A genetic tango attack against the David–Prasad RFID ultra‐lightweight authentication protocol

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a powerful technology that enables wireless information storage and control in an economical way. These properties have generated a wide range of applications in different areas. Due to economic and technological constrains, RFID devices are seriously limited, having small or even tiny computational capabilities. This issue is particularly challenging from the security point of view. Security protocols in RFID environments have to deal with strong computational limitations, and classical protocols cannot be used in this context. There have been several attempts to overcome these limitations in the form of new lightweight security protocols designed to be used in very constrained (sometimes called ultra‐lightweight) RFID environments. One of these proposals is the David–Prasad ultra‐lightweight authentication protocol. This protocol was successfully attacked using a cryptanalysis technique named Tango attack. The capacity of the attack depends on a set of boolean approximations. In this paper, we present an enhanced version of the Tango attack, named Genetic Tango attack, that uses Genetic Programming to design those approximations, easing the generation of automatic cryptanalysis and improving its power compared to a manually designed attack. Experimental results are given to illustrate the effectiveness of this new attack.     

Energy Efficiency of an Indirect Thermally Coupled Distillation Sequence

Several thermally coupled distillation sequences have been proposed to improve the thermal inefficiency of conventional distillation sequences. Particularly, for the separation of ternary mixtures, structures that perform a lateral extraction in one of the columns of the integrated arrangement have been shown to provide significant energy savings. The structure of existing sequences, based on conventional distillation columns, might provide the basis for alternate thermally coupled designs. In this paper, it is shown how a thermally coupled system derived from an indirect conventional sequence can provide energy savings through a proper optimization of the interconnecting streams.     

A stochastic controller for a scalar linear system with additive Cauchy noise

A stochastic control scheme is developed for scalar, discrete-time, and linear-dynamic systems driven by Cauchy distributed process and measurement noises. When addressing the optimal control problem for such systems, the standard quadratic cost criteria cannot be used. In this study we introduce a new objective function that is functionally similar to the Cauchy probability density function. The performance index, defined as the expectation of this objective function with respect to the Cauchy densities, exists. The dynamic programming solution to the fixed and finite horizon optimal control problem that uses this performance index appears to be intractable. Therefore, a moving horizon optimal model predictive control problem is implemented, for which the conditional expected value of the objective function and its gradients can be computed in closed   form and without assumptions such as certainty equivalence. Numerical results are shown for this m$m$-step model predictive optimal controller and compared to a similar, Linear-Exponential-Gaussian model predictive controller. An essential difference between the Cauchy and Gaussian controllers when applied to a system with Cauchy noises is that, while the Gaussian controller is linear and reacts strongly to all noise pulses, the Cauchy controller can differentiate between measurement and process noise pulses by ignoring the former while responding to the latter. This property of the Cauchy controller occurs when an impulsive measurement noise is more likely than an impulsive process noise. The Cauchy and Gaussian controllers react similarly when applied to a system with Gaussian noises, demonstrating the robustness of the proposed control scheme.     

Total content and dialyzable iron and zinc in foods from northern and Southern Mexico

Developing countries diets are based on a variety of plant foods that often are the main suppliers of important amounts of iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn). The objectives of this study were 1) to measure the total and dialyzable amounts of Fe and Zn in foods from Northern Mexico (Sonora) and from Southern Mexico (Oaxaca) and 2) to evaluate the effect of meat content of diets on the dialyzable amount of Fe and Zn. Methods to calculate the total dialyzable amount of Fe and Zn, were those of the AOAC and of Shen et al. Total Fe in e northern Mexican foods went from 0.78 +/- 0.0 to 11.59 +/- to 0.03 mg/ 100g (dry weight, DW); in southern Mexican foods the same micronutrient amounts were 0.86 +/- 0.18 to 8.8 +/- 0.57 mg/100 g (BS). Total Zn values were 0.91 +/- 0.00 to 13.58 +/- 0.05 mg/100 g (DW) in Sonora, and 0.64 +/- 0.18 to 20.80 +/- 0.33 mg/100 g (DW) in Oaxaca. In northern Mexico, foods dialyzable Fe had values from 0.1 +/- 0.04% to 10.6 +/- 0.36% and for Zn from 4.0 +/- 0.21% to 55.32 +/- 0.14%. Meanwhile, the range of values of dialyzable Fe for foods from Oaxaca were from 0.22 +/- 0.06% to 9.40 +/- 0.14% for and from 2.41 +/- 0.26% to 54.27 +/- 1.49% for dialyzable Zn. The average value for dialyzable Fe was higher in the foods that contained meat or meat products (p= 0.001).     

gHRV: Heart rate variability analysis made easy

In this paper, the gHRV software tool is presented. It is a simple, free and portable tool developed in python for analysing heart rate variability. It includes a graphical user interface and it can import files in multiple formats, analyse time intervals in the signal, test statistical significance and export the results.     

