Context-Aware and Secure Workflow Systems

Businesses do evolve. Their evolution necessitates the re-engineering of their existing "business processes”, with the objectives of reducing costs, delivering services on time, and enhancing their profitability in a competitive market. This is generally true and particularly in domains such as manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and education). The central objective of workflow technologies is to separate business policies (which normally are encoded in business logics) from the underlying business applications. Such a separation is desirable as it improves the evolution of business processes and, more often than not, facilitates the re-engineering at the organisation level without the need to detail knowledge or analyses of the application themselves. Workflow systems are currently used by many organisations with a wide range of interests and specialisations in many domains. These include, but not limited to, office automation, finance and banking sector, health-care, art, telecommunications, manufacturing and education. We take the view that a workflow is a set of "activities”, each performs a piece of functionality within a given "context” and may be constrained by some security requirements. These activities are coordinated to collectively achieve a required business objective. The specification of such coordination is presented as a set of "execution constraints” which include parallelisation (concurrency/distribution), serialisation, restriction, alternation, compensation and so on. Activities within workflows could be carried out by humans, various software based application programs, or processing entities according to the organisational rules, such as meeting deadlines or performance improvement. Workflow execution can involve a large number of different participants, services and devices which may cross the boundaries of various organisations and accessing variety of data. This raises the importance of _ context variations and context-awareness and _ security (e.g. access control and privacy). The specification of precise rules, which prevent unauthorised participants from executing sensitive tasks and also to prevent tasks from accessing unauthorised services or (commercially) sensitive information, are crucially important. For example, medical scenarios will require that: _ only authorised doctors are permitted to perform certain tasks, _ a patient medical records are not allowed to be accessed by anyone without the patient consent and _ that only specific machines are used to perform given tasks at a given time. If a workflow execution cannot guarantee these requirements, then the flow will be rejected. Furthermore, features/characteristics of security requirement are both temporal- and/or event-related. However, most of the existing models are of a static nature – for example, it is hard, if not impossible, to express security requirements which are: _ time-dependent (e.g. A customer is allowed to be overdrawn by 100 pounds only up-to the first week of every month. _ event-dependent (e.g. A bank account can only be manipulated by its owner unless there is a change in the law or after six months of his/her death). Currently, there is no commonly accepted model for secure and context-aware workflows or even a common agreement on which features a workflow security model should support. We have developed a novel approach to design, analyse and validate workflows. The approach has the following components: = A modelling/design language (known as CS-Flow). The language has the following features: – support concurrency; – context and context awareness are first-class citizens; – supports mobility as activities can move from one context to another; – has the ability to express timing constrains: delay, deadlines, priority and schedulability; – allows the expressibility of security policies (e.g. access control and privacy) without the need for extra linguistic complexities; and – enjoy sound formal semantics that allows us to animate designs and compare various designs. = An approach known as communication-closed layer is developed, that allows us to serialise a highly distributed workflow to produce a semantically equivalent quasi-sequential flow which is easier to understand and analyse. Such re-structuring, gives us a mechanism to design fault-tolerant workflows as layers are atomic activities and various existing forward and backward error recovery techniques can be deployed. = Provide a reduction semantics to CS-Flow that allows us to build a tool support to animate a specifications and designs. This has been evaluated on a Health care scenario, namely the Context Aware Ward (CAW) system. Health care provides huge amounts of business workflows, which will benefit from workflow adaptation and support through pervasive computing systems. The evaluation takes two complementary strands: – provide CS-Flow’s models and specifications and – formal verification of time-critical component of a workflow

The Design and Analysis of Context-Aware, Secure Workflow Systems

Workflows are set of activities that implement and realise business goals. Modern business goals add extra requirements on workflow systems and their management. Workflows may cross many organisations and utilise services on a variety of devices and/or supported by different platforms. Current workflows are therefore inherently context-aware. Each context is governed and constrained by its own policies and rules to prevent unauthorised participants from executing sensitive tasks and also to prevent tasks from accessing unauthorised services and/or data. We present a sound and multi-layered design language for the design and analysis of secure and context aware workflows systems

Effect of using mobile translation applications for translating collocations

Purpose – This study aims to examine the effects of using mobile translation applications for translating collocations. Design/methodology/approach – The study followed an experimental design where 47 students of English as foreign language in a Saudi university were randomly categorized into two groups. Both the groups were given a translation task consisting of 30 sentences with fixed, medium-strength and weak collocations. The participants in the experimental group (n 23) were asked to use a mobile App (Reverso) to translate the sentences, while the control group (n 24) was allowed to use only paper-based dictionaries. The translations were scored and analyzed to measure if there was any significant difference between the two groups. Findings – The results indicated that the mobile translation application was more effective in translating fixed and medium-strength collocations than weak collocations, and in translating collocations in both translation directions (i.e. from Arabic into English or vice-versa). Originality/value – The findings suggest that integrating translation technologies in general and mobile translation applications in particular in translation can enhance the translation process. Students can utilize mobile translation applications to enhance their translation skills, especially for translating collocations

