Documentation Assessment of the Diebold Voting System

The California Secretary of State commissioned a comprehensive, independent evaluation of the electronic voting systems certified for use within the State. This team, working as part of the “Top to Bottom” Review (“TTBR”), evaluated the documentation supplied by Diebold Election System, Inc

Same-Sex Sexualities, Gender Variance, Economy and Livelihood in Nepal: Exclusions, Subjectivity and Development

This case study explores the relationship between socioeconomic opportunity and exclusion in relation to minority gender and sexualities in Nepal. The study, a component of a wider programme on Sexuality, Poverty and Law supported by the Department for International Development (DFID) and undertaken at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), aims to advance empirically grounded insights and recommendations to address the socioeconomic conditions of sexuality and gender minority peoples, in respect of varied aspects of life experience, subjectivity, self-identity and livelihood. Based on fieldwork conducted in Kathmandu, Nepal, between November 2013 and June 2014 the case study recounts experiences of socioeconomic marginalisation and opportunity as encountered and created by people who experience themselves as being different from socially normative conventions of sexuality and gender; in respect of the present research this has specifically entailed focusing on the experiences of transgender people and people who practise same-sex sexualities (and in respect of an understanding that such genders and sexualities are experienced differently by different people and do not represent uniform or singular categorisations). Many of the people who participated in the research evidence a multifaceted array of livelihood strategies as being connected to sexuality and gender difference. Some of these strategies were found to have been taken forward in the context of community-based support projects (for example, associated with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for sexual and gender minorities) while others were conceived as independent life choices, or experienced as arising out of lack of choice or economic opportunity. In each of these often interconnected circumstances, the relationship between sexuality, gender, economy and livelihood emerges as complex and ambivalent.UK Department for International Developmen

A theoretical exploration of hospital clinical pharmacists' perceptions, experiences and behavioural determinants in relation to provision of optimal and suboptimal pharmaceutical care.

Pharmaceutical care describes a range of patient-focused activities delivered by pharmacists. The activities aim to optimise medicines use for patients and to reduce harm from adverse events with medicines. This study was conducted in an NHS Scotland organisation, where the clinical pharmacy service has an established quality management system. It was evident that some gaps existed in the quality assurance parameters for clinical pharmacy services and pharmaceutical care, with there being no clearly defined route to report adverse events or near misses that arose from within the service. In quality management terms this meant it was difficult to determine whether optimal pharmaceutical care was being delivered, or to establish how accurate clinical pharmacists were in their pharmaceutical care activities. Additionally, this meant it was difficult to evidence areas for quality improvement. This study aimed to explore the perceptions, experiences and behavioural determinants of the hospital clinical pharmacists in relation to optimal and suboptimal pharmaceutical care within an NHS organisation in Scotland using a theoretical framework. The research used the concept of suboptimal pharmaceutical care to describe the gap between pharmaceutical care as intended and pharmaceutical care as delivered. This research used qualitative study design and a phenomenological approach, and was conducted in two phases with the first phase influencing the design of the second phase. In Phase 1, focus group methodology was used to determine perceptions of hospital clinical pharmacists to optimal and suboptimal pharmaceutical care. Study participants (n=20) were hospital clinical pharmacists recruited from hospitals across the NHS Scotland health board. A topic guide focused the discussions on the activities related to medicines reconciliation and Kardex/medicines review. Data generated from focus groups was in the form of written statements and audio-recorded narrative to describe participants' perceptions of barriers and enablers to providing optimal pharmaceutical care. The Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF), an integrative theoretical framework that describes behavioural determinants, was used to analyse the findings. Phase 2 used in-depth interviews to explore participants' (n=10) experiences of optimal and suboptimal pharmaceutical care. A semi-structured interview schedule was developed using TDF, to facilitate identification of behavioural determinants to the provision of optimal and suboptimal pharmaceutical care. Within Phase 1, participants perceived that there were barriers to the delivery of optimal pharmaceutical care, citing as contributory elements time factors, lack of policy and procedure, conflicting priorities (including uncertainty over efficiency versus thoroughness), poor underpinning knowledge of medicines by doctors, and inadequate skills in completing and documenting activities. In Phase 2, key determinants were elicited, including knowledge (of trainees), time, policy, procedure or guidance on suboptimal pharmaceutical care, and personal and professional barriers and enablers, including professional embarrassment and hierarchy. The study has allowed an exploration of an underacknowledged topic in clinical pharmacy practice and identified behaviours, including role uncertainty and embarrassment, that may contribute to lack of reporting on suboptimal pharmaceutical care. Recommendations have been made using behavioural change technique interventions and include educational interventions, skills training, modelling, enablement, persuasion, incentivisation, coercion, restriction and environmental restructuring. Implementation of these interventions and evaluation of their effectiveness will enable the organisation to have more robust quality assurance parameters within the clinical pharmacy service, and to ensure continued conformance with the quality management system. Across the wider clinical pharmacy community, lessons may be learned about perceptions and experiences relating to suboptimal pharmaceutical care, and consideration made to capturing the learning opportunities that can arise when considering suboptimal pharmaceutical care in practice

