Expert System for UNIX System Reliability and Availability Enhancement

Highly reliable and available systems are critical to the airline industry. However, most off-the-shelf computer operating systems and hardware do not have built-in fault tolerant mechanisms, the UNIX workstation is one example. In this research effort, we have developed a rule-based Expert System (ES) to monitor, command, and control a UNIX workstation system with hot-standby redundancy. The ES on each workstation acts as an on-line system administrator to diagnose, report, correct, and prevent certain types of hardware and software failures. If a primary station is approaching failure, the ES coordinates the switch-over to a hot-standby secondary workstation. The goal is to discover and solve certain fatal problems early enough to prevent complete system failure from occurring and therefore to enhance system reliability and availability. Test results show that the ES can diagnose all targeted faulty scenarios and take desired actions in a consistent manner regardless of the sequence of the faults. The ES can perform designated system administration tasks about ten times faster than an experienced human operator. Compared with a single workstation system, our hot-standby redundancy system downtime is predicted to be reduced by more than 50 percent by using the ES to command and control the system

Game Theory Meets Network Security: A Tutorial at ACM CCS

The increasingly pervasive connectivity of today's information systems brings up new challenges to security. Traditional security has accomplished a long way toward protecting well-defined goals such as confidentiality, integrity, availability, and authenticity. However, with the growing sophistication of the attacks and the complexity of the system, the protection using traditional methods could be cost-prohibitive. A new perspective and a new theoretical foundation are needed to understand security from a strategic and decision-making perspective. Game theory provides a natural framework to capture the adversarial and defensive interactions between an attacker and a defender. It provides a quantitative assessment of security, prediction of security outcomes, and a mechanism design tool that can enable security-by-design and reverse the attacker's advantage. This tutorial provides an overview of diverse methodologies from game theory that includes games of incomplete information, dynamic games, mechanism design theory to offer a modern theoretic underpinning of a science of cybersecurity. The tutorial will also discuss open problems and research challenges that the CCS community can address and contribute with an objective to build a multidisciplinary bridge between cybersecurity, economics, game and decision theory

EPR spectrum via entangled states for an Exchange-Coupled Dimer of Single-Molecule Magnets

Multi-high-frequency electron paramagnetic resonance(EPR) spectrum for a supermolecular dimer $[ Mn_4]_2$ of single-molecule magnets recently reported [S. Hill, R. S. Edwards, N. Aliaga-Alcalde and G. Christou(HEAC), Science 302, 1015 (2003)] is studied in terms of the perturbation method in which the high-order corrections to the level splittings of degenerate states are included. It is shown that the corresponding eigenvectors are composed of entangled states of two molecules. The EPR-peak positions are calculated in terms of the eigenstates at various frequencies. From the best fit of theoretical level splittings with the measured values we obtain the anisotropy constant and exchange coupling which are in agreement with the corresponding values of experimental observation. Our study confirms the prediction of HEAC that the two $Mn_4$ units within the dimer are coupled quantum mechanically by the antiferromagnetic exchange interaction and the supermolecular dimer behaviors in analogy with artificially fabricated quantum dots.Comment: 16 pages,2 figures, 2 table

Thermoelectric efficiency at maximum power in low-dimensional systems

Low-dimensional electronic systems in thermoelectrics have the potential to achieve high thermal-to-electric energy conversion efficiency. A key measure of performance is the efficiency when the device is operated under maximum power conditions. Here we study the efficiency at maximum power of three low-dimensional, thermoelectric systems: a zero-dimensional quantum dot (QD) with a Lorentzian transmission resonance of finite width, a one-dimensional (1D) ballistic conductor, and a thermionic (TI) power generator formed by a two-dimensional energy barrier. In all three systems, the efficiency at maximum power is independent of temperature, and in each case a careful tuning of relevant energies is required to achieve maximal performance. We find that quantum dots perform relatively poorly under maximum power conditions, with relatively low efficiency and small power throughput. Ideal one-dimensional conductors offer the highest efficiency at maximum power (36% of the Carnot efficiency). Whether 1D or TI systems achieve the larger maximum power output depends on temperature and area filling factor. These results are also discussed in the context of the traditional figure of merit $ZT$

The nature of symmetric instability and its similarity to convective and inertial instability

It is shown that there exists a local similarity among SI (Symmetric Instability), BI (Buoyancy or Convective Instability), and II (Inertial Instability) even for fully nonlinear viscous motion. The most unstable slope angles for SI and Moist SI motions are analyzed based on parcel energetics. These considerations also suggest qualitatively that CSI (Conditional SI) circulations will be slantwise and lie between the moist most unstable slope and dry least stable slope of the basic state

Investigate the impacts of assimilating satellite rainfall estimates on rainstorm forecast over southwest United States

Using the MM5-4DVAR system, a monsoon rainstorm case over southern Arizona (5-6 August 2002) was investigated for the influence of assimilating satellite rainfall estimates on precipitation forecasts. A set of numerical experiments was conducted with multiple configurations including using 20-km or 30-km grid distances and none or 3-h or 6-h assimilation time windows. Results show that satellite rainfall assimilation can improve the rainstorm-forecasting pattern and amount to some extent. The minimization procedure of 4DVAR is sensitive to model spatial resolution and the assimilation time window. The 3-h assimilation window with hourly rainfall data works well for the 6-h forecast, and for 12-h or longer forecasts, a 6-h assimilation window will be requested. Copyright 2004 by the American Geophysical Union