Secret Identities Research Articles

A Prototype of Decentralized Applications (DApps) Population Management System Based on Blockchain and Smart Contract

The Indonesian population reached 270,20 million in 2020. Each resident is equipped with various secret identities. The COVID-19 pandemic has made all activities use technology as a basis, causing residents' identities to be stored digitally. Some applications that keep these identities experience data leaks. However, with the advent of Web3 and its emphasis on decentralization through blockchain, a new era of secure data management is possible. Blockchain, with its inherent security features, ensures that data stored is secure, difficult to damage or lose due to mutual consensus. Every transaction is recorded, making it easy to carry out the audit process. Therefore, this research will design and implement prototype dApps for secure population management, leveraging the superior security of blockchain technology. The initial stage of research is to conduct a literature study. Furthermore, it is to create designs such as system, infrastructure, and activity diagrams. Then do the development of the dApps prototype. The last is testing using OWASP ZAP and cost analysis. A dApps prototype was implemented on a blockchain. Every transaction is recorded and publicly viewable through the Etherscan platform. Other data stored on a blockchain have gone through an AES-256 encryption process with the data owner's account key so that the owner can only see the data. The results of the tests performed show that there is no high-level warning. The cost analysis results show that the most used costs are when deploying smart contracts and making new data. For further development, it is implementing permissionless blockchain and multi-accounts.

A Monitoring System for Cyber Bullying Activities using Stochastic Gradient Descent Classifier

Abstract: Life has reached a stage where we cannot live without internet enabled technology. New devices and services are being invented continuously with the evolution of new technologies to improve our day-to-day lifestyle. At the same time, this opens many security vulnerabilities. Cybercrime may happen to any device/service at any time with worst ever consequences. Internet use today has a greater impact on young people than ever before. They view the internet and mobile phone networks as the two major communication frameworks that are crucial to our everyday lives and the formation of our identities. However, these technologies are often used improperly. Many internet users are the targets of bullying, which leaves the "target" completely perplexed. Cyberbullying is drastically increasing. The issue of cyberbullying is saddening because the system that enables communication and information flow is evolving into a risky "site" to visit. Cyberbullying affects people all across the world, not just in one nation. United States have begun to enact laws that are focused on cyberbullying. Other countries have adopted laws against bullying that apply to both regular bullying and cyberbullying. The internet gives users the option to browse anonymously and to create profiles with secret identities. Our proposed structure can significantly increase the existing methods detection capacity in actual social network scenarios while effectively making up for their drawbacks.

Anatomists Assemble! Integrating superheroes into the anatomy and physiology classroom.

Anatomy and physiology courses are sometimes seen as difficult, which can lead to a lack of motivation in students to learn and engage in the course material. Students may also see the material as "dry," have issues forming personal connections, or struggle to connect the content to the real world. These issues may lead to students not performing well in the course or feeling that the health field is not ideal for them. Popular culture, especially mainstream superheroes, can serve as an option for mending these gaps by being a gateway to connecting to many students' lives. Superheroes can be integrated into the classroom through relevant, creative, and unique examples that include clinical correlates, modern scientific innovations, and some real-life "supers" living among us. Real anatomy and physiology can still be taught and explained through discussing these "incredible" examples and also present an opportunity for students to be creative in generating their own anatomical and physiological explanations for various superpowers. Superheroes also help open the classroom up to being a place of acceptance, primarily through their secret identities, which cover a broad range of idols that students can look up to, whether it is their career or based on a character's race or sexual orientation. Professors can become the superhero in their classroom and help students become more engaged and interested in the material.

The secret identities of TMPRSS2: Fertility factor, virus trafficker, inflammation moderator, prostate protector and tumor suppressor.

