Pixel expansion and the quality of the reconstructed secret image has been a major issue of visual secret sharing (VSS) schemes. A number of probabilistic VSS schemes with minimum pixel expansion have been proposed for black and white (binary) secret images. This paper presents a probabilistic (2, 3)-VSS scheme for gray scale images. Its pixel expansion is larger in size but the quality of the ...

Serum antibody responses to toxic shock syndrome (TSS) toxin 1 (TSST-1) and staphylococcal enterotoxins A, B, and C were determined by western blot (immunoblot) analysis of acute- and convalescent-phase paired sera from 18 TSS- and 31 non-TSS-associated Staphylococcus aureus infections. Compared with non-TSS cases, seroconversion to TSST-1 was significantly more frequent among both menstrual (5...

In this paper, we propose a second-order extension of the continuous-time game-theoretic mirror descent (MD) dynamics, referred to as MD2, which provably converges mere (but not necessarily strict) variationally stable states (VSS) without using common auxiliary techniques such time-averaging or discounting. We show that MD2 enjoys no-regret well an exponential rate convergence towards strong V...

The conditioning of biosolids is a growing issue due to extremely large increases in production of this waste, escalating disposal costs and inefficient use of produced methane. One approach to improve biosolids utilization is treating waste activated sludge (WAS) before anaerobic digestion to enhance digestion, increase methane production and lower biosolids production. Cavitation is the dynam...

The paper reports the results of an investigation aimed to evaluate the performances of an innovative process for treating tannery wastewater. In such a process biological degradation, carried out in a sequencing batch biofilm reactor (SBBR), is combined with chemical oxidation by ozone. The treatment was carried out at laboratory scale on a real primary effluent coming from a centralized plant...

the properties of excess sludge wasted from two parallel pilot plants membrane bioreactor (mb-mbr and conventional mbr) have been monitored. sludge samples of mb-mbr and mbr have been examined and compared in terms of vss/tss, filtration index, eps and smp concentration, nitrogen and phosphorous in dry matter, fi, svi and polyelectrolyte requirement for sludge conditioning. by keeping similar o...

The present study was done to shorten the start-up time of up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor. Two different nutrients were used during the UASB start-up period, which was designed to decrease the hydraulic retention time (HRT) from 48 to 24 and 12 to 6 hrs at average temperatures of 25-34 oC. In the first stage, start-up was with glucose for 14 days and then the reactor was also f...

Verifiable secret sharing schemes (VSS) are secret sharing schemes dealing with possible cheating by the participants. In this paper, we propose a new unconditionally secure VSS. Then we construct a new proactive secret sharing scheme based on that VSS. In a proactive scheme, the shares are periodically renewed so that an adversary cannot get any information about the secret unless he is able t...

Urban nonpoint source pollution is a significant contributor to water quality degradation. Watershed planners need to be able to estimate nonpoint source loads to lakes and streams if they are to plan effective management strategies. To meet this need for the twin cities metropolitan area, a large database of urban and suburban runoff data was compiled. Stormwater runoff loads and concentration...

This paper presents a visual secret sharing (VSS) scheme for general access structures by using random grids. Compared to the existing VSS schemes for general access structures, the proposed scheme generates the shares of same size as that of the original secret image and does not require any codebook prior to encryption process. With these advantages, the proposed scheme broadens the potential...