TMI essays

TMI essays I chose to write my paper on an article about the near meltdown of a nuclear facility near my home, Three Mile Island. It was about 22 years ago, on March 28, 1979, in Middletown, Pennsylvania, when TMI almost had the worst commercial nuclear power accident in the history of the United States. Uranium was melting in the reactor, and hydrogen gas was exploding around the facility. No one knew whether to evacuate people in nearby towns, or to tell them to stay put. Evacuation could cause chaos on the roads, while keeping people there could have grave effects, whether right then, or in the future. Since this, 60 nuclear power plants across the U.S. have been shut down or abandoned. No new plants have been built since 1973. 103 reactors were still operating at the time this article was published. After Three Mile Island, new regulations have been made, like better trained plant operators, and more workers, these requirements have made nuclear power more expensive than burning coal or hydroelectric power. In 1999, TMI still had one functioning unit. Operators said it was a model of efficiency and safety. But in a deal that summer, the plant was to be sold for $100 million, just one seventh of its book value. The reason for this price was that TMIs Unit 2 was dismantled just enough to reveal a steel skeleton under its cooling towers. Never to reopen, it cost $700 million to build, and $973 million to run. At the time of the accident, the people of central Pennsylvania were the focus of everyones attention. Robert Reid, the mayor of Middletown, tried to get to someone in the plant, but with no luck. He called TMIs corporate owners in New Jersey and was assured that no radiation had escaped into the air, but radioactive gas had been released to relieve pressure inside. Dick Thornburgh, governor then, recommended that pregnant women and young children living within 5 miles of the plant e ...

Tyrosine Kinases essays

Tyrosine Kinases essays In this experiment we will determine whether or not epidermal growth factors (EGF) stimulate target cells, through the receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) (3). RTKs are transmembrane proteins that receive an extra cellular message, and transform it into an intracellular message. When inactive the RTKs reside as monomers in the lipid bylayer of the cell, until they are dimerized (2). At the same time of this dimerization the RTK then binds its ligand, EGF is a possible ligand. This action causes a conformational change that allows the RTK to be autophophorilated (1). Phosphorylation can happen on a few different side chains of the RTK. Such as serine, threonine, and tyrosine. We are concerned with the phosphorylation that occurs on the tyrosine. Phosphorylation of these side chains occurs at the exposed hydroxyl end of the amino acid. A hydrolysis reaction occurs and each dimmer yields phosphate groups to each other to allow the autophophorylation event (4). By knowing that the tyrosine side chains are phosphorylated we can perform a western blot and then using a specific antibody we determine if our EGF has caused the RTK to be phosphorylated (3). To start we took serum starved COS-7 cells that were ruffly 100 percent confluent, and were separated into a six well plate, and added to five wells different media. Before this we removed the existing media from the cells. In separate wells we added 2mls of acetyl choline 1ml/mg, EGF 2Â µl/mg, 10% FCS, serum free media, and BSA 10ml/mg. We then incubated the plate for 30 min at 37C and 5% CO2. After the incubation we removed the media from the cells and added 150Â µl of SDS ample buffer with othovanadate, pipetting up and down to remove the cells. We then transferred the cells to microfuge tubes and placed them in a water bath, boiling, for 5 min. We then preformed an SDS PAGE with six wells, the first five we ...

Obligations of Managers and Executives in I.T Essay

Obligations of Managers and Executives in I.T - Essay Example Considerably, cyber security has been an issue concerning the IT department. However, there has been a considerable growth of the information security to constitute a legal obligation and responsibility for the management. In this regard, all the shareholders need inclusion to address the matters of cyber security. For instance, according to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley security regulations, the Board of Directors has the mandate to ensure the safety of finances regarding their corporations. In addition, the evolving case laws suggest that corporate directors have a duty of care for the company’s information systems. They add that the obligation extends to safeguarding the integrity of the stored data from a mere responsibility of guarding corporate financials. Further, the Business Roundtable notes that the board of directors should consider information security as an element of corporate governance. Data confidentiality, integrity, and storage In this context, it is eminent for the organizations to observe the procedure incorporated to protect their company information from access by unauthorized persons. The data must be stored in forms that are not easy to interpret when opened as flat plain text files, accessed in inaccessible locations, and or protected by the firewall (Smedinghoff, 2005). Use of technical access controls in protecting the corporate information In this context, policies and procedures should remain implemented to ensure appropriate access to information by authorized persons (Kshetri, 2010).

