This qualitative study explored the experiences of clients using the Life Story Board during personal therapy. LSB is a visual interview tool that consists of a colourful board, and sets of cards. The data from clients (N=7) was collected through follow up interviews after the sessions with the LSB. Two resulting themes, Role Play and Speaking Inside Out, explored the impact of the visual structure as well as how communication patterns were differently valuable compared to traditional therapy. Data collected from therapists (N=6) through two focus groups generated themes related to the therapists' assumptions about disclosure during therapy sessions. The LSB used in therapy sessions became an integral part of the process with active participation of client and therapist. Participant clients created a visual representation of their difficult life events and experiences in an organized way in a process of co-construction with the therapists, to improve their understanding.

The diploma thesis aims on the matter of data hiding (steganography) in audio records. It describes general steganographic principles and aims further on the specifics of data hiding in audio records and also aims on the LSB steganographic technique and suitability of different types of audio records to be used with this technique. The thesis also describes a laboratory exercise focused on steganography in audio records and influence of related aspects on the final audio record which contains secret data. Further, the thesis describes a program that was created especially for the laboratory exercise, from the design, functional as well as implementation-related view. Within the exercise, students will be able to examine how the amount of data to be hidden in the audio record and different ways of data hiding will affect quality of the resulting audio record, and therefore they can become more familiar with the matter of steganography based on the LSB method used in audio records.

Sammanhang. Genom att använda steganografi i bilder är det möjligt att lagra en stor mängd data utan att påverka bilden som information lagras i. En vanlig metod som används inom steganografi är LSB (Least Significant Bit), som ofta anses vara en av de första metoderna som användes inom steganografi. Förutom valet av metod har personen ett val att göra när hen ska välja en bild som ska representera bärare av information. Vad man ofta försöker åstadkomma är att skapa en komplex metod men glömmer bort bilden som ska användas som bärare. I slutändan är det bilden som kommer att användas och testas vid olika mätningar. Mål. Den här studien kommer att undersöka om olika typer av bildformat, BMP, PNG, JPEG och TIFF, har någon påverkan när jämförelse görs av originalbilden och den modifierade, givet att en steganografisk metod används för att lagra informationen. Studien kommer även att undersöka om bildrepresentationen har någon påverkan på mätningarna. Metod. En utbyggd metod av Least Significant Bit metoden kommer att implementeras och användas för att lagra information i olika typer av bilder med olika bildformat. Ett experiment sätts upp för att undersöka formaten med hjälp av mätningsverktygen MSE (Mean Squared Error), PSNR (Peek Signal-to-Noise Ratio) och SSIM (Structural Similarity). Resultat. Vid jämförelse av de grafer och tabeller som togs fram, sågs JPEG ha ett bättre resultat genom att ha ett lägre differentiellt värde mellan varje test. BMP, PNG och TIFF hade minimala skillnader mellan varandra för varje test. För bildrepresentationen visade två bilder högre differentiellt värde än de resterande tre. Sammanfattning. Resultaten från experimentet visade att vilken komprimeringsmetod som ett bildformat använder kommer ha påverkan på mätningsvärdena. Resultaten visade också att bildrepresentation kan ha en påverkan på mätningarna av en bild men mer data behövs för att dra en slutsats. / Context. By using image steganography it is possible to hide a large amount of data without making big differences to the initial picture. One commonly used method is Least Significant Bit (LSB), which often is considered one of the first method implemented and used in Image Steganography. Apart from the method, the user also have a choice when deciding what picture he or she should use as the carrier of information. What people often try to accomplish is to have a very complex method that hides the data in an efficient way, but forgets about the picture used as a carrier. In the end, all measurements will be done on the picture. Objectives. This study will investigate if different image formats, BMP, PNG, JPEG and TIFF, have an impact on the differences when comparing the original picture with the modified, given that data is stored with a steganographic method and is gradually increased. The study will also investigate if what the picture visually represent will have an effect on the measurements. Methods. An extended method of the Least Significant Bit method will be implemented and used to create different pictures with different kinds of image formats. An experiment will investigate these formats by taking measurements with MSE (Mean Squared Error), PSNR (Peek Signal-to-Noise Ratio) and SSIM (Structural Similarity). Results. When comparing different formats one could say that JPEG showed better performance by having a lower differential value between each test, by looking at the graphs and tables. BMP, PNG and TIFF had minimal changes between each other for each test. As for the visual representation of the pictures, two pictures showed a higher differential value after each test than the remaining three. Conclusions. The results from the experiment showed that which compression method a format uses will have an impact on the measurement. The results also showed that the pictures’ visual representation could have some impact on the measurement of a picture but more data is needed to conclude this theory.

