A Study in Authenticity : Admissible Concealed Indicators of Authority and Other Features of Forgeries : A Case Study on Clement of Alexandria, Letter to Theodore, and the Longer Gospel of Mark

A standard approach in historically minded disciplines to documents and other artefacts that have become suspect is to concentrate on their dissimilarities with known genuine artefacts. While such an approach works reasonably well with relatively poor forgeries, more skilfully done counterfeits have tended to divide expert opinions, demanding protracted scholarly attention. As there has not been a widespread scholarly consensus on a constrained set of criteria for detecting forgeries, a pragmatic maximum for such dissimilarities—as there are potentially an infinite numbers of differences that can be enumerated between any two artefacts—has been impossible to set. Thus, rather than relying on a philosophically robust critical framework, scholars have been accustomed to approaching the matter on a largely case-by-case basis, with a handful of loosely formulated rules for guidance. In response to these shortcomings, this dissertation argues that a key characteristic of inquiry in historically minded disciplines should be the ability to distinguish between knowledge-claims that are epistemically warranted—i.e., that can be asserted post hoc from the material reality they have become embedded in with reference to some sort of rigorous methodological framework—and knowledge-claims that are not. An ancient letter by Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–215 CE) to Theodore, in which two passages from the Longer Gospel of Mark (also known as the Secret Gospel of Mark) are quoted, has long been suspected of having been forged by Morton Smith (1915–1991), its putative discoverer. The bulk of this dissertation consists of four different articles that each use different methodological approaches. The first, a discourse analysis on scholarly debate over the letter’s authenticity, illuminates the reasons behind its odd character and troubled history. Second, archival research unearths how data points have become corrupted through unintended additions in digital-image processing (a phenomenon labelled line screen distortion here). Third, a quantitative study of the handwriting in Clement’s Letter to Theodore shows the inadequacy of unwittingly applying palaeographic standards in cases of suspected deceptions compared to the standards adhered to in forensic studies. Additionally, Smith’s conduct as an academic manuscript hunter is found to have been consistent with the standard practices of that profession. Finally, a study of the conceptual distinctions and framing of historical explanations in contemporary forgery discourse reveals the power of the methodologic approach of WWFD (What Would a Forger Do?), which has recently been used in three varieties (unconcealed, concealed, and hyperactive) to construe suspected documents as potential forgeries—despite its disregard of justificatory grounding in favour of coming up with free-form, first-person narratives in which the conceivable functions as its own justification. Together, the four articles illustrate the pitfalls of scholarly discourse on forgeries, especially that surrounding Clement’s Letter to Theodore. The solution to the poor argumentation that has characterized the scholarly study of forgeries is suggested to be an exercise in demarcation: to decide (in the abstract) which features should be acceptable as evidence either for or against the ascription of the status of forgery to an historical artefact. Implied within this suggestion is the notion of constraint, i.e., such that a constrained criterion would be one that cannot be employed to back up both an argument and its counter-argument. A topical case study—a first step on the road to creating a rigorous standard for constrained criteria in determining counterfeits—is the alternative narrative of an imagined creation of Clement’s Letter to Theodore by Smith around the time of its reported discovery (1958). Concealed indicators of authority, or the deliberate concealment of authorial details within the forged artefact by the forger, is established as a staple of the literary strategy of mystification, and their post hoc construction as acceptable evidence of authorship is argued to follow according to criteria: 1) that the beginning of the act of decipherment of a concealed indicator of authority has to have been preceded by a literary primer that is unambiguous to a high degree, 2) that, following the prompting of the literary primer, the act of deciphering a concealed indicator of authority has to have adhered to a technique or method that is unambiguous to a high degree, and 3) that, following the prompting of the literary primer and the act of decipherment, both of which must have been practiced in an unambiguous manner to a high degree, the plain-text solution to the concealed indicator of authority must likewise be unambiguous to a high degree.Tässä väitöskirjassa tarkastellaan Klemens Aleksandrialaisen (n. 150-215 jaa.) kirjettä Theodorokselle, joka sisältää Salaisen Markuksen evankeliumin nimellä tunnettuja tekstikatkelmia. Näissä katkelmissa, jotka eivät sisälly kanonisoituun Uuteen testamenttiin, Jeesus mm. herättää nuorukaisen kuolleista ja opettaa tälle Jumalan valtakunnan salaisuuden. Klemensin kirje todistaa laajemmin kristinuskon varhaisvaiheen moninaisuudesta, mutta sitä on myös epäilty väärennökseksi. Historiallisten väärennösten tunnistamiseen ei ole löytynyt yleisesti hyväksyttyä metodia. Historiantutkijat ovat joutuneet arvioimaan epäiltyjä väärennöksiä tapauskohtaisesti, ja taidokkaasti toteutetut väärennökset johtavatkin usein pitkään ja kiivaaseen keskusteluun. Väitöskirjan ytimen muodostavat neljä artikkelia, joissa tarkastellaan Klemensin kirjettä eri näkökulmista ja kuvataan myös yleisemmin historiallisten väärennösten paljastamiseen liittyviä sudenkuoppia. Ensimmäinen artikkeli kuvaa diskurssianalyysin keinoin väärennösväitteistä käytyä sananvaihtoa, jota leimaa puhuminen toisten tutkijoiden ohi ja yli. Toinen ja kolmas artikkeli analysoivat Klemensin kirjeen käsialaa. Ne paljastavat, että digitaalinen kuvankäsittely on tahattomasti muokannut käsialan yksityiskohtia. Vertailuaineisto osoittaa, ettei Klemensin kirjeen käsiala sisällä "väärentäjän vapinaa" tai muita yleisiä väärennöksen tuntomerkkejä. Neljäs artikkeli tarkastelee ja problematisoi tutkijoiden tapaa perustella väärennösväitteitä luomalla kuvitteellisia tarinoita, joilla selitetään väärennöksien yksityiskohtien syntymistä. Väitöskirjassa ehdotetaan, että historiallisten väärennösten paljastamiseen täytyy kehittää vankka tieteellinen viitekehys. Väitöskirjan yhteenvetoluvussa otetaan tähän ensimmäinen askel tarkastelemalla, kuinka autenttisuuden kysymystä on lähestytty mm. kirjallisuustieteen alalla. Yhteenvetoluvussa analysoidaan mystifikaatiolle (kirjallinen genre) tyypillistä tapaa piilottaa "kätkettyjä tekijyyden indikaattoreita" väärennöksiin. Analyysin perusteella todetaan, että aiemmin tutkijat ovat saattaneet langeta kehittelemään villejä väärennösteorioita erilaisten kuviteltujen vihjeiden ja salakirjoitusten pohjalta. Jotta vältytään tämänkaltaiselta "kryptoanalyyttiseltä hyperaktiivisuudelta," tarvitaan "kätkettyjen tekijyyden indikaattoreiden" käytölle kriteerejä. Ehdotettujen kriteerien mukaan ainoastaan sellaiset "kätketyt tekijyyden indikaattorit" voidaan hyväksyä todellisiksi, joiden 1) olemassaoloon viitataan yksiselitteisesti, joiden 2) purkaminen tapahtuu yksiselitteisellä metodilla ja jotka 3) nimeävät tekijän yksiselitteisellä tavalla

