Cryptography and cryptographic protocols

We survey the paradigms, approaches and techniques used to conceptualize, define and provide solutions to natural cryptographic problems. We start by presenting some of the central tools (e.g., computational difficulty, pseudorandomness, and zero-knowledge proofs), and next turn to the treatment of encryption and signature schemes. We conclude with an extensive treatment of secure cryptographic protocols both when executed in a stand-alone manner and when many sessions of various protocols are concurrently executed and controlled by an adversary. The survey is intended for researchers in distributed computing, and assumes no prior familiarity with cryptography.Received: June 2001, Accepted: July 2002,     

Almost k-wise independence versus k-wise independence

We say that a distribution over {0,1}ⁿ is (ε,k)-wise independent if its restriction to every k coordinates results in a distribution that is ε-close to the uniform distribution. A natural question regarding (ε,k)-wise independent distributions is how close they are to some k-wise independent distribution. We show that there exist (ε,k)-wise independent distributions whose statistical distance is at least n^O(k)·ε from any k-wise independent distribution. In addition, we show that for any (ε,k)-wise independent distribution there exists some k-wise independent distribution, whose statistical distance is n^O(k)·ε.     

Open source content contributors’ response to free-riding: The effect of personality and context

We address concerns about the sustainability of the open source content model by examining the effect of external appropriation, whereby the product of open source contributors’ efforts is monetized by a party that did not contribute to the project, on intended effort withdrawal (reduction in contribution level). We examine both the personality of contributors and their contextual motivations to contribute, using a scenario-based survey of Wikipedia contributors. The findings suggest that perceived justice of the open source license terms, and intrinsic motivations are both negatively related with effort withdrawal intentions. Moreover, we find that the effect of the fairness personality trait on effort withdrawal is stronger for individuals who are low in perceived justice and weaker for individuals high in justice. The findings of factors predicting effort withdrawal contribute to the open source literature, which tends to focus on contribution and motivations, but not on what impacts changes in individual contribution levels.     

Geometric Bone Modeling: From Macro to Micro Structures

There is major interest within the bio-engineering community in developing accurate and non-invasive means for visualizing, modeling and analyzing bone micro-structures. Bones are composed of hierarchical bio-composite materials characterized by complex multi-scale structural geometry. The process of reconstructing a volumetric bone model is usually based upon CT/MRI scanned images. Meshes generated by current commercial CAD systems cannot be used for further modeling or analysis. Moreover, recently develop...     

Optimal search path for service in the presence of disruptions

We consider the following basic search path problem: a customer residing at a node of a network needs to obtain service from one of the facilities; facility locations are known and fixed. Facilities may become inoperational with certain probability; the state of the facility only becomes known when the facility is visited. Customer travel stops when the first operational facility is found. The objective is to minimize the expected total travel distance.     

On the complexity of approximating k-set packing

Given a k-uniform hypergraph, the Maximum k -Set Packing problem is to find the maximum disjoint set of edges. We prove that this problem cannot be efficiently approximated to within a factor of unless P = NP. This improves the previous hardness of approximation factor of by Trevisan. This result extends to the problem of k-Dimensional-Matching.     

Logical diagnosis ofLDL programs

The debuggers of Ref. 11) and most of their derivatives are of themeta-interpreter type. The computation of the debugger tracks the computation of the program to be diagnosed at the level of procedure call. This is adequate if the intuitive understanding of the programmer is in terms of procedure calls; as is indeed the case in Prolog. InLDL however, while the semantics of the language are described in a bottom-up, fixpoint model of computation,⁸⁾ theactual execution of a program is a complex sequence of low-level procedure calls determined (and optimized) by the compiler. Consequently, a trace of these procedure calls is of little use to the programmer. Further, one cannot “execute” anLDL program as if it was a Prolog program; the program may simply not terminate in its Prolog reading and severalLDL constructs have no obvious Prolog counterparts. We identify the origin of a fault in theLDL program by a top-down, query/subquery approach. The basic debugger, implemented in Prolog, is a shell program between the programmer and theLDL program: it poses queries and uses the results to drive the interaction with the user. It closely resembles the one presented in Ref. 11). The core of a more sophisticated debugger is presented as well. Several concepts are introduced in order to quantify debugging abilities. One is that of agenerated interpretation, in which the structureless intended interpretation of Ref. 11) is augmented with causality. Another is the (idealized) concept of areliable oracle. We show that given an incorrect program and a reliable oracle which uses a generated interpretation, a cause for the fault will be found in finitely many steps. This result carries over to the more sophisticated debugger.     

Spider Silk-CBD-Cellulose Nanocrystal Composites: Mechanism of Assembly

The fabrication of cellulose-spider silk bio-nanocomposites comprised of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) and recombinant spider silk protein fused to a cellulose binding domain (CBD) is described. Silk-CBD successfully binds cellulose, and unlike recombinant silk alone, silk-CBD self-assembles into microfibrils even in the absence of CNCs. Silk-CBD-CNC composite sponges and films show changes in internal structure and CNC alignment related to the addition of silk-CBD. The silk-CBD sponges exhibit improved thermal and structural characteristics in comparison to control recombinant spider silk sponges. The glass transition temperature (Tg) of the silk-CBD sponge was higher than the control silk sponge and similar to native dragline spider silk fibers. Gel filtration analysis, dynamic light scattering (DLS), small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and cryo-transmission electron microscopy (TEM) indicated that silk-CBD, but not the recombinant silk control, formed a nematic liquid crystalline phase similar to that observed in native spider silk during the silk spinning process. Silk-CBD microfibrils spontaneously formed in solution upon ultrasonication. We suggest a model for silk-CBD assembly that implicates CBD in the central role of driving the dimerization of spider silk monomers, a process essential to the molecular assembly of spider-silk nanofibers and silk-CNC composites.