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Η ανάπτυξη του διαδικτύου τα τελευταία χρόνια έχει φέρει αλλαγές στο μέγεθος και την ποιότητα του διαθέσιμου περιεχομένου. Οι χρήστες κυριολεκτικά κατακλύζονται από πληροφορία η οποία μπορεί να έχει διάφορες μορφές όπως κείμενο, ήχο, εικόνα, βίντεο. Η μεγάλη εξάπλωση του διαδικτύου, η εύκολη αναζήτηση σε μεγάλο όγκο πληροφορίας καθώς και η παρουσίαση του περιεχομένου με φιλικό τρόπο προς το χρήστη συνέβαλε στην ολοένα αυξανόμενη ανάγκη για προμήθεια εικόνων, βίντεο και μουσικής. Η ψηφιοποίηση του μεγαλύτερου όγκου περιεχομένου που διαχειρίζονται οι χρήστες τόσο στην προσωπική όσο και στην επαγγελματική ζωή τους οδήγησε στην ανάπτυξη νέων τεχνικών στεγανογραφίας για την ανταλλαγή κρυφής πληροφορίας, έννοια η οποία είναι ευρέως γνωστή από την αρχαιότητα. Η παρούσα μεταπτυχιακή εργασία υλοποιεί δύο από τους πιο δημοφιλείς αλγορίθμους στεγανογράφησης τον (Least Significant Bit) και τον LBP (Local Binary Pattern). Το σύστημα που αναπτύχθηκε είναι διαθέσιμο στο διαδίκτυο και μπορεί να χρησιμοποιηθεί από οποιοδήποτε χρήστη επιθυμεί να αποκρύψει πληροφορία (κείμενο ή εικόνα) μέσα σε μια εικόνα. Το σύστημα υλοποιεί όλο τον κύκλο της στεγανογράφησης δίνοντας τη δυνατότητα στο χρήστη όχι μόνο να κάνει απόκρυψη της πληροφορίας που επιθυμεί αλλά και την αντίστροφη διαδικασία δηλαδή την ανάκτηση της κρυμμένης πληροφορίας. Η διαδικασία είναι απλή και απαιτεί από τον αποστολέα (αυτός που κρύβει το μήνυμα) το ανέβασμα της εικόνας στο σύστημα, την εισαγωγή ενός μυστικού κλειδιού το οποίο πρέπει να είναι γνωστό για την ανάκτηση του μηνύματος, και φυσικά το μήνυμα, δηλαδή η προς απόκρυψη πληροφορία. Στη συνέχεια ο παραλήπτης για να ανακτήσει το μήνυμα θα πρέπει να ανεβάσει στο σύστημα τη στεγανογραφημένη εικόνα καθώς και το μυστικό κλειδί που έχει συμφωνήσει με τον αποστολέα. Τέλος, με κάποια σενάρια χρήσης, πραγματοποιούνται μετρήσεις, οι οποίες δείχνουν την απόδοση κάθε αλγορίθμου και γίνονται οι αντίστοιχες συγκρίσεις. Το σύστημα που υλοποιήθηκε στην παρούσα εργασία μπορεί να συμπεριλάβει και άλλες μεθόδους στεγανογράφησης καθώς επίσης και με την επέκταση του αλγορίθμου LBP ώστε να χρησιμοποιεί και τις τρεις χρωματικές συνιστώσες για την απόκρυψη της πληροφορίας.. Επίσης, θα είχε ιδιαίτερο ενδιαφέρον η παροχή της συγκεκριμένης διαδικασίας σαν ηλεκτρονική υπηρεσία (web service) ώστε να είναι εφικτό να χρησιμοποιηθεί ανεξάρτητα και να μπορεί να εισαχθεί ως αυτόνομο κομμάτι λογισμικού σε κάθε πλατφόρμα που υποστηρίζει web services. / The development of the internet in recent years has brought changes in the size and quality of the available content. Users literally flooded with information which may have various forms like text, audio, image, and video. The wide spread of the internet, the ease of search in a large amount of information and the presentation of the available content in a friendly way resulted in the need for more images, videos and music. With the digitization of the available content new steganography techniques were necessary so that users can exchange secret information. In the current thesis two of the most popular steganography algorithms are implemented: the LSB (Least Significant Bit) and the LBP (Local Binary Pattern). The system is publicly available and can be used by any user who wishes to hide information (text or image) within an image. The system provides functionalities so that user can hide information within an image and recover the hidden information. The sender (the person who wishes to hide a message) has to provide the following information in the system: upload the image, provide the secret key needed to retrieve the message, and upload the message. The receiver has to upload the image containing the message and the secret key needed to recover the message. Anumber of usage scenarios are implemented to measure the performance of the algorithms and make comparisons. The implemented system can easily include more steganografy methods and also the extension of the LBP algorithm so that the three color components are used to hide the information. It would be interested to provide the current process as an e-service (web service) that it is feasible to be used independently and can be introduced as a standalone piece of software in any platform that supports web services.

