Digital Divide in Rural Native American Homes: A Student Perspective

Native American homes located in rural western North Dakota have seen increased availability of broadband and fiber optic Internet but continue to have low access numbers. Native American homes in the region located outside population centers continue to have difficulty accessing the Internet. Many households continue to struggle with economic factors compounded by the cost of a device to access the Internet for personal, educational, or employment use. A qualitative study with semi-structured interviews and the grounded theory method investigated the Native American home environment. Interviews were conducted with Native American students attending a state university with insight into diverse digital environments. The cost of access and technical knowledge continue to be issues in the home. This research deepens the understanding of digital divide factors in Native American households, emphasizing the perspective of Native American students

The role of leadership styles, organizational culture, and knowledge management in higher education institutions (HEI)

Knowledge management (KM) strategies adopted by universities are either inadequate or inconsistent. Minimal research has explored the link between KM enablers and the effective implementation of KM in the context of HEI. This empirical study aims to investigate the relationship between transformational leadership, transactional leadership, organizational culture, KM effectiveness and organizational performance. The research employs structural equation modeling using Partial Least Square (SEM-PLS) to study the underlying relationships. Key findings suggest that organizational culture and transformational leadership contributed to KM effectiveness and that KM is essential for improving the performance of higher education institutions

Static Binary Rewriting for ROP Gadget Removal

Return-Oriented Programming (ROP) is an exploitation technique that is commonly used by malicious users. It works by leveraging return statements in binaries to gain control over the execution of programs. Some mitigations for ROP include changing the binary during compilation time, rewriting the binary after compilation, and adding runtime checks to the binary. The focus of this study was rewriting the binary after compilation. Rewriting during compilation time requires end users to have access to source code, which, in most cases, they will not. Adding runtime checks adds additional overhead to the target binary. The areas this study aimed to improve in the binary rewriting space were twofold. The first was improving static binary rewriting. This was done by attempting to see if the amount of information needed to correctly rewrite a binary could be reduced compared to other tools. The second area was attempting to use static binary rewriting to reduce the number of potential ROP gadgets in a binary. The ROP gadgets that were targeted were those created by splitting an instruction that contains a return in them to create new ROP gadgets. This was chosen because most current tools focused on the safety of standard returns from function ends. To determine if static binary rewriting could be used to reduce the amount of ROP gadgets created from mid-instruction ROP gadgets, a design science approach was taken. There were two artifacts that were created through two design cycles. The first artifact aimed to create a static binary rewriter that collected minimal amount of information from binaries. The second artifact built upon the first artifact and attempted to use it to remove instructions that contained a mid-instruction return. After the removal of the mid-instruction return, the second artifact inserted instructions that allowed for the same functionality of the binary, but without the return byte

Tunneling time and Faraday/Kerr effects in PT-symmetric systems

We review the generalization of tunneling time and anomalous behaviour of Fara- day and Kerr rotation angles in parity and time (PT )-symmetric systems. Similarities of two phenomena are discussed, both exhibit a phase transition-like anomalous behaviour in a certain range of model parameters. Anomalous behaviour of tunneling time and Faraday/Kerr angles in PT -symmetric systems is caused by the motion of poles of scattering amplitudes in the en- ergy/frequency complex plane

CyberEducation-By-Design™: Developing A Framework for Cybersecurity Education at Secondary Education Institutions in Arizona

Most survey results agree that there is a current and ongoing shortage of skilled cybersecurity workers that places our privacy, infrastructure, and nation at risk. Estimates for the global Cybersecurity Workforce Gap range from 2.72 million (ISC2, 2021) to 3.5 million (Cyber Academy, 2021) for 2021 and the United States estimates range from 465,000 (Brooks, 2021) to over 769,000 (Cyber Seek, 2022) open jobs as of November 2022. The most optimistic estimates still demonstrate a critical issue. As cybersecurity threats continue to grow in sophistication, scope, and scale, the ability to secure the United States from these threats lies in the ability to develop cybersecurity professionals with the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) to accomplish the tasks associated with their cyber roles. The ability to supply qualified cybersecurity professionals is outpaced by the growing demand as previously outlined. This study proposes that conducting a case study of existing cybersecurity programs at secondary education institutions can identify the critical elements of these programs. These elements can be codified into program profiles and further refined into a comprehensive cybersecurity education framework for secondary education institutions. This framework can be used by school districts throughout Arizona to develop cybersecurity programs and ultimately develop qualified and competent cybersecurity professionals to overcome the cybersecurity workforce gap

Design Principles For App-Based Healthcare Interventions: A Mixed Method Approach