The human TMPRSS2 gene is pathogenetically implicated in both coronaviral lung infection and prostate cancer, suggesting its potential as a drug target in both contexts. SARS-COV-2 spike polypeptides are primed by the host transmembrane TMPRSS2 protease, triggering virus fusion with epithelial cell membranes followed by an endocytotic internalisation process that bypasses normal endosomal activation of cathepsin-mediated innate immunity; viral co-opting of TMPRSS2 thus favors microbial survivability by attenuating host inflammatory responses. In contrast, most early hormone-dependent prostate cancers express TMPRSS2:ERG fusion genes arising from deletions that eliminate the TMPRSS2 coding region while juxtaposing its androgen-inducible promoter and the open reading frame of ERG, upregulating pro-inflammatory ERG while functionally disabling TMPRSS2. Moreover, inflammatory oxidative DNA damage selects for TMPRSS2:ERG-fused cancers, whereas patients treated with antiinflammatory drugs develop fewer of these fusion-dependent tumors. These findings imply that TMPRSS2 protects the prostate by enabling endosomal bypass of pathogens which could otherwise trigger inflammation-induced DNA damage that predisposes to TMPRSS2:ERG fusions. Hence, the high oncogenic selectability of TMPRSS2:ERG fusions may reflect a unique pro-inflammatory synergy between androgenic ERG gain-of-function and fusogenic TMPRSS2 loss-of-function, cautioning against the use of TMPRSS2-inhibitory drugs to prevent or treat early prostate cancer.

Secret Identities in Dwarf Fortress

Chairs’ Note: In this invited industry case study, Tarn Adams discusses recent extensions to Dwarf Fortress’s systems for character deception. A noted opus in the history of videogames, Dwarf Fortress is a roguelike set in procedurally generated fantasy universes. It has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Wired, and many other press publications. Currently, Tarn and his brother, Zach Adams, are roughly midway through its famous 30-year development cycle. As Tarn explains in this paper, an upcoming update centered around artifacts—and what characters know about them—has had the fun consequence of necessitating that a certain class of non-player characters cultivate secret identities. This major extension has brought both technical and design challenges, as this paper illustrates. —James Ryan

Public Heroes, Secret Jews: Jewish Identity and Comic Books

Public Heroes, Secret Jews:Jewish Identity and Comic Books Jennifer Caplan (bio) "Who was that masked man?" was the common refrain of those who witnessed the Lone Ranger (John Reid) perform some heroic act or feat of derring-do. The Lone Ranger began in 1933 as a radio program, so it was up to the audience to imagine what the man and his mask looked like. By 1938 there was a syndicated comic strip, and in 1948 The Lone Ranger comic book series began its 145-issue run.1 These visual representations created the now iconic look of a man in a simple black domino mask, which was enough of a disguise that no one could recognize the man under the mask. Superman had already established that something as simple as removing or adding a pair of glasses could obscure a hero's identity, so the Lone Ranger's domino mask was more than sufficient as an act of subterfuge. Putting on or taking off a mask is an almost sacred act within the pages of comic books. The mask is the thing that separates, protects, and creates the liminal space in which an alter ego exists. This essay is going to use what I am calling "masking theory" to think critically about both what it means to have a secret identity and how Jewish comic book characters have had their Jewishness masked and unmasked throughout their history. Masks do not all work the same way. Bruce Wayne wears a mask so that people do not know he is also Batman, but Clark Kent is the mask that Superman wears to hide his otherness. Characters don masks for many reasons, but the most common is to hide something about themselves that they do not think society would understand. Sometimes they are protecting the reputation and family of the "real person" under the mask, but not always. Superman hides in plain sight as Clark Kent just as Wonder Woman hides as Diana Prince; they hide their inhumanity while Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker (Spiderman) hide their humanity. The mask is always a defense mechanism, but what it is defending is not always the same thing. Masking theory, in this case, is focused not only on the characters but also the comic book authors themselves, and what we might infer about them based on what masks they apply to their creations. The masking and unmasking of Jewish characters speaks to what Rachel Kranson calls the "ambivalent embrace" of postwar American Jews and middle-class American identity.2 [End Page 53] For this study I focus primarily on four characters: The Thing (Ben Grimm), Magneto (Max Eisenhardt), Ragman (Rory Regan), and Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde). Drawing on Tom Morris's work on secret identities, as well as other contemporary theories of comics and graphic novels, I argue that for three out of the four characters, it has been their Jewishness that has been their "secret identity" at least as much as their "real" name. I am beginning with The Thing because his mask is the least stereotypical. His identity was never a secret, so if (as Morris argues) a secret identity is an integral part of the superhero genre, The Thing allows us to ask what his secret might be. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created The Thing, and they and the other Jewish writers like them might have been masking themselves as they were masking their characters. While fear of exposure might have driven art to imitate life, secret identities are nevertheless powerful, in part because they open up space for more: more personality, more diversity, and more exceptionality. A character with two separate yet fully formed identities offers greater space for writers and artists to explore social and political issues, and yet there can be downsides to keeping certain parts of a character hidden, or masked. In "The Secret of Secret Identities" Morris writes, "for most of the superheroes, a dual identity is primarily about masking. The costume and the superhero persona (from the Latin for 'mask,' or presentation) keep a secret."3 Masking is substantially different from both hiding and making invisible. Masking is about taking something obvious or apparent and...

