Smart cards and the fingerprint: a framework for user identification and authentication

Access control has been a great concern in this Information and Communication Technology (ICT) era. The need to control access to certain information and resources has been taken seriously by the ICT community. This research believes that no single security method, algorithm, key or procedure is entirely secure. Hence, a combination of multiple security components is mandatory to provide a high level of protection against fraud and other threats. This research combines two security components, which are the smart card and fingerprint recognition. It looks into the vulnerabilities of magnetic-stripe cards and Personal Identification Numbers (PIN) or passwords widely used in systems today. As a result, the research proposed a framework for user identification and authentication in automatic-teller-machine (ATM) systems using fingerprints and smart cards as opposed to the PIN and magnetic-stripe cards

ASSESSMENT OF SEASONAL VARIABILITY FOR WIND SPEED AND SIGNIFICANT WAVE HEIGHT USING SATELLITE ALTIMETER OVER MALAYSIAN SEAS

Malaysia is located in the equatorial region and experienced climate hot, humid and rainy throughout the year. These have brought four monsoon seasons to Malaysia which can be categorised as Northeast monsoon, Southwest monsoon, First-inter monsoon and Second-inter monsoon. Although Malaysia is surrounded by large scale marine resources, the lack of understanding in seasonal variability has affected the spatial and temporal analysis. Thus, this study will highlight the assessment of seasonal variability of wind speed and significant wave height over the Malaysian seas. For more than two decades satellite altimeter data were used to generate a prolonged trend of regional ocean wind speed and significant wave height in order to study the monsoons in Malaysia. A set of wind speed and significant wave height data are compared with the in-situ measurement to validate the accuracy of the wind speed and significant wave height observation using the satellite altimeter. Two selected buoys were using as benchmarks and assessed using the statistical analysis by conducting a root mean square error and a correlation calculation. Seasonal variations assessment is conducted with significance to analyse the monsoon effect towards the wind speed and significant wave height condition. As a result, both ocean parameters present a good value of root mean square error and positive correlation which were 0.7976 (wind speed) and 0.92 (significant wave height), which proves the measurement from satellite altimeter is reliable to use. In addition, the seasonal variation assessment illustrates during the Northeast monsoon, each part of the Malaysian seas experienced with great wind speed and significant wave height

Thermomechanical treatment of austempered ductile iron

The production of lightweight ferrous castings with increased strength properties became unavoidable facing the serious challenge of lighter aluminum and magnesium castings. The relatively new ferrous casting alloy ADI offers promising strength prospects, and the thermo-mechanical treatment of ductile iron may suggest a new route for production of thin-wall products. This work aims at studying the influence of thermomechanical treatment, either by ausforming just after quenching and before the onset of austempering reaction or by cold rolling after austempering. In the first part of this work, ausforming of ADI up to 25% reduction in height during a rolling operation was found to add a mechanical processing component compared to the conventional ADI heat treatment, thus increasing the rate of ausferrite formation and leading to a much finer and more homogeneous ausferrite product. The kinetics of ausferrite formation was studied using both metallographic as well as XRD-techniques. The effect of ausforming on the strength was quite dramatic (up to 70% and 50% increase in the yield and ultimate strength respectively). A mechanism involving both a refined microstructural scale and an elevated dislocation density was suggested. Nickel is added to ADI to increase hardenability of thick section castings, while ausforming to higher degrees of deformation is necessary to alleviate the deleterious effect of alloy segregation on ductility. In the second part of this work, the influence of cold rolling (CR) on the mechanical properties and structural characteristics of ADI was investigated. The variation in properties was related to the amount of retained austenite (γr) and its mechanically induced ransformation. In the course of tensile deformation of ADI, transformation induced plasticity (TRIP) takes place, indicated by the increase of the instantaneous value of strain-hardening exponent with tensile strain. The amount of retained austenite was found to decrease due to partial transformation of γr to martensite under the CR strain. Such strain-induced transformation resulted in higher amounts of mechanically generated martensite. The strength and hardness properties were therefore increased, while ductility and impact toughness decreased with increasing CR reduction

Utility of Certain Nucleophilic Aromatic Substitution Reactions for the Assay of Ethamsylate in its Dosage forms and in Presence of its Degradation Product

