A Novel Text Steganographic Technique Using Specific Alphabets

In today’s electronic era, wealth of electronic information are accessing over the Internet. Several important information and private data transferring over the Internet are being hacked by attackers via latest communication technology. So, maintaining the security of secret data has been a great challenge. To tackle the security problem, cryptographic methods as well as steganographic techniques are essential. This paper focuses on hybrid security system using cryptographic algorithm and text steganographic technique to achieve a more robust security system. In this work, to overcome the limited data hiding capacity, suspiciousness, and data damaging effect due to modification, of traditional steganographic techniques, a new technique for information hiding in text file is proposed. The proposed approach conceals a message, without degrading cover, by using first, second, second last, and last letter of words of the cover text. Hence, from the embedding capacity point of view, its capacity depends on the similarity of characters of the words in cover text. In addition, as further improvement for security, secret message encryption is performed using Blowfish algorithm before hiding into the innocuous cover text.

Information Security System Based on English and Myanmar Text Steganography

Due to the growth in frequent exchange of digital data over public channel, information security plays an important role in daily part of communication. Hence, various techniques like steganography are applied in information security area for more efficient information security system. This paper proposes two new text steganographic approaches using two different languages which are based on Unicode standard for secure data transfer over the public channel. The main aim is to overcome the limited embedding capacity, suspiciousness, and data damaging effect due to modification of existing steganographic approaches. The first approach conceals a message, without degrading the cover, by using four specific characters of words of the English cover text. The second approach performs message hiding by using the three specific groups of characters of combined words in Myanmar cover text while maintaining the content of the cover. The structure and operation of the proposed approaches based on the idea of existing text steganographic technique: Hiding Data in Paragraph (HDPara) algorithm. In this work, an empirical comparison of the proposed approaches with HDPara approach is presented. According to the comparison results, the proposed approaches outperform the existing HDPara approach in terms of embedding capacity.

Height and body-mass index trajectories of school-aged children and adolescents from 1985 to 2019 in 200 countries and territories: a pooled analysis of 2181 population-based studies with 65 million participants

Summary Background Comparable global data on health and nutrition of school-aged children and adolescents are scarce. We aimed to estimate age trajectories and time trends in mean height and mean body-mass index (BMI), which measures weight gain beyond what is expected from height gain, for school-aged children and adolescents. Methods For this pooled analysis, we used a database of cardiometabolic risk factors collated by the Non-Communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration. We applied a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate trends from 1985 to 2019 in mean height and mean BMI in 1-year age groups for ages 5–19 years. The model allowed for non-linear changes over time in mean height and mean BMI and for non-linear changes with age of children and adolescents, including periods of rapid growth during adolescence. Findings We pooled data from 2181 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in 65 million participants in 200 countries and territories. In 2019, we estimated a difference of 20 cm or higher in mean height of 19-year-old adolescents between countries with the tallest populations (the Netherlands, Montenegro, Estonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina for boys; and the Netherlands, Montenegro, Denmark, and Iceland for girls) and those with the shortest populations (Timor-Leste, Laos, Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea for boys; and Guatemala, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Timor-Leste for girls). In the same year, the difference between the highest mean BMI (in Pacific island countries, Kuwait, Bahrain, The Bahamas, Chile, the USA, and New Zealand for both boys and girls and in South Africa for girls) and lowest mean BMI (in India, Bangladesh, Timor-Leste, Ethiopia, and Chad for boys and girls; and in Japan and Romania for girls) was approximately 9–10 kg/m2. In some countries, children aged 5 years started with healthier height or BMI than the global median and, in some cases, as healthy as the best performing countries, but they became progressively less healthy compared with their comparators as they grew older by not growing as tall (eg, boys in Austria and Barbados, and girls in Belgium and Puerto Rico) or gaining too much weight for their height (eg, girls and boys in Kuwait, Bahrain, Fiji, Jamaica, and Mexico; and girls in South Africa and New Zealand). In other countries, growing children overtook the height of their comparators (eg, Latvia, Czech Republic, Morocco, and Iran) or curbed their weight gain (eg, Italy, France, and Croatia) in late childhood and adolescence. When changes in both height and BMI were considered, girls in South Korea, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and some central Asian countries (eg, Armenia and Azerbaijan), and boys in central and western Europe (eg, Portugal, Denmark, Poland, and Montenegro) had the healthiest changes in anthropometric status over the past 3·5 decades because, compared with children and adolescents in other countries, they had a much larger gain in height than they did in BMI. The unhealthiest changes—gaining too little height, too much weight for their height compared with children in other countries, or both—occurred in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, New Zealand, and the USA for boys and girls; in Malaysia and some Pacific island nations for boys; and in Mexico for girls. Interpretation The height and BMI trajectories over age and time of school-aged children and adolescents are highly variable across countries, which indicates heterogeneous nutritional quality and lifelong health advantages and risks

