Adding Privacy Protection to Policy Based Authorisation Systems

An authorisation system determines who is authorised to do what i.e. it assigns privileges to users and provides a decision on whether someone is allowed to perform a requested action on a resource. A traditional authorisation decision system, which is simply called authorisation system or system in the rest of the thesis, provides the decision based on a policy which is usually written by the system administrator. Such a traditional authorisation system is not sufficient to protect privacy of personal data, since users (the data subjects) are usually given a take it or leave it choice to accept the controlling organisation’s policy. Privacy is the ability of the owners or subjects of personal data to control the flow of data about themselves, according to their own preferences. This thesis describes the design of an authorisation system that will provide privacy for personal data by including sticky authorisation policies from the issuers and data subjects, to supplement the authorisation policy of the controlling organisation. As personal data moves from controlling system to controlling system, the sticky policies travel with the data. A number of data protection laws and regulations have been formulated to protect the privacy of individuals. The rights and prohibitions provided by the law need to be enforced by the authorisation system. Hence, the designed authorisation system also includes the authorisation rules from the legislation. This thesis describes the conversion of rules from the EU Data Protection Directive into machine executable rules. Due to the nature of the legislative rules, not all of them could be converted into deterministic machine executable rules, as in several cases human intervention or human judgement is required. This is catered for by allowing the machine rules to be configurable. Since the system includes independent policies from various authorities (law, issuer, data subject and controller) conflicts may arise among the decisions provided by them. Consequently, this thesis describes a dynamic, automated conflict resolution mechanism. Different conflict resolution algorithms are chosen based on the request contexts. As the EU Data Protection Directive allows processing of personal data based on contracts, we designed and implemented a component, Contract Validation Service (ConVS) that can validate an XML based digital contract to allow processing of personal data based on a contract. The authorisation system has been implemented as a web service and the performance of the system is measured, by first deploying it in a single computer and then in a cloud server. Finally the validity of the design and implementation are tested against a number of use cases based on scenarios involving accessing medical data in a health service provider’s system and accessing personal data such as CVs and degree certificates in an employment service provider’s system. The machine computed authorisation decisions are compared to the theoretical decisions to ensure that the system returns the correct decisions

Reaction of Zinc Proteome with Biologically Important Metal Binding Ligands

Fluorescent sensors have been widely used as microscopic tools to image Zn2+ on a cellular level. Recently, it has been established that the sensors TSQ and Zinquin form adducts with Zn-proteins and image fractions of the Zn-proteome.1 Since TSQ and Zinquin bind specifically to many Zn-proteins, it is hypothesized that other metal binding ligands, both synthetic and natural, may also bind to the Zn-proteome. Biologically active 1,10-phenanthroline (Phen) and related molecules were investigated for their ability to bind to Zn-proteome. Similarly, the cellular tripeptide, glutathione was investigated. It was observed that Phen and some other metal binding, bidentate ligands, were able to displace TSQ from the TSQ-Zn-proteome. Specifically when cellular Zn-proteome reacted with TSQ, adduct formation occurs, that was detected by fluorescence emission at 470 nm. Upon reaction of TSQ-Zn-proteome with 1,10-phenanthroline, glutathione, and some other related small molecules, a significant decrease in fluorescence was observed, indicating the displacement of TSQ by each competing ligand. Native SDS (NDS) PAGE electrophoresis of the product of the reaction of 1,10-Phenanthroline with TSQ-Zn-proteome further confirmed the displacement of TSQ from an array of Zn-proteins. This reaction was further characterized with the use of Zn-alcohol dehydrogenase as a model enzyme that reacts with TSQ and Phen. These studies reveal the Zn-proteome as widely available for adduct formation at its zinc binding sites. The importance of such reactions is being investigated

Impact of Mass Media on the Utilization of Maternal Healthcare Services in South Asia

