Fake Degrees Research Articles

Sarah Elaine Eaton, Jamie J. Carmichael, Helen Pethrick, eds., Fake Degrees and Fraudulent Credentials in Higher Education

Sarah Elaine Eaton, Jamie J. Carmichael, Helen Pethrick, eds., Fake Degrees and Fraudulent Credentials in Higher Education

ORICERT – FRAUDULENT DEGREE AND MARKSHEET DETECTION

Identifying fake degrees and marksheets is becoming more and more important intoday's educational environment, since thespread of fake credentials jeopardizes employer confidence, academic integrity, and social standards. An overview of the most recent developments in marksheet and fraudulent degree detection techniques—including both established techniques and cutting-edge technologies—is provided Conventional techniques for identifying forged credentials frequently entail manual verification procedures, such as physical document inspection, institution verification,and cross- referencing with official databases. Although these techniques are still fundamental, they are prone to human error and frequently ineffective whenmanaging high numbers of credentials. Recent years have seen a boom intechnology advancements meant to improve the scalability and accuracy of fraudulent credential detection in response to these difficulties. For example, machine learning algorithms have demonstrated potential in automating the authentication process through the analysis of anomalies and patterns found in digital documents. Using natural language processing (NLP) techniques, textual data from academic transcripts and diplomas may be extracted and analysed to help find discrepancies or anomalies. Additionally, blockchain technology has become a disruptive force in credential verification by providing decentralized, immutable ledgers for academic accomplishments. Employers and educational institutions may reduce the danger of credential fraud by establishing safe, unchangeable archives of student Records by utilizing blockchain-based credentialing systems. Notwithstanding these developments, there are still issues with fraudulent credential detection, such as the necessity for international collaboration in the fight against cross-border credential fraud and the adaptation of fraudsters to changing detection techniques. Furthermore, the ethical implications related to algorithmic bias and data privacy emphasize how crucial it is to implement and supervise detection systems responsibly. KEYWORD: Degree Marksheet Verification Record.

Block-Chain Framework for Educational Domain and its Benefits

Blockchain technology has gained significant attention in recent years due to its potential to revolutionize various industries. In the educational domain, a blockchain-based framework has emerged as a promising solution with several benefits. This paper explores the concept of a blockchain-based framework for the educational domain and highlights its benefits. The framework focuses on areas such as credential verification, academic records and transcripts, anti-fraud measures, micro-credentialing, secure assessments, and efficient data sharing. By leveraging blockchain technology, educational institutions can enhance transparency, security, and efficiency in these areas. Credential verification becomes more reliable and tamper-proof as digital credentials are stored on the blockchain. Academic records and transcripts can be securely shared between institutions, simplifying the transfer process and reducing administrative burdens. Blockchain's immutability and cryptographic security features help combat issues like fake degrees or certificates, ensuring the authenticity of educational qualifications. The framework also enables the issuance and management of micro-credentials, reflecting specific skills or knowledge. By recording these credentials on the blockchain, individuals can have a comprehensive and verifiable record of their lifelong learning achievements. In the assessment process, blockchain technology enhances security and integrity by preventing data manipulation or cheating. The framework provides a decentralized and transparent platform for storing question banks, exam results, and assessments. Furthermore, blockchain-based frameworks facilitate secure and efficient sharing of educational resources, research findings, and collaborations. Smart contracts automate processes such as copyright permissions, royalty distributions, and collaborative project agreements, ensuring transparency and fairness. While the benefits of a blockchain-based framework in education are promising, challenges regarding technical implementation, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and privacy must be addressed. Further research and development are needed to explore these aspects and enable widespread adoption of blockchain solutions in the educational domain

Do fake reviews promote consumers' purchase intention?

Although fake reviews are ubiquitous in the information interface that consumers browse, there is little research to understand the role of fake reviews in the online purchase process. Therefore, in this paper, we try to reveal the changes of consumers' online purchase intention after reading fake reviews in different situations. In the three studies, we found that for utilitarian products, the low fake degree of reviews could improve online purchase intention, while for hedonic products, the high fake degree of reviews could improve online purchase intention. And perceived value plays a mediating role in this process. Besides, for products with high brand awareness, fake reviews do not affect consumers' purchase intention, while for products with low brand awareness, the higher fake degree of reviews, the lower consumers' purchase intention. This paper are helpful for consumers to make more rational decisions in the face of fake information, have reference significance for marketers to choose reasonable ways to promote products in specific situations, and help optimize the supervision mechanism of online reviews.

