Security management of mutually trusted domains through cooperation of defensive technologies

A number of defensive technologies have been proposed for the prevention of security threats. However, these defensive technologies are implemented independently without cooperation among various network domains. In this paper, different administrative networks are leagued to form a federative network environment called a trusted domain. From the perspective of a network manager, there is a need to integrate diverse technologies into an effective defensive system among mutually trusted domains. An imperative task for security management is to put in place a shared defensive mechanism, or protective shield, for multiple domains. A cooperative approach to provide such a shared defensive system is presented with integration of both intra‐domain and inter‐domain defensive mechanisms. The simulation results show that, through sharing the defensive information, the firewall system can successfully detect and filter the repeated intrusions. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Impact of preanneal process on threshold voltage of MOS transistors for trench DRAM

As the first step of DRAM manufacture, preanneal process plays an important role in determining the threshold voltage variation. It is found that the higher trans-1,2-dichloroethene flow in pad oxide growth and the higher nitrogen flow in high-temperature annealing step would respectively engender a lower boron segregation coefficient and higher nitridation of the oxide, both modify the boron distribution in the substrate and consequently the behavior of the threshold voltage. As the feature size of DRAM devices enter nanometer regime, besides gate oxidation, ion implantation and related thermal processes, the impact of preanneal process condition should be prudentially taken into consideration for rigorous control of the threshold voltage in the advanced DRAM production.     

A study of diffusion in poly(ethyleneglycol)-gelatin based semi-interpenetrating networks for use in wound healing

Semi-interpenetrating networks (sIPNs) designed to mimic extracellular matrix via covalent crosslinking of poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate in the presence of gelatin have been shown to aid in wound healing, particularly when loaded with soluble factors. Ideal systems for tissue repair permit an effective release of therapeutic agents and flow of nutrients to proliferating cells. Appropriate network characterization can, consequently, be used to convey an understanding of the mass transfer kinetics necessary for materials to aid in the wound healing process. Solute transport from and through sIPNs has not yet been thoroughly evaluated. In the current study, the diffusivity of growth factors and nutrients through the polymeric system was determined. Transport of keratinocyte growth factor was modeled by treating the sIPN as a plane sheet into which the protein was loaded. The diffusion coefficient was determined to be 4.86 × 10⁻⁹ ± 1.86 × 10⁻¹² cm²/s. Glucose transport was modeled as flow through a semi-permeable membrane. Using lag-time analysis, the diffusion coefficient was calculated to be 2.25 × 10⁻⁶ ± 1.98 × 10⁻⁷ cm²/s. The results were evaluated in conjunction with previous studies on controlled drug release from sIPNs. As expected from Einstein-Stokes equation, diffusivity decreased as molecular size increased. The results offer insight into the structure-function design paradigm and show that release from the polymeric system is diffusion controlled, rather than dissolution controlled.     

Phase-shifting algorithms for electronic speckle pattern interferometry

A set of innovative phase-shifting algorithms developed to facilitate metrology based on electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI) are presented. The theory of a phase-shifting algorithm, called a (5,1) algorithm, that takes five phase-shifted intensity maps before a specimen is deformed and one intensity map after a specimen is deformed is presented first. Because a high-speed camera can be used to record the dynamic image of the specimen, this newly developed algorithm has the potential to retain the phase-shifting capability for ESPI in dynamic measurements. Also shown is an algorithm called a (1,5) algorithm that takes five phase-shifted intensity maps after the specimen is deformed. In addition, a direct-correlation algorithm was integrated with these newly developed (5,1) or (1,5) algorithms to form DC-(5,1) and DC-(1,5) algorithms, which are shown to improve significantly the quality of the phase maps. The theoretical and experimental aspects of these two newly developed techniques, which can extend ESPI to areas such as high-speed dynamic measurements, are examined in detail.     

Terahertz Microchip for Illicit Drug Detection

To accurately detect minute amounts of substances without disturbing the surroundings of target molecules has been a major goal in bioanalytical technology. Here by integrating an optoelectronic terahertz (THz) microsource into a glass-substrated microchip within the near-field distance, we demonstrate a compact, label-free, noninvasive, and sensitive microbiosensing system with low-power consumption. The demonstrated THz microchip allows us to locally specify various illicit drug powders with weights of nanograms, with a promising future for rapid identification of the static status or even the dynamics of various biomolecules     

Robustness of periodic trajectories

A robustness problem for periodic trajectories is considered. A nonautonomous system with a periodic solution is given. The problem is to decide whether a stable periodic solution remains in a neighborhood of the nominal periodic solution when the dynamics of the system is perturbed. The case with a structured dynamic perturbation is considered. This makes the problem a nontrivial generalization of a classical problem in the theory of dynamical systems. A solution to the robustness problem will be obtained by using a variational system obtained by linearizing the system dynamics along a trajectory, which is uncertain but within the prespecified neighborhood of the nominal trajectory. This gives rise to robustness conditions that can be solved using integral quadratic constraints for linear time periodic systems.     

