Intermediate Round Research Articles

Perspective Armour-Piercing Intermediate Cartridge Projectile

Ongoing military conflicts, along with a constant evolution of individual protection devices, have shown an urgent need of development in terms of the armour piercing capability of standard infantry small arms ammunition. The following paper includes a brief overview of the existing armour-piercing intermediate rounds, in an effort to define the most reasonable design of a perspective armour-piercing projectile. Therefore, various projectiles were designed and evaluated in terms of their external ballistic performance for chosen initial conditions, followed by preliminary internal and terminal ballistic calculations that were performed in order to assess the most reasonable outcome.

Privacy-preserving and efficient data sharing for blockchain-based intelligent transportation systems

Recent years have witnessed the development and adoption of blockchain technology in intelligent transportation systems (ITS) because of its authenticity and traceability. However, increasing ITS devices impose grand challenges in privacy-preserving and efficient data sharing. Recent research has demonstrated that integrating searchable symmetric encryption in blockchain enables privacy-preserving data sharing among ITS devices. However, existing solutions focus only on single-keyword searches over encrypted ITS data on the blockchain and suffer from privacy and efficiency issues when extended to multi-keyword scenarios. This work proposes a bloom filter-based multi-keyword search protocol for ITS data with enhanced efficiency and privacy preservation. We design a bloom filter to select a low-frequency keyword from the multiple keywords input by the ITS data owner. The low-frequency keyword can filter out a large portion of the ITS data from the search result, thus significantly reducing the computational cost. Furthermore, each identifier-keyword pair is attached with a pseudorandom tag that enables the completion of a search operation in only one round. In this manner, privacy is preserved because there are no intermediate rounds and results. In addition to the multi-keyword search protocol, we specify the addition and deletion protocols to enable dynamic updates of data records. We conducted a comprehensive performance evaluation of the protocols. The experimental results indicate that the proposed multi-keyword search protocol saves 14.67% query time and 59.96% financial cost.

Entropy Reduction Model for Pinpointing Differential Fault Analysis on SIMON and SIMECK Ciphers

In this article, we present a formal model of entropy reduction across the rounds when a fault is injected in SIMON and SIMECK family of lightweight ciphers. The model helps to pinpoint a range of intermediate rounds in a cipher of the same family, which when subjected to a fault injection requires minimal number of such attempts to reveal the secret key. The range of such rounds depict increased vulnerability to fault analysis attacks and, thus, require a stronger countermeasure for such rounds. We demonstrate the proposed entropy-reduction model for all versions of SIMON and SIMECK. The comparisons with existing fault analysis attacks depict that our proposed model requires least number of faults and smaller attack time in almost all versions of SIMON and SIMECK. The proposed entropy-reduction model can be used as a tool for the designers for any generic lightweight Feistel cipher to identify the vulnerable rounds in the encryption/decryption algorithms.

A new floating-point adder FPGA-based implementation using RN-coding of numbers

A well-known problem in the computer science area is related to numerical data representation, which directly affects adder circuits’ design and a reason to have different formats: IEEE Std. 754, Half-Unit-Biased (HUB), and Round-to-Nearest (RN). RN has an advantage that rounding to nearest is equivalent to a word truncation. It avoids double rounding errors and intermediate rounding steps with an exact conversion between formats, making it applicable to general problems. However, there is a lack of research on the hardware implementation of the RN representation. In this work, we propose hardware architectures for binary and floating-point adders, analyzing for the latter its performance in terms of error and resource consumption in FPGAs. To accomplish this, we have developed a one-bit RN-based adder that allows modular designs, considering an efficient signal propagation to obtain new architectures for both binary and floating-point single-precision adders. The results open new perspectives for further applications.

Progression in risk factors during 36 years of follow-up and prediction of carotid intima-media thickness in a large cohort of adults with and without diabetes

Carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) can assess the cumulative effect of atherosclerotic risk factors and provides an independent predictor of future cardiovascular (CV) risk. The aim of this study was to investigate the progression of conventional risk factors in 933 long-term survivors from a Danish cohort with and without diabetes mellitus (DM) as predictors for attained carotid IMT during 35.6 (0.7) years of follow-up. Persons who participated in the first, the last and one of the intermediate rounds of the Copenhagen City Heart Study, and who had had an ultrasound-derived measure of the carotid IMT performed at the last examination were included in the analyses. The risk factors varied between persons with and without DM during the 36 years, but the difference in blood pressure disappeared in the fifth examination, where, in addition, total cholesterol was found to be lower in persons with DM. In this cohort there were no difference in attained carotid IMT between persons with and without DM at the last examination. The following risk factors were found to best predict carotid IMT: age, maximum systolic BP, average systolic BP, average BMI, minimum BMI, sex and years of smoking. The prediction of carotid IMT was clinically poor with a root mean-squared error of prediction (RMSEP) of 0.134 mm and a 95% prediction error probability interval of (−0.22; 0.30). Furthermore, the distribution of prediction errors was skewed to the right indicating that the prediction errors were larger among persons with high carotid IMT.