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities(.)(1,2) This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity(3-6). Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55% of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017-and more than 80% in some low- and middle-income regions-was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing-and in some countries reversal-of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories.Peer reviewe

Heterogeneous contributions of change in population distribution of body mass index to change in obesity and underweight NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC)

From 1985 to 2016, the prevalence of underweight decreased, and that of obesity and severe obesity increased, in most regions, with significant variation in the magnitude of these changes across regions. We investigated how much change in mean body mass index (BMI) explains changes in the prevalence of underweight, obesity, and severe obesity in different regions using data from 2896 population-based studies with 187 million participants. Changes in the prevalence of underweight and total obesity, and to a lesser extent severe obesity, are largely driven by shifts in the distribution of BMI, with smaller contributions from changes in the shape of the distribution. In East and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the underweight tail of the BMI distribution was left behind as the distribution shifted. There is a need for policies that address all forms of malnutrition by making healthy foods accessible and affordable, while restricting unhealthy foods through fiscal and regulatory restrictions

Innovation Security of Beaufort Cipher by Stream Cipher Using Myanmar-Vigenere Table and Unicode Table

Nowadays, securing information and message transformation are going with electronic way, thesecurity becomes very important role on public network. Cryptography is readable message convert tounreadable message using encryption/decryption process. Encryption Process is sender and decryptionprocess are receiver side. Commonly, information can be storing with international language such as Englishlanguage. At the present time, everyone is trying to be more secure not only English but also own languagesuch as Myanmar, Chinese, Tamil etc. Confidential data are transferred through with regional language byusing with more innovative method. To secure such information, encryption/decryption plays an importantrole in information security. In cryptography, there are several cipher techniques such as, polyalphabeticcipher, Stream cipher, Block cipher etc. This section using Beaufort cipher is an example of substitutioncipher, In this paper, we propose an advanced encryption algorithm that improves the security of Beaufortencryption by combining it with a modern encryption method such as Stream cipher for the Myanmarlanguage, Stream cipher is considered relatively as an unbreakable method and uses a binary form ( insteadof characters) where Plain text, encrypted text and key are bit string

Learning management system for art class

This report provides an insight into the experiences, skills and accomplishments acquired during the author’s final year project at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, from 2012 December to 2013 November in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Engineering (Information Engineering & Media). Almost all of the Learning Management Systems in the market are meant for delivering course materials and creating quizzes so as to assess the students’ knowledge. However, in learning an art module, the skills and creativity cannot be graded merely based on knowledge or the theories. It depends more onto the overall feelings given to the viewer. In fact, there is no definite dimension for assessing an artwork. Therefore, apart from having features of normal LMS like posting announcements, and uploading contents, this project also aims to develop a system for grading the artwork, keeping archives for each student’s portfolio and showcasing it as a digital gallery. This report will see through the accomplishments and a detailed description of developing progress from requirements modelling, software implementation to final features and interface.Bachelor of Engineerin

Prevention of Man-In-The-Middle Attack in Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange Algorithm using Proposed Hash Function

The key exchange process is a very important feature for many parts in cryptography. In data encryption, symmetric encryption techniques need to share the same secret key securely between two parties before encryption and this is a challenging task for secure data transmission. Most symmetric key encryptions and key management systems widely use Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange (DHKE) algorithm for the purpose of key distribution because it has simple computation and supports forward security. However, there is no key authentication and Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attack has occurred during the key generation process. To overcome this problem, a new hash function is proposed to get the public key integrity during the public key sharing process of DHKE algorithm. This hash function is created by using six bitwise operators and operated in a variable length of the rounds depending on message length. Thus, the proposed system improves the security of DHKE and grantees the user authentication requirements

Biofuel from microalgae: a review on the current status and future trends

The constant reliance on fossil fuel energy resources is unsustainable, due to both depleting world reserves and increasing green house gas emissions associated with their use and thus there are dynamic research at the global level envisioned at developing alternative renewable and potentially carbon neutral solid, liquid and gaseous biofuels as alternative energy resources. The contemporary knowledge and technology predictions have proved that among the third generation biofuels especially those derived from microalgae are considered the best reasonable alternative energy resource compared to undeniable drawbacks of first and second generation biofuels. Moreover, its efficiency to sequester carbon from the atmosphere and industrial gases which can efficiently utilize the nutrients present in wastewater and industrial effluents. Therefore, culturing algae provide several benefits such as providing biomass for the production of biofuels to sequester the atmospheric carbon, removing the nutrients from the wastewater and is not competing with agricultural land, water resources and food crops. This study reviewed the technologies underneath the microalgae-to-biofuels processes, focusing on the biomass production, harvesting, conversion technologies, and the lipid extraction methods. The genetics and molecular biotechnology aspects have also been briefly discussed. Though the economical assessment of algal biofuels is not attractive, it suggests them to be environmentally better than the fossil fuels