Enhancing and Implementing Fully Transparent Internet Voting

Voting over the internet has been the focus of significant research with the potential to solve many problems. Current implementations typically suffer from a lack of transparency, where the connection between vote casting and result tallying is seen as a black box by voters. A new protocol was recently proposed that allows full transparency, never obfuscating any step of the process, and splits authority between mutually-constraining conflicting parties. Achieving such transparency brings with it challenging issues. In this paper we propose an efficient algorithm for generating unique, anonymous identifiers (voting locations) that is based on the Chinese Remainder Theorem, we extend the functionality of an election to allow for races with multiple winners, and we introduce a prototype of this voting system implemented as a multiplatform web application

The Internet Based Electronic Voting Enabling Open and Fair Election

Voting is the pillar of modern democracies. However, examination of current voting systems (including E-voting techniques) shows a gap between casting secret ballots and tallying and verifying individual votes. This gap is caused by either disconnection between the vote-casting process and the vote-tallying process, or opaque transition (e.g. due to encryption) from vote- casting to vote-tallying and thus, damages voter assurance, i.e. failing to answer the question: “Will your vote count?” We proposed a groundbreaking E-voting protocol that fills this gap and provides a fully transparent election. In this new voting system, this transition is seamless, viewable, and verifiable. As a result, the above question can be answered assuredly: “Yes, my vote counts!” The new E-voting protocol is fundamentally different from all existing voting/E-voting protocols in terms of both concepts and the underlying mechanisms. It consists of three innovative Technical Designs: TD1: universal verifiable voting vector; TD2: forward and backward mutual lock voting; and TD3: in-process verification and enforcement. The new technique is the first fully transparent E-voting protocol which fills the aforementioned gap. The trust is split equally among all tallying authorities who are of conflict-of-interest and will technologically restrain from each other. As a result, the new technique enables open and fair elections, even for minor or weak political parties. It is able to mitigate errors and risk and detect fraud and attacks including collusion, with convincingly high probability 1 − 2−(m−log(m))n (n: #voters and m ≥ 2:#candidates). It removes many existing requirements such as trusted central tallying authorities, tailored hardware or software, and complex cryptographic primitives. In summary, the new e- voting technique delivers voter assurance and can transform the present voting booth based voting and election practice. Besides voting and elections, the new technique can also be adapted to other applications such as student class evaluation, rating and reputation systems

Technical Report: Benchmarking an HP DL580 cluster at Indiana University (Mason)

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies that supported this work.Detailed system description and benchmark performance of Mason, an HP DL580 system installed in 2011

Comparison of Multi-Sample Variant Calling Methods for Whole Genome Sequencing

Rapid advancement of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies has facilitated the search for genetic susceptibility factors that influence disease risk in the field of human genetics. In particular whole genome sequencing (WGS) has been used to obtain the most comprehensive genetic variation of an individual and perform detailed evaluation of all genetic variation. To this end, sophisticated methods to accurately call high-quality variants and genotypes simultaneously on a cohort of individuals from raw sequence data are required. On chromosome 22 of 818 WGS data from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), which is the largest WGS related to a single disease, we compared two multi-sample variant calling methods for the detection of single nucleotide variants (SNVs) and short insertions and deletions (indels) in WGS: (1) reduce the analysis-ready reads (BAM) file to a manageable size by keeping only essential information for variant calling ("REDUCE") and (2) call variants individually on each sample and then perform a joint genotyping analysis of the variant files produced for all samples in a cohort ("JOINT"). JOINT identified 515,210 SNVs and 60,042 indels, while REDUCE identified 358,303 SNVs and 52,855 indels. JOINT identified many more SNVs and indels compared to REDUCE. Both methods had concordance rate of 99.60% for SNVs and 99.06% for indels. For SNVs, evaluation with HumanOmni 2.5M genotyping arrays revealed a concordance rate of 99.68% for JOINT and 99.50% for REDUCE. REDUCE needed more computational time and memory compared to JOINT. Our findings indicate that the multi-sample variant calling method using the JOINT process is a promising strategy for the variant detection, which should facilitate our understanding of the underlying pathogenesis of human diseases

Transparent and Mutual Restraining Electronic Voting

Many e-voting techniques have been proposed but not widely used in reality. One of the problems associated with most of existing e-voting techniques is the lack of transparency, leading to a failure to deliver voter assurance. In this work, we propose a transparent, auditable, end-to-end verifiable, and mutual restraining e-voting protocol that exploits the existing multi-party political dynamics such as in the US. The new e-voting protocol consists of three original technical contributions -- universal verifiable voting vector, forward and backward mutual lock voting, and in-process check and enforcement -- that, along with a public real time bulletin board, resolves the apparent conflicts in voting such as anonymity vs. accountability and privacy vs. verifiability. Especially, the trust is split equally among tallying authorities who have conflicting interests and will technically restrain each other. The voting and tallying processes are transparent to voters and any third party, which allow any voter to verify that his vote is indeed counted and also allow any third party to audit the tally. For the environment requiring receipt-freeness and coercion-resistance, we introduce additional approaches to counter vote-selling and voter-coercion issues. Our interactive voting protocol is suitable for small number of voters like boardroom voting where interaction between voters is encouraged and self-tallying is necessary; while our non-interactive protocol is for the scenario of large number of voters where interaction is prohibitively expensive. Equipped with a hierarchical voting structure, our protocols can enable open and fair elections at any scale

