Search results for: secure computation outsourcing

Authors: Muhammad R. Bello, Mamman A. Wasagu, Yahya M. Kamar

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The study investigated the effects of computer-aided instructional package (CAIP) on performance and retention of genetic concepts among secondary school students in Niger State. Quasi-experimental research design i.e. pre-test-post-test experimental and control groups were adopted for the study. The population of the study was all senior secondary school three (SS3) students’ offering biology. A sample of 223 students was randomly drawn from six purposively selected secondary schools. The researchers’ developed computer aided instructional package (CAIP) on genetic concepts was used as treatment instrument for the experimental group while the control group was exposed to the conventional lecture method (CLM). The instrument for data collection was a Genetic Performance Test (GEPET) that had 50 multiple-choice questions which were validated by science educators. A Reliability coefficient of 0.92 was obtained for GEPET using Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC). The data collected were analyzed using IBM SPSS Version 20 package for computation of Means, Standard deviation, t-test, and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The ANOVA analysis (Fcal (220) = 27.147, P < 0.05) shows that students who received instruction with CAIP outperformed the students who received instruction with CLM and also had higher retention. The findings also revealed no significant difference in performance and retention between male and female students (tcal (103) = -1.429, P > 0.05). It was recommended amongst others that teachers should use computer-aided instructional package in teaching genetic concepts in order to improve students’ performance and retention in biology subject. Keywords: Computer-aided Instructional Package, Performance, Retention and Genetic Concepts.

Keywords: computer aided instructional package, performance, retention, genetic concepts, senior secondary school students

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Authors: Saif Obaid Alkaabi, Nabil Ayad

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Governments constantly seek to offer faster, more secure, efficient and effective services for their citizens. Recent changes and developments to communication services and technologies, mainly due the Internet, have led to immense improvements in the way governments of advanced countries carry out their interior operations Therefore, advances in e-government services have been broadly adopted and used in various developed countries, as well as being adapted to developing countries. The implementation of advances depends on the utilization of the most innovative structures of data techniques, mainly in web dependent applications, to enhance the main functions of governments. These functions, in turn, have spread to mobile and wireless techniques, generating a new advanced direction called m-government. This paper discusses a selection of available m-government applications and several business modules and frameworks in various fields. Practically, the m-government models, techniques and methods have become the improved version of e-government. M-government offers the potential for applications which will work better, providing citizens with services utilizing mobile communication and data models incorporating several government entities. Developing countries can benefit greatly from this innovation due to the fact that a large percentage of their population is young and can adapt to new technology and to the fact that mobile computing devices are more affordable. The use of models of mobile transactions encourages effective participation through the use of mobile portals by businesses, various organizations, and individual citizens. Although the application of m-government has great potential, it does have major limitations. The limitations include: the implementation of wireless networks and relative communications, the encouragement of mobile diffusion, the administration of complicated tasks concerning the protection of security (including the ability to offer privacy for information), and the management of the legal issues concerning mobile applications and the utilization of services.

Keywords: e-government, m-government, system dependability, system security, trust

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Authors: Innocent O. Arukalam, Emeka E. Oguzie

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Interest in the development of eco-friendly anti-corrosion coatings using bio-based renewable materials is gaining momentum recently. To this effect, chitin biopolymer, which is non-toxic, biodegradable, and inherently possesses anti-microbial property, was successfully synthesized from snail shells and used as a filler in the preparation of epoxy coating. The chitin particles were characterized with contact angle goniometer, scanning electron microscope (SEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrophotometer, and X-ray diffractometer (XRD). The performance of the coatings was evaluated by immersion and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) tests. Electronic structure properties of the coating ingredients and molecular level interaction of the corrodent and coated Q235 steel were appraised by quantum chemical computations (QCC) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation techniques, respectively. The water contact angle (WCA) measurement of chitin particles was found to be 129.3o while that of chitin particles modified with amino trimethoxy silane (ATMS) was 149.6o, suggesting it is highly hydrophobic. Immersion and EIS analyses revealed that epoxy coating containing silane-modified chitin exhibited lowest water absorption and highest barrier as well as anti-corrosion performances. The QCC showed that quantum parameters for the coating containing silane-modified chitin are optimum and therefore corresponds to high corrosion protection. The high negative value of adsorption energies (Eads) for the coating containing silane-modified chitin indicates the coating molecules interacted and adsorbed strongly on the steel surface. The observed results have shown that silane-modified epoxy-chitin coating would perform satisfactorily for surface protection of metal structures in saline environment.

Keywords: chitin, EIS, epoxy coating, hydrophobic, molecular dynamics simulation, quantum chemical computation

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Authors: Charles Sikwanda

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The use of geosynthetic materials in geotechnical engineering projects has rapidly increased over the past several years. These materials have resulted in improved performance and cost reduction of geotechnical structures as compared to the use of conventional materials. However, working with geosynthetics requires knowledge of interface parameters for design. These parameters are typically determined by the large direct shear device in accordance with ASTM-D5321 and ASTM-D6243 standards. Although these laboratory tests are standardized, the quality of the results can be largely affected by several factors that include; the shearing rate, applied normal stress, gripping mechanism, and type of the geosynthetic specimens tested. Amongst these factors, poor surface gripping of a specimen is the major source of the discrepancy. If the specimen is inadequately secured to the shearing blocks, it experiences progressive failure and shear strength that deviates from the true field performance of the tested material. This leads to inaccurate, unsafe, and cost ineffective designs of projects. Currently, the ASTM-D5321 and ASTM-D6243 standards do not provide a standardized gripping system for geosynthetic shear strength testing. Over the years, researchers have come up with different gripping systems that can be used such as; glue, metal textured surface, sandblasting, and sandpaper. However, these gripping systems are regularly not adequate to sufficiently secure the tested specimens to the shearing device. This has led to large variability in test results and difficulties in results interpretation. Therefore, this study was aimed at determining the effects of gripping systems in geosynthetic interface shear strength testing using a 300 x 300 mm direct shear box. The results of the research will contribute to easy data interpretation and increase result accuracy and reproducibility.

