Is I-Voting I-Llegal?

The Voting Rights Act was passed to prevent racial discrimination in all voting booths. Does the existence of a racial digital divide make Internet elections for public office merely a computer geek\u27s pipe dream? Or can i-voting withstand scrutiny under the current state of the law? This i-Brief will consider the current state of the law, and whether disproportionate benefits will be enough to stop this extension of technology dead in its tracks

Qafny: Quantum Program Verification Through Type-guided Classical Separation Logic

Formal verification has been proven instrumental to ensure that quantum programs implement their specifications but often requires a significant investment of time and labor. To address this challenge, we present Qafny, an automated proof system designed for verifying quantum programs. At its core, Qafny uses a type-guided quantum proof system that translates quantum operations to classical array operations. By modeling these operations as proof rules within a classical separation logic framework, Qafny automates much of the traditionally tedious and time-consuming reasoning process. We prove the soundness and completeness of our proof system and implement a prototype compiler that transforms Qafny programs both into the Dafny programming language and into executable quantum circuits. Using Qafny, we demonstrate how to efficiently verify important quantum algorithms, including quantum-walk algorithms, Grover's search algorithm, and Shor's factoring algorithm, with significantly reduced human effort.Comment: Version

Decentralized Threshold Signatures with Dynamically Private Accountability

Threshold signatures are a fundamental cryptographic primitive used in many practical applications. As proposed by Boneh and Komlo (CRYPTO'22), TAPS is a threshold signature that is a hybrid of privacy and accountability. It enables a combiner to combine t signature shares while revealing nothing about the threshold t or signing quorum to the public and asks a tracer to track a signature to the quorum that generates it. However, TAPS has three disadvantages: it 1) structures upon a centralized model, 2) assumes that both combiner and tracer are honest, and 3) leaves the tracing unnotarized and static. In this work, we introduce Decentralized, Threshold, dynamically Accountable and Private Signature (DeTAPS) that provides decentralized combining and tracing, enhanced privacy against untrusted combiners (tracers), and notarized and dynamic tracing. Specifically, we adopt Dynamic Threshold Public-Key Encryption (DTPKE) to dynamically notarize the tracing process, design non-interactive zero knowledge proofs to achieve public verifiability of notaries, and utilize the Key-Aggregate Searchable Encryption to bridge TAPS and DTPKE so as to awaken the notaries securely and efficiently. In addition, we formalize the definitions and security requirements for DeTAPS. Then we present a generic construction and formally prove its security and privacy. To evaluate the performance, we build a prototype based on SGX2 and Ethereum

Microwave-assisted non-thermal hemp degumming

The microwave-assisted non-thermal degumming of hemp fibre has been studied and then compared with the water bath heating under different time and temperature conditions. The results show that the residual gum content of the lean hemp using microwave-assisted heating method is lower than that obtained using water bath heating. The residual gum content gap between the two degumming processes increases first and then decreases as the heating time and temperature are increased. This proves the existence of non-thermal effects in microwave heating process besides the thermal effects in water bath heating. In addition, the structures of the lean hemp fibres obtained from these two methods are also studied by scanning electron microscopy and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy.

Development and application of oncolytic viruses as the nemesis of tumor cells

Viruses and tumors are two pathologies that negatively impact human health, but what occurs when a virus encounters a tumor? A global consensus among cancer patients suggests that surgical resection, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and other methods are the primary means to combat cancer. However, with the innovation and development of biomedical technology, tumor biotherapy (immunotherapy, molecular targeted therapy, gene therapy, oncolytic virus therapy, etc.) has emerged as an alternative treatment for malignant tumors. Oncolytic viruses possess numerous anti-tumor properties, such as directly lysing tumor cells, activating anti-tumor immune responses, and improving the tumor microenvironment. Compared to traditional immunotherapy, oncolytic virus therapy offers advantages including high killing efficiency, precise targeting, and minimal side effects. Although oncolytic virus (OV) therapy was introduced as a novel approach to tumor treatment in the 19th century, its efficacy was suboptimal, limiting its widespread application. However, since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first OV therapy drug, T-VEC, in 2015, interest in OV has grown significantly. In recent years, oncolytic virus therapy has shown increasingly promising application prospects and has become a major research focus in the field of cancer treatment. This article reviews the development, classification, and research progress of oncolytic viruses, as well as their mechanisms of action, therapeutic methods, and routes of administration

Preparation of washable, highly sensitive and durable strain sensor based conductive double rib knitted fabric

A strain sensor based nylon/spandex double rib elastic knitted fabric has been fabricated by coating graphene and adhesive. The morphology, conductivity and sensing property of treated fabric are investigated. The coated knit fabric exhibits a good conductivity of 15.65 S/m and the resulting strain sensors could detect the small strains of about 0.2% with gauge factor of 29.15. Within a strain range of 0-20%, the gauge factor is found as 28.64. It also shows excellent performance in terms of sensitivity, stability and durability over 5000 wash cycles, and could monitor small external deformations with a response time of 0.24s. Moreover, it has good washability.

The mechanism of chlorogenic acid inhibits lipid oxidation: An investigation using multi-spectroscopic methods and molecular docking

Endogenous lipase and lipoxygenase play important roles in accelerating lipid oxidation. Polyphenols are a series of commonly used chemicals for preserving fish and seafood products, due to their positive inhibitory effects on lipid oxidation. However, the mechanism involved is still unknown. The inhibitory effects of chlorogenic acid (CGA) on lipase and lipoxygenase were investigated and explored with multi- spectroscopic and molecular docking approaches. Results showed that CGA could inhibit the activities of lipase and lipoxygenase with concentration increased in a highly dose-dependent manner. CGA quenched intrinsic fluorescence intensities of enzymes by static quenching and binding with CGA which led to changes in 3D structures of enzymes. Results of the molecular docking confirmed binding modes, binding sites and major interaction forces between CGA and enzymes, which reduced the corresponding activity. Thus, this study could provide basic mechanisms of the inhibitory effects of polyphenols on lipid oxidation during food preservation