bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Spaces of the Haar Type on Arbitrary Irregular Grids
Authors: Dem’yanovich Yu. K. , Burova I. G.
Published: November 2020

The paper deals with Haar-type spaces on arbitrary irregular grids. The choice of non-uniform grids determines the characteristics of the Haar-type space that can be used to construct the wavelet decomposition. Thus, it becomes a possible adaptive choice of the design space depending on the incoming flow. In contrast to the classical approach, this paper considers the possibility of the adaptive compression of the initial flow. The complexity of the algorithm is directly proportional to the length of the initial number flow. Numerical examples are presented.
Análisis del tiempo de respuesta del laboratorio clínico al servicio de urgencia del Hospital del Niño Doctor José Renán Esquivel durante el segundo trimestre de 2016
Authors: Juárez Moore Yaremi Del Carmen , Llanusa Ruiz Celia , Gutiérrez Zehr Johana
Published: November 2020

El objetivo del presente estudio fue evaluar los tiempos de respuesta del laboratorio clínico para los pacientes del servicio de urgencia del Hospital del Niño Doctor José Renán Esquivel, que acudieron a consulta en el segundo trimestre 2016. En cuanto al diseño se aplicó el  Método descriptivo-restrospectivo. Universos compuestos por pacientes que acudieron a urgencias del hospital y que requierieron análisis clínicos entre los meses de abril a junio de 2016: Universo #1: 5.000 pacientes con análisis clínico hematológico. 357muestras analizadas. Universo #2: 3.023 pacientes con análisis clínico de química general. 342 muestras analizadas. Universo #3: 1.689 pacientes con análisis clínico de urinálisis. 313 muestras analizadas. Universo #4: 420 pacientes con análisis clínico de parasitología. 201 muestras analizadas. En cuanto a los materiales y métodos se generó la información mediante la revisión y análisis documental de las solicitudes médicas ingresadas al sistema de información de laboratorio clínico MODULAB. Como conclusión del estudio se identificó que la sección que posee el mayor porcentaje de informes de laboratorio clínico fuera de tiempo es hematología general con un 40.62% seguida de la sección de química general con un 25.14%. Todas las secciones cumplen con tiempos de respuestas globales menores a 1:00:00 hora, pero existen tendencias de tiempos de respuesta prolongados en los horarios matutinos y vespertinos.
Cardiomyocyte uptake mechanism of a hydroxyapatite nanoparticle mediated gene delivery system
Authors: Komuro Hiroaki , Yamazoe Masahiro , Nozaki Kosuke , Nagai Akiko , Sasano Tetsuo
Published: November 2020

Gene therapy has been explored as a future alternative for treating heart disease. Among several gene delivery systems aimed at penetrating specific target cells, we focused on safe and non-viral gene delivery materials with a high transfection efficiency. Although various techniques have been developed, the mechanisms underlying the cellular uptake of gene delivery materials have not yet been sufficiently studied in cardiomyocytes. The aim of this study was to determine how hydroxyapatite (HAp) nanoparticles contribute to the delivery of plasmid DNA (pDNA) into cardiomyocytes. We fabricated HAp nanoparticles using the water-in-oil (W/O) emulsion method and used these nanoparticles as the delivery vector for transfecting cardiomyocyte-derived HL-1 cells. HAp exhibited particles on the nanoscale and with a low cytotoxicity in HL-1 cells. The transfection assay performed with several endocytosis inhibitors suggested that the HAp/pDNA complexes were internalized by HL-1 cells through macropinocytosis. Furthermore, this HL-1 cell uptake was generated in response to HAp stimulation. Thus, HAp is a positive regulator of macropinocytosis in HL-1 cells and a good system for gene delivery in cardiomyocytes.
Exploring Gifted Education Program and Practice in Rural Appalachia
Authors: Miller Myriah , Brigandi Carla
Published: November 2020

The literature on rural gifted programs is growing, but understandings of programmatic features and the teachers within the gifted programs in rural Appalachia are still largely underdeveloped. Through an exploratory case study of three rural Appalachian gifted programs, this study provides a glimpse into their organizational structures and the teachers’ experiences and perceptions. The illustrative findings indicate that teachers utilized their resources and knowledge to manufacture their gifted curricula and expressed competing narratives of place and globality. Also, misassumptions and unsupported practices in this rural place negatively influenced teacher retention. Implications and future steps are addressed.
World Class Pioneering Clinical Innovations: Nobel Prize Committee’s Failures
Authors: Al-Mosawi Aamir Jalal
Published: November 2020