Investigation of the Effect of Substrate Orientation on the Structural, Electrical and Optical Properties of n-type GaAs1-xBix Layers Grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy

Current-Voltage (I-V), Capacitance-Voltage (C-V), Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy (DLTS), Laplace DLTS, Photoluminescence (PL) and Micro-Raman techniques have been employed to investigate the effect of the orientation of the substrates on the structural, electrically and optically active defects in dilute GaAs1−xBix epilayers structures having a Bi composition x = ~5.4%, grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) on (100) and (311)B GaAs planes. X-ray diffraction results revealed that the in-plane strain in the Ga(As,Bi) layer of the samples grown on (100)-oriented substrate (−0.0484) is significantly larger than that of the samples grown on (311)B-oriented substrate. The substrate orientation is found to have a noticeable impact on the Bi incorporation and the electrical properties of dilute GaAsBi Schottky diodes. The I-V characteristics showed that (100) Schottky diodes exhibited a larger ideality factor and higher barrier height compared with (311)B samples. The DLTS measurements showed that the number of electrically active traps were different for the two GaAs substrate orientations. In particular, three and two electron traps are detected in samples grown on (100) and (311)B GaAs substrates, respectively, with activation energies ranging from 0.12 to 0.41 eV. Additionally, one hole trap was observed only in sample grown on (100) substrates with activation energy 0.24 eV. The observed traps with small activation energies are attributed to Bi pair defects. The photoluminescence (PL) and Raman spectra have evidenced different compressive strain which affects considerably the optical properties. Furthermore, the PL spectra were also affected by different contributions of Bi- related traps which are different for different substrate orientation in agreement with DLTS results

Seroprevalence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 among blood donors in the early month of the pandemic in Saudi Arabia

Background: Serologic testing provides better understanding of SARS-CoV-2 prevalence and its transmission. This study was an investigation of the prevalence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 among blood donors in Saudi Arabia. Objective: To estimate the seroprevalence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies among blood donors in Saudi Arabia during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Serology results and epidemiological data were analyzed for 837 adult blood donors, with no confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, in Saudi Arabia from 20th to 25th May 2020. Seroprevalence was determined using electrochemical immunoassay to detect anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. Results: The overall seroprevalence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies was 1.4% (12/837). Non-citizens had higher seroprevalence compared with citizens (OR 13.6, p = 0.001). Secondary education was significantly associated with higher seroprevalence compared with higher education (OR 6.8, p = 0.005). The data showed that the highest seroprevalence was in Makkah (8.1%). Uisng Makkah seroprevalence as the reference, the seroprevalence in other areas was: Madinah 4.1% (OR 0.48, 95% CI 0.12-1.94), Jeddah 2.3% (OR 0.27, 95% CI 0.31-2.25), and Qassim 2.9 % (OR 0.34, 95% CI 0.04-2.89) and these were not statistically different from seroprevalence in the Makkah region. Conclusions: At the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia, the seroprevalence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 among blood donors was low, but was higher among non-citizens. These findings may indicate that non-citizens and less educated individuals may be less attentive to preventive measures. Monitoring seroprevalence trends over time require repeated sampling

The impact of using computers in an EFL reading classroom An exploratory case study

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

CALL for Change: an exploratory case study from the Saudi context

This paper reports an exploratory case study of 48 Saudi female freshmen at the College of Languages & Translation in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The study seeks to examine the effect of using computers in EFL reading classrooms by looking at how the use of computers contributes to the development of students’ reading skills and strategies. It explores the effects of using computer-based reading lessons in EFL classrooms on learners' attitudes, behaviors and motivation. It also investigates the effect of using such lessons on the teacher's role and her understanding of that role. Findings showed statistically significant improvement in students’ examination scores. The qualitative analysis of the data reveals that integrating computer-based lessons in this particular reading class gradually developed positive attitudinal and behavioral change during the course and increased motivation. It also led to a desire for an increase in autonomous, interactive behavior not only in the reading class but in other classes as well. Findings showed a positive change in the teacher’s behavior and attitude. That change lead to a gradual shift in her role from the manager of the class into more of a facilitator, allowing her students more control over their learning

MLab: A Mobile Language Learning Lab System for Language Learners

This paper describes the design and development of a mobile language lab system called MLab. The MLab system aims to replace the traditional language lab - which typically has a restrictive layout and lacks interaction - with a more user-friendly, low-cost mobile language lab. The target users of MLab are language teachers and students, and the system offers them the freedom to move around and use their own devices at any time and in any place. The MLab system was developed using several web technologies and Application Programming Interface (API) to provide a fast and convenient method of accessing required content. To evaluate the MLab system, a pilot test was conducted with a class of 15 students and their teacher. The results showed high usability rates and generally positive attitudes toward using the system