The aim of speech scrambling algorithms is to transform clear speech into an unintelligible signal so that it is difficult to decrypt it in the absence of the key. Most of the existing speech scrambling algorithms tend to retain considerable residual intelligibility in the scrambled speech and are easy to break. Typically, a speech scrambling algorithm involves permutation of speech segments in time, frequency or time-frequency domain or permutation of transform coefficients of each speech block. The time-frequency algorithms have given very low residual intelligibility and have attracted much attention. We first study the uniform filter bank based time-frequency scrambling algorithm with respect to the block length and number of channels. We use objective distance measures to estimate the departure of the scrambled speech from the clear speech. Simulations indicate that the distance measures increase as we increase the block length and the number of chan­nels. This algorithm derives its security only from the time-frequency segment permutation and it has been estimated that the effective number of permutations which give a low residual intelligibility is much less than the total number of possible permutations. In order to increase the effective number of permutations, we propose a time-frequency scrambling algorithm based on wavelet packets. By using different wavelet packet filter banks at the analysis and synthesis end, we add an extra level of security since the eavesdropper has to choose the correct analysis filter bank, correctly rearrange the time-frequency segments, and choose the correct synthesis bank to get back the original speech signal. Simulations performed with this algorithm give distance measures comparable to those obtained for the uniform filter bank based algorithm. Finally, we introduce the 2-channel perfect reconstruction circular convolution filter bank and give a simple method for its design. The filters designed using this method satisfy the paraunitary properties on a discrete equispaced set of points in the frequency domain.

We report on the scrambling performance and focal-ratio-degradation (FRD) of various octagonal and rectangular fibers considered for MAROON-X. Our measurements demonstrate the detrimental effect of thin claddings on the FRD of octagonal and rectangular fibers and that stress induced at the connectors can further increase the FRD. We find that fibers with a thick, round cladding show low FRD. We further demonstrate that the scrambling behavior of non-circular fibers is often complex and introduce a new metric to fully capture non-linear scrambling performance, leading to much lower scrambling gain values than are typically reported in the literature (<1000 compared to 10,000 or more). We find that scrambling gain measurements for small-core, non-circular fibers are often speckle dominated if the fiber is not agitated.

This paper proposes a novel analysis of the Russian OVS construction and argues that the parametric variation in the availability of OVS cross-linguistically depends on the type of relative interpretative argument prominence that a language encodes via syntactic structure. When thematic and information-structural prominence relations do not coincide, only one of them can be structurally/linearly represented. The relation that is not structurally/linearly encoded must be made visible at the PF interface either via prosody or morphology.

As the information technology develops rapidly, the software industry also keep growing and growing. Huge amount of capital and intelligence are being invested in developing the new software. However, it has been such a big negative impact on all software developers caused by the illegal reproduction and distribution. Therefore, besides the copyright regulations, software companies have always been concentrated on how to prevent their software from being illegally reproduced by adding protection codes. As most of the companies are not willing to reveal their protection methods, it is hard to have any chance to learn from each other's techniques and experiences. As a result, this thesis is really concentrated on collecting and categorizing as many as possible the protection coding technologies and in the end, analyzing and applying those to our own programs.

This report adresses why the currently used scrambling standard CSA needs a replacement. Proposed replacements to CSA are analyzed to some extent, and an alternative replacement (AES128) is analyzed. One alternative being the CSA3, and the other being the CISSA algorithm. Both of the proposed algorithms use the AES algorithm as a base. The CSA3 combines AES128 with a secret cipher, the XRC, while CISSA uses the AES cipher in a feedback mode. The different utilizations makes CSA3 hardware friendly and CISSA software friendly. The implementation of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is analyzed for a 128 bit key length based design, and a specific implementation is presented.

Research based on children's performance on standard false-belief reasoning tasks indicates that theory of mind (ToM) understanding, (i.e. the ability to represent, conceptualize, and reason about one's own and others' mental states) is initially absent and develops around the age of four years (Wellman et al., 2001). Recently, researchers have investigated the relationship between language and ToM development. According to de Villiers & Pyers (2002) understanding of embedded complement structures is necessary for children to be able to understand false belief, because both require the ability to handle misrepresentation. Following Perner (1991), Smith et al. (2003) argued (contra De Villiers & Pyers) that the developmental link between embedded clauses and false belief reasoning skills stems instead from a requirement to handle metarepresentation. They proposed that children's aptitude with double-event relative clauses predicts their false-belief reasoning ability. Previous research on linguistic precursors of false belief understanding has focused largely on English speaking children. The current research hypothesized that crosslinguistic differences in the emergence of ToM understanding could result because of the potential for a developmental link between ToM understanding and other linguistic properties (e.g. scrambling), found in free word order languages, such as Russian. The current research sought to determine whether there is a correlation between the development of false belief reasoning skills and the acquisition of relativization in monolingual Russian speaking children; and to find out whether the acquisition of scrambled word orders (e.g. OVS) is a better predictor of false belief reasoning in child Russian. The participants of the study were 36 monolingual Russian children: 18 3-year-olds (Mean age = 3;6) and 18 4-year-olds (Mean Age= 4;6). We assessed the children's false belief understanding using the unexpected contents task and the unexpected transfer task and their ability to handle relative clauses and scrambled (OVS) word order through a Truth-Value judgment (TVJ) act-out task (Crain & Thornton, 1998). Our results confirm the previously established link between age and false belief reasoning. However, the results failed to support previous findings regarding the status of relative clauses as a linguistic precursor for the development of False Belief reasoning. The results also failed to confirm our predictions regarding the privileged role of scrambling (i.e. OVS sentences) in Russian children's ToM development. Our findings suggest that OVS sentences might be more difficult for Russian children to handle compared to relative clauses with the canonical SVO order, regardless of age the Russian children performed better on relative clauses than on scrambled OVS sentences -- this leads us to conclude -- "Syntax is easy! Pragmatics is hard!" Also there were no age related differences in relation to either relative clauses or scrambled word order sentences. Additionally, for child Russian, de Villiers & Peyers proposal regarding the privileged role of embedded complement clauses as a linguistic precursor to TOM development cannot yet be ruled out.

