Authorisation in Context: Incorporating Context-Sensitivity into an Access Control Framework

With sensitive information about ourselves now distributed across personal devices, people need to make access control decisions for different contexts of use. However, despite advances in improving the usability of access control for both developers and users, we still lack insights about how the intentions behind policy decisions in different contexts of use are shaped. In this paper, we describe how context was incorporated into an access control framework using a study of how context influences access control decision making. We describe how the main recommendations arising from this study were used to build context into a policy editor for this access control framework

Enhancing interoperability in cross-platform enterprise mashups through data aggregation and extraction

Enterprise Mashups usually comprise services from different service domains that often differ vastly from each other regarding their protocols, data or programming models. This fact poses a challenge especially for non-professional developers who want to quickly create a complex service composition because they are required to know the technical details of the involved service domains in order to use them in their composite application. In this paper we describe an extensible framework that allows for enhanced interoperability of arbitrary service types by introducing a unified way to interact with disparate Web services and an intuitive model for handling heterogeneous data types within a composition. Our framework forms the basis for building extensive tool support for end-users that allows easy creation of Mashups with diversified services, collaboration with other users and distributed execution of a service composition

Empowering Civic Participation in the Policy Making Process through Social Media

The Web as medium has a high significance in everyday life of the digital society. The circumstance of growing visibility of social media covers a high potential in the range of a more citizen-centric and socially-rooted policy making. These potentials call for novel tools with the capability to analyze society’s input and predict the possible impact of policies. The paper describes a prototype tool set for policy makers that utilizes social media technologies and methods to empower public engagement, enable cross-media platform publishing, feedback tracking / analysis and provide decision support

Autonomous Vehicle Control

A practical knowledge base in the emerging field of Robotics was developed and used to create a framework for further experiments. The framework was designed such that modular parts could be replaced, allowing for future development without "reinventing the wheel". To prove the framework, a semi-autonomous robot was implemented, including stereo vision sensors, an inertial navigation system, and a simultaneous localization and mapping algorithm

The Mechanism of Flutter Electrical Alternans

We have had the opportunity to observe the occurrence of flutter electrical alternans in which two distinct populations of flutter waves are present and which alternate in 1:1 and 2:1 patterns. The flutter alternans whether 2:1 or 3:1, was concordant with the pattern of preceding ventricular conduction (ventriculophasic variation). This concordance occurred reproducibly and remained consistent. Our example of flutter allernans probably represents mechanical artefact caused by catheter movement during ventricular mechanical systole. We reproduced this pattern consistently at a slower rate during coronary sinus pacing. These findings appear to suggest an explanation for certain types of so‐called atrial flutter electrical alternans

Correlates of mental disorders among minority Arab adolescents in Israel: results from the Galilee Study

Abstract Background The Galilee Study is the first large epidemiological study to compare correlates of mental disorders between two Arab Palestinian minority groups of adolescents in Israel. Methods A two-stage cross-sectional study, carried out between 2012 and 2014, included all 9th grade students from 5 Arab localities, representative of 77% of the Muslim and 100% of Druze citizens in Israel. During the screening stage, 1639 students completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in the classroom (response rate = 69.3%). During the follow-up stage, 704 adolescent-mother dyads were interviewed at home; using the Development and Well-Being Assessment, the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)-12, the Subjective Feeling of Discrimination Index (FDI), and socio-demographic questions (response rate = 84.4%). Results Prevalence of any disorder, internalizing or externalizing disorders among Muslim adolescents were 19.2, 15.8 and 4.2%, respectively and among Druze adolescents 10.9, 5.9 and 5.5%, respectively. Muslim adolescents were 3.2 times more likely than Druze adolescents to have an internalizing disorder, while Druze were 2 times more likely than Muslim to have an externalizing disorder. Males were at higher risk than females for externalizing disorders in both populations, though among Druze the risk was more striking. Learning disabilities increased the likelihood of having an externalizing disorder in both populations. Risk factors for internalizing disorders among Muslim adolescents were female gender, a very low socio-economic level, few siblings, LD, high maternal GHQ-12 score and high FDI; and for externalizing disorders, male gender, a relatively low socio-economic level but not the lowest, learning disability and high maternal GHQ-12 score. Conclusions We found an association between religion/ethnicity and internalizing and externalizing disorders as well as a strong correlation between religion/ethnicity and socio-economic variables. Therefore, we tend to conclude that not religion per se but the multifaceted socio-cultural and economic factors that characterize religious groups are associated with mental disorders. Very low socio-economic level and feeling discriminated which were traits connected only to Muslim adolescents, were associated with internalizing disorders. When preparing preventive measures aimed at furthering mental health among minority adolescents, authorities should focus on improving the socio-economic status of minorities and reducing institutional and personal discrimination. The educational and mental health establishments could undertake measures to improve resilience and coping strategies of Muslim families living in the most adverse conditions, such as providing special support through the school counseling services and coordinating, at the ministerial levels, school and community health services in order to carry out joint preventive programs and referrals to specialist services when needed