Reversible watermarking scheme with image-independent embedding capacity

Permanent distortion is one of the main drawbacks of all the irreversible watermarking schemes. Attempts to recover the original signal after the signal passing the authentication process are being made starting just a few years ago. Some common problems, such as salt-and-pepper artefacts owing to intensity wraparound and low embedding capacity, can now be resolved. However, some significant problems remain unsolved. First, the embedding capacity is signal-dependent, i.e., capacity varies significantly depending on the nature of the host signal. The direct impact of this is compromised security for signals with low capacity. Some signals may be even non-embeddable. Secondly, while seriously tackled in irreversible watermarking schemes, the well-known problem of block-wise dependence, which opens a security gap for the vector quantisation attack and transplantation attack, are not addressed by researchers of the reversible schemes. This work proposes a reversible watermarking scheme with near-constant signal-independent embedding capacity and immunity to the vector quantisation attack and transplantation attack

Conversion and conflict in Palestine : the missions of the Church Missionary Society and the protestant bishop Samuel Gobat

On 30 December 1846 Samuel Gobat (1799-1879) arrived in Jerusalem. This was the start of almost thirty-five years in office as bishop of the Protestant bishopric in Jerusalem. Throughout his episcopate Gobat closely cooperated with the missionaries of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), who were on the same wavelength in their missionary activities and objective: the evangelization of Christians from other churches. Gobat and the CMS missionaries had a shared background in the intercontinental Evangelical movement. Evangelicalism strongly influenced their missionary work, expectations and the way they perceived the other churches. Their writings contain many manifestations of their Evangelical principles regarding their work in the mission field and reflect a strong rivalry with the other denominations. Their accounts are interspersed with criticism of the other churches in Palestine. This constant censuring of the other churches and the efforts to make converts among their members resulted in conflicts ranging from small wrangles to terrible riots. The missionaries__ Evangelicalism and the rivalry they felt were inextricably bound up with each other. This book concentrates on both the influence of the Evangelical principles on the missionary efforts of Gobat and the CMS missionaries, and the competition they experienced with the other churches.LEI Universiteit LeidenCollege van Bestuur van de Universiteit Leiden als een Leidse aanvulling op de Aspasiafondsen van NWO.Modernity (Religion and Modernity

Optical Detection of Preneoplastic Lesions of the Central Airways

Current routine diagnosis of premalignant lesions of the central airways is hampered due to a limited sensitivity (white light bronchoscopy) and resolution (computer tomography (CT), positron emission tomography (PET)) of currently used techniques. To improve the detection of these subtle mucosal abnormalities, novel optical imaging bronchoscopic techniques have been developed over the past decade. In this review we highlight the technological developments in the field of endoscopic imaging, and describe their advantages and disadvantages in clinical use

Greater Expectations?

Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are key tools in the construction of lightweight authentication and key exchange protocols. So far, all existing PUF-based authentication protocols follow the same paradigm: A resource-constrained prover, holding a PUF, wants to authenticate to a resource-rich verifier, who has access to a database of pre-measured PUF challenge-response pairs (CRPs). In this paper we consider application scenarios where all previous PUF-based authentication schemes fail to work: The verifier is resource-constrained (and holds a PUF), while the prover is resource-rich (and holds a CRP-database). We construct the first and efficient PUF-based authentication protocol for this setting, which we call converse PUF-based authentication. We provide an extensive security analysis against passive adversaries, show that a minor modification also allows for authenticated key exchange and propose a concrete instantiation using controlled Arbiter PUFs

Erratum to: Circulating tumor DNA as a biomarker for monitoring early treatment responses of patients with advanced lung adenocarcinoma receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors.

The following error appeared in Section 3.5 in Ref. [1]. Instead of ‘Progressive disease-L1 expression data were available for 87 patients’, the text should read ‘PD-L1 expression data were available for 87 patients’. We apologize for this error.</p

Gene Expression-Based Classification of Non-Small Cell Lung Carcinomas and Survival Prediction

