STAR: Secret sharing for private threshold aggregation reporting

Threshold aggregation reporting systems promise a practical, privacy-preserving solution for developers to learn how their applications are used in-the-wild. Unfortunately, proposed systems to date prove impractical for wide scale adoption, suffering from a combination of requiring: i) prohibitive trust assumptions; ii) high computation costs; or iii) massive user bases. As a result, adoption of truly-private approaches has been limited to only a small number of enormous (and enormously costly) projects. In this work, we improve the state of private data collection by proposing STAR, a highly efficient, easily deployable system for providing cryptographically-enforced κ-anonymity protections on user data collection. The STAR protocol is easy to implement and cheap to run, all while providing privacy properties similar to, or exceeding the current state-of-the-art. Measurements of our open-source implementation of STAR find that it is 1773x quicker, requires 62.4x less communication, and is 24x cheaper to run than the existing state-of-the-art

AdGraph: a graph-based approach to ad and tracker blocking

User demand for blocking advertising and tracking online is large and growing. Existing tools, both deployed and described in research, have proven useful, but lack either the completeness or robustness needed for a general solution. Existing detection approaches generally focus on only one aspect of advertising or tracking (e.g. URL patterns, code structure), making existing approaches susceptible to evasion. In this work we present AdGraph, a novel graph-based machine learning approach for detecting advertising and tracking resources on the web. AdGraph differs from existing approaches by building a graph representation of the HTML structure, network requests, and JavaScript behavior of a webpage, and using this unique representation to train a classifier for identifying advertising and tracking resources. Because AdGraph considers many aspects of the context a network request takes place in, it is less susceptible to the single-factor evasion techniques that flummox existing approaches. We evaluate AdGraph on the Alexa top-10K websites, and find that it is highly accurate, able to replicate the labels of human-generated filter lists with 95.33% accuracy, and can even identify many mistakes in filter lists. We implement AdGraph as a modification to Chromium. AdGraph adds only minor overhead to page loading and execution, and is actually faster than stock Chromium on 42% of websites and AdBlock Plus on 78% of websites. Overall, we conclude that AdGraph is both accurate enough and performant enough for online use, breaking comparable or fewer websites than popular filter list based approaches

Allelic polymorphism of F2, F5 and MTHFR genes in population of Ukraine

Analysis of F2, F5 and MTHFR genes SNPs allelic variants in population of Ukraine. Polymorphic variants were analyzed in 172 unrelated individuals using PCR followed by RFLP analysis.Проанализировано распределение полиморфных вариантов генов по SNP F2 G20210A, F5 G1691A и MTHFR C677T среди населения Украины. Аллельные варианты SNP анализировали среди 172 неродственных индивидуумов методами ПЦР- и ПДРФ-анализа.Проаналізували розподіл алельних варіантів генів за SNP F2 G20210A, F5 G1691A та MTHFR C677T серед населення України. Алельні варіанти SNP аналізували серед 172 неспоріднених індивідів методом ПЛР- та ПДРФ-аналізу

Superpotentials from variational derivatives rather than Lagrangians in relativistic theories of gravity

The prescription of Silva to derive superpotential equations from variational derivatives rather than from Lagrangian densities is applied to theories of gravity derived from Lovelock Lagrangians in the Palatini representation. Spacetimes are without torsion and isolated sources of gravity are minimally coupled. On a closed boundary of spacetime, the metric is given and the connection coefficients are those of Christoffel. We derive equations for the superpotentials in these conditions. The equations are easily integrated and we give the general expression for all superpotentials associated with Lovelock Lagrangians. We find, in particular, that in Einstein's theory, in any number of dimensions, the superpotential, valid at spatial and at null infinity, is that of Katz, Bicak and Lynden-Bell, the KBL superpotential. We also give explicitly the superpotential for Gauss-Bonnet theories of gravity. Finally, we find a simple expression for the superpotential of Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theories with an anti-de Sitter background: it is minus the KBL superpotential, confirming, as it should, the calculation of the total mass-energy of spacetime at spatial infinity by Deser and Tekin.Comment: Scheduled to appear in Class. Quantum Grav. August 200

On the Theory of Vibronic Laser

Some aspects of lasing at vibronic transitions in impurity crystals are theoretically studied. The threshold conditions for a vibronic laser are shown to be dependent on the strength of interaction of optical centers with a local vibration, which forms the vibronic spectrum, and the crystal lattice temperature. The theory can be easily generalized to the spectrum containing a structureless phonon sideband and well agrees with the experimental temperature dependence of the output power of a Mg2SiO4:Cr4+ forsterite laser.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur

An analysis of quadrupole splitting of the Mössbauer spectra of ferritin and iron-dextran complexes in relation to the iron core microstructural variations

Mössbauer spectra of human liver ferritin and some pharmaceutically important iron-dextran complexes as ferritin models were measured at 87 K (frozen solutions) and at both 87 and 295 K (lyophilized forms). The Mössbauer spectra consisted of paramagnetic doublets only. However, the spectral line shapes were not Lorentzian and these Mössbauer spectra were better fitted using a superposition of two or more quadrupole doublets or using a distribution of quadrupole splittings. The differences of the maximal quantity of quadrupole doublets for better fitting of various Mössbauer spectra of ferritin and iron-dextran complexes were compared with the fitting using the distribution of quadrupole splitting for additional analysis. It is possible that variations of the quantity of quadrupole doublets for better fitting of Mössbauer spectra of ferritin and iron-dextran complexes may be related to heterogeneous iron cores in the samples. This heterogeneity is supposed to be different for various samples and changed for lyophilized samples and for frozen solutions as well as for various temperatures

Wide-angle spectral imaging using a Fabry-Pérot interferometer

We show that wide-angle spectral imaging can be achieved with compact and cost-effective devices using Fabry-Pérot interferometers. Designs with a full field of view of 90°, in which the Fabry-Pérot interferometer is mounted either in front of an imaging lens system or behind a telecentric lens system, are presented and analysed. We show the dependency of the spectral resolution on the numerical aperture of the lens system and demonstrate its value as a design criterion

Infinite-dimensional pp-adic groups, semigroups of double cosets, and inner functions on Bruhat--Tits builldings

We construct $p$-adic analogs of operator colligations and their characteristic functions. Consider a $p$-adic group $G=GL(\alpha+k\infty, Q_p)$, its subgroup $L=O(k\infty,Z_p)$, and the subgroup $K=O(\infty,Z_p)$ embedded to $L$ diagonally. We show that double cosets $\Gamma= K\setminus G/K$ admit a structure of a semigroup, $\Gamma$ acts naturally in $K$-fixed vectors of unitary representations of $G$. For each double coset we assign a 'characteristic function', which sends a certain Bruhat--Tits building to another building (buildings are finite-dimensional); image of the distinguished boundary is contained in the distinguished boundary. The latter building admits a structure of (Nazarov) semigroup, the product in $\Gamma$ corresponds to a point-wise product of characteristic functions.Comment: new version of the paper, 47pp, 3 figure