3,805 research outputs found

    A forensics and compliance auditing framework for critical infrastructure protection

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    Contemporary societies are increasingly dependent on products and services provided by Critical Infrastructure (CI) such as power plants, energy distribution networks, transportation systems and manufacturing facilities. Due to their nature, size and complexity, such CIs are often supported by Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS), which are in charge of managing assets and controlling everyday operations. As these IACS become larger and more complex, encompassing a growing number of processes and interconnected monitoring and actuating devices, the attack surface of the underlying CIs increases. This situation calls for new strategies to improve Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) frameworks, based on evolved approaches for data analytics, able to gather insights from the CI. In this paper, we propose an Intrusion and Anomaly Detection System (IADS) framework that adopts forensics and compliance auditing capabilities at its core to improve CIP. Adopted forensics techniques help to address, for instance, post-incident analysis and investigation, while the support of continuous auditing processes simplifies compliance management and service quality assessment. More specifically, after discussing the rationale for such a framework, this paper presents a formal description of the proposed components and functions and discusses how the framework can be implemented using a cloud-native approach, to address both functional and non-functional requirements. An experimental analysis of the framework scalability is also provided.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    Responding to Reading Difficulties: An Exploration from Different Professional Perspectives

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    The study was designed to explore educators’ perspectives on reading difficulties and their choice of teaching strategies for students with reading difficulties. The study aimed to understand how educators form their professional perspectives on reading difficulties, how this relates to their understanding of the concept of ‘dyslexia’ and how this informs their teaching methods. Furthermore, the study has explored the extent to which these chosen teaching strategies are inclusive and meet the needs of all students. A qualitative case study was used to generate data to address the research questions and achieve the aims of this study. Data were generated from semi-structured interviews with thirteen educators from different contexts and career stages, classroom observations in two primary schools in England, and a dyslexia training session online. Thematic data analysis was used to interpret the data and identify themes related to the educators’ understanding of the reading difficulty and pedagogy for students with reading difficulty (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Braun and Clarke's six steps were followed for analysing the data. Furthermore, multi-layer analysis (Robbins, 2007) was used to incorporate findings from three aspects of my theoretical framework: Rogoff’s (1995) three planes of analysis, Tobin’s (1999) comparative classroom ethnography, and models of disability. My study suggests that teachers’ understanding of reading difficulties is influenced by different models of disability at different levels of their thinking, which then also influences their choice of teaching strategies to respond to reading difficulties. My study findings also suggest that students with reading difficulties are not given enough opportunities to voice their needs and feelings, and it is recommended that spaces be provided for individuals to reflect and for all stakeholders to talk and share their reflections. In addition, my study recommends that student teachers should be prepared for working with students who have reading difficulties in their future classrooms by developing an understanding and knowledge of inclusive pedagogy and how this relates to teaching children how to read. This can also be extended to teachers who are currently working in schools to develop a better understanding of how to support all children to learn to read.

    Conversations on Empathy

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    In the aftermath of a global pandemic, amidst new and ongoing wars, genocide, inequality, and staggering ecological collapse, some in the public and political arena have argued that we are in desperate need of greater empathy — be this with our neighbours, refugees, war victims, the vulnerable or disappearing animal and plant species. This interdisciplinary volume asks the crucial questions: How does a better understanding of empathy contribute, if at all, to our understanding of others? How is it implicated in the ways we perceive, understand and constitute others as subjects? Conversations on Empathy examines how empathy might be enacted and experienced either as a way to highlight forms of otherness or, instead, to overcome what might otherwise appear to be irreducible differences. It explores the ways in which empathy enables us to understand, imagine and create sameness and otherness in our everyday intersubjective encounters focusing on a varied range of "radical others" – others who are perceived as being dramatically different from oneself. With a focus on the importance of empathy to understand difference, the book contends that the role of empathy is critical, now more than ever, for thinking about local and global challenges of interconnectedness, care and justice

    Investigating the learning potential of the Second Quantum Revolution: development of an approach for secondary school students

