Spatial Bloom Filters: Enabling Privacy in Location-Aware Applications

The wide availability of inexpensive positioning systems made it possible to embed them into smartphones and other personal devices. This marked the beginning of location-aware applications, where users request personalized services based on their geographic position. The location of a user is, however, highly sensitive information: the user's privacy can be preserved if only the minimum amount of information needed to provide the service is disclosed at any time. While some applications, such as navigation systems, are based on the users' movements and therefore require constant tracking, others only require knowledge of the user's position in relation to a set of points or areas of interest. In this paper we focus on the latter kind of services, where location information is essentially used to determine membership in one or more geographic sets. We address this problem using Bloom Filters (BF), a compact data structure for representing sets. In particular, we present an extension of the original Bloom filter idea: the Spatial Bloom Filter (SBF). SBF's are designed to manage spatial and geographical information in a space efficient way, and are well-suited for enabling privacy in location-aware applications. We show this by providing two multi-party protocols for privacy-preserving computation of location information, based on the known homomorphic properties of public key encryption schemes. The protocols keep the user's exact position private, but allow the provider of the service to learn when the user is close to specific points of interest, or inside predefined areas. At the same time, the points and areas of interest remain oblivious to the user

Phonon-assisted radiofrequency absorption by gold nanoparticles resulting in hyperthermia

It is suggested that in gold nanoparticles (GNPs) of about 5 nm sizes used in the radiofrequency (RF) hyperthermia, an absorption of the RF photon by the Fermi electron occurs with involvement of the longitudinal acoustic vibrational mode (LAVM), the dominating one in the distribution of vibrational density of states (VDOS). This physical mechanism helps to explain two observed phenomena: the size dependence of the heating rate (HR) in GNPs and reduced heat production in aggregated GNPs. The argumentation proceeds within the one-electron approximation, taking into account the discretenesses of energies and momenta of both electrons and LAVMs. The heating of GNPs is thought to consist of two consecutive processes: first, the Fermi electron absorbs simultaneously the RF photon and the LAVM available in the GNP; hereafter the excited electron gets relaxed within the GNP's boundary, exciting a LAVM with the energy higher than that of the previously absorbed LAVM. GNPs containing the Ta and/or Fe impurities are proposed for the RF hyperthermia as promising heaters with enhanced HRs, and GNPs with rare-earth impurity atoms are also brought into consideration. It is shown why the maximum HR values should be expected in GNPs with about 5-7 nm size.Comment: proceedings at the NATO Advanced Research workshop FANEM-2015 (Minsk, May 25-27, 2015). To be published in the final form in: "Fundamental and Applied NanoElectroMagnetics" (Springer Science + Business Media B.V.

Short-Run Regional Forecasts: Spatial Models through Varying Cross-Sectional and Temporal Dimensions

In any economic analysis, regions or municipalities should not be regarded as isolated spatial units, but rather as highly interrelated small open economies. These spatial interrelations must be considered also when the aim is to forecast economic variables. For example, policy makers need accurate forecasts of the unemployment evolution in order to design short- or long-run local welfare policies. These predictions should then consider the spatial interrelations and dynamics of regional unemployment. In addition, a number of papers have demonstrated the improvement in the reliability of long-run forecasts when spatial dependence is accounted for. We estimate a heterogeneouscoefficients dynamic panel model employing a spatial filter in order to account for spatial heterogeneity and/or spatial autocorrelation in both the levels and the dynamics of unemployment, as well as a spatial vector-autoregressive (SVAR) model. We compare the short-run forecasting performance of these methods, and in particular, we carry out a sensitivity analysis in order to investigate if different number and size of the administrative regions influence their relative forecasting performance. We compute short-run unemployment forecasts in two countries with different administrative territorial divisions and data frequency: Switzerland (26 regions, monthly data for 34 years) and Spain (47 regions, quarterly data for 32 years)

Interactions between cigarette and alcohol consumption in rural China

The objective of this paper is to analyze interdependencies between cigarette and alcohol consumption in rural China, using panel data for 10 years (1994–2003) for rural areas of 26 Chinese provinces. There have been many studies in which cigarette and alcohol consumption have been considered separately but few to date for China on interactions between the consumption of these two products. Taxes are often recommended as a tool to reduce alcohol and cigarette consumption. If cigarettes and alcohol are complements, taxing one will reduce the consumption of both and thus achieve a double public health dividend. However, if they are substitutes, taxing one will induce consumers to increase consumption of the other, offsetting the public health benefits of the tax. Our results indicate that the demands for both cigarettes and alcohol are very sensitive to the price of alcohol, but not to the price of cigarettes or to income. This suggests that taxes on alcohol can have a double dividend. On the other hand, an increase in cigarette taxes may not be effective in curbing cigarette or alcohol consumption in rural China

