The European Commission’s Green Deal is an opportunity to rethink harmful practices of research and innovation policy

The European Union’s Green Deal and associated policies, aspiring to long-term environmental sustainability, now require economic activities to ‘do no significant harm’ to EU environmental objectives. The way the European Commission is enacting the do no significant harm principle relies on quantitative tools that try to identify harm and adjudicate its significance. A reliance on established technical approaches to assessing such questions ignores the high levels of imprecision, ambiguity, and uncertainty—levels often in flux—characterizing the social contexts in which harms emerge. Indeed, harm, and its significance, are relational, not absolute. A better approach would thus be to acknowledge the relational nature of harm and develop broad capabilities to engage and ‘stay with’ the harm. We use the case of European research and innovation activities to expose the relational nature of harm, and explore an alternative and potentially more productive approach that departs from attempts to unilaterally or uniformly claim to know or adjudicate what is or is not significantly harmful. In closing, we outline three ways research and innovation policy-makers might experiment with reconfiguring scientific and technological systems and practices to better address the significant harms borne by people, other-than-human beings, and ecosystems. Merit, Expertise and Measuremen

Efficient implementation of a CCA2-secure variant of McEliece using generalized Srivastava codes

International audienceIn this paper we present efficient implementations of McEliece variants using quasi-dyadic codes. We provide secure parameters for a classical McEliece encryption scheme based on quasi-dyadic generalized Srivastava codes, and successively convert our scheme to a CCA2-secure protocol in the random oracle model applying the Fujisaki-Okamoto transform. In contrast with all other CCA2-secure code-based cryptosystems that work in the random oracle model, our conversion does not require a constant weight encoding function. We present results for both 128-bit and 80-bit security level, and for the latter we also feature an implementation for an embedded device

Considerations on rescattering effects for threshold photo- and electro-production of π0\pi^0 on deuteron

We show that for the S-state $\pi^0$-production in processes $\gamma+d\to d+\pi^0$ and $e^-+d\to e^-+d+\pi^0$ the rescattering effects due to the transition: $\gamma+d\to p+p+\pi^-$ (or $n+n+\pi^+)\to d+\pi^0$ are cancelled out due to the Pauli principle. The large values for these effects predicted in the past may result from the fact that the spin structure of the corresponding matrix element and the necessary antisymmetrization induced by the presence of identical protons (or neutrons) in the intermediate state was not taken into account accurately. One of the important consequences of these considerations is that $\pi^0$ photo- and electro-production on deuteron near threshold can bring direct information about elementary neutron amplitudes.Comment: Add a new sectio

Algebraic Attack against Variants of McEliece with Goppa Polynomial of a Special Form

International audienceIn this paper, we present a new algebraic attack against some special cases of Wild McEliece Incognito, a generalization of the original McEliece cryptosystem. This attack does not threaten the original McEliece cryptosystem. We prove that recovering the secret key for such schemes is equivalent to solving a system of polynomial equations whose solutions have the structure of a usual vector space. Consequently, to recover a basis of this vector space, we can greatly reduce the number of variables in the corresponding algebraic system. From these solutions, we can then deduce the basis of a GRS code. Finally, the last step of the cryptanalysis of those schemes corresponds to attacking a McEliece scheme instantiated with particular GRS codes (with a polynomial relation between the support and the multipliers) which can be done in polynomial-time thanks to a variant of the Sidelnikov-Shestakov attack. For Wild McEliece & Incognito, we also show that solving the corresponding algebraic system is notably easier in the case of a non-prime base eld Fq. To support our theoretical results, we have been able to practically break several parameters de ned over a non-prime base field q in {9; 16; 25; 27; 32}, t < 7, extension degrees m in {2,3}, security level up to 2^129 against information set decoding in few minutes or hours

Monoidic Codes in Cryptography

International audienceAt SAC 2009, Misoczki and Barreto proposed a new class of codes, which have parity-check matrices that are quasi-dyadic. A special subclass of these codes were shown to coincide with Goppa codes and those were recommended for cryptosystems based on error-correcting codes. Quasi-dyadic codes have both very compact representations and allow for efficient processing, resulting in fast cryptosystems with small key sizes. In this paper, we generalize these results and introduce quasi-monoidic codes, which retain all desirable properties of quasi-dyadic codes. We show that, as before, a subclass of our codes contains only Goppa codes or, for a slightly bigger subclass, only Generalized Srivastava codes. Unlike before, we also capture codes over fields of odd characteristic. These include wild Goppa codes that were proposed at SAC 2010 by Bernstein, Lange, and Peters for their exceptional error-correction capabilities. We show how to instantiate standard code-based encryption and signature schemes with our codes and give some preliminary parameters

