Security Archives Research Articles

Soviet prisoner of war camps in the territory of the Georgian SSR (1945-1954)

This article uses archival materials kept in the Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia. One of its main fonds is composed by former Soviet State Security (KGB) archive of the Georgian SSR. The materials used here describe in details the legislative base, POW-builders (facilities and scale), the exploitation of the POW workforce in agriculture, housing conditions of POWs as well as their physical conditions, and generate general conclusions regarding the conditions and functioning of the POW camps, revealing its role in the USSR economy and the assessment of the Soviet bureaucratic apparatus.

Losing Control? Unions’ Representativeness, Pirate Collective Agreements, and Wages

This paper documents the evolution of sector‐level collective agreements in Italy and investigates wage differentials associated with the diffusion of non‐representative agreements, often signed by unknown organizations—that is, the so‐called pirate agreements. Using employer–employee data from Social Security Archives, we find that non‐representative agreements are associated with significant wage penalties (up to −8 percent) compared with regular collective agreements. Wage penalties are heterogeneous across firm size and industry affiliation. It is also shown that half of the wage differential is due to selection effects. Finally, we provide suggestive evidence of firms’ coping strategies, showing that pirate agreements exhibit comparatively higher employment levels.

Involvement of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the Events in Afghanistan in the Late 1970s

Introduction. In this article, the author examines the position of the countries of the Middle East region in the late 1970s with regard to the armed conflict in Afghanistan. The emphasis is on the period on the eve of the entry of the Soviet troops to Afghanistan – from the April Revolution of 1978 until December 1979. The author’s focus is on two states: Pakistan directly bordering on Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, which is a major geopolitical actor in the region. Methods and materials. The author relies on documentary sources such as “Department of state bulletin”, documents of secret correspondence of the U.S. foreign policy agencies, documents of the U.S. National Security Archive, and special volumes on Afghanistan and the Middle East in “Foreign Relations of the United States. Diplomatic Papers, 1977–1980”. Thanks to these sources, it is possible to prove that the involvement of the states of the region in the Afghan armed conflict and its internationalization began even before the Soviet troops entered Afghanistan. Analysis. First, an overview of the objectives pursued by these states in Afghanistan and in the internal Afghan armed conflict is given. Following this, the author consistently reveals the position of these states in relation to the April Revolution of 1978, the ever-increasing Soviet involvement in the Afghan events (1978–1979) and the civil war that started against the Kabul government. Results. In conclusion the article reveals the role of these states in the process of internationalization of the Afghan armed conflict, which, according to the author, began before the Soviet troops entered Afghanistan.

Diplomatic Settlement Projects of the “Afghan Issue” (1980–1981)

The Soviet war in Afghanistan lasted for over nine years, from December 1979 to February 1989. The Afghan conflict became the largest military campaign of the Cold War. The continuing war in Afghanistan actually began to threaten peace and stability not only in Central Asia but in the whole world. It became a dead end for the occupiers, too. The international community perceived Soviet aggression as a significant threat to international peace and security. In the early 1980s the search for a diplomatic settlement to the situation around Afghanistan began. The purpose of the article is to investigate the ways of diplomatic settlement of the “Afghan issue” in 1980—1981 (before the Geneva Peace Talks) on the basis of official documents of the United Nations and the US National Security Archive. At the core of the research methodology there are typological, comparative аnd problem-chronological methods. In 1980–1981 a number of countries and international organizations initiated projects for a diplomatic settlement of the Afghan conflict. These countries were the following: the United States, Great Britain, France, Pakistan and others. The United Kingdom proposed a two-stage international conference to discuss the ending of foreign interference in Afghanistan and withdrawing foreign troops. According to the plan proposed by Pakistan, Soviet troops were to leave the DRA and be replaced by “international peacekeepers”. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (the President of France) proposed to convene an international conference with the participation of countries suspected of interfering in the internal affairs of the DRA in order to develop commitments on non-interference and refusal to supply weapons to Afghanistan. These projects were rejected by the USSR and the DRA. They argued that the official government of Afghanistan had not been invited to the proposed international conferences. The world community did not recognize the official government of Afghanistan. The authority of the USSR in the international arena fell significantly. Thus, the main reason for the delay in the negotiation process was the Soviet leadership’s adherence to the force line of conduct in relation to Afghanistan and the transfer of all responsibility for the Afghan crisis to its ideological opponents in the Cold War.

