Unconditionally Secure Oblivious Polynomial Evaluation: A Survey and New Results

Oblivious polynomial evaluation (OPE) is a two-party protocol that allows a receiver, R to learn an evaluation f(α), of a sender, S's polynomial f(x), whilst keeping both α and f(x) private. This protocol has attracted a lot of attention recently, as it has wide ranging applications in the field of cryptography. In this article we review some of these applications and, additionally, take an in-depth look at the special case of information theoretic OPE. Specifically, we provide a current and critical review of the existing information theoretic OPE protocols in the literature. We divide these protocols into two distinct cases (three-party and distributed OPE) allowing for the easy distinction and classification of future information theoretic OPE protocols. In addition to this work, we also develop several modifications and extensions to existing schemes, resulting in increased security, flexibility and efficiency. Lastly, we also identify a security flaw in a previously published OPE scheme.     

Distinctive Microbial Signatures and Gut-Brain Crosstalk in Pediatric Patients with Coeliac Disease and Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus

Coeliac disease (CD) and Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) are immune-mediated diseases. Emerging evidence suggests that dysbiosis in the gut microbiome plays a role in the pathogenesis of both diseases and may also be associated with the development of neuropathy. The primary goal in this cross-sectional pilot study was to identify whether there are distinct gut microbiota alterations in children with CD (n = 19), T1DM (n = 18) and both CD and T1DM (n = 9) compared to healthy controls (n = 12). Our second goal was to explore the relationship between neuropathy (corneal nerve fiber damage) and the gut microbiome composition. Microbiota composition was determined by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Corneal confocal microscopy was used to determine nerve fiber damage. There was a significant difference in the overall microbial diversity between the four groups with healthy controls having a greater microbial diversity as compared to the patients. The abundance of pathogenic proteobacteria Shigella and E. coli were significantly higher in CD patients. Differential abundance analysis showed that several bacterial amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) distinguished CD from T1DM. The tissue transglutaminase antibody correlated significantly with a decrease in gut microbial diversity. Furthermore, the Bacteroidetes phylum, specifically the genus Parabacteroides was significantly correlated with corneal nerve fiber loss in the subjects with neuropathic damage belonging to the diseased groups. We conclude that disease-specific gut microbial features traceable down to the ASV level distinguish children with CD from T1DM and specific gut microbial signatures may be associated with small fiber neuropathy. Further research on the mechanisms linking altered microbial diversity with neuropathy are warranted.     

α-Methylene-β-Lactone Scaffold for Developing Chemical Probes at the Two Ends of the Selectivity Spectrum

The utilities of an α-methylene-β-lactone (MeLac) moiety as a warhead composed of multiple electrophilic sites are reported. We demonstrate that a MeLac-alkyne not only reacts with diverse proteins as a broadly reactive measurement probe, but also recruits reduced endogenous glutathione (GSH) to assemble a selective chemical probe of GSH-β-lactone (GSH-Lac)-alkyne in live cells. Tandem mass spectrometry reveals that MeLac reacts with nucleophilic cysteine, serine, lysine, threonine, and tyrosine residues, through either Michael or acyl addition. A peptide-centric proteomics platform demonstrates that the proteomic selectivity profiles of orlistat and parthenolide, which have distinct reactivities, are measurable by MeLac-alkyne as a high-coverage probe. The GSH-Lac-alkyne selectively probes the glutathione S-transferase P responsible for multidrug resistance. The assembly of the GSH-Lac probe exemplifies a modular and scalable route to develop selective probes with different recognizing moieties.     

Lessons from a Minimal Genome: What Are the Essential Organizing Principles of a Cell Built from Scratch?

One of the primary challenges facing synthetic biology is reconstituting a living system from its component parts. A particularly difficult landmark is reconstituting a self-organizing system that can undergo autonomous chromosome compaction, segregation, and cell division. Here, we discuss how the syn3.0 minimal genome can inform us of the core self-organizing principles of a living cell and how these self-organizing processes can be built from the bottom up. The review underscores the importance of fundamental biology in rebuilding life from its molecular constituents.     

Explicit bounds for separation between Oseledets subspaces

We consider a two-sided sequence of bounded operators in a Banach space which are not necessarily injective and satisfy two properties (SVG) and (FI). The singular value gap (SVG) property says that two successive singular values of the cocycle at some index d admit a uniform exponential gap; the fast invertibility (FI) property says that the cocycle is uniformly invertible on the fastest d-dimensional direction. We prove the existence of a uniform equivariant splitting of the Banach space into a fast space of dimension d and a slow space of codimension d. We compute an explicit constant lower bound on the angle between these two spaces using solely the constants defining the properties (SVG) and (FI). We extend the results obtained by Bochi and Gourmelon in the finite-dimensional case for bijective operators and the results obtained by Blumenthal and Morris in the infinite dimensional case for injective norm-continuous cocycles, in the direction that the operators are not required to be globally injective, that no dynamical system is involved and no compactness of the underlying system or smoothness of the cocycle is required. Moreover we give quantitative estimates of the angle between the fast and slow spaces that are new even in the case of finite-dimensional bijective operators in Hilbert spaces.     

Histone Deacetylase 2 (HDAC2) Inhibitors Containing Boron

Histone deacetylase enzymes (HDACs) are responsible for the global silencing of tumour-suppressor genes. Treatment with a histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDACi) can reverse this process and restore normal cell function. Herein, we report a small series of boron-based (boronic acid, boronate ester and closo-1,2-carborane) HDAC2 inhibitors with IC₅₀ values in the nanomolar range. The boronate ester 4 b was the most potent compound assessed in this study (IC₅₀=40.6±1.5 nM), followed closely by the 1,2-closo-carborane (IC₅₀=42.9±1.5 nM). Compound 4 b exceeds the potency of the related gold-standard HDAC pan-inhibitor vorinostat ( 1 ) toward this particular HDAC isoform.     

Unraveling the film-formation kinetics of interfacial polymerization via low coherence interferometry

Interfacial polymerization (IP) is one of the most important methods for fabricating thin film composite (TFC) membranes. Understanding the film-formation mechanisms is of great value for developing membranes with enhanced performance. This work proposed a novel method to in situ characterize the film-formation kinetics via low coherence interferometry (LCI). The polyamide film formed at the liquid–substrate interface was scanned in real time; the polymerization induced significant variations in the optical properties around the reaction zone. After mitigating the effects of the perturbed interface, the surface-averaged intensity profiles provide a solid basis for analyzing the film-formation kinetics at various depths. In particular, the effects of the monomer concentrations were investigated to reveal the asymmetric growth and development of irregular substructures. All the characterization results confirm that the LCI-based characterization is a powerful tool for studying the structural evolution of the IP layer and thereby providing deeper insights for optimizing TFC membranes.     

Research on the overall architecture of Internet of Things middleware for intelligent industrial parks

With the continuous development of the Internet of Things technology and the proposal of “Made in China 2025”, the construction of IoT applicat     

Determination of Phytic Acid in Juices and Milks by Developing a Quick Complexometric-Titration Method

Food Analytical Methods - Phytic acid is a compound regularly found in plant-based food and beverages. Although it may provide some health benefits to human body, it is commonly defined as an...