An active contour for range image segmentation

In this paper a new classification of range image segmentation method is proposed according to the criterion of homogeneity which obeys the segmentation, then, a deformable model-type active contour 201C;Snake201D; is applied to segment range images

Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange through Steganographied Images

Purpose – In a private key system, the major problem is the exchange of the key between the two parties. Diffie and Hellman have set up a way to share the key. However, this technique is not protected against a man-in-the-middle attack as the settings are not authenticated. The Diffie-Hellman key exchange requires the use of digital signature or creating a secure channel for data exchanging to avoid the man-in-the-middle attack. Methodology/approach/design – We present a Diffie-Hellman key exchange implementation using steganographied images. Using steganography made invisible the data exchange to a potential attacker. So, we will not need a digital signature or creating a secure channel to do our key exchange since only the two concerned parts are aware of this exchange. Findings – We generate a symmetric 128-bit key between two users without use of digital signature or secure channel. However, it works only on bitmap images, heavy images and sensitive to compression

Gestion du capital intellectuel : Le capital intellectuel dans différents domaines et ses composantes

The purpose of our article is to definethe concept of intellectual capital, to talk  about its history, its models of measurement, the components that characterize it, its impact  on organizations, and lastly how it is manifested in different fields and its relationship with  knowledge management , that is all to highlight its importance in an economy dominated by  the creation and diffusion of knowledge, since the role of intellectual capital is indelible,  especially with the increase in overall corporate investment in IC - and because of its  economic characteristics, notably its intangible nature, itss value inscreased, it also has  characteristics that are, by definition, growth-enhancing, and permit to establish evidences of  a link between investment in this intellectual capital to growth and changes in productivity.The purpose of our article is to definethe concept of intellectual capital, to talk  about its history, its models of measurement, the components that characterize it, its impact  on organizations, and lastly how it is manifested in different fields and its relationship with  knowledge management , that is all to highlight its importance in an economy dominated by  the creation and diffusion of knowledge, since the role of intellectual capital is indelible,  especially with the increase in overall corporate investment in IC - and because of its  economic characteristics, notably its intangible nature, itss value inscreased, it also has  characteristics that are, by definition, growth-enhancing, and permit to establish evidences of  a link between investment in this intellectual capital to growth and changes in productivity

Effects of hospital facilities on patient outcomes after cancer surgery: an international, prospective, observational study

Background Early death after cancer surgery is higher in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) compared with in high-income countries, yet the impact of facility characteristics on early postoperative outcomes is unknown. The aim of this study was to examine the association between hospital infrastructure, resource availability, and processes on early outcomes after cancer surgery worldwide.Methods A multimethods analysis was performed as part of the GlobalSurg 3 study-a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study of patients who had surgery for breast, colorectal, or gastric cancer. The primary outcomes were 30-day mortality and 30-day major complication rates. Potentially beneficial hospital facilities were identified by variable selection to select those associated with 30-day mortality. Adjusted outcomes were determined using generalised estimating equations to account for patient characteristics and country-income group, with population stratification by hospital.Findings Between April 1, 2018, and April 23, 2019, facility-level data were collected for 9685 patients across 238 hospitals in 66 countries (91 hospitals in 20 high-income countries; 57 hospitals in 19 upper-middle-income countries; and 90 hospitals in 27 low-income to lower-middle-income countries). The availability of five hospital facilities was inversely associated with mortality: ultrasound, CT scanner, critical care unit, opioid analgesia, and oncologist. After adjustment for case-mix and country income group, hospitals with three or fewer of these facilities (62 hospitals, 1294 patients) had higher mortality compared with those with four or five (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 3.85 [95% CI 2.58-5.75]; p<0.0001), with excess mortality predominantly explained by a limited capacity to rescue following the development of major complications (63.0% vs 82.7%; OR 0.35 [0.23-0.53]; p<0.0001). Across LMICs, improvements in hospital facilities would prevent one to three deaths for every 100 patients undergoing surgery for cancer.Interpretation Hospitals with higher levels of infrastructure and resources have better outcomes after cancer surgery, independent of country income. Without urgent strengthening of hospital infrastructure and resources, the reductions in cancer-associated mortality associated with improved access will not be realised

Steganographic Techniques Classification According to Image Format

In this work, we present a classification of steganographic methods applicable to digital images. We also propose a classification of steganographic methods according to the type of image used. We noticed there are no methods that can be applied to all image formats. Each type of image has its characteristics and each steganographic method operates on a precise colorimetric representation. This classification provides an overview of the techniques used for the steganography of digital image

An Invariable to Rotation Data Hiding Scheme for Semi-Fragile Blind Watermark

An invariant to rotation watermarking approach is proposed for the purpose of improving the security of digital images. The proposed digital watermark approach is invariable to rotation and guarantees the integrity of the inserted mark. The size of the resulting image is identical to the original image and the process guarantees acceptable transparency. This approach evolves both in the frequency and the spatial domain. Specifically, the proposed scheme processes the JPEG images by adapting its structure to the frequency domain by modifying the DCT coefficients of the image. This scheme is also adaptable to BMP images by adjusting these parameters for an LSB modification of the colorimetric values of the image. Moreover, during the extraction, the structure of our scheme organizes itself according to the orientation of the processed image. Based on the experiment conducting with eight substitution processes, we concluded that the substitution of four bits gives a great capacity of insertion, while guaranteeing an acceptable transparency for the insertion of text. However, a substitution of one bit only is recommended for the insertion of an image. This reduces the capacity, but guarantees transparency of the watermarking process

Multilevel Entity-Informed Business Relation Extraction

International audienceThis paper describes a business relation extraction system that combines contextualized language models with multiple levels of entity knowledge. Our contributions are three-folds: (1) a novel characterization of business relations, (2) the first large English dataset of more than 10k relation instances manually annotated according to this characterization, and (3) multiple neural architectures based on BERT, newly augmented with three complementary levels of knowledge about entities: generalization over entity type, pre-trained entity embeddings learned from two external knowledge graphs, and an entity-knowledge-aware attention mechanism. Our results show an improvement over many strong knowledge-agnostic and knowledge-enhanced state of the art models for relation extraction