bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Business Satisfaction with E-Government Services in Baltic Sea Region
Authors: Kindel Kristiina  , Ritso Valter  , Venesaar Urve
Published: February 2025

The aim of current article is to analyse and identify the satisfaction of e-government services among small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) mostly in two countries of Baltic Sea Region: Estonia and Germany. Survey data is obtained from SMEs in order to determine their usage and satisfaction of selected e-government services (e.g. seeking useful information from Government websites; VAT; submission of data to statistical office; attending public procurement) that are available in two countries. For comparison, Sweden is involved in the analysis of satisfaction of enterprises with seeking information from Government websites. The findings of this study imply that SMEs in urban areas and manufacturing enterprises are using e-government services more than SMEs in rural areas and service sectors, but there are differences between countries. There is a moderate correlation between external pressure and social influence on SMEs and the satisfaction towards e-government services used by SMEs.
Cost-Based Data-Partitioning for Intra-Query Parallelism
Authors: Liu Yanchen  , Mortazavi Masood  , Cao Fang  , Chen Mengmeng  , Shi Guangyu
Published: February 2025

Contemporary DBMS systems already use data-partitioning and data-flow analysis for intra-query parallelism. We study the problem of identifying data-partitioning targets. To rank candidates, we propose a simple cost model that relies on plan structure, operator cost and selectivity for a given base table. We evaluate this model in various optimization schemes and observe how it affects degrees of parallelism and query execution latencies across all TPC-H queries: When compared with the existing naïve model which partitions the largest physical table in the query, our approach identifies significantly better partitioning targets thus resulting in sinificantly higher degree of resource utilization and intra-query parallelism for most queries while having little impact on the remaining queries in the TPC-H benchmark.
Compliance and Software Transparency for the Design of Legal Machines
Authors: Čyras Vytautas  , Lachmayer Friedrich
Published: February 2025

This paper attempts to define the software compliance and transparency problem. This constitutes a high-level holistic view. Several visualizations of the problem are presented. The context is the changeover from a text culture to a machine culture in law. We note that equal access to e-procedures does not guarantee justice. The transparency of the law leads to the transparency of software and hence challenges legal informatics. We formulate two requirements for legal machines: 1) the software architecture must be accessible; and 2) the software must provide legal protection. A need therefore arises for the legal requirements to flow down to lower-level specifications. Further we explain the notion of subsumption – a legal qualification of facts in the setting of a norm. Finally we discuss the definition of the compliance problem.
Expectations of Software Development Practitioners for Non-Technical Clients
Authors: Ojastu Deniss  , Robal Tarmo  , Kalja Ahto
Published: February 2025

Poorly working client-vendor relationship has been shown to be among the most common reasons for software project failures. One way to improve it is to set a common ground for communication: above all, by making sure that clients without software development background are knowledgeable of certain concepts and principles. By having surveyed 45 software development professionals, 53 constructs were derived that can serve as a basis for client learning. The most common concepts presented by study participants are related to awareness of development methodology and project management, as well as requirements elicitation and business analysis. In addition, fundamentals of IS design and architecture were named as good to know for inexperienced clients. These results provide basis for further research and for creating a special curricula for actual and prospective clients of software development.
Flexural failure modes of steel plate-strengthened reinforced concrete elements
Authors: Olajumoke Akinropo Musiliu  , Dundu Morgan
Published: February 2025

Failure of plate strengthened flexural reinforced concrete (RC) member can be crushing of the concrete at the compression face or premature debonding of the plate from the concrete element at the tension face. Debonding can be classified into three groups; namely, intermediate crack debonding (ICD), delamination and plate-end debonding (PED). Intermediate crack debonding is caused by flexural or flexural-shear stress, and plate-end debonding and delamination are caused by interfacial stress. This paper reviews the failure modes of flexural strengthened RC elements in bending, using epoxy-bonded steel plates. It also attempts to establish the width-to-thickness ratios of plates that can achieve the full flexural strengths of the strengthened element and promote a ductile failure.
Factors that influence friction in tendons of unbonded post-tensioning systems
Authors: Dundu Morgan  , Ward Michelle
Published: February 2025

The coefficient of friction in an unbonded post tensioning system is influenced by many factors, and these factors include the thickness of lubricant or grease present in the system, clearance between the strand and the plastic sheath, surface characteristics of the strand and plastic sheath. In order to determine the effect of these factors, a series of friction tests were performed on two different diameters of strand, namely; 12.7 mm and 15.24 mm diameters. Through a regression analysis, it was found that the frictional force decreases with increase in the thickness of the grease and that friction increases with increase in the mass of the strand. The amount of friction was found to be dependent on the surface characteristics of the strand and plastic sheath, clearance between the plastic sheath and the strand and the extrusion process of the plastic sheath.
Assessment of the unreinforced masonry shear wall stiffness
Authors: Mojsilović Nebojša
Published: February 2025

