Electrochemical oxidation of an acid dye by active chlorine generated using Ti/Sn<Subscript>(1−<Emphasis Type="Italic">x</Emphasis>)</Subscript>Ir<Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">x</Emphasis></Subscript>O<Subscript>2</Subscript> electrodes

The generation of active chlorine on Ti/Sn_(1−x)Ir _x O₂ anodes, with different compositions of Ir (x = 0.01, 0.05, 0.10 and 0.30 ), was investigated by controlled current density electrolysis. Using a low concentration of chloride ions (0.05 mol L⁻¹) and a low current density (5 mA cm⁻²) it was possible to produce up to 60 mg L⁻¹ of active chlorine on a Ti/Sn_0.99Ir_0.01O₂ anode. The feasibility of the discoloration of a textile acid azo dye, acid red 29 dye (C.I. 16570), was also investigated with in situ electrogenerated active chlorine on Ti/Sn_(1−x)Ir _x O₂ anodes. The best conditions for 100% discoloration and maximum degradation (70% TOC reduction) were found to be: NaCl pH 4, 25 mA cm⁻² and 6 h of electrolysis. It is suggested that active chlorine generation and/or powerful oxidants such as chlorine radicals and hydroxyl radicals are responsible for promoting faster dye degradation. Rate constants calculated from color decay versus time reveal a zero order reaction at dye concentrations up to 1.0 × 10⁻⁴ mol L⁻¹. Effects of other electrolytes, dye concentration and applied density currents also have been investigated and are discussed.     

基于多天线的机器人定位和高效节能无线互联网络(英文)

基于生物行为启发的协同机器人集群具有广泛的应用前景。然而,一个通常假定成立但还没有得以适当解决的问题是机器人之间通过无线通信实现动态的相互之间的定位。本文研究了用多天线实现群集机器人网的技术。沿着接收信号在路径中的功率梯度,一个装有单天线的机器人可以跟踪搜索出未知信号源的方向。用3个适当装置的可以感知载波信号不同相移的天线,一个机器人可以确定未知信号源的位置。根据各自测到的未知信号源的距离,3个机器人通过协作通信可以确定未知信号源的位置。在知道2个夹角和1个边长的情况下,3个机器人可以确定彼此之间的几何关系。在彼此之间知道位置关系的情况下,可以采用聚束技术对着想要的机器人接收或发射信号,从而提高功率效率,延长机器人的生命。这些技术可以从二维扩展到诸如爬墙机器人的三维应用情景。     

Wirelessly lockpicking a smart card reader

With more than 300 million cards sold, HID iClass is one of the most popular contactless smart cards on the market. It is widely used for access control, secure login and payment systems. The card uses 64-bit keys to provide authenticity and integrity. The cipher and key diversification algorithms used in iClass are proprietary, and little information about them is publicly available. In this paper, we have reverse engineered all security mechanisms in the card including cipher, authentication protocol and also key diversification algorithms, which we publish in full detail. Furthermore, we have found six critical weaknesses that we exploit in two attacks, one against iClass Standard and one against iClass Elite (a.k.a., iClass High Security). In order to recover a secret card key, the first attack requires one authentication attempt with a legitimate reader and \(2^{22}\) queries to a card. This attack has a computational complexity of \(2^{40}\) MAC computations. The whole attack can be executed within a day on ordinary hardware. Remarkably, the second attack which is against iClass Elite is significantly faster. It directly recovers the system-wide master key from only 15 authentication attempts with a legitimate reader. The computational complexity of this attack is lower than \(2^{25}\) MAC computations, which means that it can be fully executed within 5 seconds on an ordinary laptop.     

Analogs of squalene and oxidosqualene inhibit oxidosqualene cyclase of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Trypanosoma cruzi</Emphasis> expressed in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Saccharomyces cerevisiae</Emphasis>

