Marc Conrad

A lightweight model of trust propagation in a multi-client network environment: to what extent does experience matter?

The increasing growth in the application of global computing and pervasive systems has necessitated careful consideration of security issues. In particular, there has been a growth in the use of electronic communities, in which there exist many relationships between different entities. Such relationships require establishing trust between entities and a great deal of effort has been expended in developing accurate and reliable models of trust in such multi-client environments. Many of these models are complex and not necessarily guaranteed to give accurate trust predictions. In this paper we present a review of some of these models before proposing a simple, lightweight model for trust. The proposed model does not require the estimation of a large parameter set, nor make great assumptions about the parameters that affect trust.

Exploring the synergies between the object oriented paradigm and mathematics: a Java led approach

While the object oriented paradigm and its instantiation within programming languages such as Java has become a ubiquitous part of both the commercial and educational landscapes, its usage as a visualization technique within mathematics undergraduate programmes of study has perhaps been somewhat underestimated. By regarding the object oriented paradigm as a medium for conceptual exploration (rather than merely as a tool) the aim is to show how the close conceptual links between object orientation and certain mathematical structures such as rings and groups can be more fully realized, using a ready-made public-domain Java package.

Democracy, culture and information security: a case study in Zanzibar

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of culture on information security in a developing countrys view.Design/methodology/approach – Two questionnaires adopted from the GLOBE project and OCAI were used to collect quantitative data on national and organisational culture. Also, a face to face semi‐structured interview was used to get insight into deep‐rooted issues concerning information security in the study environment. In addition, a previous study was used to find correlation of the data in this study.Findings – The findings show that national culture has more influence than organisation culture on information security. We find that the dimensions that influence information security are Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, In‐Group Collectivism, and Future Orientation.Research limitations/implications – This research was conducted in a public sector environment with employees thereby limiting external validity. Also, the population of the survey was small to make a generali...

A Mathematical Analysis of a Data-Grid Push Service for Disaster Management Response Scenarios

Current developments in grid technologies involve fluid and dynamic interactions between service providers and service consumers. We are particularly interested in a notable obstacle, namely how to keep service consumers informed of relevant changes about data committed in multiple and distributed service provider levels, and most importantly, when these changes can affect others well-being. To achieve this,we use an aggregated service case scenario to demonstrate the need for a data-grid push service in disaster management response operations. With this in mind, the paper describes in detail the model architecture in the form of a UML activity diagram, as well as its mathematical modeling analysis for keeping interested stakeholders informed automatically about relevant and critical data changes.

Integrating Shadows in Model Driven Engineering for Agile Software Development

Shadows are well known as a programming language feature in the application area of MUDs (a certain type of multi-player online game). We argue that agile methodologies can be enhanced by the use of shadows as this feature because of its inherent ability to dynamically change the behavior of classes and objects, provides mechanisms to ease common tasks such as prototyping, deprecating, dynamic classification and interclassing at run-time. Therefore shadows should be considered a notion beyond any specific programming languages in order to facilitate its use in model-driven software engineering. For this we introduce Shadows-UML, an UML extension, that would help to push forward the convergence between model-driven and agile methodologies.

How Do Students `Reallyź Interact with Virtual Worlds?

Our ongoing research focuses on the ways that interactions affect learner engagement with a virtual world and, consequently, the educational activities that take place within it when a hybrid learning approach is used. It aims to form a complete taxonomy of the types of interactions that can lead to the development of engaging and interactive learning experiences. In this paper, we examine the impact that the orientation (induction) process has on learner engagement by observing a cohort of postgraduate students while using an OpenSim-based institutionally hosted virtual world. The results of our study highlight that educators and instructors need to plan their in-world learning activities very carefully and with a focus on interactions if engaging activities are what they want to offer their students. Additionally, it seems that student interactions with the content of the virtual world and the in-class student-to-student interactions have stronger impact on student engagement when hybrid methods are used. We confirm and further enhance our hypothesis investigating student feelings and thoughts about the interaction taking place within a virtual world when that is used in higher education.Our ongoing research focuses on the ways that interactions affect learner engagement with a virtual world and, consequently, the educational activities that take place within it when a hybrid learning approach is used. It aims to form a complete taxonomy of the types of interactions that can lead to the development of engaging and interactive learning experiences. In this paper, we examine the impact that the orientation (induction) process has on learner engagement by observing a cohort of postgraduate students while using an OpenSim-based institutionally hosted virtual world. The results of our study highlight that educators and instructors need to plan their in-world learning activities very carefully and with a focus on interactions if engaging activities are what they want to offer their students. Additionally, it seems that student interactions with the content of the virtual world and the in-class student-to-student interactions have stronger impact on student engagement when hybrid methods are used. We confirm and further enhance our hypothesis investigating student feelings and thoughts about the interaction taking place within a virtual world when that is used in higher education.

