Abstract For the unconstrained optimization of black box functions, this paper introduces a new randomized algorithm called . In practice, matches quality other state-of-the-art algorithms for finding, in small and large dimensions, local minimizer with reasonable accuracy. Although our theory guarantees only minimizers heuristic techniques turn into an efficient global solver. very thorough nu...

A predominant topic in the theory of evolutionary algorithms and, more generally, theory of randomized black-box optimization techniques is running time analysis. Running time analysis aims at understanding the performance of a given heuristic on a given problem by bounding the number of function evaluations that are needed by the heuristic to identify a solution of a desired quality. As in gen...

BACKGROUND The US Food and Drug Administration issued a black box warning regarding the use of droperidol and the potential for torsade de pointes (TdP). METHODS The primary objective of this retrospective study was to determine whether low-dose droperidol administration increased the incidence of TdP in the general surgical population during a 3-yr time period before and after the Food and D...

We present a new generic black-box traitor tracing model in which the pirate-decoder employs a self-protection technique. This mechanism is simple, easy to implement in any (software or hardware) device and is a natural way by which a pirate (an adversary) which is black-box accessible, may try to evade detection. We present a necessary combinatorial condition for black-box traitor tracing of s...

We consider average-case strengthenings of the traditional assumption that coNP is not contained in AM. Under these assumptions, we rule out generic and potentially non-black-box constructions of various cryptographic primitives (e.g., one-way permutations, collision-resistant hash-functions, constant-round statistically hiding commitments, and constant-round black-box zero-knowledge proofs for...