Keywords: geosynthetics, shear strength parameters, gripping systems, gripping

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Authors: Beatriz Lafuente Alcázar, Yash Wani, Amit J. Nimunkar

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Cardiovascular Diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death globally, and around 80% of sudden cardiac deaths are due to arrhythmias or irregular heartbeats. The majority of these pathologies are revealed by either short-term or long-term alterations in the electrocardiogram (ECG) morphology. The ECG is the main diagnostic tool in cardiology. It is a non-invasive, pain free procedure that measures the heart’s electrical activity and that allows the detecting of abnormal rhythms and underlying conditions. A cardiologist can diagnose a wide range of pathologies based on ECG’s form alterations, but the human interpretation is subjective and it is contingent to error. Moreover, ECG records can be quite prolonged in time, which can further complicate visual diagnosis, and deeply retard disease detection. In this context, deep learning methods have risen as a promising strategy to extract relevant features and eliminate individual subjectivity in ECG analysis. They facilitate the computation of large sets of data and can provide early and precise diagnoses. Therefore, the cardiology field is one of the areas that can most benefit from the implementation of deep learning algorithms. In the present study, a deep learning algorithm is trained following a novel approach, using a combination of different databases as the training set. The goal of the algorithm is to achieve the detection of R-peaks in ECG signals. Its performance is further evaluated in ECG signals with different origins and features to test the model’s ability to generalize its outcomes. Performance of the model for detection of R-peaks for clean and noisy ECGs is presented. The model is able to detect R-peaks in the presence of various types of noise, and when presented with data, it has not been trained. It is expected that this approach will increase the effectiveness and capacity of cardiologists to detect divergences in the normal cardiac activity of their patients.

Keywords: arrhythmia, deep learning, electrocardiogram, machine learning, R-peaks

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Authors: K. M. R. Siriwardhana

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Sri Lanka is a developing country in South Asia which uses English as its second language. Today, most of the university students in Sri Lanka are eagerly exploring knowledge giving special consideration to English as their 2nd Language with the understanding that to climb up the career ladder, English is inevitable both in local and international contexts. However, still a considerable failing rate in English can also be seen among the Sri Lankan undergraduates Further, most of the Sri Lankan universities now practice English as their medium of instructions making English a credited Subject to brighten the future of the Sri Lankan students. Accordingly, in many universities an array of assessments are employed to evaluate undergraduates’ competence in English language. The main objective of this study was to ascertain the effective assessment methods to improve the 2nd language skills of the Sri Lankan university students which also create a more interest in them to learn English. Accordingly, hundred (100) undergraduates were selected as the research sample and the primary data was collected employing a semi structured questionnaire along with class room observations and semi structured interviews. Data was mainly analyzed descriptively employing graphical illustrations. According to the research findings, it was revealed that practical assessments such as oral tests, competitive drama and presentations are more effective in improving their language skills and preferred by the majority of students than written assignments and papers. Further, most of the students have scored better in practical assignments than in the written assignments. Hence, the study concludes that best and the benefited way of improving English language skills of Sri Lankan undergraduates is practical assessments as it gives them the opportunity to apply the language with much confidence and competence in actual situations. Further, the study recommends the language teachers to improve their own skills and creativity in practicing and employing such assessments as it will develop both second language teaching and learning skills. Ultimately, the university graduates will be able to secure their positions internationally as they are well capable in English, the lingua franca of the world.

Keywords: assessments, second language, Sri Lanka, undergraduates

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Authors: Mohan Li

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Nowadays, intelligent research technology is more and more important than traditional research methods in urban research work, and this proportion will greatly increase in the next few decades. Frequently such analyzing work cannot be carried without some software engineering knowledge. And here, domain models of urban research will be necessary when applying software engineering knowledge to urban work. In many urban plan practice projects, making rational models, feeding reliable data, and providing enough computation all make indispensable assistance in producing good urban planning. During the whole work process, domain models can optimize workflow design. At present, human beings have entered the era of big data. The amount of digital data generated by cities every day will increase at an exponential rate, and new data forms are constantly emerging. How to select a suitable data set from the massive amount of data, manage and process it has become an ability that more and more planners and urban researchers need to possess. This paper summarizes and makes predictions of the emergence of technologies and technological iterations that may affect urban research in the future, discover urban problems, and implement targeted sustainable urban strategies. They are summarized into seven major domain models. They are urban and rural regional domain model, urban ecological domain model, urban industry domain model, development dynamic domain model, urban social and cultural domain model, urban traffic domain model, and urban space domain model. These seven domain models can be used to guide the construction of systematic urban research topics and help researchers organize a series of intelligent analytical tools, such as Python, R, GIS, etc. These seven models make full use of quantitative spatial analysis, machine learning, and other technologies to achieve higher efficiency and accuracy in urban research, assisting people in making reasonable decisions.

Keywords: big data, domain model, urban planning, urban quantitative analysis, machine learning, workflow design

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Authors: Somayeh Abedian, Pirhossein Kolivand, Hamid Reza Lornejad, Amin Karampour, Ebrahim Keshavarz Safari

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For emergency and relief service providers such as pre-hospital emergencies, quick arrival at the scene of an accident or any EMS mission is one of the most important requirements of effective service delivery. Response time (the interval between the time of the call and the time of arrival on scene) is a critical factor in determining the quality of pre-hospital Emergency Medical Services (EMS). This is especially important for heart attack, stroke, or accident patients. Location-based e-services can be broadly defined as any service that provides information pertinent to the current location of an active mobile handset or precise address of landline phone call at a specific time window, regardless of the underlying delivery technology used to convey the information. According to research, one of the effective methods of meeting this goal is determining the location of the caller via the cooperation of landline and mobile phone operators in the country. The follow-up of the Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) organization has resulted in the receipt of two separate secured electronic web services. Thus, to ensure human privacy, a secure technical architecture was required for launching the services in the pre-hospital EMS information management system. In addition, to quicken medics’ arrival at the patient's bedside, rescue vehicles should make use of an intelligent transportation system to estimate road traffic using a GPS-based mobile navigation system independent of the Internet. This paper seeks to illustrate the architecture of the practical national model used by the Iranian EMS organization.