It is understandable even to the medical students, the undeniable role of Nobel Prize winners particularly in the clinical and therapeutic fields which included the discoveries that led to developing vaccines and therapies to combat potentially fatal infectious disease, and contributed to saving millions of lives throughout the world. However, there have been recent criticisms suggesting that the prize has been given unreasonably more to basic scientific research discoveries, while ignoring world class pioneering clinical achievements. Many of the basic science research may never have any impact of any magnitude outside North America, Europe and Japan, and thus will unlikely to really contribute to a noticeable benefit to humankind. In fact, many basic science research and discoveries, for the majority of mankind living outside North America, Europe and Japan, are like discovering new galaxies at the end of the universe. Therefore, ignoring research from developing countries that have the potential of conferring the greatest benefit to humankind is definitely associated with a serious ethical dilemma when giving the Prize. The aim of this paper is to highlight recent world class pioneering clinical innovations missed by the Nobel Prize committee. Examples of world class pioneering research that have the potential of conferring the greatest benefit to humankind including curing autism research, multi-factorial therapies for mental retardation, and brain damage including cerebral palsy and brain atrophy, and intestinal dialysis.
A global food plant dataset for wild silkmoths and hawkmoths, and its use in documenting polyphagy of their caterpillars (Lepidoptera: Bombycoidea: Saturniidae, Sphingidae)
Authors: Ballesteros Mejia Liliana , Arnal Pierre , Hallwachs Winnie , Haxaire Jean , Janzen Daniel , Kitching Ian , Rougerie Rodolphe
Published: November 2020

Herbivorous insects represent a major fraction of global biodiversity and the relationships they have established with their food plants range from strict specialists to broad generalists. Our knowledge of these relationships is of primary importance to basic (e.g. the study of insect ecology and evolution) and applied biology (e.g. monitoring of pest or invasive species), and yet remains very fragmentary and understudied. In Lepidoptera, caterpillars of families Saturniidae and Sphingidae are rather well known and considered to have adopted contrasting preferences in their use of food plants. The former are regarded as being rather generalist feeders, whereas the latter are more specialist.

To assemble and synthesize the vast amount of existing data on food plants of Lepidoptera families Saturniidae and Sphingidae, we combined three major existing databases to produce a dataset collating more than 26,000 records for 1256 species (25% of all species) in 121 (67%) and 167 (81%) genera of Saturniidae and Sphingidae, respectively. This dataset is used here to document the level of polyphagy of each of these genera using summary statistics as well as the calculation of a polyphagy score derived from the analysis of Phylogenetic Diversity of the food plants used by the species in each genus.
Il dolore del feto
Authors: Bellieni Carlo Valerio
Published: November 2020

Il dolore del feto è ormai stato riconosciuto dalla fisiologia moderna. Per molti anni lo si è negato così come si è negato che il neonato sentisse dolore al momento di interventi invasivi. Questo atteggiamento era dovuto a paura degli effetti collaterali degli analgesici e al fatto che non si voleva concedere lo status di persona al feto/neonato.

Oggi c’è ancora chi continua a negare l’evidenza del dolore feto-neonatale. Alcuni teorizzando questa negazione, altri riconoscendo la presenza di dolore in questo stadio della vita ma non cambiando per questo atteggiamento clinico.

Gli esami invasivi sono altamente dolorosi per il feto; ciononostante vengono sempre più eseguiti. È tuttavia possibile un atteggiamento rispettoso della dignità del feto e del prematuro a partire dal riconoscimento della loro capacità di soffrire, che con i nostri lavori stiamo mettendo in luce.
Exploring rural palliative care patients’ experiences of accessing psychosocial support through telehealth: A longitudinal approach
Authors: Rahman Rachel J. , Keenan Joseph R. , Hudson Joanne
Published: November 2020

In this research, we explore the experiences of rural palliative care patients receiving psychosocial support through telehealth. A longitudinal approach considered how experiences vary over time. Three patients with a terminal cancer diagnosis were given a laptop to access psychosocial support via telehealth over three months. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at monthly intervals. Interpretative phenomenological analysis identified four themes: Deepening understanding through unburdened and continuous connections; the ever-present paradox of visible and invisible telehealth; insight into the holistic self: from barrier to facilitator; and, the immediate change from unnecessary distraction to mindful engagement. Findings challenge previous conclusions regarding the inability of telehealth to support meaningful relationships, and instead provide novel insights to explain why enabling rural palliative care patients to access support from home is supportive for their wellbeing and the quality of healthcare relationships. Our conclusions question whether the indirect benefits of telehealth could also offer a valuable way of accessing health services beyond a palliative care setting.
Drinking as routine practice among re-integrating National Guard and Reservists from Arkansas
Authors: Abraham Traci H. , Cheney Ann M. , Curran Geoffrey M. , Drummond Karen L.
Published: November 2020

Active duty enlisted military personnel are more likely to misuse alcohol than civilians – a pattern which persists even after the transition to civilian life. We used in-depth, substance use history interviews to elicit drinking trajectories from 54 re-integrating Army National Guard, Air Force Reserve and Army Reserve personnel from Arkansas with a history of problematic substance use. A hybrid inductive-deductive analytic approach revealed institutional norms, shared beliefs about drinking, and social values and expectations among military peers present in the context of military service that Veterans described as having shaped their drinking trajectories. Framing Veterans’ narratives vis-à-vis practice theory revealed the complex processes by which excessive drinking was embodied as routine practice during military service and subsequently reproduced in a very different post-deployment context, often with deleterious results. Elucidating these implicit processes suggested pro-active strategies for preventing problematic drinking by active duty personnel and improving the re-integration experiences of Veterans.
On narrative (re)imagining in the age of pandemic: Editor’s Introduction
Authors: Bartesaghi Mariaelena
Published: November 2020

