Independent Domain of Symmetric Encryption using Least SignificantBit : Computer Vision, Steganography and Cryptography Techniques

The rapid development of data transfer through internet made it easier to send the data accurate and faster to the destination. There are many transmission media to transfer the data to destination like e-mails; at the same time it is may be easier to modify and misuse the valuable information through hacking. So, in order to transfer the data securely to the destination without any modifications, there are many approaches like cryptography and steganography. This paper deals with the image steganography as well as with the different security issues, general overview of cryptography, steganography and digital watermarking approaches.  The problem of copyright violation of multimedia data has increased due to the enormous growth of computer networks that provides fast and error free transmission of any unauthorized duplicate and possibly manipulated copy of multimedia information. In order to be effective for copyright protection, digital watermark must be robust which are difficult to remove from the object in which they are embedded despite a variety of possible attacks. The message to be send safe and secure, we use watermarking. We use invisible watermarking to embed the message using LSB (Least Significant Bit) steganographic technique. The standard LSB technique embed the message in every pixel, but my contribution for this proposed watermarking, works with the hint for embedding the message only on the image edges alone. If the hacker knows that the system uses LSB technique also, it cannot decrypt correct message. To make my system robust and secure, we added cryptography algorithm as Vigenere square. Whereas the message is transmitted in cipher text and its added advantage to the proposed system. The standard Vigenere square algorithm works with either lower case or upper case. The proposed cryptography algorithm is Vigenere square with extension of numbers also. We can keep the crypto key with combination of characters and numbers. So by using these modifications and updating in this existing algorithm and combination of cryptography and steganography method we develop a secure and strong watermarking method. Performance of this watermarking scheme has been analyzed by evaluating the robustness of the algorithm with PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) and MSE (Mean Square Error) against the quality of the image for large amount of data. While coming to see results of the proposed encryption, higher value of 89dB of PSNR with small value of MSE is 0.0017. Then it seems the proposed watermarking system is secure and robust for hiding secure information in any digital system, because this system collect the properties of both steganography and cryptography sciences.

The "reflection protocol" - a way to develop learning and independent thinking?

It is now-a-days more and more common in the academic world to use new forms of “learning-tools”. One of those is the “reflection protocol”, which usually consist of a few pages of freely written text, related to something the students have read. There seems to be a lot of different opinions about the value to use this method. Some teachers and students are enthusiastic and others are rather critical. To write a “reflection protocol” is not in the first place to do a summery, a review, not even to analyze a text. Instead it is about to write down thoughts and questions that comes up as a result of the reading. It is also about doing associations, reflections and to interpret a text and relate this to a theme of some kind. The purpose to use “reflection protocols” is, as we see it, mainly for the student to practice independent thinking from a scientific point of view, but it also gives a possibility to a better understanding of another person’s thinking. This seems to open up for a fruitful dialogue and a way to learn. We will in this paper discuss if that could be the case.

Getting Hitched: Weddings and Reality Television

From watching reality shows like A Wedding Story on TLC, I have learned that planning a wedding is stressful, kills friendships, and is generally not fun. In my opinion, I think it’s crazy. So why do people do this? What is the allure of this madness? In addition to the general insanity of weddings, the institute of marriage has been shown to be deeply flawed and quite unequal, but we are still tuning in to watch Engaged & Underage and Perfect Proposal. The fantasy shows that we watch and the glossy magazines we read seem to cover up the fact that the institution of marriage has problems. I want to find out why we are obsessed with getting married, even though many of us won’t actually carry through with the event or will end our marriages in divorce. Is it just the pageantry? The attention one receives as a bride and a new wife? To me, the huge attention paid to marriage in the media these days brings out some really interesting questions.

Where did all these books come from? The Publishing Industry and American Intellectual Life

