HIGHLY EFFICIENT IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY USING HAAR DWT FOR HIDING MISCELLANEOUS DATA

Protecting private data exchanged over the Internet, and who can access these data has become a growing privacy and confidentiality concern. Digital image steganography helps to conceal private data within a cover image to obtain a new cover, practically indistinguishable from the original, in such a way that unauthorized individuals cannot detect the presence of the concealed data in the new cover. Capacity size of the cover image and imperceptibility are therefore considered critical requirements to assess performance of steganography algorithms. This paper presents a highly efficient steganography algorithm that is capable of hiding a large size of miscellaneous data (such as text files, binary images, colored images or a combination of these data types) in a single cover image using Haar Wavelet transform. Details of the proposed embedding and extraction algorithms for different data types are presented and discussed. The performance of the proposed steganography method is assessed in terms of the capacity of the cover image, imperceptibility and robustness. The obtained experimental results and observations demonstrated that the developed algorithms are highly efficient in terms of the capacity size of the cover image while maintaining a relatively low mean square error (MSE), high peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and a reasonable robustness against various attacks

Experimental investigation of CFRP-strengthened steel beams with web openings

The introduction of web openings in existing steel floor beams is a common occurrence in practice. Such modifications are often necessary to accommodate additional services driven by a change of building use, thus extending the service life of the structure. Depending on their size and location, openings in the web can present a major challenge to the strength and stiffness of the beam. Strengthening around an opening is often necessary to maintain the required performance of the floor beam, traditionally this is affected via application of additional steel plate, either bolted or welded. This paper focusses on the novel application of carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) to the problem of strengthening web openings, taking advantage of the material's ease of handling, superior strength-to-weight ratio and corrosion resistance. An experimental study involving 4 full scale universal beams was conducted in order to investigate the ability of CFRP to recover the strength and stiffness of beams following the introduction of web openings. All the specimens were tested under 6-point bending in the experiments. For further comparison, the equivalent test series without the addition of strengthening was modelled numerically via finite element analysis.. The effectiveness of the strengthening technique was demonstrated with increases in the load carrying capacity over the un-altered beam of between 5 and 20% being achieved

Forward Osmosis: Potential use in Desalination and Water Reuse

There has been a recurring interest in using Forward Osmosis (FO) process in water treatment and desalination. Despite the promising results from pilot and bench scale experiments the technology is still not commercialized yet. This is due to the complicated nature of the process which usually involves multiple stages of treatment in addition to the FO membrane process. Unfortunately, most of the recent studies were focused on studying the FO process alone and didn’t provide enough data about the actual cost of the process as whole which includes the osmotic agent regeneration stage/s. This issue resulted in some uncertainties about the total cost of the water treatment by the process. Furthermore, more data are required to evaluate the impact of the osmotic agent losses on the overall cost and efficiency. In case if the draw solution is regenerated by membrane treatment, a suitable membrane should be selected to ensure an optimal salt rejection. For power generation by Pressure Retarded Osmosis (PRO) process, there was an evident progress. However, the process is site specific; i.e. it is dependent of the availability of the draw and donor solution. This suggested that the process is applicable to certain areas but can’t be generalized

In Vivo Toxicity Study of Nerium oleander's Leaves and Flowers Aqueous Extracts in Mice (Cytogenetic, Biochemical and Hematological Study)

The present research was carried out to assess the toxic effect of oral administration of the aqueous extract of Nerium oleander leaves and flowers daily at doses of (25) mg/kg body weight for four weeks in mice. The toxicity of this plant parts was determined after two and four weeks by measuring the parameters of cytogenetic (mitotic index, micronucleus %), and serum levels of the hematological (RBC, Hb, WBC) and biochemical (GOT, GPT, ALT, AST) indexes in comparison with that of the control (normal saline), also clinical signs were determined. The results showed a significant decrease in mitotic index while an obvious raise was seen in micronucleus percentage in comparison with that of the control after the two periods of administration. More over significant marked changes was seen in the level of all the hematological and biochemical parameters when compared with the control. In addition to that, diarrhea with some organ lesions were also observed

Modelling and optimization of modular system for power generation from a salinity gradient

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd Pressure retarded osmosis has been proposed for power generation from a salinity gradient resource. The process has been promoted as a promising technology for power generation from renewable resources, but most of the experimental work has been done on a laboratory size units. To date, pressure retarded osmosis optimization and operation is based on parametric studies performed on laboratory scale units, which leaves a gap in our understanding of the process behaviour in a full-scale modular system. A computer model has been developed to predict the process performance. Process modelling was performed on a full-scale membrane module and impact of key operating parameters such as hydraulic feed pressure and feed and draw solution rates were evaluated. Results showed that the optimum fraction of feed/draw solution in a mixture is less than what has been earlier proposed ratio of 50% and it is entirely dependent on the salinity gradient resource concentration. Furthermore, the optimized pressure retarded osmosis process requires a hydraulic pressure less than that in the normal (unoptimized) process. The results here demonstrate that the energy output from the optimized pressure regarded osmosis process is up to 54% higher than that in the normal (unoptimized) process