Keywords: response time, geographic location inquiry service (GLIS), location-based service (LBS), emergency medical services information system (EMSIS)

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Authors: Sindhu Govardhan, Kenneth G. Crowther

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Modernisation of the water sector is leading to increased connectivity and integration of emerging technologies with traditional ones, leading to new security risks. The convergence of Information Technology (IT) with Operation Technology (OT) results in solutions that are spread across larger geographic areas, increasingly consist of interconnected Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) devices and software, rely on the integration of legacy with modern technologies, use of complex supply chain components leading to complex architectures and communication paths. The result is that multiple parties collectively own and operate these emergent technologies, threat actors find new paths to exploit, and traditional cybersecurity controls are inadequate. Our approach is to explicitly identify and draw data flows that cross trust boundaries between owners and operators of various aspects of these emerging and interconnected technologies. On these data flows, we layer potential attack vectors to create a frame of reference for evaluating possible risks against connected technologies. Finally, we identify where existing controls, mitigations, and other remediations exist across industry partners (e.g., suppliers, product vendors, integrators, water utilities, and regulators). From these, we are able to understand potential gaps in security, the roles in the supply chain that are most likely to effectively remediate those security gaps, and test cases to evaluate and strengthen security across these partners. This informs a “shared responsibility” solution that recognises that security is multi-layered and requires collaboration to be successful. This shared responsibility security framework improves visibility, understanding, and control across the entire supply chain, and particularly for those water utilities that are accountable for safe and continuous operations.

Keywords: cyber security, shared responsibility, IIOT, threat modelling

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Authors: Susan Diamond

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Machine Learning workloads have traditionally been run in high-performance computing (HPC) environments, where users log in to dedicated machines and utilize the attached GPUs to run training jobs on huge datasets. Training of large neural network models is very resource intensive, and even after exploiting parallelism and accelerators such as GPUs, a single training job can still take days. Consequently, the cost of hardware is a barrier to entry. Even when upfront cost is not a concern, the lead time to set up such an HPC environment takes months from acquiring hardware to set up the hardware with the right set of firmware, software installed and configured. Furthermore, scalability is hard to achieve in a rigid traditional lab environment. Therefore, it is slow to react to the dynamic change in the artificial intelligent industry. Watson Deep Learning as a service, a cloud-based deep learning platform that mitigates the long lead time and high upfront investment in hardware. It enables robust and scalable sharing of resources among the teams in an organization. It is designed for on-demand cloud environments. Providing a similar user experience in a multi-tenant cloud environment comes with its own unique challenges regarding fault tolerance, performance, and security. Watson Deep Learning as a service tackles these challenges and present a deep learning stack for the cloud environments in a secure, scalable and fault-tolerant manner. It supports a wide range of deep-learning frameworks such as Tensorflow, PyTorch, Caffe, Torch, Theano, and MXNet etc. These frameworks reduce the effort and skillset required to design, train, and use deep learning models. Deep Learning as a service is used at IBM by AI researchers in areas including machine translation, computer vision, and healthcare. 

Keywords: deep learning, machine learning, cognitive computing, model training

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Authors: Suman Dutta, Manish Agrawal, C. S. Jog

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Accurate computation of hydrodynamic forces on floating structures and their deformation finds application in the ocean and naval engineering and wave energy harvesting. This manuscript presents a monolithic, finite element strategy for fluid-structure interaction involving hyper-elastic solids partly submerged in an incompressible fluid. A velocity-based Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) formulation has been used for the fluid and a displacement-based Lagrangian approach has been used for the solid. The flexibility of the ALE technique permits us to treat the free surface of the fluid as a Lagrangian entity. At the interface, the continuity of displacement, velocity and traction are enforced using the mortar method. In the mortar method, the constraints are enforced in a weak sense using the Lagrange multiplier method. In the literature, the mortar method has been shown to be robust in solving various contact mechanics problems. The time-stepping strategy used in this work reduces to the generalized trapezoidal rule in the Eulerian setting. In the Lagrangian limit, in the absence of external load, the algorithm conserves the linear and angular momentum and the total energy of the system. The use of monolithic coupling with an energy-conserving time-stepping strategy gives an unconditionally stable algorithm and allows the user to take large time steps. All the governing equations and boundary conditions have been mapped to the reference configuration. The use of the exact tangent stiffness matrix ensures that the algorithm converges quadratically within each time step. The robustness and good performance of the proposed method are demonstrated by solving benchmark problems from the literature.

Keywords: ALE, floating body, fluid-structure interaction, monolithic, mortar method

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Authors: Afnan Ahmad, Shahid Ali, Mujahid Khan

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This research presents the parametric study of an existing earth fill dam located at Latamber, Karak city, Pakistan. The study consists of carrying out seepage analysis, slope stability analysis, and Earthquake analysis of the dam for the existing dam geometry and do the same for modified geometry. Dams are massive as well as expensive hydraulic structure, therefore it needs proper attention. Additionally, this dam falls under zone 2B region of Pakistan, which is an earthquake-prone area and where ground accelerations range from 0.16g to 0.24g peak. So it should be deal with great care, as the failure of any dam can cause irreparable losses. Similarly, seepage as well as slope failure can also cause damages which can lead to failure of the dam. Therefore, keeping in view of the importance of dam construction and associated costs, our main focus is to carry out parametric study of newly constructed dam. GeoStudio software is used for this analysis in the study in which Seep/W is used for seepage analysis, Slope/w is used for Slope stability analysis and Quake/w is used for earthquake analysis. Based on the geometrical, hydrological and geotechnical data, Seepage and slope stability analysis of different proposed geometries of the dam are carried out along with the Seismic analysis. A rigorous analysis was carried out in 2-D limit equilibrium using finite element analysis. The seismic study began with the static analysis, continuing by the dynamic response analysis. The seismic analyses permitted evaluation of the overall patterns of the Latamber dam behavior in terms of displacements, stress, strain, and acceleration fields. Similarly, the seepage analysis allows evaluation of seepage through the foundation and embankment of the dam, while slope stability analysis estimates the factor of safety of the upstream and downstream of the dam. The results of the analysis demonstrate that among multiple geometries, Latamber dam is secure against seepage piping failure and slope stability (upstream and downstream) failure. Moreover, the dam is safe against any dynamic loading and no liquefaction has been observed while changing its geometry in permissible limits.

