Quantum Lock: A Provable Quantum Communication Advantage

Physical unclonable functions(PUFs) provide a unique fingerprint to a physical entity by exploiting the inherent physical randomness. Gao et al. discussed the vulnerability of most current-day PUFs to sophisticated machine learning-based attacks. We address this problem by integrating classical PUFs and existing quantum communication technology. Specifically, this paper proposes a generic design of provably secure PUFs, called hybrid locked PUFs(HLPUFs), providing a practical solution for securing classical PUFs. An HLPUF uses a classical PUF(CPUF), and encodes the output into non-orthogonal quantum states to hide the outcomes of the underlying CPUF from any adversary. Here we introduce a quantum lock to protect the HLPUFs from any general adversaries. The indistinguishability property of the non-orthogonal quantum states, together with the quantum lockdown technique prevents the adversary from accessing the outcome of the CPUFs. Moreover, we show that by exploiting non-classical properties of quantum states, the HLPUF allows the server to reuse the challenge-response pairs for further client authentication. This result provides an efficient solution for running PUF-based client authentication for an extended period while maintaining a small-sized challenge-response pairs database on the server side. Later, we support our theoretical contributions by instantiating the HLPUFs design using accessible real-world CPUFs. We use the optimal classical machine-learning attacks to forge both the CPUFs and HLPUFs, and we certify the security gap in our numerical simulation for construction which is ready for implementation.Comment: Replacement of paper "Hybrid PUF: A Novel Way to Enhance the Security of Classical PUFs" (arXiv:2110.09469

AiM: Taking Answers in Mind to Correct Chinese Cloze Tests in Educational Applications

To automatically correct handwritten assignments, the traditional approach is to use an OCR model to recognize characters and compare them to answers. The OCR model easily gets confused on recognizing handwritten Chinese characters, and the textual information of the answers is missing during the model inference. However, teachers always have these answers in mind to review and correct assignments. In this paper, we focus on the Chinese cloze tests correction and propose a multimodal approach (named AiM). The encoded representations of answers interact with the visual information of students' handwriting. Instead of predicting 'right' or 'wrong', we perform the sequence labeling on the answer text to infer which answer character differs from the handwritten content in a fine-grained way. We take samples of OCR datasets as the positive samples for this task, and develop a negative sample augmentation method to scale up the training data. Experimental results show that AiM outperforms OCR-based methods by a large margin. Extensive studies demonstrate the effectiveness of our multimodal approach.Comment: Accepted to COLING 202

Radiative Seesaw in SO(10) with Dark Matter

High energy accelerators may probe into dark matter and the seesaw neutrino mass scales if they are not much heavier than ~O(TeV). In the absence of supersymmetry, we extend a class of SO(10) models to predict well known cold dark matter candidates while achieving precision unification with experimentally testable proton lifetime. The most important prediction is a new radiative seesaw formula of Ma type accessible to accelerator tests while the essential small value of its quartic coupling also emerges naturally. This dominates over the high-scale seesaw contributions making a major impact on neutrino physics and dark matter, opening up high prospects as a theory of fermion masses.Comment: 11 pages LaTex, no figures.hep-ph, astro-ph, hep-th; Version accepted in Phys. Lett.

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Student-Run Free Clinic Services for an Underserved Urban Patient Population

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted healthcare delivery in high density urban communities. This clinic provides free medical care to patients in an urban Midwestern community including limited prescriptions, vaccines, and over-the-counter medications. This study aims to understand how the patient demographics and medical services offered at the clinic have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Walk-in student-run clinics were held weekly on Saturday mornings in an urban Midwestern city, with patients consisting of underinsured and uninsured residents experiencing housing instability. Number of returning and new patients, physicals, flu shots, blood glucose readings, HbA1c, lipid panels, and referrals were collected by student coordinators and recorded by year (2019-2020 vs 2021-2022). Comparisons were made using paired two-tailed t-tests. Results: A total of 274 and 293 patients were seen between 2019-2020 and 2021-2022, respectively. Preliminary results demonstrate the number of patients significantly varied from December to February (p\u3c0.05). Number of physicals and the number of blood glucose tests in 2021-2022 significantly differ from those of 2019-2020 (p\u3c0.05). Number of Covid-19 vaccines significantly differed between these two time periods (p\u3c0.01), while the number of flu shots did not. Conclusion: Patients at walk-in clinics rely on free, interdisciplinary services to obtain healthcare services, medications, and vaccines. Patients during the 2021-2022 year became more vigilant about their health, reflected by the increase in total physicals and increase in total patients. The clinic\u27s improved pre-screening of patients\u27 overall health aims to diagnose individuals earlier, expedite essential medication provision, and reduce the frequency of patient visits