The History of Medical Ethics in India

The History of Medical Ethics in India

Heterotic quantum cohomology

It is believed, but not demonstrated, that the large radius massless spectrum of a heterotic string theory compactified to four-dimensional Minkowski space should obey equations that split into ‘F-terms’ and ‘D-terms’ in ways analogous to that of four-dimensional supersymmetric field theories. This is not easy to do directly as string theory is first quantised. Nonetheless, in this paper we demonstrate this splitting. We construct an operator overline{mathcal{D}} whose kernel amounts to deformations solving ‘F-term’ type equations. In many previous works in this field, the spin connection is treated as an independent degree of freedom (and so is spurious or fake); here our results apply on the physical moduli space in which these fake degrees of freedom are eliminated. We utilise the moduli space metric, constructed in previous work, to define an adjoint operator overline{mathcal{D}} †. The kernel of overline{mathcal{D}} † amounts to ‘D-term’ type equations. Put together, we show there is a overline{mathcal{D}} -operator in which the massless spectrum are harmonic representatives of overline{mathcal{D}} . We conjecture that one could better study the moduli space of heterotic theories by studying the corresponding cohomology, a natural counterpart to studying the overline{partial} -cohomology groups relevant to moduli of Calabi-Yau manifolds.

A refinement of the Murnaghan-Nakayama rule by descents for border strip tableaux

Lusztig's fake degree is the generating polynomial for the major index of standard Young tableaux of a given shape. Results of Springer (1974) and James & Kerber (1984) imply that, mysteriously, its evaluation at a \(k\)-th primitive root of unity yields the number of border strip tableaux with all strips of size \(k\), up to sign. This is essentially the special case of the Murnaghan-Nakayama rule for evaluating an irreducible character of the symmetric group at a rectangular partition. We refine this result to standard Young tableaux and border strip tableaux with a given number of descents. To do so, we introduce a new statistic for border strip tableaux, extending the classical definition of descents in standard Young tableaux. Curiously, it turns out that our new statistic is very closely related to a descent set for tuples of standard Young tableaux appearing in the quasisymmetric expansion of LLT polynomials given by Haglund, Haiman and Loehr (2005).Mathematics Subject Classifications: 05A19, 05E10Keywords: Border strip tableaux, descents, Murnaghan-Nakayama rule, fake degree

The counterfeit degree certificate: application of blockchain technology in higher education in India

PurposeIn this work-in-progress, the application of blockchain technology (BT) in higher education in India – involving academic institutions, students and verifiers – in the wake of fake degrees (racket) being issued at a large scale from universities across the country is being investigated. This paper considers providing new methods of database system in education, and implementing the new BT in education can increase transparency and security in the education system.Design/methodology/approachThis study used interview methodology (asking interview participants a series of informal questions to obtain knowledge).FindingsPrivate and public sector organizations have many challenges to overcome in synchronizing and aligning their digital transformation efforts to enable the network effects to take hold. India’s policymakers, civil society leaders, senior business leaders and entrepreneurs are building strong clusters to help the country be the leader of the next era of the internet as a platform that helps transform human affairs for the benefit of the citizens. Executives can contribute to the digital ecosystem by creating open and collaborative cultures where knowledge and innovation are shared with the industry for the benefit of the masses and, more so, to establish quality and communication standards. They also can contribute by staying open to change, embracing digital adoption and transformation within their management models and infrastructure. It is time for institutions to rethink their processes and governance structures to become more agile and innovative players. The success of a harmonious digital identity ecosystem relies on staying ahead of the organization’s digital curve. As a first step to provide better quality in the provision of public services, Secure Key Technologies’ blockchain-based ecosystem (securekey.com) allows multiple partners to strengthen the authentication and provides identity attribute validation as a fabric of trust and as a solid foundation to embrace a new digital era. Secure Key Technologies’ vision for the future of digital identities redefines the ways both consumers and businesses approach identity verification and the sharing of key personal information. The challenges identified in the education system be it the difficulty in authenticating certifications and documents, tracking intellectual property and in accessibility can be better managed through blockchain implementation.Originality/valueDigital certificates produced using blockchains are the most secure and efficient method being adopted by many countries across the globe (Grech and Camilleri, 2017). Tamper-proof blockchain records consist of three components or layers: the first contains the signed hash of the content, the second contains all the data and images and the third is the presentation and styling of the data. The verification process is relatively simple; the hash of the recipient is compared to the hash stored on the blockchain if they match the document is verified.

