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The purpose of this paper is to look at current discourse on the topic of crypto-currencies, more specifically Bitcoins, and their application to funding acts of terror. The paper clearly establishes the risks posed by this new payment technology and value transfer system to assist in the process of funding, planning and implementing acts of terror.

Publications, blogs and sites published and administered by terrorists groups and their supporters are examined to determine their interest in leveraging emerging payment and value transfer systems to facilitate the funding, planning and implementation of terror attacks. Press releases and other publications are also examined to determine whether crypto-currencies have been used by these groups in fund raising, fund transfer or recent terror attacks.

Although it is difficult to find concrete evidence of largescale use of Bitcoins and other crypto-currencies by terrorist groups and their supporters, there is strong evidence to suggest that they have been linked to a number of terror attacks in Europe and Indonesia. Supporters of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), jihadists and terrorist organisations are actively looking to and promoting the use of new and emerging technologies, such as Bitcoin, to mitigate some of the risks associated with traditional fund transfer methods. Some websites associated with terrorist organisations have started to collect donations in Bitcoins. Many Bitcoin ATMs and Bitcoin exchanges are located in countries that have seen significant numbers of foreign fighters join ISIS in the Middle East and are also positioned in countries that have seen increased risk of terror attack. These present a significant risk because they allow for the seamless, anonymous transfer of funds to and from terrorist groups and their supporters. The paper highlights the need for further in-depth research into reliable ways to circumvent the current difficulties experienced in differentiating illicit transactions from legitimate ones and establishing reliable means of attribution.

Using a document published by ISIS, which provides would-be jihadists detailed instructions on how they can get to Syria or Iraq without being detected, a set of models were created showing how this could be achieved using Bitcoins alone. From this scenario, red flag indicators and suspicious behaviour models have been created to determine whether they can be identified during detailed analysis of the Bitcoin blockchain which will be conducted in later stages of research.

The aim of this paper is to detail the changes needed to ensure compatibility of printed‐circuit board (PCB) surface finishes with the use of lead‐free solders and in lead‐free assembly processes.

The paper describes the various popular solderable surface finishes that are currently available. It then reviews them in terms of the required adaptations necessary to meet the requirements of the Restriction of Hazardous Substance (RoHS) Directive and to ensure compliance, whilst meeting the performance needs of the product.

Some of the available and popular finishes, such as organic solderability preservatives and tin require modifications while, others including silver, direct immersion gold and electroless nickel immersion gold are transitioning well into the world of lead‐free. Electroless nickel, electroless palladium, immersion gold is one finish that performs better with lead‐free assembly than it did with conventional eutectic solder‐based approaches.

The paper provides a concise overview of the implications for specific surface finishes when making choices for use with lead‐free and RoHS compliant PCB soldering and assembly.

The purpose of this paper is to present a better understanding of nickel corrosion, also known as “black pad” during gold deposition of EN1G.

This paper presents an accumulation of personal experience and observations of the problem over a period of ten years. It incorporates the experience of the Global Trade Association connecting the electronic industries (IPC) plating committee as it set out to write the IPC electroless nickel‐immersion gold (ENIG) specification‐4552.

Understanding how corrosion occurs will go a long way in helping printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturers stay clear of the issue and make high quality ENIG finished PCBs.

The majority of the data presented has been substantiated.

The paper details how, by good understanding of the mechanism of formation of corrosion products, manufacturers can steer clear from the problem.

To report on research on the alternative surface finish “direct gold on copper”, including reaction mechanism, methods of deposition and end uses.

Examines the deposition reaction of the electroless flash gold plating bath, and the effects of the copper surface roughness and deposition time on the deposit and solderability characteristics.

Direct immersion gold is only partially immersion and mostly electroless in deposition mode. The surface is applicable to soldering for both leaded solder and lead‐free solders. The surface is also wire bondable.

The paper offers details of a new alternative surface finish for use in printed circuit board fabrication as well as in packaging applications. The paper shows the electroless deposition mode of the process. The finish is ideally suited where Rf losses must be minimized. It is suitable for soldering as well as for wire bonding.

The purpose of this paper is to present new developments in electrolytic tin plating designed to eliminate the formation of whiskers over time, when tin is plated on copper.

Two main approaches were undertaken to achieve the desired results. The first was modification of the copper substrate prior to plating and the second was to modify the crystal structure of the tin deposit.

With the use of specific additives to the tin plating bath it was possible to achieve a crystal structure similar to that of the non‐whiskering tin/lead.

The technology is presently available commercially to plate electronic parts such as connectors and lead frames, etc.

The paper details a modified electroplating tin bath that produces a deposit that will not form whiskers over time.

A new generation of electroless nickel immersion gold process has been developed that is targeted to solve the “Black Nickel issue”. The development involved the understanding of the details of the nanostructure of electroless nickel, the interface between Ni and Au, Ni and solder, and the control of the porosity of the Au surface. A suitable increase in phosphorous content in the nickel deposit reduces the hyperactive corrosion during immersion gold process. In addition, a stabilizer system that gives consistent performance across the entire bath life was used to improve the simplicity of bath control. This combination gives many advantages for the applications in printed wiring boards.

In this research, the main purpose is to use a suitable structure to predict the trading signals of the stock market with high accuracy. For this purpose, two models for the analysis of technical adaptation were used in this study.

It can be seen that support vector machine (SVM) is used with particle swarm optimization (PSO) where PSO is used as a fast and accurate classification to search the problem-solving space and finally the results are compared with the neural network performance.

Based on the result, the authors can say that both new models are trustworthy in 6 days, however, SVM-PSO is better than basic research. The hit rate of SVM-PSO is 77.5%, but the hit rate of neural networks (basic research) is 74.2.

In this research, two approaches (raw-based and signal-based) have been developed to generate input data for the model: raw-based and signal-based. For comparison, the hit rate is considered the percentage of correct predictions for 16 days.