Dependencies and Separation of Duty Constraints in GTRBAC

A Generalized Temporal Role Based Access Control (GTRBAC) model that captures an exhaustive set of temporal constraint needs for access control has recently been proposed. GTRBAC’s language constructs allow one to specify various temporal constraints on role, user-role assignments and role-permission assignments. In this paper, we identify various time-constrained cardinality, control flow dependency and separation of duty constraints (SoDs). Such constraints allow specification of dynamically changing access control requirements that are typical in today’s large systems. In addition to allowing specification of time, the constraints introduced here also allow expressing access control policies at a finer granularity. The inclusion of control flow dependency constraints allows defining much stricter dependency requirements that are typical in workflow types of applications

Prospects of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in Malaysian Construction Industry as Conflict Resolution Tool

The construction industry of today’s world is becoming more challenging and the projects, on the other hand, are becoming more complex than before. The projects in construction industry consume huge proportions of resources especially in-terms of financial resources. Malaysian construction industry is also no exception to this challenging environment. Different concepts and technology innovations have been developed to mitigate and rule out factors affecting the performance of the construction industry. Building Information Modeling is one of them (BIM). The BIM technology helps building in a virtual environment prior to physical construction. This objective of this study is to propose a model / frame work based on BIM technology which will allow reducing the potential adverse affects of delays, cost overrun, productivity, quality and other errors in the light of the available literature and past construction practices. The paper highlights the challenging issues like construction delays, claims, design changes, delayed approvals etc. Keywords: Building Information Modelling (BIM), Construction Industry, Construction delays, Claims, Malaysian Construction Industr

AdGraph: a graph-based approach to ad and tracker blocking

User demand for blocking advertising and tracking online is large and growing. Existing tools, both deployed and described in research, have proven useful, but lack either the completeness or robustness needed for a general solution. Existing detection approaches generally focus on only one aspect of advertising or tracking (e.g. URL patterns, code structure), making existing approaches susceptible to evasion. In this work we present AdGraph, a novel graph-based machine learning approach for detecting advertising and tracking resources on the web. AdGraph differs from existing approaches by building a graph representation of the HTML structure, network requests, and JavaScript behavior of a webpage, and using this unique representation to train a classifier for identifying advertising and tracking resources. Because AdGraph considers many aspects of the context a network request takes place in, it is less susceptible to the single-factor evasion techniques that flummox existing approaches. We evaluate AdGraph on the Alexa top-10K websites, and find that it is highly accurate, able to replicate the labels of human-generated filter lists with 95.33% accuracy, and can even identify many mistakes in filter lists. We implement AdGraph as a modification to Chromium. AdGraph adds only minor overhead to page loading and execution, and is actually faster than stock Chromium on 42% of websites and AdBlock Plus on 78% of websites. Overall, we conclude that AdGraph is both accurate enough and performant enough for online use, breaking comparable or fewer websites than popular filter list based approaches

Student teachers perception towards teaching practicum programme

One of the requirements to qualify as a teacher is to undergo a teaching practicum during which one gains teaching experience. This practicum is considered as the most significant way in helping student teachers to become effective classroom teachers. This study investigates UniSZA student teachers perception towards teaching practicum and the challenges encountered by them. 45 Diploma in Teaching of English (TESL) Semester 5 students at the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics (FLL), Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (UniSZA) were chosen as respondents. The research employed qualitative methodology with questionnaire administered to examine the respondent’s answer for every question asked. The findings indicated that the student teachers have different perception and expectation regarding teaching practicum but most of them looked forward to it. The result of this study also highlighted two prominent challenges encountered by the student teachers that were to adapt with the school environment and the classroom management. Findings of this study would provide a deeper understanding on the Teaching Practicum organized by the Faculty of Languages and Communication

Analysis of Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy for chlorophyll prediction in oil palm leaves

Oil palm nutrient content is investigated with using chlorophyll as a representative factor correlated with NIR spectroscopy spectral absorbance. NIR spectroscopy method of sampling have been tested to overcome time consuming, complex chemical analysis procedure and invasive sampling method in order to identify chlorophyll content in an oil palm tree. Spectral absorbance data from range 900 nm to 1700 nm and chlorophyll data, then tested through five pre-processing methods which is Savitzky-Golay Smoothing (SGS), Multiplicative Scatter Correction (MSC), Single Normal Variation (SNV), First Derivative (1D) and also Second Derivative (2D) using Partial Least Square (PLS) regression prediction model to evaluate the correlation between both data. The overall results show, SGS has the best performance for preprocessing method with the results, the coefficient of determination (R2) values of 0.9998 and root mean square error (RMSE) values of 0.0639. In summary, correlation of NIR spectral absorbance data and chlorophyll can be achieved using a PLS regression model with SGS pre-processing technique. Thus, we can conclude that NIR spectroscopy method can be used to identify chlorophyll content in oil palm with using time saving, simple sampling and non-invasive method

