Valuable Artifacts Research Articles

Mobile Forensics Analysis for Instant Messaging Applications Namely TamTam and Botim

Cybercrimes are rapidly increasing in parallel with the usage of digital tools. Criminals can use many methods to carry out their crimes such as mobile phones and instant messaging applications. Because of that, it is important to investigate the ability to retrieve evidence from mobiles that may be involved in cybercrime. This research aims to perform a mobile forensic analysis to retrieve evidence from specific instant messaging applications. To this end, an experiment was conducted to mimic the scene of illegal messages, delete them, and investigate the ability to retrieve deleted files. According to the result, this research successfully obtained text messages, multimedia data, and contact lists. The research's novelty can be derived from its ability to retrieve deleted data, demonstrating the feasibility of retrieving evidence from instant messaging applications that have not been investigated before. In future work, analyzing these applications under other operating system platforms may offer valuable artifacts for investigators.

«ГДЕ ЗАПИСЫВАЮТ В КОШАЧЬИ ИМПЕРАТОРЫ?»: ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЕ ОБРАЗОВ ЖИВОТНЫХ В СОВРЕМЕННОМ БРЕНДИРОВАНИИ МУЗЕЕВ И ДОСУГОВЫХ ПРОСТРАНСТВ

The article describes the ways the image of cats is used to make museums attractive to visitors. The author has studied how this practice is applied in such museums as the Hermitage Museum, house museum of Anna Akhmatova on the Fontanka River, the State Museum of Vyborg Castle, and archaeological reserve «Tauric Chersonese». Moreover, some social networking pages on Vkontakte and «Classmates» have been analysed, including those of the cat Bridgelet, the cats from Chersonese, and the cat Philimon from Vyborg Castle. The article proves that the images of the cats from these and other museums have become popular means to attract prospective visitors. The following examples of conducting such a marketing work can prove it: social networking pages run in the name of cats, various contests and events connected with cats. The author has come to the conclusion that the usage of feline images is brought about by multifaceted transformations in society. In particular, nowadays museums and libraries function not merely as places to store data and historically valuable artefacts, but also as leisure facilities. In addition, the attitude to domestic animals plays a huge role here, as now they are kept at home for pleasure, rather than for work. We can’t but mention the changes in the system of social values: domestic asceticism has been replaced by a convenient and cosy way of life, thus popularizing the images of animals that are associated with it.

Forensically analyzing IoT smart camera using MAoIDFF-IoT framework

IoT devices spread over a wide range of applications these days, and their vast amount of data generated becomes a target for intruders. IoT digital forensics, which involves extracting the digital evidence from the IoT device itself and/or its network traffic using a framework is important and challenging. The challenges include the diversity of types of IoT devices, resource constraints, and users’ privacy. In this article, we focus on network forensics investigations of smart camera traffic as a case study. The investigation process followed the MAoIDFF-IoT framework, a comprehensive and effective framework for IoT devices, and focusing on the locations of potential Artifacts of Interest (AoI). In addition, a few scenarios in using the camera are investigated to obtain a valuable artifact. The results show that it is possible to extract a few artifacts from the network captured traffic even though the traffic is encrypted. Moreover, this research offers guidelines for digital investigators to conduct network forensics on smart camera devices, with detailed results provided.

Scanning, modelling and dissemination of the interior appearance of wooden historic churches in the Maramures region of Romania

In the Maramureș region of Romania there is a large number of historic wooden churches dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries. These objects of tangible cultural heritage continue to be exposed to degradation factors. Meanwhile, their interiors hide important and historically valuable artefacts of cultural heritage. Their loss would noticeably impoverish the heritage of local communities. This article presents the problems of 3D scanning the interiors of wooden historic churches, the scanning methodology specifically developed for this occasion, the equipment used and its parameters, and the results of its application. Four examples of wooden churches from the Maramureș region were studied: modern laser scanning technologies with appropriate selection of parameters permits a satisfactorily precise scan of the interior of a wooden religious building, even in difficult lighting conditions. The methodology and equipment choice was proven to be successful and is recommended here for future projects in the region and for structures facing similar challenges.

