Department of History

Ashoka University is a private university located in Sonipat, Haryana, India, focusing on liberal arts and sciences. It was established in 2014.&nbsp;It is guided by an academic council of academics and scholars from around the world. The council sets the university&#39;s academic standard, advising on matters of curriculum, faculty hiring and research.&nbsp;

Ashoka University offers a full-time 3 (+ 1) year undergraduate programme. The University comprises of&nbsp;2500 plus students, with a mix of both national and international students.&nbsp; &nbsp;

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Ashoka University

We show that for any two n × n matrices X and Y we have the inequality sj2(I + XY) ≤ λ j((I + X∗X)(I + Y∗Y)), where sj(T) and λj(T) denote the decreasingly ordered singular values and eigenvalues of T. As an application, we show that for 2n × 2n real positive definite matrices the symplectic eigenvalues dj, under some special conditions, satisfy the inequality dj(A + B) ≥ dj(A) + d1(B). © 2019 World Scientific Publishing Company.

Department of Mathematics

International Journal of Mathematics

Some inequalities for eigenvalues and symplectic eigenvalues of positive definite matrices

This article examines whether the concept of a security dilemma is useful in understanding the trajectory of India-China relations over the past seven decades. It considers several phases through which this relationship has passed and it argues that the security dilemma has never been at work. The relationship is characterized not by a security dilemma but by fundamental conflicts of interests. These have been exacerbated or ameliorated by changes in domestic politics and the wider strategic context. Going forward, too, these factors are likely to influence relationship. © 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Asian Security

The security dilemma and India-China Relations

The security of web communication via the SSL/TLS protocols relies on safe distributions of public keys associated with web domains in the form of X.509 certificates. Certificate authorities (CAs) are trusted third parties that issue these certificates. However, the CA ecosystem is fragile and prone to compromises. Starting with Google's Certificate Transparency project, a number of research works have recently looked at adding transparency for better CA accountability, effectively through public logs of all certificates issued by certification authorities, to augment the current X.509 certificate validation process into SSL/TLS. In this paper, leveraging recent progress in blockchain technology, we propose a novel system, called CTB, that makes it impossible for a CA to issue a certificate for a domain without obtaining consent from the domain owner. We further make progress to equip CTB with certificate revocation mechanism. We implement CTB using IBM's Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform. CTB's smart contract, written in Go, is provided for complete reference.

World University root node

Department of Computer Science

IEEE International Conference on Data Mining Workshops, ICDMW

Certificate transparency using blockchain

In this paper, we analyze the implementation level fault vulnerabilities of deterministic lattice-based signature schemes. In particular, we extend the practicality of skip-addition fault attacks through exploitation of determinism in Dilithium and qTESLA signature schemes, which are two leading candidates for the NIST standardization of post-quantum cryptography. We show that single targeted faults injected in the signing procedure allow to recover an important portion of the secret key. Though faults injected in the signing procedure do not recover all the secret key elements, we propose a novel forgery algorithm that allows the attacker to sign any given message with only the extracted portion of the secret key. We perform experimental validation of our attack using Electromagnetic fault injection on reference implementations taken from the pqm4 library, a benchmarking and testing framework for post quantum cryptographic implementations for the ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller. We also show that our attacks break two well known countermeasures known to protect against skip-addition fault attacks. We further propose an efficient mitigation strategy against our attack that exponentially increases the attacker's complexity at almost zero increase in computational complexity.

AsiaCCS 2019 - Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security

Exploiting determinism in lattice-based signatures practical fault attacks on pqm4 implementations of NIST candidates

This essay aims to theorise the present moment of translation in India without losing sight of its historical and contemporary understandings. It traces in the pre-modern moment, a range of linguistic negotiations to destabilise a theory of an absence of translation and dwells on perceptions of linguistic difference to show what 'translation' meant in pre-modern India. We demonstrate subsequently how colonial technologies produce the institution of language through translation and also how translation rests upon the institutions of languages. We argue that 'translation' as a term and as a concept of text-to-text/written transference of meaning is a nineteenth century phenomenon dating back to the colonial period. Furthermore,in the postcolonial moment that saw the use of translation in the service of regional and national identities, we also examine the complex relationship between English and the 'modern Indian languages' that has given rise to new creolised idioms.

