11,405 research outputs found
Pseudorandom States, Non-Cloning Theorems and Quantum Money
We propose the concept of pseudorandom states and study their constructions,
properties, and applications. Under the assumption that quantum-secure one-way
functions exist, we present concrete and efficient constructions of
pseudorandom states. The non-cloning theorem plays a central role in our
study---it motivates the proper definition and characterizes one of the
important properties of pseudorandom quantum states. Namely, there is no
efficient quantum algorithm that can create more copies of the state from a
given number of pseudorandom states. As the main application, we prove that any
family of pseudorandom states naturally gives rise to a private-key quantum
money scheme.Comment: 20 page
Evolution of pore structure, submaceral composition and produced gases of two Chinese coals during thermal treatment
This research was funded by the Research Program for Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Supervisor of Beijing (grant no. YB20101141501), the Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities (grant no. 35832015136) and Key Project of Coal-based Science and Technology in Shanxi Province-CBM accumulation model and reservoir evaluation in Shanxi province (grant no. MQ2014-01).Peer reviewedPostprin
Privacy-Preserving and Outsourced Multi-User k-Means Clustering
Many techniques for privacy-preserving data mining (PPDM) have been
investigated over the past decade. Often, the entities involved in the data
mining process are end-users or organizations with limited computing and
storage resources. As a result, such entities may want to refrain from
participating in the PPDM process. To overcome this issue and to take many
other benefits of cloud computing, outsourcing PPDM tasks to the cloud
environment has recently gained special attention. We consider the scenario
where n entities outsource their databases (in encrypted format) to the cloud
and ask the cloud to perform the clustering task on their combined data in a
privacy-preserving manner. We term such a process as privacy-preserving and
outsourced distributed clustering (PPODC). In this paper, we propose a novel
and efficient solution to the PPODC problem based on k-means clustering
algorithm. The main novelty of our solution lies in avoiding the secure
division operations required in computing cluster centers altogether through an
efficient transformation technique. Our solution builds the clusters securely
in an iterative fashion and returns the final cluster centers to all entities
when a pre-determined termination condition holds. The proposed solution
protects data confidentiality of all the participating entities under the
standard semi-honest model. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first
work to discuss and propose a comprehensive solution to the PPODC problem that
incurs negligible cost on the participating entities. We theoretically estimate
both the computation and communication costs of the proposed protocol and also
demonstrate its practical value through experiments on a real dataset.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures, 5 table
Development of System Modules for Children’s Games with Vision and Music-Based Interactive Real-Time Feedback Modules - A Design-Based Research Approach
Most past research on young children’s attention focused on the design of multimedia games based on visual stimulation. In contrast, few studies have been on the development of teaching tools focusing on auditory stimulation. This study aims to develop a real-time interactive digital game with music and eye tracking for young children. The Design-Based Research (DBR) approach was adopted. Melodic tunes and lyrics composed by the researcher constitute the auditory stimulation, paired with visual images, in a game emphasizing interactivity between game content and players. Discussions were held between the various members of the developing team, during which the game developers and domain experts proposed suggestions to the researcher, who then continuously fine-tuned the game in line with the research objective. Our preliminary findings suggested that DBR, which emphasizes child-centered design, provides a novel and innovative approach to digital game design
Impact of information cost and switching of trading strategies in an artificial stock market
This paper studies the switching of trading strategies and its effect on the
market volatility in a continuous double auction market. We describe the
behavior when some uninformed agents, who we call switchers, decide whether or
not to pay for information before they trade. By paying for the information
they behave as informed traders. First we verify that our model is able to
reproduce some of the stylized facts in real financial markets. Next we
consider the relationship between switching and the market volatility under
different structures of investors. We find that there exists a positive
relationship between the market volatility and the percentage of switchers. We
therefore conclude that the switchers are a destabilizing factor in the market.
However, for a given fixed percentage of switchers, the proportion of switchers
that decide to buy information at a given moment of time is negatively related
to the current market volatility. In other words, if more agents pay for
information to know the fundamental value at some time, the market volatility
will be lower. This is because the market price is closer to the fundamental
value due to information diffusion between switchers.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, Physica A, 201
The Swallowing Characteristics of Thickeners, Jellies and Yoghurt Observed Using an In Vitro Model
© The Author(s) 2019 Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.Drinks and foods may be thickened to improve swallowing safety for dysphagia patients, but the resultant consistencies are not always palatable. Characterising alternative appetising foods is an important task. The study aims to characterise the in vitro swallowing behaviour of specifically formulated thickened dysphagia fluids containing xanthan gum and/or starch with standard jellies and yoghurt using a validated mechanical model, the “Cambridge Throat”. Observing from the side, the model throat can follow an experimental oral transit time (in vitro-OTT) and a bolus length (BL) at the juncture of the pharynx and larynx, to assess the velocity and cohesion of bolus flow. Our results showed that higher thickener concentration produced longer in vitro-OTT and shorter BL. At high concentration (spoon-thick), fluids thickened with starch-based thickener showed significantly longer in vitro-OTT than when xanthan gum-based thickener was used (84.5 s ± 34.5 s and 5.5 s ± 1.6 s, respectively, p < 0.05). In contrast, at low concentration (nectar-like), fluids containing xanthan gum-based thickener demonstrated shorter BL than those of starch-based thickener (6.4 mm ± 0.5 mm and 8.2 mm ± 0.8 mm, respectively, p < 0.05). The jellies and yoghurt had comparable in vitro-OTT and BL to thickeners at high concentrations (honey-like and spoon-thick), indicating similar swallowing characteristics. The in vitro results showed correlation with published in vivo data though the limitations of applying the in vitro swallowing test for dysphagia studies were noted. These findings contribute useful information for designing new thickening agents and selecting alternative and palatable safe-to-swallow foods.Peer reviewe
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