Natura 2000 and spatial planning

Spatial planning which reconciles nature conservation with other policies' objectives can be a useful tool for implementing the EU nature legislation. However, a thorough exploration of the potential role of spatial planning and its instruments for the implementation of Natura 2000 has not yet been made either at EU or Member State level. In order to bridge this knowledge gap, this study provides an insight into the role and functions of spatial planning policies at EU and Member State level in relation to Natura 2000 and Nature Directives more generally. The key areas of analysis in this study are the notion and rationale of spatial planning, its instruments and governance processes, the mechanisms for integration of Natura 2000 in spatial planning processes and in sectoral policies, the EU-legal frameworks, cross border-cooperation and relevant spatial planning technologies

Fast multi-computations with integer similarity strategy

Abstract. Multi-computations in finite groups, such as multiexponentiations and multi-scalar multiplications, are very important in ElGamallike public key cryptosystems. Algorithms to improve multi-computations can be classified into two main categories: precomputing methods and recoding methods. The first one uses a table to store the precomputed values, and the second one finds a better binary signed-digit (BSD) representation. In this article, we propose a new integer similarity strategy for multi-computations. The proposed strategy can aid with precomputing methods or recoding methods to further improve the performance of multi-computations. Based on the integer similarity strategy, we propose two efficient algorithms to improve the performance for BSD sparse forms. The performance factor can be improved from 1.556 to 1.444 and to 1.407, respectively

Many heads but one brain: FusionBrain – a single multimodal multitask architecture and a competition

Supporting the current trend in the AI community, we present the AI Journey 2021 Challenge called FusionBrain, the first competition which is targeted to make a universal architecture which could process different modalities (in this case, images, texts, and code) and solve multiple tasks for vision and language. The FusionBrain Challenge combines the following specific tasks: Code2code Translation, Handwritten Text recognition, Zero-shot Object Detection, and Visual Question Answering. We have created datasets for each task to test the participants’ submissions on it. Moreover, we have collected and made publicly available a new handwritten dataset in both English and Russian, which consists of 94,128 pairs of images and texts. We also propose a multimodal and multitask architecture – a baseline solution, in the centre of which is a frozen foundation model and which has been trained in Fusion mode along with Single-task mode. The proposed Fusion approach proves to be competitive and more energy-efficient compared to the task-specific one.We would like to thank Sber and SberCloud for granting the GPU-resources to us to experiment with different architectures and also to the participants to train their models, and for supporting the FusionBrain Challenge in general

The modulation effect for supersymmetric dark matter detection with asymmetric velocity dispersion

The detection of the theoretically expected dark matter is central to particle physics cosmology. Current fashionable supersymmetric models provide a natural dark matter candidate which is the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). Such models combined with fairly well understood physics like the quark substructure of the nucleon and the nuclear form factor and the spin response function of the nucleus, permit the evaluation of the event rate for LSP-nucleus elastic scattering. The thus obtained event rates are, however, very low or even undetectable. So it is imperative to exploit the modulation effect, i.e. the dependence of the event rate on the earth's annual motion. In this review we study such a modulation effect in directional and undirectional experiments. We calculate both the differential and the total rates using symmetric as well as asymmetric velocity distributions. We find that in the symmetric case the modulation amplitude is small, less than 0.07. There exist, however, regions of the phase space and experimental conditions such that the effect can become larger. The inclusion of asymmetry, with a realistic enhanced velocity dispersion in the galactocentric direction, yields the bonus of an enhanced modulation effect, with an amplitude which for certain parameters can become as large as 0.46.Comment: 35 LATEX pages, 7 Tables, 8 PostScript Figures include

Studies of the Response of the Prototype CMS Hadron Calorimeter, Including Magnetic Field Effects, to Pion, Electron, and Muon Beams