One of the most challenging and still not satisfactorily solved issues in the design of structural masonry is the determination of the stiffness of shear walls. Determining the correct stiffness is of the utmost importance, for example for the deformation-based design of masonry structures. An assessment of the shear wall stiffness has been made, based on the results obtained from the full-scale testing of medium-size and large unreinforced masonry walls subjected to in-plane static-cyclic loading. This paper discusses the experimental results obtained and addresses the question of the influence of different parameters on the shear stiffness of unreinforced masonry walls. The selected parameters are mechanical (boundary conditions, vertical pre-compression, stiffness degradation), geometrical (aspect ratio, size effect) and constructional (presence of different layers in bed joints). A set of conclusions and recommendations for practical application and future research is also given.
The conservation state of the wooden roof of the National Museum in Phnom Penh
Authors: Megna Bartolomeo  , Liotta Giovanni
Published: February 2025

During a visit to the national Museum in Phnom Penh, the most important one in the Kingdom of Cambodia, the authors noted the presence of some signs of a termites attack in the secondary elements of the roof. According to this observation, a further investigation was performed in order to evaluate the phytosanitary condition of the wooden bearing element of the roof. According to these observations, an intervention of restoration, conservation and safeguard has to be considered as necessary and urgent. In this paper, the results of the investigation of the conservation state of the bearing wooden structures of the of the National Museum in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia, are presented; moreover a proposal of an intervention properly designed for a long time safeguard against the termites is reported. Particularly, the presence and extension of a severe, in progress, termites' attack was documented, the termites' species involved was identified, finally a proposal for a long time conservation plan of the roof is presented.
Investigation on the suitability of borrow pit sand as fine aggregate for structural concrete
Authors: Adamou Amadou  , Nnebe Munachi U.
Published: February 2025

This paper investigated the suitability of the use of borrow pit sand locally known as Obimo sand in structural concrete. The physical properties of the unwashed Obimo sand (UOS) and the washed Obimo sand (WOS) were first investigated and compared to those of the conventional river sand (RS). Concrete cubes made from the three samples (UOS, WOS and RS) were crushed for their compressive strength. It was found out that the specimens fall within the acceptable limits of fine aggregates for structural concrete works given in both IS: 383 – 1970 and BS 882: 1973. The chemical composition obtained by elemental analysis using X-ray florescence spectrometry proved Obimo sand samples free of sulfate and saline contents. Also the concrete made from the WOS gave 6.5% more strength than that made from RS at 28 days age, while the UOS produced a concrete of slightly lower compressive strength. Specifically, the compressive strength ranged from 29.5 to 33 N/mm2for the alternative Obimo sand. Conclusively, a cost analysis carried out showed a reduction of 1.42% and 0.43% for the WOS and UOS concretes respectively when compared to that of RS.
Information-based formulation of a creep model using a new experimental database
Authors: Raphael Wassim  , Touma Laurent  , Chateauneuf Alaa
Published: February 2025

Creep and shrinkage strain of concrete can have prejudicial consequences in prestressed structures built by phases. But these uncontrolled strains appear, with values often clearly more important than the expected ones. In fact, there is not yet a physical explanation perfectly satisfactory of creep and the codified descriptions of this phenomenon are always unreliable. In the context of this study, and starting from an important experimental database from large centers of research in Europe, a new model of creep calculation was developed and allows to obtain results more satisfactory than those of BPEL, EC2 and CEB 78.
Bottom ash and fly ash wastes as alkalinising reagents for neutralising acid mine drainage
Authors: Ekolu Stephen O.  , Diop Souleymane  , Azene Firehiwot
Published: February 2025

Preliminary investigation was conducted to evaluate the utilization of bottom ash and fly ash by-products on a study limited to their role as alkalizing reagents, with the ultimate objective of examining their potential use for insitu treatment of acid mine drainage (AMD) in South African mines. Bottom ash (BA) and fly ash (FA) obtained from a coal-powered electricity generation station were used in varied combined proportions of 100/0, 90/10, 70/30 BA:FA reagent mixtures and used to conduct neutralization tests done at mix proportions varied from 20:1 to 1:1 AMD to reagent mixtures. Three types of acid mine drainage water from an underground gold mine (AMD-Wz), gold tailings dam (AMD-Lc) and a coal mine (AMD-MpK) were used in the investigation. Water quality tests were carried out before and after the neutralisation treatment.
Microstructure and durability characteristics of self-curing concrete
Authors: El-Dieb Amr S.  , El-Maaddawy Tamer A.  , Al-Sallamin Abdelrahman
Published: February 2025

