Computer Sciences Commons^™

Impact Of Covid-19 On Security Vulnerabilities Of Learning Management Systems: A Study Towards Security And Sustainability Enhancement, Souheil Abdel-Latif Akacha

Theses

The rapid adoption of Learning Management Systems (LMSs) like Moodle, Chamilo, and Ilias became essential for online education due to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, revolutionizing online learning while exposing security vulnerabilities. This thesis explores security concerns within these LMSs across different pandemic periods. By analyzing existing patches, security measures, and emerging cybersecurity technologies, recommendations are formulated to enhance LMS security against evolving cyber threats, providing actionable insights for educational institutions to ensure secure online education continuity. The numerical findings highlight the increasing need for proactive security measures in Moodle, the fluctuating nature of vulnerabilities in Chamilo, and the …

Enhancing Autism Education: Exploring Interactive Videos And Ai Integration For Effective Teaching, Fatima Ahmed Alraeesi

Theses

This research focuses on enhancing autism education by integrating interactive videos and AI solutions to improve teacher training. As the number of autistic students rises, it becomes crucial for special education teachers to employ effective teaching strategies tailored to individual needs. The most effective teaching methods for autistic students involve understanding the condition and incorporating customized instruction strategies, such as adapting assignments to suit the student's needs, assisting those with difficulty speaking, and employing visual aids for better organization. The proposed solution involves utilizing interactive video technology to train teachers, bridging the gap between research and practical implementation of educational …

Interactive Emirate Sign Language E-Dictionary Based On Deep Learning Recognition Models, Ahmed Abdelhadi Abdelhadi

Theses

According to the ministry of community development database in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) about 3065 people with disabilities are hearing disabled (Emirates News Agency - Ministry of Community Development). Hearing-impaired people find it difficult to communicate with the rest of society. They usually need Sign Language (SL) interpreters but as the number of hearing-impaired individuals grows the number of Sign Language interpreters can almost be non-existent. In addition, specialized schools lack a unified Sign Language (SL) dictionary, which can be linked to the Arabic language being of a diglossia nature, hence many dialects of the language co-exist. Moreover, there …

A Reinforcement Learning Approach To Vehicle Path Optimization In Urban Environments, Shamsa Abdulla Al Hassani

Theses

Road traffic management in metropolitan cities and urban areas, in general, is an important component of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). With the increasing number of world population and vehicles, a dramatic increase in road traffic is expected to put pressure on the transportation infrastructure. Therefore, there is a pressing need to devise new ways to optimize the traffic flow in order to accommodate the growing needs of transportation systems. This work proposes to use an Artificial Intelligent (AI) method based on reinforcement learning techniques for computing near-optimal vehicle itineraries applied to Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs). These itineraries are optimized based …

Heart Rhythm Classification From Static And Ecg Time-Series Data Using Hybrid Multimodal Deep Learning, Ahmad Abdulrazaq Abdulla Alnajjar

Theses

Cardiovascular arrhythmia diseases are considered as the most common diseases that cause death around the world. Abnormal arrhythmia diseases can be identified by analyzing heart rhythm using an electrocardiogram (ECG). However, this analysis is done manually by cardiologists, which may be subjective and susceptible to different cardiologist observations and experiences, as well as to noise and irregularities in those signals. This can lead to misdiagnosis. Motivated by this challenge, an automated heart rhythm diagnosis approach from ECG signals using Deep Learning has been proposed. In order to achieve this goal, three research problems have been addressed. First, recognize the role …

The Role Of Software Engineering In Bioinformatics, Brendan Sean Lawlor

Theses

This thesis proposes that by applying state-of-the-art software engineering tools, techniques and frameworks to currently recognised challenges in bioinformatics, improved outcomes can be attained in that field. It begins by decomposing software engineering into two categories, namely process and architecture, and choosing two key challenges in the practice of bioinformatics: reproducibility and scalability. The body of the thesis is an exploration of the intersection between these two software engineering categories and these two bioinformatics challenges. The question is asked: Can best practices in professional software engineering be applied to address key issues in the bioinformatics domain, creating positive outcomes? And …

New Methods For Deep Learning Based Real-Valued Inter-Residue Distance Prediction, Jacob Barger

Theses

Background: Much of the recent success in protein structure prediction has been a result of accurate protein contact prediction--a binary classification problem. Dozens of methods, built from various types of machine learning and deep learning algorithms, have been published over the last two decades for predicting contacts. Recently, many groups, including Google DeepMind, have demonstrated that reformulating the problem as a multi-class classification problem is a more promising direction to pursue. As an alternative approach, we recently proposed real-valued distance predictions, formulating the problem as a regression problem. The nuances of protein 3D structures make this formulation appropriate, allowing predictions …

Detecting And Characterizing Self Hiding Behavior In Android Applications, Raina Samuel

Theses

Applications (apps) that conceal their activities are fundamentally deceptive; app marketplaces and end-users should treat such apps as suspicious. However, due to its nature and intent, activity concealing is not disclosed up-front, which puts users at risk. This study focuses on characterization and detection of such techniques, e.g., hiding the app or removing traces, known as 'self hiding' (SH) behavior. SH behavior has not been studied per se - rather it has been reported on only as a byproduct of malware investigations. This gap is addressed via a study and suite of static analyses targeted at SH in Android apps. …

Integration Of Lightweight & Energy Efficient Cipher In Wireless Body Area Network Fore-Health Monitoring, Azza Zayed Sultan Ai Shamsi

