Enhancement of Secrecy of Block Ciphered Systems by Deliberate Noise

This paper considers the problem of end-end security enhancement by resorting to deliberate noise injected in ciphertexts. The main goal is to generate a degraded wiretap channel in application layer over which Wyner-type secrecy encoding is invoked to deliver additional secure information. More specifically, we study secrecy enhancement of DES block cipher working in cipher feedback model (CFB) when adjustable and intentional noise is introduced into encrypted data in application layer. A verification strategy in exhaustive search step of linear attack is designed to allow Eve to mount a successful attack in the noisy environment. Thus, a controllable wiretap channel is created over multiple frames by taking advantage of errors in Eve's cryptanalysis, whose secrecy capacity is found for the case of known channel states at receivers. As a result, additional secure information can be delivered by performing Wyner type secrecy encoding over super-frames ahead of encryption, namely, our proposed secrecy encoding-then-encryption scheme. These secrecy bits could be taken as symmetric keys for upcoming frames. Numerical results indicate that a sufficiently large secrecy rate can be achieved by selective noise addition.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, journa

Two-dimensional small-world networks: navigation with local information

Navigation process is studied on a variant of the Watts-Strogatz small world network model embedded on a square lattice. With probability $p$, each vertex sends out a long range link, and the probability of the other end of this link falling on a vertex at lattice distance $r$ away decays as $r^{-\alpha}$. Vertices on the network have knowledge of only their nearest neighbors. In a navigation process, messages are forwarded to a designated target. For $\alpha <3$ and $\alpha \neq 2$, a scaling relation is found between the average actual path length and $pL$, where $L$ is the average length of the additional long range links. Given $pL>1$, dynamic small world effect is observed, and the behavior of the scaling function at large enough $pL$ is obtained. At $\alpha =2$ and 3, this kind of scaling breaks down, and different functions of the average actual path length are obtained. For $\alpha >3$, the average actual path length is nearly linear with network size.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

The vortex dynamics of a Ginzburg-Landau system under pinning effect

It is proved that the vortices are attracted by impurities or inhomogeities in the superconducting materials. The strong H^1-convergence for the corresponding Ginzburg-Landau system is also proved.Comment: 23page

Eddy current generation enhancement using ferrite for electromagnetic acoustic transduction

Eddy currents are generated in an electrically conducting surface as a step in electromagnetic acoustic transduction (EAT). In eddy current testing, wire coils are often wound onto a ferrite core to increase the generated eddy current. With EAT, increased coil inductance is unacceptable as it leads to a reduction in the amplitude of a given frequency of eddy current from a limited voltage source, particularly where the current arises from capacitor discharge. The authors present a method for EAT where ferrite is used to increase the eddy current amplitude without significantly increasing coil inductance or changing the frequency content of the eddy current

Statistical Mechanical Treatments of Protein Amyloid Formation

Protein aggregation is an important field of investigation because it is closely related to the problem of neurodegenerative diseases, to the development of biomaterials, and to the growth of cellular structures such as cyto-skeleton. Self-aggregation of protein amyloids, for example, is a complicated process involving many species and levels of structures. This complexity, however, can be dealt with using statistical mechanical tools, such as free energies, partition functions, and transfer matrices. In this article, we review general strategies for studying protein aggregation using statistical mechanical approaches and show that canonical and grand canonical ensembles can be used in such approaches. The grand canonical approach is particularly convenient since competing pathways of assembly and dis-assembly can be considered simultaneously. Another advantage of using statistical mechanics is that numerically exact solutions can be obtained for all of the thermodynamic properties of fibrils, such as the amount of fibrils formed, as a function of initial protein concentration. Furthermore, statistical mechanics models can be used to fit experimental data when they are available for comparison.Comment: Accepted to IJM

A Statistical Mechanical Approach to Protein Aggregation

We develop a theory of aggregation using statistical mechanical methods. An example of a complicated aggregation system with several levels of structures is peptide/protein self-assembly. The problem of protein aggregation is important for the understanding and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and also for the development of bio-macromolecules as new materials. We write the effective Hamiltonian in terms of interaction energies between protein monomers, protein and solvent, as well as between protein filaments. The grand partition function can be expressed in terms of a Zimm-Bragg-like transfer matrix, which is calculated exactly and all thermodynamic properties can be obtained. We start with two-state and three-state descriptions of protein monomers using Potts models that can be generalized to include q-states, for which the exactly solvable feature of the model remains. We focus on n X N lattice systems, corresponding to the ordered structures observed in some real fibrils. We have obtained results on nucleation processes and phase diagrams, in which a protein property such as the sheet content of aggregates is expressed as a function of the number of proteins on the lattice and inter-protein or interfacial interaction energies. We have applied our methods to A{\beta}(1-40) and Curli fibrils and obtained results in good agreement with experiments.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, accepted to J. Chem. Phy