776 research outputs found
Card-Based Cryptography Meets Formal Verification
Card-based cryptography provides simple and practicable protocols for performing secure multi-party computation (MPC) with just a deck of cards. For the sake of simplicity, this is often done using cards with only two symbols, e.g., ♣ and ♡. Within this paper, we target the setting where all cards carry distinct symbols, catering for use-cases with commonly available standard decks and a weaker indistinguishability assumption. As of yet, the literature provides for only three protocols and no proofs for non-trivial lower
bounds on the number of cards. As such complex proofs (handling very large combinatorial state spaces) tend to be involved and error-prone, we propose using formal verification for finding protocols and proving lower bounds. In this paper, we employ the technique of software bounded model checking (SBMC), which reduces the problem to a bounded state space, which is automatically searched exhaustively using a SAT solver as a backend.
Our contribution is twofold: (a) We identify two protocols for converting between different bit encodings with overlapping bases, and then show them to be card-minimal. This completes the picture of tight lower bounds on the number of cards with respect to runtime behavior and shuffle properties of conversion protocols. For computing AND, we show that there is no protocol with finite runtime using four cards with distinguishable symbols and fixed output encoding, and give a four-card protocol with an expected finite
runtime using only random cuts. (b) We provide a general translation of proofs for lower bounds to a bounded model checking framework for automatically finding card- and length-minimal protocols and to give additional confidence in lower bounds. We apply this to validate our method and, as an example, confirm our new AND protocol to have a shortest run for protocols using this number of cards
Momentum Dependence of Charge Excitations in the Electron-Doped Superconductor Nd1.85Ce0.15CuO4: a RIXS Study
We report a resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) study of charge
excitations in the electron-doped high-Tc superconductor Nd1.85Ce0.15CuO4. The
intraband and interband excitations across the Fermi energy are separated for
the first time by tuning the experimental conditions properly to measure charge
excitations at low energy. A dispersion relation with q-dependent width emerges
clearly in the intraband excitation, while the intensity of the interband
excitation is concentrated around 2 eV near the zone center. The experimental
results are consistent with theoretical calculation of the RIXS spectra based
on the Hubbard model
High-energy spin and charge excitations in electron-doped copper oxide superconductors
The evolution of electronic (spin and charge) excitations upon carrier doping
is an extremely important issue in superconducting layered cuprates and the
knowledge of its asymmetry between electron- and hole-dopings is still
fragmentary. Here we combine x-ray and neutron inelastic scattering
measurements to track the doping dependence of both spin and charge excitations
in electron-doped materials. Copper L3 resonant inelastic x-ray scattering
spectra show that magnetic excitations shift to higher energy upon doping.
Their dispersion becomes steeper near the magnetic zone center and deeply mix
with charge excitations, indicating that electrons acquire a highly itinerant
character in the doped metallic state. Moreover, above the magnetic
excitations, an additional dispersing feature is observed near the
{\Gamma}-point, and we ascribe it to particle-hole charge excitations. These
properties are in stark contrast with the more localized spin-excitations
(paramagnons) recently observed in hole-doped compounds even at high
doping-levels.Comment: 20 page
Contiguous RNA editing sites in the mitochondrial nad1 transcript of Arabidopsis thaliana are recognized by different proteins
AbstractPentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) proteins have been identified as site-specific factors for RNA editing in plant organelles. These proteins recognize cis-elements near the editing site. It is unclear how contiguous sites are addressed, and whether one or two factors are required. We here show the PPR MEF25 to be essential for RNA editing at the nad1-308 site in Arabidopsis mitochondria. Another editing site just one nucleotide upstream, nad1-307, is edited normally in mef25 mutant lines. This finding shows that two independent factors recognizing similar cis-elements are involved at these contiguous sites without competing with each other in vivo
Lack of association of Toll-like receptor 9 gene polymorphism with Behcet's disease in Japanese patients
The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com.ArticleTISSUE ANTIGENS. 70(1-5) 423-426 (2007)journal articl
Charge excitations associated with charge stripe order in the 214-type nickelate and superconducting cuprate
Charge excitations were studied for stipe-ordered 214 compounds,
LaSrNiO and 1/8-doped La(Ba, Sr)CuO
using resonant inelastic x-ray scattering in hard x-ray regime. We have
observed charge excitations at the energy transfer of 1 eV with the momentum
transfer corresponding to the charge stripe spatial period both for the
diagonal (nikelate) and parallel (cuprates) stripes. These new excitations can
be interpreted as a collective stripe excitation or charge excitonic mode to a
stripe-related in-gap state.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
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