Objects, worlds, and students: virtual interaction in education

The main aim of this study is to form a complete taxonomy of the types of interactions that relate to the use of a virtual world for engaging learning experiences, when blended and hybrid learning methods are to be used. In order to investigate this topic more accurately and effectively, we distinguish four dimensions of interactions based on the context in which these occur, and the involved parts: in-world and in-class, user-to-user and user-to-world interactions. In order to conduct investigation into this topic and form a view of the interactions as clear as possible, we observed a cohort of 15 undergraduate Computer Science students while using an OpenSim-based institutionally hosted virtual world. Moreover, we ran a survey where 50 students were asked to indicate their opinion and feelings about their in-world experience. The results of our study highlight that educators and instructors need to plan their in-world learning activities very carefully and with a focus on interactions if engaging activities are what they want to offer their students. Additionally, it seems that student interactions with the content of the virtual world and the in-class student-to-student interactions, have stronger impact on students’ engagement when hybrid methods are used.

Maintaining Context in a Changing (Virtual) World - Educators’ Perspectives for Opensim and Second Life

Educational activities previously performed in Second Life are now more and more move moving to other alternatives. This study concentrates on the features of Second Life and its open-source alternative, OpenSim that affect the results of the in-world educational activities. The need for educators to take these features into account is another focus of this study which also aims to highlight the similarities and differences between the contexts of Second Life and OpenSim worlds, whether internally or externally hosted, as well as their potentials and weaknesses. The findings suggest that each one of these alternatives gathers different positive and negative features and their suitability greatly depends on the academics’

Supervised ANN vs. Unsupervised SOM to Classify EEG Data for BCI: Why can GMDH do better?

Construction of a system for measuring the brain activity (electroencephalogram (EEG)) and recognising thinking patterns comprises significant challenges, in addition to the noise and distortion present in any measuring technique. One of the most major applications of measuring and understanding EGG is the brain-computer interface (BCI) technology. In this paper, ANNs (feedforward back-prop and Self Organising Maps) for EEG data classification will be implemented and compared to abductive-based networks, namely GMDH (Group Methods of Data Handling) to show how GMDH can optimally (i.e. noise and accuracy) classify a given set of BCI’s EEG signals. It is shown that GMDH provides such improvements. In this endeavour, EGG classification based on GMDH will be researched for comprehensible classification without scarifying accuracy. GMDH is suggested to be used to optimally classify a given set of BCI’s EEG signals. The other areas related to BCI will also be addressed yet within the context of this purpose. General Terms Pattern Recognition, Brain Computer Interface, Data Mining, Algorithms.

A Pragmatic and Musically Pleasing Production System for Sonic Events

We describe a novel application for sonic events namely their generation via mathematical functions implemented on a universal all purpose Java platform. Their design is driven by a set of requirements that arise in recognition-based authentication systems. We show that our approach has potential advantages as compared with traditional alphanumeric and other password systems. Our intention is to demonstrate that by leveraging familiar musical dimension and aesthetics human memorability, pleasure and pragmatics are enhanced. We demonstrate and briefly discuss one exemplar generative approach that has been specifically designed in order to fulfil the requirements implied by authentication systems. It is hoped that this work serves to stimulate debate and further activity in the field of computer generated sonics