bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Interlaminar fracture properties of UV and plasma‐treated glass fiber epoxy composites
Authors: Scarselli Gennaro , Prasad Vishnu , Quan Dong , Maffezzoli Alfonso , Murphy Neal , Ivankovic Alojz 
Published: September 2024

AbstractDespite the low density and high specific strength properties, the fiber‐reinforced composites are characterized by a relatively low interlaminar fracture toughness and their ultimate properties are strongly affected by the fiber matrix adhesion. This study aims to investigate the influence of fiber surface treatments, such as UV and atmospheric plasma, and of the interfacial shear strength, on the flexural properties and Mode I interlaminar fracture toughness of glass fiber epoxy composites. The vacuum‐assisted resin infusion technique is used for the composite fabrication. Scanning Electron Microscopy analysis is used to observe and to explain the changes in the morphology of the fibers after surface treatment. Remarkably, the results showed an overall reduction in the mechanical properties. The interfacial shear strength values of the UV and plasma‐treated samples were reduced by 34.9% and 49.5% respectively. The flexural strength was reduced by 7.9% and 5.9% respectively. The Mode I fracture toughness values for the UV and plasma‐treated samples were also reduced by 49.8% and 62.2% respectively.Highlights
UV and plasma treatments were performed on glass fibers to improve performance.
Push‐out tests were carried out to evaluate fiber/matrix adhesion.
An aerospace grade epoxy resin curing in thermal press‐clave was used.
Mechanical tests related Interfacial Shear Strength to composites performance.
Enhanced dry machinability of honeycomb‐reinforced ablative thermal protection composites by longitudinal ultrasonic‐assisted milling
Authors: Shi Zhanli , Yang Zhiyong , Hou Bo , Chen Chen , Bao Yongjie , Gong Yongjun 
Published: September 2024

AbstractHoneycomb‐reinforced ablation thermal protection (HRATP) composites are widely used in aircraft thermal protection systems as one of the most effective thermal protection methods. The conventional milling (CM) method renders it susceptible to various processing damages, which directly affects the bonding strength of the whole component. Aiming at the poor surface quality caused by the large cutting force in the cutting process, a longitudinal ultrasonic‐assisted milling (LUAM) method was proposed, which realized the periodic separation of multi‐edge micro‐tooth milling cutter and workpiece, effectively reduced the cutting force and improved the surface quality. A motion trajectory model for a multi‐edge micro‐tooth milling cutter was developed, and an experimental study of LUAM was conducted. The effects of different tools and ultrasonic characterization parameters on cutting force, cutting temperature, and surface quality were compared and analyzed. The results of the comparison between the four different tools indicate that the multi‐edge micro‐tooth milling cutter exhibits the highest machining quality. Compared with CM, applying longitudinal ultrasonic vibration to the multi‐edge micro‐tooth milling cutter reduces the inlet burr length by 33.3%, and the chip was mainly removed in a small particle manner.Highlights
A multi‐edge micro‐tooth LUAM model was established of HRATP composites.
Sensitivity analysis of milling and vibration parameters on temperature.
LUAM reduces the cutting temperature by 12.4% and the burr by 33.3%.
LUAM significantly enhanced the surface quality compared with CM.
STEM professional development of early childhood teachers
Authors: Erol Ahmet , İvrendi Asiye 
Published: September 2024

AbstractEarly childhood teachers are critical in promoting young children's STEM learning. However, research indicates that early childhood teachers are unfamiliar with STEM and do not have confidence in their abilities and skills to implement STEM education. Despite this issue, previous research has focused less on early childhood teachers' STEM professional development. This mixed‐method study investigated the effects of the STEM Professional Development Program (SPDP) on 12 early childhood teachers' attitudes toward STEM education, STEM practices, self‐efficacy, and instructional beliefs, which were used as pretest and posttest measures. The quantitative dimension of the study investigated the effects of the SPDP on early childhood teachers' attitudes and STEM practices, self‐efficacy, and instructional beliefs towards STEM education by using the pretest and posttest only, without a control group design. The qualitative dimension, participating teachers' experiences, perceptions about the SPDP, and thoughts about the SPDP's influence on their beliefs, self‐efficacy, and attitudes about STEM were explored using phenomenology design. Quantitative data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon signed‐rank test. Qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. Results showed that the SPDP positively affected teachers' self‐efficacy for STEM practices, attitudes toward STEM education, and instructional beliefs. Moreover, participating in the SPDP influenced teachers' perspectives on STEM education, supported their learning about STEM content, and increased their awareness of the importance of STEM in early childhood.
Causal Fermion Systems and Octonions
Authors: Finster Felix , Gresnigt Niels G. , Isidro José M. , Marcianò Antonino , Paganini Claudio F. , Singh Tejinder P. 
Published: September 2024

