Secure digital documents using Steganography and QR Code

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University LondonWith the increasing use of the Internet several problems have arisen regarding the processing of electronic documents. These include content filtering, content retrieval/search. Moreover, document security has taken a centre stage including copyright protection, broadcast monitoring etc. There is an acute need of an effective tool which can find the identity, location and the time when the document was created so that it can be determined whether or not the contents of the document were tampered with after creation. Owing the sensitivity of the large amounts of data which is processed on a daily basis, verifying the authenticity and integrity of a document is more important now than it ever was. Unsurprisingly document authenticity verification has become the centre of attention in the world of research. Consequently, this research is concerned with creating a tool which deals with the above problem. This research proposes the use of a Quick Response Code as a message carrier for Text Key-print. The Text Key-print is a novel method which employs the basic element of the language (i.e. Characters of the alphabet) in order to achieve authenticity of electronic documents through the transformation of its physical structure into a logical structured relationship. The resultant dimensional matrix is then converted into a binary stream and encapsulated with a serial number or URL inside a Quick response Code (QR code) to form a digital fingerprint mark. For hiding a QR code, two image steganography techniques were developed based upon the spatial and the transform domains. In the spatial domain, three methods were proposed and implemented based on the least significant bit insertion technique and the use of pseudorandom number generator to scatter the message into a set of arbitrary pixels. These methods utilise the three colour channels in the images based on the RGB model based in order to embed one, two or three bits per the eight bit channel which results in three different hiding capacities. The second technique is an adaptive approach in transforming domain where a threshold value is calculated under a predefined location for embedding in order to identify the embedding strength of the embedding technique. The quality of the generated stego images was evaluated using both objective (PSNR) and Subjective (DSCQS) methods to ensure the reliability of our proposed methods. The experimental results revealed that PSNR is not a strong indicator of the perceived stego image quality, but not a bad interpreter also of the actual quality of stego images. Since the visual difference between the cover and the stego image must be absolutely imperceptible to the human visual system, it was logically convenient to ask human observers with different qualifications and experience in the field of image processing to evaluate the perceived quality of the cover and the stego image. Thus, the subjective responses were analysed using statistical measurements to describe the distribution of the scores given by the assessors. Thus, the proposed scheme presents an alternative approach to protect digital documents rather than the traditional techniques of digital signature and watermarking

FACING THE INTELLECTUAL AND CULTURAL CHALLENGES AMONG THE MUSLIM UMMAH IN THE 21ST CENTURY

1. Overview of the Fourth Industrial Revolution 2. Industrial Revolution Implications on people 3. IR4 impact on the Muslim ummah 4. Intellectual and culturalChallenges in the Muslim umma

The Impact of Animation Program on Arabic Learning Vocabulary Recall Among Primary School Pupels: A Case Study at Al-Amin Islamic Primary School, Gombak

In Al Amin Gombak Islamic Primary School, vocabulary recall and acquisition of verbal skills is a major concern in Arabic Language Learning. Classical teaching techniques and learning materials has become ineffective in ensuring the acquisition of those skills. Although each class is equipped with a HD television that can be connected to a laptop via a USB cable, animation programs have yet to be used by the teachers in teaching Arabic Language

EMBEDDING ISLAMIC ETHICAL VALUES IN TEACHERS’ TRAINING PROGRAM: QUR’ANIC APPROACH

Islamic Value is the highest ethical manner of mankind on the earth, concerning man’s behaviours and actions- orally and verbally, it is because of originality and authentication. Value in Arabic term refers to akhlaq and adab. These Islamic Values comprising certain essential moral, ethical, cultural, social, and spiritual values. Such values are important and necessary for children through their all-round development and prepares them as a complete man. The aim of this paper is to overlook the current various ethical issue existing in Muslim communities around the world, the importance of teachers’ rule in inculcating moral values in their students, and to suggest a framework for Islamic Values education to be embedded in the curriculum of Higher Learning Institutions catered for pre-service teachers as part of ethical/moral training before they start their career. To achieve its aim, the paper is based on a descriptive method to describe the Ethical/moral Values from Islamic and non- Islamic perspectives based on current research available on line or/and offline. The focus is on the Quranic approach, specifically stated in surah al-Isra’, verses 22-39 and surah al-An’am, verses 151-153. The finding is expected be used as a guideline for Ethical values course/topics that embedded in Teachers’ training programs

Risk-Aware Accelerated Wireless Federated Learning with Heterogeneous Clients

Wireless Federated Learning (FL) is an emerging distributed machine learning paradigm, particularly gaining momentum in domains with confidential and private data on mobile clients. However, the location-dependent performance, in terms of transmission rates and susceptibility to transmission errors, poses major challenges for wireless FL's convergence speed and accuracy. The challenge is more acute for hostile environments without a metric that authenticates the data quality and security profile of the clients. In this context, this paper proposes a novel risk-aware accelerated FL framework that accounts for the clients heterogeneity in the amount of possessed data, transmission rates, transmission errors, and trustworthiness. Classifying clients according to their location-dependent performance and trustworthiness profiles, we propose a dynamic risk-aware global model aggregation scheme that allows clients to participate in descending order of their transmission rates and an ascending trustworthiness constraint. In particular, the transmission rate is the dominant participation criterion for initial rounds to accelerate the convergence speed. Our model then progressively relaxes the transmission rate restriction to explore more training data at cell-edge clients. The aggregation rounds incorporate a debiasing factor that accounts for transmission errors. Risk-awareness is enabled by a validation set, where the base station eliminates non-trustworthy clients at the fine-tuning stage. The proposed scheme is benchmarked against a conservative scheme (i.e., only allowing trustworthy devices) and an aggressive scheme (i.e., oblivious to the trust metric). The numerical results highlight the superiority of the proposed scheme in terms of accuracy and convergence speed when compared to both benchmarks

Clinical effectiveness of high definition fluorescence camera in detection of initial occlusal caries

Although visual inspection is the preferred route in everyday clinical practise for detecting early caries lesions, novel technologies like light fluorescence-based devices (Vista Proof iX HD smart) have been developed to enhance early caries detection

Implementing SexEd programs for persons with disabilities: A Survey of Teachers' Views

The aim was to investigate teachers' views regarding implementing SexEd programs for persons with IDs. Teachers' views regarding implementing SexEd programs for persons with IDs was studied. Teachers must be teaching in special education, both sexes (males and females). Participants were 180 teachers (females, n= 30, 16.6%, and males 150, 83.4%).  No differences were found between the two sexes in their responses towards implementing SexEd programs for persons with IDs. Teacher's age had significant effect on respondents' responses towards implementing SexEd programs for persons with IDs. Old teachers had positive responses towards implementing SexEd programs for persons with IDs.     &nbsp

مستقبل كتب تعليم اللغة العربية في جنوب شرق آسيا في ظل الثورة الصناعية الرابعة: رؤية استشرافية

تتضمن هذه الورقة النقاط الآتية: • البيئة الأصلية للغة العربية، • انشارها في بيئات أخرى، • مكانتها بين اللغات الرسمية الأخرى، • وصولها إلى جنوب شرق آسيا، • كتب تعليم اللغة العربية لغير الناطقين بها؛ ماضيها وحاضرها، • رؤية استشرافية لمستقبل كتب تعليم اللغة العربية في ظل الثورة الصناعية الرابعة