Digital Commons Network^™

Information Technology And The Future Of Librarianship, Emmanuel Omeiza Momoh

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

There is a growing concern by scholars in the field of library and Information science on the way technology is gradually taking over certain jobs performed by librarians and Information professionals. This may be the reason why many of the scholars have submitted that the discipline of librarianship may cease to exist in a couple of years if nothing is done to solve the problem.

In the light of this, this article seeks to identify ways in which technology has taken over certain aspects of the field of librarianship with the aim of proffering solutions and identifying other means in …

The Status Of School Libraries In Migori County, Kenya, Cary Francis Ouma, Joel Nakitare

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Whereas there is a general appreciation of libraries' role in educational performance and literacy development among learners, the status of school libraries still needs to improve. The struggle to secure a workable school library policy in Kenya is far from won. This study investigated the status of school libraries in Migori County by analyzing available resources and giving a framework for their development. Data was collected using questionnaires and Interviews in schools drawn from all the eight sub-counties in the county. The data was analyzed thematically based on parameters that define successful school libraries to arrive at study conclusions. They …

Debut Online Library Registration At The Federal University Of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria, Patrons’ Opinions Survey And The Good News, Olufunmilayo I. Fati

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Introducing a self-service online library registration to a higher educational institution presents an opportunity for technology adoption evaluation, which may be useful to other institutions. This paper presents the experience of the deployment of online library registration built on koha library management software (KLMS), to ‘Nimbe Adedipe Library, Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta, Nigeria. The system was built on Koha Circulation module and before it was commissioned, it was presented to three categories of prospective users for observations. Firstly, to the members of library’s automation department’s staff, then to the library management which also includes the Readers’ Services Librarian, and …

Healthy Lifestyles And Job Performance Of Academics: A Theoretical Perspectives, Idayat Odunola Agboola Mrs, Chinyere Nkechi Ikonne Dr

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The health related lifestyle behavior has been neglected in Nigerian Universities and as such causing deaths among the lecturers. Living a healthy lifestyle could reduce heart diseases, blood pressure and diabetes. The study adopted survey method. The population of the study was 5,310 lecturers across the six Federal Universities in South West, Nigeria. From the population, 372 were sampled. Structured questionnaire were used to collect data. From the 372 copies of questionnaire distributed; 278 were returned which gave 75% response rate. Data were analyzed using percentages, mean, standard deviation as well as relationship. Findings revealed that all information gathered on …

Indian Research Output In Immunology And Microbiology 2012-2016: A Scientometric Study, Jyoti Rana Ph.D. Scholar, Rakesh Kumar Bhatt Associate Professor

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Background: The study examines India’s research productivity in immunology and microbiology during 2012-2016, depending on various parameters, including India’s annual average research growth rate, institutional output profile of institutions and profiles of some of the most productive authors.

Aim: The focus of this study is to analyze performance of India’s research output in immunology and microbiology, the quality and productivity of major institutions participating in research in microbiology and immunology and the productivity and quality of leading authors in research in immunology and microbiology.

Methods: The study in the area of immunology and microbiology using 5 years publications data from …

Collaborative Fall Detection Using Smartphone And Kinect, Xue Li, Lanshun Nie, Hanchuan Xu, Xianzhi Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Humanfall detection has attracted broad attentions as sensors and mobile devices are increasingly adopted in real-life scenarios such as smart homes. The complexity of activities in home environments pose severe challenges to the fall detection research with respect to the detection accuracy. We propose a collaborative detection platform that combines two subsystems: a threshold-based fall detection subsystem using mobile phones and a support vector machine (SVM)-based fall detection subsystem using Kinects. Both subsystems have their respective confidence models and the platform detects falls by fusing the data of both subsystems using two methods: the logical rules-based and D-S evidence fusion …

Simulation-Based Security Of Function-Hiding Inner Product Encryption, Qingsong Zhao, Qingkai Zeng, Ximeng Liu, Huanliang Xu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Functional encryption (FE) [1,2] is a modern type of encryption scheme that extends several previous notions and allows tremendous flexibility in controlling and computing on encrypted data. FE enables an authority to derive constrained decryption keys that are used by a user to obtain specific functions of encrypted messages. Informally, the authority generates a secret key skf for a function f from a master secret key. Then, the user can only learn f(x) from a ciphertext Enc(x) with skf and reveal nothing else about x.