Efficient curing of concrete requires high water demand which is not available in many practical situations. Therefore, the need of self-curing concrete becomes more demanding. In this study, polyethylene glycol (PEG) and polyacrylamide (PAM) have been used as water soluble polymers to develop self-curing concrete. The main microstructural and durability characteristics of the developed self-curing concrete mixture were examined and compared to those of conventional concrete mixtures with no self-curing agents under different curing regimes. One batch of the self-curing and the conventional mixtures were left in the lab air-cured to act as non-water-cured control samples. The water curing regimes for conventional mixture included continuous moist-curing (water-immersion) for 3, 7 and 28 days and periodical moist-curing by means of wetted burlaps for 3 and 7 days. Curing regimes for the self-curing mixtures included 3 days of moist-curing and periodical curing using wetted burlaps for 3 and 7 days. The microstructure characteristics of the concrete mixtures were investigated by a scanning electron microscope. The durability performance of the concrete mixtures was evaluated by measuring the rapid chloride permeability and water permeability. Self-curing concrete mixtures showed better microstructure development and durability performance than those of the air-cured conventional concrete mixtures. A short 3 days moist-curing significantly improved the performance of the self-curing concrete mixture to a level almost similar to that of the conventional concrete mixture that was water-immersed for 28 days. Self-curing concrete represents a step towards a new construction material due to its lower water demand needed for curing, and hence can reserve the limited water resources in many parts in the world.
Response modelling of recycled concrete and masonry in pavements
Authors: Barisanga F.  , Rudman C.  , Jenkins K.
Published: February 2025

An increasing need for sustainable development has made recycling a priority in many countries. In South Africa, due to rapid urbanisation, millions of tons of construction and demolition waste (CDW) are generated and significant percentages end up in landfills. Many international studies have shown that CDW (in this context consisting of a mixture of concrete and masonry rubble) could be a viable road construction material within the structural layers of the pavement.
Effect of superplasticizers on concrete durability indexes
Authors: Ekolu Stephen O.
Published: February 2025

Use of durability index (DI) is one of the several approaches that have been used or advanced through various test methods for the purpose of evaluating the durability of concrete mixtures. In South Africa, use of DI's has developed through testing and research over the past years. A consortium of three tests of oxygen permeability index (OPI), water sorptivity and chloride conductivity are employed.
Open-Access Grant Data: Towards Meta-Research Innovation
Authors: Poblet Marta  , Aryani Amir  , Caldecott Kate  , Sellis Timos  , Casanovas Pompeu
Published: February 2025

Grants are the steam engine of the research enterprise. Each year, billions of dollars from public and philanthropic organisations enable research projects across the world. However, despite significant investment in research and innovation, the information about grants and their impact is hidden behind disconnected, undiscoverable and inaccessible information systems. In this paper we present recent developments and discuss the need for a coordinated effort toward enabling open access to grant information. The paper also proposes a framework for coordinating technical and policy-making efforts toward linking grants to grant outcomes (publications, patents, research data, etc.). Such a framework can be seen as the institutional side of meta-research innovation.
Argument-Based Policy Consultation Through Crowd Sourcing
Authors: Crawford Joe  , Atkinson Katie  , Bench-Capon Trevor
Published: February 2025

This paper describes an on-going project investigating the use of crowdsourcing in policy consultation. We see this as particularly useful in the early consultation stages (e.g. White Paper) when the opinions of the public are sought to determine policy objectives. The project involves a number of discrete stages: thus far we have looked especially at question design, the generation of suitable test data and the suitability of various aggregation algorithms. On the basis of these results we can design software to collect opinions, and generate arguments. The test data will allow the arguments to be evaluated with respect to variously composed populations.
Knowledge Support for Software Processes
Authors: Kosinar Michael Alexander  , Stolfa Jakub  , Stolfa Svatopluk
Published: February 2025

In the last decades we have got used to software applications and services being everywhere and working for us. However sometimes they fail to work as desired. The situation we experience nowadays is often characterized as the second software crisis and it is caused by many root causes. One main root problem is an old one – it is an insufficient specification of requirements and processes to be executed in software development. Even though the computer science offers many specification methods, standards, generic software processes, best practices, and languages, the problem is still here. The research presented in this work proposes utilization of formal methods and knowledge bases as a key solution for software process capture and modeling; the goal of the research is to describe particular sub-processes of software development process and their optimization with formalisms like Web Ontology Language (OWL). We will propose and develop complex software process modeling methodology that would combine semi-formal and formal approaches with forward and reverse process engineering (process mining) that would be used easily as well-known semi-formal approaches.
Challenge in Urban Flood Mitigating System: Decision Support based on Cyber-Physical-Human Infrastructure
Authors: Pramadihanto Dadet  , Sesulihatien Wahjoe T.  , Patrisia Soffi  , Sasaki Shiori  , Kiyoki Yasushi
Published: February 2025

