Protecting information systems to reduce the risk of security incidents is critical for organizations today. This writing provides instruction for security leaders on the processes and techniques for managing a security program. It contains practical information on the breadth of information security topics, referring to many other writings that provide details on technical security topics. This provides foundation for a security program responsive to technology developments and an evolving threat environment.The security leader may be engaged by an organization that is in crisis, where the priority action is to recover from a serious incident. This work offers foundation knowledge for the security leader to immediately apply to the organization's security program while improving it to the...

In many cases, the beginning engineering student is thrown into upper-level engineering courses without an adequate introduction to the basic material. This, at best, causes undue stress on the student as they feel unprepared when faced with unfamiliar material, and at worst, results in students dropping out of the program or changing majors when they discover that their chosen field of engineering is not what they thought it was. The purpose of this text is to introduce the student to a general cross-section of the field of electrical and computer engineering. The text is aimed at incoming freshmen, and as such, assumes that the reader has a limited to nonexistent background in electrical engineering and knowledge of no more than pre-calculus in the field of mathematics. By exposing s...

This is the complete 2 volume set, containing both volumes one (ISBN: 9781599424910) and two (ISBN: 9781599425436) packaged together. The book provides a complete guide to the protocols that comprise the Internet Protocol Suite, more commonly referred to as TCP/IP. The work assumes no prior knowledge of TCP/IP and only a rudimentary understanding of LAN/WAN access methods. The book is split into a number of sections; the manner in which data is transported between systems, routing principles and protocols, applications and services, security, and Wide Area communications. Each section builds on the last in a tutorial manner and describes the protocols in detail so serving as a reference for students and networking professionals of all levels. Volume I - Data Delivery & Routing Sectio...

The book provides a complete guide to the protocols that comprise the Internet Protocol Suite, more commonly referred to as TCP/IP. The work assumes no prior knowledge of TCP/IP and only a rudimentary understanding of LAN/WAN access methods. The book is split into a number of sections; the manner in which data is transported between systems, routing principles and protocols, applications and services, security, and Wide Area communications. Each section builds on the last in a tutorial manner and describes the protocols in detail so serving as a reference for students and networking professionals of all levels. Volume I - Data Delivery & Routing Section A: Introduction Section B: The Internet Protocol Section C: Reliable and Unreliable Data Delivery Section D: Quality of Service ...

Business Database Technology provides essential knowledge of database technology for four-year college/university business students who study information technology and data resource management. Students will learn basic data structure techniques in databases, relational database model, design and implementation of relational databases, normalization, SQL, physical relational database design techniques, database administration, relational databases in computer networks, data warehouses, overview of OLAP (online analytical processing), and introduction to NoSQL databases.

The International Conference on Signals, Systems and Automation (ICSSA 2011) aims to spread awareness in the research and academic community regarding cutting-edge technological advancements revolutionizing the world. The main emphasis of this conference is on dissemination of information, experience, and research results on the current topics of interest through in-depth discussions and participation of researchers from all over the world. The objective is to provide a platform to scientists, research scholars, and industrialists for interacting and exchanging ideas in a number of research areas. This will facilitate communication among researchers in different fields of Electronics and Communication Engineering. The International Conference on Intelligent System and Data Processing (I...

The book provides a complete guide to the protocols that comprise the Internet Protocol Suite, more commonly referred to as TCP/IP. The work assumes no prior knowledge of TCP/IP and only a rudimentary understanding of LAN/WAN access methods. The book is split into a number of sections; the manner in which data is transported between systems, routing principles and protocols, applications and services, security, and Wide Area communications. Each section builds on the last in a tutorial manner and describes the protocols in detail so serving as a reference for students and networking professionals of all levels. Volume I - Data Delivery & Routing Section A: Introduction Section B: The Internet Protocol Section C: Reliable and Unreliable Data Delivery Section D: Quality of Service S...

Upper body power (UBP) is one of the most important factors affecting the performance of cross-country skiers during races. Although some initial studies have already attempted to predict UBP, until now, no study has attempted to apply machine learning methods combined with various feature selection algorithms to identify the discriminative features for prediction of UBP. The purpose of this study is to develop new prediction models for predicting the 10-second UBP (UBP10) and 60-second UBP (UBP60) of cross-country skiers by using General Regression Neural Networks (GRNN), Radial-Basis Function Network (RBF), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Single Decision Tree (SDT) and Tree Boost (TB) along with the Relief-F feature selection algorithm, minimum redundancy maxim...