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    In recent years we have witnessed important changes: the Second Quantum Revolution is in the spotlight of many countries, and it is creating a new generation of technologies. To unlock the potential of the Second Quantum Revolution, several countries have launched strategic plans and research programs that finance and set the pace of research and development of these new technologies (like the Quantum Flagship, the National Quantum Initiative Act and so on). The increasing pace of technological changes is also challenging science education and institutional systems, requiring them to help to prepare new generations of experts. This work is placed within physics education research and contributes to the challenge by developing an approach and a course about the Second Quantum Revolution. The aims are to promote quantum literacy and, in particular, to value from a cultural and educational perspective the Second Revolution. The dissertation is articulated in two parts. In the first, we unpack the Second Quantum Revolution from a cultural perspective and shed light on the main revolutionary aspects that are elevated to the rank of principles implemented in the design of a course for secondary school students, prospective and in-service teachers. The design process and the educational reconstruction of the activities are presented as well as the results of a pilot study conducted to investigate the impact of the approach on students' understanding and to gather feedback to refine and improve the instructional materials. The second part consists of the exploration of the Second Quantum Revolution as a context to introduce some basic concepts of quantum physics. We present the results of an implementation with secondary school students to investigate if and to what extent external representations could play any role to promote students’ understanding and acceptance of quantum physics as a personal reliable description of the world

    Secondary Students’ Career Development Phenomenarratives

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    Career education and guidance can support the development of secondary students as they aspire toward their life goals. This research explored the lived experiences of three young people through the creation of phenomenarratives. A narrative co-reflection process was developed as part of the students’ personalised career guidance planning. Findings indicated the importance of career education that supports personalised and holistic learning experiences to develop students’ self-awareness, work skills, networks and confidence in their future direction

    Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion. Collected Works, Volume 5

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    This ïŹfth volume on Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion collects theoretical and applied contributions of researchers working in different ïŹelds of applications and in mathematics, and is available in open-access. The collected contributions of this volume have either been published or presented after disseminating the fourth volume in 2015 in international conferences, seminars, workshops and journals, or they are new. The contributions of each part of this volume are chronologically ordered. First Part of this book presents some theoretical advances on DSmT, dealing mainly with modiïŹed Proportional ConïŹ‚ict Redistribution Rules (PCR) of combination with degree of intersection, coarsening techniques, interval calculus for PCR thanks to set inversion via interval analysis (SIVIA), rough set classiïŹers, canonical decomposition of dichotomous belief functions, fast PCR fusion, fast inter-criteria analysis with PCR, and improved PCR5 and PCR6 rules preserving the (quasi-)neutrality of (quasi-)vacuous belief assignment in the fusion of sources of evidence with their Matlab codes. Because more applications of DSmT have emerged in the past years since the apparition of the fourth book of DSmT in 2015, the second part of this volume is about selected applications of DSmT mainly in building change detection, object recognition, quality of data association in tracking, perception in robotics, risk assessment for torrent protection and multi-criteria decision-making, multi-modal image fusion, coarsening techniques, recommender system, levee characterization and assessment, human heading perception, trust assessment, robotics, biometrics, failure detection, GPS systems, inter-criteria analysis, group decision, human activity recognition, storm prediction, data association for autonomous vehicles, identiïŹcation of maritime vessels, fusion of support vector machines (SVM), Silx-Furtif RUST code library for information fusion including PCR rules, and network for ship classiïŹcation. Finally, the third part presents interesting contributions related to belief functions in general published or presented along the years since 2015. These contributions are related with decision-making under uncertainty, belief approximations, probability transformations, new distances between belief functions, non-classical multi-criteria decision-making problems with belief functions, generalization of Bayes theorem, image processing, data association, entropy and cross-entropy measures, fuzzy evidence numbers, negator of belief mass, human activity recognition, information fusion for breast cancer therapy, imbalanced data classiïŹcation, and hybrid techniques mixing deep learning with belief functions as well

    HOW DO RELATIONAL DYNAMICS INFLUENCE PUBLIC SECTOR PARTNERSHIPS? A STUDY OF THE OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY ASSOCIATED COLLEGE PARTNERSHIP