Keywords: earth-fill dam, finite element, liquefaction, seepage analysis

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Authors: Liliia N. Butymova, Vladimir Y. Modorsky, Nikolai A. Shevelev

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Prediction of vibration processes in gas transmittal units (GTU) is an urgent problem. Despite numerous scientific publications on the problem of vibrations in general, there are not enough works concerning FSI-modeling interaction processes between several deformable blades in gas-dynamic flow. Since it is very difficult to solve the problem in full scope, with all factors considered, a unidirectional dynamic coupled 1FSI model is suggested for use at the first stage, which would include, from symmetry considerations, two blades, which might be considered as the first stage of solving more general bidirectional problem. ANSYS CFX programmed multi-processor was chosen as a numerical computation tool. The problem was solved on PNRPU high-capacity computer complex. At the first stage of the study, blades were believed oscillating with the same frequency, although oscillation phases could be equal and could be different. At that non-stationary gas-dynamic forces distribution over the blades surfaces is calculated in run of simulation experiment. Oscillations in the “gas — structure” dynamic system are assumed to increase if the resultant of these gas-dynamic forces is in-phase with blade oscillation, and phase shift (φ=0). Provided these oscillation occur with phase shift, then oscillations might increase or decrease, depending on the phase shift value. The most important results are as follows: the angle of phase shift in inter-blade oscillation and the gas-dynamic force depends on the flow velocity, the specific inter-blade gap, and the shaft rotation speed; a phase shift in oscillation of adjacent blades does not always correspond to phase shift of gas-dynamic forces affecting the blades. Thus, it was discovered, that asynchronous oscillation of blades might cause either attenuation or intensification of oscillation. It was revealed that clocking effect might depend not only on the mutual circumferential displacement of blade rows and the gap between the blades, but also on the blade dynamic deformation nature.

Keywords: aeroelasticity, ANSYS CFX, oscillation, phase shift, clocking effect, vibrations

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Authors: Eman W. Boghdady, A. R. Shehata, M. A. Azem

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Database (DB) security demands permitting authorized users and prohibiting non-authorized users and intruders actions on the DB and the objects inside it. Organizations that are running successfully demand the confidentiality of their DBs. They do not allow the unauthorized access to their data/information. They also demand the assurance that their data is protected against any malicious or accidental modification. DB protection and confidentiality are the security concerns. There are four types of controls to obtain the DB protection, those include: access control, information flow control, inference control, and cryptographic. The cryptographic control is considered as the backbone for DB security, it secures the DB by encryption during storage and communications. Current cryptographic techniques are classified into two types: traditional classical cryptography using standard algorithms (DES, AES, IDEA, etc.) and chaos cryptography using continuous (Chau, Rossler, Lorenz, etc.) or discreet (Logistics, Henon, etc.) algorithms. The important characteristics of chaos are its extreme sensitivity to initial conditions of the system. In this paper, DB-security systems based on chaotic algorithms are described. The Pseudo Random Numbers Generators (PRNGs) from the different chaotic algorithms are implemented using Matlab and their statistical properties are evaluated using NIST and other statistical test-suits. Then, these algorithms are used to secure conventional DB (plaintext), where the statistical properties of the ciphertext are also tested. To increase the complexity of the PRNGs and to let pass all the NIST statistical tests, we propose two hybrid PRNGs: one based on two chaotic Logistic maps and another based on two chaotic Henon maps, where each chaotic algorithm is running side-by-side and starting from random independent initial conditions and parameters (encryption keys). The resulted hybrid PRNGs passed the NIST statistical test suit.

Keywords: algorithms and data structure, DB security, encryption, chaotic algorithms, Matlab, NIST

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Authors: Ginger Egberts, Marianne Schaaphok, Fred Vermolen, Paul van Zuijlen

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A few years ago, a promising morphoelastic model was developed for the simulation of contraction formation after burn injuries. Contraction can lead to a serious reduction in physical mobility, like a reduction in the range-of-motion of joints. If this is the case in a healing burn wound, then this is referred to as a contracture that needs medical intervention. The morphoelastic model consists of a set of partial differential equations describing both a chemical part and a mechanical part in dermal wound healing. These equations are solved with the numerical finite element method (FEM). In this method, many calculations are required on each of the chosen elements. In general, the more elements, the more accurate the solution. However, the number of elements increases rapidly if simulations are performed in 2D and 3D. In that case, it not only takes longer before a prediction is available, the computation also becomes more expensive. It is therefore important to investigate alternative possibilities to generate the same results, based on the input parameters only. In this study, a surrogate neural network has been designed to mimic the results of the one-dimensional morphoelastic model. The neural network generates predictions quickly, is easy to implement, and there is freedom in the choice of input and output. Because a neural network requires extensive training and a data set, it is ideal that the one-dimensional FEM code generates output quickly. These feed-forward-type neural network results are very promising. Not only can the network give faster predictions, but it also has a performance of over 99%. It reports on the relative surface area of the wound/scar, the total strain energy density, and the evolutions of the densities of the chemicals and mechanics. It is, therefore, interesting to investigate the applicability of a neural network for the two- and three-dimensional morphoelastic model for contraction after burn injuries.