Dialectics and difference: against Harvey's dialectical post-Marxism

David Harvey`s recent book, Justice, nature and the geography of difference (JNGD), engages with a central philosophical debate that continues to dominate human geography: the tension between the radical Marxist project of recent decades and the apparently disempowering relativism and `play of difference' of postmodern thought. In this book, Harvey continues to argue for a revised `post-Marxist' approach in human geography which remains based on Hegelian-Marxian principles of dialectical thought. This article develops a critique of that stance, drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. I argue that dialectical thinking, as well as Harvey's version of `post-Marxism', has been undermined by the wide-ranging `post-' critique. I suggest that Harvey has failed to appreciate the full force of this critique and the implications it has for `post-Marxist' ontology and epistemology. I argue that `post-Marxism', along with much contemporary human geography, is constrained by an inflexible ontology which excessively prioritizes space in the theory produced, and which implements inflexible concepts. Instead, using the insights of several `post-' writers, I contend there is a need to develop an ontology of `context' leading to the production of `contextual theories'. Such theories utilize flexible concepts in a multilayered understanding of ontology and epistemology. I compare how an approach which produces a `contextual theory' might lead to more politically empowering theory than `post-Marxism' with reference to one of Harvey's case studies in JNGD

Observation of hard scattering in photoproduction events with a large rapidity gap at HERA

Events with a large rapidity gap and total transverse energy greater than 5 GeV have been observed in quasi-real photoproduction at HERA with the ZEUS detector. The distribution of these events as a function of the $\gamma p$ centre of mass energy is consistent with diffractive scattering. For total transverse energies above 12 GeV, the hadronic final states show predominantly a two-jet structure with each jet having a transverse energy greater than 4 GeV. For the two-jet events, little energy flow is found outside the jets. This observation is consistent with the hard scattering of a quasi-real photon with a colourless object in the proton.Comment: 19 pages, latex, 4 figures appended as uuencoded fil

D* Production in Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA

This paper presents measurements of D^{*\pm} production in deep inelastic scattering from collisions between 27.5 GeV positrons and 820 GeV protons. The data have been taken with the ZEUS detector at HERA. The decay channel $D^{*+}\to (D^0 \to K^- \pi^+) \pi^+$ (+ c.c.) has been used in the study. The $e^+p$ cross section for inclusive D^{*\pm} production with $5<Q^2<100 GeV^2$ and $y<0.7$ is 5.3 \pms 1.0 \pms 0.8 nb in the kinematic region {$1.3<p_T(D^{*\pm})<9.0$ GeV and $| \eta(D^{*\pm}) |<1.5$}. Differential cross sections as functions of p_T(D^{*\pm}), $\eta(D^{*\pm}), W$ and $Q^2$ are compared with next-to-leading order QCD calculations based on the photon-gluon fusion production mechanism. After an extrapolation of the cross section to the full kinematic region in p_T(D^{*\pm}) and $\eta$(D^{*\pm}), the charm contribution $F_2^{c\bar{c}}(x,Q^2)$ to the proton structure function is determined for Bjorken $x$ between 2 $\cdot$ 10$^{-4}$ and 5 $\cdot$ 10$^{-3}$.Comment: 17 pages including 4 figure

Observation of Scaling Violations in Scaled Momentum Distributions at HERA

Charged particle production has been measured in deep inelastic scattering (DIS) events over a large range of $x$ and $Q^2$ using the ZEUS detector. The evolution of the scaled momentum, $x_p$, with $Q^2,$ in the range 10 to 1280 $GeV^2$, has been investigated in the current fragmentation region of the Breit frame. The results show clear evidence, in a single experiment, for scaling violations in scaled momenta as a function of $Q^2$.Comment: 21 pages including 4 figures, to be published in Physics Letters B. Two references adde