A lower bound for metric 1-median selection

Consider the problem of finding a point in an n-point metric space with the minimum average distance to all points. We show that this problem has no deterministic $o(n^2)$-query $(4-\Omega(1))$-approximation algorithms

Secure secret sharing in the cloud

In this paper, we show how a dealer with limited resources is possible to share the secrets to players via an untrusted cloud server without compromising the privacy of the secrets. This scheme permits a batch of two secret messages to be shared to two players in such a way that the secrets are reconstructable if and only if two of them collaborate. An individual share reveals absolutely no information about the secrets to the player. The secret messages are obfuscated by encryption and thus give no information to the cloud server. Furthermore, the scheme is compatible with the Paillier cryptosystem and other cryptosystems of the same type. In light of the recent developments in privacy-preserving watermarking technology, we further model the proposed scheme as a variant of reversible watermarking in the encrypted domain

Anomalous spin Hall effects in Dresselhaus (110) quantum wells

Anomalous spin Hall effects that belong to the intrinsic type in Dresselhaus (110) quantum wells are discussed. For the out-of-plane spin component, antisymmetric current-induced spin polarization induces opposite spin Hall accumulation, even though there is no spin-orbit force due to Dresselhaus (110) coupling. A surprising feature of this spin Hall induction is that the spin accumulation sign does not change upon bias reversal. Contribution to the spin Hall accumulation from the spin Hall induction and the spin deviation due to intrinsic spin-orbit force as well as extrinsic spin scattering, can be straightforwardly distinguished simply by reversing the bias. For the inplane component, inclusion of a weak Rashba coupling leads to a new type of $S_y$ intrinsic spin Hall effect solely due to spin-orbit-force-driven spin separation.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Source Mergers and Bubble Growth During Reionization

The recently introduced models of reionization bubbles based on extended Press-Schechter theory (Furlanetto, Zaldarriaga & Hernquist 2004) are generalized to include mergers of ionization sources. Sources with a recent major merger are taken to have enhanced photon production due to star formation, and accretion onto a central black hole if a black hole is present. This produces a scatter in the number of ionized photons corresponding to a halo of a given mass and a change in photon production over time for any given halo mass. Photon production histories, bubble distributions, and ionization histories are computed for several different parameter and recombination assumptions; the resulting distributions interpolate between previously calculated limiting cases.Comment: 44 pages, 11 figures, version to appear in MNRAS. Some discussion of case with WMAP parameters and expanded explanation