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.

SFD Report: Mandalay, Myanmar

Mandalay is located on the bank of the Irrawaddy on a rather flat and low flood plain, in the centre of Myanmar’s dry-zone. Mandalay is the second largest city of Myanmar. Mandalay experiences increased informal settlements due to rapid expansion. All sanitation infrastructures in Mandalay are onsite. The SFD graphic shows that 100% of excreta is not properly managed. It consists of 34% of supernatant not contained from tanks connected to open drains that end up untreated in the environment; 3% of FS emptied, delivered to treatment to an oxidation pond outside the city, but not treated; 55% of FS not contained and not emptied from tanks and pits, and 8% of people practising open defecation

Improving the Effectiveness of Information Retrieval System

With the rapid growth of information and easy access of information, in particular the boom of the World Wide Web, the problem of finding useful information and knowledge becomes one of the most important topics in information and computer science. Information Retrieval (IR) systems, also called text retrieval systems, facilitate users to retrieve information which is relevant or close to their information needs. This research provides an effective IR system for retrieving not only relevant but also related documents. For retrieving relevant documents, Probabilistic Model is applied. For retrieving related documents, the related indexed table is built including extracted keywords and related documents lists. In constructing related index table in the database, Shannon’s entropy difference between intrinsic and extrinsic mode is used to extract the highly significant keywords.  Entropy threshold value was assigned to 0.5 of normalized entropy difference square ( ) according to the analytical results. The proposed keyword similarity distance (KSD) function is used to calculate similarity and relations between document pair.  The proposed system is implemented by using PHP programming language and MySQL database. The performance of this approach is evaluated by using standard IR metric such as Precision (P), Recall (R), F-measure (F) and Average Precision (AP) on three test datasets (Oshumed, CISI and CRAN). According to the experimental results, the performance of the proposed system using related index table is more effective than the traditional probabilistic model

Security Enhancement System Based on the Integration of Cryptography and Steganography

Nowadays, due to the widespread use of data exchange in electronic way, the information security has become important in data storage and transmission. Lack of security makes many problems in security awareness applications. The two kinds of information that are widely used in daily communication are image and text. Steganography and cryptography are both ways to protect the data security against various attacks. Thus, this work focuses on the enhancement of not only image but also information security based on the combination of cryptography and steganography methods. From the cryptography point of view, image security is enhanced based on the combination of proposed block-based transformation and encryption technique. Firstly, the original image is transformed with proposed block-based transformation algorithm to obtain better robustness of image encryption. And then, the generated transformed image is encrypted by using Blowfish encryption algorithm. After getting the encrypted image, a steganography approach provides the data hiding system by using this encrypted image as a cover for information security. Moreover, to prove the advantages of using combination process (proposed transformation and Blowfish encryption) rather than single encryption, performance comparison is made by calculating the correlation and entropy of encrypted images generated by combination process and Blowfish encryption algorithm.

Digital Envelope System Based on Optimized NTRU (Number Theory Research Unit) and RC6 Algorithm

With the rapid development of technologies, more data are generated and transmitted in the medical, commercial, and military fields, which may include some sensitive information. So, security is essential to transfer the important information securely over the communication channels. To fulfill the information security requirements, many security systems were proposed in many research areas. On the other hand, many cryptographic algorithms are analyzed and optimized to evaluate better performance according to their requirements. This work proposes digital envelope system in order to meet the security requirement such as confidentiality. To create digital envelope system, the original message is encrypted by using Rivest Cipher-6(RC6) with the help of secret key. Then, that secret key is encrypted by using the ONTRU (Optimized Number Theory Research Unit) with the help of Receiver’s public key.  Moreover, this work also focuses on the optimization of NTRU to obtain better execution time for the digital envelope system. According to the analytical results, it is found that ONTRU is faster than NTRU. The basic idea behind this paper is to provide a good, faster digital envelope system

Determinants of active aging and quality of life among older adults : systematic review

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

National scale-up of tuberculosis-human immunodeficiency virus collaborative activities in Myanmar from 2005 to 2016 and tuberculosis treatment outcomes for patients with human immunodeficiency virus-positive tuberculosis in the Mandalay Region in 2015.

