A Secure Neuromemristive Primitive to Mitigate Correlation Power Analysis on SHA-3 Hash Function

Passing messages to soldiers on the battle field, conducting online banking, and downloading files on the internet are very different applications that all share one thing in common, concerns over security of the data being processed. Data security depends on the cryptographic systems that take into account both the algorithmic weakness and the weaknesses of the hardware devices they are implemented on. The current dominant hardware design medium is complementary metal-oxide-semi-conductor (CMOS). CMOS has been shown to leak more power as the technology node size decreases. The leaked power has a strong correlation with the bits being manipulated inside a device. These power leakages have brought on a class of power analysis that is able to extract secret information being processed in the algorithm with far less computational power than brute force guessing. Recently, many hardware designs have been proposed which have shown resistance against different forms of power analysis by changing hardware layouts; however, these designs are realized in the same technology, CMOS, that causes the side channel attack problem. There are many emerging technologies that are becoming more practical to implement in conjunction with CMOS. Of these, neuromemristive systems have two characteristics that can be exploited to prevent side channel attacks: low power operation and stochastic behavior. Attacks were conducted on both CMOS and neuromemrisitve based mitigations of the SHA-3 algorithm. In this thesis, digital side channel attack mitigations are created to exploit dual-rail logic. A secure neuromemristive primitive is designed using neural logic blocks that, to the best of our knowledge, have not been considered by others in mitigation of power analysis. Also, an in-depth analysis of power attacks on linear functions compared to typical non-linear attack points is conducted. Metrics such as number of power traces used for the Correlation Power Analysis (CPA), correlation coefficients, confidence ratios, power consumption, and transistor count were used to compare circuit performance. Success rate of guessing a key during SHA-3 operations, while configured as a MAC, was used as a system benchmark. It was found that CMOS is effective in countermeasures when masking linear functions, with the ability to use current standard cells, in ASIC design. If reconfigurable circuits are considered, the neuromemristive circuit had the overall best mitigation strength with almost complete decoupling of input data to power dissipated; moreover, this design offered low power operation and small form factor compared to the original circuit

Effect of food-related behavioral activation therapy on food intake and the environmental impact of the diet: results from the MooDFOOD prevention trial

This is the final version. Available on open access from Springer via the DOI in this recordPurpose: Food-based dietary guidelines are proposed to not only improve diet quality, but to also reduce the environmental impact of diets. The aim of our study was to investigate whether food-related behavioral activation therapy (F-BA) applying Mediterranean-style dietary guidelines altered food intake and the environmental impact of the diet in overweight adults with subsyndromal symptoms of depression. Methods: In total 744 adults who either received the F-BA intervention (F-BA group) or no intervention (control group) for 12 months were included in this analysis. Food intake data were collected through a food frequency questionnaire at baseline and after 6 and 12 months. Greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), land use (LU), and fossil energy use (FEU) estimates from life-cycle assessments and a weighted score of the three (pReCiPe score) were used to estimate the environmental impact of each individual diet at each timepoint. Results: The F-BA group reported increased intakes of vegetables (19.7 g/day; 95% CI 7.8–31.6), fruit (23.0 g/day; 9.4–36.6), fish (7.6 g/day; 4.6–10.6), pulses/legumes (4.0 g/day; 1.6–6.5) and whole grains (12.7 g/day; 8.0–17.5), and decreased intake of sweets/extras (− 6.8 g/day; − 10.9 to − 2.8) relative to control group. This effect on food intake resulted in no change in GHGE, LU, and pReCiPe score, but a relative increase in FEU by 1.6 MJ/day (0.8, 2.4). Conclusions: A shift towards a healthier Mediterranean-style diet does not necessarily result in a diet with reduced environmental impact in a real-life setting. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov. Number of identification: NCT02529423. August 2015.European Union FP7National Institute for Health Research (NIHR

Clinical manifestations of new versus recrudescent malaria infections following anti-malarial drug treatment

Background Distinguishing new from recrudescent infections in post-treatment episodes of malaria is standard in anti-malarial drug efficacy trials. New infections are not considered malaria treatment failures and as a result, the prevention of subsequent episodes of malaria infection is not reported as a study outcome. However, in moderate and high transmission settings, new infections are common and the ability of a short-acting medication to cure an initial infection may be outweighed by its inability to prevent the next imminent infection. The clinical benefit of preventing new infections has never been compared to that of curing the initial infection. Methods Children enrolled in a sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine efficacy study in Blantyre, Malawi from 1998–2004 were prospectively evaluated. Six neutral microsatellites were used to classify new and recrudescent infections in children aged less than 10 years with recurrent malaria infections. Children from the study who did not experience recurrent parasitaemia comprised the baseline group. The odds of fever and anaemia, the rate of haemoglobin recovery and time to recurrence were compared among the groups. Results Fever and anemia were more common among children with parasitaemia compared to those who remained infection-free throughout the study period. When comparing recrudescent vs. new infections, the incidence of fever was not statistically different. However, children with recrudescent infections had a less robust haematological recovery and also experienced recurrence sooner than those whose infection was classified as new. Conclusions The results of this study confirm the paramount importance of providing curative treatment for all malaria infections. Although new and recrudescent infections caused febrile illnesses at a similar rate, recurrence due to recrudescent infection did have a worsened haemological outcome than recurrence due to new infections. Local decision-makers should take into account the results of genotyping to distinguish new from recrudescent infections when determining treatment policy on a population level. It is appropriate to weigh recrudescent malaria more heavily than new infection in assessing treatment efficacy

Biologische Streifzüge; eine gemeinverständliche Einführung in die allgemeine Biologie.

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