AbstractThe authors compare the structures and methods in the theory of causal fermion systems with approaches to fundamental physics based on division algebras, in particular the octonions. It is found that octonions and, more generally, tensor products of division algebras come up naturally to describe the symmetries of the vacuum configuration of a causal fermion system. This is achieved by associating the real and imaginary octonion basis elements with the neutrino and charged sectors of the vacuum fermionic projector, respectively. Conversely, causal fermion systems provide octonionic theories with spacetime structures and dynamical equations via the causal action principle. In this way, octonionic theories and causal fermion systems complement each other.
Matching the Vilkovisky–DeWitt Effective Action of Quantum Gravity to String Theory
Authors: Calmet Xavier , Kiritsis Elias , Kuipers Folkert , Lüst Dieter 
Published: September 2024

AbstractIn this work, the matching of the Vilkovisky–DeWitt effective action of quantum gravity is discussedwith an example of an ultra‐violet complete theory of quantum gravity. The authors show how this matching enables a calculation of the local Wilson coefficients of the effective action. Several examples in string theory are provided. Moreover, the matching conditions within the context of the swampland program are discussed.
High temperature mass spectrometric studies over Zr‐Al binary system: Thermodynamic properties over <ZrAl3(cr) + ZrAl2(cr) > and <ZrAl2(cr) + Zr2Al3(cr) > biphasic regions
Authors: Venkata Trinadh Vinjavarapu , Bera Suranjan , Brahmananda Rao Cherukuri Venkata Siva 
Published: September 2024

Vaporisation thermodynamic studies were performed over <ZrAl3(cr) + ZrAl2(cr) > and <ZrAl2(cr) + Zr2Al3(cr) > biphasic region of Al‐Zr system by employing Knudsen Effusion Mass Spectrometry (KEMS) in the temperature range between 1,233 to 1,535 and 1,208 to 1,458 K, respectively. It was observed that these samples undergo incongruent vaporisation with Al(g) alone in the vapour phase. Following are the recommended p–T relations deduced in the present study:log (pAl/Pa) = (−18,663 ± 132)/T + (12.23 ± 0.10) (1,233–1,535 K) < ZrAl3(cr) + ZrAl2(cr)>.log (pAl/Pa) = (−18,982 ± 112)/T + (11.92 ± 0.08) (1,208–1,458 K) < ZrAl2(cr) + Zr2Al3(cr)>.From the p–T and K‐T relations, based on the second and third law methods of thermodynamics, the enthalpy changes of the following reactions were evaluated: ZrAl3(cr) = ZrAl2(cr) + Al(g) and 2ZrAl2(cr) = Zr2Al3(cr) + Al(g). Subsequently, the enthalpies of the formation of ZrAl2(cr) and Zr2Al3(cr) were deduced.
Theoretical Model for Determining the Thickness and Optical Constants of Transparent Conducting Oxide Thin Films From the Measured Reflectance Spectra
Authors: Basnet Bijaya , Nepal Mahesh , Thapa Gaurab J. , Kafle Madhav , Kharel Ram P. , Karkee Rijan , Dhakal Tara P. , Kafle Bhim P. 
Published: September 2024