An innovative approach to identify past exposure to asbestos integrating questionnaire information and administrative data

Reconstruction of work history of subjects exposed to occupational carcinogens might be extremely challenging and provide unreliable results. This study, carried out in Italy from February to November 2014, aimed to explore the validity of an innovative approach to reconstruct the occupational history of workers who have previously been exposed to asbestos combining the administration of structured questionnaire with the use of administrative data. Subjects recruited in this study were enrolled in the cohorts of COSMOS 1 and 2 studies. Participants indicating an exposure to asbestos were contacted and a structured questionnaire was administered to them to verify the validity of the self-reported asbestos exposure. Subsequently, work histories of respondents were investigated using administrative information. The record linkage with social security archives allowed the reassembling of the complete work history of 487 participants. In detail, administrative files allow the retrieval of 98 % of workers declaring not to be exposed, versus 77 % using the questionnaire. Furthermore, the percentage of retrieved cases is not relevant for high risk sectors but it is almost double for industries with probable presence of asbestos. The combined and integrated use of structured questionnaire with administrative data proved effective in accurately identifying subjects who actually had an asbestos exposure. This innovative strategy, being cost-effective and easily adaptable to other carcinogens, could be particularly useful in selecting subjects to recruit in specific screening and control programs for the early diagnosis of occupational cancers.

Bellezza , Simone Attilio The Shore of Expectations: A Cultural Study of the ‘Shistdesiatnyky’ (review)

SEER, 98, 4, OCTOBER 2020 786 memoirs to the siege canon (p. 66). While works from both eras more candidly relayed the horrific conditions of the Blockade and criticized city leaders, their presentation of the heroic Soviet people and of the victory as a triumph of Soviet humanism over fascist barbarism remained consistent with wartime accounts (p. 68). In part two, Voronina draws on Hayden White’s Metahistory (Baltimore, MD, 1973) to demonstrate ‘the dependency of historical texts on literary forms’, and delves into historical scholarship from the Soviet and postSoviet eras, which ‘turned out to be written like socialist-realist novels’ (p. 149). Even when new evidence came to light, historians ‘did not attempt to dispute it [the master-narrative] and only added to it with new subject matters’ and evidence (p. 149). For instance, historians framed new forensic data about the death toll (p. 178) as lives willingly, meaningfully sacrificed. The book’s most powerful material appears in part three on siege survivors’ organizations, which have successfully lobbied the Soviet and post-Soviet states for material benefits. Presenting themselves not as civilian victims but as veterans who heroically defended the city, they have leveraged the SocialistRealist elements of the siege story to their advantage (pp. 264–65). ‘Earlier heroism was determined by the usefulness and significance of actions aimed at saving the city’, Voronina observes, but through survivors’ efforts, ‘lawmakers began to understand heroism as the very fact of being in a blockade’ (p. 265). Activists therefore joined professional writers, historians and memoirists to become co-creators of the Blockade myth. This insight is the capstone to a fascinating study about the interplay of personal experience and public discourse in the politics of memory. I only regret that the book’s analysis ends in 2006, leaving readers to wonder about the applicability of Voronina’s argument to the resurgence of the war cult in Russia today. Department of History Alexis Peri Boston University Bellezza, Simone Attilio. The Shore of Expectations: A Cultural Study of the ‘Shistdesiatnyky’. CIUS Press, Edmonton, AL and Toronto, ON, 2019. xxiii + 357 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $34.95: £26.99 (paperback). What we know about the post-Stalinist ‘Thaw’ remains heavily weighted towardsRussiaanditsmetropolitancentres.Increasingly,though,scholarshave turned towards other parts of the Soviet Union, comparing and contrasting the dynamics of Russian cultural liberalization and crackdown with those in Central Asia, the Baltics and other republics. Simone Attilio Bellezza’s study of the shistdesiatnyky — a key post-Stalinist Ukrainian cultural and political movement — is a valuable addition to the scholarship on the Thaw and REVIEWS 787 dissidence, as well as Ukrainian cultural history. Methodical and thorough in its collation and critique of a rich array of sources, from memoirs to party and state security archives, the book presents a linear, chronological account of the rise and fall of the movement. It recounts in detail every major incident in its history from the death of Stalin to the movement’s collapse in the early 1970s, with thorough biographies of its key protagonists along the way, including Lina Kostenko, Ivan Dziuba, Valentyn Moroz and many others. As such, it is the most comprehensive and up-to-date account of the movement in Englishlanguage scholarship, though the vast array of protagonists and publications might prove somewhat disorientating to non-Ukrainianists. The book’s three lengthy chapters are each devoted to a sub-period between 1953 and the mid-1970s. They trace the emergence of the movement out of the post-Stalinist literary renaissance, through to more overtly political samizdat (samvydav in Ukrainian) and public demonstrations, harshly punished by the authorities until the movement collapsed; subsequent Ukrainian dissident groups, surveyed in the epilogue, were of a quite different character. The account of shistdesiatnytstvo is largely descriptive, and at times too detailed, with a tendency to quote sources at excessive length and a structure driven by successive events rather than a consistently clear line of argument. However, it does also persuasively challenge previous views of the movement as nationalist in origin. As demonstrated through nuanced analysis of biography and memoir material, the majority of key participants held sincere Marxist-Leninist views, shaped by Soviet education and Komsomol experience. Most only...

