An improved distinguisher for dragon

Dragon stream cipher is one of the focus ciphers which have reached Phase 2 of the eSTREAMproject. In this paper, we present a new method of building a linear distinguisher for Dragon. The distinguisher is constructed by exploiting the biases of two S-boxes and the modular addition which are basic components of the nonlinear function F. The bias of the distinguisher is estimated to be around 2−75.32 which is better than the bias of the distinguisher presented by Englund and Maximov. We have shown that Dragon is distinguishable from a random cipher by using around 2150.6 keystream words and 259 memory. In addition, we present a very efficient algorithm for computing the bias of linear approximation of modular addition.

A more efficient and effective heuristic algorithm for the MapReduce placement problem in cloud computing

The placement of the mappers and reducers on the machines directly affects the performance and cost of the MapReduce computation in cloud computing. From the computational point of view, the mappers/reducers placement problem is a generalization of the classical bin packing problem, which is NP-complete. Thus, in this paper we propose a new heuristic algorithm for the mappers/reducers placement problem in cloud computing and evaluate it by comparing with other several heuristics on solution quality and computation time by solving a set of test problems with various characteristics. The computational results show that our heuristic algorithm is much more efficient than the other heuristics. Also, we verify the effectiveness of our heuristic algorithm by comparing the mapper/reducer placement for a benchmark problem generated by our heuristic algorithm with a conventional mapper/reducer placement. The comparison results show that the computation using our mapper/reducer placement is much cheaper while still satisfying the computation deadline.

Efficient disjointness tests for private datasets

We present efficient protocols for private set disjointness tests. We start from an intuition of our protocols that applies Sylvester matrices. Unfortunately, this simple construction is insecure as it reveals information about the cardinality of the intersection. More specifically, it discloses its lower bound. By using the Lagrange interpolation we provide a protocol for the honest-but-curious case without revealing any additional information. Finally, we describe a protocol that is secure against malicious adversaries. The protocol applies a verification test to detect misbehaving participants. Both protocols require O(1) rounds of communication. Our protocols are more efficient than the previous protocols in terms of communication and computation overhead. Unlike previous protocols whose security relies on computational assumptions, our protocols provide information theoretic security. To our knowledge, our protocols are first ones that have been designed without a generic secure function evaluation. More importantly, they are the most efficient protocols for private disjointness tests for the malicious adversary case.

Co-creative media in remote Indigenous communities

This paper examines co-creative video outputs that have originated from, or relate to, remote Indigenous communities in Australia. Scholarly work on remote media has mostly operated at the interface of media studies and anthropology, seeking to identify how cultural systems shape the production, distribution and reception of media in Aboriginal communities. This paper looks instead at content themes, funding sources and institutions during the 2010-2013 period, and examines the factors that may be determining the quantity of co-creative outputs, as well as the types of stories that get produced. I argue that the focus on culture has obscured important shifts in remote media policy and funding, including a trend towards content designed to address social disadvantage.

Causal behavioural profiles : efficient computation, applications, and evaluation

Analysis of behavioural consistency is an important aspect of software engineering. In process and service management, consistency verification of behavioural models has manifold applications. For instance, a business process model used as system specification and a corresponding workflow model used as implementation have to be consistent. Another example would be the analysis to what degree a process log of executed business operations is consistent with the corresponding normative process model. Typically, existing notions of behaviour equivalence, such as bisimulation and trace equivalence, are applied as consistency notions. Still, these notions are exponential in computation and yield a Boolean result. In many cases, however, a quantification of behavioural deviation is needed along with concepts to isolate the source of deviation. In this article, we propose causal behavioural profiles as the basis for a consistency notion. These profiles capture essential behavioural information, such as order, exclusiveness, and causality between pairs of activities of a process model. Consistency based on these profiles is weaker than trace equivalence, but can be computed efficiently for a broad class of models. In this article, we introduce techniques for the computation of causal behavioural profiles using structural decomposition techniques for sound free-choice workflow systems if unstructured net fragments are acyclic or can be traced back to S- or T-nets. We also elaborate on the findings of applying our technique to three industry model collections.

