Generalised Mersenne Numbers Revisited

Generalised Mersenne Numbers (GMNs) were defined by Solinas in 1999 and feature in the NIST (FIPS 186-2) and SECG standards for use in elliptic curve cryptography. Their form is such that modular reduction is extremely efficient, thus making them an attractive choice for modular multiplication implementation. However, the issue of residue multiplication efficiency seems to have been overlooked. Asymptotically, using a cyclic rather than a linear convolution, residue multiplication modulo a Mersenne number is twice as fast as integer multiplication; this property does not hold for prime GMNs, unless they are of Mersenne's form. In this work we exploit an alternative generalisation of Mersenne numbers for which an analogue of the above property --- and hence the same efficiency ratio --- holds, even at bitlengths for which schoolbook multiplication is optimal, while also maintaining very efficient reduction. Moreover, our proposed primes are abundant at any bitlength, whereas GMNs are extremely rare. Our multiplication and reduction algorithms can also be easily parallelised, making our arithmetic particularly suitable for hardware implementation. Furthermore, the field representation we propose also naturally protects against side-channel attacks, including timing attacks, simple power analysis and differential power analysis, which is essential in many cryptographic scenarios, in constrast to GMNs.Comment: 32 pages. Accepted to Mathematics of Computatio

Web 2.0, language resources and standards to automatically build a multilingual named entity lexicon

This paper proposes to advance in the current state-of-the-art of automatic Language Resource (LR) building by taking into consideration three elements: (i) the knowledge available in existing LRs, (ii) the vast amount of information available from the collaborative paradigm that has emerged from the Web 2.0 and (iii) the use of standards to improve interoperability. We present a case study in which a set of LRs for different languages (WordNet for English and Spanish and Parole-Simple-Clips for Italian) are extended with Named Entities (NE) by exploiting Wikipedia and the aforementioned LRs. The practical result is a multilingual NE lexicon connected to these LRs and to two ontologies: SUMO and SIMPLE. Furthermore, the paper addresses an important problem which affects the Computational Linguistics area in the present, interoperability, by making use of the ISO LMF standard to encode this lexicon. The different steps of the procedure (mapping, disambiguation, extraction, NE identification and postprocessing) are comprehensively explained and evaluated. The resulting resource contains 974,567, 137,583 and 125,806 NEs for English, Spanish and Italian respectively. Finally, in order to check the usefulness of the constructed resource, we apply it into a state-of-the-art Question Answering system and evaluate its impact; the NE lexicon improves the system’s accuracy by 28.1%. Compared to previous approaches to build NE repositories, the current proposal represents a step forward in terms of automation, language independence, amount of NEs acquired and richness of the information represented

International Financial Reporting Standards Adoption In Africa: The Role of International Power Politics

The primary objective of the paper is to investigate the influence of international Power Politics (IPP) on adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (/FRS) in Africa. The cluster sampling and simple random sampling techniques were adopted in this study. From a population of fifty four countries making up the African continent, a sample of forty six countries was selected. A cross-sectional data of countries for the year 2011 was collected from World Bank world development mdicators data base and world almanac and book of facts. The data collected were analysed using the ordered logistic regression technique. The study reveals that international power politics has a positive but not significant relationship with · adoption of /FRS in Afnca. The implication of this result is a policy shift towards growth in gross domestic product in Africa and the need for the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to revisit the present composition oftlre board of the IASB if adoption of international financial reporting standards is to be enhanced in Afric

Thoughts on the Establishment of Standards

The role of standards as I see it is to promote decision making that is in the interest of the public. For instance, air pollution standards might limit the sulfur content of fuels burned within a city or country. Without these standards, some individuals may burn cheaper higher sulfur fuels using the reasoning that "the little bit of sulfur dioxide contributed by me can't hurt that much". However, if everyone uses the high sulfur fuels, the general health of the public may deteriorate. Hence, standards are enacted to prohibit this situation from occurring. Usually standards specify maximum or minimum limits in terms of either absolute amounts or flowrates. Examples of the former are limitations on heights of buildings and ability to withstand an earthquake of specified magnitude. Under the latter are the air pollution standards of "parts per million" and radiation dosages due to nuclear facilities. This short note attempts to support the contention that standards should be specified in light of (1) the public preferences and, (2) the alternatives available. The implications of any alternative must always have some degree of uncertainty, so in this sense, my contention is that standards should depend on preferences for and probabilities of the consequences of the available alternatives. This particular viewpoint will be explained in terms of a simple abstract example. The thoughts contained here are meant to illustrate some of the considerations and relationships that I feel are important in establishing standards. They are not meant as complete procedures for the process of setting standards

