Security issues in hybrid networks with a satellite component

Satellites are expected to play an increasingly important role in providing broadband Internet services over long distances in an efficient manner. Most future networks will be hybrid in nature - having terrestrial nodes interconnected by satellite links. Security is an important concern in such networks, since the satellite segment is susceptible to a host of attacks, including eavesdropping, session hijacking and data corruption. In this article we address the issue of securing communication in satellite networks. We discuss various security attacks that are possible in hybrid satellite networks, and survey the different solutions proposed to secure data communications in these networks. We look at the performance problems arising in hybrid networks due to security additions like Internet security protocol (IPSec) or secure socket layer (SSL), and suggest solutions to performance-related problems. We also point out important drawbacks in the proposed solutions, and suggest a hierarchical key-management approach for adding data security to group communication in hybrid networks.     

Die adiabatische Kompressibilität von Polyelektrolyten: Bindung von Na+-Ionen an die mehrwertige Stelle der Polymerketten

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Die adiabatische Kompressibilit?t von Polyelektrolyten: Bindung von Na+-Ionen an die mehrwertige Stelle der Polymerketten

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Adiabatic compressibility of polyelectrolytes in aqueous solutions. II. Poly(4-vinyl-N-n-butylpyridinium bromide)

The adiabatic compressibility for two samples (F-1 with DP-3748 and F-2 with DP-2114) of poly(4-vinyl-N-n-butylpyridinium bromide) in aqueous solution has been determined from ultrasonic velocity and density data. The sample (F-1) with the higher degree of polymerization shows comparatively higher velocity and density in solution. However, the evidence for the difference in compressibility is not very decisive. The apparent molal volume ΦV₂ and apparent molal compressibility ΦK₂ for F-1 are found to be slightly higher than for F-2. In aqueous solution, the decrement of adiabatic compressibility per unit concentration, (β₁ ? β)/c, is found to be almost constant throughout the entire concentration range, whereas in the presence of excess added electrolyte (1.0M KBr solution), the compressibility decrement shows a decrease with dilution. The latter values are lower than those found in water, since the molecules, in the presence of excess electrolyte, are coiled up more and are less compressible. The ΦV₂ and ΦK₂ values in water are constant throughout the entire concentration range, as the free counterions formed on dissociation in the dilute region are not solvated and hence contribute little to the compressibility. On the other hand, in the presence of excess KBr (1.0M), the ΦV₂ and ΦK₂ values show a sharp decrease with increase of polyelectrolyte concentration and finally attain a constant value. This is explained by the fact that because of the formation of a charge-transfer complex between the bromide ion and the polycation, more than the equivalent number of bromide ions is bound, leaving free an equal amount of K⁺ ions which are solvated and cause the lowering of apparent volumes and compressibilities. Condensation of charges begins at a certain polyelectrolyte concentration, and no further increase of K⁺ ions is observed. A special situation arises in 0.1M KBr solution. The ΦV₂ and ΦK₂ values at first increase sharply with increase of polyelectrolyte concentration, but then level off to attain a constant value, at comparatively high concentration. In 2.0% poly(4-vinyl-N-n-butylpyridinium bromide) solution, the concentration of polymer repeat unit (0.08M) is almost equal to the concentration of the added electrolyte (0.1M KBr) used to suppress dissociation. As the polyelectrolyte concentration in 0.1M KBr solution is progressively decreased, more bromide ions are made available for forming the charge-transfer complex with the polycation, leaving the K⁺ ions free to contribute to the compressibility.     

Adiabatic Compressibility and Apparent Molal Volume of Ionic Monomers,Polymers, and Copolymers in Aqueous and Nonaqueous Solutions

Abstract

In this review we are primarily concerned with the use of apparent molal volume and apparent molal compressibility of polyelectrolytes along with their corresponding monomers in elucidating the ion-ion and ion-solvent interactions in aqueous and nonaqueous solutions. Though the main emphasis will be given to synthetic polyelectrolytes, the biochemical significant (natural) ones are not excluded altogether. It is hoped that this information will provide researchers with up-to-date knowledge of the subject matter and give a new impetus to further study on the subject. Most of the works on molal volumes and ultrasonic velocity measurements were confined up to the middle sixties to solutions of simple electrolytes. These works gave valuable information about the structure of solutions as well as about the fundamental properties of solutions.     