Transparent, Auditable, and Stepwise Verifiable Online E-Voting Enabling an Open and Fair Election

Many e-voting techniques have been proposed but not widely used in reality. One of the problems associated with most existing e-voting techniques is the lack of transparency, leading to a failure to deliver voter assurance. In this work, we p verifiable, viewable, and mutual restraining e-voting protocol that exploits the existing multi-party political dynamics such as in the US. The new e-voting protocol consists of three original technical contributions—universal verifiable voting vector, forward and backward mutual lock voting, and in-process check and enforcement—that, along with a public real time bulletin board, resolves the apparent conflicts in voting such as anonymity vs. accountability and privacy vs. verifiability. Especially, the trust is split equally among tallying authorities who have conflicting interests and will technically restrain each other. The voting and tallying processes are transparent/viewable to anyone, which allow any voter to visually verify that his vote is indeed counted and also allow any third party to audit the tally, thus, enabling open and fair election. Depending on the voting environment, our interactive protocol is suitable for small groups where interaction is encouraged, while the non-interactive protocol allows large groups to vote without interaction

Assessment of Sediment Impact on the Risk of River Diversion during Dam Construction: A Simulation-Based Project Study on the Jing River, China

Dams are vital for water resource utilization, and river diversion is key for dam construction safety. As sandy river basins are important exploitation areas that have special diversion features, the impact of sediment on the risk of river diversion during dam construction should be assessed. Diversion uncertainty is the origin of diversion risk, and sediment uncertainty changes the storage and discharge patterns of the diversion system. Two Gumbel–Hougaard (GH) copula functions are adopted to couple the random variables of flood and sediment, so that the sediment impacts on diversion storage and discharge can be obtained by the sampling of flood peaks. Based on variable coupling and sediment amendment, a method of Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) with a water balance calculation can quantitatively assess the risk of sandy river diversion, by evaluating the probability of upstream cofferdam overtopping. By introducing one diversion project on the Jing River in China with a clear water contrast, the risk values of dam construction diversion with or without sediment impacts can be obtained. Results show that the MCS method is feasible for diversion risk assessment; sediment has a negative impact on the risk of river diversion during dam construction, and this degradation effect is more evident for high-assurance diversion schemes

Multicolor Real-Time PCR Genotyping of ABO System Using Displacing Probes

Rapid and informative ABO genotyping has become increasingly popular in forensic use. We developed a multiplex real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) approach to genotype ABO major groups and subgroups. Seven differently fluorophor-labeled displacing probes for O1(261delG), A(261G), A(796C/803C), B(796A/803C), O2 (802G > A), A2 (1059delC), and A2 (1009A > G) were combined in one or two PCRs to determine either ABO major groups or subgroups. The method correctly detected 13 reference DNA samples. A blind test of 237 samples resulted in complete agreement with their phenotypes, and 110 of these 237 samples as well as with PCR-SSP method. The whole analysis could be finished in less than 100 min at substantially low material cost and the template DNA ranging from 0.16 to 500 ng per reaction could be quantitatively detected. Despite the limited informativeness of ABO genotyping, the developed methods could find application in rapid and inexpensive screening of forensic settings.edu.c

Preliminary research on the transmission path of nssSO(2-)4 and NO(-)3 in Antarctic ice sheet

The main sources of nssSO(2-)4 and NO(-)3 were summarized in this paper. By analyzing the spatial distribution features of major ions in Antarctic ice sheet and studying on the different time of the same volcanic event recorded by different ice cores from different regions in Antarctica, this paper intends to study the transmission path of nssSO(2-)4 and NO(-)3. Results show that nssSO(2-)4 and NO(-)3 are transmitted to the ice sheet through long distance and high latitude. The procedure of the transmission is that nssSO(2-)4 and NO(-)3 are transmitted to the level between the top of troposphere and the bottom of stratosphere, then subsided to the ice sheet surface and spread to other regions

Correlation between Arterial Enhancement Fraction on CT and Efficacy of Transcatheter Arterial Chemoembolization for Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Objective: To explore the correlation between arterial enhancement fraction (AEF) on Computed Tomography (CT) and the curative effect of Transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods: We enrolled 43 patients who presented with HCC to our hospital between January 2019 and January 2020 and extracted their clinical data. Three-phase contrast-enhanced CT was performed 1 month before and after TACE; based on TACE efficacy, the enrolled patients were divided into the “effective” and “ineffective” groups. The alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) level was determined using electrochemical luminescence. Changes in the AEF, AFP level, and tumor size before and after treatment were compared between the two groups. The correlation among AEF, AFP level, and tumor-size changes was explored using Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and the area under these curves (AUCs) were used to determine the evaluation value of dynamic enhanced scanning combined with AEF for TACE efficacy. Results: After TACE, the AEF, AFP level, and tumor size decreased in the effective group and were lower than the corresponding values in the ineffective group. Pearson’s correlation analysis revealed that AEF and the AFP level were positively correlated with the tumor size after TACE. ROC analysis revealed that the AUC for dynamic enhanced scanning combined with AEF for TACE efficacy evaluation was 0.902; this was significantly greater than the AUC of dynamic enhanced scanning (0.793) and AEF (0.771) alone. Conclusion: AEF is a reliable parameter for evaluating the therapeutic effect of TACE. The evaluation of TACE efficacy can be further improved by combining AEF with dynamic enhanced scanning; this approach should be used as an auxiliary method for evaluating TACE efficacy for HCC