Abstract. Certificateless public key cryptography (CLPKC) is a paradigm to solve the inherent key escrow problem suffered by identity-based cryptography (IBC). While certificateless signature is one of the most important security primitives in CLPKC, there are relatively few proposed schemes in the literature. In this paper, we manage to construct an efficient certificateless signature scheme based on the intractability of the computational Diffie-Hellman problem. By using a shorter public key, two pairing computations can be saved in the verification algorithm. Besides, no pairing computation is needed in the signing algorithm. The proposed scheme is existential unforgeable in the random oracle model. We also present an extended construction whose trust level is the same as that of a traditional signature scheme.

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Wang and Guo (Nonlinear Dyn 76(4): 1943-1950 proposed a new image alternate encryption algorithm based on chaotic map. The image alternate encryption can be conceptually treated as a block cipher where a round function which provides both confusion and diffusion is applied on a plain image iteratively. After performing the round function for T iterations, the processed image is denoted as the encrypted image. We analyse the security of Wang and Guo image encryption scheme, especially from cryptographic point of view, in line with the designers' approach in their security analyses. Negatively, we show that the image encryption scheme is vulnerable to an impossible differential attack (a type of chosen plaintext attack) and a divide-and-conquer attack when a large all black image is encrypted. This paper serves as another important security result showing that any future design of image encryption schemes based on chaotic map should be evaluated through systematic cryptanalytic approaches which include impossible differential attack. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first impossible differential attack applied on an image encryption algorithm.

The Soil Conservation Service curve number (SCS-CN) method is one of the most popular methods used to compute runoff amount due to its few input parameters. However, recent studies challenged the inconsistent runoff results obtained by the method which set the initial abstraction ratio λ as 0.20. This paper developed a watershed-specific SCS-CN calibration method using non-parametric inferential statistics with rainfall-runoff data pairs. The proposed method first analyzed the data and generated confidence intervals to determine the optimum values for SCS-CN model calibration. Subsequently, the runoff depth and curve number were calculated. The proposed method outperformed the runoff prediction accuracy of the asymptotic curve number fitting method, linear regression model and the conventional SCS-CN model with the highest Nash-Sutcliffe index value of 0.825, the lowest residual sum of squares value of 133.04 and the lowest prediction error. It reduced the residual sum of squares by 66% and the model prediction errors by 96% when compared to the conventional SCS-CN model. The estimated curve number was 72.28, with the confidence interval ranging from 62.06 to 78.00 at a 0.01 confidence interval level for the Wangjiaqiao watershed in China.

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Amide proton transfer (APT) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a pH-sensitive imaging technique that can potentially complement existing clinical imaging protocol for the assessment of ischemic stroke. This review aims to summarize the developments in the clinical research of APT imaging of ischemic stroke after 17 years of progress since its first preclinical study in 2003. Three electronic databases: PubMed, Scopus, and Cochrane Library were systematically searched for articles reporting clinical studies on APT imaging of ischemic stroke. Only articles in English published between 2003 to 2020 that involved patients presenting ischemic stroke-like symptoms that underwent APT MRI were included. Of 1,093 articles screened, 14 articles met the inclusion criteria with a total of 282 patients that had been scanned using APT imaging. Generally, the clinical studies agreed APT effect to be hypointense in ischemic tissue compared to healthy tissue, allowing for the detection of ischemic stroke. Other uses of APT imaging have also been investigated in the studies, including penumbra identification, predicting long term clinical outcome, and serving as a biomarker for supportive treatment monitoring. The published results demonstrated the potential of APT imaging in these applications, but further investigations and larger trials are needed for conclusive evidence. Future studies are recommended to report the result of asymmetry analysis at 3.5 ppm along with the findings of the study to reduce this contribution to the heterogeneity of experimental methods observed and to facilitate effective comparison of results between studies and centers. In addition, it is important to focus on the development of fast 3D imaging for full volumetric ischemic tissue assessment for clinical translation.

To assess the correlation and differences between common amide proton transfer (APT) quantification methods in the diagnosis of ischemic stroke. Methods: Five APT quantification methods, including asymmetry analysis and its variants as well as two Lorentzian model-based methods, were applied to data acquired from six rats that underwent middle cerebral artery occlusion scanned at 9.4T. Diffusion and perfusion-weighted images, and water relaxation time maps were also acquired to study the relationship of these conventional imaging modalities with the different APT quantification methods. Results: The APT ischemic area estimates had varying sizes (Jaccard index: 0.544 ≤ J ≤ 0.971) and had varying correlations in their distributions (Pearson correlation coefficient: 0.104 ≤ r ≤ 0.995), revealing discrepancies in the quantified ischemic areas. The Lorentzian methods produced the highest contrast-to-noise ratios (CNRs; 1.427 ≤ CNR ≤ 2.002), but generated APT ischemic areas that were comparable in size to the cerebral blood flow (CBF) deficit areas; asymmetry analysis and its variants produced APT ischemic areas that were smaller than the CBF deficit areas but larger than the apparent diffusion coefficient deficit areas, though having lower CNRs (0.561 ≤ CNR ≤ 1.083). Conclusion: There is a need to further investigate the accuracy and correlation of each quantification method with the pathophysiology using a larger scale | 2189 FOO et al.