Should Poor People Be Provided With Food and Shelter Essay

Should Poor People Be Provided With Food and Shelter - Essay Example There are very few people that are philanthropic enough to help such people out and bring them out of their misery. On the other hand, there are other people that refuse to help such a miserable situation, and in turn create more problems for the poorer sections of society. However, despite being caught up in such situations, it is the right of every individual to be able to have food and shelter in order to survive. Food and shelter are the two necessities a person should have in order to be able to live life properly and if these are denied, then no man will be able to survive. Most people that are poor or living below the poverty line are not even able to afford square meals and provide their family with the same. They have many mouths to feed and an unstable source of income which forces many of them to even resort to actions like begging for food. Most of them do not have a house or a roof to live under and thus are subject to the worst kind of diseases. Even food and shelter be comes a distant dream for such people and they become socially excluded from a lifestyle of being able to achieve these basic resources from society. Thus, the question lies in whether or not such people should be provided with external assistance by others in order for them to be able to gain basic food supplies and a place to live in with their families. Governments in many countries provide the socially backward classes and poor people of the society with these basic amenities. There are a number of food programs taken up in such developing and under developed countries where poor people are given food grains so that they can sustain their lifestyle and be able to feed their families. In many parts of the world, the governments also build housing societies that have basic one room shelters where poor people can dwell. In most places, these houses turn into areas that are categorized as slums because of the unhygienic conditions that they form with time. It is important for people to given food and shelter because

CASE STUDY QUESTIONS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

CASE STUDY QUESTIONS - Essay Example Economists assume that price is the most important influence on the amounts of any products or services purchased. Apart from price, economists explained that there are many other factors like consumers’ taste, numbers of consumers in the market, consumers’ income, price of related goods etc that also influence the amounts of goods or services purchased (McConnell and Brue, 2004, p. 42- 43). These factors are generally referred as determinants of demand. A person’s taste, preferences and opinions of the product or service consumed are some of the basic determinants of how much a consumer buys them. At higher price of the product or service, the consumer generally economizes and reduces quantity purchased. Similarly, as consumers’ income increases, the consumer is generally found to be buying more of many products and services in the market (Pugel, 2003, p. 19). When it comes to the case of tourism of Guam, 85% of the total tourists are from Japan and the n umbers of visits to Guam from Japan have been decreased in recent years. Demand for tourism can also be a function of consumers’ income, price of the service or price of competing goods. ... 81). As far as consumers’ income is considered to be a main determinant of the tourism to Guam, the price of tourism in relation to three different components are to be analyzed. These three components are cost of transportation, living cost in Guam and exchange rate. When more consumers are to travel to Guam, their relative spending on transportation and living would likely to increase. Similarly, they may have to spend more on exchanging currency too. In order to attract more customers to Guam and increase travelling to Guam, it is recommended that cost of transportation between Guam and Japan must be discounted or the government has to promote tourism through some seasonal programs. As a government policy maker, it is also recommended that cost of living, especially for those who visit Guam from Japan has to be adjusted in order to attract more visitors from Japan. If government fixes a specific fixed exchange rate between US Dollar and Japan’s Yen for the Japanese t ravelers to Guam, the expenditure issues that Japanese concern in relation to the exchange rate can also be solved and thus to increase numbers of travelers from Japan to Guam. A number of political and social factors have also caused decrease in travelling to Guam. The downward trend in Guam’s tourism has been caused by Japan’s sluggish economy and some political events like Gulf War in 1991, Typhoon Omar and Earthquake rated 8.1 in 1993, Korean airline crash in 1997, Asian crisis in 1998 etc (Dougan, 2007, p. 80). Japanese were choosing Guam for tourism for several reasons like beautiful beaches and safety in Guam. Safety in beaches, resorts and hotels should be

