Secure Pick Up: Implicit Authentication When You Start Using the Smartphone

We propose Secure Pick Up (SPU), a convenient, lightweight, in-device, non-intrusive and automatic-learning system for smartphone user authentication. Operating in the background, our system implicitly observes users' phone pick-up movements, the way they bend their arms when they pick up a smartphone to interact with the device, to authenticate the users. Our SPU outperforms the state-of-the-art implicit authentication mechanisms in three main aspects: 1) SPU automatically learns the user's behavioral pattern without requiring a large amount of training data (especially those of other users) as previous methods did, making it more deployable. Towards this end, we propose a weighted multi-dimensional Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) algorithm to effectively quantify similarities between users' pick-up movements; 2) SPU does not rely on a remote server for providing further computational power, making SPU efficient and usable even without network access; and 3) our system can adaptively update a user's authentication model to accommodate user's behavioral drift over time with negligible overhead. Through extensive experiments on real world datasets, we demonstrate that SPU can achieve authentication accuracy up to 96.3% with a very low latency of 2.4 milliseconds. It reduces the number of times a user has to do explicit authentication by 32.9%, while effectively defending against various attacks.Comment: Published on ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies (SACMAT) 201

Estimating household air pollution exposures and health impacts from space heating in rural China

Exposure to and the related burden of diseases caused by pollution from solid fuel cooking, known as household air pollution (HAP), has been incorporated in the assessment of the Global Burden of Diseases (GBD) project. In contrast, HAP from space heating using solid fuels, prevalent in countries at middle or high altitudes, is less studied and missing from the GBD assessment. China is an ideal example to estimate the bias of exposure and burden of diseases assessment when space heating is neglected, considering its remarkably changing demands for heating from the north to the south and a large solid-fuel-dependent rural population. In this study, based on a meta-analysis of 27 field measurement studies in rural China, we derive the indoor PM2.5 (fine particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter smaller than 2.5 μm) concentration for both the heating and non-heating seasons. Combining this dataset with time-activity patterns and percentage of households using solid fuels, we assess the population-weighted annual mean exposure to PM2.5 (PWE) and the health impacts associated with HAP in mainland rural China by county for the year 2010. We find that ignoring heating impacts leads to an underestimation in PWE estimates by 38 μg/m3 for the nationwide rural population (16 to 40 as interquartile range) with substantial negative bias in northern provinces. Correspondingly, premature deaths and disability-adjusted life years will be underestimated by approximately 30 × 103 and 60 × 104 in 2010, respectively. Our study poses the need for incorporating heating effects into HAP risk assessments in China as well as globally

Promising Partnerships in Art Education and Special Education: An Interview with Beverly Gerber

Dr. Beverly Gerber is a strong advocate for developing “promising partnerships” between art educators and special educators. She has spent her career working to advocate for increased inclusive opportunities for students with disabilities. From this advocacy, she has written books that have sat atop the National Art Education Association’s best seller’s list. In addition, Dr. Gerber is a co-founding member of the Division of Visual and Performing Arts Education (DARTS) in the council for Exceptional Children. DARTS will celebrate it’s 10th anniversary in 2025. Dr. Gerber’s work has had a notable impact on the intersection of art and special education. In this interview, she shares her experiences along with suggestions for educators and teacher preparation programs

An Analysis of Holistic Education Models in Mainland China’s Higher Education Institutions: A Case Study of College English Curriculum

Over the last four decades, the field of education in mainland China has seen sustained and stable growth. However, the very essence of education has undergone significant changes. In the era spanning from the 1980s to the mid-1990s, the primary aim of education was to serve economic construction and modern development, with a clear emphasis on utilitarian and instrumental characteristics. By the late 1990s, there was a shift towards advocating for quality education that prioritizes the comprehensive development of individuals, gradually embracing the concept of holistic education across the Chinese mainland. College English courses, mandatory for all non-English major undergraduates at Chinese universities, stand as a pivotal component of general education. Amidst the extensive backdrop of educational reform and development in mainland China, college English curriculum have experienced profound changes. The “College English Curriculum Guidelines (2020)” recently released by the Ministry of Education highlights that college English courses possess both instrumental and humanistic dimensions. The instrumental aspect is demonstrated through enhancing students’ comprehensive abilities in listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translating English, while its humanistic core is rooted in a people-oriented approach that celebrates human values and emphasizes the cultivation of comprehensive qualities and overall development. This paper aims to explore the practical model of implementing holistic education within college English curriculum, adhering to the specific requirements of the 2020 guidelines, across four dimensions: curriculum system, instructional approaches, educational resources, and faculty strength