ABSTRACTThickness and optical constants of transparent conducting oxide (TCO) of metal oxide thin films have been commonly estimated by invoking theoretical models based on measured optical reflectance or transmittance. One of such widely employed models is reflectance‐based Kushev model. However, the relatively higher value of the absorption coefficient at the absorption edge of TCOs of metal oxide thin films results in a large deviation of their thickness values estimated by this model. To address the underlying problems, in the present work, we have improved the Kushev model. Specifically, for minimizing the error in the estimated thickness values from the proposed model, we have employed t test for discarding outliers of a set of thickness values of a given thin film, which were calculated from nearby extrema of a reflectance curve. Then the thickness calculated from model was validated by comparing the value of ZnO thin transparent films extracted from ellipsometric measurement. Our model shows excellent agreement with the thickness values of ZnO films from ellipsometric measurement with only 1.2% deviation. Furthermore, observed values were also compared with the values from already established Cauchy model. The perfectly matching of the simulated reflectance spectra from the present model with the measured reflectance and excellent agreement of thickness values derived from the ellipsometric measurements with the values extracted from the model may infer us that the present model is suitable for fairly accurately estimating film thicknesses of TCO thin films.
Examining three distinct rheological models with flexoelectric effect to investigate Love‐type wave velocity in bedded piezo‐structure
Authors: Seema  , Singhal Abhinav 
Published: September 2024

AbstractThe transference of the surface seismic wave at the loosely bonded common interface of a visco‐piezo composite structure is examined in the current work. With the flexoelectric effect taken into account, the structure is composed of a viscoelastic layer embedded on a piezoelectric substrate. The shear stiffness of the upper layer is thought to be described by a Kelvin–Voigt model. An analytical separable of variable method is used to derive the complex dispersion relation for both electrically open and short circuit scenarios. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the significant influence of several influencing parameters on the wave's phase velocities and attenuation coefficients. Additionally, a graphic comparison of three rheological models – the Maxwell, Newton and Kelvin–Voigt models – is covered. Results indicate that the attenuation curve pertaining to the Maxwell and Newton model is lowest than on the Kelvin–Voigt model. Some major outcomes are highlighted here as: the prominent influence of bonding parameter is well‐proportional to the phase velocity and inversely proportional to the attenuation coefficient, and flexoelectricity has an intensive impact on both phase velocity and attenuation coefficient curves. This theoretical study leads to understanding the piezo‐flexo coupling and its potential application to design the sensors, actuators, energy harvesters and nano‐electronics.
Belenios with Cast-as-Intended: Towards a Usable Interface
Authors: Cortier Véronique , Gaudry Pierrick , Goetschmann Anselme , Lemonnier Sophie 
Published: September 2024

AbstractIn this work we consider Belenios-CaI, a protocol offering a cast-as-intended mechanism and building upon Belenios, a voting system used in about 7000 elections to date. We modify the design of Belenios-Cai from the user perspective without changing its core cryptographic mechanism. The goal is to increase its usability by letting the voter simply check whether two symbols are equal or different.We conducted a user-study among 165 participants in a research center to evaluate the usability of our implementation of Belenios-CaI. Since the cast-as-intended mechanism assumes that voters make some random choices, we also evaluate whether the choices made by voters are sufficiently “random” to provide verifiability and whether it could affect their privacy. The study shows that, for our population, Belenios-CaI is considered as usable with the random choices of the voters seeming sufficient for verifiability and privacy.
Intelligo Ut Confido: Understanding, Trust and User Experience in Verifiable Receipt-Free E-Voting
Authors: Zollinger Marie-Laure , Rønne Peter B. , Schneider Steve , Ryan Peter Y. A. , Jamroga Wojciech 
Published: September 2024

AbstractVoting protocols seek to provide integrity and vote privacy in elections. To achieve integrity, procedures have been proposed allowing voters to verify that their vote is correctly counted– however this impacts both the user experience and privacy. In particular, vote verification can lead to vote-buying or coercion, if an attacker can obtain a proof of the cast vote. Thus, some voting protocols provide mechanisms to prevent such receipts.To be effective, such receipt-freeness depends on voters being able to understand and use these mechanisms.In this paper, we present a study with 300 participants to evaluate the voters’ experience and understanding of the receipt-freeness procedures in the Selene scheme in the context of vote-buying. This is the first user study dealing with vote-buying in e-voting. While the usability and trust factors were rated low in the experiments, we found a positive correlation between trust and understanding.
Threshold Receipt-Free Single-Pass eVoting
Authors: Doan Thi Van Thao , Pereira Olivier , Peters Thomas 
Published: September 2024

