Ab initio : a new concept in engineering education, a history of the design, creation and implementation of a new School of Engineering in Richmond, Virginia (1990-2000)

Dr. Henry A. McGee, Jr., Founding Dean Emeritus of the School of Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University, chronicles the history of the School of Engineering through his term as Founding Dean, 1994–1999. McGee details the process of creating a program aimed to balance innovation and entrepreneurship.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/vcu_books/1017/thumbnail.jp

A literature analysis examining the potential suitability of terahertz imaging to detect friction ridge detail preserved in the imprimatura layer of oil-based, painted artwork

This literature analysis examines terahertz (THz) imaging as a non-invasive tool for the imaging of friction ridge detail from the first painted layer (imprimatura) in multilayered painted works of art. The paintings of interest are those created utilizing techniques developed during the Renaissance and still in use today. The goal of analysis serves to answer two questions. First, can THz radiation penetrate paint layers covering the imprimatura to reveal friction ridge information? Secondly, can the this technology recover friction ridge detail such that the fine details are sufficiently resolved to provide images suitable for comparison and identification purposes. If a comparison standard exists, recovered friction ridge detail from this layer can be used to establish linkages to an artist or between works of art. Further, it can be added to other scientific methods currently employed to assist with the authentication efforts of unattributed paintings. Flanked by the microwave and far-infrared edges, THz straddles the electronic and optic perspectives of the electromagnetic spectrum. As a consequence, this range is imparted with unique and useful properties. Able to penetrate and image through many opaque materials, its non-ionizing radiation is an ideal non-destructive technique that provides visual information from a painting’s sub-strata. Imaging is possible where refractive index differences exist between different paint layers. Though it is impossible, at present, to determine when a fingerprint was deposited, one can infer approximately when a print was created if it is recovered from the imprimatura layer of a painting, and can be subsequently attributed to a known source. Fingerprints are unique, a person is only able to deposit prints while their physical body is intact and thus, in some cases, the multiple layer process some artists use in their work may be used to the examiner’s advantage. Impressions of friction ridge detail have been recorded on receiving surfaces from human hands throughout time (and have also been discovered in works of art). Yet, the potential to associate those recorded impressions to a specific individual was only realized just over one hundred years ago. Much like the use of friction ridge skin, the relatively recently discovered THz range is now better understood; its tremendous potential unlocked by growing research and technology designed to exploit its unique properties

The case of Ferbritas Cadastre Information System

The processes of mobilization of land for infrastructures of public and private domain are developed according to proper legal frameworks and systematically confronted with the impoverished national situation as regards the cadastral identification and regularization, which leads to big inefficiencies, sometimes with very negative impact to the overall effectiveness. This project report describes Ferbritas Cadastre Information System (FBSIC) project and tools, which in conjunction with other applications, allow managing the entire life-cycle of Land Acquisition and Cadastre, including support to field activities with the integration of information collected in the field, the development of multi-criteria analysis information, monitoring all information in the exploration stage, and the automated generation of outputs. The benefits are evident at the level of operational efficiency, including tools that enable process integration and standardization of procedures, facilitate analysis and quality control and maximize performance in the acquisition, maintenance and management of registration information and expropriation (expropriation projects). Therefore, the implemented system achieves levels of robustness, comprehensiveness, openness, scalability and reliability suitable for a structural platform. The resultant solution, FBSIC, is a fit-for-purpose cadastre information system rooted in the field of railway infrastructures. FBSIC integrating nature of allows: to accomplish present needs and scale to meet future services; to collect, maintain, manage and share all information in one common platform, and transform it into knowledge; to relate with other platforms; to increase accuracy and productivity of business processes related with land property management

In the Vernacular: Photography of the Everyday

This is the catalogue of the exhibition "In the Vernacular" at Boston University Art Gallery

Central monitoring system for ambient assisted living

Smart homes for aged care enable the elderly to stay in their own homes longer. By means of various types of ambient and wearable sensors information is gathered on people living in smart homes for aged care. This information is then processed to determine the activities of daily living (ADL) and provide vital information to carers. Many examples of smart homes for aged care can be found in literature, however, little or no evidence can be found with respect to interoperability of various sensors and devices along with associated functions. One key element with respect to interoperability is the central monitoring system in a smart home. This thesis analyses and presents key functions and requirements of a central monitoring system. The outcomes of this thesis may benefit developers of smart homes for aged care

