Bruce Schneier
Schneier on Security
A blog covering security and security technology.
« Privacy in the Age of Persistence | Main | Perverse Security Incentives »
February 27, 2009
Friday Squid Blogging: Researching Squid Bacteria
New research:
Intriguingly, that gene is the one that enables the bacteria to form a biofilm, the tightly woven matrix of "slime" which allows bacterial colonies to behave in many ways like a single organism. "The biofilm might be critical for adhering to the light organ, or telling the host that the correct symbiont has arrived," says Mandel.Biofilms also seem to be important in another kind of bacterial invasion of animals: disease. Some normally harmless lung bacteria can turn into a nasty infection in humans by forming a biofilm, for example, while many immune defences are aimed at preventing biofilms. And certain bacteria, like Vibrio fischeri, typically invade only certain species and tissues.
Posted on February 27, 2009 at 4:01 PM • 3 Comments • View Blog Reactions
To receive these entries once a month by e-mail, sign up for the Crypto-Gram Newsletter.
Fish and other aquatic species have bioslime on their skins/scales for infection protection. Ask any tropical fish owner! This is just an evolutionary step further.
Posted by: Old Bogus at February 27, 2009 9:12 PM
The slides posted at NIST were useful. I'm encouraged that NIST will allow submitters to tweak security parameters for round 2 -- and NIST generally seems to have thought more deeply about security/performance tradeoffs since the AES process.
Yay that Daniel Bernstein highlighted a faster variant of CubeHash at the end of his slides. CubeHash is elegant enough that I didn't want to see it go down easily just because of his hyperconservative choices. :)
In an apparent concession to formality or non-U.S. tastes, the MD6 presentation is missing the pumpkins from this earlier, otherwise similar version:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/cis/md6/docs/...
This may just be my shallow exposure to crypto papers showing -- it also seems like there's more rigor than in the past about evaluating whether attacks really cost less than brute force (using time*memory or whatever metric).
Posted by: Anon at March 1, 2009 1:14 AM
Love that I just launched into a diatribe about the SHA-3 candidate conference (or the materials I could read) without any lead-in. Here's the missing introduction: Hey everybody, here's my diatribe about the SHA-3 candidate conference!
Posted by: Anon at March 1, 2009 1:16 AM
Post a comment
Schneier.com is a personal website. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of BT.
|
| Blog Menu |
SearchBlog Home Page
Archives by Date2009 J F M A M J J A S O N
 |
| Latest Book |
|
| Syndication |
|
Full Text Feed
Excerpts Feed |
| Translations |
|
German
Italian (selected entries) |
| Crypto-Gram Newsletter |
|
If you prefer to receive Bruce Schneier's comments on security as a monthly e-mail digest, subscribe to Schneier on Security's sister publication, Crypto-Gram.
read more |
Comments