30 × 10 μm in size, with truncated apical frontal plate and smooth pellicle, extrusomes inconspicuous, cytostome located equatorially, 12–14 somatic kineties and one contractile vacuole pore near posterior end of kinety 2. Uronema heteromarinum nov. spec. resembles U. marinum but can be distinguished morphologically by its notched pellicle with conspicuous extrusomes and reticulate ridges, the 15–16 somatic kineties, widely separated membranelle 1 and membranelle 2, as well as the subequatorially positioned cytostome. Based on the Qingdao population, an improved diagnosis for the poorly known Pleuronema setigerum is: marine slender oval-shaped form, in vivo about 40–50 × 15–20 μm; 3–5 preoral kineties and 14–22 somatic kineties; membranelle 1 and 3 three-rowed, and posterior end of M2a ring-like. The small subunit (SSU) rRNA gene for all three organisms were sequenced and analyzed with standard methods

FPGA Implementations of SHA-3 Candidates:CubeHash, Grøstl, L{\sc ane}, Shabal and Spectral Hash

Abstract: Hash functions are widely used in, and form an important part of many cryptographic protocols. Currently, a public competition is underway to find a new hash algorithm(s) for inclusion in the NIST Secure Hash Standard (SHA-3). Computational efficiency of the algorithms in hardware will form one of the evaluation criteria. In this paper, we focus on five of these candidate algorithms, namely CubeHash, Grøstl, L{\sc ane}, Shabal and Spectral Hash. Using Xilinx Spartan-3 and Virtex-5 FPGAs, we present architectures for each of these hash functions, and explore area-speed trade-offs in each design. The efficiency of various architectures for the five hash functions is compared in terms of throughput per unit area. To the best of the authors\u27 knowledge, this is the first such comparison of these SHA-3 candidates in the literature

Association of Psychological Characteristics and Functional Dyspepsia Treatment Outcome: A Case-Control Study

This study was to investigate the association of psychological characteristics and functional dyspepsia treatment outcome. 109 patients who met the criteria for FD were enrolled. Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ), Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL90), and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) were used to measure personality, psychological symptoms, and sleep quality in our patients. Leeds Dyspepsia Questionnaire (LDQ) was used to assess dyspeptic symptoms at baseline and after eight weeks of treatment. The LDQ scores change after therapy, and the degraded rate of LDQ was used to assess the prognosis of patients. Logistic regression model was used to assess the effect of the personality, psychological symptoms, and sleep quality on the prognosis of patients. Our result revealed that poor sleep quality (OR=7.68, 95% CI 1.83–32.25) and bad marriage status (OR=1.22, 95% CI 1.10–1.36) had the negative effect on the prognosis of FD, while extroversion in personality traits (OR=0.86, 95% CI 0.76–0.96) had positive effect on the prognosis of FD. We should pay attention to the sleep quality, the personality, and the marriage status of FD patients; psychological intervention may have benefit in refractory FD

Genome of the facultative scuticociliatosis pathogen Pseudocohnilembus persalinus provides insight into its virulence through horizontal gene transfer

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Key Indicators of Journal Evaluation Based on K-means and PLS-DA

[Purpose/Significance] There are many evaluation indicators and methods for journal evaluation, and it is of great significance to study the importance of evaluation indicators of journals. This paper proposed an analysis framework for "post-event" analysis of the importance or weight of evaluation indicators. [Method/Process] This paper divides the journal evaluation indicators into "before" importance and "after" importance, and focuses on the "after" importance, that is, the determination of key indicators after objective cluster analysis. Taking the bibliometric indicators of JCR 2019 economics journals as the research object, K-means clustering was first used to obtain the classification of evaluation results, and then the key indicators of journal evaluation were calculated based on principal component analysis and partial least squares discriminant analysis, and the importance of each indicator was analyzed. Starting from the objective results and the meaning of the indicators themselves, this study expounded the reasons why indicators are important. [Results/Conclusions] Compared with the importance of "before", the importance of "after the fact" is to determine the evaluation results first, without involving weights, and completely based on data evaluation. There is relatively little controversy in the selection of methods. The indicator is more scientific and objective; the use of multi-factor evaluation can comprehensively reflect the common influence of each variable, and the use of the "dimension reduction" idea can better retain the information of the original variables and reduce the multicollinearity of the evaluation indicator; K-means cluster analysis methods, both the PLS-DA and PLS-DA models, are capable of evaluating and classifying journals. According to the results of PLS-DA, the VIP value of five indicators is greater than 1; the three most important indicators that affect the evaluation results of journals obtained by the PLS-DA method are the journal impact factor(IF), the other citation IF and the five-year IF, and the meaning of the indicators is the IF of other citations and the five-year IF make up for the shortcomings of the IF; the importance of the journal IF, the IF of other citations and the five-year IF is not much different, and the importance of the journal IF is relatively greater. In the quantitative evaluation of journals, it is necessary to use multi-index evaluation to make the evaluation more comprehensive and scientific; PLS-DA has a good effect on general journals, but the better journals have a general effect, and cannot effectively distinguish Class A journals

