Teacher Guide for The Government of Kansas

The sixth edition of The Government of Kansas offers teachers and students a current review of the types and levels of state government and services available to the state's residents, and a look at the state's history and future

System Steganalysis: Implementation Vulnerabilities and Side-Channel Attacks Against Digital Steganography Systems

Steganography is the process of hiding information in plain sight, it is a technology that can be used to hide data and facilitate secret communications. Steganography is commonly seen in the digital domain where the pervasive nature of media content (image, audio, video) provides an ideal avenue for hiding secret information. In recent years, video steganography has shown to be a highly suitable alternative to image and audio steganography due to its potential advantages (capacity, flexibility, popularity). An increased interest towards research in video steganography has led to the development of video stego-systems that are now available to the public. Many of these stego-systems have not yet been subjected to analysis or evaluation, and their capabilities for performing secure, practical, and effective video steganography are unknown. This thesis presents a comprehensive analysis of the state-of-the-art in practical video steganography. Video-based stego-systems are identified and examined using steganalytic techniques (system steganalysis) to determine the security practices of relevant stego-systems. The research in this thesis is conducted through a series of case studies that aim to provide novel insights in the field of steganalysis and its capabilities towards practical video steganography. The results of this work demonstrate the impact of system attacks over the practical state-of-the-art in video steganography. Through this research, it is evident that video-based stego-systems are highly vulnerable and fail to follow many of the well-understood security practices in the field. Consequently, it is possible to confidently detect each stego-system with a high rate of accuracy. As a result of this research, it is clear that current work in practical video steganography demonstrates a failure to address key principles and best practices in the field. Continued efforts to address this will provide safe and secure steganographic technologies

Green renewal: incorporating environmental factors in equipment replacement decisions under technological change.

a b s t r a c t Equipment replacement is a fact of life in every industrial setting, and this paper seeks to answer the question: How can firms and policy makers effectively balance environmental and economic concerns with respect to replacement decisions? A replacement model which includes both economic and environmental factors is presented. One must decide whether to keep the existing technology, upgrade to a newer technology which produces a smaller environmental burden, or wait for an even newer, cleaner technology which may be introduced soon. More than 25 000 test problems are solved, examining different objectives and covering a wide range of applications. Including environmental costs does not lead to a consistent increase in the adoption of cleaner technologies; however, including incentives to adopt newer technologies does. When one accounts for the environmental impact of producing new equipment and disposing of old equipment, earlier adoption of new technologies actually increases the total environmental burden in some cases

Quantifying Carbon Accumulation and Loss in Afforested Peatlands

During the 20th Century, new tree planting techniques combined with tax incentives encouraged the establishment of forest plantations across large areas of peatland in the UK. As many of the stands reach harvesting age the question arises whether the bogs should be restored or restocked with new trees. Bad a’Cheo Forest (Caithness, Scotland), which was afforested in 1968, is once such plantation. Ground elevation and peat depth surveys were compared against re-interpolated data from before afforestation, and across the full forestry rotation. Significant subsidence has taken place since drainage, with an average reduction of 53 cm (13 %) in peat depth under forest stands, suggesting a possible loss of carbon from the peat. To confirm this Icelandic cryptotephra, most notably Hekla 4 (2310 ± 20 BCE), were used to define isochrones in peat cores, allowing for comparison of carbon stocks. ITRAX core scanning was used on 27 cores from Bad a’Cheo and on eight additional cores from four other sites around the Flow Country to rapidly identify the presence of elements indicative of tephra deposits. Hekla 4 was found significantly closer to the surface in afforested bogs (average 134.4 ± 16.3 cm) than in undrained bogs (244.0 ± 44.6 cm). Forestry had caused an average loss of stored carbon from peat of 66.8 t C ha-1 at Bad a’Cheo, and an average loss of 103 t C ha-1 across all sites. At Bad a’Cheo carbon uptake in primarily aboveground forest biomass, partially compensated for this, producing a net loss of 19.49 t C ha-1 of afforested peatland over 50 years. High variation in the data produced uncertainty in the estimates, with possible outcomes ranging from a total net gain of carbon across peat and forestry of 266.72 t C ha-1 to a significant net loss of 305.69 t C ha-1