Currently, floods are not only occurred in the outskirts of the river course, but also in the urban area, especially in the big city. The main problem of urban flood is the fact that it occurs in highly populated areas. It is a global phenomenon that causes widespread devastation, economic damages and loss of human lives. All the strategies basically are good for long term mitigation but not appropriate for solving the real problems when a disaster happens, because it is static and not real time. To overcome, two main points should be developed: socio-cultural knowledge on floods and flood prevention infrastructure development. Both are correlated to build the settlement of flood problem. Therefore, it is essential to build an integrated system combining Cyber-Physical-Human. The proposed system includes (1) physical layer that consist of sensors rainfall and river water levels and satellite sensors, (2) abstract layer consist of flood modelling (3) interaction with human. Mitigation system based Cyber - Physical - Human will be very useful for agencies related to flood control and as a decision making tool for the government and society at large. Surabaya is chosen as study area.
Context-Sensitive Framework for Visual Analytics in Energy Production from Biomass
Authors: Wartiainen Pekka  , Heimbürger Anneli  , Kärkkäinen Tommi
Published: February 2025

Data masses require a lot of data processing. Data mining is the traditional way to convert data into knowledge. In visual analytics, humans are integrated into the process as there is continuous interaction between the analyst and the analysis software. Data mining methods can be utilized also in visual analytics where the priority is given to the visualization of the information and to dimension reduction. However, the provided data is not always enough. There is a large amount of background contextual information, which should be included into the automated process. This paper describes a context-sensitive approach, in which we utilize visual analytics by studying all phases in the process according to our “sensing, processing and actuation” framework. Experimental studies show that our framework can be very useful in the process of analyzing causes for and relations between variable changes with laboratory-scale power plant data.
Smart Stress Management System for Media and Arts Employees
Authors: Kaklauskas Arturas  , Kovachec Ludmil  , Safonov Andrej  , Paliskiene Rasa  , Bartkiene Lina  , Jackute Ieva
Published: February 2025

As the tempo of contemporary life quickens along with the increasing rates of competition on the art and media market, uncertainty about the future and continual demands for greater competency, the risk of experiencing stress unavoidably rises. Stress is the physiological and psychological state of tension in a person caused by external and internal irritants called stressors. Stress is a natural reaction of an organism to internal as well as external, positive as well as negative stimuli. Stress frequently manifests in our lives and it stimulates action, inventiveness and creativity. However, long-lasting, uncontrolled stress exhausts the psyche and the immune system of an organism and it can cause various illnesses. To manage stress, a Smart Stress Management System for Media and Arts Employees was developed by the authors of this paper.
Gated Sensor Fusion: A way to Improve the Precision of Ambulatory Human Body Motion Estimation
Authors: Olivares Alberto  , Górriz J.M.  , Ramírez J.  , Olivares Gonzalo
Published: February 2025

Human body motion is usually variable in terms of intensity and, therefore, any Inertial Measurement Unit attached to a subject will measure both low and high angular rate and accelerations. This can be a problem for the accuracy of orientation estimation algorithms based on adaptive filters such as the Kalman filter, since both the variances of the process noise and the measurement noise are set at the beginning of the algorithm and remain constant during its execution. Setting fixed noise parameters burdens the adaptation capability of the filter if the intensity of the motion changes rapidly. In this work we present a conjoint novel algorithm which uses a motion intensity detector to dynamically vary the noise statistical parameters of different approaches of the Kalman filter. Results show that the precision of the estimated orientation in terms of the RMSE can be improved up to 29% with respect to the standard fixed-parameters approaches.
Handling Varying Amounts of Missing Data when Classifying Mental-Health Risk Levels
Authors: Saleh Sherine Nagy  , Buckingham Christopher D.
Published: February 2025

One of the main challenges of classifying clinical data is determining how to handle missing features. Most research favours imputing of missing values or neglecting records that include missing data, both of which can degrade accuracy when missing values exceed a certain level. In this research we propose a methodology to handle data sets with a large percentage of missing values and with high variability in which particular data are missing. Feature selection is effected by picking variables sequentially in order of maximum correlation with the dependent variable and minimum correlation with variables already selected. Classification models are generated individually for each test case based on its particular feature set and the matching data values available in the training population.
Content-based Video Retrieval with Multi Features
Authors: Lin Jhih-Long  , Chien Ou-Yang  , Yu Han-Yen  , Chen Jiann-Jone
Published: February 2025

With the advance of multimediatechnology and communications, image and video data over the Internet contribute to the sea of media. Methods on how to search and findout user desired media contents becomesimportant. In this paper, we proposed an efficient content-based video retrieval (CBVR) method that integrated color, texture and SIFT-BOW (Bag of Word) image features for robust and higher retrieval performance. Experimental results showed that our proposed CBVR method can well manipulate both global and local features for retrieval and can outperforms the previous methods by 12.5% and 19.7 %in precision performance that adopts single and multi-feature types.
Supporting Load-Balanced Virtual Machine Placement for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service
Authors: Wang Wei-Jen  , Chen Shao-Jui  , Yang Jui-Hao  , Chan Tzu-Ming
Published: February 2025

Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is an important type of cloud service. It integrates conventional computing resources, network resources, storage resources and related software packages into an on-demand network service, which provide virtual resources and machines to the users instead. Therefore, it is important to use a good VM placement mechanism that achieves good performance in an IaaS platform. For example, while allocating resources to a set of virtual machines (VMs), load balance is an important technique to avoid resource usage surge and thus can provide good quality of services to users. In this paper, we present a new VM placement mechanism based on resource usage prediction. The mechanism is implemented on a cloud platform, namely SAMEVED-Stack. The SAMEVED-Stack is a non-commercial cloud platform that supports high-level operations for virtual cluster/datacenter management. It is derived from OpenStack, and designed for supporting on-line network and computer security experiments. Our preliminary results show that, the proposed VM placement strategy outperforms three popular VM placement strategies, the Best-Fit, the First-Fit, and the max-free-memory-fit.
A Run-time Manager for Multithreading of Multi-core Systems
Authors: Hsieh Cheng Hung  , Jou Jer Min
Published: February 2025

The ubiquity of multi-core systems will necessitate time-efficient parallel execution of applications in a wide range of hardware and software environments. Compiled-time parallel execution can fail to be efficient and unable to account for dynamic changes in the multi-core run-time environment. In this paper, we propose a hardware-software co-design based run-time manager to dynamically, continuously and judiciously manage program's parallel execution in the dynamic execution conditions. It will schedule, map, synchronize, do load balance among workers of parallel applications in the multi-core environment efficiently. Experimental results show that the multiple programs could be executed simultaneously with 1.37x faster than their sequential version.
Study on time synchronization algorithm for structural health monitoring based on wireless sensor networks
Authors: Liang QingJian  , Ji Sai  , Guo Ping  , Xu Xin  , Wang Jin
Published: February 2025

To meet the special requirements of time synchronization for structural health monitoring based on wireless sensor networks, this paper proposed an improved FTSP time synchronization algorithm to exclude the disturbance of the outliers. The algorithm determines the weight values according to the regression residuals. Using those weights, an ordinary least square method based on iteratively re-weighted is applied to estimate the regression coefficients, which can reduce outliers' negative impact on the parameter estimates. Compared with the original FTSP protocol, the results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively eliminate the interference of outliers and improve the accuracy of time synchronization. Meanwhile, the time synchronization error is controlled in microsecond, which can meet time synchronization requirements in structural health monitoring.
A Fast Window-based Scalar Multiplication Algorithm for Elliptic Curve Cryptography in Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Ye Hung-Nan  , Wang Kuochen  , Jan Rong-Hong  , Hu Yuh-Jyh  , Tseng Yu-Chee  , Hsu Yi-Huai
Published: February 2025

In this paper, we propose an enhanced window-based mutual opposite form (EW-MOF) for scalar multiplication with ECC in WSNs. The proposed EW-MOF combines MOF with an enhanced window method that can reduce not only pre-computation time and memory usage, but also average key generation time that includes pre-computation time in each sensor node. Our analysis has shown that the proposed EW-MOF requires a smaller number of essential pre-computed points than the one's complement. Therefore, it is very suitable for WSNs. Simulation results show that the proposed EW-MOF is 24.69% faster than the one's complement method, which is the best method available, in the average key generation time of ECC that includes pre-computation time under different field sizes. In summary, the proposed EW-MOF is more feasible than the one's complement for wireless sensor networks in terms of key generation time and power saving.
Linked List Routing Algorithm with Wormhole Mechanism for Data Collecting Wireless Network
Authors: Chiu Jih-Ching  , Wang Wen-Shin  , Chen Chien-Lung
Published: February 2025

Data collection is one of important applications in Internet of Things. How to collect data within a short time is an important issue. However, the existing routing protocols are mostly used for data transmission and it's inefficient if used in data collection with polling manner. With this paper, we proposed a linked list routing algorithm with wormhole mechanism for data collection. Using linked list topology to construct a data collecting network, where data collecting behavior can be completed on the same path so that we can gather data at one time by data fusing operation. Because the excessive hop counts of traditional linked list topology, we use the concept of wormhole to construct shortcuts to the destination node to reduce hop counts. Data can travel back to data collector quickly through shortcuts, therefore data collecting time decreases. The simulation results show that our protocol is more efficient than existing mechanism.
Heartbeat measurement based on laser speckle fingerprint
Authors: Muchtar Kahlil  , Yeh Chia-Hung  , Lee Cheng-Wei  , Xu Wen-Hung  , Sung Po-Yi  , Kuo Chia-Chen
Published: February 2025

