POSFinger: A New Fingerprint For Passive Remote Operating System Identification.

In this paper we propose a fingerprint for identifying remote operating system as a proof-of concept. Passive operating system detection is the art of detecting the operating system of other PC remotely without its knowledge

High Performance Network Worm Detection Engine Using Memory Efficient Circular Buffer.

This paper presents the implementation of a memory efficient circular buffer to ensure a high performance network worm detection engine. A worm detection engine's primary function is to detect the existence of worms in a particular network

A reliable route repairing scheme for internet of vehicles

Recently, Internet of Vehicles (IoVs) has been recognised as a key solution for vehicular communications. Connected vehicles and infrastructure' roadside units have been shaping the underlying architecture of IoVs technology, where the conventional routing protocols cannot facilitate reliable and efficient communication for dynamic IoVs topologies. Hence, this technology is highly susceptible to frequent network fragmentations, thus exposing communication channels to regular failure problems. This paper, thus, introduces a novel routing repair strategy, referred as Reliable Route Repairing Strategy (RRRS) to tackle routing failure problems. Repairing the operation of channel communications is prioritised according to a stability degree of the connected vehicles. The RRRS features are combined with the traditional AOMDV protocol, and a comparison study has been conducted to compare the AOMDV, the RRRS-AOMDV and the HM-AOMDV protocols. The simulation results demonstrate that the RRRS-AOMDV achieves better performance, about 30% to 45% in terms of packets overhead and latency

LSB TECHNIQUE FOR IMAGE AND TEXT HIDING USING THE RED AND GREEN CHANNELS

Recently, Information hiding has an important role to protect data via the Internet from malicious attack, Steganography - which is the art of hiding data- uses a cover file to hide data by utilizing different schemas to prevent it from being detected. There are many different carrier file formats used to hid data, but digital images are the most popular because of their frequency on the Internet. This paper proposes an algorithm that hides a text file, a gray image, or both within a JPEG colored image by using a Least Significant Bits (LSB) steganography technique. This paper proposes a one tool to shrouds either a content record or a dark picture or both inside a JPEG shaded picture The algorithm makes use of each color channel separately where a gray picture will be concealed in the Red channel, while the content document will be covered up in the Green channel. It also uses the adjacent pixels in each channel for the process of hiding which results in fast process of both concealing and decoding the original content. This proposed algorithm has been implemented in MATLAB R2010a using basic image proceeding techniques. The system is then tested to see the viability of the proposed algorithm. Various sizes of data are stored inside the images. The Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and the Mean Square error (MSE) are calculated for each of the tested images. The proposed algorithm was also compared to another similar algorithm and the results showed. The proposed algorithm scored higher PSNR and lower MSE

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Application and Analysis of Asymmetrical Hot and Cold Stimuli

The human body has a unique mechanism for perceiving surrounding temperatures. When an object is in contact with the skin, we do not feel its temperature. Instead, we feel the temperature change that is caused on our skin by that object. The faster the heat is transferred, the more intense the thermal sensation is. In this dissertation, a new dynamic thermal display method, where different rates of warm and cold are applied on the skin to generate a unique sensation, is presented. The new method can be related in a wide range of applications including thermal haptics and virtual reality. To understand the perception of temperature and the general thermal state of the human body, the first aspect of this dissertation focuses on investigating the interaction between temperature change and perception on a large scale. Three field surveys were conducted inside airconditioned buildings to investigate the change in the thermal state and temperature perception of occupants when the room temperature changes. The results showed that the participants’ prediction of constant operating temperature was poor, however, their prediction was significantly improved when temperature changes were presented. In order to more accurately investigate the perception of temperature on the skin, a new thermal display method using multiple-channel thermal actuators was developed. The principle of this method is to apply slow and fast rates of temperature change simultaneously on the skin. The slowly changing temperatures are below the perceptual threshold of the thermal receptors, therefore will not be detected whereas the quickly changing temperatures are above the perceptual threshold, hence, will be detected. The idea here is to keep the average surface temperature of the skin constant, however a person will perceive a sensation of continuous cooling. This method was tested through a series of experiments, and the results showed that it is capable of generating a continuous cooling sensation without changing the average temperature of the stimulation area. Multiple variations of this method were tested including different heating and cooling rates of change, different skin locations and patterns of stimuli. Also, a continuous warming was generated using similar concept. To further investigate the temperature distribution that is caused by this method and its effect on the skin, a computational simulation was conducted. An approximate model of the skin was used to monitor its surface temperature and record the temperatures in the stimulation area when the continuous cooling method is applied. The results of the simulation showed that the temperature under the surface of the stimulation area was affected by the continuous cooling method that was applied on the skin model, however this method did not affect the average surface temperature of the skin. These findings may later determine the efficiency and intensity of the method of continuous cooling, and allow us to investigate different technically challenging variations of this method

Human Motion Tracking for Assisting Balance Training and Control of a Humanoid Robot

Abstract This project illustrates the use of the human\u27s ability to balance according to his center of gravity as demonstrated in two applications. The center of gravity of a human is explained in detail in order to use it in controlling the Aldebaran NAO robot and in the robot-assisted balance training. The first application explains how a humanoid robot can mimic a human\u27s movements via a three dimensional depth sensor where the sensor analyzes the position of a user\u27s limbs and how the robot can lift one foot and balance on the other by redistributing the its body mass when the user lifts his foot. The results showed that this algorithm enabled NAO to successfully mimic the users\u27 arms, and was able to balance on one foot by repositioning its center of mass. The second application investigates how individuals with stroke lean when undergoing robot-assisted balance training. In some instances, they can develop inappropriate leaning behaviors during the training. The Kinect sensor is used to assist in optimizing patients\u27 results by integrating it with the training program. The results showed that the Kinect sensor can improve the efficiency of the process by giving users graphical information about their mass distribution and whether they are leaning correctly or not

Workflow Scheduling Using Hybrid GA-PSO Algorithm in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing environment provides several on-demand services and resource sharing for clients. Business processes are managed using the workflow technology over the cloud, which represents one of the challenges in using the resources in an efficient manner due to the dependencies between the tasks. In this paper, a Hybrid GA-PSO algorithm is proposed to allocate tasks to the resources efficiently. The Hybrid GA-PSO algorithm aims to reduce the makespan and the cost and balance the load of the dependent tasks over the heterogonous resources in cloud computing environments. The experiment results show that the GA-PSO algorithm decreases the total execution time of the workflow tasks, in comparison with GA, PSO, HSGA, WSGA, and MTCT algorithms. Furthermore, it reduces the execution cost. In addition, it improves the load balancing of the workflow application over the available resources. Finally, the obtained results also proved that the proposed algorithm converges to optimal solutions faster and with higher quality compared to other algorithms

A Variable Service Broker Routing Policy for data center selection in cloud analyst

AbstractCloud computing depends on sharing distributed computing resources to handle different services such as servers, storage and applications. The applications and infrastructures are provided as pay per use services through data center to the end user. The data centers are located at different geographic locations. However, these data centers can get overloaded with the increase number of client applications being serviced at the same time and location; this will degrade the overall QoS of the distributed services. Since different user applications may require different configuration and requirements, measuring the user applications performance of various resources is challenging. The service provider cannot make decisions for the right level of resources. Therefore, we propose a Variable Service Broker Routing Policy – VSBRP, which is a heuristic-based technique that aims to achieve minimum response time through considering the communication channel bandwidth, latency and the size of the job. The proposed service broker policy will also reduce the overloading of the data centers by redirecting the user requests to the next data center that yields better response and processing time. The simulation shows promising results in terms of response and processing time compared to other known broker policies from the literature