The Interplay between Dietary Phosphorous, Protein Intake, and Mortality in a Prospective Hemodialysis Cohort.

(1) Background: Current dietary recommendations for dialysis patients suggest that high phosphorus diets may be associated with adverse outcomes such as hyperphosphatemia and death. However, there has been concern that excess dietary phosphorus restriction may occur at the expense of adequate dietary protein intake in this population. We hypothesized that higher dietary phosphorus intake is associated with higher mortality risk among a diverse cohort of hemodialysis patients.

Dialysis symptom index burden and symptom clusters in a prospective cohort of dialysis patients.

Background: Dialysis patients experience a high symptom burden, which may adversely impact their quality of life. Whereas other specialties emphasize routine symptom assessment, symptom burden is not well-characterized in dialysis patients. We sought to examine the prevalence and severity of unpleasant symptoms in a prospective hemodialysis cohort.

Development and Evaluation of Bluetooth Low-Energy Device for Electronic Encounter Metrics.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic led to the need for tracking of physical contacts and potential exposure to disease. Traditional contact tracing can be augmented by electronic tools called "electronic contact tracing" or "exposure notification.".

Continuous glucose monitoring in an end-stage renal disease patient with diabetes receiving hemodialysis.

Diabetes is the leading cause of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and contributes to heightened morbidity and mortality in dialysis patients. Given that ESRD patients are susceptible to hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia via multiple pathways, adequate glycemic monitoring and control is a cornerstone in diabetic kidney disease management. In ESRD, existing glycemic metrics such as glycated hemoglobin, self-monitored blood glucose, fructosamine, and glycated albumin have limitations in accuracy, convenience, and accessibility.

Encounter Metrics and Exposure Notifcation.

We discuss the measurement of aggregate levels of encounters in a population, a concept we call encounter metrics. Encounter metrics are designed so that they can be deployed while preserving the privacy of individuals. To this end, encounters are labeled with a random number that cannot be linked to anything that is broadcast at the time of the encounter.

Residual Urine Output and Mortality in a Prospective Hemodialysis Cohort.

Introduction: Although residual urine output (UOP) is associated with better survival and quality of life in dialysis patients, frequent measurement by 24-hour urine collection is burdensome. We thus sought to examine the association of patients' self-reported residual UOP, as an alternative proxy of measured residual UOP, with mortality risk in a prospective hemodialysis cohort study.

Methods: Among 670 hemodialysis patients from the prospective multicenter Malnutrition, Diet, and Racial Disparities in Kidney Disease study, we examined associations of residual UOP, ascertained by patient self-report, with all-cause mortality.

Boolean Functions with Multiplicative Complexity 3 and 4.

Multiplicative complexity (MC) is defined as the minimum number of AND gates required to implement a function with a circuit over the basis (AND, XOR, NOT). Boolean functions with MC 1 and 2 have been characterized in Fischer and Peralta (2002), and Find et al. (2017), respectively.

Better Circuits for Binary Polynomial Multiplication.

We develop a new and simple way to describe Karatsuba-like algorithms for multiplication of polynomials over . We restrict the search of small circuits to a class of circuits we call ( ⊆ {0,…, - 1}). (), - = 4, 5, 6, - http://cs-www.

Small Low-Depth Circuits for Cryptographic Applications.

We present techniques to obtain small circuits which also have low depth. The techniques apply to typical cryptographic functions, as these are often specified over the field (2), and they produce circuits containing only AND, XOR and XNOR gates. The emphasis is on the linear components (those portions containing no AND gates).

Upper Bounds on the Multiplicative Complexity of Symmetric Boolean Functions.

A special metric of interest about Boolean functions is multiplicative complexity (MC): the minimum number of AND gates sufficient to implement a function with a Boolean circuit over the basis {XOR, AND, NOT}. In this paper we study the MC of symmetric Boolean functions, whose output is invariant upon reordering of the input variables. Based on the Hamming weight method from Muller and Preparata (1975), we introduce new techniques that yield circuits with fewer AND gates than upper bounded by Boyar et al.

The Multiplicative Complexity of 6-variable Boolean Functions.

The multiplicative complexity of a Boolean function is the minimum number of two-input AND gates that are necessary and sufficient to implement the function over the basis (AND, XOR, NOT). Finding the multiplicative complexity of a given function is computationally intractable, even for functions with small number of inputs. Turan et al.

Improved upper bounds for the expected circuit complexity of dense systems of linear equations over GF(2).

Minimizing the Boolean circuit implementation of a given cryptographic function is an important issue. A number of papers [1], [2], [3], [4] only consider cancellation-free straight-line programs for producing small circuits over GF(2). Cancellation is allowed by the Boyar-Peralta ( ) heuristic [5, 6].

A Near-Optimal Algorithm to Count Occurrences of Subsequences of a Given Length.

For ∈ ℤ, define Σ as the set of integers {0, 1, …, - 1}. Given an integer and a string of length ≥ over Σ , we count the number of times that each one of the distinct strings of length n over Σ occurs as a subsequence of . Our algorithm makes only one scan of and solves the problem in time complexity and space complexity + .

On Various Nonlinearity Measures for Boolean Functions.

A necessary condition for the security of cryptographic functions is to be "sufficiently distant" from linear, and cryptographers have proposed several measures for this distance. In this paper, we show that six common measures, , and , are incomparable in the sense that for each pair of measures, μ, μ, there exist functions , with being more nonlinear than according to μ, but less nonlinear according to μ. We also present new connections between two of these measures.

Microemulsions for Colorectal Cancer Treatments. General Considerations and Formulation of Methotrexate.

Microemulsions combine the advantages of emulsions with those of nanocarriers, overcoming the stability problems of the former and providing facile scalable systems with compartments adequate for high drug loadings. Recently, microemulsions are gaining attention in the formulation of anticancer drugs not only for topical treatment, but also for systemic delivery as well as for the development of theranostic systems. The aim of this paper is two-fold.

Report on Pairing-based Cryptography.

This report summarizes study results on pairing-based cryptography. The main purpose of the study is to form NIST's position on standardizing and recommending pairing-based cryptography schemes currently published in research literature and standardized in other standard bodies. The report reviews the mathematical background of pairings.