The IEEE802.11 standard for wireless networks includes a Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol, which is a popular wireless secure communication stream cipher protocol approach to network security used to protect link-layer communications from eavesdropping and other attacks. It allows user to communicate with the user; sharing the public key over a network. It provides authentication and encrypted communications over unsecured channels. However, WEP protocol has an inherent security flaw. It is vulnerable to the various attacks, various experiments has proved that WEP fails to achieve its security goals. This thesis entails designing, evaluating and prototyping a wireless security infrastructure that can be used with the WEP protocol optionally, thus reducing the security vulnerabilities. We have studied the flaws of WEP and the reasons for their occurrence, and we provide the design and implementation of a novel scheme in Matlab and VHDL to improve the security of WEP in all aspects by a degree of 1000. The architecture was designed with a consideration for least increment in hardware, thus achieving power and cost efficiency. It also provides flexibility for optional implementation with the available technology by being able to be bypassed by the technology, which allows for non-replacement of existing hardware, common on both, the WEP and the proposed protocols, on the fly.

This thesis discusses linguistic constraints on scrambling and flexibility in word order in spoken Persian (Farsi) and presents a computational model for efficient implementation of these constraints for a subset of Persian. Linguistic phenomena which we have studies include local scrambling, long distance scrambling, extrapolation of clauses, topicalisation, case tendancy and the discourse marker ra. The work extends previous work on Persian based on Government and Binding (GB) theory by considering the pragmatic aspects of Persian Grammar and long distance scrambling.

Das Thema ist der Versuch einer vergleichenden Analyse von Scrambling im Deutschen und Koreanischen. Die Arbeit stellt hauptsächlich die Frage, ob Topik und Fokus als morphosyntaktische Merkmale der lexikalischen Elemente betrachtet werden können. Allgemein werden beide aus pragmatischer Sicht als kontext- bzw. informationsstrukturelle Merkmale angesehen. In Bezug auf Scrambling im Deutschen und Koreanischen wird - der lexikalischen Sicht (Bierwisch 1970, 86, 96, 97) folgend - diese Frage so beantwortet, dass die nominalen Merkmale der Satzglieder Topik und Fokus darstellen. Scrambling wird als eine Beschreibung der Dimensionierung des Paarbegriffes "Topik und Fokus" mit nominalen Elementen definiert. Das Scrambling wird von den morphosyntaktischen Merkmalen als Ausformung der kontinuierlichen Relativierungs-Merkmale "Topik und Fokus" bei dem nominalen funktionalen Kopf Determinator verursacht. Unter Scrambling werden die voneinander abhängigen Begriffe "Topik und Fokus" synta! ktisch aktualisiert. In dieser Arbeit werden "Topik und Fokus" durch die Entfernung der nominalen Elemente vom Prädikat graduell definiert. Das topikalste Element steht in der vom Prädikat entferntesten Position; das fokalste in der dem Prädikat nächsten. Im Satz erscheinen nominale Ausdrücke als Topik- und/oder Fokusträger. Diese nominalen Ausdrücke, z.B. die Nomina mit dem Artikel im Deutschen und mit dem Kasusmorphem im Koreanischen, bilden die Scramblingobjekte. Die deutschen Kasusträger (z.B. Artike l) kennzeichnen aber keine Topik- und/oder Fokusfunktion. In der gemischtköpfigen deutschen Sprache erscheinen links und rechts die nicht-nominalen Einheiten, z.B. Konjunktionen, finite Verben. Sie verkörpern eine Grenze für die Topik-Fokus-Graduierung in nominalen Satzgliedern. Im Deutschen ist daher langes und Multi-Scrambling nicht möglich. Im Gegensatz dazu treten in der rechtsköpfigen koreanischen Sprache die nicht-nominalen bzw. verbalen Elemente uniform am Ende des Satz! es auf, und Kasusträger im Koreanischen (Kasusmorpheme) fungieren als Topik- und/oder Fokusmarker bei Scrambling, was langes und mehrfaches Scrambling ermöglicht. / This research is the study of the comparative analysis of scrambling in German and Korean. The main question of this study is whether topic and focus can be considered as morphosyntactic features of lexical items. Generally, the two are regarded as context- or information-structural features from pragmatic view. As far as scrambling in German and Korean goes, the question is, according to the lexical view (Bierwisch 1970, 86, 96, 97), answered as the nominal features of the sentence elements describe topi c and focus. Scrambling is defined as a description of the dimension of the pair concept "topic and focus" with nominal elements. It is caused by the morphosyntactic features as form of the relative features "topic and focus" in the nominal functional head determinator. Under scrambling, the interdependent notions "topic and focus" are syntactically actualized. In this work, "topic and focus" is gradually defined by the distance of the nominal elements from the predicate. The ! most topical element stands in the most remote position from the predicate; the most focal element in the nearest position. The nominal expressions, for example, the nouns with the article in German or with the case morpheme in Korean, therefore form the scrambling objects. But the cases in German don't mark lexically the topic and/or focus function. In the head-mixed language like German, the non-nominal units, namely, conjunctions, and finite verbs, appear left and right. They embody a boundary on the t opic-focus-graduation in nominal elements. As a result in German long and multiple scrambling is impossible. By contrast, the non-nominal or verbal elements occur uniformly at the end of a sentence in the head-right language like Korean and the cases in Korean function as lexical topic and focus markers in scrambling, which enables long and multiple scrambling to be possible.