Integrating machine learning and blockchain to develop a system to veto the forgeries and provide efficient results in education sector

Although the education sector is improving more quickly than ever with the help of advancing technologies, there are still many areas yet to be discovered, and there will always be room for further enhancements. Two of the most disruptive technologies, machine learning (ML) and blockchain, have helped replace conventional approaches used in the education sector with highly technical and effective methods. In this study, a system is proposed that combines these two radiant technologies and helps resolve problems such as forgeries of educational records and fake degrees. The idea here is that if these technologies can be merged and a system can be developed that uses blockchain to store student data and ML to accurately predict the future job roles for students after graduation, the problems of further counterfeiting and insecurity in the student achievements can be avoided. Further, ML models will be used to train and predict valid data. This system will provide the university with an official decentralized database of student records who have graduated from there. In addition, this system provides employers with a platform where the educational records of the employees can be verified. Students can share their educational information in their e-portfolios on platforms such as LinkedIn, which is a platform for managing professional profiles. This allows students, companies, and other industries to find approval for student data more easily.

Tableau posets and the fake degrees of coinvariant algebras

We introduce two new partial orders on the standard Young tableaux of a given partition shape, in analogy with the strong and weak Bruhat orders on permutations. Both posets are ranked by the major index statistic offset by a fixed shift. The existence of such ranked poset structures allows us to classify the realizable major index statistics on standard tableaux of arbitrary straight shape and certain skew shapes. By a theorem of Lusztig–Stanley, this classification can be interpreted as determining which irreducible representations of the symmetric group exist in which homogeneous components of the corresponding coinvariant algebra, strengthening a recent result of the third author for the modular major index. Our approach is to identify patterns in standard tableaux that allow one to mutate descent sets in a controlled manner. By work of Lusztig and Stembridge, the arguments extend to a classification of all nonzero fake degrees of coinvariant algebras for finite complex reflection groups in the infinite family of Shephard–Todd groups.

Immutable and Privacy Protected E-Certificate Repository on Blockchain

Fake education certificates or fake degree is one of the major concerns in higher education. This fraud can be minimized if there is a tamper-proof and confidential registry of certificates wherein not one but multiple certified authorities verifies and stores the issued certificate in immutable repositories with proper privacy maintained. Secondly, there should be a mechanism for retrieving the authentic certificate without much cost and time. Blockchain is an immutable, shared, distributed ledger without the control of a single centralized authority that fits very well for the discussed use case. The proposed work, PrivateCertChain, has implemented the idea for university having multiple affiliated colleges, by deploying and verifying digitally signed e-certificate on Ethereum Blockchain. Multiple affiliated colleges can serve as the miners for verifying the signature of the issuer. For privacy concerns, the content of the certificate will be hashed and this hashed value will be stored in Blockchain along with the roll number of the certificate holder. Once the transaction hash is generated, it will be converted to QR code. The QR code is shared with the respective owner of the certificate and it will also serve as the credential of the certificate. Thus, anyone having the credential can view the authentic certificate which is kept on the blockchain, by scanning QR through the dedicated application designed for verification. The proposed solution can be a foolproof mechanism against all frauds as it guards for integrity, confidentiality, authenticity, and privacy of educational certificates.

EUNICERT: Ethereum Based Digital Certificate Verification System

The fake certificate is a special global problem in today's digital age. Thousands of universities and educational institutions around the world do not exist but can release hundreds of millions of fake degrees. Verifying the integrity of qualifications is a real challenge for today's employers. Applying the anti-data modifying properties of blockchain technology, this study proposes a solution issuing and verifying digital certificates called EUniCert to solve this problem. By changing the design and integrating new consensus algorithm used in Ethereum platform into the Unicoin network that was used to verify and store the information related to the issued digital certificate, the EUniCert improves the latency to validate transactions as well as the number of verified blocks in the blockchain network compared to the previous solution that we have proposed. We implement a simple blockchain system to illustrate the management operation of the digital certificates on the ethereum platform. Besides, we conduct a simulation to evaluate the performance of our proposal compared with the previous system. The result is that the average latency decreases by 3.27 times as well as the number of verified blocks increases by 11% compared with the previous system.