Spatial representation of public displays networks

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia de ComunicaçõesEste trabalho faz parte do projeto Europeu Pd-Net e tem como objectivo identificar e abordar os desafios tecnológicos e de investigação relacionados com a criação de redes, em larga escala, de ecrãs públicos e sensores associados. O aparecimento das redes de larga escala de ecrãs públicos irá representar uma mudança significativa no modo como pensamos sobre a disseminação de informação em espaços públicos e criará uma nova área de investigação, as bases para um novo meio de comunicação e novas oportunidades de negócio. De igual modo, é esperada uma mudança nos espaços públicos para espaços inteligentes que podem ser ajustados para refletir as esperanças, aspirações e interesses dos ocupantes que utilizam o conteúdo e as aplicações criadas em qualquer parte da rede. Um dos pontos-chave da rede de ecrãs públicos é a possibilidade de endereçar a rede como um todo e focar nas relações espaciais entre os ecrãs.This work is part of Pd-Net, a European project that aims to explore the scientific challenges and new technologies required to enable the emergence of large scale networks of pervasive public displays and associated sensors that are open to applications and content from many sources. The emergence of such pervasive display networks would represent a radical transformation in the way we think about information dissemination in public spaces and will create a new research area, provide the foundations for a new communication medium and new business opportunities. In the same way, it is expected a change from public spaces – from today’s environments in which information is pushed to passers-by in the form of adverts – to spaces that can utilise ambient intelligence to be tailored to reflect the hopes, aspirations and interests of its occupants using content and applications created anywhere in a global network. One of the interesting features of pervasive displays networks is the possibility to address the network as a whole and to focus on the spatial relations between displays

The sacrament of friendship: disrupting lonely landscapes in American higher education

Loneliness is on the rise. Students in higher education report increased feelings of isolation, anxiety, and depression and the non-stop transactional culture rarely leaves time for quiet self-reflection or the cultivation of deep ties. Drawing connections between this spiritual impoverishment and the infantilization of Roman Catholic laity, this project engages a theopoetic of the Holy Trinity and feminist ecclesiology to argue for an expansion of sacramental consciousness. My strategic proposal for transformation rests in the design of a sacramental friendship program that nourishes a posture towards receptivity, innovation, just discipleship, and gratitude. This spacious scaffolding invites students to dig deep into their already holy lives, developing the skills of active listening and mindful presence to prioritize relationships over tasks

Building the OD professional of the future: creating a blueprint for new models of organisational development practice in the NHS

The National Health Service (NHS) in England provides vital care to the population, free at the point of delivery. Demographic changes in society and advances in treatment of illness have resulted in a population that is living longer with complex long-term conditions. For the NHS this means a shift from episodic reactive care to predictive, preventative and ongoing care with patients at the heart of the approach. The 2014 Five Year Forward View set out a direction of travel for services to be integrated in order to break down barriers between organisations, moving from old to new models of care. Organisational Development (OD) practitioners tasked with supporting the change efforts required to move to new models of care were struggling to get the traction needed. Inquiries led by the NHS OD community revealed a transactional bias to their activities, using traditional models of ‘diagnostic’ OD. The new models of care prompted me in my national role supporting the development of OD practitioners to explore if the present practice of OD was fit for the future. Over a two-year period, fourteen OD practitioners from across the NHS worked in an Action Research group using co-operative inquiry methods to answer the question how do we build the OD professional of the future? We explored four areas in depth: locating ourselves in practice; new models of OD; phenomenal practice in the dynamic now; and building the OD professional the future. Our work resulted in a deeper understanding of the landscape and climate of OD in the NHS. We created a blueprint for OD practice which incorporates Diagnostic, Dialogic and an emergent category of Dynamic OD into a new architecture of OD for the NHS. We revealed that strength is the core of phenomenal OD practice in the dynamic space and developed a route for the OD professionals of the future to find their way to a new way of working that will meet the ongoing changing needs of the NHS. The research programme concluded that working in multiple interdependent complex adaptive systems will be the new normal for OD practitioners in the future NHS. To succeed they will need to stretch into unexplored areas of practice and find or create micro-communities of learning to shape and strengthen their presence. The process of co-operative inquiry itself created collaborative behaviours and as such there should be support for OD practitioners across the NHS to come together and carry out inquiries into their own practice and continually build and rebuild themselves

