Formation of soluble mercury oxide coatings: transformation of elemental mercury in soils

The impact of mercury (Hg) on human and ecological health has been known for decades. Although a treaty signed in 2013 by 147 nations regulates future large-scale mercury emissions, legacy Hg contamination exists worldwide and small scale releases will continue. The fate of elemental mercury, Hg(0), lost to the subsurface and its potential chemical transformation that can lead to changes in speciation and mobility are poorly understood. Here we show that Hg(0) beads interact with soil or manganese oxide solids and x-ray spectroscopic analysis indicates that the soluble mercury coatings are HgO. Dissolution studies show that after reacting with a composite soil, > 20 times more Hg is released into water from the coated beads than from a pure liquid mercury bead. An even larger, > 700 times, release occurs from coated Hg(0) beads that have been reacted with manganese oxide, suggesting that manganese oxides are involved in the transformation of the Hg(0) beads and creation of the soluble mercury coatings. Although the coatings may inhibit Hg(0) evaporation, the high solubility of the coatings can enhance Hg(II) migration away from the Hg(0)-spill site and result in potential changes in mercury speciation in the soil and increased mercury mobility.

PatchCity: Procedural City Generation using Texture Synthesis

PatchCity is a new approach to the procedural generation of city models. The algorithm uses texture synthesis to create a city layout in the visual style of one or more input examples. Data is provided in vector graphic form from either real or synthetic city definitions. The paper describes the PatchCity algorithm, illustrates its use, and identifies its strengths and limitations. The technique provides a greater range of features and styles of city layout than existing generative methods, thereby achieving results that are more realistic. An open source implementation of the algorithm is available.

Investigation into DCT Feature Selection for Visual Lip-Based Biometric Authentication

This paper investigated using lip movements as a behavioural biometric for person authentication. The system was trained, evaluated and tested using the XM2VTS dataset, following the Lausanne Protocol configuration II. Features were selected from the DCT coefficients of the greyscale lip image. This paper investigated the number of DCT coefficients selected, the selection process, and static and dynamic feature combinations. Using a Gaussian Mixture Model - Universal Background Model framework an Equal Error Rate of 2.20% was achieved during evaluation and on an unseen test set a False Acceptance Rate of 1.7% and False Rejection Rate of 3.0% was achieved. This compares favourably with face authentication results on the same dataset whilst not being susceptible to spoofing attacks.

Review of Richard Friedli & Mallory Schneuwly Purdie (eds), L’Europe des Religions. Éléments d’analyse des champs religieux européens. Actes du programme 2002-2003 de formation doctorale.

Book Review in Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions und Kulturgeschichte No. 100 (2006) of Richard Friedli & Mallory Schneuwly Purdie (eds), L’Europe des Religions. Éléments d’analyse des champs religieux européens. Actes du programme 2002-2003 de formation doctorale, Berne: Peter Lang, collection « Studia Religiosa Helvetica », vol.8/9, 2004, 257p.

Lattice-based Encryption Over Standard Lattices in Hardware

Lattice-based cryptography has gained credence recently as a replacement for current public-key cryptosystems, due to its quantum-resilience, versatility, and relatively low key sizes. To date, encryption based on the learning with errors (LWE) problem has only been investigated from an ideal lattice standpoint, due to its computation and size efficiencies. However, a thorough investigation of standard lattices in practice has yet to be considered. Standard lattices may be preferred to ideal lattices due to their stronger security assumptions and less restrictive parameter selection process. In this paper, an area-optimised hardware architecture of a standard lattice-based cryptographic scheme is proposed. The design is implemented on a FPGA and it is found that both encryption and decryption fit comfortably on a Spartan-6 FPGA. This is the first hardware architecture for standard lattice-based cryptography reported in the literature to date, and thus is a benchmark for future implementations.
Additionally, a revised discrete Gaussian sampler is proposed which is the fastest of its type to date, and also is the first to investigate the cost savings of implementing with lamda_2-bits of precision. Performance results are promising in comparison to the hardware designs of the equivalent ring-LWE scheme, which in addition to providing a stronger security proof; generate 1272 encryptions per second and 4395 decryptions per second.

An Association of Cancer Physicians' strategy for improving services and outcomes for cancer patients

The Association of Cancer Physicians in the United Kingdom has developed a strategy to improve outcomes for cancer patients and identified the goals and commitments of the Association and its members.