This work contains overview of methods used in the area of Music Information Retrieval, mainly for purposes of searching of musical recordings. Several existing services in the areas of music identification and searching are presented and their methods for unique song identification are described. This work also focuses on possible modifications of these algorithms for searching of cover versions of songs and for the possibility of searching based on voice created examples.

Algorithms for fingerprints recognition are already known for long time and there is also an effort for their best optimization. This master's thesis is dealing with an opposite approach, where the fingerprints are not being recognized, but are generated on the minutiae position basis. Such algorithm is then free of the minutiae detection from image and enhancements of fingerprints. Results of this work are the synthetic images generated according to few given parameters, especially minutiae.

There are several frauds against biometric systems (BSs) and several techniques exist to secure BSs against these frauds. One of the techniques is liveness detection. To fool fingerprint sensors, latent fingerprints, dummy fingers and wafer-thin layer attached to the finger are being used. Liveness detection is being used also when scanning fingerprints. Several different characteristics of the live finger can be used to detect liveness, for example sweat, conductivity etc. In this thesis, new approach is examined. It is based on the expandability of the finger as an effect of heartbeats/pulsation. As the skin is expanding, also the distances between papillary lines are expanding. Whole finger expands approximately in range of 4,5 ľm , the distance between two neighbor papillary lines in 0,454 ľm . This value collides with wavelength of blue and green light. The result from this work is following. The resolution of the capturing device is not high enough to capture the expandability on distance between two neighbor papillary lines. Also, because of collision with wavelength, the diffraction effect is presented and the result images are influenced by this error.

This document deals with presentation of nowadays software and hardware methods used for fingerprint recognition with focus on liveness testing and thereafter it deals with description of my solution. In order to describe results obtained from study of technical literature, we discuss important terminology of biometric systems at first and further main principles of fingerprint sensors used in practice are shown. From overviewed methods of liveness detection we underline one method based on  perspiration (researched by BioSAL laboratory) and one spectroscopic method researched by Lumidigm Corporation. The study of liveness testing methods inspired me to creation of new type fingerprint sensor which has built-in livennes testing method based on two characteristic properties of living human tisue. In order to test this sensor, we discuss nowadays sensor deception method. It follows from their analysis, that newly designed sensor should be theoretically resistant to each of them.

Aufgrund der ökologischen und ökonomischen Problematik der chemischen Phosphatfällung ist eine Optimierung der Effizienz und Stabilität der biologischen Verfahren zur Phosphat-elimination erforderlich. Hierfür ist jedoch ein fundiertes Wissen über die daran beteiligten Organismen eine entscheidende Vorraussetzung. Das Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit war es, die mikrobielle Populationstruktur von zwei Belebtschlamm-anlagen im Labormaßstab mit Hilfe von drei unterschiedlichen 16S rDNA basierenden molekular-biologischen Methoden zu charakterisieren. Ein besonderer Schwer-punkt ist hierbei die Analyse der Bakterien, die mit der erhöhten biologischen Phosphat-elimination in Verbindung gebracht werden. Dies sind Vertreter der Rhodocyclus-Gruppe, der Gattung Tetrasphaera und der Gattung Acinetobacter. Als Untersuchungsobjekte wurden zwei Hauptstromverfahren zur erhöhten biologischen Phosphatelimination gewählt, die sich im Schlamm-alter, der Schlammbelastung und der sich daraus resultierenden Nitrifikationsleistung unterscheiden. Aufgrund der gewählten Verfahrensweisen wurde der Einfluss der Nitrifikation auf die Zusammensetzung der Belebtschlammbiozönose ebenfalls untersucht. Um praxisnahe Verhältnisse zu erreichen, wurden die Anlagen mit kommunalem Abwasser beschickt. Für einen Vergleich sollten Proben aus kommunalen Kläranlagen mit deutlich anderen Verfahrensweisen in die Untersuchungen mit einbezogen werden.