On the security of mobile sensors

PhD ThesisThe age of sensor technology is upon us. Sensor-rich mobile devices are ubiquitous. Smart-phones, tablets, and wearables are increasingly equipped with sensors such as GPS, accelerometer, Near Field Communication (NFC), and ambient sensors. Data provided by such sensors, combined with the fast-growing computational capabilities on mobile platforms, offer richer and more personalised apps. However, these sensors introduce new security challenges to the users, and make sensor management more complicated. In this PhD thesis, we contribute to the field of mobile sensor security by investigating a wide spectrum of open problems in this field covering attacks and defences, standardisation and industrial approaches, and human dimensions. We study the problems in detail and propose solutions. First, we propose “Tap-Tap and Pay” (TTP), a sensor-based protocol to prevent the Mafia attack in NFC payment. The Mafia attack is a special type of Man-In-The-Middle attack which charges the user for something more expensive than what she intends to pay by relaying transactions to a remote payment terminal. In TTP, a user initiates the payment by physically tapping her mobile phone against the reader. We observe that this tapping causes transient vibrations at both devices which are measurable by the embedded accelerometers. Our observations indicate that these sensor measurements are closely correlated within the same tapping, and different if obtained from different tapping events. By comparing the similarity between the two measurements, the bank can distinguish the Mafia fraud apart from a legitimate NFC transaction. The experimental results and the user feedback suggest the practical feasibility of TTP. As compared with previous sensor-based solutions, ours is the only one that works even when the attacker and the user are in nearby locations or share similar ambient environments. Second, we demonstrate an in-app attack based on a real world problem in contactless payment known as the card collision or card clash. A card collision happens when more than one card (or NFC-enabled device) are presented to the payment terminal’s field, and the terminal does not know which card to choose. By performing experiments, we observe that the implementation of contactless terminals in practice matches neither EMV nor ISO standards (the two primary standards for smart card payment) on card collision. Based on this inconsistency, we propose “NFC Payment Spy”, a malicious app that tracks the user’s contactless payment transactions. This app, running on a smart phone, simulates a card which requests the payment information (amount, time, etc.) from the terminal. When the phone and the card are both presented to a contactless terminal (given that many people use mobile case wallets to travel light and keep wallet essentials close to hand), our app can effectively win the race condition over the card. This attack is the first privacy attack on contactless payments based on the problem of card collision. By showing the feasibility of this attack, we raise awareness of privacy and security issues in contactless payment protocols and implementation, specifically in the presence of new technologies for payment such as mobile platforms. Third, we show that, apart from attacking mobile devices by having access to the sensors through native apps, we can also perform sensor-based attacks via mobile browsers. We examine multiple browsers on Android and iOS platforms and study their policies in granting permissions to JavaScript code with respect to access to motion and orientation sensor data. Based on our observations, we identify multiple vulnerabilities, and propose “TouchSignatures” and “PINLogger.js”, two novel attacks in which malicious JavaScript code listens to such sensor data measurements. We demonstrate that, despite the much lower sampling rate (comparing to a native app), a remote attacker is able to learn sensitive user information such as physical activities, phone call timing, touch actions (tap, scroll, hold, zoom), and PINs based on these sensor data. This is the first report of such a JavaScript-based attack. We disclosed the above vulnerability to the community and major mobile browser vendors classified the problem as high-risk and fixed it accordingly. Finally, we investigate human dimensions in the problem of sensor management. Although different types of attacks via sensors have been known for many years, the problem of data leakage caused by sensors has remained unsolved. While working with W3C and browser vendors to fix the identified problem, we came to appreciate the complexity of this problem in practice and the challenge of balancing security, usability, and functionality. We believe a major reason for this is that users are not fully aware of these sensors and the associated risks to their privacy and security. Therefore, we study user understanding of mobile sensors, specifically their risk perceptions. This is the only research to date that studies risk perceptions for a comprehensive list of mobile sensors (25 in total). We interview multiple participants from a range of backgrounds by providing them with multiple self-declared questionnaires. The results indicate that people in general do not have a good understanding of the complexities of these sensors; hence making security judgements about these sensors is not easy for them. We discuss how this observation, along with other factors, renders many academic and industry solutions ineffective. This makes the security and privacy issues of mobile sensors and other sensorenabled technologies an important topic to be investigated further