A comprehensive study of the usability of multiple graphical passwords

Recognition-based graphical authentication systems (RBGSs) using images as passwords have been proposed as one potential solution to the need for more usable authentication. The rapid increase in the technologies requiring user authentication has increased the number of passwords that users have to remember. But nearly all prior work with RBGSs has studied the usability of a single password. In this paper, we present the first published comparison of the usability of multiple graphical passwords with four different image types: Mikon, doodle, art and everyday objects (food, buildings, sports etc.). A longi-tudinal experiment was performed with 100 participants over a period of 8 weeks, to examine the usability performance of each of the image types. The re-sults of the study demonstrate that object images are most usable in the sense of being more memorable and less time-consuming to employ, Mikon images are close behind but doodle and art images are significantly inferior. The results of our study complement cognitive literature on the picture superiority effect, vis-ual search process and nameability of visually complex images

Progress in QCD Using Lattice Gauge Theory

Review of results from lattice QCD of relevance to standard-model phenomenology, to appear in Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science. KEY WORDS: hadron masses, quark mixing (CKM) matrix, weak matrix elements, strong coupling constant.Comment: 41 pages LaTeX, FERMILAB-PUB-93/058-T. Figures and style file are uuencoded and appended. Figures embedded with epsf.sty, available from the serve

Library Search UX report summer 2016

During Summer 2016, Imperial College London's Library Information Systems team ran a round of user experience research into the information-seeking behaviour of undergraduate and postgraduate students with a specific focus on the use of the library catalogue and discovery interface. The purpose of the work was to understand user behaviours and preferences to target development of practical improvements to the Library Search interface

Changing academic practice at a UK research-intensive university through supporting the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL)

Over the past decade, there have been many changes in Higher Education in the UK. Alongside increased student participation and widening access, the government has called for universities to professionally develop teachers in Higher Education and recognise the role of learning and teaching in the sector. The University of Glasgow has responded to this changing agenda in a number of ways. At the institutional level, the University launched its first comprehensive Learning and Teaching Strategy in 2006. At the same time it also appointed Associate Deans of Learning and Teaching in each Faculty. Another initiative has been the introduction of a ‘teaching’ career track, through the establishment of a new category of academic staff, the University Teacher, with promotion procedures supporting career development up to Professorial level. Rather than engaging in research (one of the main academic roles of the lecturer, associate professor in US terms), University Teachers must engage in scholarship, in addition to their teaching and administration duties. The establishment of a Learning and Teaching Centre responsible for supporting the University in the implementation of its Learning and Teaching Strategy has also consolidated and initiated a number of activities that all aim to enhance the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at Glasgow. These initiatives have wrought changes at an institutional level and are contributing to changing academic practice. In particular, the term ‘Scholarship of Teaching and Learning’, once unheard of at the institution is increasingly being recognised as a valid form of academic activity and increasing numbers of academic staff are engaging in it. This paper will outline some of these changes and offer reflections on their impact on SoTL and academic practice

Comparison of laser performance for diode-pumped Tm:YLF of various doping concentrations

Single-end-pumped laser performance of 2, 4, and 6at.% Tm-doped YLF rods is reported. For the pumping configuration employed, crystal fracture was observed to occur for a thermal load per unit absorption length of ~13W/cm. The 2at.% Tm-doped crystal was found to have a quantum yield of ~90% of that of 4at.% Tm. However, due to a lower thermal loading density, the maximum possible incident pump power is predicted to be >60% higher, hence offering a greater output power per rod for the lower doping concentration. Power scaling considerations are discussed with reference to cross-relaxation, upconversion, and thermal loading of the host crystal

Interprofessional learning in practice: The student experience

Interprofessional learning and the development of teamworking skills are recognised as essential for patient care and are also a government priority for undergraduate education. Sixteen occupational therapy students worked on an interprofessional training ward as part of their practice placement and three of them participated in an evaluation using the nominal group technique. Despite this small number, the evaluation identifies the value of this learning experience in giving the students an opportunity to appreciate the importance of interpersonal skills; to learn about other team members’ roles; and to experience the challenges of working on a busy rehabilitation ward for older people

Improving route discovery in on-demand routing protocols using local topology information in MANETs

Most existing routing protocols proposed for MANETs use flooding as a broadcast technique for the propagation of network control packets; a particular example of this is the dissemination of route requests (RREQs), which facilitate route discovery. In flooding, each mobile node rebroadcasts received packets, which, in this manner, are propagated network-wide with considerable overhead. This paper improves on the performance of existing routing protocols by reducing the communication overhead incurred during the route discovery process by implementing a new broadcast algorithm called the adjusted probabilistic flooding on the Ad-Hoc on Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol. AODV [3] is a well-known and widely studied algorithm which has been shown over the past few years to maintain an overall lower routing overhead compared to traditional proactive schemes, even though it uses flooding to propagate RREQs. Our results, as presented in this paper, reveal that equipping AODV with fixed and adjusted probabilistic flooding, instead, helps reduce the overhead of the route discovery process whilst maintaining comparable performance levels in terms of saved rebroadcasts and reachability as achieved by conventional AODV\@. Moreover, the results indicate that the adjusted probabilistic technique results in better performance compared to the fixed one for both of these metrics