The American book publishing industry shapes the character of American intellectual life. While the newspaper and television industries have been accused of and investigated for bias and lowering America’s intellectual standards, book publishing has gone largely unexamined by scholars. The existing studies of the publishing industry have focused on finance, procedure and history. “There are few ‘theories’ of publishing – efforts to understand the ‘whys’ as well as the ‘hows.’ Few scholarly scientists have devoted significant scholarly attention to publishing” (Altbach and Hoshino, xiii). There are many possible reasons for this lacuna. First, there is a perception that books have always been around, that they are an “old” technology and therefore they don’t appear to have had as much of an impact on our society as television and other media (which were developed quickly and suddenly) seem to have had (Altbach and Hoshino, xiv). Also, despite books’ present and past popularity, television, radio, and now the internet reach more people more easily, and are therefore more topical points of study and observation. In studying the effects of mass media on everyday American life, television and the internet may be the most logical points of study. Regarding public intellectual life however, books play a much more important role. Public intellectual life has always been associated with independent thinkers publishing their work for the masses. For this reason, this I focus on trade publishing. Trade publishing produces fiction and non-fiction works for the general reading public, as opposed to technical manuals, textbooks, and other fiction and nonfiction books targeted to small and specific audiences. Although, quantitatively speaking, “the largest part of book publishing business is embodied in that great complex of companies and activities producing educational, business, scientific, technical, and reference books and materials,” (Tebbel 1987, 439) the trade industry publishes most of the books that most people read. It is the most public segment of the industry, and the most likely place to find public intellectualism. Trade publishing is not only the most public segment of the industry, but it is also the most susceptible to corruption and lowered intellectual standards. Unlike specialty publishing, which caters to a specific, known segment of society, trade publishers must compete with countless other publications, as well as with other forms of media, for the patronage of the general public. As John Tebbel (author of a widely referenced history of the publishing industry) puts it, “The textbook, scientific, or technical book is subjected to much more rigorous scrutiny by buyers and users, and in an intensively competitive market inferior products are quickly lost" (Tebbel 1987, xiv). Since the standards for trade publishing are not nearly as specific – trade books simply need to catch the attention of a significant number of readers, they don’t have to measure up to a given level of quality – the quality of trade books is much more variable. And yet, a successful trade publication can have a much greater impact on society than the most rigorously researched and edited textbook or scholarly study.

Closed-circuit Television Students Film a Voltage-regulator check by William C.H. Meyers

One of a series of photographs accompanying a press release by the New York Trade School announcing the development and demonstration of a new technique in closed-circuit TV. Student Dennis Mahoney serves as one of the cameramen as William C. H. Meyers of the Automotive Department performs the demonstration. Black and white photograph.

Nicholas Colon, Jr, Proprietor Tele-FM Television and Advanced Television Techniques graduate, 1954.

This is a photograph showing Nicholas Colon, Jr. a New York Trade School, Advanced Television Techniques graduate with an unnamed worker at his Tele-FM Television company. Original caption reads, "Nicholas Colon, Jr. - Advanced Television Techniques 1954, operates and up-to-date and successful television service shop. He is on the executive board of CETA (Certified Electronic Technicians Association). He prefers to employ graduate technicians of the New York Trade School Advanced Television Techniques course." Black and white photograph with caption glued to reverse.

Abstract types and distributions in independent private value auctions

In this note, in an independent private values auction framework, I discuss the relationship between the set of types and the distribution of types. I show that any set of types, finite dimensional or not, can be extended to a larger set of types preserving incentive compatibility constraints, expected revenue and bidder’s expected utilities. Thus for example we may convexify a set of types making our model amenable to the large body of theory in economics and mathematics that relies on convexity assumptions. An interesting application of this extension procedure is to show that although revenue equivalence is not valid in general if the set of types is not convex these mechanism have underlying distinct allocation mechanism in the extension. Thus we recover in these situations the revenue equivalence.

DCE: the dynamic conditional execution in a multipath control independent architecture

This thesis presents DCE, or Dynamic Conditional Execution, as an alternative to reduce the cost of mispredicted branches. The basic idea is to fetch all paths produced by a branch that obey certain restrictions regarding complexity and size. As a result, a smaller number of predictions is performed, and therefore, a lesser number of branches are mispredicted. DCE fetches through selected branches avoiding disruptions in the fetch flow when these branches are fetched. Both paths of selected branches are executed but only the correct path commits. In this thesis we propose an architecture to execute multiple paths of selected branches. Branches are selected based on the size and other conditions. Simple and complex branches can be dynamically predicated without requiring a special instruction set nor special compiler optimizations. Furthermore, a technique to reduce part of the overhead generated by the execution of multiple paths is proposed. The performance achieved reaches levels of up to 12% when comparing a Local predictor used in DCE against a Global predictor used in the reference machine. When both machines use a Local predictor, the speedup is increased by an average of 3-3.5%.

Does humor work in advertising of pharmaceutical products?