Efficient computation of causal behavioural profiles using structural decomposition

Identification of behavioural contradictions is an important aspect of software engineering, in particular for checking the consistency between a business process model used as system specification and a corresponding workflow model used as implementation. In this paper, we propose causal behavioural profiles as the basis for a consistency notion, which capture essential behavioural information, such as order, exclusiveness, and causality between pairs of activities. Existing notions of behavioural equivalence, such as bisimulation and trace equivalence, might also be applied as consistency notions. Still, they are exponential in computation. Our novel concept of causal behavioural profiles provides a weaker behavioural consistency notion that can be computed efficiently using structural decomposition techniques for sound free-choice workflow systems if unstructured net fragments are acyclic or can be traced back to S- or T-nets.

Developing Co-operating Legal Knowledge Based Systems

In attempting to build intelligent litigation support tools, we have moved beyond first generation, production rule legal expert systems. Our work supplements rule-based reasoning with case based reasoning and intelligent information retrieval. This research, specifies an approach to the case based retrieval problem which relies heavily on an extended object-oriented / rule-based system architecture that is supplemented with causal background information. Machine learning techniques and a distributed agent architecture are used to help simulate the reasoning process of lawyers. In this paper, we outline our implementation of the hybrid IKBALS II Rule Based Reasoning / Case Based Reasoning system. It makes extensive use of an automated case representation editor and background information.

Experimental and numerical analysis of the relationship between indoor and outdoor airborne particles in an operating room

This work investigated the impact of the HVAC filtration system and indoor particle sources on the relationship between indoor and outdoor airborne particle size and concentrations in an operating room. Filters with efficiency between 65% and 99.97% were used in the investigation and indoor and outdoor particle size and concentrations were measured. A balance mass model was used for the simulation of the impact of the surgical team, deposition rate, HVAC exhaust and air change rates on indoor particle concentration. The experimental results showed that high efficiency filters would not be expected to decrease the risk associated with indoor particles larger than approximately 1 µm in size because normal filters are relatively efficient for these large particles. A good fraction of outdoor particles were removed by deposition on the HVAC system surfaces and this deposition increased with particle size. For particles of 0.3-0.5 µm in diameter, particle reduction was about 23%, while for particles >10 µm the loss was about 78%. The modelling results showed that depending on the type of filter used, the surgical team generated between 93-99% of total particles, while the outdoor air contributed only 1-6%.

Red colouration in apple fruit is due to the activity of the MYB transcription factor, MdMYB10

Anthocyanin concentration is an important determinant of the colour of many fruits. In apple (Malus x domestica), centuries of breeding have produced numerous varieties in which levels of anthocyanin pigment vary widely and change in response to environmental and developmental stimuli. The apple fruit cortex is usually colourless, although germplasm does exist where the cortex is highly pigmented due to the accumulation of either anthocyanins or carotenoids. From studies in a diverse array of plant species, it is apparent that anthocyanin biosynthesis is controlled at the level of transcription. Here we report the transcript levels of the anthocyanin biosynthetic genes in a red-fleshed apple compared with a white-fleshed cultivar. We also describe an apple MYB transcription factor, MdMYB10, that is similar in sequence to known anthocyanin regulators in other species. We further show that this transcription factor can induce anthocyanin accumulation in both heterologous and homologous systems, generating pigmented patches in transient assays in tobacco leaves and highly pigmented apple plants following stable transformation with constitutively expressed MdMYB10. Efficient induction of anthocyanin biosynthesis in transient assays by MdMYB10 was dependent on the co-expression of two distinct bHLH proteins from apple, MdbHLH3 and MdbHLH33. The strong correlation between the expression of MdMYB10 and apple anthocyanin levels during fruit development suggests that this transcription factor is responsible for controlling anthocyanin biosynthesis in apple fruit; in the red-fleshed cultivar and in the skin of other varieties, there is an induction of MdMYB10 expression concurrent with colour formation during development. Characterization of MdMYB10 has implications for the development of new varieties through classical breeding or a biotechnological approach.