DEMYSTIFYING SHIP OPERATIONAL AVAILABILITY – AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH FOR THE MAINTENANCE OF NAVAL VESSELS

Asset availability improvement has been the focus of many studies by various industries for a few decades now, and the defence industry is no exception. To date, there exists no simple and inexpensive high availability solution for the complex naval ships consisting of many interdependent systems and subsystems working in parallel. Any given approach must strike a balance between true needs and economics, an ever-increasing decision-making burden to stakeholders. Nevertheless, there are many ways to approach the problem. In the past, availability has been viewed as complex mathematical calculations and estimates involving defective equipment. The applied approach has not been fully understood nor appealing to most practitioners as well as the majority of stakeholders who continuously complain about the gap between theory and practice. This paper aims to demystify the complex naval ship availability issue, simplified for easy understanding of operators, maintainers and logisticians as well as other stakeholders involved in the maintenance of naval vessels. The stepby-step approach begins with the identification of severe factors involving both human and machinery affecting downtime of naval vessels culminating into the generation of an availability-oriented model, summarized to a simple four-step approach to availability improvement. Practitioners are now able to appreciate their individual contribution towards improving ship availability

General practitioner\u27s knowledge regarding the diagnosis and drug therapy for acute myocardial infarction

OBJECTIVE: To assess the general practitioners (GP) knowledge regarding the diagnosis and initial drug therapy for acute myocardial infarction (AMI). METHODS: A questionnaire-based survey was conducted in randomly selected GPs of Karachi. Doctors working in community as GPs who were registered medical practitioners having a Bachelor of Medicine & Bachelor of Surgery degree were included in the study. Doctors working at tertiary care facilities or having a post graduate degree or post graduate training in a specialty other than family medicine were excluded from the study. RESULTS: A total of 186 GPs participated in our study. GPs who studied research journals were 2.33 times more likely to investigate serum cardiac troponins levels for the diagnosis of AMI compared to those who did not study research journals (P = 0.02). Twenty six percent of the GPs said that they would refer a patient with suspected AMI without treatment, while 76% said that they would consider some treatment prior to referral. Fifty eight percent of the GPs identified ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) of \u3c 12 hours duration as an indication of thrombolysis while 28% identified posterior wall AMI as a thrombolytic indication. CONCLUSION: GPs, although adequately aware of the presenting features of AMI, were lacking in knowledge regarding the means for confirmation of diagnosis, initial drug therapy and were less likely to carry management steps in their practice

Financial crises and the attainment of the SDGs: an adjusted multidimensional poverty approach

This paper analyses the impact of financial crises on the Sustainable Development Goal of eradicating poverty. To do so, we develop an adjusted Multidimensional Poverty Framework (MPF) that includes 15 indicators that span across key poverty aspects related to income, basic needs, health, education and the environment. We then use an econometric model that allows us to examine the impact of financial crises on these indicators in 150 countries over the period 1980–2015. Our analysis produces new estimates on the impact of financial crises on poverty’s multiple social, economic and environmental aspects and equally important captures dynamic linkages between these aspects. Thus, we offer a better understanding of the potential impact of current debt dynamics on Multidimensional Poverty and demonstrate the need to move beyond the boundaries of SDG1, if we are to meet the target of eradicating poverty. Our results indicate that the current financial distress experienced by many low-income countries may reverse the progress that has been made hitherto in reducing poverty. We find that financial crises are associated with an approximately 10% increase of extreme poor in low-income countries. The impact is even stronger in some other poverty aspects. For instance, crises are associated with an average decrease of government spending in education by 17.72% in low-income countries. The dynamic linkages between most of the Multidimensional Poverty indicators, warn of a negative domino effect on a number of SDGs related to poverty, if there is a financial crisis shock. To pre-empt such a domino effect, the specific SDG target 17.4 on attaining long-term debt sustainability through coordinated policies plays a key role and requires urgent attention by the international community