Lattice-based completely non-malleable PKE in the standard model

This paper presents ongoing work toward constructing efficient completely non-malleable public-key encryption scheme based on lattices in the standard (common reference string) model. An encryption scheme is completely non-malleable if it requires attackers to have negligible advantage, even if they are allowed to transform the public key under which the related message is encrypted. Ventre and Visconti proposed two inefficient constructions of completely non-malleable schemes, one in the common reference string model using non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs, and another using interactive encryption schemes. Recently, two efficient public-key encryption schemes have been proposed, both of them are based on pairing identity-based encryption.

Domain-specific application analysis for customized instruction identification

With the increasing importance of Application Domain Specific Processor (ADSP) design, a significant challenge is to identify special-purpose operations for implementation as a customized instruction. While many methodologies have been proposed for this purpose, they all work for a single algorithm chosen from the target application domain. Such algorithm-specific approaches are not suitable for designing instruction sets applicable to a whole family of related algorithms. For an entire range of related algorithms, this paper develops a methodology for identifying compound operations, as a basis for designing “domain-specific” Instruction Set Architectures (ISAs) that can efficiently run most of the algorithms in a given domain. Our methodology combines three different static analysis techniques to identify instruction sequences common to several related algorithms: identification of (non-branching) instruction sequences that occur commonly across the algorithms; identification of instruction sequences nested within iterative constructs that are thus executed frequently; and identification of commonly-occurring instruction sequences that span basic blocks. Choosing different combinations of these results enables us to design domain-specific special operations with different desired characteristics, such as performance or suitability as a library function. To demonstrate our approach, case studies are carried out for a family of thirteen string matching algorithms. Finally, the validity of our static analysis results is confirmed through independent dynamic analysis experiments and performance improvement measurements.

The Ash Burner

Growing up with his father in a small coastal town, all Ted knows about his mother is that she died when he was a boy. His father has brought them halfway across the world to start anew, but her absence defines and haunts their lives. When Ted meets Anthony and Claire, an intense friendship begins, carrying them to Sydney and university. They introduce him to poetry and art, and he feels a sense of belonging at last. But as the trio’s friendship deepens over the years, Ted must learn to negotiate the boundaries of love, and come to terms with a legacy of secrets and silence. Written with extraordinary grace and sensitivity, The Ash Burner explores beauty and desire, grief and loss, and the search for one’s true self.

Subtropical futures : Victoria Park re-imagined

Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, in South-East Queensland is situated on the Brisbane River, one of the largest rivers (and floodplains) on the east coast of Australia. The river defines the city and gives it its name. The river has been a natural place to accommodate some population growth for the city with high-density development that capitalises on the natural amenity, cycleways and a string of parks and the flatter land. The major floods of 2011 and the scare of 2013, has seen a more malevolent quality of the river and shift of thinking on its role within the city. The floods have made council, for the first time, acquire prime development sites near the river, with proposals for high density development and made them parks, at great cost. The pressure for population growth in Brisbane remains. 140,000 new dwellings are required by 2031. Brownfield sites are less plentiful and there is interest to rethink of some of the other strategic locations in the city away from the river on higher ground and steeper slopes. Some of these places are currently open spaces. Victoria Park Golf Course sits on a high ridge line and a very strategic part of the city just north of the city centre is one of the few remaining golf courses close to the centre of an Australian capital city. While it is a public course and a valuable community asset, it has been compromised by the recently completed northern busway with two bus stations constructed on its edges. It is bounded on the west and north-east by two major community facilities, the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) to the west and RBW Hospital at its northern end. In a city in need of urban consolidation, perhaps it is time to review the future of the golf course. This question has been investigated as a conjecture in the Master of Architecture program at the QUT. The project has been to re-imagine Victoria Park as a new city parkland and a place that makes an urban connection from the QUT to the hospital. This new urban precinct is be a medium to high-density transit oriented development that capitalises on the bus way stations and the proximity of the university and hospital. The precinct will frame/define/interact with the new major urban park for the city. A key question being addressed is how the design can embody and define principles of a subtropical urbanism. Students are identifying the appropriate street and block structure, density and built form to be accommodated on blocks that define and activate a rich sequence of streets and public spaces. The paper will present a critical overview of the project work that provides a lens to how future professionals may respond to these issue that will be the focus of their professional lives.

