Horizon formation and far-from-equilibrium isotropization in supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma

Using gauge/gravity duality, we study the creation and evolution of anisotropic, homogeneous strongly coupled $\mathcal N=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma. In the dual gravitational description, this corresponds to horizon formation in a geometry driven to be anisotropic by a time-dependent change in boundary conditions.Comment: 4 pages, typos corrected, published versio

On the Portability of Generalized Schnorr Proofs

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Whole-genome sequencing reveals host factors underlying critical COVID-19

Critical COVID-19 is caused by immune-mediated inflammatory lung injury. Host genetic variation influences the development of illness requiring critical care1 or hospitalization2,3,4 after infection with SARS-CoV-2. The GenOMICC (Genetics of Mortality in Critical Care) study enables the comparison of genomes from individuals who are critically ill with those of population controls to find underlying disease mechanisms. Here we use whole-genome sequencing in 7,491 critically ill individuals compared with 48,400 controls to discover and replicate 23 independent variants that significantly predispose to critical COVID-19. We identify 16 new independent associations, including variants within genes that are involved in interferon signalling (IL10RB and PLSCR1), leucocyte differentiation (BCL11A) and blood-type antigen secretor status (FUT2). Using transcriptome-wide association and colocalization to infer the effect of gene expression on disease severity, we find evidence that implicates multiple genes—including reduced expression of a membrane flippase (ATP11A), and increased expression of a mucin (MUC1)—in critical disease. Mendelian randomization provides evidence in support of causal roles for myeloid cell adhesion molecules (SELE, ICAM5 and CD209) and the coagulation factor F8, all of which are potentially druggable targets. Our results are broadly consistent with a multi-component model of COVID-19 pathophysiology, in which at least two distinct mechanisms can predispose to life-threatening disease: failure to control viral replication; or an enhanced tendency towards pulmonary inflammation and intravascular coagulation. We show that comparison between cases of critical illness and population controls is highly efficient for the detection of therapeutically relevant mechanisms of disease

Evaluation of the Effect of Surfactants on the Adsorption and Movement of Carbaryl in Soils of Divergent Texture

The adsorption and movement of carbaryl on soils in surfactant-free and surfactant (cationic, non-ionic, anionic) solutions of different critical micelle concentrations (CMCs) has been studied using batch equilibrium and soil thin layer chromatography (soil TLC) techniques. The adsorption of carbaryl in surfactant–soil–water systems followed the order cationic > anionic > non-ionic as anticipated from the Freundlich constant, K F , and distribution coefficient, K D , values. The R f values obtained from soil TLC studies were inversely proportional to the K F and K D values. The affinities of carbaryl towards organic carbon and the clay content of the soil were compared using the K OC and K C values. The behaviour of carbaryl in surfactant–soil–water systems mainly depends on the degree of hydrophobicity of the pesticide and the type and concentration of surfactant used. The K D */K D ratios were used to evaluate the remediation efficiency of surfactants and it was found that anionic surfactant is a better choice for remediation of contaminated soils. The remediation efficiency of non-ionic surfactant varies with the nature of the soils whereas cationic surfactant leads to poor remediation efficiency. The results obtained are interesting as they afford the basic data relating to the possible use of surfactants for solving pollution problems posed by carbaryl

ExBLACR: Extending BLACR system

Reputation-based anonymous blacklisting systems allow users to anonymously authenticate their identities with a service provider (SP) directly, while enabling the service provider to score users' misbehaviour and deny access from users with insufficient reputation, without the assistance of a Trusted Third Party (TTP). Au, Kapadia and Susilo's reputation-based anonymous blacklisting system BLACR is an elegant solution except for the linear computational overhead in the size of the reputation list. Therefore, they proposed a more practical strategy for BLACR that allows active users to authenticate in the express lane. However, the strategy disables BLACR's ability to perform unblacklisting since removing entries from the blacklist invalidates the reputation proofs of express lane tokens. Another problem of BLACR is that the express lane tokens can be reused (replay attack). In this paper, we propose ExBLACR, which provides a solution to the above problems. Our construction directly builds from BLACR and we present an improvement of weighted-score adjusting protocol () to support unblacklisting when BLACR employs the express lane authentication. We also make a minor change to the express lane tokens to resist replay attack. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.Reputation-based anonymous blacklisting systems allow users to anonymously authenticate their identities with a service provider (SP) directly, while enabling the service provider to score users' misbehaviour and deny access from users with insufficient reputation, without the assistance of a Trusted Third Party (TTP). Au, Kapadia and Susilo's reputation-based anonymous blacklisting system BLACR is an elegant solution except for the linear computational overhead in the size of the reputation list. Therefore, they proposed a more practical strategy for BLACR that allows active users to authenticate in the express lane. However, the strategy disables BLACR's ability to perform unblacklisting since removing entries from the blacklist invalidates the reputation proofs of express lane tokens. Another problem of BLACR is that the express lane tokens can be reused (replay attack). In this paper, we propose ExBLACR, which provides a solution to the above problems. Our construction directly builds from BLACR and we present an improvement of weighted-score adjusting protocol () to support unblacklisting when BLACR employs the express lane authentication. We also make a minor change to the express lane tokens to resist replay attack. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland