Perfectly secure message transmission in two rounds

In the model that has become known as "Perfectly Secure Message Transmission"(PSMT), a sender Alice is connected to a receiver Bob through n parallel two-way channels. A computationally unbounded adversary Eve controls t of these channels, meaning she can acquire and alter any data that is transmitted over these channels. The sender Alice wishes to communicate a secret message to Bob privately and reliably, i.e. in such a way that Eve will not get any information about the message while Bob will be able to recover it completely. In this paper, we focus on protocols that work in two transmission rounds for n= 2t+1. We break from previous work by following a conceptually simpler blueprint for achieving a PSMT protocol. We reduce the previously best-known communication complexity, i.e. the number of transmitted bits necessary to communicate a 1-bit secret, from O(n^3 log n) to O(n^2 log n). Our protocol also answers a question raised by Kurosawa and Suzuki and hitherto left open: their protocol reaches optimal transmission rate for a secret of size O(n^2 log n) bits, and the authors raised the problem of lowering this threshold. The present solution does this for a secret of O(n log n) bits

Private hospital workflow optimization via secure k-means clustering

Optimizing the workflow of a complex organization such as a hospital is a difficult task. An accurate option is to use a real-time locating system to track locations of both patients and staff. However, privacy regulations forbid hospital management to assess location data of their staff members. In this exploratory work, we propose a secure solution to analyze the joined location data of patients and staff, by means of an innovative cryptographic technique called Secure Multi-Party Computation, in which an additional entity that the staff members can trust, such as a labour union, takes care of the staff data. The hospital, owning location data of patients, and the labour union perform a two-party protocol, in which they securely cluster the staff members by means of the frequency of their patient facing times. We describe the secure solution in detail, and evaluate the performance of our proof-of-concept. This work thus demonstrates the feasibility of secure multi-party clustering in this setting

Role and regulation of ACC deaminase gene in Sinorhizobium meliloti: Is it a symbiotic, rhizospheric or endophytic gene?

Plant-associated bacteria exhibit a number of different strategies and specific genes allow bacteria to communicate and metabolically interact with plant tissues. Among the genes found in the genomes of plant-associated bacteria, the gene encoding the enzyme 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (ACC) deaminase (acdS) is one of the most diffused. This gene is supposed to be involved in the cleaving of plant-produced ACC, the precursor of the plant stress-hormone ethylene toning down the plant response to infection. However, few reports are present on the actual role in rhizobia, one of the most investigated groups of plant-associated bacteria. In particular, still unclear is the origin and the role of acdS in symbiotic competitiveness and on the selective benefit it may confer to plant symbiotic rhizobia. Here we present a phylogenetic and functional analysis of acdS orthologs in the rhizobium model-species Sinorhizobium meliloti. Results showed that acdS orthologs present in S. meliloti pangenome have polyphyletic origin and likely spread through horizontal gene transfer, mediated by mobile genetic elements. When acdS ortholog from AK83 strain was cloned and assayed in S. meliloti 1021 (lacking acdS), no modulation of plant ethylene levels was detected, as well as no increase in fitness for nodule occupancy was found in the acdS-derivative strain compared to the parental one. Surprisingly, AcdS was shown to confer the ability to utilize formamide and some dipeptides as sole nitrogen source. Finally, acdS was shown to be negatively regulated by a putative leucine-responsive regulator (LrpL) located upstream to acdS sequence (acdR). acdS expression was induced by root exudates of both legumes and non-leguminous plants. We conclude that acdS in S. meliloti is not directly related to symbiotic interaction, but it could likely be involved in the rhizospheric colonization or in the endophytic behavior

Linear Secret Sharing Schemes from Error Correcting Codes and Universal Hash Functions