In großen Teilen der Welt verursachen intrazelluläre Parasiten der Spezies Leishmania schwerwiegende Infektionen beim Menschen. Die Exposition eines Phospholipids (Phosphatidylserin, PS) steht unter Verdacht Fresszellen zur Aufnahme der Parasiten zu stimulieren. Bisher ist die Regulation der Phospholipidverteilung in der Plasmamembran dieser Parasiten kaum erforscht. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde ein lipidtransportierender Proteinkomplex identifiziert, der einen wesentlichen Beitrag zur asymmetrischen Lipidverteilung in der Plasmamembran von Leishmania donovani leistet. Die Zerstörung des Komplexes führte zum Verlust des einwärts gerichteten Lipidtransports und zur Anreicherung von Phosphatidylethanolamin (PE) auf der Zelloberfläche des Parasiten. Diese veränderte Lipidasymmetrie hatte jedoch keinen Einfluss auf die Phagozytose durch Makrophagen. Darüber hinaus brachte die Untersuchung des Insektenstadiums (Promastigote) verschiedener Leishmania Spezies zu Tage, dass die Menge an PS unterhalb des Detektionslimits modernster Nachweisverfahren liegt. Des Weiteren konnte gezeigt werden, dass der Parasit über einen Scramblase-Mechanismus verfügt, der durch intrazelluläres Kalzium stimulierbar ist. Die Scramblase-Aktivität ist, im Gegensatz zu dem zuvor beschriebenen einwärts gerichteten Lipidtransport, energieunabhängig und ermöglicht die bidirektionale Translokation von fluoreszenzmarkiertem Phosphatidylcholin (PC), PE, PS und Sphingomyelin (SM). Dementsprechend konnte nach Kalziumstimulierung endogenes PE auch in der äußeren Lipidschicht der Plasmamembran detektiert werden, wobei deren Barrierefunktion nicht beeinträchtigt wurde. Diese Ergebnisse geben neue Einblicke in die dynamische Regulation der Lipidverteilung über die Plasmamembran des Parasiten und verdeutlichen, dass die Exposition von PS und PE nicht essentiell für das Eindringen der Leishmanien in die Wirtszellen ist. / The protozoan parasite Leishmania causes severe infections in humans throughout the world. Following the transmission via sand flies to its mammalian host the extracellular parasite has to gain entry into phagocytic cells to initiate a successful infection. Specific surface exposed phospholipids have been implicated in Leishmania macrophage-interaction, but the mecha-nisms controlling and regulating the plasma membrane lipid distribution remains to be eluci-dated. In the present work a lipid transporting protein complex was identified in Leishmania dono-vani which plays an essential role in maintaining an asymmetric lipid distribution across the plasma membrane. Loss of the protein complex abolishes the inward-directed lipid transport and thus e.g. to an increased cell surface exposure of phosphatidylethanolamine (PE). In spite of this altered lipid asymmetry the uptake by macrophages is unaffected. Moreover, Leishma-nia promastigotes of different species lack detectable amounts of phosphatidylserine (PS) although being infective. Furthermore, a scramblase activity following a cytosolic calcium signal was demonstrated. This scramblase mechanism facilitated, in contrast to the previous described inward directed lipid transport, the bidirectional movement of fluorescent lipid analogues of PC, PE, PS and SM in an energy-independent manner. In accordance with these findings endogenous PE was exposed to the outer plasma membrane leaflet following the Ca2+-signal, while the plasma membrane itself remained intact. These results provide novel insight into the dynamic regulation of the transbilayer lipid distri-bution across the parasite plasma membrane and reveal that exposure of PS and PE is not cru-cial for invasion of the host cell by Leishmania donovani promastigotes.