THE SQUARE AS SYMBOLIC SPACE IN A.S. PUSHKIN’s WRITING

Repetition and variation of some baseline motives and images are a hallmark of A. Pushkin’s poetic system. A comprehensive system of A. Pushkin’s writing arises due to complex and contradictory relationships of specific elements. A principle of ‘resourceful contradiction’ forms the basis for the system. The square is one of the key space images which not only unites a wide range of works (from ‘Boris Godunov’ tragedy to ‘The Captain’s Daughter’ novel) but forms a recurrent plot as well. The author of the paper demonstrates the functioning of this image and elicits its semantics by means of numerous texts. The square space in Pushkin’s works is both a death site and a place of salvation; both a place of historic resolutions and a place of historic dead end. Special attention is paid to the allusive principle which is constitutive in Pushkin’s fiction system. The image of the square is inseparable from the events of December, 14, 1825 and July, 25, 1826 in a number of works (‘The Bronze Horseman’, ‘The Captain’s Daughter’ and others).

An Efficient Visually Meaningful Quantum Walks-Based Encryption Scheme for Secure Data Transmission on IoT and Smart Applications

Smart systems and technologies have become integral parts of modern society. Their ubiquity makes it paramount to prioritise securing the privacy of data transferred between smart devices. Visual encryption is a technique employed to obscure images by rendering them meaningless to evade attention during transmission. However, the astounding computing power ascribed to quantum technology implies that even the best visually encrypted systems can be effortlessly violated. Consequently, the physical realisation quantum hardware portends great danger for visually encrypted date on smart systems. To circumvent this, our study proposes the integration of quantum walks (QWs) as a cryptographic mechanism to forestall violation of the integrity of images on smart systems. Specifically, we use QW first to substitute the original image and to subsequently permutate and embed it onto the reference image. Based on this structure, our proposed quantum walks visually meaningful cryptosystem facilities confidential transmission of visual information. Simulation-based experiments validate the performance of the proposed system in terms of visual quality, efficiency, robustness, and key space sensitivity, and by that, its potential to safeguard smart systems now and as we transition to the quantum era.

Chaotic system constructed by product trigonometric function and polynomial and applied to color image encryption

In the applied research of nonlinear system, the low degree of chaos in the dynamical system leads to the limitation of using the chaos method to solve some practical problems. In this paper, we use the product trigonometric function and ternary polynomial to build a dynamical system, which has strong chaotic characteristics. The dynamical system is constructed by two product trigonometric functions and a ternary linear equation, and its chaotic properties are verified by bifurcation diagrams, Lyapunov exponents, fractal dimensions, etc. The system has many parameters and large parameter intervals and is not prone to cycles. The conditions for the non-divergence of this system are given by mathematical derivation, and it is found that the linear part of the system can be replaced by an arbitrary ternary polynomial system and still not diverge, and the bifurcation diagram is drawn to verify it. Finally, the chaotic sequence is distributed more uniformly in the value domain space by adding the modulo operation. Then, the bit matrix of multiple images is directly permuted by the above system, and the experiment confirms that the histogram, information entropy, and pixel correlation of its encrypted images are satisfactory, as well as a very large key space.

Empowering Girls Through Sport: A Gender Transformative Approach to Life Skills?

From the Pacific Islands to Sub-Saharan Africa, development organizations have positioned sport as an ideal tool for building important life skills that can be transferred from the playing field to day-to-day realities. Sport has also been positioned as a key space for girls’ empowerment, especially in contexts where gender norms limit girls’ mobility and/or their opportunities to engage in activities stereotyped as being for boys. But an approach that solely focuses on empowering girls through sport by depositing in her useful life skills ignores the structural conditions that have disempowered her in the first place. This chapter examines the gender transformative potential of sport-based life skills programs by exploring the skills that are being targeted, especially for girls’ empowerment, by the sport for development (SFD) community. The chapter then examines the implications for our understanding of life skills approaches to gender transformative social change, particularly as it pertains to addressing the conditions that have held girls back.

Networks and Stories. Analyzing the Transmission of the Feminist Intangible Cultural Heritage on Twitter

Internet social media is a key space in which the memorial resources of social movements, including the stories and knowledge of previous generations, are organised, disseminated, and reinterpreted. This is especially important for movements such as feminism, which places great emphasis on the transmission of an intangible cultural legacy between its different generations or waves, which are conformed through these cultural transmissions. In this sense, several authors have highlighted the importance of social media and hashtivism in shaping the fourth wave of feminism that has been taking place in recent years (e.g., #metoo). The aim of this article is to present to the scientific community a hybrid methodological proposal for the network and content analysis of audiences and their interactions on Twitter: we will do so by describing and evaluating the results of different research we have carried out in the field of feminist hashtivism. Structural analysis methods such as social network analysis have demonstrated their capacity to be applied to the analysis of social media interactions as a mixed methodology, that is, both quantitative and qualitative. This article shows the potential of a specific methodological process that combines inductive and inferential reasoning with hypothetico-deductive approaches. By applying the methodology developed in the case studies included in the article, it is shown that these two modes of reasoning work best when they are used together.