This issue, that has been realized and published during the difficult period of the global pandemic, is the result of many efforts and for this I would like to thank the editorial team and all the wonderful contributors, readers and reviewers of Qualitative Research in Medicine and Healthcare. This issue opens with a beautiful piece on narrative as aesthetic re-imagining and closes with an article on telemedicine, taking us through both a historical and symbolic timeline of our how the stories of our lives have changed as the authors’ submissions illuminate the synchronicities of the human condition and the unexpected challenges of healthcare (and the process of academic publishing!). (...)
A case of duodenal adenocarcinoma treated with primary chemoradiation
Authors: Manur Janaki Gururajachar , Jain Harshitha M.
Published: November 2020

Duodenal adenocarcinoma represents <1% of total gastrointestinal malignancies. Given the rarity of the disease, a definitive treatment guideline is lacking. Surgery plays a major role and radiotherapy was not included in the treatment due to the presence of many critical structures near the vicinity of the duodenum such as the liver, kidneys, and bowel. However, with the advent of newer techniques, adjuvant chemoradiation has shown a promising result with improvement in locoregional control by 20%. We are herewith presenting the details of the radiation planning of a patient treated with chemoradiation who had good long-term outcome.
Economic and Political Realities and Models of Territorial Structure Development in the South of the Far East
Authors: Koshevaya Elena S. , Miroshnikova Tatyana K.
Published: November 2020

The economic and political processes taking place in the southern Far East have had a significant impact on the development of the territorial structure. Methodologically, a constructive and comprehensive geopolitical approach was used that allowed a structural evaluation of economic and political realities and their impact on the formation and development of the territorial structure, as well as its various orientations and typologies in the south of the country. Far East. In addition, its focused study allowed to evaluate the economic and political effect of the modernization scenario, to analyze the impact of external and internal economic, political and social realities with a focus on the restructuring and organization of the territorial structure, all of which allowed to identify the main problems of its destabilization and, at the same time, determine the prospects for further growth of the elements of the system to varying degrees, affecting the industrial, transportation, infrastructure and other spheres of the population's life. It is concluded that the dialectical interaction of a set of political and economic realities of transformations and modernizations, internal and external, have configured an arial-nodal / linear-nodal polycentric linear structure in the south of the Far East.
Formation of political journalism as an institution in Azerbaijan: areas of development and activity
Authors: Guliyev Bahruz
Published: November 2020

It analyses the methodological foundations and essence of political journalism as a social institution, as well as the interaction of politics and journalism. Based on an interdisciplinary study, the article gives an account of the peculiarities of the realization of political journalism in the world and in Azerbaijan, stating that political journalism performs informative, communicative, ideological, cultural, enlightening, organizational and recreational functions. It concludes by highlighting the power of the media to carry out democracy, in political decision-making and debates through the power of information. In other words, the power of the media is the power of political journalism, the unity of the media with political and economic power. It also points to the place and role of social media political science. Political media science is considered a new phenomenon in former Soviet republics. It is characterized as a phenomenon that encompasses systematic political theory, the science of modern comparative media, media, and politics. It is also believed that the political science of the media is related to the mediation of politics and the political processes of l to information.
Models of Marginality in the Historical-Theoretical and Political-Legal Contexts
Authors: Stepanenko Raviya Faritovna , Ainoutdinova Irina Nailjevna , Romashov Roman Anatolyevich
Published: November 2020

The research analyzes different models of marginality in historical-legal and political-legal contexts. The relevance of the study is due to the significant risks of spreading marginality in modern society, as a prerequisite for legal anomia. Understanding marginality, as one of the destructive forms of legal awareness and legally significant limiting behavior, allows marginality to be modeled historically and theoretically in relation to sociocultural phenomena such as state and law. At the methodological level, documentary design was used close to historical research and epistemological reflection typical of interdisciplinary dialogue. It is concluded that the use of legal means and techniques to combat marginality is based on the hypothesis of legal consciousness, according to which anyone initially focuses on consciousness, socially active and useful, and therefore on lawful behavior established by law. This approach can be formed, strengthened, or restored through the implementation of educational, ideological, and other functions of law, political science, or history.
State Guarantees of the Right to Housing for War Veterans: Substantive and Procedural Aspects
Authors: Cherneha Andriy P. , Udovenko Zhanna V. , Sergiienko Nataliia A. , Oblovatska Nataliia O. , Dotsenko Alyona O.
Published: November 2020

The purpose of the article was to reveal the problematic aspects of the realization of the right to housing by war veterans who participated in counter-terrorism operations / joint operations. I am interested in observing the protection of this right in civil, criminal and executive proceedings based on national and international law. The methodological basis of the study includes general and special methods of scientific research (historical, statistical, formal logic, comparative legal and structural logic). Statistics are given on the number of war veterans (combatants) as of 2019-2020, in the dynamics of providing them a living space in Ukraine during 2015-2020. In addition, the article provides examples of the elimination of conflicts of laws and ambiguous judicial practices of application of civil, family, housing and social law, as well as civil, criminal and executive procedure in the field of exercise of the right to housing by combatants and their families, protection of this right before the courts and execution of decisions in this category of cases. The results of this work can be useful for combatants who need to improve their living conditions, as well as for human rights defenders who help these people.
Misi Umat Allah (Book Review)
Authors: Novalina Martina
Published: November 2020

