A socio-cognitive and computational model for decision making and user modelling in social phishing

Systems software quality, and system security in particular, is often compromised by phishing attacks. The latter were relatively easy to detect through phishing content filters, in the past. However, it has been increasingly difficult to stop more recent and sophisticated social phishing attacks. To protect the citizens from new types of phishing attacks, software quality engineers need to provide equally sophisticating preventive technology that models people’s reactions. The authors considered the behaviour of people on the Internet from a socio-cognitive perspective and deduced who could be more prone to be spoofed by social phishing techniques. The authors herein propose a computational and interdisciplinary metamodelling methodology, which can assist in capturing and understanding people’s interactive behaviour when they are online. Online behaviour can reveal Internet users’ knowledge, information, and beliefs in a given social context; these could also constitute significant factors for trust in social phishing circumstances which, in turn, can provide valuable insights and decision making meta-knowledge for recognition of potential victims of phishers. The proposed modelling approach is illustrated and explained using real-life phishing cases. This meta-model can i) help social computing and phishing researchers to understand users’ trust decisions from a socio-cognitive perspective, and ii) open ways to integrate artificial intelligence design techniques within software quality management practices in order to protect citizens from being spoofed by social phishing attacks. Thus, this software design quality approach will increase system security as a proactive maintenance strategy

A comparative study of cloud services use by prospective IT professionals in five countries

Individuals and organizations utilise the cloud technology and its services in various ways. Cloud-based services are becoming increasingly popular, while there is no adequate knowledge offered for their secure use in the education for future IT professionals. It is important to understand how security and privacy issues are perceived and handled by male/female users and IT professionals of different cultures. The authors aim at presenting and scrutinizing information about cloud services’ use by prospective IT professionals in five countries, namely China, Finland, Greece, Nepal, and the UK. In particular the authors, wanting to find out what are the future IT professionals’ conceptualisations and awareness, collected data from male and female IT students in higher education, who use (or not) cloud services. The authors further illustrate the research findings by proceeding to a comparative analysis considering different perspectives such as: gender, education background, national culture (values and culture), and IT-related knowledge. The final research outcomes reveal attention-grabbing information for future IT professionals’ skills, knowledge, and digital competencies. For the IT professionals and software quality engineering communities the latter comprise a body of realistic knowledge, worthy of note when designing curricula for security technology by accommodating practical and accessible solutions (e.g., cryptography-based cloud security) for developing and enhancing the IT professionals’ role

Management of single submucosal fibroid in unmarried females with uterine artery embolization

Background: Uterine fibroids (leiomyomas) are the most common benign neoplasm of the female pelvis. The location of fibroids, whether submucosal, subserosal, pedunculated subserosal, intramural, or endocavitary, is important because signs and symptoms may be determined by location. Uterine artery embolization (UAE) for many patients is an effective alternative treatment to surgical therapy for fibroid tumors. It is a minimally invasive procedure, which allows for rapid recovery and return to normal activities. Objective of this study was to know the efficacy of minimally invasive technique UAE for reducing symptoms in sub-mucous uterine leiomyoma in unmarried females.Methods: This retrospective analysis was performed on 9 unmarried females with symptomatic single submucosal fibroid diagnosed on MRI with size range of 3.5 cms to 6.5 cms. They presented at Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana, Punjab in a period of 3 years from January 2016-December 2019. Inclusion criteria were unmarried females, single submucosal fibroid diagnosed on USG/MRI. Exclusion criteria was active infection, more than one fibroid in uterus, prior GnRH analogues treatment during the previous 3 months.Results: All patients presented with heavy menstrual bleeding (HMB) and dysmenorrhea, lower abdomen pain was encountered in 3 patients and 2 patients had inter-menstrual bleeding. Recurrent, UTI was there in 1 patient and 1 patient had vaginal discharge. All fibroids belonged to stage 1 FIGO classification. UAE was done and patients were followed for 6 months. Symptomatic success was seen in 100% patients and 77.77% patients expelled the fibroid per vaginally.Conclusions: UAE is alternative method of treatment for submucosal fibroids in unmarried females who do not want to undergo surgery. Proper case selection can give us good results and symptomatic relief

Validation of the use of POSSUM score in enteric perforation peritonitis - results of a prospective study