University Admission Process in Chile Essay Example for Free

University Admission Process in Chile Essay Learning implies having had access to it, counting with quality books and teachers and being in an enviroment where culture is important. Therefore, what PSU does is to prevent poor students -who have abilities but did not have acces to knowledge-, from developping a professional course of high standards. In addition, PSU does not accomplish its main task, which is selecting the more qualified students to go to traditional universities. Because it does not messures abilities, nor skills. Just training. The ones who are good at memorizing and trained themselves correctly can have a high score. There are schools (normally private schools) that dedicate exclusive time to prepare their students for this exam, leaving behind other important subjects. This situation leads us to a third negative characteristic of our university admission process. In Chile exists the business of something similar to pre-colleges. Here, the ones who can afford these classes are taught the mechanism of PSU. And in concequence, they are the more prepared to take the exam than the ones who were not able to pay for extra lessons. ALTERNATIVE ADMISSION PROCESSES. One of the main achievements of last year’s strike in our university was the posibility of having an alternative admission process, apart from PSU. Senior year students from schools with low budget can be matriculated at University of Concepcion with only de minimum PSU score this university requires (475 or 500) and having had at least a 5 in their high school grades average. There is a quota of 56 students in 49 courses. Medicine, Law, Astronomy, Sociology, Psicology, History Teaching, among others. Another admission process in Chile is the pre-college system. It is found in several universities in the country. (de Santiago, Cardenal Silva Henriquez, Alberto Hurtado, Tecnologica Metropolitana, Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educacion y Catolica del Norte) In University of Santiago, this programme started in 2007 with the support of UNESCO (united nacions. Educational, scientific and cultural organization). This system allowes students with the best grade averages of low budget schools, be matriculated at this university. No PSU score required. After selecting the students, they take classes of Spanish, Maths and Cultural Management for five months. If the sudents attend all lessons, they get matriculated in college at the University of Santiago with a full scholarship. And afterwards, they are able to study a professional course at this university. CONCLUSION As we said before, our current university admission process helps to increase our social differences and discriminates students from low economic stratums. Thus, we realised the solutions we suggest will be useless unless there is a deep structural change in our educational system, and if we look further, a change in our society. However, we hope these alternatives get massively increased in the near future. This way, the university access will be improved for the ones who really want to study regardless of their economic condition. So what we -common citizens students and teachers- must do, is get informed and communicate others about the problems that bother us. And take advantage of oportunities like last years strike to accomplish our aims and demands.

