1,334 research outputs found

    UMSL Bulletin 2023-2024

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    The 2023-2024 Bulletin and Course Catalog for the University of Missouri St. Louis.https://irl.umsl.edu/bulletin/1088/thumbnail.jp

    UMSL Bulletin 2022-2023

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    The 2022-2023 Bulletin and Course Catalog for the University of Missouri St. Louis.https://irl.umsl.edu/bulletin/1087/thumbnail.jp

    A Critical Review Of Post-Secondary Education Writing During A 21st Century Education Revolution

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    Educational materials are effective instruments which provide information and report new discoveries uncovered by researchers in specific areas of academia. Higher education, like other education institutions, rely on instructional materials to inform its practice of educating adult learners. In post-secondary education, developmental English programs are tasked with meeting the needs of dynamic populations, thus there is a continuous need for research in this area to support its changing landscape. However, the majority of scholarly thought in this area centers on K-12 reading and writing. This paucity presents a phenomenon to the post-secondary community. This research study uses a qualitative content analysis to examine peer-reviewed journals from 2003-2017, developmental online websites, and a government issued document directed toward reforming post-secondary developmental education programs. These highly relevant sources aid educators in discovering informational support to apply best practices for student success. Developmental education serves the purpose of addressing literacy gaps for students transitioning to college-level work. The findings here illuminate the dearth of material offered to developmental educators. This study suggests the field of literacy research is fragmented and highlights an apparent blind spot in scholarly literature with regard to English writing instruction. This poses a quandary for post-secondary literacy researchers in the 21st century and establishes the necessity for the literacy research community to commit future scholarship toward equipping college educators teaching writing instruction to underprepared adult learners

    Efficient Security Protocols for Constrained Devices

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    During the last decades, more and more devices have been connected to the Internet.Today, there are more devices connected to the Internet than humans.An increasingly more common type of devices are cyber-physical devices.A device that interacts with its environment is called a cyber-physical device.Sensors that measure their environment and actuators that alter the physical environment are both cyber-physical devices.Devices connected to the Internet risk being compromised by threat actors such as hackers.Cyber-physical devices have become a preferred target for threat actors since the consequence of an intrusion disrupting or destroying a cyber-physical system can be severe.Cyber attacks against power and energy infrastructure have caused significant disruptions in recent years.Many cyber-physical devices are categorized as constrained devices.A constrained device is characterized by one or more of the following limitations: limited memory, a less powerful CPU, or a limited communication interface.Many constrained devices are also powered by a battery or energy harvesting, which limits the available energy budget.Devices must be efficient to make the most of the limited resources.Mitigating cyber attacks is a complex task, requiring technical and organizational measures.Constrained cyber-physical devices require efficient security mechanisms to avoid overloading the systems limited resources.In this thesis, we present research on efficient security protocols for constrained cyber-physical devices.We have implemented and evaluated two state-of-the-art protocols, OSCORE and Group OSCORE.These protocols allow end-to-end protection of CoAP messages in the presence of untrusted proxies.Next, we have performed a formal protocol verification of WirelessHART, a protocol for communications in an industrial control systems setting.In our work, we present a novel attack against the protocol.We have developed a novel architecture for industrial control systems utilizing the Digital Twin concept.Using a state synchronization protocol, we propagate state changes between the digital and physical twins.The Digital Twin can then monitor and manage devices.We have also designed a protocol for secure ownership transfer of constrained wireless devices. Our protocol allows the owner of a wireless sensor network to transfer control of the devices to a new owner.With a formal protocol verification, we can guarantee the security of both the old and new owners.Lastly, we have developed an efficient Private Stream Aggregation (PSA) protocol.PSA allows devices to send encrypted measurements to an aggregator.The aggregator can combine the encrypted measurements and calculate the decrypted sum of the measurements.No party will learn the measurement except the device that generated it