The rapid development of data transfer through internet made it easier to send the data accurate and faster to the destination. There are many transmission media to transfer the data to destination like e-mails; at the same time it is may be easier to modify and misuse the valuable information through hacking. So, in order to transfer the data securely to the destination without any modifications, there are many approaches like cryptography and steganography. This paper deals with the image steganography as well as with the different security issues, general overview of cryptography, steganography and digital watermarking approaches.  The problem of copyright violation of multimedia data has increased due to the enormous growth of computer networks that provides fast and error free transmission of any unauthorized duplicate and possibly manipulated copy of multimedia information. In order to be effective for copyright protection, digital watermark must be robust which are difficult to remove from the object in which they are embedded despite a variety of possible attacks. The message to be send safe and secure, we use watermarking. We use invisible watermarking to embed the message using LSB (Least Significant Bit) steganographic technique. The standard LSB technique embed the message in every pixel, but my contribution for this proposed watermarking, works with the hint for embedding the message only on the image edges alone. If the hacker knows that the system uses LSB technique also, it cannot decrypt correct message. To make my system robust and secure, we added cryptography algorithm as Vigenere square. Whereas the message is transmitted in cipher text and its added advantage to the proposed system. The standard Vigenere square algorithm works with either lower case or upper case. The proposed cryptography algorithm is Vigenere square with extension of numbers also. We can keep the crypto key with combination of characters and numbers. So by using these modifications and updating in this existing algorithm and combination of cryptography and steganography method we develop a secure and strong watermarking method. Performance of this watermarking scheme has been analyzed by evaluating the robustness of the algorithm with PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) and MSE (Mean Square Error) against the quality of the image for large amount of data. While coming to see results of the proposed encryption, higher value of 89dB of PSNR with small value of MSE is 0.0017. Then it seems the proposed watermarking system is secure and robust for hiding secure information in any digital system, because this system collect the properties of both steganography and cryptography sciences.

Pagrindinis šio darbo tikslas susipažinti su steganografijos mokslu bei statistiniais stegoanalizės metodais, kurių dėka slepiama ir atrandama informacija įvairiuose failuose. Šitame magistro darbe išnagrinėti, aprašyti bei įgyvendinti du steganografijos ir du stegoanalizės metodai. Visi metodai realizuoti JAVA programavimo kalba, daliai matematiniams skaičiavimams atlikti panaudota MAPLE programa. Darbo pabaigoje pateikta metodų analizė. / The main goal of the thesis is to review the methods of steganography and steganalysis and to experiment with them. Steganography helps to embed hidden messages in such way that anyone except the intended recipient is unaware of the existence of the message but with the use of statistical steganalysis methods those hidden messages can be detected. This thesis consists of two steganography (LSB and LSBH) and two steganalysis methods (RS and PoV) description and implementation. All methods were implemented with JAVA code. Thesis is concluded with a comparison of these methods' quality.