КҮЗЕМБАЙ БАЙБОСЫНОВТЫҢ ӨЛКЕТАНУ БАҒЫТЫНДАҒЫ ЕЛЕУЛІ ЕҢБЕКТЕРІ, ҒАЛЫМНЫҢ ХАТЫ ӨШПЕЙДІ

The article examines the works of the famous historian and local historian Baibosynov Kuzembaya. He made a great contribution to the study of the Zhambyl region. Throughout his life he conducted many scientific studies. He worked hard to find historical sites and valuable materials. Baibosynov Kuzembay did not stop his research even at retirement age. There were cases when they continued archaeological research in the sites of “Nizhniya Baryskhan”, located near the city of Taraz, they drew up a plan to open a museum there and presented it to the regional leadership.He presented the research he had done over the years and always mentioned historical sites that needed to be explored in the future.When students came to him for interviews, he shared many of his scientific plans and mentored the youth for the future. Let's talk about some articles that were published during his lifetime. The works of the Baibosynov Kuzembaya were published in local and national newspapers. Some time ago, an expedition organized by the museum brought from the Zhdanov state farm, Amangeldinsky department, Talas region, a very rare wooden bed made by Dayyrbekov Biten, who a century ago was famous for his art in the lower Talas region.Those who saw him and remember that he learned this art from his brothers Togyzbai and Onbai, and until recently, products made by him could be found in this village, but now they are not. In Kuzembai's articles, he was very interested in the history of the region and the creative work of the artists of this region. For example, one of the problems that has been bothering me for a long time is that wonderful works created by folk craftsmen and their musical instruments are being brought together. But some of them refuse to send it to the museum because it is a valuable thing left by their ancestors, he says. He writes about where and how the museum collected valuable artifacts from remote villages in the region.

Conserving Palmyra's Ancient Heritage: Challenges, Strategies, and Innovative Solutions

The ongoing conflict in Syria has inflicted significant damage on the cultural heritage of Palmyra, with monuments, temples, and tombs severely destroyed or damaged, and valuable artifacts lost due to looting and illegal excavation. Inadequate funding, resources, and a lack of a legal framework for heritage protection exacerbate the situation. This article explores various conservation strategies to address these issues, including international cooperation, documentation and mapping of archaeological sites, community engagement, and the establishment of a legal framework for heritage protection. Case studies of successful conservation projects offer valuable insights into effective strategies for preserving cultural heritage in conflict-affected areas. Additionally, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) presents promising solutions for heritage conservation. AI technologies can assist in documenting and mapping archaeological sites, assessing damage, predicting future threats, and creating virtual reconstructions of destroyed heritage buildings. This study aims to analyze the obstacles in conserving Palmyra's heritage buildings during the Syrian conflict and propose effective strategies for conservation. The research addresses challenges such as conflict, looting, inadequate resources, and the lack of a legal framework for heritage protection. Preserving Palmyra's ancient heritage is crucial for humanity's cultural legacy. Despite these challenges, the international community, local stakeholders, and innovative technologies offer hope for restoration and preservation.

Seismic behavior assessment of fasteners based on a shaking table test of a museum building model with a display case and artifacts

Fasteners are widely used in museums as an attachment method to secure objects. However, due to the lack of research on the seismic behaviour of fasteners under seismic loads, the implementation of fasteners in museums usually lacks scientific guidance, resulting in their ineffectiveness in improving the seismic safety of museum artifacts. In addition, few studies have experimentally investigated the adverse effects of structural dynamic amplification on the seismic safety of museum artifacts. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the seismic behavior of fasteners used in museums and provide valuable insights for protecting museum artifacts. Shaking table tests were conducted on a full-scale model of a museum building, display case, and artifacts to simulate seismic loads and investigate the seismic response of two typical artifacts secured with fasteners. A numerical study was also performed to evaluate different types of fasteners and their effectiveness in enhancing the seismic safety of artifacts. The adverse effects of dynamic amplification on artifact safety were discussed, and recommendations were provided for improving the seismic behavior of fasteners. Furthermore, the impact of multidirectional seismic excitation on the safety of the artifacts and the seismic performance of the fasteners were analyzed. The research findings contribute to the selection of appropriate fasteners for preserving valuable artifacts in museums.