We report on the response of a prototype CMS hadron calorimeter module to charged particle beams of pions, muons, and electrons with momenta up to 375 GeV/c. The data were taken at the H2 and H4 beamlines at CERN in 1995 and 1996. The prototype sampling calorimeter used copper absorber plates and scintillator tiles with wavelength shifting fibers for readout. The effects of a magnetic field of up to 3 Tesla on the response of the calorimeter to muons, electrons, and pions are presented, and the effects of an upstream lead tungstate crystal electromagnetic calorimeter on the linearity and energy resolution of the combined calorimetric system to hadrons are evaluated. The results are compared with Monte Carlo simulations and are used to optimize the choice of total absorber depth, sampling frequency, and longitudinal readout segmentation.Comment: 89 pages, 41 figures, to be published in NIM, corresponding author: P de Barbaro, [email protected]

Extended double-base number system with applications to elliptic curve cryptography

Abstract. We investigate the impact of larger digit sets on the length of Double-Base Number system (DBNS) expansions. We present a new representation system called extended DBNS whose expansions can be extremely sparse. When compared with double-base chains, the average length of extended DBNS expansions of integers of size in the range 200– 500 bits is approximately reduced by 20 % using one precomputed point, 30 % using two, and 38 % using four. We also discuss a new approach to approximate an integer n by d2 a 3 b where d belongs to a given digit set. This method, which requires some precomputations as well, leads to realistic DBNS implementations. Finally, a left-to-right scalar multiplication relying on extended DBNS is given. On an elliptic curve where operations are performed in Jacobian coordinates, improvements of up to 13 % overall can be expected with this approach when compared to window NAF methods using the same number of precomputed points. In this context, it is therefore the fastest method known to date to compute a scalar multiplication on a generic elliptic curve. Keywords: Double-base number system, Elliptic curve cryptography.

Double-Base Number System for Multi-Scalar Multiplications

Abstract. The Joint Sparse Form is currently the standard representation system to perform multi-scalar multiplications of the form [n]P + m[Q]. We introduce the concept of Joint Double-Base Chain, a generalization of the Double-Base Number System to represent simultaneously n and m. This concept is relevant because of the high redundancy of Double-Base systems, which ensures that we can nd a chain of reasonable length that uses exactly the same terms to compute both n and m. Furthermore, we discuss an algorithm to produce such a Joint Double-Base Chain. Because of its simplicity, this algorithm is straightforward to implement, e cient, and also quite easy to analyze. Namely, in our main result we show that the average number of terms in the expansion is less than 0.3945 log 2 n. With respect to the Joint Sparse Form, this induces a reduction by more than 20 % of the number of additions. As a consequence, the total number of multiplications required for a scalar multiplications is minimal for our method, across all the methods using two precomputations, P + Q and P − Q. This is the case even with coordinate systems o ering very cheap doublings, in contrast with recent results on scalar multiplications. Several variants are discussed, including methods using more precomputed points and a generalization relevant for Koblitz curves. Our second contribution is a new way to evaluate φ, the dual endomorphism of the Frobenius. Namely, we propose formulae to compute ±φ(P) with at most 2 multiplications and 2 squarings in F 2 d. This represents a speed-up of about 50 % with respect to the fastest techniques known. This has very concrete consequences on scalar and multi-scalar multiplications on Koblitz curves. Keywords. Elliptic curve cryptography, scalar multiplication, Double

Fault-Tolerant Computations over Replicated Finite Rings

International audienceThis paper presents a fault-tolerant technique based on the modulus replication residue number system (MRRNS) which allows for modular arithmetic computations over identical channels. In this system, fault tolerance is provided by adding extra computational channels that can be used to redundantly compute the mapped output. An algebraic technique is used to determine the error position in the mapped outputs and provide corrections. We also show that by taking advantage of some elementary polynomial properties we obtain the same level of fault tolerance with about a 30% decrease in the number of channels. This new system is referred to as the symmetric MRRNS (SMRRNS)

A Tree-Based Approach for Computing Double-Base Chains

We introduce a tree-based method to find short Double-Base chains. As compared to the classical greedy approach, this new method is not only simpler to implement and faster, experimentally it also returns shorter chains on average. The complexity analysis shows that the average length of a chain returned by this tree-based approach is log₂ n/4.6419. This tends to suggest that the average length of DB-chains generated by the greedy approach is not O(log n/ log log n). We also discuss generalizations of this method, namely to compute Step Multi-Base Representation chains involving more than 2 bases and extended DB-chains having nontrivial coefficients.14 page(s