Every student counts: promoting numeracy and enhancing employability

This three-year project investigated factors that influence the development of undergraduates’ numeracy skills, with a view to identifying ways to improve them and thereby enhance student employability. Its aims and objectives were to ascertain: the generic numeracy skills in which employers expect their graduate recruits to be competent and the extent to which employers are using numeracy tests as part of graduate recruitment processes; the numeracy skills developed within a diversity of academic disciplines; the prevalence of factors that influence undergraduates’ development of their numeracy skills; how the development of numeracy skills might be better supported within undergraduate curricula; and the extra-curricular support necessary to enhance undergraduates’ numeracy skills

Advancing Chronic Respiratory Disease Care with Real-Time Vital Sign Prediction

Cardiovascular and chronic respiratory diseases, being pervasive in nature, pose formidable challenges to the overall well-being of the global populace. With an alarming annual mortality rate of approximately 19 million individuals across the globe, these diseases have emerged as significant public health concerns warranting immediate attention and comprehensive understanding. The mitigation of this elevated mortality rate can be achieved through the application of cutting-edge technological innovations within the realm of medical science, which possess the capacity to enable the perpetual surveillance of various physiological indicators, including but not limited to blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and blood glucose concentrations. The forward-thinking implications of these pivotal physiological or vital sign parameters not only facilitate prompt intervention from medical professionals and carers, but also empower patients to effectively navigate their health status through the receipt of pertinent periodic notifications and guidance from healthcare practitioners. In this research endeavour, we present a novel framework that leverages the power of machine learning algorithms to forecast and categorise forthcoming values of pertinent physiological indicators in the context of cardiovascular and chronic respiratory ailments. Drawing upon prognostications of prospective values, the envisaged framework possesses the capacity to effectively categorise the health condition of individuals, thereby alerting both caretakers and medical professionals. In the present study, a machine-learning-driven prediction and classification framework has been employed, wherein a genuine dataset comprising vital signs has been utilised. In order to anticipate the forthcoming 1-3 minutes of vital sign values, a series of regression techniques, namely linear regression and polynomial regression of degrees 2, 3, and 4, have been subjected to rigorous examination and evaluation. In the realm of caregiving, a concise 60-second prognostication is employed to enable the expeditious provision of emergency medical aid. Additionally, a more comprehensive 3-minute prognostication of vital signs is utilised for the same purpose. The patient's overall health is evaluated based on the anticipated vital signs values through the utilisation of three machine learning classifiers, namely Support Vector Machine (SVM), Decision Tree and Random Forest. The findings of our study indicate that the implementation of a Decision Tree algorithm exhibits a high level of accuracy in accurately categorising a patient's health status by leveraging anomalous values of vital signs. This approach demonstrates its potential in facilitating prompt and effective medical interventions, thereby enhancing the overall quality of care provided to patients

The development of an accreditation scheme for accredited exercise physiologists

Background: Accredited Exercise Physiologists provide exercise services for people living with chronic disease, disability or injury and are recognised in Australia as Accredited Exercise Physiologists (AEP) under a national certification system administered by Exercise and Sport Science Australia (ESSA). A major breakthrough occurred for the AEP in 2006 when the Australian Department of Health and Ageing approved the AEP to deliver clinical exercise services for people with chronic medical conditions under the taxpayer-funded national health scheme, Medicare Australia. Aims: In light of these developments, the authors recognised the need for new accreditation criteria, and our report summarises the work that we did on behalf of the profession and ESSA in restructuring the accreditation system. Methods and Outcomes: We first performed a background study that defined the scope of practice of the AEP and benchmarked the AEP against other allied health professions in Australia and Clinical Exercise Physiologists internationally. We then constructed a new set of accreditation criteria comprising sets of pathologyspecific knowledge and experiences, together with a set of generic standards including communication, professional behaviour and risk management. All participating Australian universities (18 out of 27 responded) and 29 practitioner experts were then invited to provide comment and input into the draft guidelines. There was strong support for the new system that was implemented nationally on 1 January 2008 and is now administered by ESSA. Conclusions: This work has stimulated an unprecedented level of activity in the Australian university sector in developing new curricula in clinical exercise science and practice, and is intended to lead to improved standards of clinical exercise practice.<br /

Understanding user behavior towards passwords through acceptance and use modelling

The security of computer systems that store our data is a major issue facing the world. This research project investigated the roles of ease of use, facilitating conditions, intention to use passwords securely, experience and age on usage of passwords, using a model based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of technology. Data was collected via an online survey of computer users, and analyzed using PLS. The results show there is a significant relationship between ease of use of passwords, intention to use them securely and the secure usage of passwords. Despite expectations, facilitating conditions only had a weak impact on intention to use passwords securely and did not influence actual secure usage. Computing experience was found to have an effect on intention to use passwords securely, but age did not. The results of this research lend themselves to assisting in policy design and better understanding user behavior

Software security during modern code review: The developer’s perspective

To avoid software vulnerabilities, organizations are shifting security to earlier stages of the software development, such as at code review time. In this paper, we aim to understand the developers’ perspective on assessing software security during code review, the challenges they encounter, and the support that companies and projects provide. To this end, we conduct a two-step investigation: we interview 10 professional developers and survey 182 practitioners about software security assessment during code review. The outcome is an overview of how developers perceive software security during code review and a set of identified challenges. Our study revealed that most developers do not immediately report to focus on security issues during code review. Only after being asked about software security, developers state to always consider it during review and acknowledge its importance. Most companies do not provide security training, yet expect developers to still ensure security during reviews. Accordingly, developers report the lack of training and security knowledge as the main challenges they face when checking for security issues. In addition, they have challenges with third-party libraries and to identify interactions between parts of code that could have security implications. Moreover, security may be disregarded during reviews due to developers’ assumptions about the security dynamic of the application they develop

Equipment-as-Experience: A Heidegger-Based Position of Information Security

Information security (InfoSec) has ontologically been characterised as an order machine. The order machine connects with other machines through interrupting mechanisms. This way of portraying InfoSec focuses on the correct placement of machine entities to protect information assets. However, what is missing in this view is that for the InfoSec we experience in everyday practice, we are not just observers of the InfoSec phenomena but also active agents of it. To contribute to the quest, we draw on Heidegger’s (1962) notion of equipment and propose the concept of equipment-as-experience to understand the ontological position of InfoSec in everyday practice. In this paper we show how equipment-as-experience provides a richer picture of InfoSec as being a fundamental sociotechnical phenomena. We further contend using an example case to illustrate that InfoSec equipment should not be understood merely by its properties (present-at-hand mode), but rather in ready-to-hand mode when put into practice