It's a Roman … it's a Persian … it's Rabbi Meir! Secret Identities and the Rabbinic Self in the Babylonian Talmud

It's a Roman … it's a Persian … it's Rabbi Meir!Secret Identities and the Rabbinic Self in the Babylonian Talmud Sara Ronis (bio) What kinds of leaders were the late antique Babylonian rabbis? What kinds of heroes did they think they were? This paper explores Talmudic narratives about heroic rabbis using insights from modern superhero studies. What does it mean to see the Babylonian rabbis as superheroes? According to Peter Coogan's popular definition, a superhero is A heroic character with a selfless, pro-social mission; with superpowers—extraordinary abilities, advanced technology, or highly developed physical, mental, or mystical skills; who has a superhero identity embodied in a codename and iconic costume, which typically express his1 biography, character, powers or origin (transformation from ordinary person to superhero); and who is generally distinct, i.e. can be distinguished from characters of related genres (fantasy, science fiction, detective, etc.) by a preponderance of generic conventions. Often superheroes have dual identities, the ordinary one of which is usually a closely guarded secret.2 Though Coogan ignores the gender diversity inherent in the modern world of superheroes, he notes a range of commonalities across superheroes that shape what it means to be a superhero. But there are actually two kinds of superheroes.3 There are figures like Batman—Batman's true identity is the all-too-human Bruce Wayne, an identity that he hides when he puts on his Batman costume and gets in the Batmobile to save Gotham City. An ordinary human making himself extraordinary through a costume. Then there are figures like Superman. Superman really is Kal-El, the alien child from Krypton who has extraordinary powers here on Earth. Superman hides this identity when he dresses up as Clark Kent to earn a paycheck and date Lois Lane. He is an extraordinary being disguising himself as ordinary. Yet both types of superhero are selfless, exceptional, have multiple identities, and exist in particular literary contexts. Indeed, superheroes' commonalities move beyond the surface. As Jeph Loeb and Tom Morris have noted, "The stories of these characters embody [End Page 93] our deepest hopes and fears, as well as our highest aspirations, and … can help us deal with our worst nightmares. They chart out questions we'll all have to face in the future. And they shed new light on our present condition."4 Superheroes function in similar ways in our collective imagination, reflecting a particular imagined past as they also shape the range of futures that are possible. When we think of the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud, we do not tend to think of them as masked men in tights, flying about ancient Babylonian cities. And indeed, they were not superheroes in the modern sense. But the rabbis did think of themselves as exceptional, as heroes, and even as superheroes relative to ordinary people with their ordinary abilities. Their actions entailed developed physical and mystical skills, self-sacrifice, pro-social agendas, and special titles ("rabbi"), though spandex had not yet been invented. And as superheroes, they took their self-imposed responsibility for the Jewish people seriously. Their stories also served to model one way to live in a complex and often hostile world in which few had political and economic power. They offered one vision of the Jewish past and present that had the potential to shape a rabbinic future. The rabbis of Late Antiquity lived in two geographic regions, at the whims of two major forces: the Sasanian Empire and the Roman Empire. The land of Israel was part of the Roman Empire, which was at times hostile to its religious minorities. Babylonia was a part of the Sasanian Empire, which largely had a policy of toleration of religious minorities. And yet, even in Sasanian Babylonia, the rabbis were aware that they were at the mercy of mercurial kings and administrators.5 In a world in which imperial policies were set by a dynastic ruler, the rabbis of both regions were very aware that each ruler brought the potential for radically new and destructive policies. The rabbis had many ways of mediating this danger: prayer, bribery, respect, and subterfuge. To achieve their aims—like all superheroes—the rabbis...

