A conditional role-involved purpose-based access control model

This paper presents a role-involved conditional purpose-based access control (RCPBAC) model, where a purpose is defined as the intension of data accesses or usages. RCPBAC allows users using some data for certain purpose with conditions. The structure of RCPBAC model is defined and investigated. An algorithm is developed to achieve the compliance computation between access purposes (related to data access) and intended purposes (related to data objects) and is illustrated with role-based access control (RBAC) to support RCPBAC. According to this model, more information from data providers can be extracted while at the same time assuring privacy that maximizes the usability of consumers' data. It extends traditional access control models to a further coverage of privacy preserving in data mining environment as RBAC is one of the most popular approach towards access control to achieve database security and available in database management systems. The structure helps enterprises to circulate clear privacy promise, to collect and manage user preferences and consent

An analysis system detecting epileptic seizure from EEG

This paper presents an analysis system for detecting epileptic seizure from electroencephalogram (EEG). As EEG recordings contain a vast amount of data, which is heterogeneous with respect to a time-period, we intend to introduce a clustering technique to discover different groups of data according to similarities or dissimilarities among the patterns. In the proposed methodology, we use K-means clustering for partitioning each category EEG data set (e.g. healthy; epileptic seizure) into several clusters and then extract some representative characteristics from each cluster. Subsequently, we integrate all the features from all the clusters in one feature set and then evaluate that feature set by three well-known machine learning methods: Support Vector Machine (SVM), Naive bayes and Logistic regression. The proposed method is tested by a publicly available benchmark database: 'Epileptic EEG database'. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme with SVM classifier yields overall accuracy of 100% for classifying healthy vs epileptic seizure signals and outperforms all the recent reported existing methods in the literature. The major finding of this research is that the proposed K-means clustering based approach has an ability to efficiently handle EEG data for the detection of epileptic seizure

Empowering local government through decentralised WASH programmes in Bangladesh

While the Government of Bangladesh has gained itself a good reputation with regards to achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 7, institutional reforms and modernisation of public service providers in the local governments are still needed for quality delivery and maintenance of water supply and sanitation services. Decentralisation of decision making and financial management to LGIs, along with bridging gap between the citizens and public representatives through participatory planning is one of the vital pre-requisites of integrated rural development. HYSAWA (Hygiene, Sanitation & Water) Fund, an autonomous financing organization, mobilizes resources and technical support for the LGIs for delivery of decentralized WatSan services in a transparent and accountable manner. Direct linkage with the funding source is regarded as a key to empower local governments, which, together with capacity building inputs will promote greater devolution of administrative and financial power to them. An effective engagement of local government is needed for sustainability of WASH services

Monitoring of WatSan projects: application of information technology by local governments in Bangladesh

Union Parishads (UP) are the lowest tier of local government in Bangladesh. The territory is called ‘Union’ and there are 4451 Unions in Bangladesh. The average population of a Union is 25000 and average area is about 25 Sqkms. Union Parishads are elected councils to govern development activities of the Union. Almost all development projects in Bangladesh have root level partnership with UPs mainly for monitoring of projects, thus, reporting of progress is a regular tasks for UPs. With the increasing decentralisation process in Bangladesh, local governments are being empowered and they are given project implementation role. Hygiene Sanitation and Water Fund Project (HYSAWA) has given full project authority to UPs; the activities include planning, implementation, fund management, monitoring and reporting of community based WatSan projects. HYSAWA has introduced online reporting and monitoring system for UPs, which has drastically improved project monitoring and reporting. This paper describes the online reporting system of UPs including lessons learnt

The Moderating Influence of the Strength of Racial Identity on the Relationship Between Teacher-Student Racial Similarity-Dissimilarity and Classroom Engagement