AbstractIn 2001, Hirt proposed a receipt-free voting scheme, which prevents malicious voters from proving to anybody how they voted, under the assumption of the availability of a helping server that is trusted for receipt-freeness, and only for that property. This appealing design led to a number of subsequent works that made this approach non-interactive and more efficient. Still, in all of these works, receipt-freeness depends on the honesty of one single server.In order to remove this single point of failure, we design a new model in which multiple helping servers are available and propose a new security definition called threshold receipt-freeness. Our definition requires that receipt-freeness should be guaranteed even if some of the helping servers happen to be fully malicious and ensures that voters can express their votes even if the corrupted servers choose the content of their local view of the ballots.Eventually, we propose a generic construction of a single-pass verifiable voting system achieving threshold receipt freenes with a mixnet-based tallying process. Our ballot submission process relies on the recently designed traceable receipt-free encryption primitive.
Improving the Computational Efficiency of Adaptive Audits of IRV Elections
Authors: Ek Alexander , Blom Michelle , Stark Philip B. , Stuckey Peter J. , Vukcevic Damjan 
Published: September 2024

AbstractAWAIRE is one of two extant methods for conducting risk-limiting audits of instant-runoff voting (IRV) elections. In principle AWAIRE can audit IRV contests with any number of candidates, but the original implementation incurred memory and computation costs that grew superexponentially with the number of candidates. This paper improves the algorithmic implementation of AWAIRE in three ways that make it practical to audit IRV contests with 55 candidates, compared to the previous 6 candidates. First, rather than trying from the start to rule out all candidate elimination orders that produce a different winner, the algorithm starts by considering only the final round, testing statistically whether each candidate could have won that round. For those candidates who cannot be ruled out at that stage, it expands to consider earlier and earlier rounds until either it provides strong evidence that the reported winner really won or a full hand count is conducted, revealing who really won. Second, it tests a richer collection of conditions, some of which can rule out many elimination orders at once. Third, it exploits relationships among those conditions, allowing it to abandon testing those that are unlikely to help. We provide real-world examples with up to 36 candidates and synthetic examples with up to 55 candidates, showing how audit sample size depends on the margins and on the tuning parameters. An open-source Python implementation is publicly available.
A Framework for Voters’ Trust Repair in Internet Voting
Authors: Fel Leo 
Published: September 2024

AbstractResearch on voters’ trust in i-voting has been exclusively related to building trust in the process of i-voting adoption, with no work addressing the question of trust repair. This article introduces a framework for trust repair in i-voting by integrating insights from trust repair in other research areas, as well as concepts developed for and used in the e-voting literature. The article traces the process of trust repair from the different beliefs influencing voters’ trust in both the human and technological dimensions of an i-voting system, through the influence of the internal and external stakeholders, to trust violations and the i-voting organisers’ strategies for trust repair and the ‘arsenal’ of measures at their disposal. The article highlights the importance of detecting the emergence of events that may violate trust among voters, understanding the severity and dimensions of trust violation, and strategically navigating trust repair. It also outlines open questions and identifies avenues for future research.
Efficient Cleansing in Coercion-Resistant Voting
Authors: Giustolisi Rosario , Garjan Maryam Sheikhi 
Published: September 2024

AbstractCoercion resistance is a strong security property of electronic voting that prevents adversaries from forcing voters to vote in a specific way by using threats or rewards. There exist clever techniques aimed at preventing voter coercion based on fake credentials, but they are either inefficient or cannot support features such as revoting without leaking more information than necessary to coercers. One of the reasons is that invalid ballots cast due to revoting or coercion need to be removed before the tallying. In this paper, we propose a coercion-resistant Internet voting scheme that does not require the removal of invalid ballots, hence avoids the leakage of information, but still supports revoting. The scheme is very efficient and achieves linear tallying.
Absentee Online Voters in the Northwest Territories:Attitudes and Impacts on Participation
Authors: Goodman Nicole , Hayes Helen A. , Dunbar Stephen 
Published: September 2024