Detecting Fake News In Social Media Networks, Monther Aldwairi, Ali Alwahedi

All Works

© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Fake news and hoaxes have been there since before the advent of the Internet. The widely accepted definition of Internet fake news is: fictitious articles deliberately fabricated to deceive readers'. Social media and news outlets publish fake news to increase readership or as part of psychological warfare. Ingeneral, the goal is profiting through clickbaits. Clickbaits lure users and entice curiosity with flashy headlines or designs to click links to increase advertisements revenues. This exposition analyzes the prevalence of fake news in light of the advances in communication made possible by the emergence …

A Generalized Deep Learning-Based Diagnostic System For Early Diagnosis Of Various Types Of Pulmonary Nodules, Ahmed Shaffie, Ahmed Soliman, Luay Fraiwan, Mohammed Ghazal, Fatma Taher, Neal Dunlap, Brian Wang, Victor Van Berkel, Robert Keynton, Adel Elmaghraby, Ayman El-Baz

All Works

© The Author(s) 2018. A novel framework for the classification of lung nodules using computed tomography scans is proposed in this article. To get an accurate diagnosis of the detected lung nodules, the proposed framework integrates the following 2 groups of features: (1) appearance features modeled using the higher order Markov Gibbs random field model that has the ability to describe the spatial inhomogeneities inside the lung nodule and (2) geometric features that describe the shape geometry of the lung nodules. The novelty of this article is to accurately model the appearance of the detected lung nodules using a new …

Dictionary Learning With Structured Noise, Pan Zhou, Cong Fang, Zhouchen Lin, Chao Zhang, Y. Edward Chang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recently, lots of dictionary learning methods have been proposed and successfully applied. However, many of them assume that the noise in data is drawn from Gaussian or Laplacian distribution and therefore they typically adopt the 2 or 1 norm to characterize these two kinds of noise, respectively. Since this assumption is inconsistent with the real cases, the performance of these methods is limited. In this paper, we propose a novel dictionary learning with structured noise (DLSN) method for handling noisy data. We decompose the original data into three parts: clean data, structured noise, and Gaussian noise, and then characterize them …

Secure Smart Metering Based On Lora Technology, Yao Cheng, Hendra Saputra, Leng Meng Goh, Yongdong Wu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Smart metering allows Substation Automation System (SAS) to remotely and timely read smart meters. Despite its advantages, smart metering brings some challenges. a) It introduces cyber attack risks to the metering system, which may lead to user privacy leakage or even the compromise of smart metering systems. b) Although the majority of meters are located within a regional power supply area, some hard-to-reach nodes are geographically far from the clustered area, which account for a big portion of the entire smart metering operation cost. Facing the above challenges, we propose a secure smart metering infrastructure based on LoRa technology which …

Securing Display Path For Security-Sensitive Applications On Mobile Devices, Jinhua Cui, Yuanyuan Zhang, Zhiping Cai, Anfeng Liu, Yangyang Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

While smart devices based on ARM processor bring us a lot of convenience, they also become an attractive target of cyber-attacks. The threat is exaggerated as commodity OSes usually have a large code base and suffer from various software vulnerabilities. Nowadays, adversaries prefer to steal sensitive data by leaking the content of display output by a security-sensitive application. A promising solution is to exploit the hardware visualization extensions provided by modern ARM processors to construct a secure display path between the applications and the display device. In this work, we present a scheme named SecDisplay for trusted display service, it …