Selective de-identification of ECGs, The

Includes bibliographical references.2022 Fall.Biometrics are often used for immigration control, business applications, civil identity, and healthcare. Biometrics can also be used for authentication, monitoring (e.g., subtle changes in biometrics may have health implications), and personalized medical concerns. Increased use of biometrics creates identity vulnerability through the exposure of personal identifiable information (PII). Hence an increasing need to not only validate but secure a patient's biometric data and identity. The latter is achieved by anonymization, or de-identification, of the PII. Using Python in collaboration with the PTB-XL ECG database from Physionet, the goal of this thesis is to create "selective de-identification." When dealing with data and de-identification, clusters, or groupings, of data with similarity of content and location in feature space are created. Classes are groupings of data with content matching that of a class definition within a given tolerance and are assigned metadata. Clusters start without derived information, i.e., metadata, that is created by intelligent algorithms, and are thus considered unstructured. Clusters are then assigned to pre-defined classes based on the features they exhibit. The goal is to focus on features that identify pathology without compromising PII. Methods to classify different pathologies are explored, and the effect on PII classification is measured. The classification scheme with the highest "gain," or (improvement in pathology classification)/ (improvement in PII classification), is deemed the preferred approach. Importantly, the process outlined can be used in many other systems involving patient recordings and diagnostic-relevant data collection

Cloud-based homomorphic encryption for privacy-preserving machine learning in clinical decision support