Identification of a cis-regulatory element by transient analysis of co-ordinately regulated genes

Background Transcription factors (TFs) co-ordinately regulate target genes that are dispersed throughout the genome. This co-ordinate regulation is achieved, in part, through the interaction of transcription factors with conserved cis-regulatory motifs that are in close proximity to the target genes. While much is known about the families of transcription factors that regulate gene expression in plants, there are few well characterised cis-regulatory motifs. In Arabidopsis, over-expression of the MYB transcription factor PAP1 (PRODUCTION OF ANTHOCYANIN PIGMENT 1) leads to transgenic plants with elevated anthocyanin levels due to the co-ordinated up-regulation of genes in the anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway. In addition to the anthocyanin biosynthetic genes, there are a number of un-associated genes that also change in expression level. This may be a direct or indirect consequence of the over-expression of PAP1. Results Oligo array analysis of PAP1 over-expression Arabidopsis plants identified genes co-ordinately up-regulated in response to the elevated expression of this transcription factor. Transient assays on the promoter regions of 33 of these up-regulated genes identified eight promoter fragments that were transactivated by PAP1. Bioinformatic analysis on these promoters revealed a common cis-regulatory motif that we showed is required for PAP1 dependent transactivation. Conclusion Co-ordinated gene regulation by individual transcription factors is a complex collection of both direct and indirect effects. Transient transactivation assays provide a rapid method to identify direct target genes from indirect target genes. Bioinformatic analysis of the promoters of these direct target genes is able to locate motifs that are common to this sub-set of promoters, which is impossible to identify with the larger set of direct and indirect target genes. While this type of analysis does not prove a direct interaction between protein and DNA, it does provide a tool to characterise cis-regulatory sequences that are necessary for transcription activation in a complex list of co-ordinately regulated genes.

Polarized infrared absorption spectrum of matrix-isolated methylperoxyl radicals, CH3OO (X)over-tilde 2A ''

We have used a tandem pair of supersonic nozzles to produce clean samples of CH3OO radicals in cryogenic matrices. One hyperthermal nozzle decomposes azomethane (CH3NNCH3) to generate intense pulses of CH3 radicals, While the second nozzle alternately fires a burst Of O-2/Ar at the 20 K matrix. The CH3/O-2/20 K argon radical sandwich acts to produce target methylperoxyl radicals: CH3 + O-2 --> CH3OO. The absorption spectra of the radicals are monitored with a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer. We report 10 of the 12 fundamental infrared bands of the methylperoxyl radical CH3OO, (X) over tilde (2)A", in an argon matrix at 20 K. The experimental frequencies (cm(-1)) and polarizations follow: the a' modes are 3032, 2957, 1448, 1410, 1180, 1109, 90, 492, while the a" modes are 3024 and 1434. We cannot detect the asymmetric CH3 rocking mode, nu(11), nor the torsion, nu(12). The infrared spectra of (CH3OO)-O-18-O-18, (CH3OO)-C-13, and CD3OO have been measured as well in order to determine the isotopic shifts. The experimental frequencies, {nu}, for the methylperoxyl radicals are compared to harmonic frequencies, {omega}, resulting from a UB3LYP/6-311G(d,p) electronic structure calculation. Linear dichroism spectra were measured with photooriented radical samples in order to establish the experimental polarizations of most vibrational bands. The methylperoxyl radical matrix frequencies listed above are within +/-2% of the gas-phase vibrational frequencies. A final set of vibrational frequencies for the H radical, are recommended. See also http://ellison.colorado.edu/methylperoxyl.

Impact and energy absorption of portable water-filled road safety barrier system fitted with foam

Portable water-filled barriers (PWFBs) are roadside appurtenances that are used to prevent errant vehicles from penetrating into temporary construction zones on roadways. A numerical model of the composite PWFB, consisting of a plastic shell, steel frame, water and foam was developed and validated against results from full scale experimental tests. This model can be extended to larger scale impact cases, specifically ones that include actual vehicle models. The cost-benefit of having a validated numerical model is significant and this allows the road barrier designer to conduct extensive tests via numerical simulations prior to standard impact tests Effects of foam cladding as additional energy absorption material in the PWFB was investigated. Different types of foam were treated and it was found that XPS foam was the most suitable foam type. Results from this study will aid PWFB designers in developing new generation of roadside structures which will provide enhanced road safety.

