Image and Text Steganography Using Convolutional Neural Network

Steganography has been used since centuries for concealment of messages in a cover media where messages were physically hidden. The goal in our project is to hide digital messages using modern steganography techniques. An N * N RGB pixel secret message (either text or image) is to be transmitted in another N * N RGB container image with minimum changes in its contents. The cover image also called the carrier can be publicly visible. In this project, along with LSB encoding, deep learning modules using the Adam algorithm are used to train the model that comprises a hiding network and a reveal network. The encoder neural network determines where and how to place the message, dispersing it throughout the bits of cover image. The decoder network on the receiving side, which is simultaneously trained with the encoder, reveals the secret image. The main aspect of this work is it produces minimal distortion to the secret message. Thus, preserving its integrity. Also, other steganography softwares cannot be used to reveal the message since the model is trained using a deep learning algorithm which complicates its steganalysis. The network is only trained once, irrespective of the different container images and secret messages given as inputs. Thus, this work has wide and secure applications in many fields.

Morphological principles of neuronal mitochondria

In the highly dynamic metabolic landscape of a neuron, mitochondrial membrane architectures can provide critical insight into the unique energy balance of the cell. Current theoretical calculations of functional outputs like ATP and heat often represent mitochondria as idealized geometries and therefore can miscalculate the metabolic fluxes. To analyze mitochondrial morphology in neurons of mouse cerebellum neuropil, 3D tracings of complete synaptic and axonal mitochondria were constructed using a database of serial TEM tomography images and converted to watertight meshes with minimal distortion of the original microscopy volumes with a granularity of 1.6 nanometer isotropic voxels. The resulting in silico representations were subsequently quantified by differential geometry methods in terms of the mean and Gaussian curvatures, surface areas, volumes, and membrane motifs, all of which can alter the metabolic output of the organelle. Finally, we identify structural motifs that are present across this population of mitochondria; observations which may contribute to future modeling studies of mitochondrial physiology and metabolism in neurons.

Raincloud plots: a multi-platform tool for robust data visualization

Across scientific disciplines, there is a rapidly growing recognition of the need for more statistically robust, transparent approaches to data visualization. Complementary to this, many scientists have called for plotting tools that accurately and transparently convey key aspects of statistical effects and raw data with minimal distortion. Previously common approaches, such as plotting conditional mean or median barplots together with error-bars have been criticized for distorting effect size, hiding underlying patterns in the raw data, and obscuring the assumptions upon which the most commonly used statistical tests are based. Here we describe a data visualization approach which overcomes these issues, providing maximal statistical information while preserving the desired ‘inference at a glance’ nature of barplots and other similar visualization devices. These “raincloud plots” can visualize raw data, probability density, and key summary statistics such as median, mean, and relevant confidence intervals in an appealing and flexible format with minimal redundancy. In this tutorial paper, we provide basic demonstrations of the strength of raincloud plots and similar approaches, outline potential modifications for their optimal use, and provide open-source code for their streamlined implementation in R, Python and Matlab (https://github.com/RainCloudPlots/RainCloudPlots). Readers can investigate the R and Python tutorials interactively in the browser using Binder by Project Jupyter.

The mapping of raster images on plane isometric grid

Drawing images on curvilinear shapes with the least distortion takes place in many design tasks. In most ways, build a grid, each elementary cell of which is painted a given color. In this problem it is necessary to solve two main problems: the first - to carry out the formation of a given curvilinear grid with elementary cells in the form of squares, which are called isometric (or isothermal); the second is to paint each cell of the curved area with the corresponding pixel color of the original raster The aim of the study is to reveal the way of displaying raster images on flat curvilinear areas represented by isometric grids, and with the help of a computer model in the Maple symbolic algebra to analyze the influence of isometric grid parameters on the position and size of displayed raster images. The mapping of images onto curvilinear forms with minimal distortion takes place in many design tasks. A method of conformal mapping of arbitrary raster images onto plane curvilinear region is proposed, which are represented by isometric (also called isothermal) grids. The essence of the proposed method is as follows. Any raster image, for example, digital photography in jpg format, is characterized by the dimensions N×M - the number of pixels in width and height. In addition, each pixel has a color and brightness, which are arranged in rows and columns. To apply a raster image to a curvilinear region, it is also necessary to divide the curvilinear domain into N×M, the number of elementary squares, each of which is assigned the corresponding color from the raster. The influence and arguments of the various isometric grids constructed on the sizes and positions of an arbitrary raster image are investigated in the article. It is shown how the isometric grid, depending on and localizes the raster image - it can be located both within the limits of the isometric grid coordinate lines and beyond it, can also be oriented in different directions with respect to the and coordinate lines. It is shown the possibility of scaling a raster image that can be performed relative to the relative dimensions of an isometric grid. Since there is a correspondence between the pixel matrix of the original raster image and the - cells of the isometric grid, the rotation of the image will affect its position in the isometric grid. For example, rotating the original bitmap image at an angle 90 degrees will change its location on a plane isometric grids – from along the coordinate lines to along the coordinate lines. Note that, the curvilinear cells of the constructed isometric grids differ somewhat from the shape of the squares because the values and of the corresponding arguments and of their coordinate lines were taken somewhat too large. Otherwise, cells would degenerate into points and the corresponding grid image would not be so clear.

ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ ВПЛИВУ НЕРІВНОМІРНОСТІ ЦЕМЕНТОВАНОГО ШАРУ НА НЕСУЧУ ЗДАТНІСТЬ БАЗОВИХ ТА ОПОРНО-КОРПУСНИХ ДЕТАЛЕЙ УНІВЕРСАЛЬНО-ЗБІРНИХ ПРИСТОСУВАНЬ

The article contains analysis of the uneven cemented layer effect upon the bearing capacity of the base and supporting parts of versatile prefabricated welded work tools. The issue was studied as there is a lack of data on contact deformations, which are necessary for further calculation of assembly errors due to thermal deformations. Fluctuations of the cemented layer depth along the base part surface negatively affect the contact of the tool base surfaces. This issue is especially acute when expanding the scope of application of reconfigurable reusable technological equipment, which would be cost-effective in terms of serial multi-item production of welded structures.The relation between microhardness and the value of the polished cemented layer was determined during testing of 12 ХН3А steel samples, cemented to a depth of 2.4 mm and hardened to a hardness of HRC 60-62. Obtained relation between the microhardness and polished layer thickness has shown that with increasing polished layer, the microhardness decreases. This leads to a decrease in the critical load, under which recoverable deformations of irregularities transit into plastic deformations. The ratio of the actual planes of contact, where the recoverable deformation of microroughnesses appoears when approaching and penetration of harder irregularities into soft ones occurs, will be proportional to the ratio of the nominal planes of the cemented and raw layers.As a result of processing the test data, the relation between critical pressure and cemented layer thickness has been got. Microroughnesses at lower loads will be deformed plastically, reducing the bearing capacity of base surfaces, which is unacceptable for parts of tools and affects their service life. It follows from the above that the unevenness of the cemented layer depth of the front surfaces of the base and supporting parts is a negative phenomenon that impairs their performance. It is necessary to use a process that ensures minimal distortion of the part during heat treatment and a stable depth of the cemented layer.

Generalized method for forming plane isotropic curves

The process of modeling the temperature distribution on surfaces, applying an image to curved areas with minimal distortion requires the formation of isometric grids on the plane and on the surface. One of the common ways to form planar isometric networks is to use the functions of a complex variable and planar isotropic curves, followed by separation of the real and imaginary parts. The development of computer models for the interactive search and analysis of isometric networks according to various initial geometric conditions provides a generalized method for their formation with the possibility of varying their shape and position. It is proposed to use an isotropic vector for the formation of flat isotropic curves, which ensured a single sequence of analytical calculations according to the following initial conditions: 1) selection of an arbitrary function of a real argument; 2) a given parametric equation of a plane curve; 3) a given polar equation of a plane curve. Since the analytical calculations of the derivation of the parametric equation of a plane isotropic curve and the corresponding isometric grid are rather laborious, their execution is carried out in the environment of the Maple symbolic algebra. To this end, the corresponding software has been created, which interactively allows you to select the function of a real argument, a parametric or polar equation of a plane guide curve. All subsequent stages of analytical transformations to form an isotropic curve and the corresponding isometric grid are carried out automatically. An interactive model for the formation and analysis of plane isotropic curves with various initial conditions has been created, which has shown its effectiveness, which is confirmed by the given examples of plane isometric grids for specific functions of the real parameter, plane curves in the parametric and polar form of their job.

SURFACE ACOUSTIC WAVE FILTERS: RUSSIAN CONTRIBUTION TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS

Представлена ретроспектива развития технологии поверхностных акустических волн (ПАВ) - одной из самых инновационных в мире. Неоспоримый вклад в динамику развития техники ПАВ внесли российские ученые, результаты теоретических исследований которых, внедренные в промышленное производство, позволили реализовать широкий спектр устройств, обеспечивающих прием, обработку и передачу информации с минимальными искажениями в таких областях, как телевидение, сотовая связь, навигация, радиочастотная идентификация и, конечно, техника специального назначения. Приведены важнейшие результаты исследований по каждому направлению. The article shows a retrospective of the development of surface acoustic wave (SAW) technology, which remains one of the most innovative technologies in the world. The undeniable contribution to the dynamics of SAW technology has been made by Russian scientists, whose theoretical studies, introduced into industrial production, have made it possible to implement a wide range of devices providing reception, processing, and transmission of information with minimal distortion in such areas as television, cellular communications, navigation, radio frequency identification, and of course special-purpose techniques. The most important results of research in each direction are presented.

Data Hiding in Symmetric Circular String Art

Creative digital artwork is usually the outcome of a long period of intellectual creation and labor of an artist. Similarly, computer-created digital artwork is an outcome of a large amount of machine time and computational resources. However, such intellectual properties can be easily copied by illegal users. Copyright protection of digital art is increasingly more important than before. Recently, using a computational approach to generate string art tends to be popular and attractive. To protect the illegal usage of the digital form of string art, we propose a data hiding algorithm specifically designed for string art. A digital string art image consists of a sequence of string lines, each specified by two nails fixed at the two ends of that line. The encrypted secret data (the watermark) is embedded into the list of line segments by odd–even modulation, where a bit ‘1’ is embedded by forcing the next node to be an odd node, and a bit ‘0’ is embedded by forcing the next node to be an even node. To minimize the impact of data embedding on the quality of the original string art image, a local optimization algorithm is developed to select the nodes that produce minimal distortion. To quantify the embedding distortion, we introduce a smoothing filter model for the human vision system (HVS) specifically tailored to string art image. Experimental results show that using the proposed algorithm, the distortion between the original string art image and the watermarked string art image is unnoticeable. The modified string art image is statistically indistinguishable from the original string art, and hence is secure under steganalysis. To our best knowledge, this is the first work towards data hiding and copyright protection of digital string art.