Traditional human pulse detection usually needs to surround the arm or take pressure on human body, but it is inconvenient for injured patients. The main goal of this paper is to measure the human heartbeat without any pressure. A laser speckle fingerprint recognition system has been proposed for human heartbeat measurement. The proposed system pre-processes the laser speckle image with Butterworth filter to enhance the quality and edge of the fingerprint, and calculates the relations between a set of images with 2D correlation method in order to predict the pulse rate. According to the experiments, the proposed system achieves a high-accuracy of the pulse rate measurement and could assist in observing the human heartbeat effectively.
A Novel Approach for Ontology Maintenance Based on Web Data
Authors: Ren Xiangyu  , Liu Jin  , Song Qiuxia  , Song Junjie  , Zhong Bei
Published: February 2025

Ontology is composed of a set of concepts and their mutual relations, thus it is the basis for the search engine to make semantically reasoning work. The accuracy of the concepts and other information in ontology is directly related to performance of a search engine. Thus the maintenance and optimization method for ontology is vital for the ontology construction and utilization, especially when the data source of ontology is now from millions of unstructured web pages data. There are many optimization approaches for ontology in the literature, but the automatic method is seldom found, and the most commonly used method is still artificial maintenance which is slow and inconvenient. Based on probability and lexical analysis, we proposed a hybrid ontology automatic maintenance approach in this paper. Experimental results show the effectiveness of this method.
Toward the One-to-Two Balanced Disjoint-Path Cover of Matching Composition Networks
Authors: Kung Tzu-Liang  , Chen Hon-Chan  , Hsu Lih-Hsing  , Wang Chi-Lun
Published: February 2025

A one-to-two disjoint-path cover of a graph G is a pair (P1, P2) of two vertex-disjoint paths that connect one source to two sinks in G and span G. It is called ϵ-balanced if |ℓ(P1)−ℓ(P2)|=ϵ, where ℓ(P1) and ℓ(P2) denote the lengths of paths P1and P2, respectively. The matching composition network is a family of interconnection networks, each of which connects two components with the same number of vertices by a perfect matching. This paper addresses some properties about one-to-two disjoint-path covers of matching composition networks. Applying the proposed main theorem, a one-to-two ϵ-balanced disjoint-path cover in some well-known interconnection networks, such as crossed cubes, twisted cubes, locally twisted cubes, etc., can be easily obtained for a given odd integer ϵ.
An Efficient Authentication and Service Key Agreement Scheme in IOT Environments
Authors: Huang Jheng-Jia  , Juang Wen-Shenq  , Fan Chun-I
Published: February 2025

In IOT environments, the device joining of a service group is flexible and quick and a device usually does not has a powerful computation and storage capacity. In this paper, in order to provide a secure service framework in the IOT environments, we propose an efficient authentication and service key agreement scheme. Our proposed scheme can satisfy the nice properties including (1) flexible shared group service keys agreement, (2) low communication and computation cost, (3) mutual authentication, (4) session key agreement, (5) dynamic participation, and (6) no time synchronization problem. Also our scheme can achieve the security requirements including mutual authentication and preventing all various well-known attacks.
Cryptanalysis of Anonymous Authenticated and Key Agreement Scheme Based on Biometric for Multi-Server Environment
Authors: Kuo Wen-Chung  , Wei Hong-Ji  , Chen Yu-Hui  , Cheng Jiin-Chiou
Published: February 2025

In 2014, Choi proposed a security enhanced anonymous multi-server authenticated key agreement scheme using smart card and biometrics and claimed that his scheme could overcome all of security issues in Chuang-Chen's scheme, such as impersonation attack, smart card loss attack, denial of service attack and perfect forward secrecy. Although Choi's scheme solves the impersonation and denial of service attack, we discover that his scheme is not only still vulnerable to smart card loss attack and lack of perfect forward secrecy, but also contains a flaw in design for authentication phase after our analysis in detail.
Frameworks in Evidence Collection in Forensics by Analyzing Temporal Cloud Storage Forensics
Authors: Kao Da-Yu  , Chung Min-Jung  , Wang Shiuh-Jeng
Published: February 2025

Cloud storage services are subject to exploitation by cyber offenders for criminal purposes. It will enhance the challenge of collecting and analyzing digital evidence in cybercrime investigation. This study covers general theories of computer forensics and surveys the cloud storage forensics of file metadata. This study evaluates the correction and effectiveness of date-time stamps, and presents a novel collection evidence framework, which is based on ISO/IEC 27037:2012 standard. This novel framework represents an essential contribution toward cloud storage forensics, and helps us discover further knowledge or information to improve the correction and effectiveness on date-time stamps in a cloud storage device. As a result, our work will help computer forensic examiners evaluate evidence with confidence in the cloud age.
Wavelet-Based Reversible and Visible Image Watermarking Scheme
Authors: Chen Chien-Chang  , Tsai Han-Wei
Published: February 2025