Despite the ubiquity of mobile health applications (apps), the practical use and success of the apps have been questionable. Design Principles (DP) can affect chronic health app user satisfaction and have been studied for ensuring favorable app usage. However, there is no consensual definition of DP within the preceding literature, which has a technical rather than an end-user-centric focus and lacks a rigorous theoretical basis. Moreover, different levels of DPs’ application can lead to differential user satisfaction as influenced by the user-contextual environment, warranting a quantitative assessment. Accordingly, the overarching question to be addressed is which DP for the self-management of chronic conditions contributes to better user satisfaction outcomes. The research focuses on Multiple Sclerosis (MS) as a representative condition. This research uses a mixed methods, with a qualitative approach for DP identification and a quantitative approach for the studying the DP-Satisfaction relationship. The DP identification is achieved through - 1) An in depth review of foundational theory for greater validity, 2) A Systematic Literature Review (SLR), for DP themes grounded in theory, and 3) Manually coded user reviews for MS apps. The theoretical underpinnings of the empirical approach are established through a composite theoretical lens, based on technologically, behaviorally, and cognitively oriented frameworks. The DP extracted from theory, SLR, and manual coding methods are found to be largely consistent with each other, namely ‘Communication with Clinicians’, ‘Compatibility, ‘Education’, ‘Notifications’, ‘Tracking’, ‘Social Support’, ‘Ease of Use’, ‘Technical Support’, ‘Usefulness’, ‘Privacy and Security’, and Quality. An ordinal logistic regression analysis is conducted to understand the relationship between DP and User Satisfaction outcomes based on the manually coded DP scores of the user reviews. All DP have a significant impact on User Satisfaction. From a theoretical perspective, the research improves our understanding of key design principles for the self-management of chronic conditions such as MS and the impact of such principles on user satisfaction. From a practical perspective, the findings provide guidance to the user requirement elicitation process, potentially leading to the development of more successful, sustainable, and responsive healthcare interventions

Conversational Agents for Mental Health and Well-being: Discovering Design Recommendations Using Text Mining

Conversational agents are increasingly being used by the general population due to shortages in healthcare providers and specialists, and limited access to treatments. They are also used by people to deal with loneliness and lack of companionship. As these apps are increasingly replacing real humans, there is a need to explore their design features and limitations for better design of conversational apps. Using text mining and topic modeling, this study analyzed a total of 126,610 reviews about Replika, a popular and well-established conversational agent mobile app. Our results emphasized current practices for designing conversational apps while at the same time sheds the light on limitations associated with these apps. Such limitations are related to the need for better conversations and intelligent responses, the need for advanced AI chatbots, the need to avoid questionable and inappropriate content, the need for inclusive design, and the need to address some technical limitations

Defining A Cyber Operations Performance Framework Via Computational Modeling

Cyber operations are influenced by a wide range of environmental characteristics, strategic policies, organizational procedures, complex networks, and the individuals who attack and defend these cyber battlegrounds. While no two cyber operations are identical, leveraging the power of computational modeling will enable decision-makers to understand and evaluate the effect of these influences prior to their impact on mission success. Given the complexity of these influences, this research proposes an agent-based modeling framework that will result in an operational performance dashboard for user analysis. To account for cyber team behavioral characteristics, this research includes the development and validation of the Cyber Operations Self-Efficacy Scales (COSES). The underlying statistics, algorithms, research instruments, and equations to support the overall framework are provided. This research represents the most comprehensive cyber operations agent-based performance analysis tools published to date

Detection Of VulnerabilitIies in 5G Femtocell Firmware Using Static Analysis Tools

The purpose of this study is to support fifth generation (5G) wireless network security by identifying vulnerabilities in 5G femtocell firmware. It addresses the problem of whether 5G femtocells are shipped to customers with firmware that contains vulnerabilities. This is a subproblem of supply chain security. The problem is significant because exploitation of latent vulnerabilities in the firmware of 5G network access points (such as femtocells) could compromise the security of network communications. This study employs a design science research methodology consisting of a quasi-experiment which applies static analysis tools to 5G femtocell firmware samples. It seeks to answer the research question “can security vulnerabilities in 5G femtocell firmware be detected by static analysis tools?”. The presence of vulnerabilities would imply that the firmware is insecure. This question directly supports the purpose of this research. The quasi-experiment applied four commercially available static analysis security tools to five 5G femtocell firmware samples harvested from used 5G equipment. The static analysis tools were able to identify several known CVEs in each firmware sample. To lessen the chances of reporting false positives, each CVE reported by the tools was assigned a “confidence rating” corresponding to the number of tools reporting the presence of that CVE. The study found several CVEs in each firmware sample with confidence ratings of 1.0 (i.e., every tool in the study had reported the presence of that CVE). Further, many of these CVEs were publicly documented prior to the deployment of the firmware into the field. Because of these findings, the study was able to answer the research question in the affirmative