Phenomenography : opening a new territory for library and information science research

Phenomenography is a research approach devised to allow the investigation of varying ways in which people experience aspects of their world. Whilst growing attention is being paid to interpretative research in LIS, it is not always clear how the outcomes of such research can be used in practice. This article explores the potential contribution of phenomenography in advancing the application of phenomenological and hermeneutic frameworks to LIS theory, research and practice. In phenomenography we find a research toll which in revealing variation, uncovers everyday understandings of phenomena and provides outcomes which are readily applicable to professional practice. THe outcomes may be used in human computer interface design, enhancement, implementation and training, in the design and evaluation of services, and in education and training for both end users and information professionals. A proposed research territory for phenomenography in LIS includes investigating qualitative variation in the experienced meaning of: 1) information and its role in society 2) LIS concepts and principles 3) LIS processes and; 4) LIS elements.

Supplementary Information : Hogan, Holland, Holloway, Petit and Read : Read Classification for Next Generation Sequencing, ESANN 2013, April 2013

This item provides supplementary materials for the paper mentioned in the title, specifically a range of organisms used in the study. The full abstract for the main paper is as follows: Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies have revolutionised molecular biology, allowing clinical sequencing to become a matter of routine. NGS data sets consist of short sequence reads obtained from the machine, given context and meaning through downstream assembly and annotation. For these techniques to operate successfully, the collected reads must be consistent with the assumed species or species group, and not corrupted in some way. The common bacterium Staphylococcus aureus may cause severe and life-threatening infections in humans,with some strains exhibiting antibiotic resistance. In this paper, we apply an SVM classifier to the important problem of distinguishing S. aureus sequencing projects from alternative pathogens, including closely related Staphylococci. Using a sequence k-mer representation, we achieve precision and recall above 95%, implicating features with important functional associations.

Modeling and detection of complex attacks

A complex attack is a sequence of temporally and spatially separated legal and illegal actions each of which can be detected by various IDS but as a whole they constitute a powerful attack. IDS fall short of detecting and modeling complex attacks therefore new methods are required. This paper presents a formal methodology for modeling and detection of complex attacks in three phases: (1) we extend basic attack tree (AT) approach to capture temporal dependencies between components and expiration of an attack, (2) using enhanced AT we build a tree automaton which accepts a sequence of actions from input message streams from various sources if there is a traversal of an AT from leaves to root, and (3) we show how to construct an enhanced parallel automaton that has each tree automaton as a subroutine. We use simulation to test our methods, and provide a case study of representing attacks in WLANs.

Towards a secure human-and-computer mutual authentication protocol

We blend research from human-computer interface (HCI) design with computational based crypto- graphic provable security. We explore the notion of practice-oriented provable security (POPS), moving the focus to a higher level of abstraction (POPS+) for use in providing provable security for security ceremonies involving humans. In doing so we high- light some challenges and paradigm shifts required to achieve meaningful provable security for a protocol which includes a human. We move the focus of security ceremonies from being protocols in their context of use, to the protocols being cryptographic building blocks in a higher level protocol (the security cere- mony), which POPS can be applied to. In order to illustrate the need for our approach, we analyse both a protocol proven secure in theory, and a similar proto- col implemented by a �nancial institution, from both HCI and cryptographic perspectives.

A lightweight biometric signature scheme for user authentication over networks

We introduce a lightweight biometric solution for user authentication over networks using online handwritten signatures. The algorithm proposed is based on a modified Hausdorff distance and has favorable characteristics such as low computational cost and minimal training requirements. Furthermore, we investigate an information theoretic model for capacity and performance analysis for biometric authentication which brings additional theoretical insights to the problem. A fully functional proof-of-concept prototype that relies on commonly available off-the-shelf hardware is developed as a client-server system that supports Web services. Initial experimental results show that the algorithm performs well despite its low computational requirements and is resilient against over-the-shoulder attacks.