We present a novel method for constructing linear secret sharing schemes (LSSS) from linear error correcting codes and linear universal hash functions in a blackbox way. The main advantage of this new construction is that the privacy property of the resulting secret sharing scheme essentially becomes independent of the code we use, only depending on its rate. This allows us to fully harness the algorithmic properties of recent code constructions such as efficient encoding and decoding or efficient list-decoding. Choosing the error correcting codes and universal hash functions involved carefully, we obtain solutions to the following open problems: - A linear near-threshold secret sharing scheme with both linear time sharing and reconstruction algorithms and large secrets (i.e. secrets of size $\Omega(n)$). Thus, the computational overhead per shared bit in this scheme is *constant*. - An efficiently reconstructible robust secret sharing scheme for $n/3 \leq t 0$) with shares of optimal size $O(1 + \lambda / n)$ and secrets of size $\Omega(n + \lambda)$, where $\lambda$ is the security parameter

Experimental characterization of a Polymer Metal Hybrid (PMH) automotive structure under quasi-static, creep, and impact loading

A feasibility study on a short fibre reinforced Polymer Metal Hybrid (PMH) solution of a car’s suspension control arm has been conducted through a simplified demonstrator, representative of the most critical portion of this component. It was injection moulded in two versions: an all composite one and a PMH version, in which the short fibre reinforced composite was over-moulded on to an aluminium insert. The demonstrator underwent quasi- static, creep and impact tests to simulate most of the loading conditions experienced by a suspension arm during its lifetime. The mechanical behaviours of the two demonstrator versions were compared to highlight the differences introduced by the proposed novel PMH solution. In particular, the ductile metal insert ensured the compliance of the PMH demonstrators with the automotive specific safety requirement of avoiding the complete separation at failure, which was successfully obtained in all testing conditions

Molecular and microbiological insights on the enrichment procedures for the isolation of petroleum degrading bacteria and fungi

Autochthonous bioaugmentation, by exploiting the indigenous microorganisms of the contaminated environment to be treated, can represent a successful bioremediation strategy. In this perspective, we have assessed by molecular methods the evolution of bacterial and fungal communities during the selective enrichment on different pollutants of a soil strongly polluted by mixtures of aliphatic and polycyclic hydrocarbons. Three consecutive enrichments were carried out on soil samples from different soil depths (0\u20131, 1\u20132, 2\u20133 m), and analyzed at each step by means of high-throughput sequencing of bacterial and fungal amplicons biomarkers. At the end of the enrichments, bacterial and fungal contaminants degrading strains were isolated and identified in order to (i) compare the composition of enriched communities by culture-dependent and culture-independent molecular methods and to (ii) obtain a collection of hydrocarbon degrading microorganisms potentially exploitable for soil bioremediation. Molecular results highlighted that for both bacteria and fungi the pollutant had a partial shaping effect on the enriched communities, with paraffin creating distinct enriched bacterial community from oil, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons generally overlapping; interestingly neither the soil depth or the enrichment step had significant effects on the composition of the final enriched communities. Molecular analyses well-agreed with culture-dependent analyses in terms of most abundant microbial genera. A total of 95 bacterial and 94 fungal strains were isolated after selective enrichment procedure on different pollutants. On the whole, isolated bacteria where manly ascribed to Pseudomonas genus followed by Sphingobacterium, Bacillus, Stenothrophomonas, Achromobacter, and Serratia. As for fungi, Fusarium was the most abundant genus followed by Trichoderma and Aspergillus. The species comprising more isolates, such as Pseudomonas putida, Achromobacter xylosoxidans and Ochromobactrum anthropi for bacteria, Fusarium oxysporum and Fusarium solani for fungi, were also the dominant OTUs assessed in Illumina