A visible reversible image watermarking scheme embeds visible watermark into digital images for ownership identification and the embedded watermark can be removed to recover the original image. The proposed scheme first partitions the cover image to four similar images with half size in width and height. These 4 images are classified to two sets, fixed set (FS) and watermarked set (WS), and each image is then applied to forward wavelet transform for acquiring 4 low-pass subimages for embedding watermark image. The number of FS and WS determines the stability or visibility of embedded watermarks. The coefficients in FS are stationary and the watermark image is embedded into low-pass coefficients of WS based on low-pass coefficients of FS. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme has good watermark similarity and good extraction result under cropped or noise attacks.
SmartMed: A Medication Management System to Improve Adherence
Authors: Diemert Simon  , Richardson Kirk  , Hunter Paul  , Weber Jens  , Price Morgan
Published: February 2025

Adherence is the degree to which patients comply with their caregivers prescribed treatments. Lack of adherence due to various causes negatively affects health objectives. Prior work in the field of medication management has indicated the usefulness of IT as a possible aid for those who have difficulty adhering to prescribed medication regimes. In this paper we present a medication management system (SmartMed) that has been designed to monitor and increase adherence. The SmartMed system consists of a portable pill bottle device, a local base station, and a cloud data service. It reminds users when it is time to take their medications, and acquires adherence data which is accessible for applications that query the data service. The project was undertaken as an undergraduate engineering design project. This paper describes the design and prototype implementation of this system and provides direction for future work.
Modelling Clinical Diagnostic Errors: A System Dynamics Approach
Authors: Guo Shijing  , Roudsari Abdul  , Garcez Artur d'Avila
Published: February 2025

The diagnostic process involves a series of stages in the patient pathway. Any errors or misleading information from any stage could lead to errors in the final decision-making. System dynamics modeling maps the diagnostic process as a whole and seeks to provide a quantitative way of analyzing different errors at each stage as well as relevant key factors. This paper provides a framework based on system dynamics for modeling the tracing of errors inside of the system from where errors initially occur, the routes of errors inside of the system, and how errors are delivered out of the system. Also, a detailed illustration of the phase history and physical examinations is provided as an example to explain how relevant factors can be interpreted and how this affects errors according to the framework.
Using Usability Evaluation to Inform Alberta's Personal Health Record Design
Authors: Price Morgan  , Bellwood Paule  , Davies Iryna
Published: February 2025

Alberta Health is deploying the Personal Health Portal (PHP) (MyHealth.Alberta.ca) to all people in the province of Alberta, Canada. The PHP will include several components such as a Personal Health Record (PHR) where users can enter and access their own health data. For the first PHR of its kind in Canada, Alberta Health asked the University of Victoria's eHealth Observatory to evaluate the PHP, including the PHR. The evaluation includes pre-design, design, and adoption evaluation. This paper focuses on early usability evaluations of the PHR software. Persona-based usability inspection was combined with usability testing sessions using think aloud. These evaluations found that while people were familiar with the web-based technology, several aspects of the PHR information architecture, content, and presentation could be improved to better support and provide value to the users. The findings could be helpful to others designing and implementing similar PHR software.
Danish Citizens' Expectations to the Use of eHealth
Authors: Bertelsen Pernille  , Tornbjerg Kristina
Published: February 2025

Danish citizens' attitudes and expectations to eHealth is being investigated in this paper with the aim is to explore how the Danish citizens perceive eHealth. Data has been collected through a national survey with 1.058 respondents (80% participated by e-mail, 20% by telephone). We found that the majority of the Danish citizens had experience with use of eHealth and a positive view on eHealths impact on future healthcare. However, the citizens neither using nor trusting eHealth, belong to the socio-economic weak population with no or very little education suggesting a need for the designers and planners to revisit their patient empowerment strategies.
Integration of Electronic Health Records into Nursing Education: Issues, Challenges and Limitations
Authors: Borycki Elizabeth M.  , Frisch Noreen  , Moreau Jeannine  , Kushniruk Andre W.
Published: February 2025

In this paper we describe our integration of teaching about the use of electronic health records into a fourth year undergraduate nursing course. We report on our method of integration and issues, challenges and limitations of the approach. We present our findings using a case study approach that includes a description of the context and EHR software used.
Integrating Clinical Decision Support into EMR and PHR: a Case Study Using Anticoagulation
Authors: Chackery Dave-Gregory  , Keshavjee Karim  , Mirza Kashif  , Ghany Ahmad  , Holbrook Anne M.
Published: February 2025

