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A Survey of Post-Quantum Cryptography Support in Cryptographic Libraries
No full textIEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE) August 31, 2025, Albuquerque, New MexicoThe rapid advancement of quantum computing poses a significant threat to modern cryptographic systems, necessitating the transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC). This study evaluates the support for PQC algorithms within nine widely used open-source cryptographic libraries -- OpenSSL, wolfSSL, BoringSSL, LibreSSL, Bouncy Castle, libsodium, Crypto++, Botan, and MbedTLS -- focusing on their implementation of the NIST-selected PQC finalists: CRYSTALS-Kyber, CRYSTALS-Dilithium, FALCON, and SPHINCS+. Our analysis, based on the latest available documentation, release notes, and industry reports as of early 2025, reveals a varied state of readiness across these libraries. While some libraries have integrated PQC support or have clear implementation roadmaps, others lag behind, creating potential security risks as quantum threats become more imminent. We discuss key challenges, including performance trade-offs, implementation security, and adoption hurdles in real-world cryptographic applications. Our findings highlight the urgent need for continued research, standardization efforts, and coordinated adoption strategies to ensure a secure transition to the quantum-resistant cryptographic landscape.http://arxiv.org/abs/2508.1607
Can Grassroots Budgeting Save Democracy?
No full textAs the fall local government budget season comes up, Sunil Dasgupta talks with author Celina Su, professor of political science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and Brooklyn College, about her new book Budget Justice: On Building Grassroots Politics and Solidarities (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DXYB8K8P?ref=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_10HCHFRWJJD443Z3YWWS&ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_10HCHFRWJJD443Z3YWWS&social_share=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_10HCHFRWJJD443Z3YWWS&bestFormat=true), where she uses the experience of participatory budgeting in New York, Barcelona, and Porto Alegre, Brazil, to create a different vision of the budget process and of democracy itself. Music by Drew Pictures and the Lead Extras.https://open.spotify.com/episode/6cpbFV4lg0NueAIUiUjyo
Mapping the Perseus Galaxy Cluster with XRISM: Gas Kinematic Features and their Implications for Turbulence
No full textIn this paper, we present extended gas kinematic maps of the Perseus cluster by combining five new XRISM/Resolve pointings observed in 2025 with four Performance Verification datasets from 2024, totaling 745 ks net exposure. To date, Perseus remains the only cluster that has been extensively mapped out to ~0.7$r₂₅₀₀ by XRISM/Resolve, while simultaneously offering sufficient spatial resolution to resolve gaseous substructures driven by mergers and AGN feedback. Our observations cover multiple radial directions and a broad dynamical range, enabling us to characterize the intracluster medium kinematics up to the scale of ~500 kpc. In the measurements, we detect high velocity dispersions (≃300 km⁻¹) in the eastern region of the cluster, corresponding to a nonthermal pressure fraction of ≃ 7 − 13%. The velocity field outside the AGN-dominant region can be effectively described by a single, large-scale kinematic driver based on the velocity structure function, which statistically favors an energy injection scale of at least a few hundred kpc. The estimated turbulent dissipation energy is comparable to the gravitational potential energy released by a recent merger, implying a significant role of turbulent cascade in the merger energy conversion. In the bulk velocity field, we observe a dipole-like pattern along the east-west direction with an amplitude of ≃ ±200 − 300 km s⁻¹, indicating rotational motions induced by the recent merger event. This feature constrains the viewing direction to ≃ 30° −50° relative to the normal of the merger plane. Our hydrodynamic simulations suggest that Perseus has experienced at least two energetic mergers since redshift z~1, the latest associated with the radio galaxy IC310. This study showcases exciting scientific opportunities for future missions with high-resolution spectroscopic capabilities (e.g., HUBS, LEM, and NewAthena).CZ and NW were supported by the GACR EXPRO grant No. 21-13491X. CZ and IZ were partially supported by NASA grant 80NSSC18K1684. CZ, IZ, and AH acknowledge partial support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation through the Sloan Research Fellowship. EM acknowledges support from NASA grants 80NSSC20K0737 and 80NSSC24K0678. SU acknowledges support by Program for Forming Japan’s Peak Research Universities (J-PEAKS) Grant Number JPJS00420230006. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant numbers JP25K23398 (SU). Part of this work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. The material is based upon work supported by NASA under award number 80GSFC24M0006. The simulations presented in this paper were carried out using the Midway computing cluster provided by the University of Chicago Research Computing Center. The software used in this work was developed in part by the DOE NNSAand DOE Office of Science supported Flash Center for Computational Science at the University of Chicago and the University of Rochester.http://arxiv.org/abs/2510.1278
Would Program Regions Create Six MCPS Mini-Districts?
