Visual Clustering of Spam Emails for DDoS Analysis

Networking attacks embedded in spam emails are increasingly becoming numerous and sophisticated in nature. Hence this has given a growing need for spam email analysis to identify these attacks. The use of these intrusion detection systems has given rise to other two issues, 1) the presentation and understanding of large amounts of spam emails, 2) the user-assisted input and quantified adjustment during the analysis process. In this paper we introduce a new analytical model that uses two coefficient vectors: 'density' and 'weight'for the analysis of spam email viruses and attacks. We then use a visual clustering method to classify and display the spam emails. The visualization allows users to interactively select and scale down the scope of views for better understanding of different types of the spam email attacks. The experiment shows that this new model with the clustering visualization can be effectively used for network security analysis

Young people's response to six smartphone apps for anxiety and depression : focus group study

Background: Suicide is one of the most frequent causes of death in young people worldwide. Depression lies at the root of this issue, a condition that has a significant negative impact on the lives of those who experience it and on society more generally. However, 80% of affected young people do not obtain professional help for depression and other mental health issues. Therefore, a key challenge is to find innovative and appealing ways to engage young people in learning to manage their mental health. Research suggests that young people prefer to access anonymous Web-based programs rather than get face-to-face help, which has led to the development of numerous smartphone apps. However, the evidence indicates that not all of these apps are effective in engaging the interest of young people who are most in need of help. Objective: The study aimed to investigate young people’s response to six currently available smartphone apps for mental health and to identify features that young people like and dislike in such apps. Methods: Focus groups were conducted with 23 young people aged 13 to 25 years in which they viewed and used six smartphone apps for mental health. A general inductive approach following a realist paradigm guided data analysis. Results: The results revealed that young people value autonomy and the opportunity to personalize experiences with these apps above other things. Finding a balance between simplicity and informativeness is also an important factor. Conclusions: App developers need to consider using participant-design frameworks to ensure that smartphone apps are providing what young people want in a mental health app. Solutions to the need for personalization and increasing user engagement are also crucially needed

Review of innovative immersive technologies for healthcare applications

Immersive technologies, including virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR), can connect people using enhanced data visualizations to better involve stakeholders as integral members of the process. Immersive technologies have started to change the research on multidimensional genomic data analysis for disease diagnostics and treatments. Immersive technologies are highlighted in some research for health and clinical needs, especially for precision medicine innovation. The use of immersive technology for genomic data analysis has recently received attention from the research community. Genomic data analytics research seeks to integrate immersive technologies to build more natural human-computer interactions that allow better perception engagements. Immersive technologies, especially VR, help humans perceive the digital world as real and give learning output with lower performance errors and higher accuracy. However, there are limited reviews about immersive technologies used in healthcare and genomic data analysis with specific digital health applications. This paper contributes a comprehensive review of using immersive technologies for digital health applications, including patient-centric applications, medical domain education, and data analysis, especially genomic data visual analytics. We highlight the evolution of a visual analysis using VR as a case study for how immersive technologies step, can by step, move into the genomic data analysis domain. The discussion and conclusion summarize the current immersive technology applications’ usability, innovation, and future work in the healthcare domain, and digital health data visual analytics

Child-Custody Reform and Marriage-Specific Investment in Children

Research on child custody primarily focuses on the well-being of children following divorce. We extend this literature by examining how the prospect of joint child custody affects marriage-specific investment in children’s private-school education. Variation in the timing of joint-custody reforms across states proxies for the prospect of joint child custody and provides a natural experiment framework with which to examine marriage-specific investment in children. The probability of children’s private school attendance declines by 13 percent in states that adopt joint-custody laws. The effects of joint-custody reform are larger in states that have property-division laws that consistently favor one parent over the other. The results are largely robust for subsamples partitioned by socioeconomic status

Challenges in using large high-resolution displays for visual analytics

Visual Analytics techniques, which is a combination of automated analysis techniques, interactive visualizations and analytical reasoning, provide an effective platform for understanding, reasoning and supporting decision making of large information spaces. With the advance of technologies, large and high-resolution display systems have become more affordable so that they are fast becoming an attractive solution for visual analytics. A large high-resolution display would enable the analysis of much large information. This paper surveys on hardware, software and interaction technologies based on large high-resolution displays in visual analytics context. We also discuss technical challenges in using large high-resolution displays for visual analytics

Large scale network analysis with interactive visualisation

This paper proposes a new interactive visualisation for analysing large hierarchical structures and networks. The technique combines of different graph layout methods with a layout refinement process, an interactive navigation mechanism and clustering algorithms. The integration of these components makes it flexible in dealing with a variety of graph and hierarchical structures. Interactive exploration is enabled with chaincontext view. We aim to provide user with an effective mechanism for understanding of the nature of various networks. This could lead to the discovering and revealing of the hidden structures and relationships among elements as well as relationships associated with the elements

Large graph visualization by hierarchical clustering

This paper proposes a new technique for visualizing large graphs of several ten thousands of vertices and edges. To achieve a graph abstraction, a hierarchical clustered graph is extracted from a general large graph based on the community structures discovered in the graph. An enclosure geometrical partitioning algorithm is then applied to achieving the space optimization. For graph drawing, it uses a combination of spring-embbeder and circular drawing algorithms that archives the goal of optimization of display space and aesthetical niceness. The paper also discusses an interaction mechanism accompanied with the layout solution. The interaction not only allows users to navigate hierarchically through the entire clustered graph, but also provides a way to navigate multiple clusters concurrently. Animation is also implemented to preserve user mental maps during the interaction

A new interactive platform for visual analytics of social networks

This paper presents a new interactive platform for visual analytics of large networks and graphs. The platform integrates multiple graph layouts, interactive navigations and clustering algorithms into an effective and flexible analytical visual environment for better understanding of the nature of variety of different networks. This could lead to the discovery and revealing of hidden structures and relationships among the network items as well as the attributes associated with particular focused elements. We provide a number of interactive navigation and exploration methods so that it can provide a flexible and controllable way to archive the preferable view for analytics. We are extending our visual analytics platform into a large and high-resolution display

From research to learning and teaching : reflection on experience with postgraduate students

The role of a university lecturer has always been challenging as it needs to elevate the inspiration and deliver up-todate knowledge and skills to the students. Teaching with full of supportive technologies is not necessarily an optimal approach whilst the blended learning with hybrid teaching styles can support better student needs and appropriate subject matters. This paper presents a positive experience based on the hybrid model of learning and teaching to motivate and inspire students to learn. By blending real-world research experience with extensive visual examples to teaching, we delivered high-quality teaching curriculum as well as attracted students to continue their study journey in related research projects reflecting their passions and knowledge from the former study. The leaning and teaching experience were applied to postgraduate coursework in information communications technology, data science and engineering fields