Maternal mortality is a serious issue in the developing world due in part to inadequate care and awareness before, during, and after the pregnancy period. Appropriate information about maternal healthcare is essential to reduce maternal mortality. Mass media can be an influential source in disseminating knowledge and information on maternal healthcare. Therefore, this study examines the impact of mass media exposure (television, radio, and newspaper) and socioeconomic factors on maternal healthcare utilization in four South Asian countries: India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Afghanistan. Analyses use the Demographic and Health Survey 2014-2016, a nationally representative survey of women aged 15-49 years. Maternal healthcare utilization is significantly higher among women exposed to mass media across countries, even after controlling for mother’s, husband’s, and household socioeconomic factors. Mother’s educational attainment moderates the association between mass media and maternal healthcare in three of the four countries

Water quality assessment and trophic state classification of Tasik Ilmu, UTM

Freshwater lakes are valuable natural asset to humans for their significant functions. Unfortunately, exposure of the lakes with anthropogenic pollutants creates concern on the occurrence of enhanced eutrophication which further degrade the water quality. In this study, water quality of UTM’s lake and river was characterized according the six water quality parameter of Malysian Department of Environment Water Quality Index (DOE-WQI), total phosphorus, fecal coliform, chl-a, transparency and turbidity. The impact of the oxidation pond (OP) on the lake water quality was also investigated and meanwhile, the trophic state of UTM’s lake was evaluated using Carlson index. Water samples were collected at seven locations including river, OP and lake for three times. The samples were analyzed for DO, BOD, COD, AN, total phosphorus and fecal coliform. The study found that, the WQI calculated for the lake was ranging from 69.5 to 70 which falls under Class III indicating that the water is slightly polluted and unsuitable for recreational use with body contact. The Trophic State Index (TSI) of Tasik Ilmu revealed that mean values of TSI(SD), TSI(chl-a) and TSI (TP) were 71.6, 65.4 and 100.2 respectively which reflect the eutrophic condition of the lake water. From the removal profile of OP it was found that, the COD removal was 60%, ammonical nitrogen and fecal coliform were only ranging between 30-33%, the total phosphorus and BOD were significant with 70% of removal. The classification of river water quality before the OP effluent falls under Class II with WQI 78 while, after the effluent it falls under Class III. In conclusion, the two indices TSI and WQI used for water quality assessment process confirmed that Tasik Ilmu is in a deteriorating state and effluents from the OP contributed to its deterioration

Perceived Corporate Glass Ceiling: A Survey Research in Bangladesh Corporate Job Sectors

The study investigated the perceived corporate glass ceiling and measured the leading factors of the glass ceiling according to gender, company types, and years of work experience. 257 adult male and female employees participated in this study as respondents, and they were from four districts of Bangladesh working in banks, multinational companies, private firms, and telecommunication sectors following a convenient sampling technique. The results revealed that 60.7% of the respondents perceived a glass ceiling exists in the workplace of Bangladesh. The researchers used mean of means analysis to compare the perceptual differences regarding the leading factors of glass ceiling according to gender, company types, and working experience and found work-life conflict as the most important factor for causing the glass ceiling.&nbsp

Implementation of the Trigonometric LMS Algorithm using Original Cordic Rotation

The LMS algorithm is one of the most successful adaptive filtering algorithms. It uses the instantaneous value of the square of the error signal as an estimate of the mean-square error (MSE). The LMS algorithm changes (adapts) the filter tap weights so that the error signal is minimized in the mean square sense. In Trigonometric LMS (TLMS) and Hyperbolic LMS (HLMS), two new versions of LMS algorithms, same formulations are performed as in the LMS algorithm with the exception that filter tap weights are now expressed using trigonometric and hyperbolic formulations, in cases for TLMS and HLMS respectively. Hence appears the CORDIC algorithm as it can efficiently perform trigonometric, hyperbolic, linear and logarithmic functions. While hardware-efficient algorithms often exist, the dominance of the software systems has kept those algorithms out of the spotlight. Among these hardware- efficient algorithms, CORDIC is an iterative solution for trigonometric and other transcendental functions. Former researches worked on CORDIC algorithm to observe the convergence behavior of Trigonometric LMS (TLMS) algorithm and obtained a satisfactory result in the context of convergence performance of TLMS algorithm. But revious researches directly used the CORDIC block output in their simulation ignoring the internal step-by-step rotations of the CORDIC processor. This gives rise to a need for verification of the convergence performance of the TLMS algorithm to investigate if it actually performs satisfactorily if implemented with step-by-step CORDIC rotation. This research work has done this job. It focuses on the internal operations of the CORDIC hardware, implements the Trigonometric LMS (TLMS) and Hyperbolic LMS (HLMS) algorithms using actual CORDIC rotations. The obtained simulation results are highly satisfactory and also it shows that convergence behavior of HLMS is much better than TLMS.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. Published in IJCNC; http://airccse.org/journal/cnc/0710ijcnc08.pdf, http://airccse.org/journal/ijc2010.htm