    Digital Twins and Blockchain for IoT Management

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    We live in a data-driven world powered by sensors getting data from anywhere at any time. This advancement is possible thanks to the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT embeds common physical objects with heterogeneous sensing, actuating, and communication capabilities to collect data from the environment and people. These objects are generally known as things and exchange data with other things, entities, computational processes, and systems over the internet. Consequently, a web of devices and computational processes emerges involving billions of entities collecting, processing, and sharing data. As a result, we now have an internet of entities/things that process and produce data, an ever-growing volume that can easily exceed petabytes. Therefore, there is a need for novel management approaches to handle the previously unheard number of IoT devices, processes, and data streams. This dissertation focuses on solutions for IoT management using decentralized technologies. A massive number of IoT devices interact with software and hardware components and are owned by different people. Therefore, there is a need for decentralized management. Blockchain is a capable and promising distributed ledger technology with features to support decentralized systems with large numbers of devices. People should not have to interact with these devices or data streams directly. Therefore, there is a need to abstract access to these components. Digital twins are software artifacts that can abstract an object, a process, or a system to enable communication between the physical and digital worlds. Fog/edge computing is the alternative to the cloud to provide services with less latency. This research uses blockchain technology, digital twins, and fog/edge computing for IoT management. The systems developed in this dissertation enable configuration, self-management, zero-trust management, and data streaming view provisioning from a fog/edge layer. In this way, this massive number of things and the data they produce are managed through services distributed across nodes close to them, providing access and configuration security and privacy protection

    Value Creation with Extended Reality Technologies - A Methodological Approach for Holistic Deployments

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    Mit zunehmender Rechenkapazität und Übertragungsleistung von Informationstechnologien wächst die Anzahl möglicher Anwendungs-szenarien für Extended Reality (XR)-Technologien in Unternehmen. XR-Technologien sind Hardwaresysteme, Softwaretools und Methoden zur Erstellung von Inhalten, um Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality und Mixed Reality zu erzeugen. Mit der Möglichkeit, Nutzern Inhalte auf immersive, interaktive und intelligente Weise zu vermitteln, können XR-Technologien die Produktivität in Unternehmen steigern und Wachstumschancen eröffnen. Obwohl XR-Anwendungen in der Industrie seit mehr als 25 Jahren wissenschaftlich erforscht werden, gelten nach wie vor als unausgereift. Die Hauptgründe dafür sind die zugrundeliegende Komplexität, die Fokussierung der Forschung auf die Untersuchung spezifische Anwendungsszenarien, die unzu-reichende Wirtschaftlichkeit von Einsatzszenarien und das Fehlen von geeigneten Implementierungsmodellen für XR-Technologien. Grundsätzlich wird der Mehrwert von Technologien durch deren Integration in die Wertschöpfungsarchitektur von Geschäftsmodellen freigesetzt. Daher wird in dieser Arbeit eine Methodik für den Einsatz von XR-Technologien in der Wertschöpfung vorgestellt. Das Hauptziel der Methodik ist es, die Identifikation geeigneter Einsatzszenarien zu ermöglichen und mit einem strukturierten Ablauf die Komplexität der Umsetzung zu beherrschen. Um eine ganzheitliche Anwendbarkeit zu ermöglichen, basiert die Methodik auf einem branchen- und ge-schäftsprozessunabhängigen Wertschöpfungsreferenzmodell. Dar-über hinaus bezieht sie sich auf eine ganzheitliche Morphologie von XR-Technologien und folgt einer iterativen Einführungssequenz. Das Wertschöpfungsmodell wird durch ein vorliegendes Potential, eine Wertschöpfungskette, ein Wertschöpfungsnetzwerk, physische und digitale Ressourcen sowie einen durch den Einsatz von XR-Technologien realisierten Mehrwert repräsentiert. XR-Technologien werden durch eine morphologische Struktur mit Anwendungsmerk-malen und erforderlichen technologischen Ressourcen repräsentiert. Die Umsetzung erfolgt in einer iterativen Sequenz, die für den zu-grundeliegenden Kontext anwendbare Methoden der agilen Soft-wareentwicklung beschreibt und relevante Stakeholder berücksich-tigt. Der Schwerpunkt der Methodik liegt auf einem systematischen Ansatz, der universell anwendbar ist und den Endnutzer und das Ökosystem der betrachteten Wertschöpfung berücksichtigt. Um die Methodik zu validieren, wird der Einsatz von XR-Technologien in zwei industriellen Anwendungsfällen unter realen wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen durchgeführt. Die Anwendungsfälle stammen aus unterschiedlichen Branchen, mit unterschiedlichen XR-Technologiemerkmalen sowie unterschiedlichen Formen von Wert-schöpfungsketten, um die universelle Anwendbarkeit der Methodik zu demonstrieren und relevante Herausforderungen bei der Durch-führung eines XR-Technologieeinsatzes aufzuzeigen. Mit Hilfe der vorgestellten Methodik können Unternehmen XR-Technologien zielgerichtet in ihrer Wertschöpfung einsetzen. Sie ermöglicht eine detaillierte Planung der Umsetzung, eine fundierte Auswahl von Anwendungsszenarien, die Bewertung möglicher Her-ausforderungen und Hindernisse sowie die gezielte Einbindung der relevanten Stakeholder. Im Ergebnis wird die Wertschöpfung mit wirtschaftlichem Mehrwert durch XR-Technologien optimiert