Starting with a summary of the history of Artificial Intelligence, this book makes the bridge to the modern debate on the definition of Intelligence and the path to building Intelligent Machines. Since the definition of Intelligence is itself subject to open debate, the quest for Intelligent machines is pursuing a moving target. Apparently, intelligent behaviour is, to a great extent, the result of using a sophisticated associative memory, more than the result of heavy processing. The book describes theories on how the brain works, associative memory models and how a particular model - the Sparse Distributed Memory (SDM) - can be used to navigate a robot based on visual memories. Other robot navigation methods are also comprehensively revised and compared to the method proposed. The per...

This book was written with the novice or intermediate 8052 developer in mind. Assuming no prior knowledge of the 8052, it takes the reader step-by-step through the architecture including discussions and explanations of concepts such as internal RAM, external RAM, Special Function Registers (SFRs), addressing modes, timers, serial I/O, and interrupts. This is followed by an in-depth section on assembly language which explains each instruction in the 8052 instruction set as well as related concepts such as assembly language syntax, expressions, assembly language directives, and how to implement 16-bit mathematical functions. The book continues with a thorough explanation of the 8052 hardware itself, reviewing the function of each pin on the microcontroller and follows this with the design ...

The operational aspects of Lambda Calculus are studied as a fundamental basis for high-order functional computation. We consider systems having full reduction semantics, i.e., equivalence-preserving transformations of functions. The historic lineage from Eval-Apply to SECD to RTNF/RTLF culminates in the techniques of normal-order graph Head Order Reduction (HOR). By using a scalar mechanism to artificially bind relatively free variables, HOR makes it relatively effortless to reduce expressions beyond weak normal form and to allow expression-level results while exhibiting a well-behaved linear self-modifying code structure. Several variations of HOR are presented and compared to other efficient reducers, with and without sharing, including a conservative breadth-first one which mechanically...

Arduino for the Cloud considers the Arduino Yun and the Dragino Yun Shield as components closing the gap between a typical microcontroller application and connection to the cloud. Arduino Yun combines the classic Arduino with an Atheros AR9331 system-on-a-chip (SoC) for wireless access points and routers platforms, which uses the Linux distribution Linino (OpenWRT) operating system. The Dragino Yun Shield expands any Arduino with network capabilities by the Atheros AR9331.The combination of microcontroller and Linux device supports the whole chain from sensor to software applications in the cloud by hardware and software. This book deals with the Arduino and the Linux device and their interaction, without the need of detailed Linux knowledge.

This book presents a comprehensive process for visualization of interface metaphor for software. It is helpful in designing interactive user interfaces with magical super-affordances and definitive user experiences. As per the ancient Indian Vedic literature, metaphors are always conceived out of Vastu (entities having existence in our world). The visualization process given in the book shows how metaphorization could help in innovating highly experiential user interfaces, as one can create Avastu (non entities) by combining different objects and imaginative properties together. The main highlights of this process are selection and dissection of interface metaphor, pre-facto analysis, qualitative and quantitative evaluation, mapping between user and application domain lexicons, specialized...

This research is dedicated to two main problems in finding shortest paths in the graphs. The first problem is to find shortest paths from an origin to all other vertices in non-negatively weighted graph. The second problem is the same, except it is allowed that some edges are negative. This is a more difficult problem that can be solved by relatively complicated algorithms. We attack the first problem by introducing a new data structure - Relaxed Heaps that implements efficiently two main operations critical for the improvement of Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm. R²heaps with suspended relaxation proposed in this research gives the best known worst-case time bounds of O(1) for a decrease_key operation and O(logn) for a delete_min operation. That results in the best worst-case runnin...

Shape classification is a challenging image processing problem because shapes can occur in any position, at any orientation, and at any scale in an image. Shapes can also be obscured by gaps in their boundaries, occlusions, and noise. General shape classifiers often suffer from low precision, and specialized shape classifiers rely on specific features, like vertices or connected boundaries, making them difficult to generalize. The objective of this research is to design, implement, and test a general, high-precision two-dimensional shape classifier that is invariant to translation, scale, and rotation, as well as robust to gaps in the shape boundary, occlusions, and noise. To achieve this objective, the radial feature token (RFT) is implemented as the ALISA Shape Module, which learns to cl...

