LUCIA, a new Italian talking head based on a modified version of the Cohen-Massaro’s labial coarticulation model is described. A semi-automatic minimization technique, working on real cinematic data, acquired by the ELITE optoelectronic system, was used to train the dynamic characteristics of the model. LUCIA is an MPEG-4 standard facial animation system working on standard FAP visual parameter...

We present the first fair e-cash system with a compact wallet that enables users to spend efficiently k coins while only sending to the merchant O(λ log k) bits, where λ is a security parameter. The best previously known schemes require to transmit data of size at least linear in the number of spent coins. This result is achieved thanks to a new way to use the Batch RSA technique and a tree-bas...

We consider the problem of estimating the length of a shortest path in a DAG whose edge lengths are known only approximately but can be determined exactly at a cost. Initially, each edge e is known only to lie within an interval [le; he]; the estimation algorithm can pay ce to nd the exact length of e. In particular, we study the problem of nding the cheapest set of edges such that, if exactly ...

At Crypto 2013, Coron, Lepoint, and Tibouchi (CLT) proposed a practical Graded Encoding Scheme (GES) over the integers, which has very similar cryptographic features to ideal multilinear maps. In fact, the scheme of Coron et al. is the second proposal of a secure GES, and has advantages over the first scheme of Garg, Gentry, and Halevi (GGH). For example, unlike the GGH construction, the subgro...

We construct the first constant-size hierarchical identity-based signature (HIBS) without random oracles the signature size is O(λs) bits, where λs is the security parameter, and it is independent of the number of levels in the hierarchy. We observe that an efficient hierarchical identity-based signcryption (HIBSC) scheme without random oracles can be compositioned from our HIBS and Boneh, Boye...

The ordering of messages according to a given time measure is a largely discussed topic. Nevertheless, wireless or wired systems considering the order of messages do not use the access layer to accomplish this task. In this paper, we discuss the use of non-destructive bit-wise arbitration on the MAC layer for real-time message ordering in wireless sensor networks. With this access method, it is...

The bacterial actin homolog ParM has always been modeled as a polar filament, comprising two parallel helical strands, like actin itself. I present arguments here that ParM may be an apolar filament, in which the two helical strands are antiparallel.

the aim of this study was investigating some blood parameters of blue-neck male ostriches (struthio camelus) with 4 months old after feeding a diet containing 3% sunflower oil for two months. in the morning, after about 12 h of fasting, some blood samples were collected from the wing vein of ostriches at the beginning and 60 days of study in department of animal sceince arak university . the pl...

With the retirement of the space shuttle near and rising fuel prices driving a demand for more efficient travel, alternative engine technology is being heavily researched. The scramjet, or supersonic combustion ramjet, has proven to be a promising development in reusable hypersonic transportation. Flight testing these engines, however, is very expensive and no scramjet flight has yet been recov...

Chunk parsing has focused on the recognition of partial constituent structures at the level of individual chunks. Little attention has been paid to the question of how such partial analyses can be combined into larger structures for complete utterances. Such larger structures are not only desirable for a deeper syntactic analysis. They also constitute a necessary prerequisite for assigning func...