This book describes the link between biblical theology and mission. The contributors' description of biblical theology is the basis for carrying out their mission, where the mission will not be completed if it has not been translated through the implications of practical theology in a contemporary context. Contributors combine descriptions of biblical theology with contemporary contextualization. The mission of God's people is more than just biblical theology. Wright provides the reader with a complete Bible with a complete theology for a complete missionary task related to the creation, redemption, and the new creation.
Senses, Religion, and Religious Encounter: Literature Review and Research Perspectives
Authors: Cuffel Alexandra , Di Giacinto Licia , Krech Volkhard
Published: November 2020

An overview of the senses in the study of religion and religious encounter is provided, along with reflections on the ways in which various specific senses were imagined to serve as modes of communication between human beings and between humans and transcendent beings. How the individual case studies collected in this volume inform such a project and further research on religion, the senses, and the role of the senses in religious encounter is a core concern of this introductory essay. We end by suggesting new directions for additional research for an integrated and systematic examination of how senses shape and are used in human encounters with the transcendent and the (human) religious Other.
From Manichaeism to Zoroastrianism: On the History of the Teaching of the ‘Two Principles’
Authors: König Götz
Published: November 2020

The essential feature in the religious history of Pre-Islamic Iran is its dualistic worldview.  It marks all stages of Zoroastrianism and also Manichaeism, in which dualism can be regarded as the most important Zoroastrian piece of inheritance. The following essay concentrates on two aspects of this ‘inheritance’ that have been  overlooked until today: 1) The Manichaean dualism is consistently built on elements and tendencies that already existed, albeit covertly, in the Younger Avesta; and 2) The Manichaean dualism has thereby confronted Zoroastrian theologians with the task of giving an alternative and consistent formulation of dualism. Thus, the continuous attention both Dēnkard III and the Škand Gumānīg ī Wizār, two of the most philosophically inclined works in Pahlavi, give the concept of dualism seeks to articulate a relation between the notion of evil and the idea of the “finite,” and also to formulate the notion of "principle," seen as a demarcation from the Manichaean solution.
Between Secrecy and Transparency: Conversions to Protestantism Among Iranian Refugees in Germany
Authors: Stadlbauer Susanne
Published: November 2020

Present-day scholarship on religious conversions diverts from classic Protestant paradigms of sudden conversions and instant transformations of the self. Instead, it stresses that converts make active choices that are influenced by specific contexts and historical changes. This becomes evident in an ethnographic study of one controversial aspect of the recent refugee influx in Germany: the so-called mass conversions of Iranian refugees from Shia Islam to Christianity, which have been highly publicized and criticized since the height of immigration in 2015. The analysis draws on interview data with Iranian refugee converts and their pastors in Protestant churches in North Rhine-Westphalia between October 2017 and January 2018. The study reveals the need to theorize the symbiotic connection between religious contacts, forced migration, and conversion to Christianity. It applies Rambo’s (1993) stage model of conversion and the analytical concept of secrecy (Jones 2014, Manderson et al. 2015, Simmel 1906) to demonstrate that the Iranian refugees’ conversions are shaped by contexts, crises, encounters, quests, interactions, commitments, and consequences (Rambo 1993) as they negotiate the forces of secrecy, risk, transparency, and the benefits of being a Christian. The goal of this paper is to find thematic patterns in their narratives that can be systematized and can build a foundation for further study.
Homo Ritualis: Hindu Ritual and its Significance for Ritual Theory by Axel Michaels
Authors: Gamliel Ophira
Published: November 2020

This contribution offers a review of Homo Ritualis: Hindu Ritual and its Significance for Ritual Theory by Axel Michaels (2016).
Editorial: Welcome to Entangled Religions!
Authors: Strotmann Vivian
Published: November 2020

This article offers you a brief introduction to Entangled Religions. Thank you for your interest in our online journal!
The Figure with a Bow in Gandhāran Great Departure Scenes. Some New Readings
Authors: Pons Jessie
Published: November 2020

The figure holding a bow on Gandhāran illustrations of the Bodhisattva’s departure from Kapilavastu has been the subject of controversy. First identified as Māra and Indra, the interpretation proposed by K. Tanabe that the protagonist is Vaiśravaṇa-Kubera rallied broader consensus. The present reassessment takes into account the multi-cultural and multi-religious context of production of the images, namely the Kushan era, to offer additional readings of the Gandhāran figure. The approach is two-fold. The examination of written and visual traditions of representing the episode is complemented by the analysis of the Gandhāran iconography in light of material from various cultural strands which came into contact in the region. As a final step, the article considers possible logics which might have constrained the construction of the Gandhāran portrayals and tests the hypothesis that further divinities from religious trends coeval in Gandhāra may be recognized under the guises of the bow-holder.
Editorial: 2015 - Our First Full Year Online
Authors: Strotmann Vivian
Published: November 2020

