Flexible composition and execution of large scale applications on distributed e-infrastructures

Computer simulation is finding a role in an increasing number of scientific disciplines, concomitant with the rise in available computing power. Marshalling this power facilitates new, more effective and different research than has been hitherto possible. Realizing this inevitably requires access to computational power beyond the desktop, making use of clusters, supercomputers, data repositories, networks and distributed aggregations of these resources. The use of diverse e-infrastructure brings with it the ability to perform distributed multiscale simulations. Accessing one such resource entails a number of usability and security problems; when multiple geographically distributed resources are involved, the difficulty is compounded. In this paper we present a solution, the Application Hosting Environment,³ which provides a Software as a Service layer on top of distributed e-infrastructure resources. We describe the performance and usability enhancements present in AHE version 3, and show how these have led to a high performance, easy to use gateway for computational scientists working in diverse application domains, from computational physics and chemistry, materials science to biology and biomedicine.     

LED电视在2D模式下的视觉健康舒适度测试研究

通过客观量测人眼观视时的各项视觉生理指标,并将各项指标嵌入人眼健康舒适度评价模型进行分析运算。经由583人次的人因实验,从视觉健康舒适度、电视屏幕人眼色觉客观量化反馈以及操控可用性3个方面对12款主流品牌的LED电视样机的视觉健康舒适度与人机交互设计进行了测试与评价。     

工程设计中应用高压变频器要特别关注的问题

从工程设计的观点,对高压变频器的外部性能作了全面介绍,提出了许多应考虑的问题,高压变频器价格高,在生产中占有重要地位,有关技术问题涉及很多方面,因此,选择宜慎重,本文即为此而写。     

PUFPass: A password management mechanism based on software/hardware codesign

Secure passwords need high entropy, but are difficult for users to remember. Password managers minimize the memory burden by storing site passwords locally or generating secure site passwords from a master password through hashing or key stretching. Unfortunately, they are threatened by the single point of failure introduced by the master password which is vulnerable to various attacks such as offline attack and shoulder surfing attack. To handle these issues, this paper proposes the PUFPass, a secure password management mechanism based on software/hardware codesign. By introducing the hardware primitive, Physical Unclonable Function (PUF), into PUFPass, the random physical disorder is exploited to strengthen site passwords. An illustration of PUFPass in the Android operating system is given. PUFPass is evaluated from aspects of both security and preliminary usability. The security of the passwords is evaluated using a compound heuristic algorithm based PUF attack software and an open source password cracking software, respectively. Finally, PUFPass is compared with other password management mechanisms using the Usability-Deployability-Security (UDS) framework. The results show that PUFPass has great advantages in security while maintaining most benefits in usability.     

Job search website for illiterate users of Pakistan

Illiteracy is a major hurdle in socio-economic development of Pakistan. Research in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can help in tackling this issue by developing solutions tailored for illiterate population. The work presented within this paper proposes a job search website for illiterate population of KPK province of Pakistan. The designed website does not require any human assistance while searching a job. Moreover, the website uses culturally relevant graphical and audio content. The usability of the website is tested according to the ISO-9241-11 specification. Furthermore, we have studied the effect of the participants’ characteristics, i.e., their age, computer and mobile usage experience on the usability of the website. The results show that the participants found the website usable. Specifically, they could search suitable jobs with a minimal number of clicks and in less time as compared to the usual task completion rates reported throughout the literature. None of the participants’ characteristics were found to be affecting the usability of the website. These results suggest a promising potential of ICT solutions for providing services to illiterate population of Pakistan.     

THEOL网络教学平台体验测试研究

目的：探讨网络辅助教学平台对护生学习的促进作用。方法：选取我院护理专业600名学生,以使用THEOL网络教学平台用户体验为出发点,分别从主要原因、频率、帮助程度、满意度分析几个方面讨论网络教学平台可用性特点,用问卷调查的方法进行测试,通过该项测试发现存在的部分可用性问题,并针对问题提出可用性改进的建议。结果：问卷调查发现大部分同学认为网络教学平台对提高同学学习效率“有帮助”和“比较有帮助”。结论：应该将网络教学平台与护理教学结合起来,对学生学习有一定的促进作用。     

Context-aware mobile learning system: Usability assessment based on a field study

