Prospective Analysis of the Mobile Health Information Systems in China

With the rapidly growing economy in the past few decades, people of China (mainland) are now enjoying increasingly more economic benefits than ever before. Of many growing technologies, mobile devices, especially cell phones, have been gaining popularity throughout the country. According to the latest statistics in 2007, more than one third of Chinese have cell phones. In addition to the basic uses of voice communication, cell phones have many other promising applications. Particularly, as a pervasive technology, mobile devices offer a great opportunity to deliver health information directly to people with an affordable cost. This paper analyzes the potential of mobile health information systems in China. This prospective analysis will be conducted from four important perspectives: technology, market demand, business model, and government policy

A Communication Choreography for Discrete Step MultiAgent Social Simulations

Considerable research has been done on agent communications, yet in discrete step social agent simulations there is no standardized work done to facilitate reactive agent-to-agent communication. We propose an agent-to-agent interaction framework that preserves the integrity of the communication process in an artificial society in a \u27time-stepped\u27 discrete event simulator. We introduce the modeling language called Agent Choreography Description Language (ACDL) in order to model the communication. It serves in describing the common and collaborative observable behaviour of multiple agents that need to interact in a peer to peer manner to achieve some goal. ACDL further adopts the parallel and interaction activities to model proper communication in an artificial society. The ACDL communication framework is implemented and tested in REPAST. It employs a communication manager to generate and execute ACDL specification according to agent\u27s communication needs

Bursting the broadband bubble

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Broadband has revolutionised the way the Internet is used and has become the critical enabling infrastructure of our modem and knowledge-based economy. Its widespread introduction has not only greatly enhanced the speed at which information online can be accessed, but also the range and sophistication of the content available. It is still penetrating the telecommunication market and is seen by some as the most significant evolutionary step since the emergence of the Internet. However in the rush to achieve market share, there is a risk that insufficient attention may be paid to quality issues, the central theme of this research. The research addresses the issues of broadband quality with a stated objective of assessing broadband quality by means of an integrated framework that encompasses factors beyond strict technical characteristics of broadband networks. Indeed, the concept of quality is a multi-facetted one, for which various perspectives can be distinguished. In this work, broadband quality as perceived by users, ISP and Government in the United Kingdom (UK) is looked at and a survey report is given and analysed. The aim of this doctoral research was to provide much needed empirical broadband quality framework that would guide the service provider as well as the UK government in the provision of quality broadband to its consumers. It will also stand as a benchmark to countries wanting to provide quality broadband to its citizens. A survey research approach was employed to achieve the overall aim and objective of this research. This was conducted using the response of 133 participants located in various boroughs in the UK. The results of the survey show that quality, though desired by many, has been short-changed by the desire to have access to the Internet via broadband at the lowest cost possible. However, this has not encouraged some consumers to switch to broadband from dial-up service despite continuous low prices being offered by service providers. Furthermore, the results also indicated that focusing on broadband quality will improve and promote investment in broadband capacity and decrease the uncertainty in consumer demand for applications such as multi-media content delivery, enhanced electronic commerce and telecommuting that exploit broadband access

Arquitecturas de hardware para um veículo eléctrico

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201

XML security in XML data integrity, authentication, and confidentiality

The widely application of XML has increasingly required high security. XML security confronts some challenges that are strong relating to its features. XML data integrity needs to protect element location information and contextreferential meaning as well as data content integrity under fine-grained security situations. XML data authentication must satisfy a signing process under a dependent and independent multi-signature generation scenario. When several different sections are encrypted within the XML data, it cannot query the encrypted contents without decrypting the encrypted portions. The technologies relating to XML security demand further development. This thesis aims to improve XML security relative technologies, and make them more practicable and secure. A novel revocation information validation approach for X.509 certificate is proposed based on the XML digital signature technology. This approach reduces the complexity of XKMS or PKI systems because it eliminates the requirement for additional revocation checking from XKMS or CA. The communication burden between server and client could be alleviated. The thesis presents the context-referential integrity for XML data. An integrity solution for XML data is also proposed based on the concatenated hash function. The integrity model proposed not only ensures XML data content integrity, but also protects the structure integrity and elements’ context relationship within an XML data. If this model is integrated into XML signature technology, the signature cannot be copied to another document still keeping valid. A new series-parallel XML multi-signature scheme is proposed. The presented scheme is a mixed order specified XML multi-signature scheme according to a dependent and independent signing process. Using presented XML data integrity-checking pool to provide integrity-checking for decomposed XML data, it makes signing XPath expression practicable, rather than signing XML data itself. A new labeling scheme for encrypted XML data is presented to improve the efficiency of index information maintenance which is applied to support encrypted XML data query processing. The proposed labelling scheme makes maintenance index information more efficient, and it is easy to update XML data with decreasing the number of affected nodes to the lowest. In order to protect structural information for encrypted XML data, the encrypted nodes are removed from original XML data, and structural information is hidden. A case study is carried out to demonstrate how the proposed XML security relative approaches and schemes can be applied to satisfy fine-grained XML security in calibration certificate management.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Petrinet-based Validation of Railway Signalling and Safety Systems