BigBang: An application towards building business ecosystem through the integration of MyGeoTrust privacy platform

Micro or small business often defined as the business that has less than five employees including the owner himself. Additionally, it mostly operate in a certain geographical area and the consumer base that surrounds its’ vicinity. Even with their limited focus and capacity such businesses combined carries a large share of overall economy of a county. However, to publish and commercialise these business services are not trivial task due to mainly economical constrains. These businesses often use cheap means of advertising to reach their consumers. Such initiative often includes, launching business websites of their own using mostly free templates and releasing promotional images or videos through the sites. This thesis is an initiation to support such micro businesses and their consumers. The target is to build a platform, which will provide both the stakeholders a common ground to maximize their interests and benefits. For instance, the businesses can launch their business offers, view and analyze the rivals, set business strategy. On the other hand, consumers could have a virtual megamall of vibrant services. Furthermore, this platform is integrated with the MyGeoTrust privacy service to study the usability and applicability of the service under a number of pragmatic scenarios

Risk factors for cardiovascular disease and prediction of coronary artery disease in a rural Bangladeshi population

Background/Aim: Non-communicable diseases, in particular cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), have become the leading cause of death in Bangladesh. This thesis contributes with new information to the understanding of the epidemiology of CVDs through a series of studies which: review the existing evidence on CVD risk factors in Bangladesh; explore and characterize individual risk factors as well as CVD absolute risk scores in a rural population; and explore options of absolute risk prediction models applicable for this population. Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis to explore the prevalence of CVD risk factors followed by three cross-sectional and one case-cohort study were conducted on a peripherally located rural Bangladeshi population. One cohort study (N=66,710) examined demographic and anthropometric risk factors; one case-control study (cases=1170, control=563) examined the clinical and biochemical risk factors of CVDs; and one cross-sectional study estimated the absolute CVD risk of 563 disease-free participants. The case-cohort study (sub-cohort=563, main cohort=52989, 2.5 years of follow-up) examined risk factors for coronary heart diseases (CHDs), and compared the performance of four CVD risk prediction models in the study population. Findings: The review and meta-analysis suggest that CVD risk is high among Bangladeshi people. Even in the rural population studied there was a substantial prevalence of anthropometric, clinical, and biochemical risk factors of CVDs. On absolute risk scoring, approximately one-fifth of both male and female adults are at moderate or high risk of developing CVDs within 10 years. The 'with' and 'without' cholesterol versions of the CVD risk prediction tool were concordant. On short-term testing for the outcome of coronary artery disease as diagnosed on electrocardiogram, the laboratory and non-laboratory based absolute risk scoring models had similar predictive accuracy. Conclusion: Our data suggest that rural Bangladeshis are at substantial risk for CVDs. Rigorous methods in study design and analyses are the main strengths, whereas, lack of representativeness in some studies included in the review, the small number of cases, short duration of follow-up, and probable inaccuracy of case ascertainment in the case-cohort study are the main limitations. Despite these limitations, the studies provide important insights into the prevalence of CVD risk and its prediction among rural Bangladeshis and thus it will make a significant contribution towards management and prevention of CVDs in this population