A Class of Fractional p

We study a class of nonlinear fractional integrodifferential equations with p-Laplacian operator in Banach space. Some new existence results are obtained via fixed point theorems for nonlocal boundary value problems of fractional p-Laplacian equations. An illustrative example is also discussed

Electrical Switching and Memory Effects in Electroactive Polymers Containing Electron-Donor and -Acceptor Moieties

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Health Insurance of Rural/township Schoolchildren in Pinggu, Beijing: Coverage Rate, Determinants, Disparities, and Sustainability

Background: As China re-establishes its health insurance system through various cooperative schemes, little is known about schoolchildren's health insurance. This paper reports findings from a study that examined schoolchildren's insurance coverage, disparities between farmer and non-farmer households, and effects of low-premium cooperative schemes on healthcare access and utilization. It also discusses barriers to sustainable enrollment and program growth. Method: A survey of elementary school students was conducted in Pinggu, a rural/suburban district of Beijing. Statistical analyses of association and adjusted odds ratio via logistic regression were conducted to examine various aspects of health insurance. Results: Children's health insurance coverage rose to 54% by 2005, the rates are comparable for farmers' and non-farmer's children. However, 76% of insured farmers' children were covered under a low-premium scheme protecting only major medical events, compared to 42% among insured non-farmers' children. The low-premium schemes improved parental perceptions of children's access to and affordability of healthcare, their healthcare-seeking behaviors, and overall satisfaction with healthcare, but had little impact on utilization of outpatient care. Conclusion: Enrolling and retaining schoolchildren in health insurance are threatened by the limited tangible value for routine care and low reimbursement rate for major medical events under the low-premium cooperative schemes. Coverage rates may be improved by offering complimentary and supplementary benefit options with flexible premiums via a multi-tier system consisting of national, regional, and commercial programs. Health insurance education by means of community outreach can reinforce positive parental perceptions, hence promoting and retaining insurance enrollment in short-term

Determinants of Air Quality in Building Environments: A Multi-Regression Analysis and Implications for Open Teaching Practices

In the ever-evolving educational milieu, the integration of innovative teaching methodologies is increasingly crucial to meet the changing needs of modern learners. This research meticulously explores the application of open teaching practices in the fields of building environment and energy application engineering. Through an in-depth examination of multi-regression data pertaining to various environmental factors, this study reveals significant correlations and patterns that are relevant to both educators and environmental specialists. Emphasis is placed on the student-centric ethos of this approach, combining the dual concepts of environmental science and pedagogical progression. The relationship between environmental variables, such as PM2.5, PM10, temperature, and humidity, and the air quality index (AQI) is rigorously analyzed. Such analysis underscores the educational improvements brought about by open teaching strategies. The presented findings not only offer nuanced insights into how the aforementioned variables influence air quality but also highlight the benefits and potential of open teaching methodologies in creating a more interactive and enlightening academic environment

Mechanism of fatigue performance enhancement in a laser sintered superhard nanoparticles reinforced nanocomposite followed by laser shock peening

This study investigates the fundamental mechanism of fatigue performance enhancement during a novel hybrid manufacturing process, which combines laser sintering of superhard nanoparticles integrated nanocomposites and laser shock peening (LSP). Through laser sintering, TiN nanoparticles are integrated uniformly into iron matrix to form a nanocomposite layer near the surface of AISI4140 steel. LSP is then performed on the nanocomposite layer to generate interaction between nanoparticles and shock waves. The fundamental mechanism of fatigue performance enhancement is discussed in this paper. During laser shock interaction with the nanocomposites, the existence of nanoparticles increases the dislocation density and also helps to pin the dislocation movement. As a result, both dislocation density and residual stress are stabilized, which is beneficial for fatigue performance. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4799154

Trade Privacy for Utility: A Learning-Based Privacy Pricing Game in Federated Learning