Masked Jews: Conversion and Secret Identities in Late Medieval Iberia

Masked Jews: Conversion and Secret Identities in Late Medieval Iberia

The Alter Ego Effect The Power of Secret Identities to Transform Your Life

The Alter Ego Effect The Power of Secret Identities to Transform Your Life

Vardø Etat and the Comintern Boys: Communist Insurgent Intelligence in Northern Scandinavia 1919–1921

ABSTRACT The Communist International (Comintern) had one of its earliest outposts in the small northern Norwegian border town of Vardø. In dealing with the raison d’etre of this so-called liaison point Vardø Etat the paper adopts anon-state actors’ intelligence perspective, by uncovering the secret communist activities and identities of the main actors involved in the transnational clandestine network and comparing its features with the characteristics of insurgent intelligence actors. The paper argues that the political aim of exporting the October Revolution to the rest of the world, together with a heritage of pre-revolutionary Bolshevik organizational practice and experience, contributed to forming the Vardø Etat’s use of internal security, counterintelligence, HUMINT and covert actions. Though, despite similarities to other insurgent groups the Vardø Etat was a hybrid, a state proxy, deeply entwined with the Soviet state and its intelligence agencies. Reckless militancy was downplayed as the Comintern took form in the period of 1919–1921 quickly evolving toward a more centralized apparatus staffed by professional cosmopolitan communists. In a longer perspective the Vardø Etat can be perceived as part of the first wave of many later waves of Marxist-Leninist insurgent groups around the world throughout the twentieth century and after.

The Shadow and the dual-identity avenger tradition in American popular fiction

Abstract A secret identity is one of the definitional characteristics of comic-book superheroes. However, American popular literature had been populated by characters with secret identities long before the first superhero comics appeared. The crime-fighting dual-identity vigilantes enjoyed their heyday in the 1930s and 1940s, during the golden era of pulps. Selling usually for 10 cents, pulp magazines were the best source of cheap thrills and heroics. In this era, dozens of costumed avengers appeared and the most popular was undoubtedly The Shadow. Between 1931 and 1949, Street and Smith published more than three hundred stories featuring The Shadow, most of them written by Walter B. Gibson. In the late 1930s, several of the pulp conventions, including costumed avengers, were adopted by the creators of the superhero comic books, and The Shadow served as a main inspiration for Bill Finger’s and Bob Kane’s Batman. The article discusses the evolution of crime-fighting pulp heroes with a particular emphasis on The Shadow as the most influential dual-identity avenger of the era.

The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune

Reviewed by: The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune Alaine Martaus Klune, TJ The Extraordinaries. Tor Teen, 2020 [400p] (The Extraordinaries) Trade ed. ISBN 9781250203656 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781250203670 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 8-12 As Shadow Star's biggest fan and writer of his most popular fanfic, sixteen-year-old Nick Bell is sure he knows everything about Nova City's favorite Extraordinary. Now Nick sets out to become Extraordinary himself, only to find himself distracted by his ADHD, his seemingly ever-present ex, and his new fascination with adorable best friend Seth Gray. His plans also put him in the middle of the ongoing battle between Shadow Star and nemesis Pyro Storm, both of whom are hiding more than their identities. Soon, dastardly plots unfold and secret identities are revealed, and Nick learns he knows far less than he realized about his hero, his friends, and his own heart. Part superhero homage, part sigh-worthy romance, part action-packed adventure, this novel is all kinds of comical fun. Klune skillfully strings together the tropes of the genre for an enjoyably fresh take that celebrates superhero fandom even as it playfully mocks its excesses. The real draw here is Nick himself and his myriad relationships, whose playful banter full of snark and sass gives the novel its heart and its humor, alongside plenty of genuine laugh-out-loud moments; his navel-gazing, which humorously lacks any real self-awareness, just makes him more likable. This will be a strong recommendation for genre fans who will be glad to see a post-"credits" scene that offers extra reveals and sequel potential. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Everyone has a secret: Closeting and secrecy fromSmallvilletoThe Flash,and from shame to algorithmic risk