Efficient And Privacy-Preserving Outsourced Calculation Of Rational Numbers, Ximeng Liu, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Robert H. Deng, Rongxing Lu, Jian Weng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we propose a framework for efficient and privacy-preserving outsourced calculation of rational numbers, which we refer to as POCR. Using POCR, a user can securely outsource the storing and processing of rational numbers to a cloud server without compromising the security of the (original) data and the computed results. We present the system architecture of POCR and the associated toolkits required in the privacy preserving calculation of integers and rational numbers to ensure that commonly used outsourced operations can be handled on-the-fly. We then prove that the proposed POCR achieves the goal of secure integer and rational …

Hybrid Privacy-Preserving Clinical Decision Support System In Fog-Cloud Computing, Ximeng Liu, Robert H. Deng, Yang Yang, Ngoc Hieu Tran, Shangping Zhong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we propose a framework for hybrid privacy-preserving clinical decision support system in fog cloud computing, called HPCS. In HPCS, a fog server uses a lightweight data mining method to securely monitor patients' health condition in real-time. The newly detected abnormal symptoms can be further sent to the cloud server for high-accuracy prediction in a privacy-preserving way. Specifically, for the fog servers, we design a new secure outsourced inner-product protocol for achieving secure lightweight single-layer neural network. Also, a privacy-preserving piecewise polynomial calculation protocol allows cloud server to securely perform any activation functions in multiple-layer neural network. Moreover, …

Smartwatch-Based Early Gesture Detection & Trajectory Tracking For Interactive Gesture-Driven Applications, Tran Huy Vu, Archan Misra, Quentin Roy, Kenny Tsu Wei Choo, Youngki Lee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The paper explores the possibility of using wrist-worn devices (specifically, a smartwatch) to accurately track the hand movement and gestures for a new class of immersive, interactive gesture-driven applications. These interactive applications need two special features: (a) the ability to identify gestures from a continuous stream of sensor data early–i.e., even before the gesture is complete, and (b) the ability to precisely track the hand’s trajectory, even though the underlying inertial sensor data is noisy. We develop a new approach that tackles these requirements by first building a HMM-based gesture recognition framework that does not need an explicit segmentation step, …

Integrated Reward Scheme And Surge Pricing In A Ride Sourcing Market, Hai Yang, Chaoyi Shao, Hai Wang, Jieping Ye

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Surge pricing is commonly used in on-demand ride-sourcing platforms (e.g., Uber, Lyft and Didi) to dynamically balance demand and supply. However, since the price for ride service cannot be unlimited, there is usually a reasonable or legitimate range of prices in practice. Such a constrained surge pricing strategy fails to balance demand and supply in certain cases, e.g., even adopting the maximum allowed price cannot reduce the demand to an affordable level during peak hours. In addition, the practice of surge pricing is controversial and has stimulated long debate regarding its pros and cons. In this paper, to address the …

User-Friendly Deniable Storage For Mobile Devices, Bing Chang, Yao Cheng, Bo Chen, Fengwei Zhang, Wen-Tao Zhu, Yingjiu Li, Zhan. Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Mobile devices are prevalently used to process sensitive data, but traditional encryption may not work when an adversary is able to coerce the device owners to disclose the encryption keys. Plausibly Deniable Encryption (PDE) is thus designed to protect sensitive data against this powerful adversary. In this paper, we present MobiPluto, a user-friendly PDE scheme for denying the existence of sensitive data stored on mobile devices. A salient difference between MobiPluto and the existing PDE systems is that any block-based file systems can be deployed on top of it. To further improve usability and deniability of MobiPluto, we introduce a …

Real-World Large-Scale Iot Systems For Community Eldercare: A Comparative Study On System Dependability, Hwee-Pink Tan, Austin Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The paradigm of aging-in-place — where the elderly live and age in their own homes, independently and safely, with care provided by the community — is compelling, especially in societies that face both shortages in institutionalized eldercare resources, and rapidly-aging populations. Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies, particularly in-home monitoring solutions, are commercially available, and can be a fundamental enabler of smart community eldercare, if they are dependable. In this paper, we present our findings on system performance of solutions from two vendors, which we have deployed at scale for technology-enabled community care. In particular, we highlight the importance of quantifying actual system …