Organizing the Mechanism of Conducting the “Secret War” of the USA Against the Sandinista Regime of 1984

Introduction. In Russian historiography, the issue of the reasons for the beginning of the U.S. special operations in Nicaragua is a complex problem that requires careful development due to its importance as one of the elements of the confrontation during the Cold War. The scientific relevance of this issue is determined by the insufficient degree of its study. The socio-political relevance is related to the current military-political situation in the world in general and the actions of the United States in particular, which, as part of ensuring their national security, use special operations to achieve certain goals and objectives. An example of this is the U.S.-led special operation to destroy Osama bin Laden, during which the sovereignty of Pakistan was violated. Another example of U.S. special operations at the present stage is Washington’s support of the “proxy” forces loyal to it in Syria. Special operations conducted by the United States in Nicaragua during the first half of the 80s were in many ways the main tool for achieving U.S. state interests in this country. In this regard, it seems that a detailed consideration of the first attempt in the history of the United States to conduct a global special operation, which began with the program of supporting the anti-Communist forces “Contras” in Nicaragua, which was later funded by the illegal supply of American weapons to Iran, would be useful for the domestic scientific doctrine. Methods and materials. In the course of the research, the historical-comparative method, the method of analysis and synthesis, as well as the system approach are applied. The study uses: 1) a set of unpublished materials on the special activities of the United States in Nicaragua, declassified in connection with the “Iran-Contra” scandal, and contained on the electronic website of the National Security Archive at the George Washington University; 2) published sources related to the Cold War; 3) scientific literature on the problems of U.S. special operations during the cold war; 4) memoir literature. Analysis. This article analyzes the reasons that influenced the decision of the U.S. political leadership to authorize special operations in Nicaragua based on the documents and materials studied in the Iran-Contra Affair. Results. The scientific development of the problems of the U.S. special policy in Nicaragua was observed back in the 80s in the USSR. However, it was conducted in hot pursuit, it was biased, considered a complex set of processes taking place in Central America from the perspective of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, and did not take into account the American position, which made the scientific assessment of these events less complete and justified. New studies of this period take this factor into account, are based on new methods and previously unknown to the scientific community documents and materials that were declassified after the end of the Cold War. Results. In the course of the study, an attempt was made to highlight the mechanism for the development and implementation of U.S. special operations in Nicaragua. The author concludes that the use of the National Security Council personnel for special operations was conditioned by the need to avoid legislative restrictions of the U.S. Congress when implementing U.S. foreign policy in Nicaragua.

Das Vadanya" To the Multilateral Force: The Societ Union's Role in the Johnson Administration's Decision to Abandon the MLF

The Multilateral Force (MLF) was a proposed nuclear sharing arrangement between the United States and a number of its NATO partners. Proposed in 1958, the MLF was debated until about 1965 or 1966 and was often distinguished by its controversial nature and failure to gain traction. This paper examines documents from the Digital National Security Archive (DNSA), Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State, and various secondary sources to evaluate the extent to which the Soviet Union contributed to the MLF’s failure as an initiative. The Force is often treated as a narrow and highly technical policy debate by existing literature. However, examination of these documents highlighted the necessity of viewing the Force as a topic of distinct political import in American-Soviet nuclear negotiations. While technical disputes over the MLF’s constitution was an immediate cause of its demise, U.S. policymakers also faced strategic incentives not to pursue the treaty. In particular, the documents reflect growing belief within the Johnson administration that exiting the agreement could improve broader bilateral relations with the Soviet Union and ensure that the international community could continue to make progress on the creation of a nuclear non-proliferation agreement.