Neutrino mass and low-scale leptogenesis in a testable SUSY SO(10) model

It is shown that a supersymmetric SO(10) model extended with fermion singlets can accommodate the observed neutrino masses and mixings as well as generate the desired lepton asymmetry in concordance with the gravitino constraint. A necessary prediction of the model is near-TeV scale doubly-charged Higgs scalars which should be detectable at the LHC.Comment: Latex, 7 pages, 2 figures, minor clarifications added, to appear in Physics Letters

Variable, but not free-weight, resistance back squat exercise potentiates jump performance following a comprehensive task-specific warm-up

Studies examining acute, high-speed movement performance enhancement following intense muscular contractions (frequently called "post-activation potentiation"; PAP) often impose a limited warm-up, compromizing external validity. In the present study, the effects on countermovement vertical jump (CMJ) performance of back squat exercises performed with or without elastic bands during warm-up were compared. After familiarization, fifteen active men visited the laboratory on two occasions under randomized, counterbalanced experimental squat warm-up conditions: (a) free-weight resistance (FWR) and (b) variable resistance (VR). After completing a comprehensive task-specific warm-up, three maximal CMJs were performed followed by three back squat repetitions completed at 85% of 1-RM using either FWR or VR Three CMJs were then performed 30 seconds, 4 minutes, 8 minutes, and 12 minutes later. During CMJ trials, hip, knee, and ankle joint kinematics, ground reaction force data and vastus medialis, vastus lateralis, and gluteus maximus electromyograms (EMG) were recorded simultaneously using 3D motion analysis, force platform, and EMG techniques, respectively. No change in any variable occurred after FWR (P > 0.05). Significant increases (P < 0.05) were detected at all time points following VR in CMJ height (5.3%-6.5%), peak power (4.4%-5.9%), rate of force development (12.9%-19.1%), peak concentric knee angular velocity (3.1%-4.1%), and mean concentric vastus lateralis EMG activity (27.5%-33.4%). The lack of effect of the free-weight conditioning contractions suggests that the comprehensive task-specific warm-up routine mitigated any further performance augmentation. However, the improved CMJ performance following the use of elastic bands is indicative that specific alterations in force-time properties of warm-up exercises may further improve performance

SARS-CoV-2 sero-surveillance in Greece: evolution over time and epidemiological attributes during the pre-vaccination pandemic era

BACKGROUND: Nation-wide SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence surveys provide valuable insights into the course of the pandemic, including information often not captured by routine surveillance of reported cases. METHODS: A serosurvey of IgG antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 was conducted in Greece between March and December 2020. It was designed as a cross-sectional survey repeated at monthly intervals. The leftover sampling methodology was used and a geographically stratified sampling plan was applied. RESULTS: Of 55,947 serum samples collected, 705 (1.26%) were found positive for anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, with higher seroprevalence (9.09%) observed in December 2020. Highest seropositivity levels were observed in the "0-29" and "30-49" year age groups. Seroprevalence increased with age in the "0-29" age group. Highly populated metropolitan areas were characterized with elevated seroprevalence levels (11.92% in Attica, 12.76% in Thessaloniki) compared to the rest of the country (5.90%). The infection fatality rate (IFR) was estimated at 0.451% (95% CI: 0.382-0.549%) using aggregate data until December 2020, and the ratio of actual to reported cases was 9.59 (7.88-11.33). CONCLUSIONS: The evolution of seroprevalence estimates aligned with the course of the pandemic and varied widely by region and age group. Young and middle-aged adults appeared to be drivers of the pandemic during a severe epidemic wave under strict policy measures