IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN Security Performance Using Multiple Clients

IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks have gained popularity, providing users mobility and flexibility in accessing information. Existing solutions for wireless LAN networks have been exposed to security vulnerabilities. Previous study has evaluated the security performance of IEEE 802.11 wireless networks using single server-client architecture. This research investigated the effect of multiple security mechanisms on the performance of multi-client congested and un-congested networks. The effect of different TCP and UDP packet sizes on performance of secure networks was also studied. The results showed that WEP encryption significantly degrades the performance of congested wireless networks. Network performance degradation increased as the number of clients was increased under all security mechanisms

Effects of an Immersive Virtual Reality Exergame on University Students’ Anxiety, Depression, and Perceived Stress: Pilot Feasibility and Usability Study

Background: In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of students suffering from depression, anxiety, and perceived stress. A solution that has been increasingly used for improving health and wellbeing is exergaming. The effect and acceptability of exergames have been studied widely but mostly with older adults. Their feasibility and usability by university students, especially for immersive virtual reality (iVR) exergames, remain unexplored. Objective: This study aims to explore the feasibility of a six-week iVR exergame-based intervention in reducing anxiety, depression, and perceived stress for university students and examine the usability and acceptability of such games. Methods: A total of 31 university students were recruited to participate in a 6-week study, where they needed to play a boxing-style iVR exergame called FitXR twice a week, 30 minutes per session. Their anxiety (Beck Anxiety Inventory), depression (Beck Depression Inventory-II), and perceived stress (Perceived Stress Scale) were measured before and after intervention. Results: Fifteen participants completed the 6-week study. Our results suggested that participants’ depression scores were reduced significantly from 8.33 (SD=5.98) to 5.40 (SD=5.14) after the intervention (P=.012). In addition, most participants (93.3%) believed the iVR exergame has good usability. Furthermore, most participants (93.3%) were satisfied with the iVR gameplay experience and would play the iVR exergame again in the future. Eleven participants (73.3%) would recommend the iVR exergame to their friends. Conclusions: Results gained from the study show that the iVR exergame has good usability, is highly acceptable, and has the potential to reduce depression among university students

Massively distributed authorship of academic papers

Wiki-like or crowdsourcing models of collaboration can provide a number of benefits to academic work. These techniques may engage expertise from different disciplines, and potentially increase productivity. This paper presents a model of massively distributed collaborative authorship of academic papers. This model, developed by a collective of thirty authors, identifies key tools and techniques that would be necessary or useful to the writing process. The process of collaboratively writing this paper was used to discover, negotiate, and document issues in massively authored scholarship. Our work provides the first extensive discussion of the experiential aspects of large-scale collaborative research.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN Security Performance Using Multiple Clients

IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks have gained popularity, providing users mobility and flexibility in accessing information. Existing solutions for wireless LAN networks have been exposed to security vulnerabilities. Previous study has evaluated the security performance of IEEE 802.11 wireless networks using single server-client architecture. This research investigated the effect of multiple security mechanisms on the performance of multi-client congested and un-congested networks. The effect of different TCP and UDP packet sizes on performance of secure networks was also studied. The results showed that WEP encryption significantly degrades the performance of congested wireless networks. Network performance degradation increased as the number of clients was increased under all security mechanisms

A collaborative constraint-based intelligent system for learning object-oriented analysis and design using UML

Automatic analysis of interaction and support for group learning through a distance collaborative learning system is at the forefront of educational technology. Research shows that collaborative leaming provides an environment to enrich the leaming process by introducing interactive partners into an educational system and creating more realistic social contexts. This paper presents COtttCl-Ogtll, a constraint-based ITS that teaches object-oriented design using Unified Modelling Language (UML). UML is easily the most popular objectoriented modelling technology in current practice. Constraint-Based Modelling (CBM) has been used successfully in several tutoring systems, which have proven to be extremely effective in evaluations performed in real classrooms. We have developed a single-user version that supports students in learning UML class diagrams. The system was evaluated in a real classroom, and the results showed that students' performance increased significantly while interacting with the system. We are now extending the system to provide supporl for collaboration. An overview of both single-user and collaborative versions of the system is presented. A full evaluation study has been planned lor April 2006, the goal of which is to evaluate the effect of using the system on students' leaming and collaboration

SOFA: An Online Social Network for Engaging and Motivating Families to Adopt a Healthy Lifestyle

Overweight and obesity have become a global epidemic and are increasing rapidly. Previous research has shown that providing social support and family support has profound roles on the weight management of individuals. However, the support provided by online health communities is outside the family context and is targeted at individuals. We are proposing SOFA (SOcial FAmily), an online social networking system aimed to engage and motivate families to adopt a healthy lifestyle through exposure to educational information on diet exercise and a range of other healthy living information. In this paper, we describe SOFA’s features, the research questions that we are investigating and some preliminary results from a live deployment. The results showed that adding a social layer can considerably increase user engagement with static educational content and showed that the provision of family based profiles reduced the activity levels of individual family members when compared to those with individual profiles

Train-For-Life : on-line interactive training for industry learners

Learning a topic online via Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has gained a lot of popularity due to their scalability and efficiency of knowledge distribution. However, participating in these courses usually means fully committing to the course for at least a few months in some cases. Providing engaging online education is a challenger for industry/non-academic trainees mainly due to their lack of time. In this paper, we describe a practical experience of online learning for non-academic audience in transport, logistics, security and safety industry. The proposed training courses are designed to be short, flexible and interactive to keep the trainees interested and engaged with the content. During any courses the trainees were challenged with different interactive tasks to emphasis on some important points. Results show that more than 90% of the trainees managed to complete the training parts of the courses they are registered to do and enjoyed their experience