Distributed Random Process for a Large-Scale Peer-to-Peer Lottery

Most online lotteries today fail to ensure the verifiability of the random process and rely on a trusted third party. This issue has received little attention since the emergence of distributed protocols like Bitcoin that demonstrated the potential of protocols with no trusted third party. We argue that the security requirements of online lotteries are similar to those of online voting, and propose a novel distributed online lottery protocol that applies techniques developed for voting applications to an existing lottery protocol. As a result, the protocol is scalable, provides efficient verification of the random process and does not rely on a trusted third party nor on assumptions of bounded computational resources. An early prototype confirms the feasibility of our approach

iPose: Instance-Aware 6D Pose Estimation of Partly Occluded Objects

We address the task of 6D pose estimation of known rigid objects from single input images in scenarios where the objects are partly occluded. Recent RGB-D-based methods are robust to moderate degrees of occlusion. For RGB inputs, no previous method works well for partly occluded objects. Our main contribution is to present the first deep learning-based system that estimates accurate poses for partly occluded objects from RGB-D and RGB input. We achieve this with a new instance-aware pipeline that decomposes 6D object pose estimation into a sequence of simpler steps, where each step removes specific aspects of the problem. The first step localizes all known objects in the image using an instance segmentation network, and hence eliminates surrounding clutter and occluders. The second step densely maps pixels to 3D object surface positions, so called object coordinates, using an encoder-decoder network, and hence eliminates object appearance. The third, and final, step predicts the 6D pose using geometric optimization. We demonstrate that we significantly outperform the state-of-the-art for pose estimation of partly occluded objects for both RGB and RGB-D input

In silico Assessment of Drug-like Properties of Alkaloids from Areca catechu L Nut

Purpose: To investigate in silico the drug-like properties of alkaloids (arecoline, arecaidine, guvacine, guvacoline, isoguvacine, arecolidine and homoarecoline) obtained from the fruits of Areca catechu L (areca nut).Methods: All chemical structures were re-drawn using Chemdraw Ultra 11.0. Furthermore, software including Bio-Loom for Windows - version 1.5, Molinspiration Property Calculator and ACD/I-LAB service were used to predict the drug-like properties of the alkaloids, including relative molecular mass (MW), partition coefficient log P (cLog P), number of hydrogen bond donors (HBD), number of hydrogen bond acceptors (HBA), topological polar surface area (TPSA), number of rotatable bonds (NROTB), pKa, and aqueous solubility at a given pH (LogS). In addition, Lipinski’s rule was used to evaluate druglike properties.Results: From our research, MWs of the seven compounds were all < 500. HBD and cLog P values of the seven compounds were all < 5, and HBA values were all < 10. In addition, TPSA value of each compound was < 60 Å2, and NROTB value was < 10. Besides, pKa values of the seven alkaloids were > 7.5; furthermore, they possess good solubility at pH 1.0, 5.0, and 7.0.Conclusion: All the seven alkaloids possess good drug-like properties, and demonstrated good oral absorption and bioavailability. The results also suggest that these compounds can be further developed into new oral drugs for treating certain diseases.Keywords: Areca catechu L, Areca nut, Drug-like properties, Alkaloids, Arecoline, Arecaidine, Guvacine, Guvacoline, Isoguvacine, Arecolidine, Homoarecoline, In silic

Nanoscale ferroelectric tunnel junctions based on ultrathin BaTiO₃film and Ag nanoelectrodes

Author name used in this publication: J. Y. Dai2012-2013 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

Malondialdehyde level and some enzymatic activities in subclinical mastitis milk

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the changes occurring in milk malondialdehyde (MDA) level and some enzymatic activities as a result of subclinical mastitis (SCM) in dairy cows. A total of 124 milk samples were collected from 124 lactating cows from the same herd in the period between the 2nd week after calving and the 10th week postpartum. They were classified by bacterial culture and the California mastitis test (CMT) as positive were deemed to have glands with SCM, and the periodic incidence rate of SCM was 26.6%. The most common bacterial isolates from SCM cases were Staphylococcus aureus (47%) and coagulase negative Staphylococci (CNS) (27%). The mean level of MDA and activities of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) were significantly higher in SCM milk than in normal milk, while the mean activity of glutathione peroxidase (GPx) was significantly lower in SCM milk than in normal milk. There were no differences in the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) between normal milk and SCM milk. Therefore, the measurement of milk MDA level and GPx, LDH and ALP activities, appears to be a suitable diagnostic method for identifying SCM in dairy cows.Key words: Subclinical mastitis, mastitis diagnostic, etiology, malonaldehyde (MDA), enzym

One-to-many laser fanout generated by single large-size two-dimensional holographic photonic crystal

The phenomenon of one-to-many laser fanout in large-size two-dimensional (2D) holographic photonic crystals (H-PhCs) is presented. Theoretical analysis demonstrates that the phenomenon is induced by multiple substrate waveguiding effect of 2D H-PhCs, and the orientations of the waveguided beams depend on the lattice structures of 2D H-PhCs. The fanout angle and separations between output spots are determined by lambda/d, light incident angle and thickness of glass substrate, therefore can be controlled via fabricating special lattice structures. The phenomenon has the potential to enable the application of 2D PhCs as interconnection devices in optical networks. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics

Multiphase technique improves mud-pulse velocity calculations

Measurement while drilling (MWD) has become a popular survey technology to monitor directional data, drilling data, formation evaluation data and safety data in the world. And closed loop drilling shows promise in recent years. Obviously, the method of t

Microstructures and resistivity of cuprate/manganite bilayer deposited on SrTiO3 substrate

Thin Yba[SUB2]Cu[SUB3]O[SUB7-δ/La[SUB0.67]Ca[SUB0.33]MnO[SUB3] (YBCO/LCMO) films were grown on SrTiO[SUB3](STO)substrates by magnetron sputtering technique. The microstructures of the bilayers were characterized and a standard four-probe technique was applied to measure the resistivity of the samples. The interdiffusions at the YBCO/LCMO and LCMO/STO interfaces formed two transient layers with the thickness of about 3 and 2 nm, respectively. All the bilayers were well textured along the c axis. At low temperature, the superconductivity can only be observed when the thickness of YBCO is more than 25 nm. When the thickness of YBCO is less than 8 nm, the bilayers show only ferromagnetism. The superconductivity and ferromagnetism perhaps coexist in the bilayer with the YBCO thickness of 12.5 nm. These interesting properties are related to the interaction between spin polarized electrons in the manganites and the cooper pairs in the cuprates. © 2003 American Institute of Physics.published_or_final_versio