Exostosis of the external auditory meatus or ear canal nodes. A study of etiology and therapeutic results

In this study we evaluated the relation between exposure of the ear canal to cold water and development of exostosis. Furthermore we wanted to evaluate the clinical outcome of surgical removal of the exostosis. The material consisted of a group of 15 winter bathers who had been exposed to cold water over a period varying from three to 45 years. All but one subject who had exposed the ear canal to cold water had developed exostoses of the ear canals. Follow-up examinations of nine patients after surgical removal of the exostosis revealed normal, well calibrated ear canals. Three winter bathers who continued the exposure to cold water developed a new exostosis.     

Energy policy and the energy economy in FR Germany : An overview

The article reports on the current status of West German energy policy, and in a sense it is a case study of a predominantly, though not purely, market-oriented approach. It presents some interesting facts and figures on the West German energy economy, and although written in an introductory fashion, leads the reader into the heart of current energy policy issues. The short retrospective demonstrates the remarkable success of the market-oriented approach to energy policy. The main current problems are the implementation of stricter environmental standards and the structural adjustments of the domestic coal and refining industries. A short discussion on future perspectives shows that total primary energy demand up to the end of the century is likely to remain stagnant, while further marked progress in energy efficiency can be expected.     

Efficient co-processor utilization in database query processing

Specialized processing units such as GPUs or FPGAs provide great opportunities to speed up database operations by exploiting parallelism and relieving the CPU. However, distributing a workload on suitable (co-)processors is a challenging task, because of the heterogeneous nature of a hybrid processor/co-processor system. In this paper, we present a framework that automatically learns and adapts execution models for arbitrary algorithms on any (co-)processor. Our physical optimizer uses the execution models to distribute a workload of database operators on available (co-)processing devices. We demonstrate its applicability for two common use cases in modern database systems. Additionally, we contribute an overview of GPU-co-processing approaches, an in-depth discussion of our framework's operator model, the required steps for deploying our framework in practice and the support of complex operators requiring multi-dimensional learning strategies.     

Analysis of privacy in mobile telephony systems

We present a thorough experimental and formal analysis of users’ privacy in mobile telephony systems. In particular, we experimentally analyse the use of pseudonyms and point out weak deployed policies leading to some critical scenarios which make it possible to violate a user’s privacy. We also expose some protocol’s vulnerabilities resulting in breaches of the anonymity and/or user unlinkability. We show these breaches translate in actual attacks which are feasible to implement on real networks and discuss our prototype implementation. In order to countermeasure these attacks, we propose realistic solutions. Finally, we provide the theoretical framework for the automatic verification of the unlinkability and anonymity of the fixed 2G/3G procedures and automatically verify them using the ProVerif tool.     

Efficient Authentication from Hard Learning Problems

We construct efficient authentication protocols and message authentication codes (MACs) whose security can be reduced to the learning parity with noise (LPN) problem. Despite a large body of work—starting with the \({\mathsf {HB}}\) protocol of Hopper and Blum in 2001—until now it was not even known how to construct an efficient authentication protocol from LPN which is secure against man-in-the-middle attacks. A MAC implies such a (two-round) protocol.     

Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-of-the-art review

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result, the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented.     

Substantial Cyano‐Substituted Fully sp2‐Carbon‐Linked Framework: Metal‐Free Approach and Visible‐Light‐Driven Hydrogen Evolution

Polymeric semiconductors are emerging as a kind of competitive photocatalysts for hydrogen evolution due to their well‐tunable structures, versatile functionalization, and low‐cost processibility. In this work, a series of conjugated porous polymers with substantial cyano‐substituted fully sp²‐carbon frameworks are efficiently synthesized by using electron‐deficient tricyanomesitylene as a key building block to promote an organic base‐catalyzed Knoevenagel condensation with various aldehyde‐substituted arenes. The resulting porous polymers feature donor‐acceptor structures with π‐extended conjugation, rendering them with distinct semiconducting properties. They possess hierarchically porous structures, nanoscale morphologies, and intriguing wettability. These promising physical characters, finely tailorable by varying the arene units, are essentially relevant to the abundant cynao substituents over the whole frameworks. The as‐prepared porous polymers exhibit excellent visible‐light‐driven photocatalytic activity for water‐splitting hydrogen evolution with apparent quantum yield up to 2.0% at 420 nm or 1.9% at 470 nm, among the highest values yet reported for porous polymer‐based photocatalysts, also representing the first example of such kinds of catalysts formed through a metal‐free‐catalyzed carbon–carbon coupling reaction.     

Superconducting Energy Gap Features of FeSe Investigated by Tunneling Spectroscopy on Planar Junctions

Planar tunneling junctions of the presumably unconventional superconductor FeSe were prepared and investigated. The junctions consisted of rf-sputtered FeSe/AlO _x /Ag multilayers patterned lithographically into mesa structures. Bias voltage-dependent differential conductivities dI/dV(V) of junctions in the tunneling, intermediate barrier strength, and metallic regimes were investigated. Depending on the barrier type between two to four features of the conductivity were obtained, which are discussed in the framework of multiple superconducting energy gaps. Specifically, we reproduced with all barrier types two established energy gaps and identified another feature as presumably originating from an additional large superconducting gap. A further conductivity feature could be associated with a resonant state.