Protecting web applications from DDoS attacks by an active distributed defense system

In the last a few years a number of highly publicized incidents of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against high-profile government and commercial websites have made people aware of the importance of providing data and services security to users. A DDoS attack is an availability attack, which is characterized by an explicit attempt from an attacker to prevent legitimate users of a service from using the desired resources. This paper introduces the vulnerability of web applications to DDoS attacks, and presents an active distributed defense system that has a deployment mixture of sub-systems to protect web applications from DDoS attacks. According to the simulation experiments, this system is effective in that it is able to defend web applications against attacks. It can avoid overall network congestion and provide more resources to legitimate web users.

An active stereo vision-based learning approach for robotic tracking, fixating and grasping control

In this paper, an active stereo vision-based learning approach is proposed for a robot to track, fixate and grasp an object in unknown environments. First, the functional mapping relationships between the joint angles of the active stereo vision system and the spatial representations of the object are derived and expressed in a three-dimensional workspace frame. Next, the self-adaptive resonance theory-based neural networks and the feedforward neural networks are used to learn the mapping relationships in a self-organized way. Then, the approach is verified by simulation using the models of an active stereo vision system which is installed in the end-effector of a robot. Finally, the simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the present approach.

Assessment of measures of physical activity of children with cerebral palsy at home and school: a pilot study

ABSTRACT
Home and school are important settings where children can accrue health promoting physical activity (PA). Little is known about the PA levels and associated environmental characteristics at home and school in children with cerebral palsy (CP). An observational tool - Behaviors of Eating and Activity for Children’s Health Evaluation System (BEACHES) - offers potential for providing information.

Engineering fundamentals in a new undergraduate curriculum

CONTEXTIn recent years there has been a push in Engineering education to change the basic model fromstudents learning discrete subjects, followed by design projects in third and fourth year, to learningand practicing the design process from the first year. At the same time, there has also been a pushtowards “active learning” (Prince, 2004) as opposed to the more traditional lecture/tutorial/practicalapproach. This year, Deakin University has launched a new design-centred curriculum inundergraduate engineering. Named “Project-Oriented Design-Based Learning” (PODBL), the newcourse structure is running in first and second years. In semester one of first year in the new course,students enrol in one double-unit of design, one unit of maths, and one unit of fundamental science.PURPOSEThis work seeks to determine whether a new fundamental-science unit called “EngineeringFundamentals” fulfils the educational needs of first-year students in the PODBL curriculum. It alsoseeks to determine student perceptions of the new unit.APPROACHThe unit was first offered in semester-one, 2016 to two separate on-campus cohorts and an offcampuscohort. Innovations in this unit include using the CADET model for teaching combinedpractical-tutorial seminars, a shift in lectures from delivering conceptual content to teaching problemsolving and applications (flipping the classroom), and extensive use of online videos and study guidesfor delivering primary content (Cloud Learning). Student learning was assessed by means of problembasedonline quizzes, practical reports, and a final exam. Student perceptions were queried by astandard unit-evaluation system and by a more focussed set of surveys given to students in threeseparate cohorts.RESULTSThe academic results in this unit were compared with those in the previous unit. No substantialdifferences were observed in the marks of this unit in 2016 compared with the 2015 marks of thecorresponding previous physics unit. On-campus students showed more general satisfaction with theunit than did off-campus students. However, not all on-campus students were happy with the flippedclassroommodel.CONCLUSIONSAs the course changes from a traditional approach to a design and project-based approach, it is best ifall units in the course adapt in some way to the new teaching style. Not all units need be completelyproject or design based. In the case of “Engineering Fundamentals,” we believe that due to the widevariety of topics covered, making the entire unit design-based is inappropriate. However, some designand project components can be built into the unit via the practicals. Semester one 2016 was asuccessful first offering of the unit. We recommend that in future years a design/project component beconsidered for the unit’s practicals.