Framework for Security Transparency in Cloud Computing

The migration of sensitive data and applications from the on-premise data centre to a cloud environment increases cyber risks to users, mainly because the cloud environment is managed and maintained by a third-party. In particular, the partial surrender of sensitive data and application to a cloud environment creates numerous concerns that are related to a lack of security transparency. Security transparency involves the disclosure of information by cloud service providers about the security measures being put in place to protect assets and meet the expectations of customers. It establishes trust in service relationship between cloud service providers and customers, and without evidence of continuous transparency, trust and confidence are affected and are likely to hinder extensive usage of cloud services. Also, insufficient security transparency is considered as an added level of risk and increases the difficulty of demonstrating conformance to customer requirements and ensuring that the cloud service providers adequately implement security obligations. The research community have acknowledged the pressing need to address security transparency concerns, and although technical aspects for ensuring security and privacy have been researched widely, the focus on security transparency is still scarce. The relatively few literature mostly approach the issue of security transparency from cloud providers’ perspective, while other works have contributed feasible techniques for comparison and selection of cloud service providers using metrics such as transparency and trustworthiness. However, there is still a shortage of research that focuses on improving security transparency from cloud users’ point of view. In particular, there is still a gap in the literature that (i) dissects security transparency from the lens of conceptual knowledge up to implementation from organizational and technical perspectives and; (ii) support continuous transparency by enabling the vetting and probing of cloud service providers’ conformity to specific customer requirements. The significant growth in moving business to the cloud – due to its scalability and perceived effectiveness – underlines the dire need for research in this area. This thesis presents a framework that comprises the core conceptual elements that constitute security transparency in cloud computing. It contributes to the knowledge domain of security transparency in cloud computing by proposing the following. Firstly, the research analyses the basics of cloud security transparency by exploring the notion and foundational concepts that constitute security transparency. Secondly, it proposes a framework which integrates various concepts from requirement engineering domain and an accompanying process that could be followed to implement the framework. The framework and its process provide an essential set of conceptual ideas, activities and steps that can be followed at an organizational level to attain security transparency, which are based on the principles of industry standards and best practices. Thirdly, for ensuring continuous transparency, the thesis proposes an essential tool that supports the collection and assessment of evidence from cloud providers, including the establishment of remedial actions for redressing deficiencies in cloud provider practices. The tool serves as a supplementary component of the proposed framework that enables continuous inspection of how predefined customer requirements are being satisfied. The thesis also validates the proposed security transparency framework and tool in terms of validity, applicability, adaptability, and acceptability using two different case studies. Feedbacks are collected from stakeholders and analysed using essential criteria such as ease of use, relevance, usability, etc. The result of the analysis illustrates the validity and acceptability of both the framework and tool in enhancing security transparency in a real-world environment

Psychopathic personality traits and antisocial behaviours in adults: Behavioural, emotional, and physiological correlates

This thesis presents a series of studies that contribute to the literature about psychopathic traits in the general population, addressing physiological, emotional and behavioural correlates. At the level of behaviour, studies within Chapter Three showed positive correlations between bullying and psychopathy, and found better explanatory power for Primary Psychopathy in predicting bullying (Study 1). Additionally, bully–victims were found to present higher psychopathic traits (Study 2). At the physiological level, Chapter Four presents two studies examining cardiovascular functioning at rest and cardiovascular reactivity to stress. Rebellious Nonconformity, Total Psychopathy, and Social Influence showed significant, negative associations with resting heart rate (Study 3). Subsequently, Study 4 reports an association between psychopathic behaviours with threatening physiological responses, showing that participants high on their total levels of psychopathic personality traits and on Machiavellian Egocentricity were marked by a maladaptive pattern of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal reactivity to stress. Finally, this thesis aimed to extend the psychophysiological findings to the level of behaviour while also accounting for emotional deficiencies (cf. Chapter Five). Study 5 revealed that secondary variants of psychopathy were significant in predicting perceived stress. Additionally, the associations between psychopathic variants and perceived stress were mediated by specific deficiencies in empathy (e.g., difficulties in identifying and describing feelings). In summary, data presented in this thesis indicated differential associations of psychopathic traits in cardiovascular functioning at rest, and central nervous system reactivity to laboratory–induced stress. Further, that elevated self–report psychopathy was accompanied by higher behavioural and emotional difficulties

A structured approach to defect data management for improving DFM implementation in aerospace manufacturing

The aim of adopting Product Lifecycle Management in a highly product centric knowledge environment is to reduce product development time and costs whilst improving quality by effectively integrating people, processes, resources and information. In the aerospace industry, most products and systems are manufactured, delivered to customers and serviced over an extensively long time, typically 20 years or more. This results in building up large amounts of dispersed data and information related to defects throughout the product’s lifecycle, hence inhibiting the ability to make effective use of defect data for the purpose of improving design for manufacturing implementation. There have been very limited research efforts aiming to overcome these challenges in the low volume high value aerospace manufacturing context. This paper presents the findings of an extensive industrial investigation carried out at BAE Systems (Rochester, UK) to identify the gaps and requirements in the industrial practice and proposes the need for structured approach to defect data management in order to establish the systematic link between the defects, engineering data, and related issues within PLM System context

Guideline to apply the ISO 90003:2004 Standard to SMEs of software development

By undertaking this Final Career Project I have tried to accomplish two main goals: • The main goal has been adapt the ISO 90003:2004 standard to SMEs software development company (purposing norms, procedures, work instructions for every one of the guideline sections), and as an example I have created a Web application named Booking Books. • The second goal has been, by developing the software product with a level of quality accepted and recognized, get certified in the ISO 9001:2008 standard. I hope that all software development SMEs take a firm decision to adapt the standard ISO 9001:2008 or other standard of quality, in order to motivate them to improve their quality and thus be more competitive. The certification is not only a necessity in terms of quality; the standard can keep out of the business to the weaker companies, as it is becoming a prerequisite to have certifications in order to do business.Ingeniería Técnica en Informática de Gestió

Proceedings /5th International Symposium on Industrial Engineering – SIE2012, June 14-15, 2012., Belgrade

editors Dragan D. Milanović, Vesna Spasojević-Brkić, Mirjana Misit