Climate grief, resilience and Brian Fies’s A fire story

ABSTRACT Climate change has profoundly impacted ecosystems, communities, and individuals worldwide. Climate change comics have emerged as a powerful medium for raising environmental awareness, particularly by highlighting the emotional toll it takes on humans. This paper examines the graphic narrative, A Fire Story: A Memoir by Brian Fies, which depicts the devastating wildfire disaster that struck Northern California in 2017. The narrative effectively conveys the ecological and human habitat destruction caused by climate change-induced natural disasters through autobiographical and witnesses accounts. It offers reflections on the past, present, and future while challenging climate denial and exploring themes of climate grief and resilience. The narrative explores how the traumatic event disrupts personal chronology and exposes the emotional vulnerability of survivors in their post-disaster lives. This article analyzes climate grief and resilience in climate change comics, emphasising the significance of A Fire Story as a valuable artefact that documents the testimonies of witnesses and survivors. To challenge climate denial, graphic narratives go beyond generalities and present highly detailed and emotionally charged narratives, including social fragmentation, forced evacuation, and economic devastation.

Legends about Prusian Cities

The Prussian settlements contain archaeological information that can be enriched with data from folk legends about these fortified settlements. In the proposed article, several legends of Sambia (the Kaliningrad peninsula of the Kaliningrad region) are selected, the analysis of which allowed us to draw the following conclusions: in the names of the settlements there are rudiments of the Prussian language, which disappeared from local use in the beginning of the 18th century . In the array of legends about the Prussian settlements, some of which arose already in the 17th century, there are several sorts / types of texts. They have both local, Prussian, and external, Germanic origin. Some of the legends of Sambia are an echo of finds made not earlier than the time of the order on the sites of settlements or near them (treasures, individual valuable artifacts, sacrificial stones, etc.). Indirectly, this indicates that the authors of the legends and their narrators reported that the settlements were once the habitats of the local population. All of the above allows us to consider the legends about the Prussian settlements of Sambia as a special, but, nevertheless, interesting and important source of the settlement history of the center of the Prussian tribal area.

ЕВОЛЮЦІЯ ТА РОЗВИТОК МУЗЕЙНИХ БУДІВЕЛЬ

Museums are not just places where valuable artifacts of historical significance are stored and exhibited. They are true masterpieces of architectural art and places that win the hearts of visitors with their internal organization and aesthetic expression. The article examines the phenomenon of spectacular buildings, focusing on museums that fascinate with their architectural solutions and interior design. The author examines the emergence of the first museums as institutions that store and display artifacts of historical significance. The author reveals how over time museums have become not only places of preservation of valuable things, but also cultural centers that reflect social and intellectual achievements. The further evolution of museums has led to the emergence of incredible architectural creations that have become real spectacles of the museum world. The article explores various concepts used in the creation of modern museums. The functionality of the museum and the basic principles of museum interior design are considered. The importance of the aesthetic components of the museum interior is highlighted, showing how lighting and colors play an important role in creating an atmosphere and mood that support the goals and ideas of the museum. Attention is paid to the establishment of the art of museum exposition in recent years as an independent and valuable genre of creativity. All of these aspects allow museums to remain relevant and engaging for audiences. They fulfill an important mission of preserving cultural heritage and provide an opportunity to enjoy art and history in a unique way. Museums continue to amaze us with their beauty and intellectual richness, revealing to us the greatness and diversity of the world.

IoT forensics: Exploiting log records from the DAHUA technology CCTV systems.

CCTV surveillance systems are ubiquitous IoT appliances. Their forensic examination has proven critical for investigating crimes. DAHUA Technology is a well-known manufacturer of such products. Despite its global market share, research regarding digital forensics of DAHUA Technology CCTV systems is scarce and currently limited to extracting their video footage, overlooking the potential presence of valuable artifacts within their log records. These pieces of evidence remain unexploited by major commercial forensic software, yet they can hide vital information for an investigation. For instance, these log records document user actions, such as formatting the CCTV system's hard drive or disabling camera recording. This information can assist in attributing nefarious actions to specific users and hence can be invaluable for understanding the sequence of events related to incidents. Therefore, in this paper, several DAHUA Technology CCTV systems are thoroughly analyzed for these unexplored pieces of evidence, and their forensic value is presented.

Practices and challenges of threat modelling in agile environments

Facing the increasing annual cybersecurity costs, threat modelling (TM) is a method to consider security as early as possible in the software development life cycle (SDLC). Thereby, TM helps to identify and address security-related design flaws in information systems. As the original TM approach is based on sequential development, it is not aligned with today’s predominantly agile environments. This results in several challenges. However, TM’s implementation in an agile development approach lacks the recommendations on how to tackle these challenges. Therefore, we assess the state-of-the-art of TM challenges and practices in agile environments by conducting a literature review covering 220 papers. Thereby, we identify nine categories of challenges and six categories of practices. We propose a valuable artefact for practitioners by mapping challenges and practices to the agile SDLC and by creating a matrix highlighting how the practices address the challenges of TM in an agile environment.