Background: HIV-associated TB is a serious public health problem in Myanmar. Study objectives were to describe national scale-up of collaborative activities to reduce the double burden of TB and HIV from 2005 to 2016 and to describe TB treatment outcomes of individuals registered with HIV-associated TB in 2015 in the Mandalay Region. Methods: Secondary analysis of national aggregate data and, for treatment outcomes, a cohort study of patients with HIV-associated TB in the Mandalay Region. Results: The number of townships implementing collaborative activities increased from 7 to 330 by 2016. The number of registered TB patients increased from 1577 to 139 625 in 2016, with the number of individuals tested for HIV increasing from 432 to 114 180 (82%) in 2016: 10 971 (10%) were diagnosed as HIV positive. Uptake of co-trimoxazole preventive therapy (CPT) and antiretroviral therapy (ART) nationally in 2016 was 77% and 52%, respectively. In the Mandalay Region, treatment success was 77% and mortality was 18% in 815 HIV-associated TB patients. Risk factors for unfavourable outcomes and death were older age (≥45 years) and not taking CPT and/or ART. Conclusion: Myanmar is making good progress with reducing the HIV burden in TB patients, but better implementation is needed to reach 100% HIV testing and 100% CPT and ART uptake in TB-HIV co-infected patients

Determinants of active aging and quality of life among older adults: systematic review

IntroductionPopulation demography across the globe shows an increasing trend in the aging population due to better healthcare, improved nutrition, advanced health-related technology, and decreased fertility rate. Despite these advancements, there remains a knowledge gap in understanding the association between active aging determinants and quality of life (QoL) among older adults, particularly within diverse cultural contexts, which has not been adequately explored in previous research. Therefore, understanding the association between active aging determinants and QoL can help policymakers plan early interventions or programs to assist future older adults in both aging actively and optimizing their quality of life (QoL), as these two factors have a bidirectional relationship.ObjectiveThis study aimed to review evidence regarding the association between active aging and quality of life (QoL) among older adults and to determine the most widely used study designs and measurement instruments in studies conducted between 2000 and 2020.MethodsRelevant studies were identified by a systematic search of four electronic databases and cross-reference lists. Original studies examining the association between active aging and QoL in individuals aged 60 years or older were considered. The quality of the included studies and the direction and consistency of the association between active aging and QoL were assessed.ResultsA total of 26 studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in this systematic review. Most studies reported a positive association between active aging and QoL among older adults. Active aging had a consistent association with various QoL domains including physical environment, health and social services, social environment, economic, personal, and behavioral determinants.ConclusionActive aging had a positive and consistent association with several QoL domains among older adults, backing the notion that the better the active aging determinants, the better the QoL among older adults. Considering the broader literature, it is necessary to facilitate and encourage the active participation of older adults in physical, social, and economic activities for the maintenance and/or improvement of QoL. Identifying other possible determinants and enhancing the methods to improve those determinants may help improve the QoL among older adults

Availability and quality of anti-malarials among private sector outlets in Myanmar in 2012: results from a large, community-based, cross-sectional survey before a large-scale intervention

BACKGROUND: Global malaria control efforts are threatened by the spread and emergence of artemisinin-resistant Plasmodium falciparum parasites. In 2012, the widespread sale of partial courses of artemisinin-based monotherapy was suspected to take place in the highly accessed, weakly regulated private sector in Myanmar, posing potentially major threats to drug resistance. This study investigated the presence of artemisinin-based monotherapies in the Myanmar private sector, particularly as partial courses of therapy, to inform the targeting of future interventions to stop artemisinin resistance. METHODS: A large cross-sectional survey comprised of a screening questionnaire was conducted across 26 townships in Myanmar between March and May, 2012. For outlets that stocked anti-malarials at the time of survey, a stock audit was conducted, and for outlets that stocked anti-malarials within 3 months of the survey, a provider survey was conducted. RESULTS: A total of 3,658 outlets were screened, 83% were retailers (pharmacies, itinerant drug vendors and general retailers) and 17% were healthcare providers (private facilities and health workers). Of the 3,658 outlets screened, 1,359 outlets (32%) stocked at least one anti-malarial at the time of study. Oral artemisinin-based monotherapy comprised of 33% of self-reported anti-malarials dispensing volumes found. The vast majority of artemisinin-based monotherapy was sold by retailers, where 63% confirmed that they sold partial courses of therapy by cutting blister packets. Very few retailers (5%) had malaria rapid diagnostic tests available, and quality-assured artemisinin-based combination therapy was virtually nonexistent among retailers. CONCLUSION: Informal private pharmacies, itinerant drug vendors and general retailers should be targeted for interventions to improve malaria treatment practices in Myanmar, particularly those that threaten the emergence and spread of artemisinin resistance