Recently, a number of inhibitors of the enzyme oxidosqualene cyclase (OSC; EC 5.4.99.7), a key enzyme in sterol biosynthesis, were shown to inhibit in mammalian cells the multiplication of Trypanosoma cruzi, the parasite agent of Chagas’ disease. The gene coding for the OSC of T. cruzi has been cloned and expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The expression in yeast cells could be a safe and easy model for studying the activity and the selectivity of the potential inhibitors of T. cruzi OSC. Using a homogenate of S. cerevisiae cells expressing T. cruzi OSC, we have tested 19 inhibitors: aza, methylidene, vinyl sulfide, and conjugated vinyl sulfide derivatives of oxidosqualene and squalene, selected as representative of different classes of substrate analog inhibitors of OSC. The IC₅₀ values of inhibition (the compound concentration at which the enzyme is inhibited by 50%) are compared with the values obtained using OSC of pig liver and S. cerevisiae. Many inhibitors of pig liver and S. cerevisiae OSC show comparable IC₅₀ for T. cruzi OSC, but some phenylthiovinyl derivatives are 10–100 times more effective on the T. cruzi enzyme than on the pig or S. cerevisiae enzymes. The expression of proteins of pathogenic organisms in yeast seems very promising for preliminary screening of compounds that have potential therapeutic activity.     

Experimental validation of radial reconstructed pin-power distributions in full-scale BWR fuel assemblies with and without control blade

Total fission rate measurements have been performed on full-size BWR fuel assemblies of type SVEA-96+ in the zero power reactor PROTEUS at the Paul Scherrer Institute. This paper presents comparisons of reconstructed 2D pin fission rates from nodal diffusion calculations to the experimental results in two configurations: one “regular” (I-1A) and the other “controlled” (I-2A). Both configurations consist of an array of 3 × 3 SVEA-96+ fuel assemblies moderated with light water at 20 °C. In configuration I-2A, an L-shaped hafnium control blade (half of a real cruciform blade) is inserted adjacent to the north-west corner of the central fuel assembly. To minimise the impact of the surroundings, all measurements were done in fuel pins belonging to the central assembly. The 3 × 3 experimental configuration (test zone) was modelled using the core monitoring and design tools that are applied at the Leibstadt Nuclear Power Plant (KKL). These are the 2D transport code HELIOS, used for the cross-section generation, and the 3D, 2-group nodal diffusion code PRESTO-2. The exterior is represented, in the axial and radial directions, by 2-group partial current ratios (PCRs) calculated at the test zone boundary using a 3D Monte Carlo (MCNPX) model of the whole PROTEUS reactor. Sensitivity cases are analysed to show the impact of changes in the 2D lattice modelling on the calculated fission rate distribution and reactivity. Further, the effects of variations in the test zone boundary PCRs and their behaviour in energy are investigated.     

Practical static analysis of context leaks in Android applications

Android native applications, written in Java and distributed in APK format, are widely used in mobile devices. Their specific pattern of use lets the operating system control the creation and destruction of resources, such as activities and services (contexts). Programmers are not supposed to interfere with such life cycle events. Otherwise, contexts might be leaked, ie, they will never be deallocated from memory, or be deallocated late, leading to memory exhaustion and frozen applications. In practice, it is easy to write incorrect code, which hinders garbage collection of contexts and leads to context leakages. In this work, we present a novel static analysis method that finds context leaks in Android code. We apply this analysis to APKs translated into Java bytecode. We provide a formal analysis of our algorithms and suggest further research directions for improving precision by combining different approaches. We discuss the results of a large number of experiments with our analysis, which reveal context leaks in many widely used applications from the Android marketplace. This shows the practical usefulness of our technique and its superiority w.r.t. the well-known Lint and Infer static analysis tools. We estimate the amount of memory saved by the collection of the leaks found and explain, experimentally, where programmers often go wrong and limitations of our tool. Such lessons could be used for designing of a sound or more powerful static analysis tool. This work can be considered as a practical application of software analysis techniques to solve practical problems.     

Correlation between the defect structure and the residual stress distribution in ZnO visualized by TEM and Raman microscopy

A deep understanding of the appearance and distribution of residual stresses in ZnO is of high importance as mechanical stresses directly influence its electrical and optical properties. In this paper we investigate the correlation between residual stresses and the plastic deformation below a micro indent placed on a prism plane of a ZnO single crystal. The residual stress field was mapped by means of confocal Raman microscopy. A cross section was studied by transmission electron microscopy and cathodoluminescence to visualize defect structures. In the Raman measurement bands of residual stresses were observed. The analysis of the defect structure showed that the residual stress distribution corresponds to crystallographic directions which are known to be the preferred directions for plastic deformation. The preparation of lamellae by FIB strongly alters both the residual stress state as well as the defect density caused by plastic deformation.