The Grouping-Induced Numerosity Illusion Is Attention-Dependent

Perceptual grouping and visual attention are two mechanisms that help to segregate visual input into meaningful objects. Here we report how perceptual grouping, which affects perceived numerosity, is reduced when visual attention is engaged in a concurrent visual task. We asked participants to judge the numerosity of clouds of dot-pairs connected by thin lines, known to cause underestimation of numerosity, while simultaneously performing a color conjunction task. Diverting attention to the concomitant visual distractor significantly reduced the grouping-induced numerosity biases. Moreover, while the magnitude of the illusion under free viewing covaried strongly with AQ-defined autistic traits, under conditions of divided attention the relationship was much reduced. These results suggest that divided attention modulates the perceptual grouping of elements by connectedness and that it is independent of the perceptual style of participants

Ergodicity breaking in strong and network-forming glassy system

The temperature dependence of the non-ergodicity factor of vitreous GeO$_2$, $f_{q}(T)$, as deduced from elastic and quasi-elastic neutron scattering experiments, is analyzed. The data are collected in a wide range of temperatures from the glassy phase, up to the glass transition temperature, and well above into the undercooled liquid state. Notwithstanding the investigated system is classified as prototype of strong glass, it is found that the temperature- and the $q$-behavior of $f_{q}(T)$ follow some of the predictions of Mode Coupling Theory. The experimental data support the hypothesis of the existence of an ergodic to non-ergodic transition occurring also in network forming glassy systems

Intelligent conditional collaborative private data sharing

With the advent of distributed systems, secure and privacy-preserving data sharing between different entities (individuals or organizations) becomes a challenging issue. There are several real-world scenarios in which different entities are willing to share their private data only under certain circumstances, such as sharing the system logs when there is indications of cyber attack in order to provide cyber threat intelligence. Therefore, over the past few years, several researchers proposed solutions for collaborative data sharing, mostly based on existing cryptographic algorithms. However, the existing approaches are not appropriate for conditional data sharing, i.e., sharing the data if and only if a pre-defined condition is satisfied due to the occurrence of an event. Moreover, in case the existing solutions are used in conditional data sharing scenarios, the shared secret will be revealed to all parties and re-keying process is necessary. In this work, in order to address the aforementioned challenges, we propose, a “conditional collaborative private data sharing” protocol based on Identity-Based Encryption and Threshold Secret Sharing schemes. In our proposed approach, the condition based on which the encrypted data will be revealed to the collaborating parties (or a central entity) could be of two types: (i) threshold, or (ii) pre-defined policy. Supported by thorough analytical and experimental analysis, we show the effectiveness and performance of our proposal

Check before storing: what is the performance price of content integrity verification in LRU caching?

In some network and application scenarios, it is useful to cache content in network nodes on the fly, at line rate. Resilience of in-network caches can be improved by guaranteeing that all content therein stored is valid. Digital signatures could be indeed used to verify content integrity and provenance. However, their operation may be much slower than the line rate, thus limiting caching of cryptographically verified objects to a small subset of the forwarded ones. How this affects caching performance? To answer such a question, we devise a simple analytical approach which permits to assess performance of an LRU caching strategy storing a randomly sampled subset of requests. A key feature of our model is the ability to handle traffic beyond the traditional Independent Reference Model, thus permitting us to understand how performance vary in different temporal locality conditions. Results, also verified on real world traces, show that content integrity verification does not necessarily bring about a performance penalty; rather, in some specific (but practical) conditions, performance may even improve

Evidence of anomalous dispersion of the generalized sound velocity in glasses

The dynamic structure factor, S(Q,w), of vitreous silica, has been measured by inelastic X-ray scattering in the exchanged wavevector (Q) region Q=4-16.5 nm-1 and up to energies hw=115 meV in the Stokes side. The unprecedented statistical accuracy in such an extended energy range allows to accurately determine the longitudinal current spectra, and the energies of the vibrational excitations. The simultaneous observation of two excitations in the acoustic region, and the persistence of propagating sound waves up to Q values comparable with the (pseudo-)Brillouin zone edge, allow to observe a positive dispersion in the generalized sound velocity that, around Q=5 nm-1, varies from 6500 to 9000 m/s: this phenomenon was never experimentally observed in a glass.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. To appear in Phys. Rev.

Editoriale

Editorial

Instability and confined chaos in a nonlinear dispersive wave system

Calculations of a discrete nonlinear dispersive wave system show that as the degree of nonlinearity increases, the system experiences in turn, periodic, recurring, chaotic, transitional, and periodic motions. A relationship between the instability of the initial configuration and the long-time behavior is identified. The calculations further suggest that the corresponding continuous system will exhibit chaotic motions and energy-sharing among a narrow band of unstable modes, a phenomenon which we call "confined chaos.