Introduction: The objective of the study was to present our last 5-years experience of peritonitis and validate POSSUM score in predicting mortality and morbidity in patients of enteric perforation (EP) peritonitis. Methods: Data was collected prospectively for all peritonitis cases admitted in single surgical unit from January 2005 to December 2009. Parameters for calculating POSSUM were also retrieved; in these patients, O:E (Observed vs. Expected) ratio of mortality and morbidity were estimated after calculating predicted mortality and morbidity by exponential regression equations. Results: 887 patients with peritonitis were admitted and treated in this unit during the 5 years of study period. Duodenal (n=431; 48%) followed by ileal (n=380; 42.8%) perforations were the commonest. Mean age of the patients was 34 years and 86% were males. Mean delay in presentation was 78.5 hrs. Mean duration of hospital and ICU stay was 13 and 7.2 days. Postoperative complications were seen in 481 (54%) patients, and 90 (10%) patients died. POSSUM scores and predicted mortality/morbidity were calculated in 380 patients of ileal perforation peritonitis; O:E ratio of mortality and morbidity were 0.47 and 0.85 in these patients. Conclusion: POSSUM and P-POSSUM are accurate tools for predicting morbidity and mortality respectively in EP patients. Though they may sometime over or under predict morbidity as well as mortality.Key words: Enteric perforation, Peritonitis, POSSUM , P-POSSU

Churn Prediction using MapReduce and HBase.

The mobile telecommunication market is rapidly increasing with numerous service providers stepping in the market. This makes the customer think to leave the service provided by one service provider and move to another service provider for some better offers. This project is an attempt to design and implement an application that can take Customer Records as input and give Customer churn prediction details as output. It will enable service provider to know in advance about the valuable customer who are about to churn. By merely giving customer data records as input, user can get the desired customer behaviour pattern, which is the churn output. The output obtained will basically distinguish the churners and the non-churners. The system is built using Apache Hadoop, Apache HBase and a Data Mining Algorithm under MapReduce code. The use of Hadoop framework makes it easy to process the large datasets containing the information of customers. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.150317

Blockchain from a Modern Perspective: An Evolution to Health Science

This paper gives a thorough evaluation of the literature on blockchain applications in healthcare. The evaluation included 42 papers that presented current information on the existing implications and gaps in the usage of blockchain technology for enhancing healthcare systems. According to the SLR results, blockchain is being utilized to produce unique and sophisticated solutions to enhance the prevailing standards of medical data handling, sharing, and processing. In the healthcare business, blockchain technology is experiencing conceptual evolution, adding considerable value through enhanced efficiency, access control, technical innovation, privacy protection, and data management process security. The findings also indicate that the current limits are mostly related to model performance, as well as the constraints and costs involved with implementation. An integrated approach is offered to cover prospective areas where future researchers might bring considerable value, such as regulatory compliance, system architecture, and data protection. Finally, the SLR believes that further research can help to enable the wider implementation of blockchain applications to handle crucial challenges like as medical diagnostics, legal compliance, preventing fraud, and enhancing patient care in remote monitoring or medical emergencies

Effect of silver nanoparticles on growth of eukaryotic green algae

Silver nanoparticles, endowed with powerful antimicrobial property, are the most widely used nanomaterial in consumer products, with associated risk of their easy access to environment and freshwater ecosystems by surface runoff. Although toxic effects of nanosilver on bacterial, fungal and mammalian cells have been documented, its impact on algal growth remains unknown. Pithophora oedogonia and Chara vulgaris are predominant members of photosynthetic eukaryotic algae, which form major component of global aquatic ecosystem. Here we report for the first time that nanosilver has significant adverse effects on growth and morphology of these filamentous green algae in a dose-dependent manner. Exposure of algal thalli to increasing concentrations of silver nanoparticles resulted in progressive depletion in algal chlorophyll content, chromosome instability and mitotic disturbance, associated with morphological malformations in algal filaments. SEM micrographs revealed dramatic alterations in cell wall in nanoparticle-treated algae, characterized with cell wall rupture and degradation in Pithophora. Although these observations underscore severe deleterious effects of nanosilver on aquatic environment, the information can also be exploited as a bioengineering strategy to control unwanted and persistent growth of noxious algal weeds that clog the municipal water supply and water channels and produce fouling of water bodies

EXERGY-BASED ECOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF GENERALIZED IRREVERSIBLE HEAT PUMP SYSTEM

A reverse Carnot cycle forms the basis of all heat-pump cycles in providing heating and cooling loads. The optimal exergy-based Ecological analysis of an irreversible Heat-pump system with the losses of heat resistance, heat leak and internal irreversibility has been carried out by taking into account Exergy based ecological function (E) as an objective in the viewpoint of Finite-Time-Thermodynamics (FTT) or Entropy Generation Minimization (EGM). Exergy is defined here as the power required minus the lost power. The effects of irreversibilities along with internal heat leakage on coefficient on the performance of the system are investigated. The exergy based Ecological function decreases steadily with irreversibilites and heat leakages in the system. COP in such a system increases with the cycle temperature ratio. If a heat pump cycle is optimized with above mentioned criterion, there is a trade-off between its coefficient of Performance and the heating load it provides