Hardware design and implementation of a MAVLink interface for an FPGA-based autonomous UAV flight control system

This paper details the initial design and planning of a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) implemented control system that will enable a path planner to interact with a MAVLink based flight computer. The design is aimed at small Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles (UAV) under autonomous operation which are typically subject to constraints arising from limited on-board processing capabilities, power and size. An FPGA implementation for the de- sign is chosen for its potential to address such limitations through low power and high speed in-hardware computation. The MAVLink protocol offers a low bandwidth interface for the FPGA implemented path planner to communicate with an on-board flight computer. A control system plan is presented that is capable of accepting a string of GPS waypoints generated on-board from a previously developed in- hardware Genetic Algorithm (GA) path planner and feeding them to the open source PX4 autopilot, while simultaneously respond- ing with flight status information.

Genome-wide association analysis identifies 13 new risk loci for schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is an idiopathic mental disorder with a heritable component and a substantial public health impact. We conducted a multi-stage genome-wide association study (GWAS) for schizophrenia beginning with a Swedish national sample (5,001 cases and 6,243 controls) followed by meta-Analysis with previous schizophrenia GWAS (8,832 cases and 12,067 controls) and finally by replication of SNPs in 168 genomic regions in independent samples (7,413 cases, 19,762 controls and 581 parent-offspring trios). We identified 22 loci associated at genome-wide significance; 13 of these are new, and 1 was previously implicated in bipolar disorder. Examination of candidate genes at these loci suggests the involvement of neuronal calcium signaling. We estimate that 8,300 independent, mostly common SNPs (95% credible interval of 6,300-10,200 SNPs) contribute to risk for schizophrenia and that these collectively account for at least 32% of the variance in liability. Common genetic variation has an important role in the etiology of schizophrenia, and larger studies will allow more detailed understanding of this disorder.

The effect of transforming growth factor β1 gene polymorphisms in ankylosing spondylitis

Objectives. To determine whether genetic polymorphisms in or near the transforming growth factor β1 (TGFB1) locus were associated d with susceptibility to or severity of ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Methods. Five intragenic single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) and three microsatellite markers flanking the TGFB1 locus were genotyped. Seven hundred and sixty-two individuals from 184 multiplex families were genotyped for the microsatellite markers and two of the promoter SNPs. One thousand and two individuals from 212 English and 170 Finnish families with AS were genotyped for all five intragenic SNPs. A structured questionnaire was used to assess the age of symptom onset, disease duration and disease severity scores, including the BASDAI (Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index) and BASFI (Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Functional Index). Results. A weak association was noted between the rare TGFB1 + 1632 T allele and AS in the Finnish population (P = 0.04) and in the combined data set (P = 0.03). No association was noted between any other SNPs or SNP haplotype and AS, even among those families with positive non-parametric linkage scores. The TGFB1 +1632 polymorphism was also associated with a younger age of symptom onset (English population, allele 2 associated with age of onset greater by 4.2 yr, P = 0.05; combined data set, allele 2 associated with age of onset greater by 3.2 yr, P = 0.02). A haplotype of coding region SNPs (TGFB1 +869/ +915+1632 alleles 2/1/2) was associated with age of symptom onset in both the English parent-case trios and the combined data set (English data set, haplotype 2/1/2 associated with age of onset greater by 4.9 yr, P = 0.03; combined data set, haplotype 2/1/2 associated with greater age of onset by 4.2 yr, P = 0.006). Weak linkage with AS susceptibility was noted and the peak LOD score was 1.3 at distance 2 cM centromeric to the TGFB1 gene. No other linkage or association was found between quantitative traits and the markers. Conclusion. This study suggests that the polymorphisms within the TGFB1 gene play at most a small role in AS and that other genes encoded on chromosome 19 are involved in susceptibility to the disease.

Polymorphisms of the CYP2D6 gene increase susceptibility to ankylosing spondylitis

Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a common and highly familial rheumatic disorder. The sibling recurrence risk ratio for the disease is 63 and heritability assessed in twins > 90%. Although MHC genes, including HLA-B27, contribute only 20-50% of the genetic risk for the disease, no non-MHC gene has yet been convincingly demonstrated to influence either susceptibility to the disease or its phenotypic expression. Previous linkage and association studies have suggested the presence of a susceptibility gene for AS close to, or within, the cytochrome P450 2D6 gene (CYP2D6, debrisoquine hydroxylase) located at chromosome 22q13.1. We performed a linkage study of chromosome 22 in 200 families with AS affected sibling-pairs. Association of alleles of the CYP2D6 gene was examined by both case-control and within-family means. For case-control studies, 617 unrelated individuals with AS (361 probands from sibling-pair and parent-case trio families and 256 unrelated non-familial sporadic cases) and 402 healthy ethnically matched controls were employed. For within-family association studies, 361 families including 161 parent-case trios and 200 affected sibling-pair families were employed. Homozygosity for poor metabolizer alleles was found to be associated with AS. Heterozygosity for the most frequent poor metabolizer allele (CYP2D6*4) was not associated with increased susceptibility to AS. Significant within-family association of CYP2D6*4 alleles and AS was demonstrated. Weak linkage was also demonstrated between CYP2D6 and AS. We postulate that altered metabolism of a natural toxin or antigen by the CYP2D6 gene may increase susceptibility to AS.