To prevent implicit privacy disclosure in sharing gradients among data owners (DOs) under federated learning (FL), differential privacy (DP) and its variants have become a common practice to offer formal privacy guarantees with low overheads. However, individual DOs generally tend to inject larger DP noises for stronger privacy provisions (which entails severe degradation of model utility), while the curator (i.e., aggregation server) aims to minimize the overall effect of added random noises for satisfactory model performance. To address this conflicting goal, we propose a novel dynamic privacy pricing (DyPP) game which allows DOs to sell individual privacy (by lowering the scale of locally added DP noise) for differentiated economic compensations (offered by the curator), thereby enhancing FL model utility. Considering multi-dimensional information asymmetry among players (e.g., DO's data distribution and privacy preference, and curator's maximum affordable payment) as well as their varying private information in distinct FL tasks, it is hard to directly attain the Nash equilibrium of the mixed-strategy DyPP game. Alternatively, we devise a fast reinforcement learning algorithm with two layers to quickly learn the optimal mixed noise-saving strategy of DOs and the optimal mixed pricing strategy of the curator without prior knowledge of players' private information. Experiments on real datasets validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed scheme in terms of faster convergence speed and enhanced FL model utility with lower payment costs.Comment: Accepted by IEEE ICC202

Existence of solutions for fractional interval--valued differential equations by the method of upper and lower solutions

In this work we firstly study some important properties of fractional calculus for interval-valued functions and introduce the concepts of upper and lower solutions for intervalvalued Caputo fractional differential equations. Then, we prove an existence result for intervalvalued Caputo fractional differential equations by use of the method of upper and lower solutions. Finally several examples will be presented to illustrate our abstract results

Extend FHEW to General Case

When talking about FHE, refresh process is a little different from bootstrapping process. Bootstrapping always means that a scheme homomorphic decrypting its process, while refresh imply that use another scheme, always in large scale, to perform its decryption process. In EUROCRYPT’2015, Ducas and Micciancio proposed a FHE which can perform refresh process in less than a second, called DM14, while the scheme only support bite plaintext space, which is cumbersome for many applications. Extending DM14 to a large plaintext space becomes an open problem. In order to solve it, we improved the msbExtract process to endure a large base, by mapping the element to position. As a result, we constructed an efficient FHE with large plaintext space and quickly refresh process. We implemented our scheme in computer, and made a comparison between our performance and DM14. The result is that the running time is almost same, when extend the plaintext space from 2 to 8

Two round multiparty computation via Multi-key fully homomorphic encryption with faster homomorphic evaluations

Multi-key fully homomorphic encryption (MKFHE) allows computations on ciphertexts encrypted by different users (public keys), and the results can be jointly decrypted using the secret keys of all the users involved. The NTRU-based scheme is an important alternative to post-quantum cryptography, but the NTRU-based MKFHE has the following drawbacks, which cause it inefficient in scenarios such as secure multi-party computing (MPC). One is the relinearization technique used for key switching takes up most of the time of the scheme’s homomorphic evaluation, the other is that each user needs to decrypt in sequence, which makes the decryption process complicated. We propose an efficient leveled MKFHE scheme, which improves the efficiency of homomorphic evaluations, and constructs a two-round (MPC) protocol based on this. Firstly, we construct an efficient single key FHE with less relinearization operations. We greatly reduces the number of relinearization operations in homomorphic evaluations process by separating the homomorphic multiplication and relinearization techniques. Furthermore, the batching technique and a specialization of modulus can be applied to our scheme to improve the efficiency. Secondly, the efficient single-key homomorphic encryption scheme proposed in this paper is transformed into a multi-key vision according to the method in LTV12 scheme. Finally, we construct a distributed decryption process which can be implemented independently for all participating users, and reduce the number of interactions between users in the decryption process. Based on this, a two-round MPC protocol is proposed. Experimental analysis shows that the homomorphic evaluation of the single-key FHE scheme constructed in this paper is 2.4 times faster than DHS16, and the MKFHE scheme constructed in this paper can be used to implement a two-round MPC protocol effectively, which can be applied to secure MPC between multiple users under the cloud computing environment