Enhancing Artifact Protection in Smart Transportation Monitoring Systems via a Porous Structural Triboelectric Nanogenerator

Artifacts are irreplaceable treasures of human culture, and transportation monitoring is critical for safeguarding valuable artifacts against damage during culture exchanges. However, current collision-monitoring technologies have limitations in regard to real-time monitoring, cushioning protection, and power supply requirements. Here, we present a method for constructing a smart artifact-monitoring system (SAMS) based on a porous carbon black (CB)/Ecoflex triboelectric nanogenerator (PCE-TENG) that can monitor collisions in real time and absorb vibrations during artifact transportation. The PCE-TENG is assembled using a flexible printed circuit board (FPCB) and a porous Ecoflex layer with CB powder. It exhibits cushioning protection, stretchability, pressure sensitivity, and durability. To enhance its electrical output, modifications were made to optimize the CB content and surface structure. The SAMS comprises six PCE-TENGs attached to the inner wall of the artifact transport package and enables collision monitoring and protection in different directions. Moreover, the SAMS has the capability to instantly transmit warning information to monitoring terminals in the event of improper operations, empowering carriers to promptly and efficiently safeguard artifacts by taking necessary measures. This paper presents a practical strategy for artifact transportation monitoring and package engineering that could have significant implications for the field.

IoT forensics: Analysis of a HIKVISION's mobile app

CCTV surveillance systems are ubiquitous IoT products. These CCTV systems can be remotely operated using either a mobile or a desktop application. HIKVISION is a well-known manufacturer of such devices that offers a variety of applications that allow remote usage of their products. Research regarding digital forensics of HIKVISION's CCTV systems is scarce and currently only limited to recovering video footage from the devices themselves, skipping all valuable artifacts that could reside within the applications' data that were utilized to access them. This unexplored piece of evidence is currently not parsed by either commercial or open source software yet it can hide vital information for a number of investigative questions. In this paper, a HIKVISION's mobile application is thoroughly analyzed, in both Android and iOS operating systems, in pursuit of evidentiary data that could reside within. Exploiting the findings of this study authors contributed to FOSS with the aim of assisting investigators with their examinations. In particular, they used their findings to develop relevant parsers for ALEAPP and iLEAPP.

THE REMAINS OF THE VISHNU TEMPLE AND OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION

This research paper explores the historical significance of the ancient city of Besnagar, located in Madhya Pradesh, India. Through archaeological excavations conducted by the Archaeological Survey of India, valuable artifacts and structures have been unearthed, shedding light on the city's prominence during the Mauryan and Shunga periods. Besnagar, believed to be a distorted form of Vaishya Nagar, was likely a prominent center of Vaishnavism in ancient times. Situated between the Betwa and Bes rivers, the city was protected by a nearly one-kilometer-long defensive wall on the Udayagiri Road. Outside the city walls, a large reservoir made of massive stones stored water from both rivers, contributing to the city's development. The study aims to shed light on the historical context, architectural features, and religious significance of the Vishnu Temple and other archaeological remains from the site.

Pashto Handwritten Invariant Character Trajectory Prediction Using a Customized Deep Learning Technique.

Before the 19th century, all communication and official records relied on handwritten documents, cherished as valuable artefacts by different ethnic groups. While significant efforts have been made to automate the transcription of major languages like English, French, Arabic, and Chinese, there has been less research on regional and minor languages, despite their importance from geographical and historical perspectives. This research focuses on detecting and recognizing Pashto handwritten characters and ligatures, which is essential for preserving this regional cursive language in Pakistan and its status as the national language of Afghanistan. Deep learning techniques were employed to detect and recognize Pashto characters and ligatures, utilizing a newly developed dataset specific to Pashto. A further enhancement was done on the dataset by implementing data augmentation, i.e., scaling and rotation on Pashto handwritten characters and ligatures, which gave us many variations of a single trajectory. Different morphological operations for minimizing gaps in the trajectories were also performed. The median filter was used for the removal of different noises. This dataset will be combined with the existing PHWD-V2 dataset. Various deep-learning techniques were evaluated, including VGG19, MobileNetV2, MobileNetV3, and a customized CNN. The customized CNN demonstrated the highest accuracy and minimal loss, achieving a training accuracy of 93.98%, validation accuracy of 92.08% and testing accuracy of 92.99%.

