G(its)(2) VSR: An Information Theoretic Secure Verifiable Secret Redistribution Protocol for Long-term Archival Storage

Protocols for secure archival storage are becoming increasingly important as the use of digital storage for sensitive documents is gaining wider practice. Wong et al.[8] combined verifiable secret sharing with proactive secret sharing without reconstruction and proposed a verifiable secret redistribution protocol for long term storage. However their protocol requires that each of the receivers is honest during redistribution. We proposed[3] an extension to their protocol wherein we relaxed the requirement that all the recipients should be honest to the condition that only a simple majority amongst the recipients need to be honest during the re(distribution) processes. Further, both of these protocols make use of Feldman's approach for achieving integrity during the (redistribution processes. In this paper, we present a revised version of our earlier protocol, and its adaptation to incorporate Pedersen's approach instead of Feldman's thereby achieving information theoretic secrecy while retaining integrity guarantees.

Precision and long-term stability of clumped-isotope analysis of CO2 using a small-sector isotope ratio mass spectrometer

RATIONALE The ratio of the measured abundance of 13C18O bonding CO2 to its stochastic abundance, prescribed by the delta 13C and delta 18O values from a carbonate mineral, is sensitive to its growth temperature. Recently, clumped-isotope thermometry, which uses this ratio, has been adopted as a new tool to elucidate paleotemperatures quantitatively. METHODS Clumped isotopes in CO2 were measured with a small-sector isotope ratio mass spectrometer. CO2 samples digested from several kinds of calcium carbonates by phosphoric acid at 25 degrees C were purified using both cryogenic and gas-chromatographic separations, and their isotopic composition (delta 13C, delta 18O, Delta 47, Delta 48 and Delta 49 values) were then determined using a dual-inlet Delta XP mass spectrometer. RESULTS The internal precisions of the single gas Delta 47 measurements were 0.005 and 0.02 parts per thousand (1 SE) for the optimum and the routine analytical conditions, respectively, which are comparable with those obtained using a MAT 253 mass spectrometer. The long-term variations in the Delta 47 values for the in-house working standard and the heated CO2 gases since 2007 were close to the routine, single gas uncertainty while showing seasonal-like periodicities with a decreasing trend. Unlike the MAT 253, the Delta XP did not show any significant relationship between the Delta 47 and delta 47 values. CONCLUSIONS The Delta XP gave results that were approximately as precise as those of the MAT 253 for clumped-isotope analysis. The temporal stability of the Delta XP seemed to be lower, although an advantage of the Delta XP was that no dependency of delta 47 on Delta 47 was found. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.