Parallel parsing of programming languages

A new method of specifying the syntax of programming languages, known as hierarchical language specifications (HLS), is proposed. Efficient parallel algorithms for parsing languages generated by HLS are presented. These algorithms run on an exclusive-read exclusive-write parallel random-access machine. They require O(n) processors and O(log2n) time, where n is the length of the string to be parsed. The most important feature of these algorithms is that they do not use a stack.

Hydrodynamics from the D1-brane

We study the hydrodynamic properties of strongly coupled SU(N) Yang-Mills theory of the D1-brane at finite temperature in the framework of gauge/gravity duality. The only non-trivial viscous transport coefficient in 1+1 dimensions is the bulk viscosity. We evaluate the bulk viscosity by isolating the quasi-normal mode corresponding to the sound channel for the gravitational background of the D1-brane. We find that the ratio of the bulk viscosity to the entropy density to be 1/4 pi. This ratio continues to be 1/4 pi also in the regime when the D1-brane Yang-Mills theory is dual to the gravitational background of the fundamental string. Our analysis shows that this ratio is equal to 1/4 pi for a class of gravitational backgrounds dual to field theories in 1+1 dimensions obtained by considering D1-branes at cones over Sasaki-Einstein 7-manifolds.

Konstruktioner i interaktion. : de e som resurs i samtal

This study concerns the most common word pair in spoken Swedish, de e (it is, third person pronoun + copula-verb in present tense). The aim of the study is twofold, with an empirical aim and a theoretical aim. The empirical aim is to investigate if and how the string de e can be understood and described as a construction in its own right with characteristics that distinguishes it from other structures and resources in spoken Swedish. The theoretical aim is to test how two different linguistic theories and methods, interactional linguistics and construction grammar, can be combined and used to describe and explain patterns in languaging that traditional grammar does take into account. The empirical analysis is done within the interactional linguistic framework with sequence analyses of excerpts from authentic conversation data. The data consists of approximately ten hours of recorded conversation from Finland and Sweden. The sequence analysis suggests that the string de e really is used as a resource in its own right. In most cases, the string is also used in ways consistent with abstract grammatical patterns described by traditional grammar. Nevertheless, there are instances where de e is used in ways not described before: with numerals and infinitive phrases as complements, without any complements at all and together with certain complements (bra, de) in idiomatic ways. Furthermore, in the instances where de e is used according to known grammatical patterns the function of the particular string de e is clearly contextually specific and in various ways linked to the micro-context in which it is used. A new model is suggested for understanding and concluding the results from the sequence analyses. It consists of two different types of constructions grammatical and interactional. The grammatical constructions show how the string is used in eleven structurally different ways. The interactional constructions show seven different sequential positions and functions in which the string occurs. The two types of constructions are also linked to each other as potentials. This is a new way to describe how interactants use and responds to a concrete string like de e in conversation.

Non-linear resonance in strings under narrow band random excitation, part I: Planar response and stability

Non-linear planar response of a string to planar narrow band random excitation is investigated in this paper. A response equation for the mean square deflection σ2 is obtained under a single mode approximation by using the equivalent linearization technique. It is shown that the response is triple valued, as in the case of harmonic excitation, if the centre frequency of excitation Ω lies in a certain specified range. The triple valued response occurs only if the excitation bandwidth β is smaller than a critical value βcrit which is a monotonically increasing function of the intensity of excitation. An approximate method of investigating the almost sure asymptotic stability of the solution is presented and regions of instability in the Ω-σ2 plane have been charted. It is shown that planar response can become unstable either due to an unbounded growth of the in-plane component of motion or due to a spontaneous appearance of an out-of-plane component.

Vacancy ordered phases and one-dimensional quasiperiodicity

The metastable vacancy ordered phases observed in aluminium transition metal alloys on rapid solidification or vapour deposition can be considered as a periodic arrangement of a truncated quasiperiodic string based on the Fibonacci sequence along the left angle bracket111right-pointing angle bracket stacking direction of the original CsCl cell. Using the projection formalism developed in the context of quasicrystals, the diffraction patterns of the vacancy ordered phases are calculated for both commensurate and incommensurate projection from a periodic cubic cell in four dimensions. These are compared with experimentally observed patterns. It is shown that at increasingly longer periodicity the patterns from commensurate crystals become indistinguishable from the truly quasiperiodic one. It is suggested that there is a strong link between vacancy ordered phases and quasicrystals.

