dbProlog: a Prolog/relational database interface

dbProlog is a prototype system that provides a C-Prolog user access to data in an external relational database via both loose and tight coupling. To the application programmer, dbProlog is a group of six built-in Prolog predicates that effect communication between a C-Prolog process and a database management system process. Prolog application program statements may be written using the six predicates to make the interface transparent to an end-user. The system is based on a driver process that must be customized to the interfaced DBMS and whose primary function is the translation of requests and replies between C-Prolog and the DBMS. dbProlog supports Prolog\u27s depth-first search on database retrievals by producing the next record when the retrieval predicate is encountered upon backtracking. dbProlog also supports multiple active database retrievals, as may be required by a Prolog rule that references two or more database retrievals, or by a recursive rule

Data mining and public health surveillance

Thesis submitted to the Department of Computer Science, Ashesi University College, in partial fulfillment of Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science, April 2013The ability to observe current trends in health information and predict the future health status of a country is an important goal of health service institutions. Health information systems are used to accumulate, validate and examine data in order to provide information which is used in the formation of health policies. The fast growth and integration of databases means health scientists now have a huge resource that can be studied to make inferences and reveal valuable trends. Developing countries like Ghana often lack such systems, with high cost of software and IT infrastructure being the major issues. However, due to its low hardware requirements, an open-source system like DHIS2 solves these problems. There is also the need to develop systems which simulate the human thought process and data mining is one element of this stimulating area of adaptive behaviour and machine learning. The main research objective of this thesis is to examine how medical data are being used currently and explore better ways of analyzing them to deliver an improved quality of health service.Ashesi University Colleg

Cyber Security

This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Annual Conference on Cyber Security, CNCERT 2021, held in Beijing, China, in AJuly 2021. The 14 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 51 submissions. The papers are organized according to the following topical sections: ​data security; privacy protection; anomaly detection; traffic analysis; social network security; vulnerability detection; text classification

Cyber Security

This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Annual Conference on Cyber Security, CNCERT 2021, held in Beijing, China, in AJuly 2021. The 14 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 51 submissions. The papers are organized according to the following topical sections: ​data security; privacy protection; anomaly detection; traffic analysis; social network security; vulnerability detection; text classification

Evidential Reasoning & Analytical Techniques In Criminal Pre-Trial Fact Investigation

This thesis is the work of the author and is concerned with the development of a neo-Wigmorean approach to evidential reasoning in police investigation. The thesis evolved out of dissatisfaction with cardinal aspects of traditional approaches to police investigation, practice and training. Five main weaknesses were identified: Firstly, a lack of a theoretical foundation for police training and practice in the investigation of crime and evidence management; secondly, evidence was treated on the basis of its source rather than it's inherent capacity for generating questions; thirdly, the role of inductive elimination was underused and misunderstood; fourthly, concentration on single, isolated cases rather than on the investigation of multiple cases and, fifthly, the credentials of evidence were often assumed rather than considered, assessed and reasoned within the context of argumentation. Inspiration from three sources were used to develop the work: Firstly, John Henry Wigmore provided new insights into the nature of evidential reasoning and formal methods for the construction of arguments; secondly, developments in biochemistry provided new insights into natural methods of storing and using information; thirdly, the science of complexity provided new insights into the complex nature of collections of data that could be developed into complex systems of information and evidence. This thesis is an application of a general methodology supported by new diagnostic and analytical techniques. The methodology was embodied in a software system called Forensic Led Intelligence System: FLINTS. My standpoint is that of a forensic investigator with an interest in how evidential reasoning can improve the operation we call investigation. New areas of evidential reasoning are in progress and these are discussed including a new application in software designed by the author: MAVERICK. There are three main themes; Firstly, how a broadened conception of evidential reasoning supported by new diagnostic and analytical techniques can improve the investigation and discovery process. Secondly, an explanation of how a greater understanding of the roles and effects of different styles of reasoning can assist the user; and thirdly; a range of concepts and tools are presented for the combination, comparison, construction and presentation of evidence in imaginative ways. Taken together these are intended to provide examples of a new approach to the science of evidential reasoning. Originality will be in four key areas; 1. Extending and developing Wigmorean techniques to police investigation and evidence management. 2. Developing existing approaches in single case analysis and introducing an intellectual model for multi case analysis. 3. Introducing a new model for police training in investigative evidential reasoning. 4. Introducing a new software system to manage evidence in multi case approaches using forensic scientific evidence. FLINTS

Automated Framework to Improve User?s Awareness and to Categorize Friends on Online Social Networks

The popularity of online social networks has brought up new privacy threats. These threats often arise after users willingly, but unwittingly reveal their information to a wider group of people than they actually intended. Moreover, the well adapted ?friends-based? privacy control has proven to be ill-equipped to prevent dynamic information disclosure, such as in user text posts. Ironically, it fails to capture the dynamic nature of this data by reducing the problem to manual privacy management which is time-consuming, tiresome and error-prone task. This dissertation identifies an important problem with posting on social networks and proposes a unique two phase approach to the problem. First, we suggest an additional layer of security be added to social networking sites. This layer includes a framework for natural language to automatically check texts to be posted by the user and detect dangerous information disclosure so it warns the user. A set of detection rules have been developed for this purpose and tested with over 16,000 Facebook posts to confirm the detection quality. The results showed that our approach has an 85% detection rate which outperforms other existing approaches. Second, we propose utilizing trust between friends as currency to access dangerous posts. The unique feature of our approach is that the trust value is related to the absence of interaction on the given topic. To approach our goal, we defined trust metrics that can be used to determine trustworthy friends in terms of the given topic. In addition, we built a tool which calculates the metrics automatically, and then generates a list of trusted friends. Our experiments show that our approach has reasonably acceptable performance in terms of predicting friends? interactions for the given posts. Finally, we performed some data analysis on a small set of user interaction records on Facebook to show that friends? interaction could be triggered by certain topics

The prevention of mobile phone theft: a case study of crime as pollution; rational choices and consumer demand.

This thesis makes two contributions to environmental criminology. The first contribution is a rational choice event model for mobile phone thieves. This is based on interviews with 40 mobile phone thieves. In addition, the deterrent effects of 23 designs of phone are assessed. Comparisons are made between the responses of offenders and non-offenders; and between experienced offenders and less experienced offenders. The results show that mobile phone thieves make discerning choices about which model of phone to steal at the point of theft. The factors affecting handset choice reflect Clarke s (1999) CRAVED characteristics. Mobile phone thieves are differentially deterred by a variety of design solutions, the most effective of which reduce the resale value of stolen handsets. In contrast with offenders, non-offenders are more easily deterred, and statistically significantly more deterred for five of the 23 designs presented in this thesis; do not appreciate the importance of resale value; and are not so aware of the possibilities for circumventing or neutralising security technology. The differences between offender and non-offender responses mean that offenders are arguably best placed to assess product use and misuse in the process of designing-out crime. The second contribution of this thesis is a Mobile Phone Theft Index which controls for phone availability in the absence of handset sales data. Mobile phone theft is arguably a form of pollution (Roman and Farrell, 2002) and can, therefore, be controlled using traditional pollution control instruments (Farrell and Roman, 2006). Informing the public of their risk of victimisation according to handset ownership would make security a marketable aspect of handset design, incentivising industry to decrease theft rates. Industry action to date shows evidence of obstructionism and pre-regulatory initiatives (Newman, 2004) meaning that a novel instrument such as the Index is necessary to alter the current status quo where industry costs UK society an estimated £1.2 billion per year (Mailley and Farrell, 2006)