No full textMCPS' plans to expand magnet education and change school boundaries potentially turns the nation's 14th largest school system toward becoming six mini-districts. Sunil Dasgupta talks with MCPS officials leading the program changes, Jeannie Franklin and Angela McLane, about their plans, the challenges, and the possible consequences of the reorganization. Music by Seth Kibel and Flo Anito.https://open.spotify.com/episode/59aB7S3aD40SYgza3DubH
Central Bank Communication, Financial Frictions and Investment Decisions
No full textI study the role of financial positions in the transmission of Fed information to investment. Central bank communication influence firms’ expectations and stimulate investment, but its aggregate impact hinges on firms’ financial positions. In the data, low-leverage firms invest nearly twice as much as high-leverage firms following Fed information shocks, consistent with easier access to credit markets and borrowing. To assess the aggregate implications, I augment a heterogeneous-firm model with financial frictions and default risk to include a role for Fed information. The model shows that Fed information amplifies aggregate investment volatility by around 10 percent, but its effectiveness is dampened by leverage heterogeneity, which reduces the aggregate response by about 20 percent. Moreover, while Fed communication is most powerful in recessions, its aggregate impact is dampened when credit conditions are tight. These results suggest that forward guidance is most effective when complemented by credit policy.https://lpollio.github.io/luigipollio/fed_information_and_financial_frictions.pd
Navigating Stress Data Sharing: Guardrails for Effective Physiological Data Sharing in High-Stress Training Environments
No full textCHIWORK ’25, June 23rd to June 25th, 2025, Amsterdam, NetherlandsResearch indicates that individuals are eager to share stress data for reflection and support. Critically, this highlights the need for guardrails to ensure that physiological data sharing enhances well-being without compromising privacy, security, or autonomy. To explore this, we leveraged a Stress Reflection system, which allows open-sharing of stress data within a high-stress paramedic training environment focused on collaboration. Our study aimed to identify paramedic trainees’ potential concerns to place necessary guardrails for safe data sharing; however, our findings revealed that participants generally expressed few concerns, if any, and instead had far-reaching ideas about the potential benefits. In other words, participants did not understand the gravity of how information could do harm. With this in mind, we present this overexuberance for information, sharing alongside it voiced concerns to outline where guardrails should be implemented, ensuring support while protecting participants in ways they may not fully recognize.This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 181585https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3729176.372917
Back to School Apps, Magnet Program Changes, Gas Companies
No full textMCPS communications chief and CTO on outreach platforms as schools reopen. How to think about the magnet program changes proposed last week (https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DKRJWU4F383C/$file/10.01%20Program%20Analysis%20Boundary%20Studies%20Comm%20Engage%20Plan%20Update%20250821%20PPT%20REV.pdf). Maryland Public Service Commission Chair Fred Hoover on new hearings looking at how the state’s gas utilities should align their investments with the state’s climate goals. And more. Music By Dear Daria.https://open.spotify.com/episode/4IYLd3gDeSvCg6E84aXls
Conditions Necessary for Chlorine Activation in the Midlatitude Summer Lower Stratosphere
No full textStudies have suggested that ClO could be enhanced within convectively influenced air masses in the North American Monsoon Anticyclone due to low temperature and elevated water mixing ratio conditions that are conducive to chlorine activation, potentially leading to significant loss of ozone in the midlatitude lowermost stratosphere. We analyze in situ measurements of temperature, pressure, ClO, ClONO₂, H₂O, NO₂, aerosol surface area density (SAD), and organic chlorine species obtained by instruments aboard the NASA ER-2 over the continental US during the Dynamics and Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere (DCOTSS) campaign to show that chlorine activation large enough to affect loss of ozone was not observed, for the summers of 2021 and 2022. During both deployments, tropopause-overshooting convection with water vapor and temperature conditions suitable for chlorine activation were sampled. Due to their relatively young chemical age, most of these cold and wet air masses had