Enhanced Performance Dual Stage Pressure Retarded Osmosis

© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. A dual stage PRO process has been proposed for power generation from a salinity gradient across a semi-permeable membrane. Both closed-loop and open-loop dual stage PRO system were evaluated using 2 M NaCl and Dead Sea as draw solutions, whereas the feed solution was either fresh water or seawater. The impact of feed salinity gradient resource and feed pressure on the net power generation and water flux were evaluated. DSPRO can be combined with desalination plant using seawater brine as the draw solution either in closed-loop or open-loop. This hybridization has multiple applications such as reducing the impact of discharging concentrated brine to sea, energy storage, and increase the recovery rate of the desalination. Power generation by DSPRO will reduce the energy consumption by the desalination processes. Waste heat from power plants can be used for the regeneration of the draw solution in the closed-loop DSPRO. Process modelling has been performed and shown promising results for DSPRO application for power generation

Novel Thermal Desalination Brine Reject-Sewage Effluent Salinity Gradient for Power Generation and Dilution of Brine Reject

Salinity gradient resource presents an essential role for power generated in the process of pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO). Researchers proposed several designs for coupling the PRO process with the desalination plants, particularly reverse osmosis technology for low-cost desalination but there is no study available yet on the utilization of the concentrated brine reject from a thermal desalination plant. This study evaluates the feasibility of power generation in the PRO process using thermal plant brine reject-tertiary sewage effluent (TSE) salinity gradient resource. Power generation in the PRO process was determined for several commercially available FO membranes. Water flux in Oasys Forward Osmosis membrane was more than 31 L/m2h while the average water flux in the Oasys module was 17 L/m2h. The specific power generation was higher in the thin film composite (TFC) membranes compared to the cellulose triacetate (CTA) membranes. The specific power generation for the Oasys membrane was 0.194 kWh/m3, which is 41% of the maximum Gibbs energy of the brine reject-TSE salinity gradient. However, the Hydration Technology Innovation CTA membrane extracted only 0.133 kWh/m3 or 28% of Gibbs free energy of mixing for brine reject-TSE salinity gradient. The study reveals the potential of the brine reject-TSE salinity gradient resource for power generation and the dilution of brine reject

Process simulation of ion exchange desalination treatment of coal seam gas associated water

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd The aim of this investigation was to develop an ion exchange process for the remediation of coal seam gas (CSG) associated water to make it suitable for beneficial reuse. The hypothesis was that computational modelling could accelerate the selection of appropriate ion exchange desalination strategies. Hence, we applied AqMB water process engineering software to predict which combination of weak acid cation (WAC), strong acid cation (SAC), weak base anion (WBA) and strong base anion (SBA) resins were most appropriate. Simulation results revealed that both SAC/WBA and SAC/SBA resin combinations were unable to meet water beneficial reuse standards for conductivity (< 950 μS/cm) due to the presence of bicarbonate species (4973 and 1918 μS/cm, respectively). Thus, a degasser unit was necessary to remove the large concentrations (ca. 1328 mg/L) of dissolved carbon dioxide formed due to decomposition of bicarbonate/carbonate species under acidic conditions in the cation resin stages. pH adjustment of effluent from the preferred SBA resin with acid not only did not meet solution conductivity guidelines but also raised the concentration of chloride or sulphate ions to levels, which may be detrimental for crop growth. Addition of a WAC resin allowed production of high quality water (either SAC/SBA/WAC or WAC/SAC/SBA combinations). To comply with sodium adsorption ratio requirements for irrigating soil it was suggested to apply micronized gypsum to the treated water. Economic evaluation suggested the treated water cost was A$1003 (WAC/SAC/SBA) to A$1276 (SAC/SBA/WAC) per ML treated which was comparable to estimated costs for a reverse osmosis desalination system

Enhancing cloud computing security by paillier homomorphic encryption

In recent years, the trend has increased for the use of cloud computing, which provides broad capabilities with the sharing of resources, and thus it is possible to store and process data in the cloud remotely, but this (cloud) is untrusted because some parties can connect to the network such as the internet and read or change data because it is not protected, therefore, protecting data security and privacy is one of the challenges that must be addressed when using cloud computing. Encryption is interested in the field of security, confidentiality and integrity of information that sent by a secure connection between individuals or institutions regardless of the method used to prepare this connection. But using the traditional encryption methods to encrypt the data before sending it will force the data provider to send his private key to the server to decrypt the data to perform computations on it. In this paper we present a proposal to secure banking data transmission through the cloud by using partially homomorphic encryption algorithms such as (paillier, RSA algorithm) that allow performing mathematical operations on encrypted data without needing to decryption. A proxy server will also use for performing re-encryption process to enhance security