A preliminary open source software infrastructure for the health sector in the UAE

Information Technology (IT) is the key to ensuring that health care information is accessible when and where it is needed, and to supporting personal health, health care decision making, and health system sustainability. IT is making steady progress toward linking all aspects of patient care - it is the future of healthcare provision and it is growing fast. However, spending on new medical technology is considered a leading contributor to the increase in overall health spending. The development of IT systems in the health industry is often a high-cost venture. One way to address the problem of cost, and hence to improve the quality of the services provided by these systems, is to consider making IT applications available with no licensing fees through the Open Source Software community. This paper presents the initial development of a preliminary Open Source Software platform containing software that meets user requirements in the health sector. This platform is different from other medical Open Source Software, in that it integrates free open-source applications which range from operating systems to email systems. The paper also highlights the financial advantages of introducing Open Source Software and its positive impact on the quality of health services

HOPPSIGEN: a database of human and mouse processed pseudogenes

Processed pseudogenes result from reverse transcribed mRNAs. In general, because processed pseudogenes lack promoters, they are no longer functional from the moment they are inserted into the genome. Subsequently, they freely accumulate substitutions, insertions and deletions. Moreover, the ancestral structure of processed pseudogenes could be easily inferred using the sequence of their functional homologous genes. Owing to these characteristics, processed pseudogenes represent good neutral markers for studying genome evolution. Recently, there is an increasing interest for these markers, particularly to help gene prediction in the field of genome annotation, functional genomics and genome evolution analysis (patterns of substitution). For these reasons, we have developed a method to annotate processed pseudogenes in complete genomes. To make them useful to different fields of research, we stored them in a nucleic acid database after having annotated them. In this work, we screened both mouse and human complete genomes from ENSEMBL to find processed pseudogenes generated from functional genes with introns. We used a conservative method to detect processed pseudogenes in order to minimize the rate of false positive sequences. Within processed pseudogenes, some are still having a conserved open reading frame and some have overlapping gene locations. We designated as retroelements all reverse transcribed sequences and more strictly, we designated as processed pseudogenes, all retroelements not falling in the two former categories (having a conserved open reading or overlapping gene locations). We annotated 5823 retroelements (5206 processed pseudogenes) in the human genome and 3934 (3428 processed pseudogenes) in the mouse genome. Compared to previous estimations, the total number of processed pseudogenes was underestimated but the aim of this procedure was to generate a high-quality dataset. To facilitate the use of processed pseudogenes in studying genome structure and evolution, DNA sequences from processed pseudogenes, and their functional reverse transcribed homologs, are now stored in a nucleic acid database, HOPPSIGEN. HOPPSIGEN can be browsed on the PBIL (Pôle Bioinformatique Lyonnais) World Wide Web server (http://pbil.univ-lyon1.fr/) or fully downloaded for local installation

Un référentiel pour la mesure des logiciels avec la norme ISO 19761 (COSMIC-FFP) : une étude exploratoire

La problématique générale de cette thèse est le manque de standards et de références pour le design et pour l'utilisation des mesures en génie logiciel. Cette problématique rend le processus de mesurage des logiciels complexe et difficile. La méthodologie adoptée pour résoudre la problématique indiquée ci-dessus est à la fois exploratoire et qualitative. L'objectif de cette thèse est la construction d'un référentiel pour la mesure des logiciels. Le référentiel est composé de huit étalons de mesure des logiciels. Dans notre contexte, un étalon est défini comme «une mesure matérialisée, appareil de mesure, matériau de référence destiné a définir, réaliser, conserver ou reproduire une unité ou une ou plusieurs valeurs d'une grandeur pour servir de référence» (ISO, 1993). Ces étalons de mesure traitent un seul attribut du logiciel, soit la taille fonctionnelle, et ils touchent trois types de logiciels: applications de gestion, systèmes en temps réel et systèmes hybrides. Pour mesurer la taille fonctionnelle, ces étalons utilisent une mesure appelée les points de fonction (en anglais Function Point Analysis - FPA). «FPA, introduced in 1979 by Allan Albrecht, was proposed to help measure the productivity of software development. Function points have the advantage of well-known norms and well defined detailed procedures that allow a uniform method of counting and the establishment of a reference base for making comparisons, provided, of course, that the rules of calculation and accounting are correctly applied.» (Abran, 1994) Pour la construction du référentiel, une méthode de mesure des logiciels bien spécifique a été choisie, soit COSMIC-FFP (ISO 19761). COSMIC-FFP est une méthode rigoureuse de mesure des logiciels. Elle rend possible la mesure de la taille des logiciels tels qu'ils sont perçus par leurs utilisateurs, c'est-à-dire à travers les besoins fonctionnels. Le résultat de l'application de la mesure donne une valeur numérique qui quantifie la taille fonctionnelle du logiciel. Les raisons de la sélection de cette mesure spécifique et sa description sont expliquées dans le quatrième chapitre

Secure software engineering: A new teaching perspective based on the SWEBOK

Lack of a suitable set of controls during the development life cycle of software will lead to mistakes in the requirements, design, or code of software and, therefore, result in significant security vulnerabilities. This paper proposes a software engineering course from the security perspective, which can be taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. It will prepare students to successfully cope with the technical challenges as well as the non technical issues associated with the software development process, while integrating security into each phase of the process. The course materials are derived from the Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) published by the IEEE Computer Society with the support of a consortium of industrial sponsors