This article charts changes in the representation and encoding of superhero closeting metaphors from US television programs Smallville (2001–2011) to The Flash (2014–). Many theorists have noted that superheroes’ hidden secret identities resemble closeting. However, because of legal and social changes in LGBTQ acceptance, as well as intensification of the data-driven security state, closeting on The Flash connects to a fundamentally different set of algorithmic neoliberal social processes. As a result, The Flash portrays a form of post-shame closeting wherein secrecy is a practice of necessary self-defense against mechanized necropolitical violence and social erasure based on unpredictable data markers of risk.

Configuring an Asian American Subject through Comic

In his preface to Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology (2009), Jeff Yang addresses that “a quarter of the kids are Asians” in national comic book conventions like Comic-Con and that many comic book artists are Asian Americans (11). While Asian Americans take a substantial part of comics industry, however, writers in Secret Identities argue that there are not many Asian (American) superhero characters. Comics writers thus employ (auto)biographical voices not only to debunk Asian Americans’ marginalized place in comics narratives but also to push the literary convention to the critical contours. In particular, some artists revisit hero genres in an attempt to appropriate the American mythology in which an Asian American protagonist reinvents his or her subjectivity. In this article, I discuss the ways in which Asian American artists interweave comics, short stories, and autobiographies together to configure their racialized experiences, and I focus on “Preface: In the Beginning” and “Driving Steel” to examine the critical location of current Asian American writers.

Naming: Heteronymy and the Imaginary Artists of George Herms

Within a Cold War climate of paranoia regarding secret identities and communist plots, California-based artist George Herms realized artworks attributed to fictional artist-authors: Eric Hammerscof...

Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System by Sonya Huber

Reviewed by: Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System by Sonya Huber Erica Trabold Sonya Huber. Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System. University of Nebraska Press, 2017. If Sonya Huber's Pain Woman Takes Your Keys was a word cloud, those billowing masses of most-used terms, the central and most prominent element drawing the reader's eye toward its center would be the bold letters P-A-I-N. Besides the minor articles a, an, and the, no other word appears more often or more consistently in the twenty-eight essays that comprise this collection. Pain functions as the book's theme, holding at the center and reaching the outer limits of the personal essay form. Huber's near constant repetition of the word "pain" invites the reader into a richly individual and often indescribable landscape—that of chronic pain—a territory the reader may have never encountered described so carefully or forcefully in literature. Huber writes of being diagnosed with both an autoimmune condition and rheumatoid arthritis at age thirty-eight. The diagnosis that names the pain taking up permanent residence in Huber's "glowing skeleton" serves as a springboard for a project attuned to a much deeper and nuanced exploration of pain itself. For Huber, living with chronic pain makes each day—and this remains an understatement—difficult. Add to that difficulty the fact that chronic pain, especially pain experienced by women, is so often distrusted, disbelieved, or dismissed, and Huber has tapped into an idea unending in its complexity. Precisely because her topic, her pain, is ever-morphing and in a constant state of flux, its edges shifting and nearly unknowable—the essay, a form without rules, boundaries, limits, or ends becomes the subject's most worthy and perfect vessel. Six sections of approximately five essays divide Pain Woman Takes Your Keys into small and specific manifestations of pain's effects. In the book's opening section, "Pain Bows in Greeting," Huber introduces pain as a concept by the things it "wants," and in the second essay, "Pain as Lava Lamp," attempts the book's first metaphorical description of the sensation the narrator experiences every day: "It wasn't the whack of an anvil or the burn of a scraped knee. This pain sat warmly on the surface of my hands up to the elbows like evil, pink evening gloves, with a sort of swimming cap clenched on my head, with blue plastic flowers at the base of the neck, and a nauseating blur in the eyes." In the essays that follow, Huber recasts her pain in images. She does this out of necessity. "In fact, if I don't feed it a metaphor on a daily basis," she writes, "my pain devours me." In the book's third act, Huber writes of the various "Side Projects and Secret Identities" pain has allowed her to create. In the following section titled, "My Machines," she pays homage to the physical objects that help her navigate "Pain Woman's" worst days, and in "Bitchiness as Treatment Protocol," an intensely-human method of coping with an invisible condition. The collection would not be complete without an intimate view of Huber's home life, an aspect of pain studied in the book's penultimate section, "Intimate Moments with the Three of Us," or a lyric [End Page 39] exploration of one woman's connectedness to the universe at large. It is in this final section, "Measuring the Sky," that Huber's voice truly soars. "Pain is not a Jesus that wants anything from me. It doesn't scold or wag its finger, doesn't judge, and doesn't give a shit how its human handles itself. It just is, like the Grand Canyon, not as a concept or a postcard but the square inches that together find themselves forming a crater without specific consciousness of their outline," she writes in the essay "Between One and Ten Thousand." The voice here, Huber has noted pages earlier, sounds much different than that of "Pain Woman," an alternate identity who keeps pace writing, working, and creating art—even in the grips of...