Background: Current clinical therapy of non-small cell lung cancer depends on histo-pathological classification. This approach poorly predicts clinical outcome for individual patients. Gene expression profiling holds promise to improve clinical stratification, thus paving the way for individualized therapy. Methodology and Principal Findings: A genome-wide gene expression analysis was performed on a cohort of 91 patients. We used 91 tumor- and 65 adjacent normal lung tissue samples. We defined sets of predictor genes (probe sets) with the expression profiles. The power of predictor genes was evaluated using an independent cohort of 96 non-small cell lung cancer- and 6 normal lung samples. We identified a tumor signature of 5 genes that aggregates the 156 tumor and normal samples into the expected groups. We also identified a histology signature of 75 genes, which classifies the samples in the major histological subtypes of non-small cell lung cancer. Correlation analysis identified 17 genes which showed the best association with post-surgery survival time. This signature was used for stratification of all patients in two risk groups. Kaplan-Meier survival curves show that the two groups display a significant difference in post-surgery survival time (p = 5.6E-6). The performance of the signatures was validated using a patient cohort of similar size (Duke University, n = 96). Compared to previously published prognostic signatures for NSCLC, the 17 gene signature performed well on these two cohorts

The impact of loco-regional recurrences on metastatic progression in early-stage breast cancer: a multistate model

To study whether the effects of prognostic factors associated with the occurrence of distant metastases (DM) at primary diagnosis change after the incidence of loco-regional recurrences (LRR) among women treated for invasive stage I or II breast cancer. The study population consisted of 3,601 women, enrolled in EORTC trials 10801, 10854, or 10902 treated for early-stage breast cancer. Data were analysed in a multivariate, multistate model by using multivariate Cox regression models, including a state-dependent covariate. The presence of a LRR in itself is a significant prognostic risk factor (HR: 3.64; 95%-CI: 2.02-6.5) for the occurrence of DM. Main prognostic risk factors for a DM are young age at diagnosis (</=40: HR: 1.79; 95%-CI: 1.28-2.51), larger tumour size (HR: 1.58; 95%-CI: 1.35-1.84) and node positivity (HR: 2.00; 95%-CI: 1.74-2.30). Adjuvant chemotherapy is protective for a DM (HR: 0.66; 95%-CI: 0.55-0.80). After the occurrence of a LRR the latter protective effect has disappeared (P = 0.009). The presence of LRR in itself is a significant risk factor for DM. For patients who are at risk of developing LRR, effective local control should be the main target of therapy

Comparison of Circulating Cell-Free DNA Extraction Methods for Downstream Analysis in Cancer Patients

Circulating cell-free DNA (ccfDNA) may contain DNA originating from the tumor in plasma of cancer patients (ctDNA) and enables noninvasive cancer diagnosis, treatment predictive testing, and response monitoring. A recent multicenter evaluation of workflows by the CANCER-ID consortium using artificial spiked-in plasma showed significant differences and consequently the importance of carefully selecting ccfDNA extraction methods. Here, the quantity and integrity of extracted ccfDNA from the plasma of cancer patients were assessed. Twenty-one cancer patient-derived cell-free plasma samples were selected to compare the Qiagen CNA, Maxwell RSC ccfDNA plasma, and Zymo manual quick ccfDNA kit. High-volume citrate plasma samples collected by diagnostic leukapheresis from six cancer patients were used to compare the Qiagen CNA (2 mL) and QIAamp MinElute ccfDNA kit (8 mL). This study revealed similar integrity and similar levels of amplified short-sized fragments and tumor-specific mutants comparing the CNA and RSC kits. However, the CNA kit consistently showed the highest yield of ccfDNA and short-sized fragments, while the RSC and ME kits showed higher variant allelic frequencies (VAFs). Our study pinpoints the importance of standardizing preanalytical conditions as well as consensus on defining the input of ccfDNA to accurately detect ctDNA and be able to compare results in a clinical routine practice, within and between clinical studies

TAO: Techniques for algorithm-level obfuscation during high-level synthesis

Intellectual Property (IP) theft costs semiconductor design companies billions of dollars every year. Unauthorized IP copies start from reverse engineering the given chip. Existing techniques to protect against IP theft aim to hide the IC's functionality, but focus on manipulating the HDL descriptions. We propose TAO as a comprehensive solution based on high-level synthesis to raise the abstraction level and apply algorithmic obfuscation automatically. TAO includes several transformations that make the component hard to reverse engineer during chip fabrication, while a key is later inserted to unlock the functionality. Finally, this is a promising approach to obfuscate large-scale designs despite the hardware overhead needed to implement the obfuscation