The Encyclopedia of Neutrosophic Researchers - vol. 1

This is the first volume of the Encyclopedia of Neutrosophic Researchers, edited from materials offered by the authors who responded to the editor’s invitation. The authors are listed alphabetically. The introduction contains a short history of neutrosophics, together with links to the main papers and books. Neutrosophic set, neutrosophic logic, neutrosophic probability, neutrosophic statistics, neutrosophic measure, neutrosophic precalculus, neutrosophic calculus and so on are gaining significant attention in solving many real life problems that involve uncertainty, impreciseness, vagueness, incompleteness, inconsistent, and indeterminacy. In the past years the fields of neutrosophics have been extended and applied in various fields, such as: artificial intelligence, data mining, soft computing, decision making in incomplete / indeterminate / inconsistent information systems, image processing, computational modelling, robotics, medical diagnosis, biomedical engineering, investment problems, economic forecasting, social science, humanistic and practical achievements

Stream ciphers for secure display

In any situation where private, proprietary or highly confidential material is being dealt with, the need to consider aspects of data security has grown ever more important. It is usual to secure such data from its source, over networks and on to the intended recipient. However, data security considerations typically stop at the recipient's processor, leaving connections to a display transmitting raw data which is increasingly in a digital format and of value to an adversary. With a progression to wireless display technologies the prominence of this vulnerability is set to rise, making the implementation of 'secure display' increasingly desirable. Secure display takes aspects of data security right to the display panel itself, potentially minimising the cost, component count and thickness of the final product. Recent developments in display technologies should help make this integration possible. However, the processing of large quantities of time-sensitive data presents a significant challenge in such resource constrained environments. Efficient high- throughput decryption is a crucial aspect of the implementation of secure display and one for which the widely used and well understood block cipher may not be best suited. Stream ciphers present a promising alternative and a number of strong candidate algorithms potentially offer the hardware speed and efficiency required. In the past, similar stream ciphers have suffered from algorithmic vulnerabilities. Although these new-generation designs have done much to respond to this concern, the relatively short 80-bit key lengths of some proposed hardware candidates, when combined with ever-advancing computational power, leads to the thesis identifying exhaustive search of key space as a potential attack vector. To determine the value of protection afforded by such short key lengths a unique hardware key search engine for stream ciphers is developed that makes use of an appropriate data element to improve search efficiency. The simulations from this system indicate that the proposed key lengths may be insufficient for applications where data is of long-term or high value. It is suggested that for the concept of secure display to be accepted, a longer key length should be used

Formal Abstractions for Attested Execution Secure Processors

Realistic secure processors, including those built for academic and commercial purposes, commonly realize an “attested execution” abstraction. Despite being the de facto standard for modern secure processors, the “attested execution” abstraction has not received adequate formal treatment. We provide formal abstractions for “attested execution” secure processors and rigorously explore its expressive power. Our explorations show both the expected and the surprising. On one hand, we show that just like the common belief, attested execution is extremely powerful, and allows one to realize powerful cryptographic abstractions such as stateful obfuscation whose existence is otherwise impossible even when assuming virtual blackbox obfuscation and stateless hardware tokens. On the other hand, we show that surprisingly, realizing composable two-party computation with attested execution processors is not as straightforward as one might anticipate. Specifically, only when both parties are equipped with a secure processor can we realize composable two-party computation. If one of the parties does not have a secure processor, we show that composable two-party computation is impossible. In practice, however, it would be desirable to allow multiple legacy clients (without secure processors) to leverage a server’s secure processor to perform a multi-party computation task. We show how to introduce minimal additional setup assumptions to enable this. Finally, we show that fair multi-party computation for general functionalities is impossible if secure processors do not have trusted clocks. When secure processors have trusted clocks, we can realize fair two-party computation if both parties are equipped with a secure processor; but if only one party has a secure processor (with a trusted clock), then fairness is still impossible for general functionalities

An investigation into trust and security in the mandatory and imposed use of financial ICTs upon older people

