A Performant, Misuse-Resistant API for Primality Testing

Primality testing is a basic cryptographic task. But developers today are faced with complex APIs for primality testing, along with documentation that fails to clearly state the reliability of the tests being performed. This leads to the APIs being incorrectly used in practice, with potentially disastrous consequences. In an effort to overcome this, we present a primality test having a simplest-possible API: the test accepts a number to be tested and returns a Boolean indicating whether the input was composite or probably prime. For all inputs, the output is guaranteed to be correct with probability at least 1 - 2-128. The test is performant: on random, odd, 1024-bit inputs, it is faster than the default test used in OpenSSL by 17%. We investigate the impact of our new test on the cost of random prime generation, a key use case for primality testing. The OpenSSL developers have adopted our suggestions in full; our new API and primality test are scheduled for release in OpenSSL 3.0

Defects of B-cell terminal differentiation in patients with type-1 Kabuki syndrome

Kabuki syndrome (KS) is a complex multi-system developmental disorder associated with mutation of genes encoding histone-modifying proteins. In addition to craniofacial, intellectual, and cardiac defects, KS is also characterized by humoral immune deficiency and autoimmune disease, yet no detailed molecular characterization of the KS-associated immune phenotype has previously been reported

'To live and die [for] Dixie': Irish civilians and the Confederate States of America

Around 20,000 Irishmen served in the Confederate army in the Civil War. As a result, they left behind, in various Southern towns and cities, large numbers of friends, family, and community leaders. As with native-born Confederates, Irish civilian support was crucial to Irish participation in the Confederate military effort. Also, Irish civilians served in various supporting roles: in factories and hospitals, on railroads and diplomatic missions, and as boosters for the cause. They also, however, suffered in bombardments, sieges, and the blockade. Usually poorer than their native neighbours, they could not afford to become 'refugees' and move away from the centres of conflict. This essay, based on research from manuscript collections, contemporary newspapers, British Consular records, and Federal military records, will examine the role of Irish civilians in the Confederacy, and assess the role this activity had on their integration into Southern communities. It will also look at Irish civilians in the defeat of the Confederacy, particularly when they came under Union occupation. Initial research shows that Irish civilians were not as upset as other whites in the South about Union victory. They welcomed a return to normalcy, and often 'collaborated' with Union authorities. Also, Irish desertion rates in the Confederate army were particularly high, and I will attempt to gauge whether Irish civilians played a role in this. All of the research in this paper will thus be put in the context of the Drew Gilpin Faust/Gary Gallagher debate on the influence of the Confederate homefront on military performance. By studying the Irish civilian experience one can assess how strong the Confederate national experiment was. Was it a nation without a nationalism

Measurement of proton, deuteron, triton, and α particle emission after nuclear muon capture on Al, Si, and Ti with the AlCap experiment

Heavy charged particles after nuclear muon capture are an important nuclear physics background to the muon-to-electron conversion experiments Mu2e and COMET, which will search for charged lepton flavor violation at an unprecedented level of sensitivity. The AlCap experiment measured the yield and energy spectra of protons, deuterons, tritons, and alpha particles emitted after the nuclear capture of muons stopped in Al, Si, and Ti in the low energy range relevant for the muon-to-electron conversion experiments. Individual charged particle types were identified in layered silicon detector packages and their initial energy distributions were unfolded from the observed energy spectra. Detailed information on yields and energy spectra for all observed nuclei are presented in the paper.Comment: 24 pages, 19 figure

MicroRNAs can generate thresholds in target gene expression

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short, highly conserved noncoding RNA molecules that repress gene expression in a sequence-dependent manner. We performed single-cell measurements using quantitative fluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry to monitor a target gene's protein expression in the presence and absence of regulation by miRNA. We find that although the average level of repression is modest, in agreement with previous population-based measurements, the repression among individual cells varies dramatically. In particular, we show that regulation by miRNAs establishes a threshold level of target mRNA below which protein production is highly repressed. Near this threshold, protein expression responds sensitively to target mRNA input, consistent with a mathematical model of molecular titration. These results show that miRNAs can act both as a switch and as a fine-tuner of gene expression.National Institutes of Health (U.S.). Director's Pioneer Award (1DP1OD003936)National Cancer Institute (U.S.). Physical Sciences-Oncology Center (U54CA143874)United States. Public Health Service (Grant R01-CA133404)United States. Public Health Service (Grant R01-GM34277)National Cancer Institute (U.S.) (PO1-CA42063)National Cancer Institute (U.S.) Cancer Center Support (Grant P30-CA14051)Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Predoctoral FellowshipCleo and Paul Schimmel Foundation. FellowshipNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada PGS Scholarshi

LSST Science Book, Version 2.0

A survey that can cover the sky in optical bands over wide fields to faint magnitudes with a fast cadence will enable many of the exciting science opportunities of the next decade. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will have an effective aperture of 6.7 meters and an imaging camera with field of view of 9.6 deg^2, and will be devoted to a ten-year imaging survey over 20,000 deg^2 south of +15 deg. Each pointing will be imaged 2000 times with fifteen second exposures in six broad bands from 0.35 to 1.1 microns, to a total point-source depth of r~27.5. The LSST Science Book describes the basic parameters of the LSST hardware, software, and observing plans. The book discusses educational and outreach opportunities, then goes on to describe a broad range of science that LSST will revolutionize: mapping the inner and outer Solar System, stellar populations in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, the structure of the Milky Way disk and halo and other objects in the Local Volume, transient and variable objects both at low and high redshift, and the properties of normal and active galaxies at low and high redshift. It then turns to far-field cosmological topics, exploring properties of supernovae to z~1, strong and weak lensing, the large-scale distribution of galaxies and baryon oscillations, and how these different probes may be combined to constrain cosmological models and the physics of dark energy.Comment: 596 pages. Also available at full resolution at http://www.lsst.org/lsst/sciboo