Side-channel leakage assessment metrics and methodologies at design cycle: A case study for a cryptosystem

Current EDA (electronic design automation) tools are not capable to consider side-channel vulnerabilities at design time. Therefore, designers should manage such security considerations in their designs manually. One of the main reasons for this glaring shortcoming is the lack of feasible metrics to assess the immunity of various crypto-system designs against various attacks at design time. In this paper, we suggest and categorize the required features for a reliable metric for side-channel security assessment in EDA tools and then we show that T-test can be used as a reliable metric to assess the impact of such attacks in a crypto-system. We also present a toolchain called Time-based Power Simulation engine (TPS) to perform required gate-level power measurements during the design phase. TPS is used for tests that are conducting in this research. Using this toolchain, we evaluate the T-test as an assessment metric for analyzing the security at design time against side-channel attacks. Results of our analysis show that it can be used efficiently as a feasible metric to measure the vulnerability level of a design against the SCA attacks. Moreover, the results of the T-test at the design phase show that using different bits of intermediate round values as selection functions in our DES cipher implementation leads to very different levels of information leakage.

Effects of topography on particle composition of 2011 tsunami deposits on the ria-type Sanriku coast, Japan

A geological survey was conducted in a small valley along the Sanriku coast, and the grain compositions of both autochthonous gravels and the 2011 tsunami deposit from the Tohoku-oki earthquake were investigated to reveal the depositional form of the tsunami deposits on the ria-type coast. The features of autochthonous gravels in the beach, riverbed, and slope areas are characterized by a combination of their rock type and roundness. The roundness values of the beach and slope gravels are large (0.8–0.9) and small (0.1–0.2), respectively, regardless of rock type, and the riverbed gravels are typically granite rocks with an intermediate roundness (0.4–0.5). The 2011 tsunami deposits along the survey transect include the above autochthonous gravels and show several characteristic features, such as a sharp erosional contact with the underlying peaty soil, normal and/or inverse grading structures, mud sheets, and richness in gravels in the lower unit, while the thickness shows no systematic changes with the distance from the coast. The presence of slope gravels suggests high tsunami inundation and flux, which eroded bare rock and talus and transported them to the valley plain by backwash current. The mixture of beach and riverbed deposits implies the formation of both an upstream current from the beach, which transported beach pebbles inland, and a backwash current along the channel, which accumulated sub-angular riverbed gravels around the river mouth. The characteristics of the 2011 tsunami deposit on the Sanriku coast, where narrow valleys are surrounded by high cliffs with steep slopes, are significantly different from those of sandy tsunami deposits in Sendai Plain, where a flat plain develops within several kilometers of the coastline. The differences among sedimentary facies are affected by the topography and autochthonous deposits.

Morphogenesis and grain size variation of alluvial gold recovered in auriferous sediments of the Tormes Basin (Iberian Peninsula) using a simple correspondence analysis

With present techniques it is difficult to determine whether the gold particles present at fluvial placers have come from one or multiple sources. Knowledge of this would be useful in prospecting for larger gold deposits. The aim of the present work was to test the potential of a technique based on modern visual and classic statistical methods to determine the single or multisource origin of gold particles at different sites in the Tormes Basin (Central Iberian Zone of the Iberian Massif, Iberian Peninsula). This basin contains numerous lode and placer gold deposits that have been exploited since ancient times. Today, gold nuggets (usually associated with quartz, 0.2–6 g in weight, 0.53–3.74 cm long and mostly discoidal in shape and of intermediate roundness) can be recovered from the sediments of the upper reaches of the River Tormes. These nuggets, as well as small gold particles collected at three gravel pits from across the basin (all of which showed abrasion marks) were examined by optical and/or environmental scanning electron microscopy, and the differences in their dimensions and morphological features noted. Simple correspondence analysis of the sphericity and roundness of the nuggets and particles was used to morphologically classify the gold samples collected at each location. The gold nuggets were best classified as elongated rods of intermediate roundness. Surprisingly, the gold particles from the most upstream and downstream gravel pits were best described as discs/sub-discs of rounded appearance, while those from the intermediate gravel pit were discs of intermediate roundness. Analysis of the variance followed by the Tukey honest significant differences test revealed the particles from the most upstream gravel pit to be significantly more flattened and smaller. These were therefore transported further from their source than the particles collected at the other two pits. These results suggest that multiple sources of sedimentary gold exist in the Tormes Basin and that these feed these different gravel pits. Present techniques for classifying gold would not have detected these differences.