Exploratory study on innovative use of ISO standards for IT security in the UAE

With the high percentage of security breaches, following IT standards could be one way to protecting sensitive information and auditing the accuracy, confidentiality, and integrity of information within the organization. ISO security standards enable organizations to practice safe security techniques to minimize the number of successful IT security attacks. Many researches have been established extensively in both the research and industry fields that highlighted the need for implementing an information security standards and policy in strive towards the securing of information. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no such study on using ISO standards in the IT field, in the UAE. This paper focuses more specifically on the IT security techniques. Emirates Authority for Standardization and Metrology (ESMA) seeks to focus its efforts on the IT field - IT Security techniques being an area of interest. Since the UAE is always coping with the rapid growth in technology and it has a lack of publications on the topic of IT standards, it is worthy to address the usage of ISO standards in this region. This research survey, which sent to many public and private Emirati organizations, shows that the usage of ISO standards in this region of the world is quite promising

A reliable mobile application for safety on roads

Road traffic jams, roads construction works, maintenance activities, traffic incidents and other unplanned events represent a major concern in almost all countries that can result in considerable delays, higher fuel consumption, higher cost expenses and many other indirect effects which ultimately require immediate attention to alleviate such concerns that can influence the users. This was a motivation to combine mobile applications with traffic load analysis and develop an application that assists in giving drivers an access to traffic information, mainly road works and incidents, to help them better plan their daily journeys across the city. With this Mobile Application for the SAfety on Roads (MASAR), drivers can now stay in touch with latest information and traffic updates on the move in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. MASAR is dedicated to making drivers journey as safe and reliable as possible. Where delays occur, MASAR wants to make sure that you can access information quickly and easily. Furthermore, drivers can now take advantage of free travel news through MASAR. The current version of the application allows drivers to check how the traffic is flowing on highways and roads in Abu Dhabi before they begin their journey. The app only provides information for roads that are managed within Abu Dhabi, which are detailed within Abu Dhabi Network Maps. The travel information covers unplanned incidents such as accidents and congestion, plus lane closures and other restrictions due to improvement works. As future enhancements, the team is planning to covers all United Arab Emirates roads and makes the application compatible with almost all mobile phone platforms. © IFAC

Techniques for quantitative analysis of software quality throughout the SDLC: The SWEBOK guide coverage

This paper presents an overview of quantitative analysis techniques for software quality and their applicability during the software development life cycle (SDLC). This includes the Seven Basic Tools of Quality, Statistical Process Control, and Six Sigma, and it highlights how these techniques can be used for managing and controlling the quality of software during specification, design, implementation, testing, and maintenance. We verify whether or not these techniques, which are generally accepted for most projects, most of the time, and have value that is recognized by the peer community, have indeed been included in the SWEBOK Guide. © 2010 IEEE

Assessment of real-time software specifications quality using COSMIC-FFP

The success of a system development project largely depends on the non ambiguity of its system-level requirements specification document where the requirements are described at the \u27system level\u27 and not at the software and hardware level, and which document serves as an input to the design, implementation and testing phases. The way the system requirements specification document is written is sometimes ambiguous from a software viewpoint. This paper approaches the problem faced by the codesign, namely, the ill-defined functionality allocation between the hardware and the software for real time systems and presents an initial solution to it. It discusses what are the system requirements to be assigned to the hardware and what is really to be done by the software? Different decisions can lead then to various alternatives of allocation of functions between hardware and software: this will affect what software will be built and, correspondingly, the final functional size of software while measuring it using COS-MIC-FFP measurement method. This paper presents an initial solution towards understanding the applicability of the COSMIC-FFP functional size measurement method in assessing the hardware-software requirements allocation, and illustrates the approach on a Steam Boiler Controller case study. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Developing an initial open-source platform for the higher education sector - A case study: Alhosn University

The higher education community is concerned about the cost and performance of commercial software products. A common view is that existing proprietary options do not have the features required by instructors and students or allow for cost-effective customization. One way to address these problems in poorer countries, and hence improve their quality of education and access to knowledge, would be to consider the modern educational tools available with no license fees through open-source software. This paper presents an initial development of a complete open-source software platform called the Open University Project, which contains software that precisely fulfills user requirements in the higher education sector. The paper also highlights the financial advantages of introducing open-source software in developing countries and its positive impact on educational quality. © 2009 IEEE

Enhancing protection techniques of e-banking security services using open source cryptographic algorithms

Security and the privacy features concerning e-banking needs to be improved rapidly to continue its growing. It is really difficult to ensure enough adequate security by using the conventional algorithms for a long time period, due to recent advances such as high progress in cryptanalysis techniques, improvement of computing skills and continuous hacking trials. This paper refers important issues regarding how to enhance the transition to more secure cryptographic and encryption algorithms in the financial sector. This paper recommends that adopting and implementing open source applications following international standards can be considered as a good replacement to the conventional algorithms to offer more enhancement security techniques and highest performance encryption algorithms for e-banking transaction services. We proposed a modified algorithm for AES, in which substitute byte, shift row will remain as in the original AES while mix column operation is replaced by 128 permutation operation followed by add round key operation. Comparative study with traditional encryption algorithms is shown the superiority of the modified algorithm and its high ability to overcome the problem of computational overhead. We additionally suggested another level of e-banking security services using Confidence Building Metric (CBM). The CBMs are computed based on certain parameters and can be implemented on any platform at the client side. © 2013 IEEE