Competitive charge-remote and anion-induced fragmentations of the non-8-enoate anion. A charge-remote reaction which co-occurs with hydrogen scrambling

The non-8-enoate anion undergoes losses of the elements of C3H6, C4H8 and C6H12 on collisional activation, The mechanisms of these processes have been elucidated by a combination of product ion and labelling (H-2 and C-13) studies, together with a neutralisation reionisation mass spectrometric study. These studies allow the following conclusions to be made. (i) The loss of C3H6 involves cyclisation of the enolate anion of non-8-enoic acid to yield the cyclopentyl carboxylate anion and propene. (ii) The loss of 'C4H8' is a charge-remote process (one which proceeds remote from the charged centre) which yields the pent-4-enoate anion, butadiene and dihydrogen. This process co-occurs and competes with complex H scrambling. (iii) The major loss of 'C6H12' occurs primarily by a charge-remote process yielding the acrylate anion, hexa-1,5-diene and dihydrogen, but in this case no H scrambling accompanies the process. (iv) It is argued that the major reason why the two charge-remote processes occur in preference to anion-induced losses of but-l-ene and hex-l-ene from the respective 4- and 2-anions is that although these anions are formed, they have alternative and lower energy fragmentation pathways than those involving the losses of but-l-ene and hex-l-ene; viz. the transient 4-anion undergoes facile proton transfer to yield a more stable anion, whereas the 2-(enolate) anion undergoes preferential cyclisation followed by elimination of propene [see (i) above].

The loss of CO from the ortho, meta and para forms of deprotonated methyl benzoate in the gas phase

The ortho, meta and para anions of methyl benzoate may be made in the source of a mass spectrometer by the S(N)2(Si) reactions between HO- and methyl (o-, m-, and p-trimethylsilyl)benzoate respectively. All three anions lose CO upon collisional activation to form the ortho anion of anisole in the ratio ortho>>meta > para. The rearrangement process is charge directed through the ortho anion. Theoretical calculations at the B3LYP/6-311++G(d,p)//HF/6-31+G(d) level of theory indicate that the conversion of the meta and para anions to the ortho anion prior to loss of CO involve 1,2-H transfer(s), rather than carbon scrambling of the methoxycarbonylphenyl anion. There are two mechanisms which can account for this rearrangement, viz. (A) cyclisation of the ortho anion centre to the carbonyl group of the ester to give a cyclic carbonyl system in which the incipient methoxide anion substitutes at one of the two equivalent ring carbons of the three membered ring to yield an intermediate which loses CO to give the ortho anion of anisole, and (B) an elimination reaction to give an intermediate benzyne-methoxycarbonyl anion complex in which the MeOCO- species acts as a MeO- donor, which then adds to benzyne to yield the ortho anion of anisole. Calculations at the B3LYP/6-311++G(d,p)//HF/6-31+G(d) level of theory indicate that (i) the barrier in the first step (the rate determining step) of process A is 87 kJ mol(-1) less than that for the synchronous benzyne process B, and (ii) there are more low frequency vibrations in the transition state for benzyne process B than for the corresponding transition state for process A. Stepwise process A has the lower barrier for the rate determining step, and the lower Arrhenius factor: we cannot differentiate between these two mechanisms on available evidence.

Geographic co-distribution of influenza virus subtypes H7N9 and H5N1 in humans, China

Human infection with a novel low pathogenicity influenza A(H7N9) virus in eastern China has recently raised global public health concerns (1). The geographic sources of infection have yet to be fully clarified, and confirmed human cases from 1 province have not been linked to those from other provinces. While some studies have identified epidemiologic characteristics of subtype H7N9 cases and clinical differences between these cases and cases of highly pathogenic influenza A(H5N1), another avian influenza affecting parts of China (2–4), the spatial epidemiology of human infection with influenza subtypes H7N9 and H5N1 in China has yet to be elucidated. To test the hypothesis of co-distribution of high-risk clusters of both types of infection, we used all available data on human cases in mainland China and investigated the geospatial epidemiologic features...