Applying Grover's algorithm to AES: quantum resource estimates

We present quantum circuits to implement an exhaustive key search for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and analyze the quantum resources required to carry out such an attack. We consider the overall circuit size, the number of qubits, and the circuit depth as measures for the cost of the presented quantum algorithms. Throughout, we focus on Clifford$+T$ gates as the underlying fault-tolerant logical quantum gate set. In particular, for all three variants of AES (key size 128, 192, and 256 bit) that are standardized in FIPS-PUB 197, we establish precise bounds for the number of qubits and the number of elementary logical quantum gates that are needed to implement Grover's quantum algorithm to extract the key from a small number of AES plaintext-ciphertext pairs.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, 5 tables; to appear in: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQCrypto 2016

Workplace violence: Actual and feared events in a Southeast medical center

Session presented on Saturday, April 13, 2013: Healthcare associated work place violence (WPV) remains an ever increasing danger to the nursing workforce. Healthcare workers are much more likely to be injured on the job than other professions with nurses at the highest risk of injury. In a recent year, registered nurses reported over 2,000 assaults and violent acts resulted in an average of 4 days lost from work. Outcomes impacted by WPV include patient care, medication errors, job satisfaction and retention and physical/mental health. The purpose of phase one of this study was to assess current workplace violence in a southeast medical center with an anticipated need for an educational/behavioral intervention to impact WPV. Workplace violence began to be tracked as a targeted interest of employee health in January 2011 resulting in a perceived under-reporting of violent events. In an academic-clinical partnership with a university school of nursing, a phase one research project was designed to establish baseline knowledge of actual and feared violent events at work. The investigators surveyed 53 medical center employees with the Violent Events at Work and Fear of Future Violent Events a Work surveys, tools with established test-retest reliability (r(34)) =.92, p\u3e .01). Items on both tools were significantly different by unit worked, including actual and feared physical violent events of hitting and kicking (p \u3e .05) and spitting and biting (p \u3e .05). Fear of future violent events was significantly different by unit worked (X2 (35) = 56.634, p \u3e .05). Of the seven employees who reported fear of future violent events at work, five (71.4%) were from the ER or Behavioral unit. The basis of this research project lay the groundwork for future interventional research aimed at decreasing workplace violence within the healthcare setting

Follow the leader: Changing the game of hierarchy in healthcare

Almost every formal organization has a multilayered hierarchy. Followers make up the majority of any organization, but have been overlooked as a component of the team. The first step in breaking this mold is identifying the types of followership that are present within the nursing profession

Building an Engineering Honors Curriculum: Collegiate Consistency with Individual Flexibility

Recently, Honors at Iowa developed a curriculum that all student members must complete to graduate with University Honors. The curriculum has two primary components; the first is building knowledge through course work and the second is the application of knowledge through hands on learning experiences. Because, however, the engineering undergraduate curriculum is more structured and sequential in nature than the curriculum of the other undergraduate colleges, a distinct honors engineering curriculum was developed collaboratively between the College of Engineering and the University Honors Program. This engineering-specific honors curriculum maintained the key features of course work and experience-based learning valued by engineering and honors, but allowed for unique out-of-class experiences available to University of Iowa engineering students to be woven into the curriculum. The standard Honors curriculum for undergraduates at Iowa is 12 credit hours of honors coursework and 12 credit hours of experience-based learning. The 12 credits of coursework are commonly completed early in the students’ education through honors offerings of general education courses. In contrast, the experiential component is most commonly pursued by upper class students and includes opportunities such as Honors in the major, research, study abroad, internships, and a variety of types of courses such as teaching practica, service learning, and graduate courses. This standard 12/12 Honors curriculum is still available to engineering honors students, but many engineering students’ schedules are limited in flexibility, and the number of honors offerings that fit their needs is also limited. To maintain consistency in University Honors across the colleges and also accommodate the emphasis in engineering on applied learning, the College of Engineering and Honors Program agreed to reduce the required number of hours of honors coursework and increase proportionately the amount of experience-based learning in the honors curriculum. This has become known as the Engineering Alternative and highlights more out-of-class opportunities that provide discipline-specific learning. For example, engineering students can count leadership positions in engineering student organizations for honors credit because these organizations incorporate a project with faculty oversight. Engineering honors students may also deepen their knowledge and help other students by serving as tutors or by participating in other service roles in the College of Engineering. These opportunities are in addition to the standard experiential learning options of honors in the major, research, study abroad, and internships. Together, the varied options of the Honors Engineering Alternative curriculum allow students great flexibility in completing University Honors that is of equivalent depth to the 12/12 standard Honors Curriculum. The result of the collaboration between Honors and the College of Engineering is an honors curriculum that meets the general requirements of the Honors curriculum but also is flexible enough to accommodate the more structured and sequential nature of the engineering curriculum

Talent & Tenacity: Sparking an Incubator in Ramsey

Report completed by students enrolled in PA 5211: Land Use Planning, taught by Fernando Burga in fall 2017.This project was completed as part of the 2017-2018 Resilient Communities Project (rcp.umn.edu) partnership with the City of Ramsey. The City of Ramsey has a successful business retention and expansion (BRE) program that has been focused on small-business development and growth. To advance these efforts, the City would like to pursue new initiatives to attract, retain, and grow businesses, including developing a long-term vision and strategy for a business incubator. To assess the feasibility of a business incubator, students in Dr. Fernando Burga’s Land Use Planning class documented economic development assets in Ramsey, interviewed successful business owners in Ramsey to understand their needs and challenges in starting a business, outlined considerations for the City in launching an incubator, and investigated the potential benefits and challenges of several business incubator models for Ramsey. A final report is available.This project was supported by the Resilient Communities Project (RCP), a program at the University of Minnesota whose mission is to connect communities in Minnesota with U of MN faculty and students to advance community resilience through collaborative, course-based projects. RCP is a program of the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA). More information at http://www.rcp.umn.edu