In this thesis we address fundamental questions about what constitutes and limits an HI disc, probing the distribution of neutral gas in the outer parts of galaxies. We use a subsample of galaxies observed as part of the THINGS survey to investigate the HI extent of spiral galaxy discs. We revisit previous work on the extent of HI discs, showing the limitations set by insufficient linear resolution. We then exploit the high spatial and velocity resolution combined with good sensitivity of THINGS to investigate where the atomic gas discs end and what might shape their edges. We find that the atomic gas surface density across most of the disc is constant at 5 – 10 x 10^20 atoms/cm^2 and drops sharply at large radius. The general shape of the HI distribution is well described by a Sérsic-type function with a slope index, n = 0.14 - 0.22 and characteristic radius ri. We propose a new column density threshold of 5 x 10^19 atoms/cm^2 to define the extent of the gas disc. This limit is well within reach of modern instruments and is at the level where disc gas becomes susceptible to ionisation by an extragalactic radiation field. We argue that at this level the HI column density has decreased to one tenth of that across the inner disc and that by going to yet lower column density the disc is unlikely to grow by more than 10% in radius. The HI column density at which the radial profiles turn over is too high for it to be caused by ionisation by an extragalactic UV field and we postulate that the HI extent is set by how galaxy discs form. Ionisation by extragalactic radiation will only play a rôle at column densities below 5 x 10^19 atoms/cm^2, if any. To study the crucial relation between observed edges and how closely these reproduce the intrinsic distribution of gas through our interferometric measurements, we created an ensemble of models based on four radial density distributions. We conclude that the observed edges in spiral galaxies faithfully reflect their intrinsic shape. Only in very specific cases of highly inclined (>75º) and/or large vertical scaleheight discs do we see strong deviations from the intrinsic surface density of the observed shape of the edges in spiral galaxies. In the case of NGC 3198 we concluded that there is no significant difference in the radial profiles obtained with either constant or exponentially increasing vertical gas distributions, when scaleheights are not higher than 1 kpc at the outskirts of the disc. We infer an upper limit to the scaleheight of NGC 3198 of 2 kpc. To address the distribution of neutral gas at larger scales, we study an HI rich, giant LSB galaxy, NGC 765. We present HI spectral line and radio-continuum VLA data, complemented by optical and Chandra X-ray maps. NGC 765 has the largest HI-to-optical ratio known to date of any spiral galaxy and one of the largest known HI discs in absolute size with a diameter of ~ 240 kpc measured at a surface density of 2 x 10^19 atoms/cm^2. We derive a total HI mass of M_HI = 4.7 x 10^10 M_sun, a dynamical mass of M_dyn = 5.1 x 10^11 M_sun and an HI mass to luminosity ratio of M_HI/L_B = 1.6, making it the nearest and largest “crouching giant”. Optical images reveal evidence of a central bar with tightly wound low-surface brightness spiral arms extending from it. Radio-continuum (L_1.4 GHz = 1.3 x 10^21 W/Hz) and X-ray (L_x ~ 1.7 x 10^40 erg/s) emission is found to coincide with the optical core of the galaxy, compatible with nuclear activity powered by a low-luminosity AGN. We may be dealing with a galaxy that has retained in its current morphology traces of its formation history. In fact, it may still be undergoing some accretion, as evidenced by the presence of HI clumps the size (< 10 kpc) and mass (10^8 -10^9 M_sun) of small (dIrr) galaxies in the outskirts of its HI disc and by the presence of two similarly sized companions. In an exploration of future work, we engaged in a study of the edges in the HI discs of dwarf irregular galaxies, their parameterisation and simulation. A collection of simulations were created based on the dwarf galaxy NGC 2366, similar to what was done for the larger spiral galaxies, showing that line-of-sight column densities are affected for discs with inclinations higher than 60º. Five out of eleven of the dwarfs from THINGS which are less inclined than 60º were analysed and parameterised with our Sérsic-type function. Their discs have average central column densities spread evenly from log_10 NHI = 20.7 atoms/cm^2 to log_10 NHI =21.3 atoms/cm^2. Their radial decline is shallower (slope index peaks around n ~ 0.3) than for spirals. The up-coming Local Irregular That Trace Local Extremes (LITTLE) THINGS project, will likely enlarge the number of local dwarf irregular (dIm) galaxies to which this type of analysis can be applied and for which these preliminary results verified.

This thesis explores the effects of operating parameters on the location and shape of lifted flames in a Low Swirl Burner (LSB). In addition, it details the development and analysis of a CH PLIF imaging system for visualizing flames in lean combustion systems. The LSB is studied at atmospheric pressure using LDV and CH PLIF. CH* chemiluminescence is used for high pressure flame imaging. A four-level model of the fluorescing CH system is developed to predict the signal intensity in hydrocarbon flames. Results from imaging an atmospheric pressure laminar flame are used to validate the behavior of the signal intensity as predicted by the model. The results show that the fluorescence signal is greatly reduced at high pressure due to the decreased number of CH molecules and the increased collisional quenching rate. This restricts the use of this technique to increasingly narrow equivalence ratio ranges at high pressures. The limitation is somewhat alleviated by increasing the preheat temperature of the reactant mixture. The signal levels from high hydrogen-content syngas mixtures doped with methane are found to be high enough to make CH PLIF a feasible diagnostic to study such flames. Finally, the model predicts that signal levels are unlikely to be significantly affected by the presence of strain in the flow field, as long as the flames are not close to extinction. The results from the LSB flame investigation reveal that combustor provides reasonably robust flame stabilization at low and moderate values of combustor pressure and reference velocities. However, at very high velocities and pressures, the balance between the reactant velocity and the turbulent flame speed shifts in favor of the former resulting in the flame moving downstream. The extent of this movement is small, but indicates a tendency towards blow off at higher pressures and velocities that may be encountered in real world gas turbine applications. There is an increased tendency of relatively fuel-rich flames to behave like attached flames at high pressure. These results raise interesting questions about turbulent combustion at high pressure as well as provide usable data to gas turbine combustor designers by highlighting potential problems.

Öffentliche Bibliotheken stehen bei der Erfüllung ihres gesellschaftlichen Informationsund Bildungsauftrages in einer hochtechnisierten Wissensgesellschaft vor ganz neuen Herausforderungen. Die Bibliotheksentwicklungskonzeption (BEK) der Leipziger Städtischen Bibliotheken (LSB) ist Grundlage für Qualität und Quantität der Bibliotheksarbeit und reagiert in ihren regelmäßigen Fortschreibungen auf aktuelle Entwicklungen. Festgeschrieben sind darin auch der Ausbau der Online-Angebote und die Förderung des lebenslangen Lernens.