The Use of Technology to Counter Frauds and Scams for the Benefit of Society: A Detailed Study

With the advent of the digital age, humanity has gained a number of benefits, such as the internet, mobile technology, and crypto currencies. Nevertheless, this has also allowed criminal strategies to evolve and spread as a result of this development. As a result, fraud attempts have increased from analog to digital as a result of the move from analog to electronic methods. When scams and fraud are present in society, there is a reduction in the ability of the government to provide its citizens with the services they need and to support them at the same time. Fraud results in a loss of dollars which could have been invested in healthcare, education, economic development, or public safety if these dollars had not been lost to fraud. The term "Digital Fraud or Digital Scams" refers to the use of a computer or a mobile device, along with the various means of communication available on the internet, by criminals who intend to deceive or harm a company, or an individual, in order to gain financial gain through digital fraud. Organizations need to update outdated analog technology that has been repurposed for digital applications in order to remain competitive against scams and frauds. As we move into a new digital world where we live in today, companies and governments will need to take a fresh look at their authentication procedures

The Impact of Information and Communication Technologies on Economic Competitiveness

It is important to note that enterprises will be more productive when they utilize information communication technologies to the fullest extent possible. This will result in an increase in their competitiveness, which will enable them to achieve sustainable economic growth, which, in the long run, is a prerequisite for reducing poverty. As a result of the development of information communication technologies, the opportunities for developing economies to participate in international markets are constantly expanding as a result of the development of this technology. With the advent of the Internet, we are witnessing a dramatic change in how goods and services are produced, delivered, sold, and purchased. As a result, the number of people and businesses that are connected to the internet on a daily basis is increasing, thus making them ready to take part in and contribute to the knowledge economy in an ever-increasing way. As a result of the use of the Internet, weak participants in the global economy will be empowered - such as small business owners in developing countries - enabling them to access information, communication, and knowledge that they had not been able to access in the past. It has become possible to trade goods and services more quickly due to the use of new technologies. Over the past few years, it has been shown that the trade in information and communication technology goods and services has been growing at a faster rate than the trade in total goods and services in the past few years. The information and communication technologies have also enabled trade in other sectors as they have improved market access and brought a broader range of customers into the market, as well as simplified the customs, transportation, and logistics processes that are associated with trade in other sectors. In terms of the economic impact of ICTs, one of their most important features is that they play a very important role in changing productivity processes within organizations

Pregnancy in uterus didelphys delivered by caesarean section: a case report

The aim of this study is to report a rare case of pregnancy in uterus didelphys. Mullerian duct anomalies are congenital defects of the female genital system that arise from abnormal embryological development of the Mullerian ducts. A didelphys uterus, also known as double uterus is one of the least common amongst the various Mullerian duct anomalies. It results from complete failure of fusion of Mullerian ducts. There is presence of double uterine bodies with two separate cervices and often double or septate vagina. We report the case in our institute of a pregnancy in the left sided body of a didelphys uterus, delivered by caesarean section. Patients with uterus didelphys belong to high risk group and complications are increased in malformed uterus. Such cases need a meticulous prenatal care. It is a rare Mullerian anomaly and can present with varied obstetrical and gynaecological complications. Prompt and accurate diagnosis of uterine malformations and appropriate surgical intervention are essential to prevent complications

PTPerf: On the performance evaluation of Tor Pluggable Transports

Tor, one of the most popular censorship circumvention systems, faces regular blocking attempts by censors. Thus, to facilitate access, it relies on "pluggable transports" (PTs) that disguise Tor's traffic and make it hard for the adversary to block Tor. However, these are not yet well studied and compared for the performance they provide to the users. Thus, we conduct a first comparative performance evaluation of a total of 12 PTs -- the ones currently supported by the Tor project and those that can be integrated in the future. Our results reveal multiple facets of the PT ecosystem. (1) PTs' download time significantly varies even under similar network conditions. (2) All PTs are not equally reliable. Thus, clients who regularly suffer censorship may falsely believe that such PTs are blocked. (3) PT performance depends on the underlying communication primitive. (4) PTs performance significantly depends on the website access method (browser or command-line). Surprisingly, for some PTs, website access time was even less than vanilla Tor. Based on our findings from more than 1.25M measurements, we provide recommendations about selecting PTs and believe that our study can facilitate access for users who face censorship.Comment: 25 pages, 12 figure

INSOLVENCY LAWS: A WALL OF CONTROL OVER CORPORATE WORLD

This paper examines the current Insolvency Regime of the country and is based upon the pitfalls and inadequacy of insolvency legislations hegemonizing corporate sector in India. Debt Financing: A fundamental activity by Corporate Persons “The Pecking Order theory says that the firm will borrow, rather than issuing equity, when internal cash flow is not sufficient to fund capital expenditure” (Myers, 2001)1. In the process of financing a new venture the directors of a corporate firm estimate two major outcomes- whether the venture will maximize profit, or it will increase overall valuation of the firm. While the former outcome is limited to increase in wealth of shareholders, later increases market share, market value and overall income power of the corporation. Debt financing is a process which undertakes less cost of raising capital compared with equity issue, but it undermines the objective of profit because interest on liability is an expense, however, the corporation benefits in long run. Issuing equity to dilute current share of stakeholders is an indication to overvalued stock and on the other hand utilizing debt to fund a project is a sign of capability