The study represents the first report on the development of spectrophotometric methods for determination of ethamsylate (EST) in the presence of hydroquinone as an impurity and/or acidic degradation product. The proposed methods are based on the reaction of EST through it,s secondary amino group either with 1,2-naphthoquinone-4-sulphonate sodium (NQS) at pH 10.7 or 2,4-dinitrofluorobenzene (DNFB) at pH 9.3 to form orange and yellow colored reaction products peaking at 478 and 387 nm for methods (I) and (II), respectively. The different experimental parameters affecting the development and stability of the reaction products in methods (I) and (II) were carefully studied and optimized. The absorbance-concentration plots were rectilinear over the concentration ranges of 2-30 and 2-14 µg mL−1 for methods (I) and (II), respectively. The lower detection limits were 0.13 and 0.19 µg mL−1 and the lower quantitation limits were 0.44 and 0.63 µg mL−1 for methods (I) and (II), respectively. Both methods were successfully applied to commercial ampoules and tablets

ESTABLISHMENT OF NEW FITTED GEOID MODEL IN UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MALAYSIA

The purpose of this study is to produce fitted geoid for Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Johor Bahru by using precise levelling and 3D GNSS control network technique. This study focuses on the theory, computation method and analysis of fitted geoid around Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. The computation of accuracy fitted geoid model is based on the GNSS levelling and Precise Levelling. The achieved accuracy of UTM Fitted Geoid Model is at 8 mm. In conclusion, this research can contribute to Universiti Teknologi Malaysia by providing good UTM fitted geoid model that can give better accuracy for various purposes of work related to surveying and mapping

Interference and electromagnetic compatibility challenges in 5G wireless network deployments

5G wireless network technology is going operate within the environment of other electrical, electronic and electromagnetic devices, components and systems, with capability of high speed data connectivity acting as network transceiver stations with Massive MIMO for Internet of Things (IoT). Considering the level of interoperability, electromagnetic Interference and electromagnetic compatibility to avoid electromagnetic pulse effects (EMP) which is capable of not only causing network malfunctions but total devices and equipments failure in mission critical operations, like hospital MRI scan machines, security profiling and data handling or even personal healthcare devices like heart pacemaker. Electromagnetic energy coupling in PCB due to: radiation, reflection and Crosstalk generates reliability challenges affecting Signal Integrity between traces of multilayer boards stalks, power bus and packaging creating Electromagnetic interference (EMI) in PCB leading false clock response to system failure. Above were considered very essential when deploying 5G wireless network facility as presented in this paper

Study of nonstandard auto-antibodies as prognostic markers in auto immune hepatitis in children

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Antibodies to chromatin and soluble liver antigen have been associated with severe form of autoimmune hepatitis and/or poor treatment response and may provide guidance in defining subsets of patients with different disease behaviors. The major clinical limitation of these antibodies is their lower individual occurrence in patients with autoimmune hepatitis.</p> <p>Aim</p> <p>To estimate the value of detection of these non-standard antibodies in autoimmune hepatitis as prognostic markers.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Both antibodies were tested by enzyme immunoassay in 20 patients with autoimmune hepatitis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Antibodies to soluble liver antigen were not detected in any of our patients. On the other hand anti chromatin antibodies were present in 50% (10/20). Antibodies to chromatin occurred more commonly in females than males (8/14 versus 2/6). Of the 14 patients who relapsed 8(57%) had antichromatin antibodies while they were present in only 2 out of 6(33.3%) non relapsers. Antichromatin antibodies were found more in patients with antinuclear (3/4) and anti smooth muscle antibodies (9/13) more than in those with liver kidney microsomal antibodies (1/4) and those seronegative (1/4) i.e. they were +ve in patients with type I (8/12(66.6%)) more than those with type II (1/4(25%)) and those seronegative (1/4(25%)). Antibodies to chromatin are associated with high levels of γ globulin but yet with no statistical difference between seropositive and seronegative counterparts (p = 0.65).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Antibodies to chromatin may be superior than those to soluble liver antigen in predicting relapse and may be useful as prognostic marker. Further studies with larger number of patients and combined testing of more than one antibody will improve the performance parameters of these antibodies and define optimal testing conditions for them before they can be incorporated into management algorithms that project prognosis.</p