An information theoretic criterion for evaluating the quality of 3-D reconstructions from video

Even though numerous algorithms exist for estimating the three-dimensional (3-D) structure of a scene from its video, the solutions obtained are often of unacceptable quality. To overcome some of the deficiencies, many application systems rely on processing more data than necessary, thus raising the question: how is the accuracy of the solution related to the amount of data processed by the algorithm? Can we automatically recognize situations where the quality of the data is so bad that even a large number of additional observations will not yield the desired solution? Previous efforts to answer this question have used statistical measures like second order moments. They are useful if the estimate of the structure is unbiased and the higher order statistical effects are negligible, which is often not the case. This paper introduces an alternative information-theoretic criterion for evaluating the quality of a 3-D reconstruction. The accuracy of the reconstruction is judged by considering the change in mutual information (MI) (termed as the incremental MI) between a scene and its reconstructions. An example of 3-D reconstruction from a video sequence using optical flow equations and known noise distribution is considered and it is shown how the MI can be computed from first principles. We present simulations on both synthetic and real data to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed criterion.     

Identification of humans using gait

We propose a view-based approach to recognize humans from their gait. Two different image features have been considered: the width of the outer contour of the binarized silhouette of the walking person and the entire binary silhouette itself. To obtain the observation vector from the image features, we employ two different methods. In the first method, referred to as the indirect approach, the high-dimensional image feature is transformed to a lower dimensional space by generating what we call the frame to exemplar (FED) distance. The FED vector captures both structural and dynamic traits of each individual. For compact and effective gait representation and recognition, the gait information in the FED vector sequences is captured in a hidden Markov model (HMM). In the second method, referred to as the direct approach, we work with the feature vector directly (as opposed to computing the FED) and train an HMM. We estimate the HMM parameters (specifically the observation probability B) based on the distance between the exemplars and the image features. In this way, we avoid learning high-dimensional probability density functions. The statistical nature of the HMM lends overall robustness to representation and recognition. The performance of the methods is illustrated using several databases.     

Statistical bias in 3-D reconstruction from a monocular video.

The present state-of-the-art in computing the error statistics in three-dimensional (3-D) reconstruction from video concentrates on estimating the error covariance. A different source of error which has not received much attention is the fact that the reconstruction estimates are often significantly statistically biased. In this paper, we derive a precise expression for the bias in the depth estimate, based on the continuous (differentiable) version of structure from motion (SfM). Many SfM algorithms, or certain portions of them, can be posed in a linear least-squares (LS) framework Ax = b. Examples include initialization procedures for bundle adjustment or algorithms that alternately estimate depth and camera motion. It is a well-known fact that the LS estimate is biased if the system matrix A is noisy. In SfM, the matrix A contains point correspondences, which are always difficult to obtain precisely; thus, it is expected that the structure and motion estimates in such a formulation of the problem would be biased. Existing results on the minimum achievable variance of the SfM estimator are extended by deriving a generalized Cramer-Rao lower bound. A detailed analysis of the effect of various camera motion parameters on the bias is presented. We conclude by presenting the effect of bias compensation on reconstructing 3-D face models from rendered images.     

"Shape activity": a continuous-state HMM for moving/deforming shapes with application to abnormal activity detection.

The aim is to model "activity" performed by a group of moving and interacting objects (which can be people, cars, or different rigid components of the human body) and use the models for abnormal activity detection. Previous approaches to modeling group activity include co-occurrence statistics (individual and joint histograms) and dynamic Bayesian networks, neither of which is applicable when the number of interacting objects is large. We treat the objects as point objects (referred to as "landmarks") and propose to model their changing configuration as a moving and deforming "shape" (using Kendall's shape theory for discrete landmarks). A continuous-state hidden Markov model is defined for landmark shape dynamics in an activity. The configuration of landmarks at a given time forms the observation vector, and the corresponding shape and the scaled Euclidean motion parameters form the hidden-state vector. An abnormal activity is then defined as a change in the shape activity model, which could be slow or drastic and whose parameters are unknown. Results are shown on a real abnormal activity-detection problem involving multiple moving objects.