A Novel Quantum Visual Secret Sharing Scheme

Inspired by Naor et al.'s visual secret sharing (VSS) scheme, a novel n out of n quantum visual secret sharing (QVSS) scheme is proposed, which consists of two phases: sharing process and recovering process. In the first process, the color information of each pixel from the original secret image is encoded into an n-qubit superposition state by using the strategy of quantum expansion instead of classical pixel expansion, and then these n qubits are distributed as shares to n participants, respectively. During the recovering process, all participants cooperate to collect these n shares of each pixel together, then perform the corresponding measurement on them, and execute the n-qubit XOR operation to recover each pixel of the secret image. The proposed scheme has the advantage of single-pixel parallel processing that is not available in the existing analogous quantum schemes and perfectly solves the problem that in the classic VSS schemes the recovered image has the loss in resolution. Moreover, its experiment implementation with the IBM Q is conducted to demonstrate the practical feasibility.Comment: 19 pages, 13 figure

Protecting User Privacy for Cloud Computing by Bivariate Polynomial Based Secret Sharing

Cloud computing is an Internet-based computing. In cloud computing, the service is fully served by the provider. Users need nothing but personal devices and Internet access. Computing services, such as data, storage, software, computing, and application, can be delivered to local devices through Internet. The major security issue of cloud computing is that cloud providers must ensure that their infrastructure is secure, and prevent illegal data accesses from outsiders, other clients, or even the unauthorized cloud employees. In this paper, we deal with key agreement and authentication for cloud computing. By using Elliptic Curve Diffie Hellman (ECDH) and symmetric bivariate polynomial based secret sharing, we design a secure cloud computing (SCC). Two types of SCC are proposed. One requires a trusted third party (TTP), and the other does not need a TTP. Additionally, via the homomorphism property of polynomial based secret sharing, our SCC can be extended to multi-server SCC (MSCC) to fit an environment where a multi-server system contains multiple servers to collaborate for serving applications

Introduction to the Special Issue on Intelligent Models for Security and Resilience in Cyber Physical Systems

This article has no abstract

An Efficient and Secure Arbitrary N-Party Quantum Key Agreement Protocol Using Bell States

Two quantum key agreement protocols using Bell states and Bell measurement were recently proposed by Shukla et al.(Quantum Inf. Process. 13(11), 2391-2405, 2014). However, Zhu et al. pointed out that there are some security flaws and proposed an improved version (Quantum Inf. Process. 14(11), 4245-4254, 2015). In this study, we will show Zhu et al.'s improvement still exists some security problems, and its efficiency is not high enough. For solving these problems, we utilize four Pauli operations {I, Z, X, Y } to encode two bits instead of the original two operations {I,X} to encode one bit, and then propose an efficient and secure arbitrary N-party quantum key agreement protocol. In the protocol, the channel checking with decoy single photons is introduced to avoid the eavesdropper's flip attack, and a post-measurement mechanism is used to prevent against the collusion attack. The security analysis shows the present protocol can guarantee the correctness, security, privacy and fairness of quantum key agreement.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure

Predicting new-onset post-stroke depression from real-world data using machine learning algorithm

IntroductionPost-stroke depression (PSD) is a serious mental disorder after ischemic stroke. Early detection is important for clinical practice. This research aims to develop machine learning models to predict new-onset PSD using real-world data.MethodsWe collected data for ischemic stroke patients from multiple medical institutions in Taiwan between 2001 and 2019. We developed models from 61,460 patients and used 15,366 independent patients to test the models’ performance by evaluating their specificities and sensitivities. The predicted targets were whether PSD occurred at 30, 90, 180, and 365 days post-stroke. We ranked the important clinical features in these models.ResultsIn the study’s database sample, 1.3% of patients were diagnosed with PSD. The average specificity and sensitivity of these four models were 0.83–0.91 and 0.30–0.48, respectively. Ten features were listed as important features related to PSD at different time points, namely old age, high height, low weight post-stroke, higher diastolic blood pressure after stroke, no pre-stroke hypertension but post-stroke hypertension (new-onset hypertension), post-stroke sleep-wake disorders, post-stroke anxiety disorders, post-stroke hemiplegia, and lower blood urea nitrogen during stroke.DiscussionMachine learning models can provide as potential predictive tools for PSD and important factors are identified to alert clinicians for early detection of depression in high-risk stroke patients

Women with endometriosis have higher comorbidities: Analysis of domestic data in Taiwan

AbstractEndometriosis, defined by the presence of viable extrauterine endometrial glands and stroma, can grow or bleed cyclically, and possesses characteristics including a destructive, invasive, and metastatic nature. Since endometriosis may result in pelvic inflammation, adhesion, chronic pain, and infertility, and can progress to biologically malignant tumors, it is a long-term major health issue in women of reproductive age. In this review, we analyze the Taiwan domestic research addressing associations between endometriosis and other diseases. Concerning malignant tumors, we identified four studies on the links between endometriosis and ovarian cancer, one on breast cancer, two on endometrial cancer, one on colorectal cancer, and one on other malignancies, as well as one on associations between endometriosis and irritable bowel syndrome, one on links with migraine headache, three on links with pelvic inflammatory diseases, four on links with infertility, four on links with obesity, four on links with chronic liver disease, four on links with rheumatoid arthritis, four on links with chronic renal disease, five on links with diabetes mellitus, and five on links with cardiovascular diseases (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, etc.). The data available to date support that women with endometriosis might be at risk of some chronic illnesses and certain malignancies, although we consider the evidence for some comorbidities to be of low quality, for example, the association between colon cancer and adenomyosis/endometriosis. We still believe that the risk of comorbidity might be higher in women with endometriosis than that we supposed before. More research is needed to determine whether women with endometriosis are really at risk of these comorbidities

Improvements on Audio and Optical Cryptography

Audio and optical cryptography schemes in [1] are secret sharing schemes that protect audio and visual secrets by using sounds and images, respectively. However, 2-out-of-n schemes in [1] are constructed by ⎡log 2 n ⎤ independent 2-out-of-2 schemes, meaning so that a 2-out-of-n scheme needs ⎡log 2 n ⎤ different cover sounds or images. More cover sounds (images) will be more difficult for the human hearing(vision) system to hear(see) the secret. In this paper new constructions for the 2-out-of-n audio and optical secret sharing schemes are proposed. Our schemes only need one cover sound or image