‘Code Name SEKRETÁŘ’: Amílcar Cabral, Czechoslovakia and the Role of Human Intelligence during the Cold War

Since 1961, Czechoslovakia had been a key supporter of the liberation struggle in Guinea-Bissau, providing the PAIGC with arms, monthly financial assistance and scholarships for military training. The extraordinary extent of this assistance can be partly explained through the ‘special relationship’ developed between Amílcar Cabral and Czechoslovakia’s Ministry of the Interior. Based on newly released records from the Czechoslovak security archives, this paper examines this clandestine relationship, addressing Prague’s motivation for recruiting Cabral as a ‘clandestine contact’ under the code name of SEKRETÁŘ (‘Secretary’ in Czech), as well as ways in which the intelligence services sought Cabral’s help in making sense of African politics and engaging with leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah. Analysing the ‘give and take’ relationship between Cabral and Czechoslovak officials, the paper argues that in many ways it was Cabral who shaped the relationship with Czechoslovakia to benefit the PAIGC. By demystifying the relationship between Cabral and Czechoslovak Intelligence, the paper provides insight into the agency of so-called peripheral actors and of human intelligence in the Cold War.

PROSEDUR PENGELOLAAN ARSIP UNTUK KEAMANAN DOKUMEN DI RSIA PURI BUNDA MALANG

In every organization, institution or agency in the implementation of the daily activities cannot be separated from an administrative activity. One of administration activity is archival activities. One of the purposes of the filing activities are archives that are stored remain safe and secure. Security activities of the archive also needs to be done to keep the archive remains in losed and damaged. The methods of data analysis to support the work of this research were used qualitative analysis method and used the method of data collection by observation and interview. The results of the research it had been known that the security of the archive was not in accordance with existing theory. Security archive influenced by how Hospital of Puri Bunda Malang conducting the management of the archive in order to avoid loss and damage to the archive. The problem occured because there is no control in borrowing and lending system of the archives, no certain place to put in, bad disaster resistance building, and also the lack of detail in the saving procedure. The Hospital of Puri Bunda Malang needed to pay attention to the security of the archives as well as the stored maintenance records.

Toward a Coordinated Global Observing System for Seagrasses and Marine Macroalgae

In coastal waters around the world, the dominant primary producers are benthic macrophytes, including seagrasses and macroalgae, that provide habitat structure and food for diverse and abundant biological communities and drive ecosystem processes. Seagrass meadows and macroalgal forests play key roles for coastal societies, contributing to fishery yields, storm protection, biogeochemical cycling and storage, and important cultural values. These socio-economically valuable services are threatened worldwide by human activities, with substantial areas of seagrass and macroalgal forests lost over the last half-century. Tracking the status and trends in marine macrophyte cover and quality is an emerging priority for ocean and coastal management, but doing so has been challenged by limited coordination across the numerous efforts to monitor macrophytes, which vary widely in goals, methodologies, scales, capacity, governance approaches, and data availability. Here, we present a consensus assessment and recommendations on the current state of and opportunities for advancing global marine macrophyte observations, integrating contributions from a community of researchers with broad geographic and disciplinary expertise. With the increasing scale of human impacts, the time is ripe to harmonize marine macrophyte observations by building on existing networks and identifying a core set of common metrics and approaches in sampling design, field measurements, governance, capacity building, and data management. We recommend a tiered observation system, with improvement of remote sensing and remote underwater imaging to expand capacity to capture broad-scale extent at intervals of several years, coordinated with stratified in situ sampling annually to characterize the key variables of cover and taxonomic or functional group composition, and to provide ground-truth. A robust networked system of macrophyte observations will be facilitated by establishing best practices, including standard protocols, documentation, and sharing of resources at all stages of workflow, and secure archiving of open-access data. Because such a network is necessarily distributed, sustaining it depends on close engagement of local stakeholders and focusing on building and long-term maintenance of local capacity, particularly in the developing world. Realizing these recommendations will produce more effective, efficient, and responsive observing, a more accurate global picture of change in vegetated coastal systems, and stronger international capacity for sustaining observations.