Backward Analysis Explained with Monthly Payments

Using only algebra, this exposition presents the concept of backward analysis. Numerical examples from finance demonstrate how backward analysis guarantees that the computed value of a polynomial of degree exceeding thirty-one million is accurate to all but the penultimate digit, despite a hundred million intermediate rounding errors. Methods from celestial mechanics then provide initial estimates for the solution of financial polynomial equations. The same analysis applies to the computation of elementary functions from calculus and special functions from differential equations.

Speculative hardware/software co-designed floating-point multiply-add fusion

A Fused Multiply-Add (FMA) instruction is currently available in many general-purpose processors. It increases performance by reducing latency of dependent operations and increases precision by computing the result as an indivisible operation with no intermediate rounding. However, since the arithmetic behavior of a single-rounding FMA operation is different than independent FP multiply followed by FP add instructions, some algorithms require significant revalidation and rewriting efforts to work as expected when they are compiled to operate with FMA--a cost that developers may not be willing to pay. Because of that, abundant legacy applications are not able to utilize FMA instructions. In this paper we propose a novel HW/SW collaborative technique that is able to efficiently execute workloads with increased utilization of FMA, by adding the option to get the same numerical result as separate FP multiply and FP add pairs. In particular, we extended the host ISA of a HW/SW co-designed processor with a new Combined Multiply-Add (CMA) instruction that performs an FMA operation with an intermediate rounding. This new instruction is used by a transparent dynamic translation software layer that uses a speculative instruction-fusion optimization to transform FP multiply and FP add sequences into CMA instructions. The FMA unit has been slightly modified to support both single-rounding and double-rounding fused instructions without increasing their latency and to provide a conservative fall-back path in case of mispeculation. Evaluation on a cycle-accurate timing simulator showed that CMA improved SPECfp performance by 6.3% and reduced executed instructions by 4.7%.

Speculative hardware/software co-designed floating-point multiply-add fusion

A Fused Multiply-Add (FMA) instruction is currently available in many general-purpose processors. It increases performance by reducing latency of dependent operations and increases precision by computing the result as an indivisible operation with no intermediate rounding. However, since the arithmetic behavior of a single-rounding FMA operation is different than independent FP multiply followed by FP add instructions, some algorithms require significant revalidation and rewriting efforts to work as expected when they are compiled to operate with FMA--a cost that developers may not be willing to pay. Because of that, abundant legacy applications are not able to utilize FMA instructions. In this paper we propose a novel HW/SW collaborative technique that is able to efficiently execute workloads with increased utilization of FMA, by adding the option to get the same numerical result as separate FP multiply and FP add pairs. In particular, we extended the host ISA of a HW/SW co-designed processor with a new Combined Multiply-Add (CMA) instruction that performs an FMA operation with an intermediate rounding. This new instruction is used by a transparent dynamic translation software layer that uses a speculative instruction-fusion optimization to transform FP multiply and FP add sequences into CMA instructions. The FMA unit has been slightly modified to support both single-rounding and double-rounding fused instructions without increasing their latency and to provide a conservative fall-back path in case of mispeculation. Evaluation on a cycle-accurate timing simulator showed that CMA improved SPECfp performance by 6.3% and reduced executed instructions by 4.7%.

Gas–Solute Dispersivity Ratio in Granular Porous Media as Related to Particle Size Distribution and Particle Shape

Measurements of solute dispersion in porous media is generally much more time consuming than gas dispersion measurements performed under equivalent conditions. Significant time savings may therefore, be achieved if solute dispersion coefficients can be estimated based on measured gas dispersion data. This paper evaluates the possibility for estimating solute dispersion based on gas dispersion measurements. Breakthrough measurements were carried out at different fluid velocities (covering the same range in Reynolds number), using O2 and NaCl as gas and solute tracers, respectively. Three different, granular porous materials were used: (1) crushed granite (very angular particles), (2) gravel (particles of intermediate roundness) and (3) Leca® (almost spherical particles). For each material, 21 different particle size fractions were used. Gas and solute dispersion coefficients were determined by fitting the advection–dispersion equation to the measured breakthrough curves and in turn used to calculate gas and solute dispersivities as a function of mean particle size (D m) and particle size range (R) for the 63 particle size fractions considered. The results show that solute and gas dispersivities are related and that their ratio depends on both R and D m. Based on these observations a simple model for predicting the dispersivity ratio from D m and R, was proposed.