Enhancing security of linux-based android devices

Our daily lives become more and more dependent upon smartphones due to their increased capabilities. Smartphones are used in various ways from payment systems to assisting the lives of elderly or disabled people. Security threats for these devices become increasingly dangerous since there is still a lack of proper security tools for protection. Android emerges as an open smartphone platform which allows modification even on operating system level. Therefore, third-party developers have the opportunity to develop kernel-based low-level security tools which is not normal for smartphone platforms. Android quickly gained its popularity among smartphone developers and even beyond since it bases on Java on top of "open" Linux in comparison to former proprietary platforms which have very restrictive SDKs and corresponding APIs. Symbian OS for example, holding the greatest market share among all smartphone OSs, was closing critical APIs to common developers and introduced application certification. This was done since this OS was the main target for smartphone malwares in the past. In fact, more than 290 malwares designed for Symbian OS appeared from July 2004 to July 2008. Android, in turn, promises to be completely open source. Together with the Linux-based smartphone OS OpenMoko, open smartphone platforms may attract malware writers for creating malicious applications endangering the critical smartphone applications and owners� privacy. In this work, we present our current results in analyzing the security of Android smartphones with a focus on its Linux side. Our results are not limited to Android, they are also applicable to Linux-based smartphones such as OpenMoko Neo FreeRunner. Our contribution in this work is three-fold. First, we analyze android framework and the Linux-kernel to check security functionalities. We survey wellaccepted security mechanisms and tools which can increase device security. We provide descriptions on how to adopt these security tools on Android kernel, and provide their overhead analysis in terms of resource usage. As open smartphones are released and may increase their market share similar to Symbian, they may attract attention of malware writers. Therefore, our second contribution focuses on malware detection techniques at the kernel level. We test applicability of existing signature and intrusion detection methods in Android environment. We focus on monitoring events on the kernel; that is, identifying critical kernel, log file, file system and network activity events, and devising efficient mechanisms to monitor them in a resource limited environment. Our third contribution involves initial results of our malware detection mechanism basing on static function call analysis. We identified approximately 105 Executable and Linking Format (ELF) executables installed to the Linux side of Android. We perform a statistical analysis on the function calls used by these applications. The results of the analysis can be compared to newly installed applications for detecting significant differences. Additionally, certain function calls indicate malicious activity. Therefore, we present a simple decision tree for deciding the suspiciousness of the corresponding application. Our results present a first step towards detecting malicious applications on Android-based devices.

Goodbye TAIS and thanks for all the information

The Therapeutic Advice and Information Service was funded by the National Prescribing Service to provide a national drug information service for health professionals working in the community. For ten years the service achieved high levels of client satisfaction, and reached its contracted target of 6000 enquiries about medicines per year, however the service ceased on 30 June 2010.

Collaborative intrusion detection framework : characteristics, adversarial opportunities and countermeasures

Complex Internet attacks may come from multiple sources, and target multiple networks and technologies. Nevertheless, Collaborative Intrusion Detection Systems (CIDS) emerges as a promising solution by using information from multiple sources to gain a better understanding of objective and impact of complex Internet attacks. CIDS also help to cope with classical problems of Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) such as zero-day attacks, high false alarm rates and architectural challenges, e. g., centralized designs exposing the Single-Point-of-Failure. Improved complexity on the other hand gives raise to new exploitation opportunities for adversaries. The contribution of this paper is twofold. We first investigate related research on CIDS to identify the common building blocks and to understand vulnerabilities of the Collaborative Intrusion Detection Framework (CIDF). Second, we focus on the problem of anonymity preservation in a decentralized intrusion detection related message exchange scheme. We use techniques from design theory to provide multi-path peer-to-peer communication scheme where the adversary can not perform better than guessing randomly the originator of an alert message.

Ontology-based feature modeling for construction information extraction from a building information model

A building information model (BIM) provides a rich representation of a building's design. However, there are many challenges in getting construction-specific information from a BIM, limiting the usability of BIM for construction and other downstream processes. This paper describes a novel approach that utilizes ontology-based feature modeling, automatic feature extraction based on ifcXML, and query processing to extract information relevant to construction practitioners from a given BIM. The feature ontology generically represents construction-specific information that is useful for a broad range of construction management functions. The software prototype uses the ontology to transform the designer-focused BIM into a construction-specific feature-based model (FBM). The formal query methods operate on the FBM to further help construction users to quickly extract the necessary information from a BIM. Our tests demonstrate that this approach provides a richer representation of construction-specific information compared to existing BIM tools.