Keywords: biomechanics, burns, feasibility, feed-forward NN, morphoelasticity, neural network, relative surface area wound

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Authors: Laxmi R. Kasaraneni

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The Internet connects all the networks, including the nation’s critical infrastructure that are used extensively by not only a nation’s government and military to protect sensitive information and execute missions, but also the primary infrastructure that provides services that enable modern conveniences such as education, potable water, electricity, natural gas, and financial transactions. It has become the central nervous system for the government, the citizens, and the industries. When it is attacked, the effects can ripple far and wide impacts not only to citizens’ well-being but nation’s economy, civil infrastructure, and national security. As such, these critical services may be targeted by malicious hackers during cyber warfare, it is imperative to not only protect them and mitigate any immediate or potential threats, but to also understand the current or potential impacts beyond the IT networks or the organization. The Nation’s IT infrastructure which is now vital for communication, commerce, and control of our physical infrastructure, is highly vulnerable to attack. While existing technologies can address some vulnerabilities, fundamentally new architectures and technologies are needed to address the larger structural insecurities of an infrastructure developed in a more trusting time when mass cyber attacks were not foreseen. This research is intended to improve the core functions of the Internet and critical-sector information systems by providing a clear path to create a safe, secure, and resilient cyber environment that help stakeholders at all levels of government, and the private sector work together to develop the cybersecurity capabilities that are key to our economy, national security, and public health and safety. This research paper also emphasizes the present and future cyber security threats, the capabilities and goals of cyber attackers, a strategic concept and steps to implement cybersecurity for maximum effectiveness, enabling technologies, some strategic assumptions and critical challenges, and the future of cyberspace.

Keywords: critical challenges, critical infrastructure, cyber security, enabling technologies, national security

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Authors: Antonello Durante, James Duff, Kevin Kelly

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The visual needs of people in modern work based buildings are changing. Self-illuminated screens of computers, televisions, tablets and smart phones have changed the relationship between people and the lit environment. In the past, lighting design practice was primarily based on providing uniform horizontal illuminance on the working plane, but this has failed to ensure good quality lit environments. Lighting standards of today continue to be set based upon a 100 year old approach that at its core, considers the task illuminance of the utmost importance, with this task typically being located on a horizontal plane. An alternative method focused on appearance has been proposed, as opposed to the traditional performance based approach. Mean Room Surface Exitance (MRSE) and Target-Ambient Illuminance Ratio (TAIR) are two new metrics proposed to assess illumination adequacy in interiors. The hypothesis is that these factors will be superior to the existing metrics used, which are horizontal illuminance led. For the six past years, research has examined this, within the Dublin Institute of Technology, with a view to determining the suitability of this approach for application to general lighting practice. Since the start of this research, a number of key findings have been produced that centered on how occupants will react to various levels of MRSE. This paper provides a broad update on how this research has progressed. More specifically, this paper will: i) Demonstrate how MRSE can be measured using HDR images technology, ii) Illustrate how MRSE can be calculated using scripting and an open source lighting computation engine, iii) Describe experimental results that demonstrate how occupants have reacted to various levels of MRSE within experimental office environments.

Keywords: illumination hierarchy (IH), mean room surface exitance (MRSE), perceived adequacy of illumination (PAI), target-ambient illumination ratio (TAIR)

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Authors: Amit Kumar Happy

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This paper is motivated by the importance of multi-sensor image fusion with a specific focus on infrared (IR) and visual image (VI) fusion for various applications, including military reconnaissance. Image fusion can be defined as the process of combining two or more source images into a single composite image with extended information content that improves visual perception or feature extraction. These images can be from different modalities like visible camera & IR thermal imager. While visible images are captured by reflected radiations in the visible spectrum, the thermal images are formed from thermal radiation (infrared) that may be reflected or self-emitted. A digital color camera captures the visible source image, and a thermal infrared camera acquires the thermal source image. In this paper, some image fusion algorithms based upon multi-scale transform (MST) and region-based selection rule with consistency verification have been proposed and presented. This research includes the implementation of the proposed image fusion algorithm in MATLAB along with a comparative analysis to decide the optimum number of levels for MST and the coefficient fusion rule. The results are presented, and several commonly used evaluation metrics are used to assess the suggested method's validity. Experiments show that the proposed approach is capable of producing good fusion results. While deploying our image fusion algorithm approaches, we observe several challenges from the popular image fusion methods. While high computational cost and complex processing steps of image fusion algorithms provide accurate fused results, they also make it hard to become deployed in systems and applications that require a real-time operation, high flexibility, and low computation ability. So, the methods presented in this paper offer good results with minimum time complexity.

Keywords: image fusion, IR thermal imager, multi-sensor, multi-scale transform

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Authors: M. Towhidur Rahman, Nasim Zaman Piyas, M. Sadiqul Baree, Shahnewaz Ahmed

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The design of high-speed craft has recently become one of the most active areas of naval architecture. Speed increase makes these vehicles more efficient and useful for military, economic or leisure purpose. The planing hull is designed specifically to achieve relatively high speed on the surface of the water. Speed on the water surface is closely related to the size of the vessel and the installed power. The Savitsky method was first presented in 1964 for application to non-monohedric hulls and for application to stepped hulls. This method is well known as a reliable comparative to CFD analysis of hull resistance. A computer program based on Savitsky’s method has been developed using MATLAB. The power of high-speed vessels has been computed in this research. At first, the program reads some principal parameters such as displacement, LCG, Speed, Deadrise angle, inclination of thrust line with respect to keel line etc. and calculates the resistance of the hull using empirical planning equations of Savitsky. However, some functions used in the empirical equations are available only in the graphical form, which is not suitable for the automatic computation. We use digital plotting system to extract data from nomogram. As a result, value of wetted length-beam ratio and trim angle can be determined directly from the input of initial variables, which makes the power calculation automated without manually plotting of secondary variables such as p/b and other coefficients and the regression equations of those functions are derived by using data from different charts. Finally, the trim angle, mean wetted length-beam ratio, frictional coefficient, resistance, and power are computed and compared with the results of Savitsky and good agreement has been observed.