This editorial offers you a look back upon the year 2015 and access to all contributions published during this year via links.
Manav Ratti: The Postsecular Imagination. Postcolonialism, Religion and Literature
Authors: Gruber-Scheller Bettina
Published: November 2020

This contribution offers a review of Manav Ratti's bookThe Postsecular Imagination.Postcolonialism, Religion and Literature.Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures, Vol. 45.New York & Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2013.242 pages, $48.95, ISBN: 978-1138822375 (paperback).
Charles D. Fletcher: Muslim-Christian Engagement in the Twentieth Century. The Principles of Interfaith Dialogue and the Work of Isma‘il al-Faruqi
Authors: Howard Damian
Published: November 2020

This contribution offers a review of Charles D. Fletcher's bookMuslim-Christian Engagement in the Twentieth Century. The Principles of Interfaith Dialogue and the Work of Isma‘il al-Faruqi.London & New York: I.B. Tauris, 2015.336 pages, £68.00, ISBN: 978-1848855090.
Editorial: Our New License
Authors: Strotmann Vivian
Published: November 2020

In the following, we address contributions published with Entangled Religions prior to 1 July, 2016 and we provide information on the new license which ER will be using.
Jorge Flores (ed. & transl.): The Mughal Padshah. A Jesuit Treatise on Emperor Jahangir’s Court and Household
Authors: Boissellier Stéphane
Published: November 2020

This contribution offers a review of:Jorge Flores (ed. & transl.): The Mughal Padshah. A Jesuit Treatise on Emperor Jahangir’s Court and Household.Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016. 200 pages, €99,00/$128.00, ISBN (hardback) 9789004307520.
Diego R. Sarrió Cucarella: Muslim-Christian Polemics across the Mediterranean. The Splendid Replies of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī (d. 684/1285)
Authors: Grigoryan Sona
Published: November 2020

This contribution offers a review of:Diego R. Sarrió Cucarella: Muslim-Christian Polemics across the Mediterranean.The Splendid Replies of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī (d. 684/1285). Leiden: Brill, 2015. 368 pages, €135,00/$175.00, ISBN (hardback) 9789004285514
Steven Hrotic: Religion in Science Fiction. The Evolution of an Idea and the Extinction of a Genre
Authors: Walter-Jochum Robert
Published: November 2020

This contribution offers a review of:Steven Hrotic: Religion in Science Fiction. The Evolution of an Idea and the Extinction of a Genre.London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. 225 pages, £28.99, ISBN (paperback): 9781474273176.
Jörg Ulrich, Anders-Christian Jacobsen & David Brakke (Eds.): Invention, Rewriting, Usurpation: Discursive Fights over Religious Traditions in Antiquity
Authors: Iricinschi Eduard
Published: November 2020

This contribution offers a review of:Jörg Ulrich, Anders-Christian Jacobsen & David Brakke (Eds.): Invention, Rewriting, Usurpation: Discursive Fights over Religious Traditions in Antiquity.Berlin: Peter Lang. 2012. XVI + 322 pages, 1 table, ISBN 978-3-631-63538-4 (hardcover)
A Look at Stephen Eskildsen: Daoism, Meditation, and the Wonders of Serenity
Authors: Sørensen Henrik H.
Published: November 2020

This piece is in the form of a review article of Stephen Eskildsen’s recent study Daoism, Meditation, and the Wonders of Serenity, which deals with the history of contemplative traditions in Daoism including a detailed survey of their various direct and indirect links with Buddhism.While this essay presents a critical evaluation of this author’s work and its findings, it also seeks to place it within the wider research-frame of Daoist studies and Chinese religions.
The Politics of Sufism and Ḥasidut in Medieval Egypt
Authors: Bentlage Björn , Necker Gerold
Published: November 2020

The present article is, firstly, a review of a recent publication by Elisha Russ-Fishbane that will, secondly, seek to develop an entanglement perspective on piety in the Ayyubid age. Elisha Russ-Fishbane’s book offers the first systematic presentation of the Jewish pietist movement in late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Egypt. It is largely based on a selection of Genizah documents, the writings of the movement’s pivotal figures, as well as a synthetic and critical discussion of the disparate remarks in previous publications. The present text will seek to summarize Russ-Fishbane’s book, discuss it in relation to other pertinent literature, and suggest some thoughts on Jewish-Muslim relations, parallels to Jewish pietism in Germany, and the book’s relevance for the perspective of entanglement.
Polemical Aspects in an Early Judeo-Persian Bible Exegesis - The Commentary on the Story of Ḥannah (RNL Yevr.-Arab. I 4608)
Authors: Haim Ofir
Published: November 2020