Querying a building information model for construction-specific spatial information

The design and construction community has shown increasing interest in adopting building information models (BIMs). The richness of information provided by BIMs has the potential to streamline the design and construction processes by enabling enhanced communication, coordination, automation and analysis. However, there are many challenges in extracting construction-specific information out of BIMs. In most cases, construction practitioners have to manually identify the required information, which is inefficient and prone to error, particularly for complex, large-scale projects. This paper describes the process and methods we have formalized to partially automate the extraction and querying of construction-specific information from a BIM. We describe methods for analyzing a BIM to query for spatial information that is relevant for construction practitioners, and that is typically represented implicitly in a BIM. Our approach integrates ifcXML data and other spatial data to develop a richer model for construction users. We employ custom 2D topological XQuery predicates to answer a variety of spatial queries. The validation results demonstrate that this approach provides a richer representation of construction-specific information compared to existing BIM tools.

A state-aware RFID privacy model with reader corruption

A number of security models have been proposed for RFID systems. Recent studies show that current models tend to be limited in the number of properties they capture. Consequently, models are commonly unable to distinguish between protocols with regard to finer privacy properties. This paper proposes a privacy model that introduces previously unavailable expressions of privacy. Based on the well-studied notion of indistinguishability, the model also strives to be simpler, easier to use, and more intuitive compared to previous models.

Crowdsourcing information systems : definition, typology and design

Crowdsourcing has become a popular approach for capitalizing on the potential of large and open crowds of people external to the organization. While crowdsourcing as a phenomenon is studied in a variety of fields, research mostly focuses on isolated aspects and little is known about the integrated design of crowdsourcing efforts. We introduce a socio-technical systems perspective on crowdsourcing, which provides a deeper understanding of the components and relationships in crowdsourcing systems. By considering the function of crowdsourcing systems within their organizational context, we develop a typology of four distinct system archetypes. We analyze the characteristics of each type and derive a number of design requirements for the respective system components. The paper lays a foundation for IS-based crowdsourcing research, channels related academic work, and helps guiding the study and design of crowdsourcing information systems.

Open source information retrieval : a report on the SIGIR 2012 workshop

On August 16, 2012 the SIGIR 2012 Workshop on Open Source Information Retrieval was held as part of the SIGIR 2012 conference in Portland, Oregon, USA. There were 2 invited talks, one from industry and one from academia. There were 6 full papers and 6 short papers presented as well as demonstrations of 4 open source tools. Finally there was a lively discussion on future directions for the open source Information Retrieval community. This contribution discusses the events of the workshop and outlines future directions for the community.

Using static analysis for automatic assessment and mitigation of unwanted and malicious activities within Android applications

In the last decade, smartphones have gained widespread usage. Since the advent of online application stores, hundreds of thousands of applications have become instantly available to millions of smart-phone users. Within the Android ecosystem, application security is governed by digital signatures and a list of coarse-grained permissions. However, this mechanism is not fine-grained enough to provide the user with a sufficient means of control of the applications' activities. Abuse of highly sensible private information such as phone numbers without users' notice is the result. We show that there is a high frequency of privacy leaks even among widely popular applications. Together with the fact that the majority of the users are not proficient in computer security, this presents a challenge to the engineers developing security solutions for the platform. Our contribution is twofold: first, we propose a service which is able to assess Android Market applications via static analysis and provide detailed, but readable reports to the user. Second, we describe a means to mitigate security and privacy threats by automated reverse-engineering and refactoring binary application packages according to the users' security preferences.

A simulation framework for smart meter security evaluation

The evolution of classic power grids to smart grids creates chances for most participants in the energy sector. Customers can save money by reducing energy consumption, energy providers can better predict energy demand and environment benefits since lower energy consumption implies lower energy production including a decrease of emissions from plants. But information and communication systems supporting smart grids can also be subject to classical or new network attacks. Attacks can result in serious damage such as harming privacy of customers, creating economical loss and even disturb the power supply/demand balance of large regions and countries. In this paper, we give an overview about the German smart measuring architecture, protocols and security. Afterwards, we present a simulation framework which enables researchers to analyze security aspects of smart measuring scenarios.