    Digital Twins of production systems - Automated validation and update of material flow simulation models with real data

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    Um eine gute Wirtschaftlichkeit und Nachhaltigkeit zu erzielen, müssen Produktionssysteme über lange Zeiträume mit einer hohen Produktivität betrieben werden. Dies stellt produzierende Unternehmen insbesondere in Zeiten gesteigerter Volatilität, die z.B. durch technologische Umbrüche in der Mobilität, sowie politischen und gesellschaftlichen Wandel ausgelöst wird, vor große Herausforderungen, da sich die Anforderungen an das Produktionssystem ständig verändern. Die Frequenz von notwendigen Anpassungsentscheidungen und folgenden Optimierungsmaßnahmen steigt, sodass der Bedarf nach Bewertungsmöglichkeiten von Szenarien und möglichen Systemkonfigurationen zunimmt. Ein mächtiges Werkzeug hierzu ist die Materialflusssimulation, deren Einsatz aktuell jedoch durch ihre aufwändige manuelle Erstellung und ihre zeitlich begrenzte, projektbasierte Nutzung eingeschränkt wird. Einer längerfristigen, lebenszyklusbegleitenden Nutzung steht momentan die arbeitsintensive Pflege des Simulationsmodells, d.h. die manuelle Anpassung des Modells bei Veränderungen am Realsystem, im Wege. Das Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist die Entwicklung und Umsetzung eines Konzeptes inkl. der benötigten Methoden, die Pflege und Anpassung des Simulationsmodells an die Realität zu automatisieren. Hierzu werden die zur Verfügung stehenden Realdaten genutzt, die aufgrund von Trends wie Industrie 4.0 und allgemeiner Digitalisierung verstärkt vorliegen. Die verfolgte Vision der Arbeit ist ein Digitaler Zwilling des Produktionssystems, der durch den Dateninput zu jedem Zeitpunkt ein realitätsnahes Abbild des Systems darstellt und zur realistischen Bewertung von Szenarien verwendet werden kann. Hierfür wurde das benötigte Gesamtkonzept entworfen und die Mechanismen zur automatischen Validierung und Aktualisierung des Modells entwickelt. Im Fokus standen dabei unter anderem die Entwicklung von Algorithmen zur Erkennung von Veränderungen in der Struktur und den Abläufen im Produktionssystem, sowie die Untersuchung des Einflusses der zur Verfügung stehenden Daten. Die entwickelten Komponenten konnten an einem realen Anwendungsfall der Robert Bosch GmbH erfolgreich eingesetzt werden und führten zu einer Steigerung der Realitätsnähe des Digitalen Zwillings, der erfolgreich zur Produktionsplanung und -optimierung eingesetzt werden konnte. Das Potential von Lokalisierungsdaten für die Erstellung von Digitalen Zwillingen von Produktionssystem konnte anhand der Versuchsumgebung der Lernfabrik des wbk Instituts für Produktionstechnik demonstriert werden