The article discusses the attitude towards Christians, Muslims, and the “foreign sciences” based on one of the only extant polemical texts written in Early Judeo-Persian—a passage from an unpublished commentary on story of Ḥannah preserved in the National Library of Russia (RNL Yevr.-Arab. I 4608). In addition, the article attempts to define the relation of this commentary to the broader intellectual environment of the medieval Jewish world. A close examination of this passage reveals a possible connection to Karaite exegetical work written in Judeo-Arabic during the tenth century, particularly those of Yefet ben ʿEli. Therefore, the article may serve as a case study of intellectual contact and transmission of knowledge between different Jewish groups in the Islamicate world.
Islam and Buddhism: The Arabian Prequel?
Authors: Akasoy Anna
Published: November 2020

Conventionally, the first Muslim-Buddhist encounters are thought to have taken place in the context of the Arab-Muslim expansions into eastern Iran in the mid-seventh century, the conquest of Sind in 711 and the rise of the Islamic empire. However, several theories promoted in academic and popular circles claim that Buddhists or other Indians were present in western Arabia at the eve of Islam and thus shaped the religious environment in which Muhammad’s movement emerged. This article offers a critical survey of the most prominent arguments adduced to support this view and discusses the underlying attitudes to the Islamic tradition, understood as a body of ideas and practices, and Islamic Tradition, understood as a body of texts. Such theories appear to be radical challenges of the Islamic tradition insofar as they seek to reinscribe the presence of religious communities in conventional narratives of Islamic origins that do not acknowledge them. On the other hand, they often operate with an unreconstructed reliance upon the sources of the Islamic Tradition. The assessment focuses ondescriptions of the Ka’ba and objects associated with it as well as on a story about an Indian physician who diagnosed an illness of Muhammad’s wife Aisha. While Indian or Buddhist connections with western Arabia and early Islam do not appear to be entirely impossible, the evidence does not amount to a persuasive case for the early seventh century.
Leakage Detection with the x2-Test
Authors: Moradi Amir , Richter Bastian , Schneider Tobias , Standaert François-Xavier
Published: November 2020

We describe how Pearson’s χ2-test can be used as a natural complement to Welch’s t-test for black box leakage detection. In particular, we show that by using these two tests in combination, we can mitigate some of the limitations due to the moment-based nature of existing detection techniques based on Welch’s t-test (e.g., for the evaluation of higher-order masked implementations with insufficient noise). We also show that Pearson’s χ2-test is naturally suited to analyze threshold implementations with information lying in multiple statistical moments, and can be easily extended to a distinguisher for key recovery attacks. As a result, we believe the proposed test and methodology are interesting complementary ingredients of the side-channel evaluation toolbox, for black box leakage detection and non-profiled attacks, and as a preliminary before more demanding advanced analyses.
CRYSTALS-Dilithium: A Lattice-Based Digital Signature Scheme
Authors: Ducas Léo , Kiltz Eike , Lepoint Tancrède , Lyubashevsky Vadim , Schwabe Peter , Seiler Gregor , Stehlé Damien
Published: November 2020

In this paper, we present the lattice-based signature scheme Dilithium, which is a component of the CRYSTALS (Cryptographic Suite for Algebraic Lattices) suite that was submitted to NIST’s call for post-quantum cryptographic standards. The design of the scheme avoids all uses of discrete Gaussian sampling and is easily implementable in constant-time. For the same security levels, our scheme has a public key that is 2.5X smaller than the previously most efficient lattice-based schemes that did not use Gaussians, while having essentially the same signature size. In addition to the new design, we significantly improve the running time of the main component of many lattice-based constructions – the number theoretic transform. Our AVX2-based implementation results in a speed-up of roughly a factor of 2 over the previously best algorithms that appear in the literature. The techniques for obtaining this speed-up also have applications to other lattice-based schemes.
High Order Masking of Look-up Tables with Common Shares
Authors: Coron Jean-Sébastien , Rondepierre Franck , Zeitoun Rina
Published: November 2020

Masking is an effective countermeasure against side-channel attacks. In this paper, we improve the efficiency of the high-order masking of look-up tables countermeasure introduced at Eurocrypt 2014, based on a combination of three techniques, and still with a proof of security in the Ishai-Sahai-Wagner (ISW) probing model. The first technique consists in proving security under the stronger t-SNI definition, which enables to use n = t+1 shares instead of n = 2t+1 against t-th order attacks. The second technique consists in progressively incrementing the number of shares within the countermeasure, from a single share to n, thereby reducing the complexity of the countermeasure. The third technique consists in adapting the common shares approach introduced by Coron et al. at CHES 2016, so that half of a randomized look-up table can be pre-computed for multiple SBoxes. We show that our techniques perform well in practice. In theory, the combination of the three techniques should lead to a factor 10.7 improvement in efficiency, for a large number of shares. For a practical implementation with a reasonable number of shares, we get a 4.8 speed-up factor for AES.
Beetle Family of Lightweight and Secure Authenticated Encryption Ciphers
Authors: Chakraborti Avik , Datta Nilanjan , Nandi Mridul , Yasuda Kan
Published: November 2020