Freeness of multi-reflection arrangements via primitive vector fields

In 2002, Terao showed that every reflection multi-arrangement of a real reflection group with constant multiplicity is free by providing a basis of the module of derivations. We first generalize Terao's result to multi-arrangements stemming from well-generated unitary reflection groups, where the multiplicity of a hyperplane depends on the order of its stabilizer. Here the exponents depend on the exponents of the dual reflection representation. We then extend our results further to all imprimitive irreducible unitary reflection groups. In this case the exponents turn out to depend on the exponents of a certain Galois twist of the dual reflection representation that comes from a Beynon-Lusztig type semi-palindromicity of the fake degrees.

EUNICERT: ETHEREUM BASED DIGITAL CERTIFICATE VERIFICATION SYSTEM

The fake certificate is a special global problem in today's digital age. Thousands of universities and educational institutions around the world do not exist but can release hundreds of millions of fake degrees. Verifying the integrity of qualifications is a real challenge for today's employers. Applying the anti-data modifying properties of blockchain technology, this study proposes a solution issuing and verifying digital certificates called EUniCert to solve this problem. By changing the design and integrating new consensus algorithm used in Ethereum platform into the Unicoin network that was used to verify and store the information related to the issued digital certificate, the EUniCert improves the latency to validate transactions as well as the number of verified blocks in the blockchain network compared to the previous solution that we have proposed. We implement a simple blockchain system to illustrate the management operation of the digital certificates on the ethereum platform. Besides, we conduct a simulation to evaluate the performance of our proposal compared with the previous system. The result is that the average latency decreases by 3.27 times as well as the number of verified blocks increases by 11% compared with the previous system.

An individual-group-merchant relation model for identifying fake online reviews: an empirical study on a Chinese e-commerce platform

During the online shopping process, customer reviews strongly influence consumers’ buying behaviour. Fake reviews are increasingly utilized to manipulate products’ reputations. Automatically and effectively identifying fake reviews has become a salient issue. This study proposes a novel individual-group-merchant relation model to automatically identify fake reviews on e-commerce platforms, which focuses on the behavioural characteristics of the stakeholders. Three groups of indicators are proposed, i.e., individual indicators, group indicators and merchant indicators. An unsupervised matrix iteration algorithm is utilized to calculate the fake degree values at individual, group and merchant levels. To validate the model, an empirical study of fake review identification on a Chinese e-commerce platform is implemented. A total of 97,804 reviews related to 93 online stores and 9558 different reviewers are randomly selected as the test data. The experimental results show that the F-measure values of the proposed method in identifying fake reviewers, online merchants and groups with reputation manipulation are 82.62%, 59.26% and 95.12%, respectively. The proposed method outperforms the traditional methods (e.g. Logistic Regression and K nearest neighbour) in identifying fake reviews. It suggests that the combinations of the behaviour indicators with content analysis can effectively improve the performances of the fake review identification. The proposed method is more scalable to large datasets and easier to be employed, as it does not require manual labelling training set and it eliminates the training of classification models. This study greatly contributes to purifying the Chinese environment of business competition and establishing a better regulatory mechanism for credit manipulation in China.

Fakeons and Lee-Wick models

The “fakeon” is a fake degree of freedom, i.e. a degree of freedom that does not belong to the physical spectrum, but propagates inside the Feynman diagrams. Fakeons can be used to make higher-derivative theories unitary. Moreover, they help us clarify how the Lee-Wick models work. In this paper we study the fakeon models, that is to say the theories that contain fake and physical degrees of freedom. We formulate them by (nonanalytically) Wick rotating their Euclidean versions. We investigate the properties of arbitrary Feynman diagrams and, among other things, prove that the fakeon models are perturbatively unitary to all orders. If standard power counting constraints are fulfilled, the models are also renormalizable. The S matrix is regionwise analytic. The amplitudes can be continued from the Euclidean region to the other regions by means of an unambiguous, but nonanalytic, operation, called average continuation. We compute the average continuation of typical amplitudes in four, three and two dimensions and show that its predictions agree with those of the nonanalytic Wick rotation. By reconciling renormalizability and unitarity in higher-derivative theories, the fakeon models are good candidates to explain quantum gravity.