Micro-manufacturing : research, technology outcomes and development issues

Besides continuing effort in developing MEMS-based manufacturing techniques, latest effort in Micro-manufacturing is also in Non-MEMS-based manufacturing. Research and technological development (RTD) in this field is encouraged by the increased demand on micro-components as well as promised development in the scaling down of the traditional macro-manufacturing processes for micro-length-scale manufacturing. This paper highlights some EU funded research activities in micro/nano-manufacturing, and gives examples of the latest development in micro-manufacturing methods/techniques, process chains, hybrid-processes, manufacturing equipment and supporting technologies/device, etc., which is followed by a summary of the achievements of the EU MASMICRO project. Finally, concluding remarks are given, which raise several issues concerning further development in micro-manufacturing

Redox-active charge carriers of conducting polymers as a tuner of conductivity and its potential window

Electric conductivity of conducting polymers has been steadily enhanced towards a level worthy of being called its alias, "synthetic metal". PEDOT:PSS (poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) doped with poly(styrene sulfonate)), as a representative conducting polymer, recently reached around 3,000â�...S cm -1, the value to open the possibility to replace transparent conductive oxides. The leading strategy to drive the conductivity increase is solvent annealing in which aqueous solution of PEDOT:PSS is treated with an assistant solvent such as DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide). In addition to the conductivity enhancement, we found that the potential range in which PEDOT:PSS is conductive is tuned wider into a negative potential direction by the DMSO-annealing. Also, the increase in a redox-active fraction of charge carriers is proposed to be responsible for the enhancement of conductivity in the solvent annealing process.open3

Feasibility of an in situ measurement device for bubble size and distribution

The feasibility of in situ measurement device for bubble size and distribution was explored. A novel in situ probe measurement system, the EnviroCam™, was developed. Where possible, this probe incorporated strengths, and minimized weaknesses of historical and currently available real-time measurement methods for bubbles. The system was based on a digital, high-speed, high resolution, modular camera system, attached to a stainless steel shroud, compatible with standard Ingold ports on fermenters. Still frames and/or video were produced, capturing bubbles passing through the notch of the shroud. An LED light source was integral with the shroud. Bubbles were analyzed using customized commercially available image analysis software and standard statistical methods. Using this system, bubble sizes were measured as a function of various operating parameters (e.g., agitation rate, aeration rate) and as a function of media properties (e.g., viscosity, antifoam, cottonseed flour, and microbial/animal cell broths) to demonstrate system performance and its limitations. For selected conditions, mean bubble size changes qualitatively compared favorably with published relationships. Current instrument measurement capabilities were limited primarily to clear solutions that did not contain large numbers of overlapping bubbles

Smc5/6 coordinates formation and resolution of joint molecules with chromosome morphology to ensure meiotic divisions

During meiosis, Structural Maintenance of Chromosome (SMC) complexes underpin two fundamental features of meiosis: homologous recombination and chromosome segregation. While meiotic functions of the cohesin and condensin complexes have been delineated, the role of the third SMC complex, Smc5/6, remains enigmatic. Here we identify specific, essential meiotic functions for the Smc5/6 complex in homologous recombination and the regulation of cohesin. We show that Smc5/6 is enriched at centromeres and cohesin-association sites where it regulates sister-chromatid cohesion and the timely removal of cohesin from chromosomal arms, respectively. Smc5/6 also localizes to recombination hotspots, where it promotes normal formation and resolution of a subset of joint-molecule intermediates. In this regard, Smc5/6 functions independently of the major crossover pathway defined by the MutLγ complex. Furthermore, we show that Smc5/6 is required for stable chromosomal localization of the XPF-family endonuclease, Mus81-Mms4Eme1. Our data suggest that the Smc5/6 complex is required for specific recombination and chromosomal processes throughout meiosis and that in its absence, attempts at cell division with unresolved joint molecules and residual cohesin lead to severe recombination-induced meiotic catastroph

Testing the robustness of controllers for self-adaptive systems

Self-Adaptive systems are software-intensive systems endowed with the ability to respond to a variety of changes that may occur in their environment, goals, or the system itself, by adapting their structure and behavior at run-time in an autonomous way. Controllers are complex components incorporated in self-adaptive systems, which are crucial to their function since they are in charge of adapting the target system by executing actions through effectors, based on information monitored by probes. However, although controllers are becoming critical in many application domains, so far very little has been done to assess their robustness. In this paper, we propose an approach for evaluating the robustness of controllers for self-adaptive software systems, aiming to identify faults in their design. Our proposal considers the stateful nature of the controller, and identifies a set of robustness tests, which includes the provision of mutated inputs to the interfaces between the controller and the target system (i.e., probes). The feasibility of the approach is evaluated on Rainbow, a framework for architecture-based self-adaptation, and in the context of the Znn.com case study