Structural analyses of features in cultural landscapes based on historical cadastral maps and GIS

A landscape may appear to be ancient and to contain old man-made structures even if this is not the whole truth. Structures are moved, removed, replaced and added over the years. New users introduce new land use and management regimes. In Norway, information from land consolidation processes is crucially important in gaining a better understanding of the history, dynamics and development of farms, identifying older traces of human activity and selecting important areas for protection and management. When cadastral maps are transformed, common points are needed during the transformation process and for testing the accuracy of the final transformation. It is often difficult to find enough common points to satisfy statistical requirements. Paper I presents a simple method using buffers based on linear features to evaluate whether or not the accuracy of the transformation results is better than the known accuracy of the source. Papers II, III and IV show how digitised and geographically referenced historical cadastral maps can be used to reconstruct the situation at various dates back to the 19th century, and for some information back to the 16th century. The digitised cadastral map provides a snapshot of the situation at the time of the land consolidation process, and the information is considered to be very exact. Paper IV also demonstrates how a DEM (digital elevation model) can add significantly to an understanding of the information contained in the land consolidation material. The use of digitised cadastral maps reveals that many man-made structures generally perceived as old, because they are constructed using traditional techniques, in fact date from after the land consolidation process. One aim of the new European Landscape Convention is to promote landscape protection, management and planning. It therefore requires identification of landscapes and analysis of their characteristics and the forces and pressures transforming them. Using land consolidation material in a GIS makes it possible to document changes in a landscape and improve understanding of the pressures behind these changes

Security functions for a file repository

When personal machines are incorporated into distributed\ud systems a new mixture of threats is exposed.\ud The security effort in the MobyDick project\ud is aimed at understanding how privacy can be protected\ud in this new environment. Our claim is that\ud a two-step process for authentication and authorisation\ud is required, but also sufficient. The research\ud vehicle is a distributed file repository

Pesto flavoured security

We demonstrate that symmetric-key cryptography can be used for both read and write access control. One-time write access can be granted by handing over an encryption key, and our encryption framework allows the revocation of previously granted rights. The number of keys to be managed explicitly grows linearly with the number of access control policies a user defines, making security manageable. The framework is used in the Pesto distributed storage system. In Pesto, policies can be stored the same as other data and the same mechanism can be used to control access to them. Delegation of authority over policies concerning different tasks can then be performed. Separating the different tasks of the system, allows for different tasks to be assigned to different sets of nodes. Nodes need then only be trusted wrt. the specific task(s) they have been assigned with

Detecting Key-Dependencies

The confidentiality of encrypted data depends on how well the key under which it was encrypted is maintained. If a session key was exchanged encrypted under a long-term key, exposure of the long-term key may reveal the session key and hence the data encrypted with it. The problem of key-dependencies between keys can be mapped onto connectivity of a graph, and the resulting graph can be inspected. This article presents a structured method (an algorithm) with which key-dependencies can be detected and analysed. Several well-known protocols are examined, and it is shown that they are vulnerable to certain attacks exploiting key-dependencies. Protocols which are free from this defect do exist. That is, when a session is terminated it is properly closed

The Origin of White Collar Criminality? – Exploring a Gene x Environment Interaction Hypothesis

The aim for this article is the elementary question: why does white collar criminals become white collar criminals? The answer is a hypothetical syllogistic constructed hypothesis for further empirical exploration in the agenda. The hypothesis takes its point of departure in biosocial criminology, especially the gene-environment interplay, focused on white collar criminality. The hypothesis proposes a link between criminal attitudes and criminal behavior based on how biological (e.g. intergenerational heredity, MAO-A), neurological (e.g. executive functioning, cortical thickness) and social-psychological/sociological factors (e.g. peer-group, rationalizations, social stress, loss of class status) correlates to each other as a system of mechanisms

Ecstasy – a way to religious knowledge: some remarks to Paul Tillich as theologian and philosopher

Much of the research examines ecstasy from the point of view of psychology, history or sociology, but a philosophical reflection on ecstasy is missing. Here, some points in the philosophical and theological thinking of Paul Tillich are presented. He can be looked upon as a religious thinker. In this case he is of interest for religiology mainly as historical material. Then he can be seen as a Christian who in modern time has tried theoretically to reflect upon his own religious faith and the place of ecstasy in that faith. He can also be regarded as a philosopher of religion, who tries to reflect universally and critically upon the phenomena of religion and ecstasy. In that case his main contribution to religiology is to help religiology to reflect upon the question of what possible meaning the concept of "religious ecstasy" can have in a modern scientific context. When looking at Tillich's ideas, it is very important to remember that he strives to be both a philosopher of religion and a Christian theologian, and that these two roles are different, according to Tillich. In any analysis of his thinking it is therefore necessary to discriminate between Tillich's philosophical and his theological statement. For Tillich's treatment of revelation and knowledge of revelation there are three central concepts: mystery, ecstasy and miracle. Every revelation has a subjective and an objective side, and they are both necessary for the revelation. Someone must be seized by the manifestation of the mystery and something must occur through which the mystery of revelation seizes someone, says Tillich. The subjective side is called ecstasy, the objective miracle