AbstractDespite being deployed in Canadian municipal elections since 2003, online ballots were not used in binding elections at higher levels of government until the Northwest Territories’ adoption of online voting for absentee voters in its territorial elections in 2019 and 2023. Municipal and Indigenous use of online voting in Canada are well studied, but implementation at higher orders of government have not yet been examined. Drawing on an original data set of online voters in the 2023 Northwest Territories territorial election, we examine who votes online in higher order elections, attitudes towards the voting mode, and its impact on engagement. Throughout our analysis, we simultaneously compare these data to original data from online voter exit surveys conducted during the 2022 Ontario municipal elections. We find that uncommitted voters outside of Yellowknife would not have voted without the online option. Similarly, for municipal voters, we find that age and past voting record correlate with whether the online option influenced electors to cast a ballot.
ZK-SNARKs for Ballot Validity: A Feasibility Study
Authors: Huber Nicolas , Küsters Ralf , Liedtke Julian , Rausch Daniel 
Published: September 2024

AbstractElectronic voting (e-voting) systems have become more prevalent in recent years, but security concerns have also increased, especially regarding the privacy and verifiability of votes. As an essential ingredient for constructing secure e-voting systems, designers often employ zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), allowing voters to prove their votes are valid without revealing them. Invalid votes can then be discarded to protect verifiability without compromising the privacy of valid votes. General purpose zero-knowledge proofs (GPZKPs) such as ZK-SNARKs can be used to prove arbitrary statements, including ballot validity. While a specialized ZKP that is constructed only for a specific election type/voting method, ballot format, and encryption/commitment scheme can be more efficient than a GPZKP, the flexibility offered by GPZKPs would allow for quickly constructing e-voting systems for new voting methods and new ballot formats. So far, however, the viability of GPZKPs for showing ballot validity for various ballot formats, in particular, whether and in how far they are practical for voters to compute, has only recently been investigated for ballots that are computed as Pedersen vector commitments in an ACM CCS 2022 paper by Huber et al. Here, we continue this line of research by performing a feasibility study of GPZKPs for the more common case of ballots encrypted via Exponential ElGamal encryption. Specifically, building on the work by Huber et al., we describe how the Groth16 ZK-SNARK can be instantiated to show ballot validity for arbitrary election types and ballot formats encrypted via Exponential ElGamal. As our main contribution, we implement, benchmark, and compare several such instances for a wide range of voting methods and ballot formats. Our benchmarks not only establish a basis for protocol designers to make an educated choice for or against such a GPZKP, but also show that GPZKPs are actually viable for showing ballot validity in voting systems using Exponential ElGamal.
Direct and Transparent Voter Verification with Everlasting Receipt-Freeness
Authors: Mosaheb Rafieh , Rønne Peter B. , Ryan Peter Y A , Sarfaraz Sara 
Published: September 2024

AbstractWe present a new verifiable voting scheme based on the Hyperion scheme but providing everlasting privacy and receipt-freeness. As with Selene and Hyperion, it provides a direct form of E2E verifiability: voters verify the presence of their votes in plaintext in the tally. However, in contrast to Selene or Hyperion, the privacy of this protocol is everlasting. In addition, our protocol offers the novel feature of everlasting receipt-freeness and coercion mitigation.
Expanding the Toolbox: Coercion and Vote-Selling at Vote-Casting Revisited
Authors: Rønne Peter B. , Finogina Tamara , Herranz Javier 
Published: September 2024

AbstractCoercion and vote-buying are challenging and multi-faceted threats that prevent people from expressing their will freely. Even though there are known techniques to resist or partially mitigate coercion and vote-buying, we explicitly demonstrate that they generally underestimate the power of malicious actors by not accounting for current technological tools that could support coercion and vote-selling. In this paper, we give several examples of how a coercer can force voters to comply with his demands or how voters can prove how they voted. To do so, we use tools like blockchains, delay encryption, privacy-preserving smart contracts, or trusted hardware. Since some of the successful coercion attacks occur on voting schemes that were supposed/claimed/proven to be coercion-resistant or receipt-free, the main conclusion of this work is that the coercion models should be re-evaluated, and new definitions of coercion and receipt-freeness are necessary. We propose such new definitions as part of this paper and investigate their implications.