Beneficial Aerodynamic Effect of Wing Scales on the Climbing Flight of Butterflies

It is hypothesized that butterfly wing scale geometry and surface patterning may function to improve aerodynamic efficiency. In order to investigate this hypothesis, a method to measure butterfly flapping kinematics optically over long uninhibited flapping sequences was developed. Statistical results for the climbing flight flapping kinematics of 11 butterflies, based on a total of 236 individual flights, both with and without their wing scales, are presented. Results show, that for each of the 11 butterflies, the mean climbing efficiency decreased after scales were removed. Data was reduced to a single set of differences of climbing efficiency using are paired t-test. Results show a mean decrease in climbing efficiency of 32.2% occurred with a 95% confidence interval of 45.6%–18.8%. Similar analysis showed that the flapping amplitude decreased by 7% while the flapping frequency did not show a significant difference. Results provide strong evidence that butterfly wing scale geometry and surface patterning improve butterfly climbing efficiency. The authors hypothesize that the wing scale\u27s effect in measured climbing efficiency may be due to an improved aerodynamic efficiency of the butterfly and could similarly be used on flapping wing micro air vehicles to potentially achieve similar gains in efficiency

West Broadway: What is Affordable?

Professional paper for the fulfillment of the Master of Urban and Regional Planning degree.This report is intended for the West Broadway Business and Area Coalition (WBC), with the goal of addressing commercial affordability along the West Broadway corridor. Considering the history of West Broadway and North Minneapolis more broadly, the project team is guided by the belief that development can be beneficial, though it is crucial that current Northside residents, who are predominantly people of color, are the ones who benefit from such development. Decision-making processes must be inclusive and responsive to the needs of West Broadway business owners, entrepreneurs, and North Minneapolis residents. Defining the term “local”, particularly regarding ownership of property and businesses along West Broadway, is central to this discussion. Oftentimes, outside resources targeting the Northside are viewed as relief aid for the poor or needy. However, the perspective of this report is that resources should be provided as an investment in the people and place, who are deserving of the opportunities that have been freely given to White Americans, though robbed from neighborhoods and people of color

Physiological and Perceived Effects of Forearm or Head Cooling During Simulated Firefighting Activity and Rehabilitation.

CONTEXT:  Cooling devices aim to protect firefighters by attenuating a rise in body temperature. Devices for head cooling (HC) while firefighting and forearm cooling (FC) during rehabilitation (RHB) intervals are commonly marketed, but research regarding their efficacy is limited. OBJECTIVE:  To investigate the physiological and perceived effects of HC and FC during firefighting drills and RHB. DESIGN:  Randomized controlled clinical trial. SETTING:  Firefighter training center. PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS:  Twenty-seven male career firefighters (age = 39 ± 7 years; height = 169 ± 7 cm; weight = 95.4 ± 16.8 kg). INTERVENTION(S):  Firefighters were randomly assigned to 1 condition: HC (n = 9), in which participants completed drills wearing a cold gel pack inside their helmet; FC (n = 8), in which participants sat on a collapsible chair with water-immersion arm troughs during RHB; or control (n = 10), in which participants used no cooling devices. Firefighters completed four 15-minute drills (D1-D4) wearing full bunker gear and breathing apparatus. Participants had a 15-min RHB after D2 (RHB1) and D4 (RHB2). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S):  Change (Δ) in gastrointestinal temperature (T RESULTS:  The T CONCLUSIONS:  The HC did not attenuate rises in physiological or perceptual variables during firefighting drills. The FC effectively reduced

The utility of PacBio circular consensus sequencing for characterizing complex gene families in non-model organisms

BACKGROUND: Molecular characterization of highly diverse gene families can be time consuming, expensive, and difficult, especially when considering the potential for relatively large numbers of paralogs and/or pseudogenes. Here we investigate the utility of Pacific Biosciences single molecule real-time (SMRT) circular consensus sequencing (CCS) as an alternative to traditional cloning and Sanger sequencing PCR amplicons for gene family characterization. We target vomeronasal gene receptors, one of the most diverse gene families in mammals, with the goal of better understanding intra-specific V1R diversity of the gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus). Our study compares intragenomic variation for two V1R subfamilies found in the mouse lemur. Specifically, we compare gene copy variation within and between two individuals of M. murinus as characterized by different methods for nucleotide sequencing. By including the same individual animal from which the M. murinus draft genome was derived, we are able to cross-validate gene copy estimates from Sanger sequencing versus CCS methods. RESULTS: We generated 34,088 high quality circular consensus sequences of two diverse V1R subfamilies (here referred to as V1RI and V1RIX) from two individuals of Microcebus murinus. Using a minimum threshold of 7× coverage, we recovered approximately 90% of V1RI sequences previously identified in the draft M. murinus genome (59% being identical at all nucleotide positions). When low coverage sequences were considered (i.e. < 7× coverage) 100% of V1RI sequences identified in the draft genome were recovered. At least 13 putatively novel V1R loci were also identified using CCS technology. CONCLUSIONS: Recent upgrades to the Pacific Biosciences RS instrument have improved the CCS technology and offer an alternative to traditional sequencing approaches. Our results suggest that the Microcebus murinus V1R repertoire has been underestimated in the draft genome. In addition to providing an improved understanding of V1R diversity in the mouse lemur, this study demonstrates the utility of CCS technology for characterizing complex regions of the genome. We anticipate that long-read sequencing technologies such as PacBio SMRT will allow for the assembly of multigene family clusters and serve to more accurately characterize patterns of gene copy variation in large gene families, thus revealing novel micro-evolutionary patterns within non-model organisms. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2164-15-720) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users