Keywords: nomogram, planing hull, principal parameters, regression

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Authors: S. Karthikeyan, Naveen Bindra

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Introduction: To update ourselves and understand the concept of latest electronic formats available for Health care providers and how it could be used and developed as per standards. The idea is to correlate between the patients Manual Medical Records keeping and maintaining patients Electronic Information in a Health care setup in this world. Furthermore this stands with adapting to the right technology depending upon the organization and improve our quality and quantity of Healthcare providing skills. Objective: The concept and theory is to explain the terms of Electronic Medical Record (EMR), Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Personal Health Record (PHR) and selecting the best technical among the available Electronic sources and software before implementing. It is to guide and make sure the technology used by the end users without any doubts and difficulties. The idea is to evaluate is to admire the uses and barriers of EMR-EHR-PHR. Aim and Scope: The target is to achieve the health care providers like Physicians, Nurses, Therapists, Medical Bill reimbursements, Insurances and Government to assess the patient’s information on easy and systematic manner without diluting the confidentiality of patient’s information. Method: Health Information Technology can be implemented with the help of Organisations providing with legal guidelines and help to stand by the health care provider. The main objective is to select the correct embedded and affordable database management software and generating large-scale data. The parallel need is to know how the latest software available in the market. Conclusion: The question lies here is implementing the Electronic information system with healthcare providers and organisation. The clinicians are the main users of the technology and manage us to ‘go paperless’. The fact is that day today changing technologically is very sound and up to date. Basically the idea is to tell how to store the data electronically safe and secure. All three exemplifies the fact that an electronic format has its own benefit as well as barriers.

Keywords: medical records, digital records, health information, electronic record system

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Authors: Sherif D. El Wakil, John Rice

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The aim of the current work was to employ the finite element method to model a slab, with a small hole across its width, undergoing plastic plane strain deformation. The computational model had, however, to be validated by comparing its results with those obtained experimentally. Since they were in good agreement, the finite element method can therefore be considered a reliable tool that can help gain better understanding of the mechanism of ductile failure in structural members having stress raisers. The finite element software used was ANSYS, and the PLANE183 element was utilized. It is a higher order 2-D, 8-node or 6-node element with quadratic displacement behavior. A bilinear stress-strain relationship was used to define the material properties, with constants similar to those of the material used in the experimental study. The model was run for several tensile loads in order to observe the progression of the plastic deformation region, and the stress concentration factor was determined in each case. The experimental study involved employing the visioplasticity technique, where a circular mesh (each circle was 0.5 mm in diameter, with 0.05 mm line thickness) was initially printed on the side of an aluminum slab having a small hole across its width. Tensile loading was then applied to produce a small increment of plastic deformation. Circles in the plastic region became ellipses, where the directions of the principal strains and stresses coincided with the major and minor axes of the ellipses. Next, we were able to determine the directions of the maximum and minimum shear stresses at the center of each ellipse, and the slip-line field was then constructed. We were then able to determine the stress at any point in the plastic deformation zone, and hence the stress concentration factor. The experimental results were found to be in good agreement with the analytical ones.

Keywords: finite element method to model a slab, slab undergoing plastic deformation, stress distribution around a circular hole, visioplasticity

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Authors: Sofia Serra-Dawa

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Adult relationships accrue on a variety of past social experiences, intentions, and emotions that might predispose and influence the approach to and construction of subsequent relationships. The Adult Attachment Theory (AAT) proposes four types of adult attachment, where attachment is built over two dimensions of anxiety and avoidance: secure, anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, and fearful-avoidant. The AAT has been studied in multiple settings such as personal and therapeutic relationships, educational settings, sexual orientation, health, and religion. In music scholarship, the AAT has been used to frame class learning of student singers and study the relational behavior between voice teachers and students. Building on this study, the present inquiry studies how attachment types might characterize learning relationships of music students (in the Western Conservatory tradition), and whether particular instrumental experiences might correlate to given attachment styles. Given certain behavioral cohesive features of established traditions of instrumental playing and performance modes, it is hypothesized that student musicians will display specific characteristics correlated to instrumental traditions, demonstrating clear tendency of attachment style, which in turn has implications on subsequent professional interactions. This study is informed by the methodological framework of Adult Attachment Scale-R (Collins and Read, 1990), which was particularly chosen given its non-invasive questions and classificatory validation. It is further hypothesized that the analytical comparison of musicians’ profiles has the potential to serve as the baseline for other comparative behavioral observation studies [this component is expected to be verified and completed well before the conference meeting]. This research may have implications for practitioners concerned with matching and improving musical teaching and learning relationships and in (professional and amateur) long-term musical settings.

Keywords: adult attachment, music education, musicians attachment profile, musicians relationships

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Authors: Md. Rasel Mia, Ashik Billah

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The empowerment of girls and youth in Bangladesh is a demanding issue in today's digital age, where online learning and education have become integral to personal and societal development. This abstract explores the critical importance of creating a secure online environment for girls and youth in Bangladesh, emphasizing the transformative impact it can have on their access to education and knowledge. Bangladesh, like many developing nations, faces gender inequalities in education and access to digital resources. The creation of a safe digital space not only mitigates the gender digital divide but also fosters an environment where girls and youth can thrive academically and professionally. This manuscript draws attention to the efforts through a mixed-method study to assess the current digital landscape in Bangladesh, revealing disparities in phone and internet access, online practices, and awareness of cyber security among diverse demographic groups. Moreover, the study unveils the varying levels of familial support and barriers encountered by girls and youth in their quest for digital literacy. It emphasizes the need for tailored training programs that address specific learning needs while also advocating for enhanced internet accessibility, safe online practices, and inclusive online platforms. The manuscript culminates in a call for collaborative efforts among stakeholders, including NGOs, government agencies, and telecommunications companies, to implement targeted interventions that bridge the gender digital divide and pave the way for a brighter, more equitable future for girls and youth in Bangladesh. In conclusion, this research highlights the undeniable significance of creating a safe digital space as a catalyst for the empowerment of girls and youth in Bangladesh, ensuring that they not only access but excel in the online space, thereby contributing to their personal growth and the advancement of society as a whole.