This paper presents a lightweight, sponge-based authenticated encryption (AE) family called Beetle. When instantiated with the PHOTON permutation from CRYPTO 2011, Beetle achieves the smallest footprint—consuming only a few more than 600 LUTs on FPGA while maintaining 64-bit security. This figure is significantly smaller than all known lightweight AE candidates which consume more than 1,000 LUTs, including the latest COFB-AES from CHES 2017. In order to realize such small hardware implementation, we equip Beetle with an “extremely tight” bound of security. The trick is to use combined feedback to create a difference between the cipher text block and the rate part of the next feedback (in traditional sponge these two values are the same). Then we are able to show that Beetle is provably secure up to min{c − log r, b/2, r} bits, where b is the permutation size and r and c are parameters called rate and capacity, respectively. The tight security bound allows us to select the smallest security parameters, which in turn result in the smallest footprint.
ExpFault: An Automated Framework for Exploitable Fault Characterization in Block Ciphers
Authors: Saha Sayandeep , Mukhopadhyay Debdeep , Dasgupta Pallab
Published: November 2020

Malicious exploitation of faults for extracting secrets is one of the most practical and potent threats to modern cryptographic primitives. Interestingly, not every possible fault for a cryptosystem is maliciously exploitable, and evaluation of the exploitability of a fault is nontrivial. In order to devise precise defense mechanisms against such rogue faults, a comprehensive knowledge is required about the exploitable part of the fault space of a cryptosystem. Unfortunately, the fault space is diversified and of formidable size even while a single cryptoprimitive is considered and traditional manual fault analysis techniques may often fall short to practically cover such a fault space within reasonable time. An automation for analyzing individual fault instances for their exploitability is thus inevitable. Such an automation is supposed to work as the core engine for analyzing the fault spaces of cryptographic primitives. In this paper, we propose an automation for evaluating the exploitability status of fault instances from block ciphers, mainly in the context of Differential Fault Analysis (DFA) attacks. The proposed framework is generic and scalable, which are perhaps the two most important features for covering diversified fault spaces of formidable size originating from different ciphers. As a proof-of-concept, we reconstruct some known attack examples on AES and PRESENT using the framework and finally analyze a recently proposed cipher GIFT [BPP+17] for the first time. It is found that the secret key of GIFT can be uniquely determined with 1 nibble fault instance injected at the beginning of the 25th round with a reasonable computational complexity of 214.
FPGAhammer: Remote Voltage Fault Attacks on Shared FPGAs, suitable for DFA on AES
Authors: Krautter Jonas , Gnad Dennis R. E. , Tahoori Mehdi B.
Published: November 2020

With each new technology generation, the available resources on Field Programmable Gate Arrays increase, making them more attractive for partial access from multiple users. They get increasingly adopted as accelerators in various application domains, embedded in shared Systems on Chip or remote cloud services. Thus, some recent works have already explored Denial-of-Service and side-channel attacks, where an FPGA fabric is shared among multiple users. In this work, we show how fault attacks can be launched within an FPGA, through software-provided bitstreams alone. Excessive voltage drops can be generated from legitimate logic mapped into the FPGA to cause timing faults, reaching from spatially and logically isolated partitions of one to another user of the FPGA fabric. To cause this voltage drop, we first show how specific patterns to activate Ring Oscillators can cause timing failures in simple test designs on various FPGA boards. Subsequently, we analyze and adapt an existing fault model for the Advanced Encryption Standard to match the accuracy of our fault attack. In the same multi-user scenario, we show as a proof-of-concept how a successful Differential Fault Analysis attack on an AES module can be launched. We perform experiments on three FPGA boards of the same model and confirm that the attack adapts to all systems and is successful under process variation, but with different susceptibility to faults. The paper is concluded by validating the attack on another platform, and analyzing the vulnerability based on a timing analysis, proving the applicability to different devices.
Improving CEMA using Correlation Optimization
Authors: Robyns Pieter , Quax Peter , Lamotte Wim
Published: November 2020

Sensitive cryptographic information, e.g. AES secret keys, can be extracted from the electromagnetic (EM) leakages unintentionally emitted by a device using techniques such as Correlation Electromagnetic Analysis (CEMA). In this paper, we introduce Correlation Optimization (CO), a novel approach that improves CEMA attacks by formulating the selection of useful EM leakage samples in a trace as a machine learning optimization problem. To this end, we propose the correlation loss function, which aims to maximize the Pearson correlation between a set of EM traces and the true AES key during training. We show that CO works with high-dimensional and noisy traces, regardless of time-domain trace alignment and without requiring prior knowledge of the power consumption characteristics of the cryptographic hardware. We evaluate our approach using the ASCAD benchmark dataset and a custom dataset of EM leakages from an Arduino Duemilanove, captured with a USRP B200 SDR. Our results indicate that the masked AES implementation used in all three ASCAD datasets can be broken with a shallow Multilayer Perceptron model, whilst requiring only 1,000 test traces on average. A similar methodology was employed to break the unprotected AES implementation from our custom dataset, using 22,000 unaligned and unfiltered test traces.
Software Toolkit for HFE-based Multivariate Schemes
Authors: Faugère Jean-Charles , Perret Ludovic , Ryckeghem Jocelyn
Published: November 2020