A simple echocardiographic score to rule out cardiac amyloidosis

BACKGROUND: Early diagnosis of cardiac amyloidosis (CA) is warranted to initiate specific treatment and improve outcome. The amyloid light chain (AL) and inferior wall thickness (IWT) scores have been proposed to assess patients referred by hematologists or with unexplained left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy, respectively. These scores are composed of 4 or 5 variables, respectively, including strain data. METHODS: Based on 2 variables common to the AL and IWT scores, we defined a simple score named AMYLoidosis Index (AMYLI) as the product of relative wall thickness (RWT) and E/e' ratio, and assessed its diagnostic performance. RESULTS: In the original cohort (n=251), CA was ultimately diagnosed in 111 patients (44%). The 2.22 value was selected as rule-out cut-off (negative likelihood ratio [LR-] 0.0). In the hematology subset, AL CA was diagnosed in 32 patients (48%), with 2.36 as rule-out cut-off (LR- 0.0). In the hypertrophy subset, ATTR CA was diagnosed in 79 patients (43%), with 2.22 as the best rule-out cut-off (LR- 0.0). In the validation cohort (n=691), the same cut-offs proved effective: indeed, there were no patients with CA in the whole population or in the hematology or hypertrophy subsets scoring <2.22, <2.36 or <2.22, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The AMYLI score (RWT* E/e') may have a role as an initial screening tool for CA. A <2.22 value excludes the diagnosis in patients undergoing a diagnostic screening for CA, while a <2.36 and a <2.22 value may be better considered in the subsets with suspected cardiac AL amyloidosis or unexplained hypertrophy, respectively

New approach to privacy-preserving clinical decision support systems for HIV treatment

Background HIV treatment prescription is a complex process. Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) are a category of health information technologies that can assist clinicians to choose optimal treatments based on clinical trials and expert knowledge. The usability of some CDSSs for HIV treatment would be significantly improved by using the knowledge obtained by treating other patients. This knowledge, however, is mainly contained in patient records, whose usage is restricted due to privacy and confidentiality constraints. Methods A treatment effectiveness measure, containing valuable information for HIV treatment prescription, was defined and a method to extract this measure from patient records was developed. This method uses an advanced cryptographic technology, known as secure Multiparty Computation (henceforth referred to as MPC), to preserve the privacy of the patient records and the confidentiality of the clinicians' decisions. Findings Our solution enables to compute an effectiveness measure of an HIV treatment, the average time-to-treatment-failure, while preserving privacy. Experimental results show that our solution, although at proof-of-concept stage, has good efficiency and provides a result to a query within 24 min for a dataset of realistic size. Interpretation This paper presents a novel and efficient approach HIV clinical decision support systems, that harnesses the potential and insights acquired from treatment data, while preserving the privacy of patient records and the confidentiality of clinician decisions.Number theory, Algebra and Geometr

Multiparametric Echocardiography Scores for the Diagnosis of Cardiac Amyloidosis

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to investigate the accuracy of a broad range of echocardiographic variables to develop multiparametric scores to diagnose CA in patients with proven light chain (AL) amyloidosis or those with increased heart wall thickness who had amyloid was suspected. We also aimed to further characterize the structural and functional changes associated with amyloid infiltration. BACKGROUND: Cardiac amyloidosis (CA) is a serious but increasingly treatable cause of heart failure. Diagnosis is challenging and frequently unclear at echocardiography, which remains the most often used imaging tool. METHODS: We studied 1,187 consecutive patients evaluated at 3 referral centers for CA and analyzed morphological, functional, and strain-derived echocardiogram parameters with the aim of developing a score-based diagnostic algorithm. Cardiac amyloid burden was quantified by using extracellular volume measurements at cardiac magnetic resonance. RESULTS: A total of 332 patients were diagnosed with AL amyloidosis and 339 patients with transthyretin CA. Concentric remodeling and strain-derived parameters displayed the best diagnostic performance. A multivariable logistic regression model incorporating relative wall thickness, E wave/e' wave ratio, longitudinal strain, and tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion had the greatest diagnostic performance in AL amyloidosis (area under the curve: 0.90; 95% confidence interval: 0.87 to 0.92), whereas the addition of septal apical-to-base ratio yielded the best diagnostic accuracy in the increased heart wall thickness group (area under the curve: 0.80; 95% confidence interval: 0.85 to 0.90). CONCLUSIONS: Specific functional and structural parameters characterize different burdens of CA deposition with different diagnostic performances and enable the definition of 2 scores that are sensitive and specific tools with which diagnose or exclude CA