Care needs to be taken to reduce the number of people who are fearful and mistrustful of using ICT where that usage is forced upon them without choice or alternative. The growing incidence of mandatory and imposed online systems can result in confusion, misuse, fear, and rejection by people with only rudimentary ICT skills. A cohort where a high percentage of such people occur is older people, defined in this study as people over the age of 60 Examples of compulsory ICT interactions include some banks limiting bank statement access through online rather than paper-based options. Other examples include the purchase of theatre or sports events tickets through ticketing systems that require an online transaction to take place. Increasingly, people are living beyond the normal retiring age. As the older cohort increases in size and in overall global population percentage, the problem of forced technology usage affects technology acceptance, technology trust, and technology rejection. People care about ICT systems where reduced trusted acceptance of technology reduces the advantages of digital health care, the perceived security of banking and shopping, and the autonomy of ICT-driven lifestyle choices. This study aims to solve one of the puzzles of ICT-driven change, where older people can show trepidation towards using technology. By understanding the drivers that influence the choices older people make in relation to ICT systems, it may be possible to introduce a much higher level of trusted acceptance in ICT systems. Although many people adopt ICTs into their lives, many older people face difficulty in using technology when it is forced upon them. This study aims to understand the connection between how choice (or lack of choice) can lead to the rejection or resistance towards ICT usage. Older people sometimes opt towards practices that place themselves at risk of financial or informational disadvantage. This study used a qualitative approach to understanding the factors that influenced the trusted acceptance, trepidation, and in some cases rejection of ICT usage by interviewing a sample of older people. Participants were asked to consider a wide range of ICT-usage scenarios and to describe their intentions. The study focussed on circumstances where ICT usage fell under either mandatory, imposed, or voluntary conditions in order to compare user behaviour. Settings included a range of technology-reliant states that examined IT security, volition and choice, aging, trusted acceptance, and technology adoption. Participants were interviewed to discover and sort the conditions (whether singly or in combination) under which the expectation of ICT acceptance was in some way altered, diminished, or prevented. This research found that older people made poor decisions when the choice to use a technology was replaced with a mandatory or strongly imposed pathway. Mandatory ICT usage across the broad area of financial transactions brought about widespread fear and distrust of online technology usage. The results revealed that many older people not only find these innovations daunting and confronting, but they also have difficulty placing their trust in ICT systems and applications that have become mandatory. In normative conditions, increased ICT acceptance and ICT usage is expected. When ICTs are mandatory in their usage, acceptance is replaced with compulsory procedure. This does not mean that mandatory things cannot be accepted, but rather that older people will accept the need to use a technology according to their perception of what is necessary for their daily and routine interactions. This study showed that voluntary ICT usages including choices increase informed decision-making, security of online financial interactions, and trusted reliance upon ICTs. Choice in ICT usage carries greater trust than mandatory, obligated, or heavily imposed ICTs. The study revealed that mandatory ICT systems can create perceptions of fear, mistrust and uncertainty. In situations where a mandatory ICT system becomes the normative method of transaction, a strong risk to the trusted acceptance of a technology is not merely the lack of ICT-based choice, but also the inability to gain reassurance or secondary confirmation through either face to face or telephone-based communication. Trust in not just the usage, but the implied secure usage of mandated and imposed ICTs, is problematic for older people. This study revealed the significance of mandated ICT systems that limit choices for people, because older humans more readily validate and associate their trust in new innovations when they can access various different professional, technical, peer-based, social and popular opinions. The research also showed that older people are fearful and less trusting in mandatory and imposed systems because they have less financial resilience, and less opportunity to bounce back from loss and disadvantage brought about by digital and online interactions. Older people were worried and reluctant to accept technology at first glance because they knew that they had spent more time than others in a pre-internet, pre-digital environment, and their seminal life experiences are correspondingly less technology-related. The results showed that many older people preferred human communication and interaction rather than communicating, buying, paying, and trusting in purely digital, ICT-based experiences. This demonstrated a gap in the trust and security of digital systems, and the need to address those ICTs that impose and mandate instruments and procedures for daily life. Specifically this study looked at what could reduce unsafe and insecure banking practices by understanding the role of choice in the trusted usage of ICT systems. This study is significant because it shows that older people make financial and social, decisions under reactionary, insecure, and under-informed conditions as a result of a gap in terms of trust security and choice. On the one hand older people develop trust towards a new innovation based on accumulated human discussion, information and reputation. On the other hand older people hold the perception that online systems offer reduced choices. This study led to the development of a model for trusted technology choice (TTCM). It differs from traditional acceptance and diffusion thinking, by having outputs as either ICT acceptance or ICT rejection. It diverges from diffusion and technology acceptance models (TAM), because technology acceptance is not regarded as a foregone conclusion. Instead, it places a very high value upon choice and volition, trust, security and human interaction. The TTCM model, together with a framework for identifying volition barriers, provides a different set of criteria for understanding the needs of older people and their meaningful interactions with new innovation and ICTs. The practical applications for using such a model directly impact upon financial and social stability for older people. Where choices are either removed or limited due to ICT usage, older citizens are unfairly disadvantaged. A model that accurately predicts the trusted usage of ICT innovations can have a widespread effect on the implementation of large-scale public and private systems where the trusted acceptance (or rejection) of each system has on flow impact on financial, health, and other critical services that include the growing population of older people

RFID Technology in Intelligent Tracking Systems in Construction Waste Logistics Using Optimisation Techniques

Construction waste disposal is an urgent issue for protecting our environment. This paper proposes a waste management system and illustrates the work process using plasterboard waste as an example, which creates a hazardous gas when land filled with household waste, and for which the recycling rate is less than 10% in the UK. The proposed system integrates RFID technology, Rule-Based Reasoning, Ant Colony optimization and knowledge technology for auditing and tracking plasterboard waste, guiding the operation staff, arranging vehicles, schedule planning, and also provides evidence to verify its disposal. It h relies on RFID equipment for collecting logistical data and uses digital imaging equipment to give further evidence; the reasoning core in the third layer is responsible for generating schedules and route plans and guidance, and the last layer delivers the result to inform users. The paper firstly introduces the current plasterboard disposal situation and addresses the logistical problem that is now the main barrier to a higher recycling rate, followed by discussion of the proposed system in terms of both system level structure and process structure. And finally, an example scenario will be given to illustrate the system’s utilization