Quality assessment technique for ubiquitous software and middleware

The new paradigm of computing or information systems is ubiquitous computing systems. The technology-oriented issues of ubiquitous computing systems have made researchers pay much attention to the feasibility study of the technologies rather than building quality assurance indices or guidelines. In this context, measuring quality is the key to developing high-quality ubiquitous computing products. For this reason, various quality models have been defined, adopted and enhanced over the years, for example, the need for one recognised standard quality model (ISO/IEC 9126) is the result of a consensus for a software quality model on three levels: characteristics, sub-characteristics, and metrics. However, it is very much unlikely that this scheme will be directly applicable to ubiquitous computing environments which are considerably different to conventional software, trailing a big concern which is being given to reformulate existing methods, and especially to elaborate new assessment techniques for ubiquitous computing environments. This paper selects appropriate quality characteristics for the ubiquitous computing environment, which can be used as the quality target for both ubiquitous computing product evaluation processes ad development processes. Further, each of the quality characteristics has been expanded with evaluation questions and metrics, in some cases with measures. In addition, this quality model has been applied to the industrial setting of the ubiquitous computing environment. These have revealed that while the approach was sound, there are some parts to be more developed in the future

Platform leadership through system interfaces : a study of application programming interfaces for mobile operating systems

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 98).The Smart Mobile device industry is witnessing rapid growth with the increased convergence of voice-centric mobile phones and data-centric personal digital assistant systems. Improving capabilities in device hardware have allowed development of complex user interfaces, multimedia and communication capabilities on these devices. Modem Mobile Operating Systems manage this complexity in the mobile device by administering hardware resources and providing a platform for development of new consumer and enterprise applications. This thesis studies the architecture, design goals and services offered by the three major mobile operating systems - Palm OS, Symbian OS and Windows Mobile.The Mobile Operating Systems studied in this thesis differ in their architectures, services and programming interfaces offered to application software developers, independent hardware vendors and OEM licensees. Their design reflects the OS vendor's strategy toward the mobile platform which is decipherable based on a study of the OS architecture and application programming interface. Three conclusions are made based on this study each of them suggests a strategy that the vendor has attempted to use to gain platform leadership through product architecture and degree of openness of interfaces.by Ashok Chakravarthy Mandala.S.M

Development and evaluation of an intelligent handheld insulin dose advisor for patients with Type-1 diabetes

Diabetes mellitus is an increasingly common, chronic, incurable disease requiring careful monitoring and treatment so as to minimise the risk of serious long-term complications. It has been suggested that computers used by healthcare professionals and/or patients themselves may playa useful role in the diabetes care process. Seven key systems (AIDA, ADICOL, DIABETES, DIAS, IIumaLink, T-IDDM, POIRO) in the area of diabetes decision support, and their underlying techniques and approaches are summarised and compared. The development of the Patient-Oriented Insulin Regimen Optimiser (POIRO) for insulindependent (Type-I) diabetes, and its hybrid statistical and rule-based expert system is then taken forward. The re-implementation and updating of the system for the Palm OS family of modern Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) is described. The evaluation of this new version in a seven week, randomised, open, cross-over clinical pilot study involving eight patients on short-acting plus long-acting insulin basalbolus regimens showed it to be easy-to-operate, reliable, not time consuming and well liked by patients. Following this, the characteristics and use of all currently available insulin formulations, and the corresponding insulin regimens are summarised. Algorithms to provide dose advice and decision support for patients taking the new rapid-acting, intermediate-acting and premixed insulin formulations are then developed. The user interface is improved and extended, amongst others through the development and use of a model describing individual user's meal time habits. Implementation-related issues encountered are discussed, and further work and future directions are identified and outlined. Motivated by the complex and safety-critical nature of systems such as POIRO, we also report on the use of the B abstract machine notation for the formal specification of the original POIRO system, and focusing on projects and published case studies. review the use of formal methods in the development of medical computer systems

How Virtualized Environments Affect Computer Forensics

Virtualized environments can make forensics investigation more difficult. Technological advances in virtualization tools essentially make removable media a PC that can be carried around in a pocket or around a neck. Running operating systems and applications this way leaves very little trace on the host system. This paper will explore all the newest methods for virtualized environments and the implications they have on the world of forensics. It will begin by describing and differentiating between software and hardware virtualization. It will then move on to explain the various methods used for server and desktop virtualization. Next, it will describe the fundamentals of a traditional forensic investigation and explain how virtualization affects this process. Finally, it will describe the common methods to find virtualization artifacts and identify virtual activities that affect the examination process. Keywords: Hardware-assisted, Hypervisor, Para-virtualization, Virtual Machine, virtualization, VMware, Moka5, MojoPac, Portable Virtual Privacy Machine, VirtualBox

Secure portable execution and storage environments: A capability to improve security for remote working