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    The last 20 years have seen a growth in partnership working in both the public and private sectors as organisations seek to improve efficiency and gain access to new resources to reduce costs and gain competitive advantage. Driven by government policy to widen participation in Higher Education, (HE), one area which has seen major growth is the partnership between universities and Colleges of Further Education (FE) to deliver Foundation, Bachelor and Masters degrees and increasingly degree apprenticeships. Due to the timescales involved in delivering degree programmes it is essential that these partnerships are viable in the longer term, but up to 50% of all partnerships fail. How to ensure the long term viability of education partnerships is an under researched area. While researchers have looked at both the role of Intellectual and Social Capital in facilitating educational partnerships, few have looked at the role of Relational Capital (RC) which is seen as the trust, respect and friendship that develops at individual level between partners. Studies of private sector partnerships see this as key to maintaining partnerships. Based on my own experience this study is concerned with partnership working in the delivery of educational programmes and, in particular, the delivery of degrees by colleges of FE, in partnership with universities. Using Relational Capital as a theoretical lens through which to view partnership this qualitative research seeks to contribute to the understanding of the long term viability of partnerships. It uses an embedded case style design to explore the relationship between Oxford Brookes University and a partner college of FE. 16 key informants from OBU and the partner college involved in either managing the partnership at senior level or the day to day operations were asked to give their views of partnership success. The focus was not on what makes a successful partnership in terms of outcomes but in developing a successful working relationship. The research seeks to answer the question; “what makes a good working relationship?” It takes a qualitative approach to research a concept which, though value laden, is often explored using quantitative techniques. While much case research is focused on theory building using grounded theory techniques this research takes a critical realist stance to elaborate on existing theory and in particular focuses on the relevance of Relational Capital and Boundary Spanning to education partnerships. The findings of each embedded case are set out in 5 distinct chapters which provide an opportunity to examine the nuances which arose as a result of subject specific pedagogy or role before a sixth chapter compares and contrasts the findings, In general, the findings show that the role of senior management, especially in the allocation of resources and development of the quality framework, the distribution of power, development of culture, trust, commitment and personal relationships, supported and developed by boundary spanners are key to successful partnership working. This thesis seeks to contribute to theory in 3 areas. The first is clarifying what is meant by building a HE culture. This research identified that what is required is to create a culture which provides a safe learning environment where knowledge is contested and applied. The second contribution examines the role of friendship in developing Relational Capital. While the research found that RC is built in education partnerships this thesis challenges the view that RC is based on personal friendship and sees friendliness based on mutual respect being more important. This reinforces the importance of building identification based trust. The third contribution builds on the boundary spanning literature by looking at the importance of boundary spanners in bridging and overcoming organisational differences and the need to integrate partnership learning back into the separate organisations. The thesis then make a practitioner contribution by providing guidance on good practice in managing partnerships. The thesis ends by making recommendations on areas for future research which would give greater insight into the role of RC and boundary spanning to ensure the success of educational partnerships

    Ethnographies of Collaborative Economies across Europe: Understanding Sharing and Caring

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    "Sharing economy" and "collaborative economy" refer to a proliferation of initiatives, business models, digital platforms and forms of work that characterise contemporary life: from community-led initiatives and activist campaigns, to the impact of global sharing platforms in contexts such as network hospitality, transportation, etc. Sharing the common lens of ethnographic methods, this book presents in-depth examinations of collaborative economy phenomena. The book combines qualitative research and ethnographic methodology with a range of different collaborative economy case studies and topics across Europe. It uniquely offers a truly interdisciplinary approach. It emerges from a unique, long-term, multinational, cross-European collaboration between researchers from various disciplines (e.g., sociology, anthropology, geography, business studies, law, computing, information systems), career stages, and epistemological backgrounds, brought together by a shared research interest in the collaborative economy. This book is a further contribution to the in-depth qualitative understanding of the complexities of the collaborative economy phenomenon. These rich accounts contribute to the painting of a complex landscape that spans several countries and regions, and diverse political, cultural, and organisational backdrops. This book also offers important reflections on the role of ethnographic researchers, and on their stance and outlook, that are of paramount interest across the disciplines involved in collaborative economy research
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