Lime: Data Lineage in the Malicious Environment

Intentional or unintentional leakage of confidential data is undoubtedly one of the most severe security threats that organizations face in the digital era. The threat now extends to our personal lives: a plethora of personal information is available to social networks and smartphone providers and is indirectly transferred to untrustworthy third party and fourth party applications. In this work, we present a generic data lineage framework LIME for data flow across multiple entities that take two characteristic, principal roles (i.e., owner and consumer). We define the exact security guarantees required by such a data lineage mechanism toward identification of a guilty entity, and identify the simplifying non repudiation and honesty assumptions. We then develop and analyze a novel accountable data transfer protocol between two entities within a malicious environment by building upon oblivious transfer, robust watermarking, and signature primitives. Finally, we perform an experimental evaluation to demonstrate the practicality of our protocol

Simple fluid with broken time reversal invariance

We characterize a system of hard spheres with a simple collision rule that breaks time reversal symmetry, but conserves energy. The collisions lead to an a-chiral, isotropic, and homogeneous stationary state, whose properties are determined in simulations and compared to an approximate theory originally developed for elastic hard spheres. In the nonequilibrium fluid state, velocities are correlated, a phenomenon known from other nonequilibrium stationary states. The correlations are long-ranged decaying like $1/r^d$ in $d$ dimensions. Such correlations are expected on general grounds far from equilibrium and had previously been observed in driven or non-stationary systems.Comment: 14 pages, 17 Figure

Equivalence Properties by Typing in Cryptographic Branching Protocols

International audienceRecently, many tools have been proposed for automatically analysing, in symbolic models, equivalence of security protocols. Equivalence is a property needed to state privacy properties or game-based properties like strong secrecy. Tools for a bounded number of sessions can decide equivalence but typically suffer from efficiency issues. Tools for an unbounded number of sessions like Tamarin or ProVerif prove a stronger notion of equivalence (diff-equivalence) that does not properly handle protocols with else branches. Building upon a recent approach, we propose a type system for reasoning about branching protocols and dynamic keys. We prove our type system to entail equivalence , for all the standard primitives. Our type system has been implemented and shows a significant speedup compared to the tools for a bounded number of sessions, and compares similarly to ProVerif for an unbounded number of sessions. Moreover, we can also prove security of protocols that require a mix of bounded and unbounded number of sessions, which ProVerif cannot properly handle

Biaxial tensile tests identify epidermis and hypodermis as the main structural elements of sweet cherry skin

The skin of developing soft and fleshy fruit is subjected to considerable growth stress, and failure of the skin is associated with impaired barrier properties in water transport and pathogen defence. The objectives were to establish a standardized, biaxial tensile test of the skin of soft and fleshy fruit and to use it to characterize and quantify mechanical properties of the sweet cherry (Prunus avium) fruit skin as a model. A segment of the exocarp (ES) comprising cuticle, epidermis, hypodermis and adhering flesh was mounted in the elastometer such that the in vivo strain was maintained. The ES was pressurized from the inner surface and the pressure and extent of associated bulging were recorded. Pressure: strain responses were almost linear up to the point of fracture, indicating that the modulus of elasticity was nearly constant. Abrading the cuticle decreased the fracture strain but had no effect on the fracture pressure. When pressure was held constant, bulging of the ES continued to increase. Strain relaxation upon releasing the pressure was complete and depended on time. Strains in longitudinal and latitudinal directions on the bulging ES did not differ significantly. Exocarp segments that released their in vivo strain before the test had higher fracture strains and lower moduli of elasticity. The results demonstrate that the cherry skin is isotropic in the tangential plane and exhibits elastic and viscoelastic behaviour. The epidermis and hypodermis, but not the cuticle, represent the structural 'backbone' in a cherry skin. This test is useful in quantifying the mechanical properties of soft and fleshy fruit of a range of species under standardized conditions.DFG/KN402/8-

Characterization of gastrointestinal transit and luminal conditions in pigs using a telemetric motility capsule

Within preclinical research, the pig has become an important model in regulatory toxicology and pharmacokinetics, to assess oral dosage forms and to compare different formulation strategies. In addition, there are emerging application of the pig model to asses clinical dosing conditions in the fasted and fed state. In this study, the gastrointestinal transit conditions in male landrace pigs were studied with a telemetric motility capsule under fasted and postprandial conditions. The whole gut transit time (WGTT) was determined by administering a SmartPill® capsule to four landrace pigs, under both fasted and fed state conditions in a cross-over study design. Overall, this study found that small intestinal transit in landrace pigs ranged from 2.3 – 4.0 h, and was broadly similar to reported human estimates and was not affected by the intake conditions. Gastric emptying was highly variable and prolonged in landrace pigs ranging from 20 – 233 h and up to 264 h in one specific case. Under dynamic conditions pigs have a low gastric pH comparable to humans, however a high variability under fasted conditions could be observed. The comparison of the data from this study with a recent similar study in beagle dogs revealed major differences between gastric maximum pressures observed in landrace pigs and dogs. In the porcine stomach maximum pressures of up to 402 mbar were observed, which are comparable to reported human data. Intestinal maximum pressures in landrace pigs were in the same range as in humans. Overall, the study provides new insights of gastrointestinal conditions in landrace pigs, which can lead to more accurate interpretation of in vivo results obtained of pharmacokinetic studies in preclinical models. While small intestinal transit conditions, GI pH and pressures were similar to humans, the prolonged gastric emptying observed in pigs need to be considered in assessing the suitability of the pig model for assessing in vivo performance of large non-disintegrated oral drug products.

Making sense of big data in health research: Towards an EU action plan.

Medicine and healthcare are undergoing profound changes. Whole-genome sequencing and high-resolution imaging technologies are key drivers of this rapid and crucial transformation. Technological innovation combined with automation and miniaturization has triggered an explosion in data production that will soon reach exabyte proportions. How are we going to deal with this exponential increase in data production? The potential of "big data" for improving health is enormous but, at the same time, we face a wide range of challenges to overcome urgently. Europe is very proud of its cultural diversity; however, exploitation of the data made available through advances in genomic medicine, imaging, and a wide range of mobile health applications or connected devices is hampered by numerous historical, technical, legal, and political barriers. European health systems and databases are diverse and fragmented. There is a lack of harmonization of data formats, processing, analysis, and data transfer, which leads to incompatibilities and lost opportunities. Legal frameworks for data sharing are evolving. Clinicians, researchers, and citizens need improved methods, tools, and training to generate, analyze, and query data effectively. Addressing these barriers will contribute to creating the European Single Market for health, which will improve health and healthcare for all Europeans