Keywords: collaboration, cyber security, digital literacy, digital resources, inclusiveness

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Authors: Valerii Dashuk

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The usage of the confidence intervals in economics and econometrics is widespread. To be able to investigate a random variable more thoroughly, joint tests are applied. One of such examples is joint mean-variance test. A new approach for testing such hypotheses and constructing confidence sets is introduced. Exploring both the value of the random variable and its deviation with the help of this technique allows checking simultaneously the shift and the probability of that shift (i.e., portfolio risks). Another application is based on the normal distribution, which is fully defined by mean and variance, therefore could be tested using the introduced approach. This method is based on the difference of probability density functions. The starting point is two sets of normal distribution parameters that should be compared (whether they may be considered as identical with given significance level). Then the absolute difference in probabilities at each 'point' of the domain of these distributions is calculated. This measure is transformed to a function of cumulative distribution functions and compared to the critical values. Critical values table was designed from the simulations. The approach was compared with the other techniques for the univariate case. It differs qualitatively and quantitatively in easiness of implementation, computation speed, accuracy of the critical region (theoretical vs. real significance level). Stable results when working with outliers and non-normal distributions, as well as scaling possibilities, are also strong sides of the method. The main advantage of this approach is the possibility to extend it to infinite-dimension case, which was not possible in the most of the previous works. At the moment expansion to 2-dimensional state is done and it allows to test jointly up to 5 parameters. Therefore the derived technique is equivalent to classic tests in standard situations but gives more efficient alternatives in nonstandard problems and on big amounts of data.

Keywords: confidence set, cumulative distribution function, hypotheses testing, normal distribution, probability density function

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Authors: Robin C. Ladwig

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Diversity Management, as a substantial element of Human Resource Management, aims to secure the economic benefit that assumingly comes with a diverse workforce. Consequently, diversity managers focus on the protection of employees and securing equality measurements to assure organisational gender diversity. Gender diversity as one aspect of Diversity Management seems to adhere to gender binarism and cis-normativity. Workplaces are gendered spaces which are echoing the binary gender-normativity presented in Diversity Management, sold under the label of gender diversity. While the expectation of Diversity Management implies the inclusion of a multiplicity of marginalised groups, such as trans and gender diverse people, in current literature and practice, the reality is curated by gender binarism and cis-normativity. The qualitative multi-method research showed a lack of knowledge about trans and gender diverse matters within the profession of Diversity Management and Human Resources. The semi-structured interviews with trans and gender diverse individuals from various backgrounds and occupations in Australia exposed missing considerations of trans and gender diverse experiences in the inclusivity and gender equity of various workplaces. Even if practitioners consider trans and gender diverse matters under gender diversity, the practical execution is limited to gender binary structures and cis-normative actions as the photo-elicit questionnaire with diversity managers, human resource officers, and personnel management demonstrates. Diversity Management should approach a broader source of informed practice by extending their business focus to the knowledge of humanity studies. Humanity studies could include diversity, queer, or gender studies to increase the inclusivity of marginalised groups such as trans and gender diverse employees and people. Furthermore, the definition of gender diversity should be extended beyond the gender binary and cis-normative experience. People may lose trust in Diversity Management as a supportive ally of marginalised employees if the understanding of inclusivity is limited to a gender binary and cis-normativity value system that misrepresents the richness of gender diversity.

Keywords: cis-normativity, diversity management, gender binarism, trans and gender diversity

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Authors: Madhav Khadilkar

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Construction of a large standby reservoir was required to provide secure water supply. The new reservoir was required to be constructed at the same location of an abandoned old open pond due to space constraints. Some investigations were carried out earlier to improvise and re-commission the existing pond. But due to a lack of quantified risk of settlement from voids in the underlying limestone, the shallow foundations were not found feasible. Since the reservoir was resting on hard strata for about three-quarter of plan area and one quarter was resting on soil underlying with limestone and considerably low subgrade modulus. Further investigations were carried out to ascertain the locations and extent of voids within the limestone. It was concluded that the risk due to lime dissolution was acceptably low, and the site was found geotechnically feasible. The hazard posed by limestone dissolution was addressed through the integrated structural and geotechnical analysis and design approach. Finite Element Analysis was carried out to quantify the stresses and differential settlement due to various probable loads and soil-structure interaction. Walls behaving as cantilever under operational loads were found undergoing in-plane bending and tensile forces due to soil-structure interaction. Sensitivity analysis for varying soil subgrade modulus was carried out to check the variation in the response of the structure and magnitude of stresses developed. The base slab was additionally checked for the loss of soil contact due to lime pocket formations at random locations. The expansion and contraction joints were planned to receive minimal additional forces due to differential settlement. The reservoir was designed to sustain the actions corresponding to allowable deformation limits per code, and geotechnical measures were proposed to achieve the soil parameters set in structural analysis.