Guest editorial : In Journal of networks, v.7 n.3

Networking of computing devices has been going through rapid evolution and thus continuing to be an ever expanding area of importance in recent years. New technologies, protocols, services and usage patterns have contributed to the major research interests in this area of computer science. The current special issue is an effort to bring forward some of these interesting developments that are being pursued by researchers at present in different parts of the globe. Our objective is to provide the readership with some insight into the latest innovations in computer networking through this. This Special Issue presents selected papers from the thirteenth conference of the series (ICCIT 2010) held during December 23-25, 2010 at the Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology. The first ICCIT was held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 1998. Since then the conference has grown to be one of the largest computer and IT related research conferences in the South Asian region, with participation of academics and researchers from many countries around the world. Starting in 2008 the proceedings of ICCIT are included in IEEExplore. In 2010, a total of 410 full papers were submitted to the conference of which 136 were accepted after reviews conducted by an international program committee comprising 81 members from 16 countries. This was tantamount to an acceptance rate of 33%. From these 136 papers, 14 highly ranked manuscripts were invited for this Special Issue. The authors were advised to enhance their papers significantly and submit them to undergo review for suitability of inclusion into this publication. Of those, eight papers survived the review process and have been selected for inclusion in this Special Issue. The authors of these papers represent academic and/or research institutions from Australia, Bangladesh, Japan, Korea and USA. These papers address issues concerning different domains of networks namely, optical fiber communication, wireless and interconnection networks, issues related to networking hardware and software and network mobility. The paper titled “Virtualization in Wireless Sensor Network: Challenges and Opportunities” argues in favor of bringing in different heterogeneous sensors under a common virtual framework so that the issues like flexibility, diversity, management and security can be handled practically. The authors Md. Motaharul Islam and Eui-Num Huh propose an architecture for sensor virtualization. They also present the current status and the challenges and opportunities for further research on the topic. The manuscript “Effect of Polarization Mode Dispersion on the BER Performance of Optical CDMA” deals with impact of polarization mode dispersion on the bit error rate performance of direct sequence optical code division multiple access. The authors, Md. Jahedul Islam and Md. Rafiqul Islam present an analytical approach toward determining the impact of different performance parameters. The authors show that the bit error rate performance improves significantly by the third order polarization mode dispersion than its first or second order counterparts. The authors Md. Shohrab Hossain, Mohammed Atiquzzaman and William Ivancic of the paper “Cost and Efficiency Analysis of NEMO Protocol Entities” present an analytical model for estimating the cost incurred by major mobility entities of a NEMO. The authors define a new metric for cost calculation in the process. Both the newly developed metric and the analytical model are likely to be useful to network engineers in estimating the resource requirement at the key entities while designing such a network. The article titled “A Highly Flexible LDPC Decoder using Hierarchical Quasi-Cyclic Matrix with Layered Permutation” deals with Low Density Parity Check decoders. The authors, Vikram Arkalgud Chandrasetty and Syed Mahfuzul Aziz propose a novel multi-level structured hierarchical matrix approach for generating codes of different lengths flexibly depending upon the requirement of the application. The manuscript “Analysis of Performance Limitations in Fiber Bragg Grating Based Optical Add-Drop Multiplexer due to Crosstalk” has been contributed by M. Mahiuddin and M. S. Islam. The paper proposes a new method of handling crosstalk with a fiber Bragg grating based optical add drop multiplexer (OADM). The authors show with an analytical model that different parameters improve using their proposed OADM. The paper “High Performance Hierarchical Torus Network Under Adverse Traffic Patterns” addresses issues related to hierarchical torus network (HTN) under adverse traffic patterns. The authors, M.M. Hafizur Rahman, Yukinori Sato, and Yasushi Inoguchi observe that dynamic communication performance of an HTN under adverse traffic conditions has not yet been addressed. The authors evaluate the performance of HTN for comparison with some other relevant networks. It is interesting to see that HTN outperforms these counterparts in terms of throughput and data transfer under adverse traffic. The manuscript titled “Dynamic Communication Performance Enhancement in Hierarchical Torus Network by Selection Algorithm” has been contributed by M.M. Hafizur Rahman, Yukinori Sato, and Yasushi Inoguchi. The authors introduce three simple adapting routing algorithms for efficient use of physical links and virtual channels in hierarchical torus network. The authors show that their approaches yield better performance for such networks. The final title “An Optimization Technique for Improved VoIP Performance over Wireless LAN” has been contributed by five authors, namely, Tamal Chakraborty, Atri Mukhopadhyay, Suman Bhunia, Iti Saha Misra and Salil K. Sanyal. The authors propose an optimization technique for configuring the parameters of the access points. In addition, they come up with an optimization mechanism in order to tune the threshold of active queue management system appropriately. Put together, the mechanisms improve the VoIP performance significantly under congestion. Finally, the Guest Editors would like to express their sincere gratitude to the 15 reviewers besides the guest editors themselves (Khalid M. Awan, Mukaddim Pathan, Ben Townsend, Morshed Chowdhury, Iftekhar Ahmad, Gour Karmakar, Shivali Goel, Hairulnizam Mahdin, Abdullah A Yusuf, Kashif Sattar, A.K.M. Azad, F. Rahman, Bahman Javadi, Abdelrahman Desoky, Lenin Mehedy) from several countries (Australia, Bangladesh, Japan, Pakistan, UK and USA) who have given immensely to this process. They have responded to the Guest Editors in the shortest possible time and dedicated their valuable time to ensure that the Special Issue contains high-quality papers with significant novelty and contributions.

Novel criteria for exponential stability of linear neutral time-varying differential systems

Using a novel approach, we get explicit criteria for exponential stability of linear neutral time-varying differential systems. A brief discussion to the obtained results is given. To the best of our knowledge, the results of this paper are new.

