Security in Locally Repairable Storage

In this paper we extend the notion of {\em locally repairable} codes to {\em secret sharing} schemes. The main problem that we consider is to find optimal ways to distribute shares of a secret among a set of storage-nodes (participants) such that the content of each node (share) can be recovered by using contents of only few other nodes, and at the same time the secret can be reconstructed by only some allowable subsets of nodes. As a special case, an eavesdropper observing some set of specific nodes (such as less than certain number of nodes) does not get any information. In other words, we propose to study a locally repairable distributed storage system that is secure against a {\em passive eavesdropper} that can observe some subsets of nodes. We provide a number of results related to such systems including upper-bounds and achievability results on the number of bits that can be securely stored with these constraints.Comment: This paper has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions of Information Theor

Estimation of Sparsity via Simple Measurements

We consider several related problems of estimating the 'sparsity' or number of nonzero elements $d$ in a length $n$ vector $\mathbf{x}$ by observing only $\mathbf{b} = M \odot \mathbf{x}$, where $M$ is a predesigned test matrix independent of $\mathbf{x}$, and the operation $\odot$ varies between problems. We aim to provide a $\Delta$-approximation of sparsity for some constant $\Delta$ with a minimal number of measurements (rows of $M$). This framework generalizes multiple problems, such as estimation of sparsity in group testing and compressed sensing. We use techniques from coding theory as well as probabilistic methods to show that $O(D \log D \log n)$ rows are sufficient when the operation $\odot$ is logical OR (i.e., group testing), and nearly this many are necessary, where $D$ is a known upper bound on $d$. When instead the operation $\odot$ is multiplication over $\mathbb{R}$ or a finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$, we show that respectively $\Theta(D)$ and $\Theta(D \log_q \frac{n}{D})$ measurements are necessary and sufficient.Comment: 13 pages; shortened version presented at ISIT 201

Combinatorial Alphabet-Dependent Bounds for Locally Recoverable Codes

Locally recoverable (LRC) codes have recently been a focus point of research in coding theory due to their theoretical appeal and applications in distributed storage systems. In an LRC code, any erased symbol of a codeword can be recovered by accessing only a small number of other symbols. For LRC codes over a small alphabet (such as binary), the optimal rate-distance trade-off is unknown. We present several new combinatorial bounds on LRC codes including the locality-aware sphere packing and Plotkin bounds. We also develop an approach to linear programming (LP) bounds on LRC codes. The resulting LP bound gives better estimates in examples than the other upper bounds known in the literature. Further, we provide the tightest known upper bound on the rate of linear LRC codes with a given relative distance, an improvement over the previous best known bounds.Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Study of effect of myoinositol on menstrual irregularities and skin problems in polycystic ovarian syndrome cases

Background: Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), first identified in 1935 as Stein-Leventhal syndrome, is a complex neuro-endocrine disorder affecting approximately 5% to 10% of women reproductive age. Typically PCOS is characterized by hyperandrogenism (extremely variable in its occurrence), chronic anovulation, polycystic ovaries at ultrasound evaluation and dermatological problems such as acne, hirsute and seborrhoea. PCOS is indeed the most common cause of female infertility.Methods: This prospective interventional study was conducted during December 2012 to June 2013 in Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Medical College and Associated Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar Memorial Hospital, Raipur (C.G.) India, after obtaining permission of ethical committee of institute. All young girls and married women who attended GOPD of Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology having polycystic ovarian syndrome as defined by Rotterdam Criteria were registered and screened for inclusion in the study. At the end of three months’ data were compiled in MS-Excel and checked for its completeness and correctness then it was analysed suitable statistical test was applied and p-value <0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results: Maximum no of cases were between 21 to 25 yrs age, youngest one was of 15 yrs and oldest one was of 33 yrs. 72% cases belonged to urban area and only 28% cases belonged to rural area. 94.67% of cases were presented with abnormal menstrual cycle. The most common menstrual abnormality was Oligomenorrhoea (43.66%) followed by Oligomenorrhoea+Menorrhagia (21.13%) than Amenorrhoea (19.71%) and Hypomenorrhoea+Oligomenorrhoea (15.49%). 42.7% cases had oily skin, 26.7% cases had hirsutism, 20% cases had acne and 9.3% cases had acanthosis nigricans. 74.65% cases (53/75) were improved in their menstrual complaints; most common menstrual abnormality improved was Oligomenorrhoea+ Menorrhagia i.e. 88.67% (13/15). Out of all cases of oligomenorrhoea 77.4% cases (24/31) achieved regular menses. Out of all cases of oligomenorrhoea+ hypomenorrhoea 81.8%% cases (2/11) achieved regular menses.Conclusions: Present study confirms that Myoinositol, an insulin sensitizer, by improving insulin signalling reduces insulin resistance and improves menstrual irregularities and skin problems of PCOS cases

New Frontier in the Treatment of Diabetes

Diabetes mellitus is a group of metabolic diseases recognized by chronic hyperglycemia resulting from defects in secretion in insulin, insulin action or both. There are different types of diabetes like Type 1, type 2, gestational diabetes, secondary diabetes, wolfram syndrome and autoimmune polyglandular syndrome. Type 1 and type 2 diabetes are most common type of diabetes. Polydipsia, polyuria, polyphagia, weight loss slow wound healing, etc. are common symptoms of Diabetes. Diabetes can be genetic; autoimmune, medical related or even diet related. In this article causes and treatment of diabetes is discussed in detail. It includes glimpse of novel technologies like patches, pump and pens, etc. It also includes momentary of other treatment like oral and Injectable hypoglycemic drug and surgical treatments. A glance of latest innovation for measuring glucose level in body with help of sweat, breath and saliva are explained. Keywords: Diabetes; Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (TY2DM), Polydipsia, polyuria, polyphagia, clicksoft microinjection, insulin pen, v-g

Rare Event of Intraoral Kinking of Endotracheal Tube Upon Prone Positioning in a Patient Undergoing Posterior Fossa Surgery

Prone position is commonly employed for many surgical procedures including neurosurgeries, spine surgeries, urological procedures, and in refractory ARDS patients. An endotracheal tube is a conduit to provide a secured airway to the patient. But in case of any equipment failure, it can cause catastrophic events. Intra-oral kinking is a rarer event. It can pose a major troubleshooting standstill owing to the inaccessible view of the kinked portion and the rarity of its occurrence to cross the clinician’s mind in the emergency scenario. We thus report this as the first such case of intraoral kinking against the soft palate in the prone position

Comparing Fuzzers on a Level Playing Field with FuzzBench

Fuzzing is a testing approach commonly used in industry to discover bugs in a given software under test (SUT). It consists of running a SUT iteratively with randomly generated (or mutated) inputs, in order to find as many as possible inputs that make the SUT crash. Many fuzzers have been proposed to date, however no consensus has been reached on how to properly evaluate and compare fuzzers. In this work we evaluate and compare nine prominent fuzzers by carrying out a thorough empirical study based on an open-source framework developed by Google, namely FuzzBench, and a manually curated benchmark suite of 12 real-world software systems. The results show that honggfuzz and AFL++ are, in that order, the best choices in terms of general purpose fuzzing effectiveness. The results also show that none of the fuzzers outperforms the others in terms of efficiency across all considered metrics, that no particular bug affinity is found for any fuzzer, and that the correlation found between coverage and number of bugs depends more on the SUT rather than on the fuzzer used