Online/Offline Traceable Attribute-Based Encryption [In Chinese], Kai Zhang, Jianfeng Ma, Junwei Zhang, Zuobin Ying, Tao Zhang, Ximeng Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Attribute-based encryption (ABE), as a public key encryption, can be utilized for fine-grained access control. However, there are two main drawbacks that limit the applications of attribute-based encryption. First, as different users may have the same decryption privileges in ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption, it is difficult to catch the users who sell their secret keys for financial benefit. Second, the number of resource-consuming exponentiation operations required to encrypt a message in ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption grows with the complexity of the access policy, which presents a significant challenge for the users who encrypt data on mobile devices. Towards this end, after proposing …

Understanding Crude Oil Import Demand Behaviour In Africa: The Ghana Case, George Marbuah

Journal of African Trade

As in many African countries, crude oil importation is a major drain on the economy of Ghana. We estimate short-run and long-run import demand models for crude oil using data over the period 1980–2012. Results show that demand for crude oil is price inelastic in the short-run but elastic in the long-run. Other important drivers of crude oil import are the real effective exchange rate, domestic oil production and population growth. Income is found to be the strongest driver of crude oil demand. Policy implications of our results are presented.

The Litigators: Perceptions Of Predictability, Definitions Of A Good Outcome, And An Alternative To Mass Tort Trials, Lisa K. Dicker, Shane K. Hebel

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

A pervasive theme in our understanding of civil legal disputes is the “big case”; that is, the generic mass tort that pits sympathetic clients against shadowy, villainous corporations. In John Grisham’s stories about these cases, a David-and-Goliath legal battle ensues, the parameters of the law shift, the attorneys’ ethics stretch, and the author uses characters to reveal both sides’ deep secrets unwillingly—and sometimes unwittingly. Ultimately, the case leads to a “win” for one side or the other—either a huge payday for the clients and a large percentage-based fee for the lawyers who stumbled across it, or a corporation that …

Effects Of Knee Sleeves On Knee Mechanics During Squats At Variable Depths, Alexandria A. Trypuc

Human Movement Studies & Special Education Theses & Dissertations

The squat is a functional, compound and multi-joint exercise that targets several muscles of the lower body and is widely used in both athletics and many exercise programs. This exercise has been the subject of many studies, comparing different squat variations and examining how external gear, such as squat suits and knee wraps impact the exercise. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of wearing neoprene knee sleeves on lower extremity kinematics, kinetics, and muscle activations during weighted back squats. Fifteen resistance trained men and women, aged 28±5 years, from the local fitness community and university campus …

Coexistence And Secure Communication In Wireless Networks, Saygin Bakşi

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In a wireless system, transmitted electromagnetic waves can propagate in all directions and can be received by other users in the system. The signals received by unintended receivers pose two problems; increased interference causing lower system throughput or successful decoding of the information which removes secrecy of the communication. Radio frequency spectrum is a scarce resource and it is allocated by technologies already in use. As a result, many communication systems use the spectrum opportunistically whenever it is available in cognitive radio setting or use unlicensed bands. Hence, efficient use of spectrum by sharing users is crucial to increase maximize …

Molecular Candidates For Blocking The Transmission Of Vector-Borne Diseases, Ashish Naresh Vora

Biological Sciences Theses & Dissertations

Vector-borne diseases (VBDs) require urgent attention as they have a high mortality rate, with 700,000 people dying in a year as of 2017. So far, extremely few reliable vaccination strategies and solutions have emerged. Transmission blocking vaccines are one among many solutions available to manage the control of VBDs. These require identification of both vector and pathogen molecules that play important roles in the transmission, dissemination and establishment of VBDs. Our strategy is to characterize these candidates that play important roles in vector-host-pathogen interactions. This manuscript presents two such studies identifying the participation of two arthropod molecules in vector-host-pathogen interactions. …