Biofilter Media Gas Pressure Loss as Related to Media Particle Size and Particle Shape

AbstractPressure loss (ΔP) is a key parameter for estimating biofilter energy consumption. Accurate predictions of ΔP as a function of air velocity (V) are, therefore, essential to assess energy consumption and minimize operation costs. This paper investigates the combined impact of medium particle size and shape on the V-ΔP relationship. The V-ΔP measurements were performed using three commercially available materials with different particle shapes: crushed granite (very angular particles), gravel (particles of intermediate roundness), and lightweight clay aggregrate (almost spherical particles). A total of 21 different particle-size fractions, with particle sizes ranging from 2 to 14 mm, were considered for each material. As expected, ΔP decreased with increasing particle size in agreement with earlier findings. The value of ΔP, however, also showed a tendency to decrease with increasing particle roundness especially for fractions containing smaller particles. A new model concept for estimating V-ΔP acr...

Optimal Research on Loading of Whole Set Supply Materials

The Loading of whole set supply materials with multi- constraints is complicated and difficult, it has a broad application prospect in the field of packaging, transportation and storage. In order to improve the container’s space using rate of the whole set supply materials, an approach is put forward by means of intermediate packaging, spatial subdivision, spatial merge and mantissa rounding while container’s shape and size as the constraints, thus solving the container problem. In the end, the application validates that the strategies are effective and practical.

The Effect of Bidder Heterogeneity on Combinatorial Conservation Auction Designs

In an iterative combinatorial auction, bidders can submit bids on individual and/or on combinations of projects in a series of intermediate rounds, where bid prices are revised before a final allocation is made. The iterative format is useful for conservation service procurement as landholders can rely on market information revealed through the rounds to evaluate their choices of projects and bid prices. However, there is no single way of providing the market information. Different designs for generating price information have been proposed. Little is known about the performance of iterative combinatorial auction designs when heterogeneous bidders, with different cost structures, participate in an auction. Using an agent based model, we evaluate a selected set of designs under different bidder heterogeneity scenarios. We observe that higher degrees of heterogeneity lead to lower auction efficiency and that auction outcomes are highly sensitive to price feedback design choices.

Comparison of simultaneous and combinatorial auction designs in fisheries quota market

Individual transferable quota (ITQ) markets are being used successfully to distribute quotas in single region and single species fisheries. In many parts of the world, the development of well crafted markets for multispecies or multiregional fisheries is still evolving. As a result, there exists an opportunity to inform policy by providing research insights into the relative merits of alternative market designs for such fisheries. This study explored the relative merits of a simultaneous ascending auction design and an iterative combinatorial auction design for a hypothetical multiple region quota market. In a simultaneous auction, separate auctions are run in parallel for individual species or regions. During intermediate rounds, fishers can adjust their bids in auction depending on their position in the other auction. In a combinatorial auction, a fisher can purchase a combination of quotas (or a package quota) for different fish species or regions in the same auction. Being able to acquire bundles of species or regions allows fishers to take advantage of complementarities. To date, the potentials of such auctions have not been thoroughly tested in fisheries quota markets. This study found that while a simultaneous auction design was more efficient than combinatorial auction design overall, combinatorial market design took fewer rounds to make final allocations and performed better in high synergy environments. ► Fishers often have synergies in their valuations for ITQs for multiple regions. ► An ABM used to test market designs for quota allocation among fishers with value synergies. ► For the first time, a simultaneous (SA) and a combinatorial (CA) auction designs compared for ITQ market. ► Simulation results showed that SA design was more efficient than CA design overall. ► However, CA design performed better in high synergy environments.

Diagnostic issues with cytopathologic interpretation of lung neoplasms displaying high‐grade basaloid or neuroendocrine morphology