Theses

There is an increase in the diseases of the circulatory system in United Arab Emirates, which makes it the first leading cause of death. This led to a high demand for a continuous care that can be achieved by adopting an emerging technology of e- Health monitoring system using Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) that can collect patient’s data. Since patient’s data is private, securing the communication within WBAN becomes highly essential. In this research thesis, we propose an architecture to secure the data transmission within the Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) in e-Health monitoring. More specifically, our proposed architecture …

Uav-Cloud: A Platform For Uav Resources And Services On The Cloud, Sara Yousif Mohamed Mahmoud

Theses

UAVs - Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – have gained significant attention recently, due to the increasingly growing range of applications. However, developing collaborative UAV applications using traditional technologies in a tightly coupled design requires a great deal of development effort, time, and budget especially for heterogeneous UAVs. Moreover, monitoring and accessing UAV resources using traditional communication media suffer from several restrictions and limitations. This research aims to simplify the efforts, reduce the time, and lower the costs of developing collaborative applications for distributed heterogeneous UAVs. In addition, the research aims to provide ubiquitous UAV resources access. A platform is proposed for …

Reducing The Risk Of Software Cost Estimation, Shixian Yang

Theses

Inaccurate cost estimation is a well-known problem in software development. The common cost estimation models are point estimates that are unable to quantify uncertainties. Furthermore, it is difficult to calibrate the uncertainties in cost estimation due to the lack of information. The purpose of this thesis is to prove that probability techniques could be synthesized into COCOMO (Constructive Cost Model) to quantify uncertainties. Another aim is to find out how to get more insight on reducing the risk of cost estimation. In this thesis, some historical data is presented to show the variance in factors of COCOMO. Monte Carlo simulation …

Amvc: A Loosely-Coupled Architecture For Component-Based Clients, Brendan Lawlor

Theses

There is an architectural deficit in most currently undertaken rich client applications: In n-tier applications the presentation layer is represented as a single layer. This is as true of browser-based rich clients (Rich Internet Applications) as of rich desktop clients since both are designed along component-based, event-driven lines. The result of creating rich clients without sufficient application architecture underpinning is often tightly-coupled code of unnecessary complexity, with the associated high cost of maintenance. No commonly understood pattern is currently evident that would allow rich client components to be combined into a loosely coupled application. This paper describes the theory and …

Model-Based Instrumentation Of Distributed Applications, Jan Schäfer

Theses

Problems such as inconsistent or erroneous instrumentation often plague applications whose source code is manually instrumented during the implementation phase. Integrating performance instrumentation capabilities into the Model Driven Software Development (MDSD) process would greatly assist software engineers who do not have detailed knowledge of source code instrumentation technologies. This thesis presents an approach that offers instrumentation support to software designers and developers. A collection of instrumentation patterns is defined to represent typical instrumentation scenarios for distributed applications. A UML profile derived from these patterns is then used to annotate UML models. Based on suitable code generation templates, the annotated models …

Personal Information Management. A Framework For Development Of Personalisable Web Based Services, Christopher Fuchs

Theses

The thesis research proposed herein will model, analyse and implement strategies for the development of personalised services. The goal of the research work is to design and implement a framework which supports developers by minimising the effort required in implementing personalised services. This includes the ability to react to localisation changes and to present proper information. An overall design goal is the independency of most components from each other which will be attained through the use of standard technologies and protocols and the consistent use of a component model. The result will include the proposed framework and the analyses of …

Speech Enabled E-Learning Technology For Adult Literacy Tutoring, Jason Meade

Theses

This research presents the work involved in developing a speech-enabled e-Learning prototype for use in literacy tutoring. As the main objective was to develop an interface for literacy learning, initial research concentrated on establishing a framework for literacy e-Leaming through the use of speech technology. Requirements for best practice e-Learning and the relevance of learning theories to an e-Learning application were also investigated. The technologies to facilitate this, such as text to speech technologies and mark-up languages, were addressed during the implementation of speech-enabled prototypes. Both server-side and client-side prototypes were implemented to investigate speech technology. Testing found the server-side …

A Toolkit For Xml-Based And Process-Oriented Application Integration, Volker Münch

Theses

Systems integration is hard work; different architectures with different interfaces and an innumerable amount of Legacy applications with non-standard interfaces exist. However the needs to meet changing business requirements and to implement faster and optimised procedures within an enterprise and in cooperation with other external enterprises mean that there is a continuing demand for such integration strategies and products. Integration was often an activity separate from system development and could not be accomplished without re-involving system designers and developers. Such a process is therefore inefficient and costly. This thesis proposes a process-oriented integration strategy that combines the tasks of integration …

Measuring Software Size For Continuous Process Improvement, Claire O'Sullivan

Theses

This thesis looks at how the size of a software product can be measured. It looks at current software sizing methods (LOC and FPA) and shows that they are not sufficient in today’s rapidly changing environment. The COSMIC-FFP method is introduced and an overview of how it works is given. The hypothesis to be tested in this thesis is whether COSMIC-FFP is an accurate, repeatable sizing method that when applied to any type of software project produces a size measure that can be used to predict the effort required to complete the project.

This thesis investigates the use of the …

Design And Code Generation Concepts For Statechart Diagrams Of The Uml V1.1 In Concurrent Environments, Pierre Metz

Theses

This thesis deals with code generation concepts for the statechart diagrams of the UML vl.l. It explores implementation approaches for mapping statechart diagrams to code. It also focuses on modelling rules for consistent design of dynamic object behaviour. Most of the given object-oriented (00) methods have statechart diagrams as their centre. It is proposed to use statechart diagrams to model the internal behaviour of objects and lifecycles, respectively. Generally, statechart diagrams are used in the area of analysis and design of reactive systems such as realtime- and embedded-systems. This thesis introduces different existing implementation patterns and shows how they can …