A distributed active defense system against DDoS attacks

This thesis proposes a novel architecture of Distributed Active Defense System (DADS) against Distibuted Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Three sub-systems of DADS were built. For each sub-system corresponding algorithms were developed, prototypes implemented, criteria for evaluation were set up and experiments in both simulation and real network laboratory environments were carried out.

Building equity in chronic disease management in Thailand : a whole-system provincial trial of systematic, pro-active chronic illness care

Thailand has a history of implementing innovative and proactive policies to address the health needs of its population. Since 1962 Thailand has implemented initiatives that led to it having a health system characterized by a primary care focus, decentralization and mechanisms to maximize equity and universal access to basic care at the local level. Thai health structures initially evolved to meet challenges including infectious and developmental diseases and later HIV. Early in the 21st century chronic illness rapidly became the greatest cause of morbidity and mortality and the question has arisen how Thailand can adapt its strong health system to deal with the new epidemics. This article describes an effort to reorient provincial health services to meet the needs of the increasing number of people with diabetes and heart disease. It describes measures taken to build on the equity-promoting elements of the Thai health system. The project included; a situational analysis, development and implementation of a chronic disease self-management intervention implemented by nurses and alignment of provincial health services. The self-management intervention is currently being evaluated within a clustered randomized control trial. The evaluation has been developed to fit with the focus on equity in relation to both selection criteria and the outcomes that are being assessed.

Optimizing time delay feedback for active vibration control of a cantilever beam using a genetic algorithm

Active vibration control using time delay for a cantilever beam is developed in this paper. The equation of motion of the system is developed using the discrete standard formulation, and the discrete quadratic function is used to design the controller. The original contribution in this paper is using a genetic algorithm to determine the optimal time delay feedback for active vibration control of a cantilever beam. Simulations of the beam demonstrated that the genetic algorithm correctly identified the time delay which produced the quickest attenuation of unwanted vibrations for both mode one and mode two. In terms of frequency response, the optimal time delay for both modes reduced the resonant amplitude. In a mixed mode situation, the simulation demonstrated that an optimal time delay could be identified.

A bioeconomic evaluation of a commercial scale recirculating finfish growout system - an Australian perspective

This study, based on 3 years of commercial data, presents the results of an economic analysis of a 20-tonne per annum (TPA) commercial recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility located in Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia. Based on the assumptions of the analysis, results highlight the non-viability of the facility, with a 10-year projected negative cumulative cash flow of − $648,038, and negative net present value (NPV) of − $707,546. Economies of scale were assessed by the development of economic models for hypothetical 50-TPA and 100-TPA facilities, based on the actual figures obtained from the 20-TPA case study. These analyses highlighted marginal viability for the 50-TPA facility (with a ten-year projected cumulative cash flow of $1,030,300; negative NPV of − $167,651 and internal rate of return (IRR) of 11.75%), and an economically viable 100-TPA facility (with a ten-year projected cumulative cash flow of $3,176,750; NPV of $522,200 and IRR of 21.03%). Sensitivity analysis highlighted that the greatest gains to be realised in improving profitability were those associated with increasing the productive capacity of the facility, increasing the sale price of the product, and decreasing the capital costs of RAS facilities. Contradictions between the results from the present study to similar studies clearly highlight a need for further economic analyses of commercial RAS facilities, using commercial data sets and standard economic analysis procedures.

A proposed hybrid evaluation methodology for intelligent transport system deployment

The rapid deployment of intelligent transport systems in practice requires serious evaluation of new construction projects. Traditional transportation evaluation methods are insufficient to capture the new features of intelligent transport systems, particularly the applications of recently developed information technologies. This research aims to develop a new conceptual framework to evaluate the social, economic and environmental impacts of intelligent transport systems deployment, with explicit consideration of impacts of information technologies on variant travel behaviours. The research would provide a systematic evaluation methodology to enable decision makers and publics better evaluating and understanding the social, economic and environmental benefits of implementation of intelligent transport systems.

Australian implementation and evaluation of active support

Background The implementation and evaluation of Active Support in Australia is reported, the first such formal evaluation outside the UK.

Method Residents and staff of five group homes participated. Active Support was introduced by training staff in one home at a time. Effectiveness was assessed using direct observation of resident engagement in activity and of staff help, as well as written assessments of resident outcomes.

Results Staff help and resident engagement increased in four of five group homes. There was significantly greater participation in a wider variety of domestic activities, as well as more frequent and varied community participation. Change in resident engagement was positively related to change in staff help, but not related to residents' level of adaptive behaviour.

Conclusions Most of our findings were consistent with earlier UK studies. There was evidence of the successful transfer of Active Support training skills to an Australian training team. Nonsignificant trends towards reduced depression and increased adaptive behaviour warrant further investigation.