The Deutsches Museum Spacesuit Display: Long-Term Preservation and Atmospheric Monitoring

Spacesuits are highly valuable artifacts made of sensitive synthetic materials, including rubber, polyvinylchloride, polyamide, or polyurethane. The main concerns for preservation are off-gazing from the objects themselves and the exterior agents of deterioration humidity, high temperature, UV radiation, and visible light. This study addresses the implementation of preventive conservation in the Deutsches Museum spacesuit display and the evaluation of the atmosphere with monitoring methods. The focus lies on innovative RFID corrosion sensors developed by the Lab-STICC and used in an exhibition for the first time. In addition, commercial devices (climate logger, UV and light meters, infrared thermal imaging) were used to check the conditions in the spacesuit showcase. The source for off-gazing coming from a suit could be located through the sensors, and the low corrosivity inside the showcase showed the effectivity of the installed charcoal absorbers. Humidity, however, was unable to be reduced to the recommended 30–40% in the large-scale showcase with silica gel. The LED lighting in the dark exhibition excludes any harmful high-energy radiation, but thermal radiation is produced by lighting and electrical devices. The applied methods were effective in evaluating the current situation in the exhibition and form a good basis for future improvements on the display.

Life is a gift: Value cosmologies in Hollywood cinema

AbstractIs life “priceless,” or can life be bought and sold like a commodity? Anthropological theory has not yet been able to integrate incommensurable value with commensurable value. But such an integrated theory of value exists—not explicitly in theory but implicitly in everyday ethics and fictional narratives. I analyze how the movie Titanic, one of the most commercially valuable artefacts of all time, reveals a comprehensive ideology of how life and material wealth should be valued. Titanic works through key themes in economic anthropology: social inequality, class struggle, gift/commodity distinctions, the meaning of money, and inalienable possessions. Titanic demonstrates that the tension between ethical values and economic value can be resolved when short‐term individual gains are transcended by a mutuality of being that reaches beyond death. Titanic proposes that American capitalism can integrate core cultural values with economic freedom and self‐realization.

An unsupervised perplexity-based method for boilerplate removal

AbstractThe availability of large web-based corpora has led to significant advances in a wide range of technologies, including massive retrieval systems or deep neural networks. However, leveraging this data is challenging, since web content is plagued by the so-called boilerplate: ads, incomplete or noisy text and rests of the navigation structure, such as menus or navigation bars. In this work, we present a novel and efficient approach to extract useful and well-formed content from web-scraped data. Our approach takes advantage of Language Models and their implicit knowledge about correctly formed text, and we demonstrate here that perplexity is a valuable artefact that can contribute in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. As a matter of fact, the removal of noisy parts leads to lighter AI or search solutions that are effective and entail important reductions in resources spent. We exemplify here the usefulness of our method with two downstream tasks, search and classification, and a cleaning task. We also provide a Python package with pre-trained models and a web demo demonstrating the capabilities of our approach.

Task Classification Framework and Job-Task Analysis Method for Understanding the Impact of Smart and Digital Technologies on the Operators 4.0 Job Profiles

There is limited scientific and grey literature studying the phenomenon of how the current job profiles are being affected by Industry 4.0 technologies at the operational level. This paper aims to answer the following question: how can the evolution of Workforce 4.0 job profiles be analyzed from a job-task perspective concerning the adoption of smart and digital technologies in manufacturing companies? To this end, it presents a task classification framework addressing three task classification dimensions, namely: (i) routine/nonroutine tasks, (ii) physical/cognitive tasks, and (iii) individual/social tasks, and a job-task analysis method to analyze the evolution of job profiles due to smart or digital technology adoption at the task level. Both artifacts were created using a state-of-the-art review to ground their conceptualization in the most recent knowledge available on work design and job-task analysis methods and were later evaluated and refined using an action-research approach to increase their applicability and usefulness for academic researchers and practitioners. The applicability of the proposed framework and method was demonstrated in an industrial case study discussing the theoretical and managerial contributions of these two artifacts for the development of Workforce 4.0 job profiles. It was concluded that the proposed framework and method are valuable artifacts that contribute to the limited universe of tools available in the literature to first analyze how operators’ tasks and roles change concerning the adoption of new Industry 4.0 technologies and then identify the requirements of new skills and competencies for the evolving and emerging job profiles on the shop floor.