Sub-surface characterisation of latest-generation identification documents using optical coherence tomography

The identification of individuals, particularly at international border crossings, coupled with the evolving sophistication of identity documents are issues that authorities must contend with. Particularly, the ability to distinguish legitimate from counterfeit documents, with high throughput, sensitivity, and selectivity is an ever-evolving challenge.Over the last decade, an increasing number of security features have been introduced by authorities in identification documents. The latest generation of travel documents (such as passports and national ID cards) forego paper substrates for several layers of polycarbonate, allowing security features to be embedded within the documents. These security features may contain information at either the superficial and sub-surface levels, thus increasing the document’s resilience to counterfeiting.As the documents become harder to forge, so does the sophistication of forgery detection. There appears to be an unmet and evolving need to identify such sophisticated forgeries, in a non-destructive, high throughput manner.In this publication, we report on the application of optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging on assessing security features in specimen passports and national ID cards. OCT allows sub-surface imaging of translucent structures, non-destructively enabling quantitative visualisation of embedded security features.     

Germany and the Kosovo war: still a civilian power?

This article assesses the motives, significance and implications of Germany's participation in the 1999 Kosovo War. This was all the more remarkable, because it took place under a Red–Green government and was not legitimised by a UN mandate. Events in Kosovo forced the new government to choose between two foreign policy articles of faith of the German Left: ‘nie wieder Krieg’ (‘never again war’) and ‘nie wieder Auschwitz’ (‘never again Auschwitz’). The government tried to ease this dilemma by flanking its participation in the war with intensive efforts to secure a negotiated settlement of the crisis involving Russia. Despite its participation in the war, Germany remains a ‘civilian power’, as it is committed to deploying military force strictly multilaterally. Kosovo shows that it has become a normal ‘civilian power’, comparable to other mature democracies in the Euro-Atlantic community.     

Making the Financial Sector Work for the Poor

This case study exploits matched firm–employee Tunisian data in order to underline the role played by within-firm human capital in worker remuneration. The estimated returns to human capital in wage equations remain unchanged when the dummies representing firm heterogeneity are replaced in the list of regressors with three firm variables: a textile industry dummy, within-firm mean education, and firm age. We find that part of what is usually considered as return to education may be due to within-firm externalities.