Administrator’s Electronic Checklist A Teacher Accountability System for Building Transformation

Data-driven decision making is a major role of principals and school-based administrators. These decision makers use data to improve not only student performance, but also to identify teacher competency, needs for professional development, allocation of resources, and communication of data results (3D, 2010). The format used to collect and report data is varied, but technology seems to be the most widely used means of collection by school districts. There are web-based systems, as well as district developed formats for monitoring student achievement. An effective system of data collection is a simple, easy to use format that provides results in a timely manner. Standards-aligned observations can provide evidence of student and teacher outcomes across the content areas. Technology standards for students can be observed and evaluated, as well

Penerapan penyusunan laporan keuangan pada usaha mikro kecil menengah berbasis standar akuntansi keuangan entitas mikro kecil dan menengah (sak-emkm) pada toko buk siti

This journal research was conducted on one of the SMEs in Patumbak Village, namely Toko Buk Siti. This study aims to determine the utilization of financial detail readiness concerning preparing financial reports based on the Financial Accounting Standards for Micro, Small and Medium Entities at Toko Buk Siti. The research was conducted with a qualitative descriptive method. Based on the findings of this study, Buk Siti Shop business owners still need to gain a greater understanding of SAK EMKM. However, they can still make simple financial reports according to their knowledge. Recording financial statements by SAK EMKM has a positive effect on business. Because business owners now know that there are standards that are used as guidelines for making financial reports for the progress of a company that is being carried out

Pushing SKOS

This presentation introduces the simple knowledge organization hub (skohub), a proof of concept web service that allows to do just that based on current web standards. Given a SKOS vocubulary, the service publishes it on the web, providing RDF serializations along with a human-readable HTML front end. For each topic described in the vocabulary, a Linked Data Notifications inbox is provided, making it possible to publish and receive notifications about resources related to that topic. Finally, WebSub enables subscriptions for push notifications about resources matching a topic

Group Decision Making with Uncertain Outcomes: Unpacking Child-Parent Choices of High School Tracks

Predicting group decisions with uncertain outcomes involves the empirically difficult task of disentangling individual decision makers' beliefs and preferences over outcomes' states from the group's decision rule. This paper addresses the problem within the context of a consequential family decision concerning the high school track of adolescent children in presence of curricular strati cation. The paper combines novel data on children's and parents' probabilistic beliefs, their stated choice preferences, and families' decision rules with standard data on actual choices to estimate a simple model of curriculum choice featuring both uncertainty and heterogeneous cooperative-type decisions. The model's estimates are used to quantify the impact on curriculum enrollment of policies affecting family members' expectations via awareness campaigns, publication of education statistics, and changes in curricular specialization and standards. The latter exercise reveals that identity of policy recipients--whether children, parents, or both--matters for enrollment response, and underlines the importance of incorporating information on decision makers' beliefs and decision rules when evaluating policies.Choice under Uncertainty, Multilateral Choice, Heterogeneous Decision Rules, Curricular Tracking, Curriculum Choice, Child-Parent Decision Making, Subjective Probabilities, Stated and Revealed Preferences, Choice-Based Sampling

Space Solar Power, Lunar Mining and the Environment

Standards: one can stay warm in the cold, and cool in the heat. One can travel great distances, desalinate water and convert materials into useful products. However, power production involves substantial pollution. When making long- term energy investment decisions, it is worth considering which energy options can produce large quantities of power for long periods of time at the lowest possible environmental costs. Space Solar Power - when the space segment is built from lunar materials - may well be the best option for one simple reason: most of the work is done thousands of kilometers away from earth