Regional Sea Level Rise Along The United States Coasts, Alessandra G. Burgos

OES Theses and Dissertations

Over the past several years, there has been several studies focused on reconstructing global mean sea level (GMSL) for the 20th century, along with projecting rates out into the future. Of greater importance for mitigation and adaptation plans, however, is the rate of local or regional sea level (RSL) rise. Ocean dynamics along with changes in Earth’s gravitational field can cause RSL to deviate from the change in GMSL. During the satellite altimeter era covering the past two decades, RSL trends can be four times the global average, with much of this spatial variation due to internal climate variability. Isolating …

Development Of A Laser-Spark Multicharged Ion System – Application In Shallow Implantation Of Sic By Boron And Barium, Md. Haider Ali Shaim

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A novel multicharged ion source, using laser ablation induced plasma coupled with spark discharge, has been investigated in this work. The designed and demonstrated ion source is cost-effective, compact and versatile. Experiments are described with the intention of demonstrating the practicability of ion implantation via laser ion source.

Multicharged aluminum ions are generated by a ns Q-switched Nd:YAG laser pulse ablation of an aluminum target in an ultrahigh vacuum. The experiments are conducted using laser pulse energies of 45–90 mJ focused on the Al target surface by a lens with an 80-cm focal length to 0.0024 cm² spot area …

Examining The Role Of Behavioral Inhibition In Harsh Parenting Preferences: An Analog Study, Kelsey T. Ellis

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Understanding the cognitive processes involved in harsh parenting behavior would have broad implications for parenting interventions and training programs. Few studies have addressed how parental stressors, specifically infant crying, can influence individuals’ self-regulatory cognitive capacities and ultimately their preference for harsh parenting strategies. Furthermore, little research has explored the link between these cognitive processes and harsh parenting preferences; thus, little work has been done to establish a true causal relationship. This study examined the role of behavioral inhibition in harsh parenting preferences when individuals were exposed to an infant crying noise.

Participants (n = 129) were undergraduate students (Mage = …

Dynamic Response Modeling Of High Speed Planing Craft With Enforced Acceleration, Brian K. Johnson

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Due to the harsh conditions high speed planing crafts must endure, research to further the understanding of high speed vessel response during wave impacts was conducted. The integration of a finite element model and captured sea trial acceleration data was investigated. The research shows that the finite element model sub-model can be used in lieu of a full finite element model with minimum degradation in output, thus allowing for the analysis of local stress concentrations where critical equipment and or personnel may be located.

The research effort was completed to develop a method for realizing the stress field and deformation …

Development And Evaluation Of Post-Production Oxygenation Techniques For The Augmentation Of Biochar, Matthew David Huff

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses & Dissertations

Biochar is the carbon rich solid by-product of biomass pyrolysis. Interest in biochar can be broken down to several main categories: use as a carbon sequestration agent, use as a medium for the removal via adsorption of unwanted materials in wastewater, and as a soil amendment for the increase of cation exchange capacity (CEC). In order to generate a biochar which is stable enough for carbon sequestration, higher temperature pyrolysis must be used in order to ensure a lower O:C ratio in order to increase the half-life of biochar in soil. This dissertation addresses the evaluation of biochars made from …

Gust Alleviation System For General Aviation Aircraft, Lucas Coleman Mills

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A designed control motion scheme to improve passenger comfort in general aviation aircraft by reducing normal acceleration and pitch rate due to turbulence is investigated. An aerodynamic math model is created for ViGYAN’s Active Ride Improvement System flight article, a one-eighth scale Pilatus Porter PC-6 with conventional forward main wing, aft horizontal and vertical tails, and a single engine with tractor configuration. The test article incorporates a full-span gust flap and forward mounted gust sensor to mechanize the gust alleviation control system, and these features are present in the dynamic model. The model is a two degree of freedom linear …