Seed endophytic bacterial profiling from wheat varieties of contrasting heat sensitivity

Wheat yield can be limited by many biotic and abiotic factors. Heat stress at the grain filling stage is a factor that reduces wheat production tremendously. The potential role of endophytic microorganisms in mitigating plant stress through various biomolecules like enzymes and growth hormones and also by improving plant nutrition has led to a more in-depth exploration of the plant microbiome for such functions. Hence, we devised this study to investigate the abundance and diversity of wheat seed endophytic bacteria (WSEB) from heatS (heat susceptible, GW322) and heatT (heat tolerant, HD3298 and HD3271) varieties by culturable and unculturable approaches. The results evidenced that the culturable diversity was higher in the heatS variety than in the heatT variety and Bacillus was found to be dominant among the 10 different bacterial genera identified. Though the WSEB population was higher in the heatS variety, a greater number of isolates from the heatT variety showed tolerance to higher temperatures (up to 55°C) along with PGP activities such as indole acetic acid (IAA) production and nutrient acquisition. Additionally, the metagenomic analysis of seed microbiota unveiled higher bacterial diversity, with a predominance of the phyla Proteobacteria covering >50% of OTUs, followed by Firmicutes and Actinobacteria. There were considerable variations in the abundance and diversity between heat sensitivity contrasting varieties, where notably more thermophilic bacterial OTUs were observed in the heatT samples, which could be attributed to conferring tolerance against heat stress. Furthermore, exploring the functional characteristics of culturable and unculturable microbiomes would provide more comprehensive information on improving plant growth and productivity for sustainable agriculture

On the Anonymity of Peer-To-Peer Network Anonymity Schemes Used by Cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrency systems can be subject to deanonimization attacks by exploiting the network-level communication on their peer-to-peer network. Adversaries who control a set of colluding node(s) within the peer-to-peer network can observe transactions being exchanged and infer the parties involved. Thus, various network anonymity schemes have been proposed to mitigate this problem, with some solutions providing theoretical anonymity guarantees. In this work, we model such peer-to-peer network anonymity solutions and evaluate their anonymity guarantees. To do so, we propose a novel framework that uses Bayesian inference to obtain the probability distributions linking transactions to their possible originators. We characterize transaction anonymity with those distributions, using entropy as metric of adversarial uncertainty on the originator's identity. In particular, we model Dandelion, Dandelion++ and Lightning Network. We study different configurations and demonstrate that none of them offers acceptable anonymity to their users. For instance, our analysis reveals that in the widely deployed Lightning Network, with 1% strategically chosen colluding nodes the adversary can uniquely determine the originator for about 50% of the total transactions in the network. In Dandelion, an adversary that controls 15% of the nodes has on average uncertainty among only 8 possible originators. Moreover, we observe that due to the way Dandelion and Dandelion++ are designed, increasing the network size does not correspond to an increase in the anonymity set of potential originators. Alarmingly, our longitudinal analysis of Lightning Network reveals rather an inverse trend -- with the growth of the network the overall anonymity decreases

zeya2u9/PTPerf: Initial Release

This release contains the measurement and analysis scripts linked to the paper "PTPerf: On the performance evaluation of Tor Pluggable Transports" published at ACM IMC 2023

Enhanced Absorption in thin and ultrathin silicon films by 3D photonic band gap back reflectors

Since thin-film silicon solar cells have limited optical absorption, we explore the effect of a nanostructured back reflector to recycle the unabsorbed light. As a back reflector we investigate a 3D photonic band gap crystal made from silicon that is readily integrated with the thin films. We numerically obtain the optical properties by solving the 3D time-harmonic Maxwell equations using the finite-element method, and model silicon with experimentally determined optical constants. The absorption enhancement relevant for photovoltaics is obtained by weighting the absorption spectra with the AM 1.5 standard solar spectrum. We study thin films either thicker ($L_{Si} = 2400$ nm) or much thinner ($L_{Si} = 80$ nm) than the wavelength of light. At $L_{Si} = 2400$ nm, the 3D photonic band gap crystal enhances the spectrally averaged ($\lambda = 680$ nm to $880$ nm) silicon absorption by $2.22$x (s-pol.) to $2.45$x (p-pol.), which exceeds the enhancement of a perfect metal back reflector ($1.47$ to $1.56$x). The absorption is enhanced by the (i) broadband angle and polarization-independent reflectivity in the 3D photonic band gap, and (ii) the excitation of many guided modes in the film by the crystal's surface diffraction leading to enhanced path lengths. At $L_{Si} = 80$ nm, the photonic crystal back reflector yields a striking average absorption enhancement of $9.15$x, much more than $0.83$x for a perfect metal, which is due to a remarkable guided mode confined within the combined thickness of the thin film and the photonic crystal's Bragg attenuation length. The broad bandwidth of the 3D photonic band gap leads to the back reflector's Bragg attenuation length being much shorter than the silicon absorption length. Consequently, light is confined inside the thin film and the absorption enhancements are not due to the additional thickness of the photonic crystal back reflector.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figure