Department of English

Benjamins Translation Library

More or less "translation": Landscapes of language and communication in India

We address a puzzle about the meanings of fraction words, due to Nathan Salmon. Counting 2 (Formula presented.) oranges seemingly requires enumerating a collection of objects with a non-whole cardinal number, which is incoherent by the lights of traditional analyses of cardinality expressions. Thus, some argue that counting 2 (Formula presented.) oranges really amounts to measuring quantities of orange-stuff. However, we claim that ‘2 (Formula presented.) oranges’ is ambiguous between counting- and measuring-interpretations; and recognizing this affords a novel solution to Salmon’s puzzle that is consistent with traditional analyses. © 2019, © 2019 Australasian Association of Philosophy.

Department of Philosophy

Australasian Journal of Philosophy

How To Count 2 Oranges

We compare successive age cohorts of three broad social groups – Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SC-STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and “Others” and provide the first disaggregated picture of the evolution of inter-caste disparities in India. The results show that absolute caste gaps in years of schooling and prestigious occupation of white-collar jobs have remained static, whereas log wages below the median have convergence and above the median diverged. Examining extension of job quotas to OBCs in 1993, we find positive effects of affirmative action on probability of holding government jobs, as well as on secondary schooling completion.

Department of Economics

World Development

Traditional hierarchies and affirmative action in a globalizing economy: Evidence from India

We address the oft-repeated criticism that the demands which the rational choice approach makes on the knowledge and cognition of a decision-maker (DM) are way beyond the capabilities of typical human intelligence. Our key finding is that it may be possible to arrive at this ideal of rationality by means of cognitively less demanding, heuristic-based ecological reasoning that draws on information about others’ choices in the DM’s environment. Formally, we propose a choice procedure under which, in any choice problem, the DM, first, uses this information to shortlist a set of alternatives. The DM does this shortlisting by a mental process of categorization, whereby she draws similarities with certain societal members—the ingroup—and distinctions from others—the outgroup—and considers those alternatives that are similar (dissimilar) to ingroup (outgroup) members’ choices. Then, she chooses from this shortlisted set by applying her preferences, which may be incomplete owing to limitations of knowledge. We show that, if a certain homophily condition connecting the DM’s preferences with her ingroup–outgroup categorization holds, then the procedure never leads the DM to making bad choices. If, in addition, a certain shortlisting consistency condition holds vis-a-vis non-comparable alternatives under the DM’s preferences, then the procedure results in rational choices. © 2019, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

Fulltext

Theory and Decision

Rational choices: an ecological approach

The metric d(A,B)=trA+trB−2tr(A1∕2BA1∕2)1∕2 1∕2 on the manifold of n×n positive definite matrices arises in various optimisation problems, in quantum information and in the theory of optimal transport. It is also related to Riemannian geometry. In the first part of this paper we study this metric from the perspective of matrix analysis, simplifying and unifying various proofs. Then we develop a theory of a mean of two, and a barycentre of several, positive definite matrices with respect to this metric. We explain some recent work on a fixed point iteration for computing this Wasserstein barycentre. Our emphasis is on ideas natural to matrix analysis. © 2018 Elsevier GmbH

Expositiones Mathematicae

On the Bures–Wasserstein distance between positive definite matrices

Voters may be unable to hold politicians to account if they lack basic information about their representatives’ performance. Civil society groups and international donors therefore advocate using voter information campaigns to improve democratic accountability. Yet, are these campaigns effective? Limited replication, measurement heterogeneity, and publication biases may undermine the reliability of published research. We implemented a new approach to cumulative learning, coordinating the design of seven randomized controlled trials to be fielded in six countries by independent research teams. Uncommon for multisite trials in the social sciences, we jointly preregistered a meta-analysis of results in advance of seeing the data. We find no evidence overall that typical, nonpartisan voter information campaigns shape voter behavior, although exploratory and subgroup analyses suggest conditions under which informational campaigns could be more effective. Such null estimated effects are too seldom published, yet they can be critical for scientific progress and cumulative, policy-relevant learning. Copyright © 2019 The Authors.