    Abductive Design of BDI Agent-based Digital Twins of Organizations

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    For a Digital Twin - a precise, virtual representation of a physical counterpart - of a human-like system to be faithful and complete, it must appeal to a notion of anthropomorphism (i.e., attributing human behaviour to non-human entities) to imitate (1) the externally visible behaviour and (2) the internal workings of that system. Although the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) paradigm was not developed for this purpose, it has been used successfully in human modeling applications. In this sense, we introduce in this thesis the notion of abductive design of BDI agent-based Digital Twins of organizations, which builds on two powerful reasoning disciplines: reverse engineering (to recreate the visible behaviour of the target system) and goal-driven eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) (for viewing the behaviour of the target system through the lens of BDI agents). Precisely speaking, the overall problem we are trying to address in this thesis is to “Find a BDI agent program that best explains (in the sense of formal abduction) the behaviour of a target system based on its past experiences . To do so, we propose three goal-driven XAI techniques: (1) abductive design of BDI agents, (2) leveraging imperfect explanations and (3) mining belief-based explanations. The resulting approach suggests that using goal-driven XAI to generate Digital Twins of organizations in the form of BDI agents can be effective, even in a setting with limited information about the target system’s behaviour

    Security Technologies and Methods for Advanced Cyber Threat Intelligence, Detection and Mitigation

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    The rapid growth of the Internet interconnectivity and complexity of communication systems has led us to a significant growth of cyberattacks globally often with severe and disastrous consequences. The swift development of more innovative and effective (cyber)security solutions and approaches are vital which can detect, mitigate and prevent from these serious consequences. Cybersecurity is gaining momentum and is scaling up in very many areas. This book builds on the experience of the Cyber-Trust EU project’s methods, use cases, technology development, testing and validation and extends into a broader science, lead IT industry market and applied research with practical cases. It offers new perspectives on advanced (cyber) security innovation (eco) systems covering key different perspectives. The book provides insights on new security technologies and methods for advanced cyber threat intelligence, detection and mitigation. We cover topics such as cyber-security and AI, cyber-threat intelligence, digital forensics, moving target defense, intrusion detection systems, post-quantum security, privacy and data protection, security visualization, smart contracts security, software security, blockchain, security architectures, system and data integrity, trust management systems, distributed systems security, dynamic risk management, privacy and ethics

    Human centric collaborative workplace: the human robot interaction system perspective

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    The implementation of smart technologies and physical collaboration with robots in manufacturing can provide competitive advantages in production, performance and quality, as well as improve working conditions for operators. Due to the rapid advancement of smart technologies and robot capabilities, operators face complex task processes, decline in competences due to robots overtaking tasks, and reduced learning opportunities, as the range of tasks that they are asked to perform is narrower. The Industry 5.0 framework introduced, among others, the human-centric workplace, promoting operators wellbeing and use of smart technologies and robots to support them. This new human centric framework enables operators to learn new skills and improve their competencies. However, the need to understand the effects of the workplace changes remain, especially in the case of human robot collaboration, due to the dynamic nature of human robot interaction. A literature review was performed, initially, to map the effects of workplace changes on operators and their capabilities. Operators need to perform tasks in a complex environment in collaboration with robots, receive information from sensors or other means (e.g. through augmented reality glasses) and decide whether to act upon them. Meanwhile, operators need to maintain their productivity and performance. This affects cognitive load and fatigue, which increases safety risks and probability of human-system error. A model for error probability was formulated and tested in collaborative scenarios, which regards the operators as natural systems in the workplace environment, taking into account their condition based on four macro states; behavioural, mental, physical and psychosocial. A scoping review was then performed to investigate the robot design features effects on operators in the human robot interaction system. Here, the outcomes of robot design features effects on operators were mapped and potential guidelines for design purposes were identified. The results of the scoping review showed that, apart from cognitive load, operators perception on robots reliability and their safety, along with comfort can influence team cohesion and quality in the human robot interaction system. From the findings of the reviews, an experimental study was designed with the support of the industrial partner. The main hypothesis was that cognitive load, due to collaboration, is correlated with quality of product, process and human work. In this experimental study, participants had to perform two tasks; a collaborative assembly and a secondary manual assembly. Perceived task complexity and cognitive load were measured through questionnaires, and quality was measured through errors participants made during the experiment. Evaluation results showed that while collaboration had positive influence in performing the tasks, cognitive load increased and the temporal factor was the main reason behind the issues participants faced, as it slowed task management and decision making of participants. Potential solutions were identified that can be applied to industrial settings, such as involving participants/operators in the task and workplace design phase, sufficient training with their robot co-worker to learn the task procedures and implement direct communication methods between operator and robot for efficient collaboration
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