Mikrobielle Prozesse spielen eine wichtige Rolle im Sediment von Talsperren und Seen. Demgegenüber stehen nur unzureichende Erkenntnisse über die Zusammensetzung mikrobieller Biozönosen in Sedimenten sowie deren Aktivität zur Verfügung. Das Ziel dieser Studie war die Untersuchung und der Vergleich der Zusammensetzung und der Struktur mikrobieller Gemeinschaften in Sedimenten um eine Abschätzung der mikrobiellen Diversität in Talsperrensedimenten unterschiedlicher Trophie zu erreichen. Durch die Kombination der in dieser Arbeit verwendeten Methoden (Vergleichende 16S rDNA Analyse, Fingerprinttechniken, klassische Methoden) konnte eine Charakterisierung der mikrobiellen Zusammensetzung der obersten 5 cm von den Talsperrensedimenten Neunzehnhain, Muldenberg, Quitzdorf und Saidenbach erzielt werden. Die vergleichende 16S rDNA Analyse offenbarte in 2541 analysierten rekombinanten Klonen 528 verschiedene Sequenztypen, welche zu 293 OTUs zusammengefaßt werden konnten. Obwohl die Gemeinschaften der verschiedenen Talsperren nur schwach auf der Ebene der phylogenetischen Gruppen differierten, konnte durch die Verwendung von Ähnlichkeitsindices gezeigt werden, dass jede Talsperre eine spezifische mikrobielle Sedimentgemeinschaft aufweist. Über 60% aller Klone zeigten Ähnlichkeiten von mehr als 97% zu 16S rDNA-Sequenzen kultivierter Organismen oder phylogenetisch eingeordneten Sequenzen (14 bekannte phylogenetische Gruppen). Alle anderen Klone zeigten hohe Sequenzhomologien zu unidentifizierten, phylogenetisch bisher nicht eingeordneten Bakterien. Diese Bakterien waren mit Anteilen zwischen 19,8% (Muldenberg) und 54,6% (Saidenbach) in den 16S rDNA Bibliotheken repräsentiert. Mittels Fingerprinttechniken (DGGE, T-RFLP, ARISA) konnten komplexe Muster der mikrobiellen Diversität erzeugt werden. Dabei konnten die Ergebnisse der 16S rDNA Analyse bestätigt werden. Durch die verwendeten Methoden konnte eine komplexe mikrobielle Diversität in den Sedimenten aufgedeckt werden und die Ergebnisse weisen darauf hin, dass die mikrobielle Diversität in Sedimenten wesentlich höher ist als bisher angenommen.

When performing fingerprinting attacks against websites in a controlled environment astudy may achieve very promising results. However, these can be misleading as the closedworld setting may not accurately represent the real-world. This is a problem many priorworks have been critiqued for, the inability to transfer their results from the closed-worldsetting to the real-world. Being able to do so is of great importance to establish what thereal-world consequences would be of fingerprint attacks. If unable to apply one’s findingsoutside of a tightly controlled environment it is difficult to gauge if these attacks types posea real threat or not. Thereby, this thesis has, contrary to previous work, based its settingon a real-world scenario to provide tangible insights into vulnerabilities of news websites.Furthermore, it targeted internal pages of websites, something understudied by previousliterature. All of this while presenting a novel classifier that is lightweight and requireslittle training, and a framework for automatically collecting and labelling encrypted TCPtraffic without the use of a proxy.

The title compound, C20H18O3, crystallizes in the space group P21/c with one mol­ecule in the asymmetric unit of the cell. The fluorene skeleton is nearly planar and the crystal structure is composed of mol­ecular layers extending parallel to the (302) plane. Within a layer, one formyl oxygen atom participates in the formation of a Carene—H...O bond, which is responsible for the formation of an inversion symmetric supra­molecular motif of graph set R22(10). A second oxygen atom is involved in an intra­molecular Carene—H...O hydrogen bond and is further connected with a formyl hydrogen atom of an adjacent mol­ecule. A Hirshfeld surface analysis indicated that the most important contributions to the overall surface are from H...H (46.9%), O...H (27.9%) and C...H (17.8%) inter­actions.

No / Despite being widely utilized in the production of cultural objects, keratinous hard tissues, such as horn, baleen, and tortoiseshell, rarely survive in archaeological contexts unless factors combine to inhibit biodeterioration. Even when these materials do survive, working, use, and diagenetic changes combine to make identification difficult. This paper reviews the chemistry and deterioration of keratin and past approaches to the identification of keratinous archaeological remains. It describes the formation of horn, hoof, baleen, and tortoiseshell and demonstrates how identification can be achieved by combining visual observation under low-power magnification with an understanding of the structure and characteristic deterioration of these materials. It also demonstrates how peptide mass fingerprinting of the keratin can be used to identify keratinous tissues, often to species, even when recognizable structural information has not survived.

Increasing use is being made of various types of scientific evidence in court. The general requirement for the admissibility of such evidence is relevance. Although expert evidence is considered to be opinion evidence, it is admissible if it can assist the court to decide a fact in issue; provided that it is also reliable. In South Africa, the initial wide judicial discretion to either admit or exclude unconstitutionally obtained evidence, has developed into a more narrowly defined discretion under the final Constitution. Examples of scientific evidence, namely, DNA evidence, fingerprints, psychiatric evidence, bite-mark evidence and polygraph evidence are considered and problems inherent in the presentation of such evidence in courts in various jurisdictions are highlighted. An investigation of the presentation and evaluation of evidence in both the accusatorial and inquisitorial systems seems to indicate that the adversarial procedure has a marked influence on the evaluation of evidence / Criminal & Procedural Law / LL.M. (Law)