Steganography, Cryptography And Watermarking

Steganography, Cryptography And Watermarking Steganography has been derived from Greek word Stego which means Covered and Graphia which means writing. Steganography is an ancient technique of covert communication. The earliest form of Steganography has been reported by the Chinese. The secret message was written in very fine silk or paper, and then it was rolled into a ball and covered with wax. The messenger would either swallow the ball or hide it in his nether parts. Herodotus has mentioned in one of his seminal works of history, Histories during the 400B.C about the tradition of secret writing. In his writings he has mentioned about the conflicts between Greece and Persia. A king named Histiaeus encouraged the Aristagoras of Miletus to revolt against the Persian king. He used to tonsure the head of his most trusted servants and tattooed the scalps with secret message and waited for the hair to grow. The servant used to travel between the borders without carrying anything contentious freely. At the reception end his head wou ld be tonsured again and the message will be conveyed. Similarly during the World War II, the Germans invented the use of microdots. Image containing great details were scaled down to the size of microdots. The German usage of secret sharing is regarded as the recent evolution of Steganography. Another example of Steganography is during the Vietman War were the captured US armed force showed hand gestures during a photo sessions to convey some military secrets. The field of Steganography is limitless and any kind of cover media can be used for carrying secret messages. Cover medias can be text, images (grey, binary, color), audio, video etc. An example is illustrated as follows. Siva and Adam dined happily. The following message is not simply a plain text but it carries a secret message within it. By extracting every second letter from each word we derive a secret message as follows. India Other methods of non technical Steganography is using lime and other citrus liquids to write secret data. The message will be imperceptible to the eye. When it is shown over a flame the writings will become perceptible. Steganography is method of information hiding. Steganography can be considered as an art as well as science for secret communication. The best way to explain the purpose of using Steganography is the Prisoner Problem. Now let us consider two prisoners Alice and Bob, and Wendy to be the warden. Now if Alice and Bob want to devise a plan for escaping then they got to communicate with each other. If Wendy is a passive warden then he wont interfere in there communication but if he is an active warden then he will interfere and extract the secret message sent. Hence Alice and Bob got to communicate in such a way that Wendy is not able to decipher there plan. This can be done by the technique of Steganography. Steganography is been used in order to enable secret communication. It is also being used by terrorist for covert communication which is potential for endangering our national as well as world security. Despite the ill effect there are positive sides of Steganography. For example a photographer can store the aperture size, future references etc while taking a picture. Steganography has a wide application in medical imaging were the details of the patients are embedded within the medical image. Similarly Steganography can be used for different friendly applications. It is also used for copy right protection using it along with Watermarking. The use of Steganography also has an important role in strengthening national security. Steganography is defined as secret hiding. It can also be regarded as secret sharing since messages can be shared secretly without being hacked or corrupted. COMPARISON BETWEEN CRYPTOGRAPHY, STEGANOGRAPHY AND WATERMARKING The other forms of data hiding are cryptography and watermarking. Cryptography is a technique in which the secret message is encrypted and sent in an unintelligent format. The basic difference between Steganography and cryptography is that Cryptography scrambles the data whereas Steganography just hides the data. Cryptography scrambles the secret data in such a way that it appears to be gibberish to any unintended user. The secret data to be communicated is a mixture of permutation and substitution and hence any unintended user cant receive the message. Steganography is different from Cryptography. Steganography rather hides the data whereas Cryptography encrypts the data. Steganography provides much more security when compared to cryptography because there is no chance of any unintended user to know that a message is being sent whereas in Cryptography there will always be a suspicion that a message is being sent. Hence these are more prone to be hacked or suppressed. Watermarking is generally used for authentication and copyrights protection. Watermarking can be used for creating a image in order that it is recognizable. It can also be used to mark a digital file so that it is intended to be visible (visible watermarking) or visible to its creator (invisible marking). The main purpose of watermarking is to prevent the illegal copying or claim of ownership of digital media. CHARACTERISTICS OF STEGANOGRAPHY, CRYPTOGRAPHY AND WATERMARKING The common characteristic between Steganography, Cryptography and Watermarking is that they transmit the secret information in such a way that only the receiver is able to decrypt the data. These techniques had been prevalent during the ancient times have been transported to the digital world. It has become nearly impossible to extract or detect the secret messages. In digital domain Steganography and watermarking have a tie and it is majorly used in digital images. These have other uses as well. Both cannot exist by themselves and hence they require cover objects. Steganography requires a cover media to carry the secret information and watermarking requires a carrier object which it is intended to protect. These similarities create a link within them and hence some modifications can lead the transportation from one technique to another. Due the similarities present between these it is difficult to distinguish between the both but actually there is a remarkable difference between the m. Cryptography encrypts data in two methods secure or unbreakable (e.g. One-time pad) systems and breakable (e.g. RSA) systems. Through both the systems communication carried out is known to all. But it is time consuming and often fruitless to crack a code. The robustness of the code lies upon the difficulties faced while reversing the code in different permutations and combinations. Due to its robustness it is used for security purposes. For example Cryptography is used for online shopping, banking etc. The credit card number, expiration etc and other crucial informations are encrypted and sent so that an unintended user cant access the details. Steganography offers high carrier capacity keeping embedded message invisible and maintaining the fidelity of the cover media. The efficiency of the Steganographic method is