Academia Sinica

About: Academia Sinica is a facility organization based out in Taipei, Taiwan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Gene. The organization has 52086 authors who have published 65998 publications receiving 1728114 citations. The organization is also known as: Central Research Academy.

Web application security assessment by fault injection and behavior monitoring

Abstract: As a large and complex application platform, the World Wide Web is capable of delivering a broad range of sophisticated applications. However, many Web applications go through rapid development phases with extremely short turnaround time, making it difficult to eliminate vulnerabilities. Here we analyze the design of Web application security assessment mechanisms in order to identify poor coding practices that render Web applications vulnerable to attacks such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting. We describe the use of a number of software-testing techniques (including dynamic analysis, black-box testing, fault injection, and behavior monitoring), and suggest mechanisms for applying these techniques to Web applications. Real-world situations are used to test a tool we named the Web Application Vulnerability and Error Scanner (WAVES, an open-source project available at http://waves.sourceforge.net) and to compare it with other tools. Our results show that WAVES is a feasible platform for assessing Web application security.

Central or peripheral systolic or pulse pressure: which best relates to target organs and future mortality?

Abstract: ObjectiveTo examine the relationship between brachial and central carotid pressures and target organ indices at baseline and their association with future mortality.MethodsWe examined, cross-sectionally and longitudinally, the relations of baseline systolic and pulse pressures in central (calibrated

Mechanism for linear and nonlinear optical effects in β-BaB 2 O 4 crystals

Abstract: Electronic structure calculations of $\ensuremath{\beta}\ensuremath{-}{\mathrm{BaB}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{4}$ from first principles are performed based on a plane-wave pseudopotential method, and the linear optical properties are then obtained. The static second-harmonic generation (SHG) coefficients are calculated at the independent-particle level with a formalism originally given by Aversa and Sipe [Phys. Rev. B 52, 14 636 (1995)] and later rearranged by Rashkeev et al. [Phys. Rev. B 57, 3905 (1998)] to explicitly show Kleinman's symmetry. The formalism is improved to be more efficient in reducing the $k$ points necessary for convergence. A real-space atom-cutting method is suggested to analyze the respective contributions of various transitions among ions and ion groups to optical response. The contribution of the cation Ba to SHG effects is found to be not important but non-negligible, while its contribution to birefringence is negligible.

The amylose content in rice endosperm is related to the post-transcriptional regulation of the waxy gene.

Abstract: The waxy (Wx) gene of rice encodes a granule-bound starch synthase (GBSS = waxy protein) required for the synthesis of amylose in endosperm. An analysis of Wx transcripts, Wx protein, and amylose content of 31 rice cultivars revealed that endosperm amylose and Wx protein contents are correlated with the ability of the cultivar to excise intron I from the leader sequence of the Wx transcript. Cultivars with high endosperm amylose content (group I) contain high levels of amylose, Wx protein, and the mature 2.3 kb Wx mRNA. Cultivars with intermediate amylose content (group II) produce substantial amounts of a large 3.3 kb Wx pre-mRNA, with intron I still present, in addition to the mature Wx mRNA, and intermediate levels of Wx protein. Glutinous rice (group III cultivars) contains no amylose, no Wx protein, and no mature Wx mRNA; only the incompletely spliced 3.3 kb Wx pre-mRNA is present in group III cultivars. Based on these results, it is hypothesized that the amylose content of rice endosperm is regulated at the level of Wx transcript processing, and, more specifically, at the stage of intron I excision from the Wx pre-mRNA.

A SM-like Higgs near 125 GeV in low energy SUSY: a comparative study for MSSM and NMSSM

Abstract: Motivated by the recent LHC hints of a Higgs boson around 125 GeV, we assume a SM-like Higgs with the mass 123-127 GeV and study its implication in low energy SUSY by comparing the MSSM and NMSSM. We consider various experimental constraints at 2 sigma level (including the muon g - 2 and the dark matter relic density) and perform a comprehensive scan over the parameter space of each model. Then in the parameter space which is allowed by current experimental constraints and also predicts a SM-like Higgs in 123-127 GeV, we examine the properties of the sensitive parameters (like the top squark mass and the trilinear coupling A(t)) and calculate the rates of the di-photon signal and the VV* (V = W, Z) signals at the LHC. Our typical findings are: (i) In the MSSM the top squark and A(t) must be large and thus incur some fine-tuning, which can be much ameliorated in the NMSSM; (ii) In the MSSM a light stau is needed to enhance the di-photon rate of the SM-like Higgs to exceed its SM prediction, while in the NMSSM the di-photon rate can be readily enhanced in several ways; (iii) In the MSSM the signal rates of pp -> h -> VV* at the LHC are never enhanced compared with their SM predictions, while in the NMSSM they may get enhanced significantly; (iv) A large part of the parameter space so far survived will be soon covered by the expected XENON100(2012) sensitivity (especially for the NMSSM).