Syntactic Approach to ECG Rhythm Analysis

A diagnostic system for ECG rhythm monitoring based on syntactic approaches to pattern recognition is presented here. The method proposed exploits the difference in shape and structure between arrhythmic and normal ECG patterns to generate distinctly different descriptions in terms of a chosen set of primitives. A given frame of signal is first approximated piecewise linearly into a set of line segments which are completely specified in terms of their length and slope values. The slope values are quantized into seven distinct levels and a unit-length line segment with a slope value in each of these levels is coded as a slope symbol. Seven such slope symbols constitute the set of primitives. The given signal is represented as a string of such symbols based on the length and angle of the line segments approximating the signal. Context-free languages are used for describing the classes of abnormal and normal ECG patterns considered here. Analysis of actual ECG data shows efficiency comparable with that of existing methods and a saving in processing time.

Koko talo soi : Klemetti-Opisto suomalaisen musiikkikulttuurin kehittäjänä 1953-1968

This study aims to examine the operations and significance of the Klemetti Institute (Klemetti-Opisto) as a developer of Finnish music culture from 1953 to 1968 during the term of office of the Institute s founder and first director, Arvo Vainio. The Klemetti Institute was originally established as a choir institute, but soon expanded to offer a wide range of music courses. In addition to providing courses for choir leaders and singers, the Institute began its orchestral activities as early as the mid-1950s. Other courses included ear training seminars as well as courses for young people s music instructors and in playing the kantele (a Finnish string instrument) and solo singing. More than 20 types of courses were offered over the 16-year period. The Klemetti Institute s courses were incorporated into the folk high school courses offered by the Orivesi Institute (Oriveden Opisto) and were organised during the summer months of June and July. In addition to funding based on the Folk High School Act, financial assistance was obtained from various foundations and funds, such as the Wihuri Foundation. This study is linked to the context of historical research. I examine the Klemetti Institute s operations chronologically, classifying instruction into different course types, and analyse concert activities primarily in the section on the Institute s student union. The source material includes the Klemetti Institute archives, which consist of Arvo Vainio s correspondence, student applications, register books and cards, journals and student lists, course albums and nearly all issues of the Klemettiläinen bulletin. In addition, I have used focused interviews and essays to obtain extensive data from students and teachers. I concentrate on primary school teachers, who accounted for the majority of course participants. A total of more than 2,300 people participated in the courses, nearly half of whom took courses during at least two summers. Primary school teachers accounted for 50% to 70% of the participants in most courses and constituted an even larger share of participants in some courses, such as the music instructor course. The Klemetti Institute contributed to the expansion throughout Finland of a new ideal for choral tone. This involved delicate singing which strives for tonal purity and expressiveness. Chamber choirs had been virtually unheard of in Finland, but the Klemetti Institute Chamber Choir popularised them. Chamber choirs are characterised by an extensive singing repertoire ranging from the Middle Ages to the present. As the name suggests, chamber choirs were originally rather small mixed choirs. Delicate singing meant the avoidance of extensive vibrato techniques and strong, heavy forte sounds, which had previously been typical of Finnish choirs. Those opposing and shunning this new manner of singing called it ghost singing . The Klemetti Institute s teachers included Finland s most prominent pedagogues and artists. As the focused essays, or reminiscences as I call them, show, their significance for the students was central. I examine extensively the Klemetti Institute s enthusiastic atmosphere, which during the early years was characterised by what some writers described as a hunger for music . In addition to distributing a new tonal ideal and choir repertoire, the Klemetti Institute also distributed new methods of music education, thus affecting the music teaching of Finnish primary schools, in particular. The Orff approach, which included various instruments, became well known, although some of Orff s ideas, such as improvisation and physical exercise, were initially unfamiliar. More important than the Orff approach was the in-depth teaching at the Klemetti Institute of the Hungarian ear training method known as the Kodály method. Many course participants were among those launching specialist music classes in schools, and the method became the foundation for music teaching in many such schools. The Klemetti Institute was also a pioneer in organising orchestra camps for young people. The Klemetti Institute promoted Finnish music culture and played an important role in the continuing music education of primary school teachers. Keywords: adult education, Grundtvigian philosophy, popular enlightenment, Klemetti Institute, Kodály method, choir singing, choir conducting, music history, music education, music culture, music camp, Orff approach, Orff-Schulwerk, Orivesi Institute, instrument teaching, free popular education, communality, solo singing, voice production