Design and delivery of undergraduate IT security management course

Information technology has become the core tool of business organisations’. External and internal threats as well as legal, regulatory and contractual compliance requirements are all combining to make effective information security a key information technology management challenges. This paper describes an undergraduate information technology security management course that provides comprehensive knowledge and skills necessary to manage both strategic and operational aspects of information security. The course covers a broad range of managerial topics in information technology security and makes use of a number of security tools and techniques to complement the theory taught. In this paper, we describe our approach, our experiences and lessons learned for teaching information technology security management course. The paper details the content of the course and outlines how it is taught and assessed.

Non-optical biosensing in lab-on-a-chip systems

This paper presents a review of the recent trends and developments in non-optical biosensing platforms for lab-on- a-chip systems. This includes design considerations and applications of the non-optical biosensing platforms. The paper first categorizes the non-optical biosensors into four groups. The definition of each group together with a review of the reported works associated with the group are given. A performance analysis of different non-optical detection methods is also presented.

Optical micro analysis in lab-on-a-chips

Lab-on-a-chips are microfluidic devices which include biological laboratory functions on a single chip. They offer great advantages in terms of speed of analysis, precision, low sample and reagent consumption and automation of analysis. An efficient detection method in lab-on-a-chips is essential for the detection and quantification of chemical and biological parameters under examination. This review paper focuses on the recent research on optical detection techniques for LOC applications. Furthermore, several emerging detection paradigms which are still being matured are covered in this paper. Also, an analysis of the performance of different optical detection methods is given.

Lab-on-a-chip : a component view

Miniaturization is being increasingly applied to biological and chemical analysis processes. Lab-on-a-chip systems are direct creation of the advancement in the miniaturization of these processes. They offer a host of exciting applications in several areas including clinical diagnostics, food and environmental analysis, and drug discovery and delivery studies. This paper reviews lab-on-a-chip systems from their components perspective. It provides a categorization of the standard functional components found in lab-on-a-chip devices together with an overview of the latest trends and developments related to lab-on-a-chip technologies and their application in nanobiotechnology. The functional components include: injector, transporter, preparator, mixer, reactor, separator, detector, controller, and power supply. The components are represented by appropriate symbols allowing designers to present their lab-on-a-chip products in a standard manner. Definition and role of each functional component are included and complemented with examples of existing work. Through the approach presented in this paper, it is hoped that modularity and technology transfer in lab-on-a-chip systems can be further facilitated and their application in nanobiotechnology be expanded.

Students' use of online academic resources within a course web site and its relationship with their course performance : an exploratory study

Prior research suggests that the online provision of course materials can have a positive impact on students' examination performance. This study adds to the existing literature by investigating the link between the students' use of different forms of online course provisions and tools (i.e. course materials, links and discussion forums) and the final examination performance of students in a second year undergraduate accounting course. Findings indicate a positive association between the number of online files viewed by students, the number of online discussion messages posted by them, and their examination performance. A significant relationship was not found between examination performance and the amount of time spent on the subject's web site, the viewing of links to web sites that were not core to the course being studied, or the passive reading of discussion messages. These findings support the benefits to be gained by providing course materials online and encouraging students to access the materials posted and to participate actively in online discussion.

Navigating human rights across the life course

Issues related to human rights have increasingly moved to the forefront of professional concern in recent years. Despite this, there has been minimal attention paid to exploring how changing human needs across the lifespan impact upon human rights. This paper takes a broad look at human rights issues that occur across the life course, and uses examples of life course transitions to illuminate issues related to moral rights and human rights. The examples include family formation, raising children, adolescent maturation in the context of youth offending and grandparents parenting their grandchildren. Each example explores the contestable rights and responsibilities of children, young people and adults and the ways in which these are negotiated within the context of the family.

Do we need to flick the switch? The need for a broader conceptualization of iatrogenic course aggravation in clinical trials of bipolar disorder?

The term ‘switching’ is often used in bipolar disorder when describing polarity changes in bipolar disorder, but this term is ambiguous and imprecise, and is sometimes used interchangeably with the term ‘cycling’. Furthermore, polarity changes in bipolar disorder can be understood in different ways, because their clinical manifestations range from the emergence of subthreshold symptoms to a full episode of the opposite pole. Besides the need to tighten the meaning of the term ‘switching’, this paper also argues that switching does not adequately describe the complex phenomena that occur with course aggravation of bipolar disorder, such as alteration in episode frequency or amplitude. A more-fine grained approach to course aggravation in bipolar disorder is proposed, which incorporates trans-polar switching, index polarity aggravation, as well as alterations in episodic amplitude, episodic duration, and interepisode length. This approach has the potential to capture a broader, more fine-grained and clinically relevant picture of the process of aggravation of the bipolar cycle.