In 2017, NIST shook the cryptographic world by starting a process for standardizing post-quantum cryptography. Sixty-four submissions have been considered for the first round of the on-going NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) process. Multivariate cryptography is a classical post-quantum candidate that turns to be the most represented in the signature category. At this stage of the process, it is of primary importance to investigate efficient implementations of the candidates. This article presents MQsoft, an efficient library which permits to implement HFE-based multivariate schemes submitted to the NIST PQC process such as GeMSS, Gui and DualModeMS. The library is implemented in C targeting Intel 64-bit processors and using avx2 set instructions. We present performance results for our library and its application to GeMSS, Gui and DualModeMS. In particular, we optimize several crucial parts for these schemes. These include root finding for HFE polynomials and evaluation of multivariate quadratic systems in F2. We propose a new method which accelerates root finding for specific HFE polynomials by a factor of two. For GeMSS and Gui, we obtain a speed-up of a factor between 2 and 19 for the keypair generation, between 1.2 and 2.5 for the signature generation, and between 1.6 and 2 for the verifying process. We have also improved the arithmetic in F2n by a factor of 4 compared to the NTL library. Moreover, a large part of our implementation is protected against timing attacks.
Improved Heuristics for Short Linear Programs
Authors: Tan Quan Quan , Peyrin Thomas
Published: November 2020

In this article, we propose new heuristics for minimising the amount of XOR gates required to compute a system of linear equations in GF(2). We first revisit the well known Boyar-Peralta strategy and argue that a proper randomisation process during the selection phases can lead to great improvements. We then propose new selection criteria and explain their rationale. Our new methods outperform state-of-the-art algorithms such as Paar or Boyar-Peralta (or open synthesis tools such as Yosys) when tested on random matrices with various densities. They can be applied to matrices of reasonable sizes (up to about 32 × 32). Notably, we provide a new implementation record for the matrix underlying the MixColumns function of the AES block cipher, requiring only 94 XORs.
FEDS: Comprehensive Fault Attack Exploitability Detection for Software Implementations of Block Ciphers
Authors: K Keerthi , Roy Indrani , Rebeiro Chester , Hazra Aritra , Bhunia Swarup
Published: November 2020

Fault injection attacks are one of the most powerful forms of cryptanalytic attacks on ciphers. A single, precisely injected fault during the execution of a cipher like the AES, can completely reveal the key within a few milliseconds. Software implementations of ciphers, therefore, need to be thoroughly evaluated for such attacks. In recent years, automated tools have been developed to perform these evaluations. These tools either work on the cipher algorithm or on their implementations. Tools that work at the algorithm level can provide a comprehensive assessment of fault attack vulnerability for different fault attacks and with different fault models. Their application is, however, restricted because every realization of the cipher has unique vulnerabilities. On the other hand, tools that work on cipher implementations have a much wider application but are often restricted by the range of fault attacks and the number of fault models they can evaluate.In this paper, we propose a framework, called FEDS, that uses a combination of compiler techniques and model checking to merge the advantages of both, algorithmic level tools as well as implementation level tools. Like the algorithmic level tools, FEDS can provide a comprehensive assessment of fault attack exploitability considering a wide range of fault attacks and fault models. Like implementation level tools, FEDS works with implementations, therefore has wide application. We demonstrate the versatility of FEDS by evaluating seven different implementations of AES (including bitsliced implementation) and implementations of CLEFIA and CAMELLIA for Differential Fault Attacks. The framework automatically identifies exploitable instructions in all implementations. Further, we present an application of FEDS in a Fault Attack Aware Compiler, that can automatically identify and protect exploitable regions of the code. We demonstrate that the compiler can generate significantly more efficient code than a naïvely protected equivalent, while maintaining the same level of protection.
Generic Side-channel attacks on CCA-secure lattice-based PKE and KEMs
Authors: Ravi Prasanna , Sinha Roy Sujoy , Chattopadhyay Anupam , Bhasin Shivam
Published: November 2020

In this work, we demonstrate generic and practical EM side-channel assisted chosen ciphertext attacks over multiple LWE/LWR-based Public Key Encryption (PKE) and Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEM) secure in the chosen ciphertext model (IND-CCA security). We show that the EM side-channel information can be efficiently utilized to instantiate a plaintext checking oracle, which provides binary information about the output of decryption, typically concealed within IND-CCA secure PKE/KEMs, thereby enabling our attacks. Firstly, we identified EM-based side-channel vulnerabilities in the error correcting codes (ECC) enabling us to distinguish based on the value/validity of decrypted codewords. We also identified similar vulnerabilities in the Fujisaki-Okamoto transform which leaks information about decrypted messages applicable to schemes that do not use ECC. We subsequently exploit these vulnerabilities to demonstrate practical attacks applicable to six CCA-secure lattice-based PKE/KEMs competing in the second round of the NIST standardization process. We perform experimental validation of our attacks on implementations taken from the open-source pqm4 library, running on the ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller. Our attacks lead to complete key-recovery in a matter of minutes on all the targeted schemes, thus showing the effectiveness of our attack.