549 research outputs found
A dynamical systems approach to the discrimination of the modes of operation of cryptographic systems
Evidence of signatures associated with cryptographic modes of operation is
established. Motivated by some analogies between cryptographic and dynamical
systems, in particular with chaos theory, we propose an algorithm based on
Lyapunov exponents of discrete dynamical systems to estimate the divergence
among ciphertexts as the encryption algorithm is applied iteratively. The
results allow to distinguish among six modes of operation, namely ECB, CBC,
OFB, CFB, CTR and PCBC using DES, IDEA, TEA and XTEA block ciphers of 64 bits,
as well as AES, RC6, Twofish, Seed, Serpent and Camellia block ciphers of 128
bits. Furthermore, the proposed methodology enables a classification of modes
of operation of cryptographic systems according to their strength.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figure
Characterizations of quasitrivial symmetric nondecreasing associative operations
We provide a description of the class of n-ary operations on an arbitrary
chain that are quasitrivial, symmetric, nondecreasing, and associative. We also
prove that associativity can be replaced with bisymmetry in the definition of
this class. Finally we investigate the special situation where the chain is
finite
AmyPro: a database of proteins with validated amyloidogenic regions
Soluble functional proteins may transform into insoluble amyloid fibrils that deposit in a variety of tissues. Amyloid formation is a hallmark of age-related degenerative disorders. Perhaps surprisingly, amyloid fibrils can also be beneficial and are frequently exploited for diverse functional roles in organisms. Here we introduce AmyPro, an open-access database providing a comprehensive, carefully curated collection of validated amyloid fibril-forming proteins from all kingdoms of life classified into broad functional categories (http://amypro.net). In particular, AmyPro provides the boundaries of experimentally validated amyloidogenic sequence regions, short descriptions of the functional relevance of the proteins and their amyloid state, a list of the experimental techniques applied to study the amyloid state, important structural/functional/variation/mutation data transferred from UniProt, a list of relevant PDB structures categorized according to protein states, database cross-references and literature references. AmyPro greatly improves on similar currently available resources by incorporating both prions and functional amyloids in addition to pathogenic amyloids, and allows users to screen their sequences against the entire collection of validated amyloidogenic sequence fragments. By enabling further elucidation of the sequential determinants of amyloid fibril formation, we hope AmyPro will enhance the development of new methods for the precise prediction of amyloidogenic regions within proteins
Performance analysis of III-V/SOI microdisk based all-optical gate for on-chip interconnects
All-optical devices such as optical filters, (de)multiplexers, switches, modulators and optical buffers etc. have been demonstrated either on silicon or hybrid silicon platform. Power consumption, speed of operation, bandwidth and footprint etc. are important performance metrics for on-chip interconnects. Here we present the experimental and theoretical analysis of the performance of an all-optical gate, realized on III- V/SQl platform, for its applications in on-chip photonic interconnects
DGAT1 overexpression in muscle by in vivo DNA electroporation increases intramyocellular lipid content.
In adipose tissue, the microsomal enzyme 1,2-acyl CoA:diacylglyceroltransferase-1 (DGAT1) plays an important role in triglyceride storage. Because DGAT1 is expressed in skeletal muscle as well, we aimed to directly test the effect of DGAT1 on muscular triglyceride storage by overexpressing DGAT1 using in vivo DNA electroporation. A pcDNA3.1-DGAT1 construct in saline was injected in the left tibialis anterior muscle of rats, followed by the application of eight transcutaneous pulses, using the contralateral leg as sham-electroporated control. Electroporation of the DGAT1 construct led to significant overexpression of the DGAT1 protein. The functionality of DGAT1 overexpression is underscored by the pronounced diet-responsive increase in intramyocellular lipid (IMCL) storage. In chow-fed rats, DGAT1-positive myocytes showed significantly higher IMCL content compared with the control leg, which was almost devoid of IMCL (1.99 +/- 1.13% vs. 0.017 +/- 0.014% of total area fraction; P <0.05). High-fat feeding increased IMCL levels in both DGAT1-positive and control myocytes, resulting in very high IMCL levels in DGAT1-overexpressing myocytes (4.96 +/- 1.47% vs. 0.80 +/- 0.14%; P <0.05). Our findings indicate that DGAT1 contributes to the storage of IMCL and that in vivo DNA electroporation is a promising tool to examine the functional consequences of altered gene expression in mature skeletal muscle
A very compact InP-based integrated optic Mach-Zehnder interferometer with a delay difference of 74 ps
A Mach-Zehnder interferometer with 6.0 mm arm length difference was realised on InP. The design is very compact, using deeply etched waveguides and circular bends with 50 mu m radius. The devices show a sinusoidal frequency response with 13.5 GHz period and extinction ratios up to 20 d
- …