A Novel Random Error Approximate Adder-Based Lightweight Medical Image Encryption Scheme for Secure Remote Monitoring of Health Data

In the present global scenario, social distancing is an inevitable one. The need for social distancing and advancements of technology to facilitate the patients and doctors around the world mandated the telemedicine and remote monitoring of patience details as the pivotal way to diagnose the disease. In this, it is essential to transmit the patient’s information such as X-ray and scan images of them to the doctor in the remote location. Preventing the medical data from the technological adversaries is the need of the hour. Infinitesimal attacks in medical images may cost human lives. This work proposes a lightweight, secure medical image encryption scheme for the remote monitoring of health data. The proposed encryption scheme uses computationally less complex weighted shift approximate adder (WSAA)–based encryption logic. The scheme uses a 256-bit key for the encryption process that strengthens the encryption and robust against various attacks. The proposed encryption scheme deploys the WSAA for diffusing the pixel values. A unique way of key distribution for pixel-wise encryption within the image is proposed that avoids the need for separate logic for the pixel-wise confusion. The proposed Encryption scheme is evaluated for its entropy and horizontal, vertical, diagonal correlation, histogram, key space, and sensitivity. Experimental results affirm that the proposed scheme significantly good with less computational complexity. The peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) value of the decrypted image is infinity, and this matches the ideal requirement of the medical encryption scheme.

Generalized multi-channel scheme for secure image encryption

The ability of metamaterials to manipulate optical waves in both the spatial and spectral domains has provided new opportunities for image encoding. Combined with the recent advances in hyperspectral imaging, this suggests exciting new possibilities for the development of secure communication systems. While traditional image encryption approaches perform a 1-to-1 transformation on a plain image to form a cipher image, we propose a 1-to-n transformation scheme. Plain image data is dispersed across n seemingly random cipher images, each transmitted on a separate spectral channel. We show that the size of our key space increases as a double exponential with the number of channels used, ensuring security against both brute-force attacks and more sophisticated attacks based on statistical sampling. Moreover, our multichannel scheme can be cascaded with a traditional 1-to-1 transformation scheme, effectively squaring the size of the key space. Our results suggest exciting new possibilities for secure transmission in multi-wavelength imaging channels.

Improvement of nuclear facilities DNP3 protocol data transmission security using super encryption BRC4 in SCADA systems

Background Data transmissions using the DNP3 protocol over the internet in SCADA systems are vulnerable to interruption, interception, fabrication, and modification through man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks. This research aims to improve the security of DNP3 data transmissions and protect them from MITM attacks. Methods This research describes a proposed new method of improving DNP3 security by introducing BRC4 encryption. This combines Beaufort encryption, in which plain text is encrypted by applying a poly-alphabetic substitution code based on the Beaufort table by subtracting keys in plain text, and RC4 encryption, a stream cipher with a variable-length key algorithm. This research contributes to improving the security of data transmission and accelerating key generation. Results Tests are carried out by key space analysis, correlation coefficient analysis, information entropy analysis, visual analysis, and time complexity analysis.The results show that to secure encryption processes from brute force attacks, a key of at least 16 characters is necessary. IL data correlation values were IL1 = −0.010, IL2 = 0.006, and IL3 = 0.001, respectively, indicating that the proposed method (BRC4) is better than the Beaufort or RC4 methods in isolation. Meanwhile, the information entropy values from IL data are IL1 = 7.84, IL2 = 7.98, and IL3 = 7.99, respectively, likewise indicating that the proposed method is better than the Beaufort or RC4 methods in isolation. Both results also show that the proposed method is secure from MITM attacks. Visual analysis, using a histogram, shows that ciphertext is more significantly distributed than plaintext, and thus secure from MITM attacks. The time complexity analysis results show that the proposed method algorithm is categorized as linear complexity.

Quantifying the Spatial Evolution of Bai People’s Courtyard Houses

Bai People’s courtyard houses in the rural parts of China’s Dali area are a particular type of Chinese courtyard house, adapted to local culture and conditions. These dwellings were constructed in vernacular tradition up until the 1980s but underwent significant changes in the following decades. The goal of this study is to examine the evolution of the spatial structure using quantitative data, and relate it to changes in the social culture of the inhabitants. Three vernacular and three contemporary cases in the village Gushengcun are compared. To enhance understanding and examine the idea of evolutionary change in architecture, the concept of a Spatial DNA is applied, building on a metaphor of the biological DNA. It uses Space Syntax techniques and links numerical values of integration and space type to functional information. Findings show that the integration of the courtyard and bedrooms is decreasing, and space types indicate a change from rings to sequences. In contrast, the kitchen space integration is increasing. These results reveal parallels to changes in the means of subsistence, social structure of the family and conceptions of privacy: Decreasing spatial centrality of the courtyard - once a key space in the processing of agricultural produce - coincides with a shift from work in the primary sector to secondary and tertiary industries. Modern conceptions of privacy and individualism replacing the family as a unit of privacy are related to the segregation of bedrooms. The change in the spatial location of the kitchen is interpreted in the context of abolished gender separation and the changing role of women. This study hence provides measurable evidence to the links between space and culture in an intertemporal comparison of dwelling types.