Basaloid squamous cell carcinoma (BSQCC) and high-grade neuroendocrine carcinomas (HGNEC) including small cell carcinoma (SMCC) and large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma (LCNEC) can be difficult to differentiate on lung cytology. This problem is particularly true in scant specimens where immunoperoxidase stains cannot be adequately performed. Sixty-six cases of BSQCC, LCNEC, and SMCC (22 cases of each) on lung or mediastinal cytology were retrospectively reviewed from the cytopathology archives of two hospitals. Common cytomorphologic characteristics were; hypercellularity, small to intermediate round blue (hyperchromatic) cells, lack of prominent nucleoli, lack of three dimensional architecture, karyorrhexis/necrosis, mitoses, naked nuclei, nuclear crush artifact, and nuclear molding. Distinctive features included: larger cell size with pleomorphism, more cohesive architecture, syncytial aggregation, slightly coarser chromatin texture, rare keratinized malignant cells, and a granular smear background seen more often in BSQCC as opposed to HGNEC. Larger cells with prominent nucleoli and more cytoplasm with focal rosette formation were helpful in distinguishing LCNEC from SMCC and BSQCC. Finally, SMCC displayed uniform small cells with extensive necrosis, and higher mitotic rate. Immunoperoxidase (IPOX) staining using p63, CK5, 6, neuroendocrine markers (chromogranin, synaptophysin and CD56) and TTF-1 were helpful. BSQCC showed p63 expression and was mostly negative for neuroendocrine markers and TTF-1. HGNEC showed immunoreactivity for neuroendocrine markers with variable immunoreactivity for TTF-1. BSQCC, SMCC, and LCNEC share overlapping cytomorphologic features and can be difficult to differentiate on limited cytology specimens. Careful consideration to subtle but definite cytomorphologic clues and attention to selective IPOX stains can lead to a definitive diagnosis.

Item price information feedback in multiple unit combinatorial auctions: design issues

Combinatorial auctions allow bidders to bid on individual items or bundles of items. This enables bidders to take advantage of the synergy or complementarity in their valuations of bundles. However, the number of bundles or packages that a bidder could explore may be large making these auctions too complex. Therefore, a combinatorial auction is often run as an iterative auction involving a series of rounds that progressively lead to a final allocation. In each intermediate round, bids are submitted and then provisional winners are determined. A key element in each round is the provision of price feedback to guide bidders in subsequent rounds. This price feedback can focus on packages or on items. Item (also known as linear) pricing feedback schemes have been widely researched for combinatorial auctions on unique items (where packages consist of one or more unique items but not multiple amounts of any item). It has been observed that such item price schemes have performed reasonably well in a wide variety of auction markets. However, they have not yet been thoroughly tested for auctions where the allocation involves multiple units of different items. In this paper, we extend several item pricing designs to the case of multiple unit combinatorial auctions. We identify a set of performance criteria by which an auctioneer could assess the suitability of a design for their particular case. We then numerically compare the algorithms using an agent-based model. Based on the results, we draw some general conclusions about the strengths and limitations of different schemes.

A Floating-Point Unit for 4D Vector Inner Product with Reduced Latency

This paper presents the algorithm and implementation of a new high-performance functional unit for floating-point four-dimensional vector inner product (4D dot product; DP4), which is most frequently performed in 3D graphics application. The proposed IEEE-compliant DP4 unit computes Z = AB + CD + EF + GH in one path and keeps the intermediate rounding by IEEE-754 rounding to nearest even. The intermediate rounding is merged with shift alignment, and intermediate carry-propagated addition and normalization are omitted to reduce latency in the proposed architecture. The proposed DP4 unit is implemented with 0.18-mum CMOS technology and has 12.8-ns critical path delay, which is reduced by 45.5 percent compared to a previous DP4 implementation using discrete multipliers and adders. The proposed DP4 unit also reduces the cycle time of 3D graphics applications by 12.4 percent on the average compared to the usual 3D graphics FPU based on four-way multiply-add-fused units.

Decimal Floating-Point Multiplication

Decimal multiplication is important in many commercial applications including financial analysis, banking, tax calculation, currency conversion, insurance, and accounting. This paper presents the design of two decimal floating-point multipliers: one whose partial product accumulation strategy employs decimal carry-save addition and one that employs binary carry-save addition. The multiplier based on decimal carry-save addition favors a nonpipelined iterative implementation. The multiplier utilizing binary carry-save addition allows for an efficient pipelined implementation when latency and throughput are considered more important than area. Both designs comply with specifications for decimal multiplication given in the IEEE 754 standard for floating-point arithmetic (IEEE 754-2008). The multipliers extend previously published decimal fixed-point multipliers by adding several features, including exponent generation, sticky bit generation, shifting of the intermediate product, rounding, and exception detection and handling. Novel features of the multipliers include support for decimal floating-point numbers, on-the-fly generation of the sticky bit in the iterative design, early estimation of the shift amount, and efficient decimal rounding. Iterative and parallel decimal fixed-point and floating-point multipliers are compared in terms of their area, delay, latency, and throughput based on verified Verilog register-transfer-level models.