While privacy and security concerns dominate public cloud services, Homomorphic Encryption (HE) is seen as an emerging solution that ensures secure processing of sensitive data via untrusted networks in the public cloud or by third-party cloud vendors. It relies on the fact that some encryption algorithms display the property of homomorphism, which allows them to manipulate data meaningfully while still in encrypted form; although there are major stumbling blocks to overcome before the technology is considered mature for production cloud environments. Such a framework would find particular relevance in Clinical Decision Support (CDS) applications deployed in the public cloud. CDS applications have an important computational and analytical role over confidential healthcare information with the aim of supporting decision-making in clinical practice. Machine Learning (ML) is employed in CDS applications that typically learn and can personalise actions based on individual behaviour. A relatively simple-to-implement, common and consistent framework is sought that can overcome most limitations of Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) in order to offer an expanded and flexible set of HE capabilities. In the absence of a significant breakthrough in FHE efficiency and practical use, it would appear that a solution relying on client interactions is the best known entity for meeting the requirements of private CDS-based computation, so long as security is not significantly compromised. A hybrid solution is introduced, that intersperses limited two-party interactions amongst the main homomorphic computations, allowing exchange of both numerical and logical cryptographic contexts in addition to resolving other major FHE limitations. Interactions involve the use of client-based ciphertext decryptions blinded by data obfuscation techniques, to maintain privacy. This thesis explores the middle ground whereby HE schemes can provide improved and efficient arbitrary computational functionality over a significantly reduced two-party network interaction model involving data obfuscation techniques. This compromise allows for the powerful capabilities of HE to be leveraged, providing a more uniform, flexible and general approach to privacy-preserving system integration, which is suitable for cloud deployment. The proposed platform is uniquely designed to make HE more practical for mainstream clinical application use, equipped with a rich set of capabilities and potentially very complex depth of HE operations. Such a solution would be suitable for the long-term privacy preserving-processing requirements of a cloud-based CDS system, which would typically require complex combinatorial logic, workflow and ML capabilities

Security and privacy issues in implantable medical devices: A comprehensive survey

Bioengineering is a field in expansion. New technologies are appearing to provide a more efficient treatment of diseases or human deficiencies. Implantable Medical Devices (IMDs) constitute one example, these being devices with more computing, decision making and communication capabilities. Several research works in the computer security field have identified serious security and privacy risks in IMDs that could compromise the implant and even the health of the patient who carries it. This article surveys the main security goals for the next generation of IMDs and analyzes the most relevant protection mechanisms proposed so far. On the one hand, the security proposals must have into consideration the inherent constraints of these small and implanted devices: energy, storage and computing power. On the other hand, proposed solutions must achieve an adequate balance between the safety of the patient and the security level offered, with the battery lifetime being another critical parameter in the design phase

A zero-watermarking algorithm for privacy protection in biomedical signals

Confidentiality of health information is indispensable to protect privacy of an individual. However, recent advances in electronic healthcare systems allow transmission of sensitive information through the Internet, which is prone to various vulnerabilities, attacks and may leads to unauthorized disclosure. Such situations may not only create adverse effects for individuals but may also cause severe consequences such as hefty regulatory fines, bad publicity, legal fees, and forensics. To avoid such predicaments, a privacy protected healthcare system is proposed in this study that protects the identity of an individual as well as detects vocal fold disorders. The privacy of the developed healthcare system is based on the proposed zero-watermarking algorithm, which embeds a watermark in a secret key instead of the signals to avoid the distortion in an audio sample. The identity is protected by the generation of its secret shares through visual cryptography. The generated shares are embedded by finding the patterns into the audio with the application of one-dimensional local binary pattern. The proposed zero-watermarking algorithm is evaluated by using audio samples taken from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary voice disorder database. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves imperceptibility and is reliable in its extraction of identity. In addition, the proposed algorithm does not affect the results of disorder detection and it is robust against noise attacks of various signal-to-noise ratios

Research Contribution of major Centrally Funded Institution Systems of India

India is now among the major knowledge producers of the world, ranking among the top 5 countries in total research output, as per some recent reports. The institutional setup for Research & Development (R&D) in India comprises a diverse set of Institutions, including Universities, government departments, research laboratories, and private sector institutions etc. It may be noted that more than 45% share of India's Gross Expenditure on Research and Development (GERD) comes from the central government. In this context, this article attempts to explore the quantum of research contribution of centrally funded institutions and institution systems of India. The volume, proportionate share and growth patterns of research publications from the major centrally funded institutions, organised in 16 groups, is analysed. These institutions taken together account for 67.54% of Indian research output during 2001 to 2020. The research output of the centrally funded institutions in India has increased steadily since 2001 with a good value for CAGR. The paper presents noteworthy insights about scientific research production of India that may be useful to policymakers, researchers and science practitioners in India. It presents a case for increased activity by the state governments and private sector to further the cause of sustainable and inclusive research and development in the country

2016-2017 Boise State University Undergraduate Catalog

This catalog is primarily for students, but can serve many audiences. In this catalog you will find an overview of Boise State University and information on admission, registration, grades, tuition and fees, financial aid, housing, student services, and other important policies and procedures. However, most of this catalog is devoted to describing the various programs and courses offered at Boise State