The Relationship between Training and Job Performance: A Systematic Review

Background/Objectives: Studies investigating the association or effect between training and job/employees’ performance that met the data extraction and quality assessment criteria are included in this review. Methods/Statistical Analysis: This study systematically reviews published studies to describe the association between training and job/employees’ performance, as well as their influence on each other. This involves systematically reviewing studies by searching different databases including the British Nursing Database, the Digital National Security Archive, ERIC, LISA, ProQuest Central and ProQuest Dissertation and Thesis. The search, completed in November 2018, looks for studies that include the following terms in their abstracts: “Training,” and “Job Performance,” or “Employees’ Performance.” Findings: The findings show that the correlation between training and job/employees’ performance are significant in ten of the studies included in this systematic review and only one study shows no association between training and job/employees’ performance. In addition, the studies show that training impacted job/employees’ performance while indicating that training was an independent variable and job/employees’ performance was a dependent variable in most of the studies. This review systematically collects and assesses studies to explore the relationship between training and job/employees’ performance. Improvements/Applications: Training is one of the essential elements in organizations’ performance. It enhances employees’ skills, knowledge and competencies, which in return increase the organization’s overall performance. Also, training is an important instrument for improving employees’ performance. Furthermore, this systematic review is the first of it is kind, up to the author’s knowledge, to explore the association between training and job/employees’ performance and it provides recommendations for training and human resource managers. Keywords: Employees’ Performance, Job Performance, Organization’s Performance, PRISMA, Systematic Review, Training

The United States and Sputnik: A Reassessment of Dwight D. Eisenhower's Presidential Legacy

Dwight D. Eisenhower's legacy as President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 has experienced a dramatic reversal in scholarly assessment. Previously denounced as a "do-nothing" president whose ignorance and complacency tarnished the prestige of the executive office, the declassification of National Security Archives, the publication of Eisenhower's memoirs, and the memoirs of those closest to the president has contributed to a shift in Eisenhower's reputation from animosity to admiration. Scholars now praise Eisenhower for his modesty, wisdom, and resourcefulness. This paper contributes to the ongoing historiographical revaluation of Eisenhower's presidential legacy by examining his handling of an overlooked episode of American history - the Sputnik Crisis of 1957. Upon receiving word of the successful launch of the Soviet satellite in October 1957, Eisenhower surrounded himself with scientists, academics, and engineers to formulate the most appropriate policy responses to Sputnik, and to refute Congressional calls for increased military spending. As such, Eisenhower accelerated the American satellite program, established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), reorganized the Department of Defense to eliminate inter-service rivalry, and provided for moderate infusions of federal funding into post-secondary education via the National Defense Education Act. Indeed, Eisenhower's strategic handling of the Sputnik Crisis cements Eisenhower's reputation as an effective, proactive, and overall effective president.

Secure communication and archiving of low altitude remote sensing data using high capacity fragile data hiding

Fragile data hiding has been extensively used for secure transmission of the sensitive data using cover images, audios and videos. In the past decade, increasingly the remote sensing applications require transmission and archiving of large number of aerial images and videos. Storage and processing of remote sensing data in the public cloud computing and storage platforms, with servers outside the control of the data owners, requires sufficient attention to persevering the privacy of the data. Furthermore, in the past few years the applications of drones and unmanned aerial vehicles demand algorithms designed especially for low altitude remote sensing data. In this paper, a novel fragile data hiding algorithm for secure transmission and archiving of sensitive data in low altitude aerial videos is presented. The proposed method incorporates Integer-to-Integer discrete wavelet transform and lattice vector quantization to present a high capacity data hiding algorithm. The fragility of the proposed algorithm results in the loss of the embedded authentication credential by any tampering attempt. The experimental results show that the proposed fragile data hiding algorithm is capable of hiding significantly higher amount of data in the aerial videos compared to other existing algorithms while keeping the perceptual quality of the cover media in an acceptable range.

Development of a Smart Mobile Data Module for Fetal Monitoring in E-Healthcare.

The fetal heart rate (FHR) is a marker of fetal well-being in utero (when monitoring maternal and/or fetal pathologies) and during labor. Here, we developed a smart mobile data module for the remote acquisition and transmission (via a Wi-Fi or 4G connection) of FHR recordings, together with a web-based viewer for displaying the FHR datasets on a computer, smartphone or tablet. In order to define the features required by users, we modelled the fetal monitoring procedure (in home and hospital settings) via semi-structured interviews with midwives and obstetricians. Using this information, we developed a mobile data transfer module based on a Raspberry Pi. When connected to a standalone fetal monitor, the module acquires the FHR signal and sends it (via a Wi-Fi or a 3G/4G mobile internet connection) to a secure server within our hospital information system. The archived, digitized signal data are linked to the patient's electronic medical records. An HTML5/JavaScript web viewer converts the digitized FHR data into easily readable and interpretable graphs for viewing on a computer (running Windows, Linux or MacOS) or a mobile device (running Android, iOS or Windows Phone OS). The data can be viewed in real time or offline. The application includes tools required for correct interpretation of the data (signal loss calculation, scale adjustment, and precise measurements of the signal's characteristics). We performed a proof-of-concept case study of the transmission, reception and visualization of FHR data for a pregnant woman at 30weeks of amenorrhea. She was hospitalized in the pregnancy assessment unit and FHR data were acquired three times a day with a Philips Avalon® FM30 fetal monitor. The prototype (Raspberry Pi) was connected to the fetal monitor's RS232 port. The emission and reception of prerecorded signals were tested and the web server correctly received the signals, and the FHR recording was visualized in real time on a computer, a tablet and smartphones (running Android and iOS) via the web viewer. This process did not perturb the hospital's computer network. There was no data delay or loss during a 60-min test. The web viewer was tested successfully in the various usage situations. The system was as user-friendly as expected, and enabled rapid, secure archiving. We have developed a system for the acquisition, transmission, recording and visualization of RCF data. Healthcare professionals can view the FHR data remotely on their computer, tablet or smartphone. Integration of FHR data into a hospital information system enables optimal, secure, long-term data archiving.