Correction of MR kappa-space data corrupted by spike noise

Magnetic resonance images are reconstructed from digitized raw data, which are collected in the spatial-frequency domain (also called kappa-space). Occasionally, single or multiple data points in the k-space data are corrupted by spike noise, causing striation artifacts in images. Thresholding methods for detecting corrupted data points can fail because of small alterations, especially for data points in the low spatial frequency area where the k-space variation is large. Restoration of corrupted data points using interpolations of neighboring pixels can give incorrect results. We propose a Fourier transform method for detecting and restoring corrupted data points using a window filter derived from the striation-artifact structure in an image or an intermediate domain. The method provides an analytical solution for the alteration at each corrupted data point. It can effectively restore corrupted kappa-space data, removing striation artifacts in images, provided that the following three conditions are satisfied. First, a region of known signal distribution (for example, air background) is visible in either the image or the intermediate domain so that it can be selected using a window filter. Second, multiple spikes are separated by the full-width at half-maximum of the point spread function for the window filter. Third, the magnitude of a spike is larger than the minimum detectable value determined by the window filter and the standard deviation of kappa-space random noise.     

Anomalous Pr Ordering and Structural Analysis for Oxygenated Tetragonal 1212 Compound Pr1.5Ba1.5Cu3O7.2

Magnetic measurement and powder X-ray Rietveld analysis are performed on oxygenated Pr _1.5 Ba _1.5 Cu ₃ O _7.2 cuprate. This tetragonal compound with lattice parameters a = 0.38916 nm and c = 1.16177 nm is found to form the TlBa ₂ CaCu ₂ O ₇ 1212-type structure when written as Cu[Ba _1.5 Pr _0.5 ]PrCu ₂ O _7.2. Low temperature magnetic data indicate that anomalous Pr order temperature T _N (Pr) decreases from 18 K for orthorhombic PrBa ₂ Cu ₃ O _6.9 to 10.5 K for Pr _1.5 Ba _1.5 Cu ₃ O _7.2. The increasing Pr-O bond length with decreasing T _N indicates that Pr ordering is closely correlated with the wave function overlap between Pr-4f orbital and O-2p orbital in the CuO ₂ bi-layers.     

Proteolytic cleavage and activation of PAK2 during UV irradiation-induced apoptosis in A431 cells

Exposure of mammalian cells to ultraviolet (UV) light elicits a cellular response and can also lead to apoptotic cell death. In this report, we show that a 36-kDa myelin basic protein (MBP) kinase detected by an in-gel kinase assay can be dramatically activated during the early stages of UV irradiation-triggered apoptosis of A431 cells. Immunoblot analysis revealed that this 36-kDa MBP kinase could be recognized by an antibody against the C-terminal regions of a family of p21Cdc42/Rac-activated kinases (PAKs). By using this antibody and a PAK2-specific antibody against the N-terminal region of PAK2 as studying tools, we further demonstrated that UV irradiation caused cleavage of PAK2 to generate a 36-kDa C-terminal catalytic fragment and a 30-kDa N-terminal fragment in A431 cells. The appearance of the 36-kDa C-terminal catalytic fragment of PAK2 matched exactly with the activation of the 36-kDa MBP kinase in A431 cells upon UV irradiation. In addition, UV irradiation also led to activation of CPP32/caspase-3, but not ICH-1L/caspase-2 and ICE/caspase-1, in A431 cells and the kinetics of activation of CPP32/caspase-3 appeared to correlate well with that of DNA fragmentation and of cleavage/activation of PAK2, respectively. Moreover, blockage of activation of CPP32/caspase-3 by pretreating the cells with two specific tetrapeptidic inhibitors for caspases (Ac-DEVD-cho and Ac-YVAD-cmk) could significantly attenuate the extent of cleavage/activation of PAK2 induced by UV irradiation. Collectively, the results demonstrate that cleavage and activation of PAK2 can be induced during the early stages of UV irradiation-triggered apoptosis and indicate the involvement of CPP32/caspase-3 in this process.