Invariant Tensors and the Cyclic Sieving Phenomenon

We construct a large class of examples of the cyclic sieving phenomenon by exploiting the representation theory of semi-simple Lie algebras. Let $M$ be a finite dimensional representation of a semi-simple Lie algebra and let $B$ be the associated Kashiwara crystal. For $r\ge 0$, the triple $(X,c,P)$ which exhibits the cyclic sieving phenomenon is constructed as follows: the set $X$ is the set of isolated vertices in the crystal $\otimes^rB$; the map $c\colon X\rightarrow X$ is a generalisation of promotion acting on standard tableaux of rectangular shape and the polynomial $P$ is the fake degree of the Frobenius character of a representation of $\mathfrak{S}_r$ related to the natural action of $\mathfrak{S}_r$ on the subspace of invariant tensors in $\otimes^rM$. Taking $M$ to be the defining representation of $\mathrm{SL}(n)$ gives the cyclic sieving phenomenon for rectangular tableaux.

Units of group rings, the Bogomolov multiplier and the fake degree conjecture

AbstractLet π be a finite p-group and ${\mathbb{F}_{q}}$ a finite field with q = pn elements. Denote by $\I_{\mathbb{F}_{q}}$ the augmentation ideal of the group ring ${\mathbb{F}_{q}}$[π]. We have found a surprising relation between the abelianization of 1 + $\I_{\mathbb{F}_{q}}$, the Bogomolov multiplier B0(π) of π and the number of conjugacy classes k(π) of π: $$ \left | (1+\I_{\Fq})_{\ab} \right |=q^{\kk(\pi)-1}|\!\B_0(\pi)|. In particular, if π is a finite p-group with a non-trivial Bogomolov multiplier, then 1 + $\I_{\mathbb{F}_{q}}$ is a counterexample to the fake degree conjecture proposed by M. Isaacs.

Politics as a Profession

The proposed research is about the people’s perception about “Politics as profession”. This paper examines multiple case studies of people’s opinion about making career in politics and further explains why most of the people are not interested in politics. By and large, people in India consider Politics as “dirt”. The word “Uneducated” is directly linked with politicians in India. We have our own Indian Political history as background information for us to understand people’s mentality towards politics and why most of us never want to join it. The purpose of this paper is to study the mentality of Indian parents about letting their children pursue politics as their profession. The main objective of this research is to make people understand that we can never clean the dirt by just staying away from it. Results of various surveys have been included to support the fact that people are afraid to take politics as a career. Post-Independence Era has seen kith and kin of late famous political figures that have entered politics in spite of being uneducated. Education doesn’t just mean acquiring degrees from some university, but to have a sense of honor towards leading people. This paper also stresses on the fact that most people agree on having an educated politician but most of the educated people are not interested in joining politics. As we know, many Indian politicians shroud in fake degree scandal, which shows the education status of politicians in India. Our proposal signifies that people need to change their mentality about politics and join it in true professional spirit so that we can be a developed nation and present an example to the rest of the world.

Fake Academic Degrees in the 18th Century?

Analyzing the most recent historical studies and sources dating back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the article reconstructs the fundamentals of degree awarding practices used in German universities of the Early Modern Period to understand whether they are comparable to present-day degree fraud practices. It examines into the academic degree concepts accepted in the pre-Modern Europe, analyses master’s and doctoral theses of the time, discusses the problem of their authorship, and traces back changes in the defense procedure as well as the historical and cultural factors which advanced the development of the modern doctoral degree. As long as social, cultural and intellectual transformations that prompted the emergence of the modern academic degree had only been completed by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the study considers it unreasonable to apply the currently existing academic and ethical criteria to the degree awarding practices of earlier historical periods. It does not mean fake degrees were a rare case or didn’t exist at all in the Early Modern Europe — it just means that academic fakeness was understood differently way back then.