that one shouldnt know that a media file has been altered in order for embedding. If the malicious user knows if there is some alteration the Steganographic method is defeated and less efficient. The embedded message is very fragile and hence if any modification is done to the stego image th e whole secret message is corrupted. The effectiveness lies on the ability to fool an unintended user. The layers of communication can be more than one layer. A secret message can be embedded with a digital image which in turn can be embedded within another digital media or video clippings. Watermarking is required in order for authentication and copyright protection of digital files. The embedded watermarking is required in an object to make it impossible to remove completely. If the embedded watermarking is removed, then the marked object is either distorted or destroyed making it useless for anyone. This is the reason why watermarking is more robust when compared to the other image processing techniques, such as compression, cropping, rotation etc. hence even if a tiny bit of information is extracted by modification and tempering the rightful owner can still claim ownership. If the owners name is embedded in the digital image and the particular image then the original information is tampered and destroyed. Unlike Steganography, it is acceptable for everyone one to see the watermark embedded in it including the invisible ones. COMBINED EFFORTS OF STEGANOGRAPHY, CRYPTOGRAPHY AND WATERMARKING Cryptography is used as a paisano of the other two data hiding techniques. Data is encrypted in both the techniques in order to increase the randomness of the Steganography to avoid the statistics-based attacks and to protect the hidden data in watermarking. Commonly it is a practice to first encrypt the data and then use any one of the embedded techniques. The importance of watermarking can be stated as follows. Suppose Rs 100 bill is introduced in December 2009 then watermarking is required in order to prevent illegal copies. If the bill is shown in light a small image will appear within the large image. The watermarking is actually a part of the large paper and is visible on both sides. Hence it becomes difficult to produce a paper with such features. In addition to these features some tiny writings which are invisible to the human eyes are present in the paper. A banker having the necessary equipments (magnifying glass) can tell the difference between the original bill and the fake bill. Steganography makes its play here. The tiny printing done on the bill represents Steganography. It is implemented in order to achieve high security. The tiny printing done in the paper cannot be copied since any commercial printer is incapable to print such a fine and thin print leading to black spots. These are the reasons why Steganography is used for high security. Cryptography is actually implemented in the bill. A serial number is been printed in the bill which may contain information about the location and date of bill is printed or any other confidential information. The unique serial number for each bill can be used for tracking purposes. Using Steganography, Cryptography and Watermarking it becomes impossible to reproduce Rs100 bill. It must be kept in mind that all three are different and have different functionality. REQUIREMENTS OF STEGANOGRAPHY Any digital media can be used as a cover media. The cover media can be a text, image (color, gray), audio or video etc. Cover media is required in order to hide and carry the information. Usually digital images are required in order to hide secret messages. The secret message is hidden within the digital image. After the message is embedded within the cover media An innocuous image consisting of scenery, people and other objects are the nominees for cover media. The availability of natural images is not a problem due to the affordable price of digital cameras nowadays. Natural images are the best candidates for cover image since they have higher resolution providing flexibility and other necessary need. Images are selected because the cover media is selected depending upon how the human visual system works. The gray image consists of pixels with intensity value from 0 to 255. The human eye cannot differentiate between a pixel intensity of 244 and 245. It will appear both the pixel intensities to be same. Also natural image s contains lots of noise and hence there is lots of pixel value intensity difference especially in the edges. This variation in the pixel intensity is known as randomness and can be exploited to embed the data without providing any suspicion to human eye. The human visual system wont be able to distinguish between the image before modulation and the image after modulation. The secret data is embedded within the cover image. The resulting image is called a stego-image. The stego-image will appear to be the same as the original image. The human eye cannot usually distinguish between the stego-image and the original image except there is a significant change between the images. In that case the Steganographic method employed is ineffective. Hence there are certain Stego-system criteria which we have to follow while doing a Stegagraphic implementation. They are stated as follows. The major criteria of Steganography that the cover media shouldnt be significantly altered or modified. The embedded data should be directly encoded in the cover and not in the header or wrapper. The embedded data should be immune to modifications of the cover. That is if the cover media under goes any change then data embedded within it should be unaltered. During transmission there are chances of noise to occur and hence distortion due to noise cannot be eliminated. Due to this issue error coding algorithms should be included where ever it is required. It is advisable to avoid the suspicious portions while embedding the message in the cover. This because after embedding in these regions they become open to suspicion. For example by embedding in smooth portions of the image, the resultant image becomes distorted and open to suspicion. Hence such portions are often avoided and portions where there is variation in the pixel intensity are preferred. The embedding efficiency must be improved. Efficiency of the embedding capacity depends upon the number of pixels in the image used for embedding purposes. The stego-image should be robust to steganalysis. Steganalysis is a method of identifying the difference between the original image and stego-image. Using steganalysis one can derive the information about the secret message. The stego-image should reassemble the original image and there should be any suspicion. The cover image should have high carrier capacity. That is the embedding capacity should be large. The amount of information present in the image should be resistant to distortion and should be comparable to the number of pixels present in the image. The three basic requirements of Steganography are robustness, capacity and imperceptibility. All these requirements should be satisfied for having an effective Steganographic method.