Die Entwicklung der Informatik und der Automatisierung ist (und war schon immer) Quelle stets neuer und effizienterer Lösungen, aber auch neuer Komplexität; sie macht eine dauerhafte, wirtschaftliche Gestaltung und Überprüfung der Sicherheit der Anlagen und der Verkehrssysteme nur noch schwieriger. Die Echtzeitinformatik ist heutzutage in die Systeme integriert, die das Leben von Menschen verwalten. Es stellt sich heraus, dass die derzeitigen Methoden und Normen nicht immer den Anforderungen nach Verfügbarkeit und nach Sicherheit entsprechen. Es sind so systematische Fehler der Software zu befürchten. Die vorliegende Arbeit besteht darin, eine Konzeptions- und Überprüfungsmethode zu definieren und zu instrumentalisieren. Sie zeigt, dass es möglich ist, formale Überprüfungsmethoden auf industrielle Steuerungen anzuwenden. Die Eisenbahnsteuerungen werden besonders behandelt. Die vorgeschlagene Methode beruht auf mehreren Konzeptionsideen: - so weit wie möglich das berufliche Umfeld berücksichtigen, die Sicherheitseigenschaften und die Funktionsanforderungen identifizieren - die Funktionssoftware und die Grundsoftware (Verwaltung des physikalischen Materials und Interpretation der fachspezifischen Aufgaben) unterscheiden - die Funktionen in Form von Automaten in AEFD-Sprache schreiben. Diese Sprache erlaubt eine Formulierung von Petrinetzen und eine deterministische Interpretation. Unter diesen Bedingungen ist es möglich, eine formelle Überprüfung einer Eisenbahnsteuerung, z.B. eines Stellwerks, zu verwirklichen. Die Hauptidee besteht in der Entwicklung eines industriellen Sicherheitsautomaten, der sich wie eine abstrakte Maschine verhält, damit dieser später formal validiert werden kann. Das Hilfsprogramm für die Formulierung der funktionellen Graphen ist für Fachleute bestimmt, die nicht über besondere Informatikkenntnisse verfügen. Die Petrinetze sind eine Konzeptualisierungssprache. Diese Netze, die in der AEFD Sprache formuliert sind, werden als interpretierbare Spezifikationen benützt. Die Sicherheitseigenschaften und die Anforderungen sind auch auf dieselbe Art formuliert. Die vorgeschlagene Methode erlaubt es unter diesen Bedingungen, einen formalen Beweis der Funktionen des Systems durchzuführen.The development of computer science and that of the automatisation were and are still source new more and more efficient resolutions, but are also sources of new complicacy returning even more difficult lasting and economic comprehension, valuation, safety of functioning of equipment and systems of transport. The real time computer science is now present in systems managing human lives. It appears now that methods and actual norms do not always allow to answer wait in availability and in security. So systematic errors of software are to fear. The work consisted in defining and instrumenting a new method of comprehension and validation. The work shows that it is possible to apply a method of formal validation to industrial automatisms. The case of rail automatisms is more particularly treated. The proposed method rests on several actions of comprehension: - hold the biggest count of context job, to identify the ownership of security and the postulates of functioning; - differentiate functional software and basic software (management of the equipment and interpretation of functional functions); - specify functions in form of automat written in language AEFD. This language allows a writing of Petri nets and a determinist and interpretable way. In these conditions it is possible to accomplish a formal validation of a rail automatism, a interlocking system or level crossing system for instance. The main idea consists in developing an industrial safety automatism which acts as an abstracted machine (a real time interpreted competitive automat with constraint) to allow a subsequent formal validation. The writing of functional graphs contacts persons having a signalling competence without any special knowledge in computer science. Petri nets are a language of conceptualization. We used these networks, written in the AEFD language, as language of deterministic and interpretable specifications. The safety properties and the functioning postulates are written in the same way. The proposed method allows in these conditions to accomplish a formal proof of the signalling functionalities realized by the computerized system