Clinical decision support (CDS) for atrial fibrillation is expected to ease the implementation of often-complex guidelines for atrial fibrillation and anticoagulation. Most clinical decision support systems (CDSS) for anticoagulation are stand-alone systems that do not integrate with electronic medical records (EMR). We have developed an architecture that consists of a computerized CDS that can integrate with multiple EMRs and multiple patient health records (PHRs). The design process revealed some significant issues that were resolved through systematic business/clinical analysis and creative clinical design in the diagnostic and treatment domains. Key issues identified and resolved include: 1) how to correctly allocate existing patients into various CDSS states (e.g., MAINTENANCE, HOLD, DISCONTINUE, etc), 2) identify when a patient becomes eligible for CDSS guidance over time, 3) how the CDSS maintains information about the patient's anticoagulation state and 4) how to transform vague human-readable concepts to explicit computable concepts. The management of anticoagulation for atrial fibrillation is no easy task and we believe our architecture will improve patient care at all levels and ultimately better balance the reduction of stroke risk while minimizing harms from major bleeding. In addition, the architecture presented is scalable to other treatment guidelines and is scalable to multiple EMRs and PHRs, making it suitable for use in a platform approach.
A Data Modification Technique in PPDM Based on Ant Colony Optimization Approach
Authors: Ansari Muhammad Zubair Hasan  , Asghar Sohail  , Zhuang Yan  , Fong Simon
Published: February 2025

Data collection is being used in all fields nowadays. This data collection of data creates a dataset. Association rule mining is one of the data mining techniques used to extract hidden knowledge within the dataset. These rules are very useful for the organizations but on the other hand, these rules also generate sensitive or confidential information and patterns. Resolving the problem of hiding the sensitive or confidential information with the sensitivity patterns, Privacy preserving data mining (PPDM) is introduced. Privacy preserving data mining is used to hide sensitive and confidential information and patterns, and also preserves the knowledge of the dataset. Various techniques are used to hide such confidential and sensitive information, but they all produce lost rules, ghost rules and hidden failure ratio. In current research work, we propose an algorithm which is based on ant colony optimization (ACO) technique. This proposed methodology is used to triumph over the problem of lost rules, ghost rules and hidden failure ratio. Fuzzy sets are used as the fitness function of ACO. The technique minimizes the problem of lost rule, ghost rule and hidden failure ratio in a great manner. Further-more, this technique is used in all types of areas for hiding sensitive information with sensitive patterns.
Designing an Integrated Funding Management System for National R&D Project
Authors: Lee Jungwoo  , Lee Hyejung  , Kim Inkyu
Published: February 2025

As science and technology developed, people in modern society have never stopped stepping forward. Showing rapid increase in social growth and Research and Development (R&D) funding, South Korea have proved that they are also in the middle of this trend. There also have been countless projects so that investors need to know how and where their funds are used. Developers from diverse fields have developed different types of management systems to help monitor and manage their projects. However, the systems are separated from the banking systems, which are in charge of transacting funds. As a result, there have been misuses related to the R&D funding. Realizing the seriousness of those problems, integrated project management systems appeared. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the real issues of managing R&D funding in the existing project management systems and introduce the architecture of the integrated systems.
A Web-DB based electronic voting system and its distribution models
Authors: Ling Xiaoping
Published: February 2025

This paper proposed a distributed web-DB based electronic voting system model. This model was thought about for state of the national election of Japan, also it is considered to be easy to fit not only the election of Japan but also elections in other countries. As a prototype of the model, a web-DB based electronic system is implemented on a Windows PC. In the system, the voter's profile browser, the political views browser and the tool for helping voters to find the candidate who has the most similar opinion with oneself are implemented as additional functions.Using this system, a qualified voter can easily use a right to vote anytime from anywhere. And, even if a voter does not know any candidate, the voter can cast the ballots to candidates whom the political views are similar to.
Re-thinking Models of Patient Empowerment
Authors: Umar Aisha  , Mundy Darren
Published: February 2025

The empowerment of citizens in relation to personal healthcare management includes consideration of a multi-faceted collection of elements. Simplistic forms of understanding which link empowerment to access provide limited acknowledgement of the requirement to facilitate a greater sense of health ownership in patients and collaborative working practices in practitioners. More complex attitudes to the delivery of empowered patients encompassing knowledge development, technological awareness and partnership approaches to healthcare delivery are steps in the right direction, but strain to fit currently emerging ideas around patient centered care. This paper posits that existing frameworks aimed at empowering patients for a patient centered ehealth system are insufficiently presented. The frameworks, which are mostly premised on an inequitable focus, fail to factor in the invaluableness of holism and technological innovation. Through a review of existing frameworks and an articulation of patient demands, weaknesses in current structures to support empowerment are explored, and key constituents of a framework for patient empowerment are determined. Consequently, the paper articulates a model focused around delivering an empowered patient in the 21stcentury healthcare system.