MicroRNA-27a Promotes Proliferation, Migration and Invasion by Targeting MAP2K4

Background: Osteosarcoma is a high-grade malignant bone neoplasm. Although the introduction of chemotherapy has reduced its mortality, more than 50% of patients develop chemoresistance and have an extremely poor prognosis due to pulmonary metastasis. Several molecular pathways contributing to osteosarcoma development and progression have recently been discovered. Various studies have addressed the genes involved in the metastasis of osteosarcoma. However, the highly complex molecular mechanisms of metastasis are still poorly understood. Recently, the decisive role of microRNAs in the regulation of molecular pathways has been uncovered. miRNAs may function as either oncogenes or tumor suppressors, depending on their target genes. miR-27a, a member of an evolutionarily conserved miRNA family, is abnormally increased in several types of cancers. It has been shown to be upregulated in osteosarcoma and plays a pro-metastatic role in osteosarcoma cell lines. However, the effects of miR-27a on osteosarcoma have not been clearly elucidated. The present study thus addressed the miR-27a sensitive mechanisms in osteosarcoma. Methods: In this study, three biological programs were used to predict whether MAP2K4 was a target of miR-27a. A specific miR-27a inhibitor was used to inhibit the endogenous activity of miR-27a in the human osteosarcoma cell line MG63. Cell proliferation, colony formation, migration and invasion assays were performed to assess the effects of miR-27a on the proliferation, metastasis and invasion of MG63 cells. The expression levels of several proteins evolved in the JNK/p38 signaling pathway were detected using western blot analysis. Results: The luciferase activity of the wild-type pGL3-MAP2K4 3'UTR vector was significantly inhibited after the miR-27a precursor or the control precursor was transfected into the MG63 cells. However, the luciferase activity was not inhibited after transfection of the mutant pGL3-MAP2K4 3'UTR vector. The inhibition of miR-27a increased the luciferase activity of the wild-type pGL3-MAP2K4 3'UTR vector after MG63 cells were transfected with the miR-27a inhibitor or the control inhibitor. Thus, MAP2K4 is a potential target of miR-27a and can be directly regulated by miR-27a. Inhibition of miR-27a significantly suppressed cell proliferation after 72 hours compared to the negative control group. Inhibition of miR-27a significantly suppressed colony formation of the MG63 cells by 39 6%. Transwell migration and invasion assays demonstrated that the number of migratory and invasive cells transfected with the miR-27a inhibitor was reduced by 63.5% and 69.1%, respectively. After transfection of the miR-27a inhibitor into the MG63 cells, the level of phospho-JNK1 and phospho-p38 increased by 25% and 29%, respectively, along with the up-regulation of MAP2K4 protein. Conclusion: This is the first study showing that miR-27a can function as an oncogene by targeting MAP2K4 in the osteosarcoma MG63 cell line. Inhibition of miR-27a increases MAP2K4 expression, which in turn inhibits cell proliferation and migration through the JNK/p38 signaling pathway in MG63 cells. These findings may help us understand the molecular mechanism of miR-27a in the tumorigenesis of osteosarcoma and may provide new diagnostic and therapeutic options for the treatment of this neoplasia

Mesospheric Gravity Wave Potential Energy Density Observed by Rayleigh Lidar above Golmud (36.25° N, 94.54° E), Tibetan Plateau

Rayleigh lidar data in 2013–2015 is used to describe the characteristics of gravity wave potential energy density in the mesosphere above Golmud (36.25° N, 94.54° E) of the Tibetan Plateau. In this study, the vertical profiles of the atmospheric gravity wave potential energy density between 50–80 km above the region are presented, including the potential energy mass density Epm and the potential energy volume density Epv. It shows the mathematical characteristics of the atmospheric gravity wave potential energy density vertical distribution, which also indicate the gravity waves are obviously dissipated in the lower mesosphere and close to conservative growth in the upper mesosphere (the turning point is around 61 km). A total of 1174 h of data covers seasonal changes, which reveals the seasonal characteristics of the potential energy density. The Epm increases faster with altitude in summer than others. All seasons of the potential energy density profiles show that gravity waves are dissipated in the lower mesosphere, among which spring and winter are the most severe and summer is weakest. The Epm is higher in spring and winter below 55 km. Above 55 km, it is the maximum in winter, followed by summer. Then, the AGWs activities between the location with mid–latitudes and different longitudes are compared and discussed