Remote working is a practice that provides economic benefits to both the employing organisation and the individual. However, evidence suggests that organisations implementing remote working have limited appreciation of the security risks, particularly those impacting upon the confidentiality and integrity of information and also on the integrity and availability of the remote worker’s computing environment. Other research suggests that an organisation that does appreciate these risks may veto remote working, resulting in a loss of economic benefits. With the implementation of high speed broadband, remote working is forecast to grow and therefore it is appropriate that improved approaches to managing security risks are researched. This research explores the use of secure portable execution and storage environments (secure PESEs) to improve information security for the remote work categories of telework, and mobile and deployed working. This thesis with publication makes an original contribution to improving remote work information security through the development of a body of knowledge (consisting of design models and design instantiations) and the assertion of a nascent design theory. The research was conducted using design science research (DSR), a paradigm where the research philosophies are grounded in design and construction. Following an assessment of both the remote work information security issues and threats, and preparation of a set of functional requirements, a secure PESE concept was defined. The concept is represented by a set of attributes that encompass the security properties of preserving the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the computing environment and data. A computing environment that conforms to the concept is considered to be a secure PESE, the implementation of which consists of a highly portable device utilising secure storage and an up-loadable (on to a PC) secure execution environment. The secure storage and execution environment combine to address the information security risks in the remote work location. A research gap was identified as no existing ‘secure PESE like’ device fully conformed to the concept, enabling a research problem and objectives to be defined. Novel secure storage and execution environments were developed and used to construct a secure PESE suitable for commercial remote work and a high assurance secure PESE suitable for security critical remote work. The commercial secure PESE was trialled with an existing telework team looking to improve security and the high assurance secure PESE was trialled within an organisation that had previously vetoed remote working due to the sensitivity of the data it processed. An evaluation of the research findings found that the objectives had been satisfied. Using DSR evaluation frameworks it was determined that the body of knowledge had improved an area of study with sufficient evidence generated to assert a nascent design theory for secure PESEs. The thesis highlights the limitations of the research while opportunities for future work are also identified. This thesis presents ten published papers coupled with additional doctoral research (that was not published) which postulates the research argument that ‘secure PESEs can be used to manage information security risks within the remote work environment’

Computer aided data acquisition tool for high-throughput phenotyping of plant populations

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The data generated during a course of a biological experiment/study can be sometimes be massive and its management becomes quite critical for the success of the investigation undertaken. The accumulation and analysis of such large datasets often becomes tedious for biologists and lab technicians. Most of the current phenotype data acquisition management systems do not cater to the specialized needs of large-scale data analysis. The successful application of genomic tools/strategies to introduce desired traits in plants requires extensive and precise phenotyping of plant populations or gene bank material, thus necessitating an efficient data acquisition system.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here we describe newly developed software "<b>PHENOME" </b>for high-throughput phenotyping, which allows researchers to accumulate, categorize, and manage large volume of phenotypic data. In this study, a large number of individual tomato plants were phenotyped with the "PHENOME" application using a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) with built-in barcode scanner in concert with customized database specific for handling large populations.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The phenotyping of large population of plants both in the laboratory and in the field is very efficiently managed using PDA. The data is transferred to a specialized database(s) where it can be further analyzed and catalogued. The "PHENOME" aids collection and analysis of data obtained in large-scale mutagenesis, assessing quantitative trait loci (QTLs), raising mapping population, sampling of several individuals in one or more ecological niches etc.</p

End-to-end security for mobile devices

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Computer Engineering, Izmir, 2004Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 120)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishix, 133 leavesEnd-to-end security has been an emerging need for mobile devices with the widespread use of personal digital assistants and mobile phones. Transport Layer Security Protocol (TLS) is an end-to-end security protocol that is commonly used in Internet, together with its predecessor, SSL protocol. By using TLS protocol in mobile world, the advantage of the proven security model of this protocol can be taken.J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) has been the de facto application platform used in mobile devices. This thesis aims to provide an end-to-end security protocol implementation based on TLS 1.0 specification and that can run on J2ME MIDP (Mobile Information Device Profile) environment. Because of the resource intensive public-key operations used in TLS, this protocol needs high resources and has low performance. Another motivation for the thesis is to adapt the protocol for mobile environment and to show that it is possible to use the protocol implementation in both client and server modes. An alternative serialization mechanism is used instead of the standard Java object serialization that is lacking in MIDP. In this architecture, XML is used to transmit object data.The mobile end-to-end security protocol has the main design issues of maintainability and extensibility. Cryptographic operations are performed with a free library, Bouncy Castle Cryptography Package. The object-oriented architecture of the protocol implementation makes the replacement of this library with another cryptography package easier.Mobile end-to-end security protocol is tested with a mobile hospital reservation system application. Test cases are prepared to measure the performance of the protocol implementation with different cipher suites and platforms. Measured values of all handshake operation and defined time spans are given in tables and compared with graphs