abundances of inorganic chlorine (Clᵧ) too low to support eventual enhancements of ClO that would lead to widespread ozone depletion. Even in the few air masses with higher levels of Clᵧ, the abundance of nitrogen oxides was elevated and the ratio of ClONO₂ to Clᵧ was observed to be very low, limiting the availability of ClONO₂ to react with HCl and sustain chlorine activation. However, we show that for the average chemical and meteorological conditions of cold, wet, overshooting air parcels observed during DCOTSS, significant chlorine activation could occur if stratospheric sulfate SAD were enhanced by major volcanic eruptions or climate intervention efforts.We thank the ER?2 pilots and crew, as well as the entire DCOTSS team, for their invaluable efforts in planning and executing the successful flights and measurements that enabled this study. This work was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA) under the Earth VentureSuborbital?3 program award for DCOTSS(80NSSC19K1399, 80NSSC19K0326,80NSSC19K0340, 80NSSC19K0347,80NSSC19K1473, 80NSSC19K0353,80NSSC24K0376, 80NSSC19K0341,80NSSC21K1200). D.M.W. acknowledges support for this work while serving at the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the U.S. government. We thank both reviewers for their extensive comments, which have led to an improved manuscript.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2025JD04378
Auditing Approximate Machine Unlearning for Differentially Private Models
No full textICDM2025, 25th IEEE International Conference on Data Mining,November 12 - 15, 2025,Washington DC, USAApproximate machine unlearning aims to remove the effect of specific data from trained models to ensure individuals' privacy. Existing methods focus on the removed records and assume the retained ones are unaffected. However, recent studies on the privacy onion effect indicate this assumption might be incorrect. Especially when the model is differentially private, no study has explored whether the retained ones still meet the differential privacy (DP) criterion under existing machine unlearning methods. This paper takes a holistic approach to auditing both unlearned and retained samples' privacy risks after applying approximate unlearning algorithms. We propose the privacy criteria for unlearned and retained samples, respectively, based on the perspectives of DP and membership inference attacks (MIAs). To make the auditing process more practical, we also develop an efficient MIA, A-LiRA, utilizing data augmentation to reduce the cost of shadow model training. Our experimental findings indicate that existing approximate machine unlearning algorithms may inadvertently compromise the privacy of retained samples for differentially private models, and we need differentially private unlearning algorithms. For reproducibility, we have pubished our code: https://anonymous.4open.science/r/Auditing-machine-unlearning-CB10/README.mdhttp://arxiv.org/abs/2508.1867
EVOLUTION OF INFORMATION IN TRANSCRIPTIONAL REGULATORY SYSTEMS
No full textTranscriptional regulatory systems are a fundamental mechanism for regulating gene expression in all living organisms. Their implementation requires transcription factors (TFs) to bind specific target sites on the genome. In this thesis, the recognition of target sites by their cognate TFs is studied as a communication process, where the DNA sequences of the target sites encode information about TF-binding affinity decoded by the TF. Our approach, based on an ‘evolutionary information theory’ of biological codes, allows us to advance our understanding of how regulatory information is encoded and where it can evolve on DNA molecules. In this work, we reveal general principles that regulatory codes follow for the encoding of information as recognizable sequence patterns, or combinations of sequence patterns, and we present a novel algorithm to identify arbitrarily complex patterns in DNA sequences (Chapters 2-4). We also investigate the possibility that transcriptional regulation involves genetic elements that belong to distinct biological entities, forming ‘hybrid’ transcriptional regulatory networks whose information is encoded on independent DNA replicons. We provide evidence for the prevalence of this phenomenon, and we present a computational platform that can systematically uncover instances of such ‘hybrid’ gene networks (Chapters 5-6). Overall, this work contributes to the study of molecular evolution, showing that the genetic elements coding for transcriptional regulation follow specific information-encoding strategies that provide an advantage in terms of mutational robustness and evolvability. It also paves the way for a comprehensive study of gene networks that extends beyond the boundaries of a single genome