ELIXIR Human Data Use Case: Secure archiving, dissemination and analysis of human access-controlled data

ELIXIR Human Data Use Case: Secure archiving, dissemination and analysis of human access-controlled data

NATO Enlargement—Was There a Promise?

NATO Enlargement—Was There a Promise?

Pakistan's Nuclear Program: Laying the Groundwork for Impunity

While there are numerous histories of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program available (e.g. Bhutto 1979; F. Khan 2012a, 2012b; International Institute for Strategic Studies 2007; Corera 2006; Levy and Scott-Clark 2007; Salik 2009), in this chapter I make two modest interventions to the existing corpus. First, whereas conventional scholarship (inter alia Kapur 2007) presume Pakistan to be a covert nuclear power since 1990, I argue that Pakistan has been a covert nuclear power for much longer, perhaps since as early as 1979. Second, marshalling evidence from the U.S. National Security Archives, I show that India was very much aware of Pakistan’s nuclear developments throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These admittedly reserved alterations of the conventioal wisdom imply that scholars should reconsider how they view earlier conflicts between India and Pakistan such as Operation Brasstacks throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Whereas Cohen and others argue that Brasstacks was not a nuclear dispute because “Pakistan had not yet acquired a nuclear weapon,” the evidence I put forward here suggests that this crisis was, in fact, a nuclearized crisis (Cohen 2016, 250).

A ROI-based high capacity reversible data hiding scheme with contrast enhancement for medical images

In this paper, we attempt to investigate the secure archiving of medical images which are stored on semi-trusted cloud servers, and focus on addressing the complicated and challenging integrity control and privacy preservation issues. With the intention of protecting the medical images stored on a semi-trusted server, a novel ROI-based high capacity reversible data hiding (RDH) scheme with contrast enhancement is proposed in this paper. The proposed method aims at improving the quality of the medical images effectively and embedding high capacity data reversibly meanwhile. Therefore, the proposed method adopts “adaptive threshold detector” (ATD) segmentation algorithm to automatically separate the “region of interest” (ROI) and “region of non-interest” (NROI) at first, then enhances the contrast of the ROI region by stretching the grayscale and embeds the data into peak bins of the stretched histogram without extending the histogram bins. Lastly, the rest of the required large of data are embedded into NROI region regardless its quality. In addition, the proposed method records the edge location of the segmentation instead of recording the location of the overflow and underflow. The experiment shows that the proposed method can improve the quality of medical images obviously whatever in low embedding rate or high embedding rate when compared with other contrast-based RDH methods.

Specters of Revolution: Peasant Guerrillas in the Cold War Mexican Countryside, by Alexander Aviña

In the 1960s and ’70s much of Latin America languished under military-authoritarian regimes which brutally repressed political opponents, real and imagined, often justifying these guerras sucias (‘dirty wars’) in the name of peace, order, Christianity and anti-Communism. Mexico, in contrast, remained a civilian polity, ruled by a dominant party, the PRI, which claimed the patriotic and progressive mantle of the Mexican Revolution of 1910; indeed, Mexico became a haven for Argentine and Chilean political refugees, as it had for Spanish Republicans a generation earlier. The PRI prided itself on its revolutionary legitimacy and provision of politico-economic stability; so, many wrongly concluded, repression was no more than a sporadic aberration (the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre being the biggest aberrant example). Recent research, helped by the opening of sensitive security archives after 2000, has shown that repression was more severe and systematic than had previously been thought (if more discreet than in South America: Tlatelolco, a massacre in downtown Mexico City, was, in that sense, a real exception).