Mosaics of combinatorial designs for information-theoretic security

We study security functions which can serve to establish semantic security for the two central problems of information-theoretic security: the wiretap channel, and privacy amplification for secret key generation. The security functions are functional forms of mosaics of combinatorial designs, more precisely, of group divisible designs and balanced incomplete block designs. Every member of a mosaic is associated with a unique color, and each color corresponds to a unique message or key value. Every block index of the mosaic corresponds to a public seed shared between the two trusted communicating parties. The seed set should be as small as possible. We give explicit examples which have an optimal or nearly optimal trade-off of seed length versus color (i.e., message or key) rate. We also derive bounds for the security performance of security functions given by functional forms of mosaics of designs.

A best–worst scaling experiment to prioritize concern about ethical issues in citizen science reveals heterogeneity on people-level v. data-level issues

Abstract“Citizen science” refers to the participation of lay individuals in scientific studies and other activities having scientific objectives. Citizen science gives rise to unique ethical issues that stem from the potentially multifaceted contributions of citizen scientists to the research process. We sought to explore the ethical issues that are most concerning to citizen scientist practitioners, participants, and scholars to support ethical practices in citizen science. We developed a best–worst scaling experiment using a balanced incomplete block design and fielded it with respondents recruited through the U.S.-based Citizen Science Association. Respondents were shown repeated subsets of 11 ethical issues and identified the most and least concerning issues in each subset. Latent class analysis revealed two respondent classes. The “Power to the People” class was most concerned about power imbalance between project leaders and participants, exploitation of participants, and lack of diverse participation. The “Show Me the Data” class was most concerned about the quality of data generated by citizen science projects and failure of projects to share data and other research outputs.

Assigning readers to cases in imaging studies using balanced incomplete block designs

In many imaging studies, each case is reviewed by human readers and characterized according to one or more features. Often, the inter-reader agreement of the feature indications is of interest in addition to their diagnostic accuracy or association with clinical outcomes. Complete designs in which all participating readers review all cases maximize efficiency and guarantee estimability of agreement metrics for all pairs of readers but often involve a heavy reading burden. Assigning readers to cases using balanced incomplete block designs substantially reduces reading burden by having each reader review only a subset of cases, while still maintaining estimability of inter-reader agreement for all pairs of readers. Methodology for data analysis and power and sample size calculations under balanced incomplete block designs is presented and applied to simulation studies and an actual example. Simulation studies results suggest that such designs may reduce reading burdens by >40% while in most scenarios incurring a <20% increase in the standard errors and a <8% and <20% reduction in power to detect between-modality differences in diagnostic accuracy and [Formula: see text] statistics, respectively.

A Construction Technique for Group Divisible (v-1,k,0,1) Partially Balanced Incomplete Block Designs (PBIBDs)

Group Divisible PBIBDs are important combinatorial structures with diverse applications. In this paper, we provided a construction technique for Group Divisible (v-1,k,0,1) PBIBDs. This was achieved by using techniques described in literature to construct Nim addition tables of order 2n, 2≤n≤5 and (k2,b,r,k,1)Resolvable BIBDs respectively. A “block cutting” procedure was thereafter used to generate corresponding Group Divisible (v-1,k,0,1) PBIBDs from the (k2,b,r,k,1)Resolvable BIBDs. These procedures were streamlined and implemented in MATLAB. The generated designs are regular with parameters(15,15,4,4,5,3,0,1);(63,63,8,8,9,7,0,1);(255,255,16,16,17,15,0,1) and (1023,1023,32,32,33,31,0,1). The MATLAB codes written are useful for generating the blocks of the designs which can be easily adapted and utilized in other relevant studies. Also, we have been able to establish a link between the game of Nim and Group Divisible (v-1,k,0,1) PBIBDs.

LDPC Codes Based on α – Resolvable BIB and Group Divisible Designs

<p>Structured LDPC codes have been constructed using balanced incomplete block (BIB) designs, resolvable BIB designs, mutually orthogonal Latin rectangles, partial geometries, group divisible designs, resolvable group divisible designs and finite geometries. Here we have constructed LDPC codes from <i>α </i>–<b> </b>resolvable BIB and Group divisible designs. The sub–matrices of incidence matrix of such block design are used as a parity – check matrix of the code which satisfy row – column constraint. Here the girth of the proposed code is at least six and the corresponding LDPC code (or Tanner graph) is free of 4– cycles. </p>

LDPC Codes Based on α – Resolvable BIB and Group Divisible Designs

<p>Structured LDPC codes have been constructed using balanced incomplete block (BIB) designs, resolvable BIB designs, mutually orthogonal Latin rectangles, partial geometries, group divisible designs, resolvable group divisible designs and finite geometries. Here we have constructed LDPC codes from <i>α </i>–<b> </b>resolvable BIB and Group divisible designs. The sub–matrices of incidence matrix of such block design are used as a parity – check matrix of the code which satisfy row – column constraint. Here the girth of the proposed code is at least six and the corresponding LDPC code (or Tanner graph) is free of 4– cycles. </p>

Construction of Complete Diallel Crosses Plans

In this paper Complete Diallel Crosses (CDC) plan is constructed using two Balanced Incomplete Block Designs and the Galois field with the same set of parametersI. The designs were isomorphic on each other and the crossing is made between the lines. The analysis of CDC plans to estimate the general combining ability (GCA) effects and specific combining ability (SCA) effects were excluded from the model. The efficiency value of the constructed CDC plan is tends to 1, and universally optimum when v is very large. The construction is also illustrated with the suitable example.