This thesis aims to evaluate whether humorous television commercials (TVCs) work for non-prescription drugs, known as “over-the-counter” (OTC). The construct humor in advertising is controversial since it involves complex and broad typology, and depends on the audience characteristics. Several studies within different product categories indicated that some consumer goods are better suited for humorous TVCs, while others, such as OTC drugs, may not take advantage from it. Paradoxically, drug announcers spend billions of dollars worldwide in humorous OTC ads. An experiment with real consumers was designed as between-and-within-subjects, to test three hypotheses. Sixty women were exposed to pairs of humorous and non-humorous TVCs, for each of the three drug categories (analgesics, vitamins, and laxatives). We used fictional brand names and real ads, and measured four dependant variables: attitude toward the advertising (AAD), attitude toward the brand (ABR), purchase intention (PI), and brand choice (BC), after subjects being exposed to manipulations of two independent variables: humorous vs. non-humorous TV commercials, for the drug categories. Conditional logit model confirmed that humor does not help to persuade respondents, whose choices, attitudes, and purchase intention were less favorable with humorous TVCs, in comparison to non-humorous executions. Future research is presented regarding marketing for pharmaceutical products.

How children's television networks in the United States have adapted to the changing digital habits of their young audiences: A comparative analysis between the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon

In the contemporary societies, many children are drawn to digital media, using it in ways that were initially unfathomable. Changing digital habits among young children have been affiliated to the rapid development, witnessed in the technological field. Prevalently, new forms of technology are being developed and ingrained into young children’s day-to-day activities. The emergence of new forms of technology has in turn prompted significant changes in digital and media consumption particularly, among young children. Changes in media and digital consumption have in turn instigated linear transition in the analogue media industries. This has resulted in analogue media networks working towards digitalizing their industries in a manner that will befit changing digital habits among young children. This report aims at establishing and analyzing the different ways in which children’s digital habits have changed and revolutionized. To achieve this, the report will critically examine the existing scope of knowledge, with reference to changing digital habits among young audiences. Further, the report also aims at establishing the manner in which children television networks have adapted to the changing digital habits among young audiences. To achieve this, the report will focus on two children television networks, Disney channel, and Nickelodeon. After which, a comparative analysis will be conducted to establish the changes made by each of these television channels, with the aim of adapting to the new digital habits among children.

Asymmetric auctions and risk aversion within independent private valoues

We study tournaments with many ex-ante asymmetric (heterogeneous) contestants as an independent-private-values all-pay auction. The asymmetry is either with respect to the distribution of valuations for the prize or the risk preferences. By characterizing equilibria in tnonotone strategies we show that tournaments \:vith man~y heterogenous contestants are qualitatively distinct. First, with two (or many ex-ante identical) participants, a contestant always exerts some effort with positive probability. In contrast, with many asymmetric participants, one 1night not exert any effort at all, even if there is a positive probability that he has the highest valuation among ali. Second, in tournan1ents with t'wo (o r n1any ex-ante h01nogenous) contestants, equilibrium effort densities are decreasing. This prediction is at odds with experimental evidence that shows the empírica! density might be increasing at high effort levels. V\.lith rnany heterogeneous contestants, however. the increasing bid density is consistent with an equilibrium behavior.

Acquisition of motor abilities up to independent walking in very low birth weight preterm infants

Objective: To determine chronological and corrected ages at acquisition of motor abilities up to independent walking in very low birth weight preterms and to determine up to what point it is necessary to use corrected age.Methods: This was a longitudinal study of preterms with birth weight < 1,500 g and gestational age <= 34 weeks, free from neurosensory sequelae, selected at the high-risk infants follow-up clinic at the Hospital das Clinicas, Faculdade de Medicine de Botucatu, Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP) in Botucatu, Brazil, between 1998 to 2003, and assessed every 2 months until acquisition of independent walking.Results: Nine percent of the 155 preterms recruited were excluded from the study, leaving a total of 143 patients. The mean gestational age was 30 +/- 2 weeks, birth weight was 1,130 +/- 222 g, 59% were female and 44% were small for gestational age. Preterms achieved head control in their second month, could sit independent at 7 months and walked at 12.8 months' corrected age, corresponding to the 4th, 9th and 15th months of chronological age. There were significant differences between chronological age and corrected age for all motor abilities. Preterms who were small for their gestational age acquired motor abilities later, but still within expected limits.Conclusions: Very low birth weight preterms, free from neurosensory disorders, acquired their motor abilities within the ranges expected for their corrected ages. Corrected age should be used until independent walking is achieved.