The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone by Jaclyn Moriarty

Reviewed by: The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone by Jaclyn Moriarty Karen Coats Moriarty, Jaclyn The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone; illus. by Karl James Mountford. Levine/Scholastic, 2018 [384p] ISBN 978-1-338-25584-3 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 5-8 Ten-year-old Bronte, who has been raised for years by her aunt Isabelle, takes the news that her parents have been killed by pirates largely in stride. However, their strange, magically enforceable will requires that Bronte travel the kingdom to give gifts to each of her ten other aunts. In good middle-grade fashion, each stop opens her eyes to a new aspect of her world and herself via adventures that call on her courage and resourcefulness, while her wry self-awareness downplays any overabundance of pluck. Among her many exploits, she rescues a baby from drowning, solves a crime that liberates one of her aunts from prison, causes an avalanche, befriends dragons, and, with the help of her cousins, stands up to her grandfather, an evil king bent on world domination. The plotting is as self-aware as Bronte's narration, with clever nods to the traditions and motifs of children's literature. Readers will find much to love here: more than one plucky orphan; lovable jumbles of quirky cousins; a prince and a princess in disguise; soccer-playing elves, friendly dragons, and lovestruck water sprites; sad adults in need of rescue; ordinary-seeming aunts with secret identities; and ambiguous prophecies that turn normal kids into heroes. Bronte's emotional growth keeps pace with her rollicking adventures, and sparse pen-and-ink spot art provides tonally apt detail of characters and settings that showcase Moriarty's significant talent for imagining and immersing readers in innovative worlds. KC Copyright © 2018 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

"It's a secret thing": Digital disembedding through online teen drama fandom

Fans of teen drama television series often feel that their pleasures are unworthy, with many going to great lengths to hide their practices from certain people. Social media plays a key role in contemporary fan cultures, and so fans must navigate platforms’ changing and complex norms around their users’ identity in careful and strategic ways. These acts counter recent scholarly claims about the ‘embeddedness’ (or entanglement, enmeshing) of social media’s technologies and norms within our everyday lives. In this paper I explore how fans sometimes disembed, or detach from the logics of certain platforms to facilitate secrecy. My respondents disembed from: (1) some platforms’ normalization of authentic identities, (2) social media’s increasing naturalization of its own embeddedness within everyday life, and (3) platforms’ demands that their users engage in often-risky practices of sharing. I draw on interview and social media observation data to examine how teen drama fandoms’ devalued cultural status motivates my respondents to create secret identities on certain platforms, particularly Facebook Pages.

Super Silicon Bros

Our electronic devices rely on it, but silicon is deeply flawed. Could one of its secret identities save the day, asks Tien Nguyen

Drawing from Resistance: Folklore, Race, and Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology

Cathy Schlund-Vials's essay examines the groundbreaking Asian American graphic narrative collection, Secret Identities (2009). Schlund-Vials argues that the comic's form provides Asian American artists and writers to speculate on non-normative and exceptional identities by putting a twist on the all-American superhero folklore. According to Schlund-Vials's analysis, graphic narratives offer a culture venue to explore alternative histories and identities that reimagine the past, present, and future for Asian Americans.