This research, titled ‘The moderating influence of the strength of racial identity on the relationship between teacher-student racial similarity-dissimilarity and classroom engagement’, was conducted by Md Enamul Kabir, a graduate student in the Department of Communication Studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato as a requirement for completing a Master of Arts degree in August 2020. The purpose of this quantitative study was to understand how the strength of racial identity moderates the effects of the teacher-student racial similarity and dissimilarity on the engaging behavior of students with their instructors in United States classrooms. This study questioned the prevalent assumption that similarity and dissimilarity predicted the nature of interaction and established the following primary hypothesis: the effect of similarity and dissimilarity in racial identity between teacher and students on the level of classroom engagement will depend on the students’ strength of social identification with race. 114 students participated in an online survey which was administered through Qualtrics. The results showed that the moderating effect was significant, but there was not enough evidence to support the effect at high and low levels of identification

Does national investment on R&D compared to military expenditure achieve greater development?

Research investment and military expenditure are generally of opposite character. Military spending is higher than research and development (R&D) because of global insecurity and power politics. We show the merit of research and development (R&D) investment and how it contributes to the national human capital. We further assess the impact of the expenditure gap between these two on the Human Development Index (HDI) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Data from 76 countries for a period of 15 years (2000-2014) were analysed by mixed effect models adjusting the effect of the six different continents. There exists a positive bi-directional significant relationship between the HDI and R&D investment. R&D tend to contribute to human capital, which in turn contributes to the public development over the years, whereas the military expenditure that only marginally contributes towards GDP, not HDI

Analysis of overdispersed antenatal health care count data

Overdispersion (or greater variability) in count data analysis is very common in many practical fields of health sciences. Ignorance of the presence of overdispersion by the researchers in such data analysis may cause misleading inferences and thus lead to incorrect interpretations of the results. Researchers should account for the consequences of overdispersion and need to select the correct choice of models for the analysis of such data. In this paper, Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) are applied in modelling and analysis of antenatal care (ANC) count data extracted from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) 2014. Pearson chi-square and different score tests are used to investigate the effect of overdispersion in the analysis. Overdispersion is found to be significant in the antenatal health care count data and so appropriate modelling is used to produce valid inferences for the regression parameters. The zero-truncated negative binomial regression (0-NBR) is found to be the best choice for analysing such data while excluding zero counts. Study findings reveal that place of residence, order of birth, exposure to mass media, wealth index and education of mother have significant impacts on the ANC status of women during pregnancy in Bangladesh

BMI transitions in Australian women: amount and causes of weight change associated with progression from healthy to unhealthy BMI over 16 years

Introduction and Aims: Progression from healthy weight to overweight or obesity is associated with numerous health problems in young adult women. The aims were to track BMI over 16 years in women who had a healthy BMI in 1996 (when they were 18-23), to calculate rates of weight change associated with maintenance and/or change in BMI, and to examine the determinants of these changes

Does income inequality matters for accessing health facility? Evidence from Bangladesh

Accessibility to health facilities is the key for improving the worldwide public health scenario. This paper investigates whether micro-level health status improves gradually for every income class despite the existence of growing income inequality as the macro-level economy flourishes. In this paper, Bangladesh is chosen as a sample for assessing the hypothesis. Bangladesh Demographic and Health Surveys (BDHS) of 2007, 2011 and 2014 were applied in this paper. Three different models were applied for robustness. The proportional odds model showed the highest Pseudo−R2 and it was fitted to determine the relationship between wealth index and various health components. The direction of the relationship between wealth index and various health components over the years was explored by the trend of the odds ratios. The fitted models showed that most of the health components (e.g. family health consciousness, women’s empowerment and reproductive health) significantly influenced wealth index at 5% level for all three data sets. However, the odds showed a shift towards one (Odds = 1), which reflects a reduction of influence on household economic status from 2007 to 2014. From 2007 to 2014, Bangladesh has doubled its per-capita GDP and showed remarkable achievements in Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) despite increasing inequality. Most health parameters showed less influence on wealth as the economy progressed. The pattern suggests that health accessibility increases as the country advances economically even though high inequality exists. Therefore, overall development of a country is beneficial even for the most vulnerable part of the economic quantile because it enables access to health service despite their insolvency