48,631 research outputs found
TrusNet: Peer-to-Peer Cryptographic Authentication
Originally, the Internet was meant as a general purpose communication protocol, transferring primarily text documents between interested parties. Over time, documents expanded to include pictures, videos and even web pages. Increasingly, the Internet is being used to transfer a new kind of data which it was never designed for. In most ways, this new data type fits in naturally to the Internet, taking advantage of the near limit-less expanse of the protocol. Hardware protocols, unlike previous data types, provide a unique set security problem. Much like financial data, hardware protocols extended across the Internet must be protected with authentication. Currently, systems which do authenticate do so through a central server, utilizing a similar authentication model to the HTTPS protocol. This hierarchical model is often at odds with the needs of hardware protocols, particularly in ad-hoc networks where peer-to-peer communication is prioritized over a hierarchical model. Our project attempts to implement a peer-to-peer cryptographic authentication protocol to be used to protect hardware protocols extending over the Internet.
The TrusNet project uses public-key cryptography to authenticate nodes on a distributed network, with each node locally managing a record of the public keys of nodes which it has encountered. These keys are used to secure data transmission between nodes and to authenticate the identities of nodes. TrusNet is designed to be used on multiple different types of network interfaces, but currently only has explicit hooks for Internet Protocol connections.
As of June 2016, TrusNet has successfully achieved a basic authentication and communication protocol on Windows 7, OSX, Linux 14 and the Intel Edison. TrusNet uses RC-4 as its stream cipher and RSA as its public-key algorithm, although both of these are easily configurable. Along with the library, TrusNet also enables the building of a unit testing suite, a simple UI application designed to visualize the basics of the system and a build with hooks into the I/O pins of the Intel Edison allowing for a basic demonstration of the system
Smooth heaps and a dual view of self-adjusting data structures
We present a new connection between self-adjusting binary search trees (BSTs)
and heaps, two fundamental, extensively studied, and practically relevant
families of data structures. Roughly speaking, we map an arbitrary heap
algorithm within a natural model, to a corresponding BST algorithm with the
same cost on a dual sequence of operations (i.e. the same sequence with the
roles of time and key-space switched). This is the first general transformation
between the two families of data structures.
There is a rich theory of dynamic optimality for BSTs (i.e. the theory of
competitiveness between BST algorithms). The lack of an analogous theory for
heaps has been noted in the literature. Through our connection, we transfer all
instance-specific lower bounds known for BSTs to a general model of heaps,
initiating a theory of dynamic optimality for heaps.
On the algorithmic side, we obtain a new, simple and efficient heap
algorithm, which we call the smooth heap. We show the smooth heap to be the
heap-counterpart of Greedy, the BST algorithm with the strongest proven and
conjectured properties from the literature, widely believed to be
instance-optimal. Assuming the optimality of Greedy, the smooth heap is also
optimal within our model of heap algorithms. As corollaries of results known
for Greedy, we obtain instance-specific upper bounds for the smooth heap, with
applications in adaptive sorting.
Intriguingly, the smooth heap, although derived from a non-practical BST
algorithm, is simple and easy to implement (e.g. it stores no auxiliary data
besides the keys and tree pointers). It can be seen as a variation on the
popular pairing heap data structure, extending it with a "power-of-two-choices"
type of heuristic.Comment: Presented at STOC 2018, light revision, additional figure
Searchable Sky Coverage of Astronomical Observations: Footprints and Exposures
Sky coverage is one of the most important pieces of information about
astronomical observations. We discuss possible representations, and present
algorithms to create and manipulate shapes consisting of generalized spherical
polygons with arbitrary complexity and size on the celestial sphere. This shape
specification integrates well with our Hierarchical Triangular Mesh indexing
toolbox, whose performance and capabilities are enhanced by the advanced
features presented here. Our portable implementation of the relevant spherical
geometry routines comes with wrapper functions for database queries, which are
currently being used within several scientific catalog archives including the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the Hubble Legacy
Archive projects as well as the Footprint Service of the Virtual Observatory.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, submitted to PAS
Efficient Reactive Brownian Dynamics
We develop a Split Reactive Brownian Dynamics (SRBD) algorithm for particle
simulations of reaction-diffusion systems based on the Doi or volume reactivity
model, in which pairs of particles react with a specified Poisson rate if they
are closer than a chosen reactive distance. In our Doi model, we ensure that
the microscopic reaction rules for various association and disassociation
reactions are consistent with detailed balance (time reversibility) at
thermodynamic equilibrium. The SRBD algorithm uses Strang splitting in time to
separate reaction and diffusion, and solves both the diffusion-only and
reaction-only subproblems exactly, even at high packing densities. To
efficiently process reactions without uncontrolled approximations, SRBD employs
an event-driven algorithm that processes reactions in a time-ordered sequence
over the duration of the time step. A grid of cells with size larger than all
of the reactive distances is used to schedule and process the reactions, but
unlike traditional grid-based methods such as Reaction-Diffusion Master
Equation (RDME) algorithms, the results of SRBD are statistically independent
of the size of the grid used to accelerate the processing of reactions. We use
the SRBD algorithm to compute the effective macroscopic reaction rate for both
reaction- and diffusion-limited irreversible association in three dimensions.
We also study long-time tails in the time correlation functions for reversible
association at thermodynamic equilibrium. Finally, we compare different
particle and continuum methods on a model exhibiting a Turing-like instability
and pattern formation. We find that for models in which particles diffuse off
lattice, such as the Doi model, reactions lead to a spurious enhancement of the
effective diffusion coefficients.Comment: To appear in J. Chem. Phy
Model-based Boosting in R: A Hands-on Tutorial Using the R Package mboost
We provide a detailed hands-on tutorial for the R add-on package mboost. The package implements boosting for optimizing general risk functions utilizing component-wise (penalized) least squares estimates as base-learners for fitting various kinds of generalized linear and generalized additive models to potentially high-dimensional data. We give a theoretical background and demonstrate how mboost can be used to fit interpretable models of different complexity. As an example we use mboost to predict the body fat based on anthropometric measurements throughout the tutorial
Simulating Hard Rigid Bodies
Several physical systems in condensed matter have been modeled approximating
their constituent particles as hard objects. The hard spheres model has been
indeed one of the cornerstones of the computational and theoretical description
in condensed matter. The next level of description is to consider particles as
rigid objects of generic shape, which would enrich the possible phenomenology
enormously. This kind of modeling will prove to be interesting in all those
situations in which steric effects play a relevant role. These include biology,
soft matter, granular materials and molecular systems. With a view to
developing a general recipe for event-driven Molecular Dynamics simulations of
hard rigid bodies, two algorithms for calculating the distance between two
convex hard rigid bodies and the contact time of two colliding hard rigid
bodies solving a non-linear set of equations will be described. Building on
these two methods, an event-driven molecular dynamics algorithm for simulating
systems of convex hard rigid bodies will be developed and illustrated in
details. In order to optimize the collision detection between very elongated
hard rigid bodies, a novel nearest-neighbor list method based on an oriented
bounding box will be introduced and fully explained. Efficiency and performance
of the new algorithm proposed will be extensively tested for uniaxial hard
ellipsoids and superquadrics. Finally applications in various scientific fields
will be reported and discussed.Comment: 36 pages, 17 figure
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