Selective dynamic serialization for reducing energy consumption in hardware transactional memory systems

In the search for new paradigms to simplify multithreaded programming, Transactional Memory (TM) is currently being advocated as a promising alternative to deadlock-prone lock-based synchronization. In this way, future many-core CMP architectures may need to provide hardware support for TM. On the other hand, power dissipation constitutes a first class consideration in multicore processor designs. In this work, we propose Selective Dynamic Serialization (SDS) as a new technique to improve energy consumption without degrading performance in applications with conflicting transactions by avoiding wasted work due to aborted transactions. Our proposal, which is implemented on top of a hardware transactional memory (HTM) system with an eager conflict management policy, detects and serializes conflicting transactions dynamically (at run-time). In its simplest form, in case of conflict, one transaction is allowed to continue whilst the rest are completely stalled. Once the executing transaction has finished, it wakes up several of the stalling transactions. More elaborated implementations of SDS try to delay this behavior until serialization of transactions is profitable, achieving the best trade-off between performance, energy savings and network traffic. SDS implementations differ from each other in the condition that triggers the serialization mode. We have evaluated several SDS schemes using GEMS, a full-system simulator implementing the LogTM-SE Eager–Eager HTM system, and several benchmarks from the STAMP suite. Results for a 16-core CMP show that SDS obtains reductions of 6 % on average in energy consumption (more than 20 % in high contention scenarios) in a wide range of benchmarks without affecting, on average, execution time. At the same time, network traffic level is also reduced by 22 %.     

Blocking the Routes to Triviality with Depth Relevance

In Rogerson and Restall’s (J Philos Log 36, 2006, p. 435), the “class of implication formulas known to trivialize (NC)” (NC abbreviates “naïve comprehension”) is recorded. The aim of this paper is to show how to invalidate any member in this class by using “weak relevant model structures”. Weak relevant model structures verify deep relevant logics only.     

Dissecting the protocol and network traffic of the OnLive cloud gaming platform

Cloud gaming is a new paradigm that is envisaged to play a pivotal role in the video game industry in forthcoming years. Cloud gaming, or gaming on demand, is a type of online gaming that allows on-demand streaming of game content onto non-specialised devices (e.g. PC, smart TV, etc.). This approach requires no downloads or game installation because the actual game is executed on the game company’s server and is streamed directly to the client. Nonetheless, this revolutionary approach significantly affects the network load generated by online games. As cloud gaming presents new challenges for both network engineers and the research community, both groups need to be fully conversant with these new cloud gaming platforms. The purpose of this paper is to investigate OnLive, one of the most popular cloud gaming platforms. Our key contributions are: (a) a review of the state-of-the-art of cloud gaming; (b) reverse engineering of the OnLive protocol; and (c) a synthetic traffic model for OnLive.     

Porous poly(2-hydroxyethyl acrylate) hydrogels prepared by radical polymerisation with methanol as diluent

Dynamic-mechanical and water sorption properties of porous and non-porous hydrogels have been studied as a function of their porosity and crosslinking density. Porous hydrogels with different crosslinking densities were prepared by co-polymerisation of 2-hydroxyethyl acrylate and ethyleneglycol dimethacrylate in solution in methanol. Pores were formed due to the segregation of the solvent from the polymer network during the polymerisation process. The porosity of the samples was observed by scanning electron microscopy. The pores collapse during the drying process after polymerisation but they reopen when the xerogel is immersed in liquid water. Bulk polymer networks with varying crosslinking densities were also synthesised and used as a reference in the analysis of the porous hydrogels. Water sorption from the gas phase and from the liquid phase was studied by means of equilibrium sorption isotherms and immersion experiments, respectively. Dynamic-mechanical spectroscopy conducted on the xerogels shows that the elastic modulus in the rubber-like state highly depends on the amount of solvent used in the polymerisation what is attributed to the presence of discontinuity surfaces in the xerogel although the pores are closed.