Teaching-learning models supported by technology have evolved since the emergence of personal computers until the present day, where m-learning has been incorporated thanks to mobile technology. In this context, some works have proposed mobile learning systems (MLS). One of the main requirements of this kind of systems in terms of software quality is the usability. Therefore, the analysis and evaluation of the usability of MLS are especially relevant; however, few works have addressed the usability issues using field studies with students and professors in real domains. In this paper, we present a usability assessment of a Context-Aware Mobile Learning System (CAMLS) based on a field study with six professors and forty-eight high school students in a real environment. The results obtained from the usability assessment show that, on average, the services offered by the system have 82.4% acceptance by users (professors and high school students), with the learning reinforcement service through SMS messages having the highest acceptance for teachers, with a positive perception of 91.5%. Meanwhile, for the high school students, the Mobile Learning Objects (MLOs) suggestion service was highest with 81% acceptance. Based on the obtained results, the evaluated mobile learning system holds wide acceptance, satisfaction, and applicability from teachers’ and students’ perspectives. The usability assessment described in this study can serve as a reference for developers seeking to improve mobile learning systems development.     

Integrating a mobile health applications for self-management to enhance Telecare system

A dramatic global increase in the pervasiveness of chronic illness has coincided with a reduction in the availability of healthcare resources, coupled with increased costs for care, forcing a fundamental reevaluation of care processes. These trends have driven interest in the use of advanced healthcare information systems and telematics applications to improve care availability while reducing overall costs, but such measures require taking an integrated approach to a range of interrelated social, economic, political and cultural impacts and challenges. Telecare technologies allow hospitals to continuously monitor biomedical indicators, while providing patients with online services such as clinical appointment scheduling, medical consulting, remote alerts, etc. Telecare has the potential to transform the healthcare industry by reducing costs, increasing quality, and enhancing patient satisfaction. The development of a real-time monitoring healthcare service model through the integration of information and communications technologies (ICT) has emerged as a research priority. This study explores the design, value creation, development and evaluation of Telecare systems and mobile health applications for autonomous health management to ensure appropriate home-based health monitoring and treatment while improving care performance. A well-defined methodology is needed to develop artifacts due to increasing disease complexity. This study develops an Android-based self-management application based on design science research methodology. The App assists users in collecting and monitoring indicators to prompt appropriate care services. This study uses individual home self-care as the basic Telecare unit to design a service model integrating six kinds of healthcare services. Usability testing is conducted to reflect five constructs: system usefulness, ease of learning, information quality, interface quality, and overall satisfaction. Experimental results support previous research findings regarding the Chronic Care Model and enhance the effectiveness of mobile-based services. Our work provides a useful reference to researchers and practitioners interested in understanding how hospitals can better facilitate more effective mobile-based technology adoption in today’s e-health environment.     

Usability aware secret protection with minimum cost

In this paper we study a cybersecurity problem of protecting system’s secrets with multiple protections and a required security level, while minimizing the associated cost due to implementation/maintenance of these protections as well as the affected system usability. The target system is modeled as a discrete-event system (DES) in which there are a subset of marker states denoting the services/functions provided to regular users, a subset of secret states, and multiple subsets of protectable events with different security levels. We first introduce usability-aware cost levels for the protectable events, and then formulate the security problem as to ensure that every system trajectory that reaches a secret state contains a specified number of protectable events with at least a certain security level, and the highest usability-aware cost level of these events is minimum. We first provide a necessary and sufficient condition under which this security problem is solvable, and when this condition holds we propose an algorithm to solve the problem based on the supervisory control theory of DES. Moreover, we extend the problem to the case of heterogeneous secrets with different levels of importance, and develop an algorithm to solve this extended problem. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our solutions with a network security example.     

Psychological aspects of equation-based modelling

Psychological aspects of equation-based modelling languages like Modelica are under-represented in literature. This does not reflect the growth of the corresponding userbase. In this paper we try to close this gap by tackling the problem from three sides: we conduct expert interviews, we conduct an experiment based on self-reported timings to analyse the effects of inheritance on understandability, and we conduct an online experiment to analyse the effects of model representations on the performance at modelling tasks. The expert interviews suggest that experienced modelling experts tend to develop their models from the top-down, while novices do the opposite. Results from the second experiment indicate that the effect of inheritance on the time to understand a model is both significant and large. The results of the last experiment imply that graphical representations outperform block-diagrams for several metrics. These results open a broad research field on the theory of good modelling practice.