Keywords: differential settlement, limestone dissolution, reservoir, soil structure interaction

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Authors: A. Hamadelnil, Z. Razak, E. Matsoom

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Boat landings on fixed offshore structure are designed to absorb the impact energy from the boats approaching the platform for crew transfer. As the size and speed of operating boats vary, the design and maintenance of the boat landings become more challenging. Different oil and gas operators adopting different design criteria for the boat landing design in the region of South East Asia. Rubber strip is used to increase the capacity of the boat landing in absorbing bigger impact energy. Recently, it has been reported that all the rubber strips peel off the boat landing frame within one to two years, and replacement is required to avoid puncturing of the boat’s hull by the exposed sharp edges and bolts used to secure the rubber strip. The capacity of the boat landing in absorbing the impact energy is reduced after the failure of the rubber strip and results in failure of the steel members. The replacement of the rubber strip is costly as it requires a diving spread. The objective of this study is to propose the most practicable criteria to be adopted by oil and gas operators in the design of the boat landings in the region of South East Asia to improve the performance of the boat landing and assure safe operation and cheaper maintenance. This study explores the current design and maintenance challenges of boat landing and compares between the criteria adopted by different operators. In addition, this study explains the reasons behind the denting of many of the boat landing. It also evaluates the effect of grout and rubber strip in the capacity of the boat landing and jacket legs and highlight. Boat landing model and analysis using USFOS and SACS software are carried out and presented in this study considering different design criteria. This study proposes the most practicable criteria to be used in designing the boat landing in South East Asia region to save cost and achieve better performance, safe operation and less cost and maintenance.

Keywords: boat landing, grout, plastic hinge, rubber strip

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Authors: Chinwe Juliana Abara, Dayo Keshi

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Through cultural heritage materials, nations witness significant boom in the world of art and tourism as well as attract foreign investors and tourists to the benefit of the regions and countries where they are located. There are notable heritage sites which record visits by tourists in their thousands annually. According to UNESCO the cultural heritage reflects the life of the community, its history and its identity. Its preservation helps to rebuild broken communities, re-establish their identities, and link their past with their present and future. During any form of conflict or war, a lot happen. People die, houses destroyed and every other thing in the society suffers. Wars and conflicts in various countries have claimed antiquities, heritage materials, contemporary Arts, Galleries, Museums, Archives and very important Monuments and Heritage sites. My Paper deals with the effects of insurgencies and conflicts on cultural heritage and tourism industries in Nigeria and how they can be protected and restored so as to yield the desirable economic gains. Preceding from the premise that conflict of any type puts our cultural heritage at risk; this paper also explores the practical challenges and opportunities available to us in the face of incessant ethnic and Boko Haram (western education is abomination) insurgents and their wanton destruction of lives and properties. There will be a review of relevant literature and documents on the effects of violence on heritage materials and tourism industries in Nigeria particularly and other parts of the world in generally .My paper also highlights the activities the National Council for Arts and Culture as well as other Cultural Agencies in Nigeria have employed to sensitize the stakeholders, the youth, the elderly, and the community at large on the need for peaceful co-existence so as to collectively strive to safeguard and secure our cultural heritage in the face of all these challenges for posterity and desirable economic gains.

Keywords: cultural heritage, conflict, tourism, insurgency, challenges

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Authors: Mohammad Hossain Mohammadi, Saif Al Ameri, Sana Ziaei, Jinane Mounsef

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Automated enumeration of the number of hand fingers is widely used in several motion gaming and distance control applications, and is discussed in several published papers as a starting block for hand recognition systems. The automated finger enumeration technique should not only be accurate, but also must have a fast response for a moving-picture input. The high performance of video in motion games or distance control will inhibit the program’s overall speed, for image processing software such as Matlab need to produce results at high computation speeds. Since an automated finger enumeration with minimum error and processing time is desired, a comparative study between two finger enumeration techniques is presented and analyzed in this paper. In the pre-processing stage, various image processing functions were applied on a real-time video input to obtain the final cleaned auto-cropped image of the hand to be used for the two techniques. The first technique uses the known morphological tool of skeletonization to count the number of skeleton’s endpoints for fingers. The second technique uses a radial distance method to enumerate the number of fingers in order to obtain a one dimensional hand representation. For both discussed methods, the different steps of the algorithms are explained. Then, a comparative study analyzes the accuracy and speed of both techniques. Through experimental testing in different background conditions, it was observed that the radial distance method was more accurate and responsive to a real-time video input compared to the skeletonization method. All test results were generated in Matlab and were based on displaying a human hand for three different orientations on top of a plain color background. Finally, the limitations surrounding the enumeration techniques are presented.

Keywords: comparative study, hand recognition, fingertip detection, skeletonization, radial distance, Matlab

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Authors: Mahmoud B. Rokaya

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The study of opinion mining and sentiment analysis includes analysis of opinions, sentiments, evaluations, attitudes, and emotions. The rapid growth of social media, social networks, reviews, forum discussions, microblogs, and Twitter, leads to a parallel growth in the field of sentiment analysis. The field of sentiment analysis tries to develop effective tools to make it possible to capture the trends of people. There are two approaches in the field, lexicon-based and corpus-based methods. A lexicon-based method uses a sentiment lexicon which includes sentiment words and phrases with assigned numeric scores. These scores reveal if sentiment phrases are positive or negative, their intensity, and/or their emotional orientations. Creation of manual lexicons is hard. This brings the need for adaptive automated methods for generating a lexicon. The proposed method generates dynamic lexicons based on the corpus and then classifies text using these lexicons. In the proposed method, different approaches are combined to generate lexicons from text. The proposed method classifies the tweets into 5 classes instead of +ve or –ve classes. The sentiment classification problem is written as an optimization problem, finding optimum sentiment lexicons are the goal of the optimization process. The solution was produced based on mathematical programming approaches to find the best lexicon to classify texts. A genetic algorithm was written to find the optimal lexicon. Then, extraction of a meta-level feature was done based on the optimal lexicon. The experiments were conducted on several datasets. Results, in terms of accuracy, recall and F measure, outperformed the state-of-the-art methods proposed in the literature in some of the datasets. A better understanding of the Arabic language and culture of Arab Twitter users and sentiment orientation of words in different contexts can be achieved based on the sentiment lexicons proposed by the algorithm.

Keywords: social media, Twitter sentiment, sentiment analysis, lexicon, genetic algorithm, evolutionary computation

Procedia PDF Downloads 158