A synopsis of eminent computer chess programs reveal that they are designed around a 'brute force' approach. An argument is made that by continuing the 'brute force' search approach, computer chess development is moving away from human evaluation methods. Research is done into studies of evaluation methods, and a discovery is made that humans use a form of intuition, called their 'sense of beauty', to choose the best chess move. A paper by Margulies is cited which formulates principles of beauty which apply to chess. Three versions of a chess program are developed, using no heuristics, standard chess heuristics, and beauty heuristics formulated from Margulies principles. The performance of the three versions of the program are compared using chess puzzles, and rated for how quickly they fi...

As distributed applications become more sophisticated, their implementation becomes more and more difficult. It is therefore important to study how to facilitate the implementation of efficient distributed applications. This thesis reviews the different classes of distributed languages and presents a new approach to develop efficient distributed programs using the Ada language. This approach is compared in detail with existing distributed programming languages, existing approaches to distributed Ada programs, and the Distributed Annex of the new revision of Ada language.

In an effort to extend traditional human-computer interfaces research has introduced embodied agents to utilize the modalities of everyday human-human communication, like facial expression, gestures and body postures. However, giving computer agents a human-like body introduces new challenges. Since human users are very sensitive and critical concerning bodily behavior the agents must act naturally and individually in order to be believable. This dissertation focuses on conversational gestures. It shows how to generate conversational gestures for an animated embodied agent based on annotated text input. The central idea is to imitate the gestural behavior of a human individual. Using TV show recordings as empirical data, gestural key parameters are extracte...

Almost from the very beginning of the digital age, people have sought better ways to communicate with computers. This research investigates how computers might be enabled to understand natural language in a more humanlike way. Based, in part, on cognitive development in infants, we introduce an open computational framework for visual perception and grounded language acquisition called Experience-Based Language Acquisition (EBLA). EBLA can watch a series of short videos and acquire a simple language of nouns and verbs corresponding to the objects and object-object relations in those videos. Upon acquiring this protolanguage, EBLA can perform basic scene analysis to generate descriptions of novel videos.The general architecture of EBLA is comprised of three stages: vision processing, entit...

This dissertation introduces new hardware architectures for more realistic surface rendering of three dimensional objects and the rendering of volumetric datasets. Surface rendering is dealt with in the first part of the dissertation where the architectures for displacement map rendering in hardware are proposed. This work represents the first to appear in scientific literature on displacement map hardware rendering. Where possible these architectures propose components that integrate into currently available pipelines and make use of existing units in those pipelines. Displacement map rendering in hardware is a desired feature currently under development by most graphics hardware vendors. The first architecture is scan-line based and works just before rasterization and the second adaptiv...

In this dissertation, a new spare capacity planning methodology is proposed utilizing path restoration. The approach is based on forcing working flows/traffic which are on paths that are disjoint to share spare backup capacity. The algorithm for determining the spare capacity assignment is based on genetic algorithms and is capable of incorporating non-linear variables such as non-linear cost function and QoS variables into the objective and constraints. The proposed methodology applies to a wider range of fault scenarios than most of the current literature. It can tolerate link-failures, node-failures, and link-and-node failures. It consists of two stages: the first stage generates a set of network topologies that maximize the sharing between backup paths by forcing them to use a subse...

Comprehensive global garbage detection (GGD) in object-oriented distributed systems, i.e., GGD intrinsically able to detect distributed cycles of garbage, has mostly been addressed via graph tracing algorithms. Graph tracing algorithms must account for every live object in the system before any resource can actually be reclaimed which compromises both their scalability and robustness in a distributed environment. Alternative non-comprehensive approaches trade-off comprehensiveness for scalability and robustness under the assumptions that distributed cycles of garbage are rare and that all comprehensive algorithms are necessarily unscalable. This thesis contends instead that distributed cycles of garbage are as likely to occur as local cycles and that a comprehensive alternative to g...

"Liberal order and software-agents" - long-established ideas and modern technology are bridged. The impulse for undertaking this effort comes from the observation that it becomes difficult for computer science alone to create order for and within machines. The growing complexity of computer systems, open networks like the Internet, and the increasingly social role of software entities push the traditional quest for total global control out of reach. Economic theory of social order offers extensive experience with such conditions, so that it can complement and guide research in computer science. It is shown that a common understanding between economics and computer science's sub-field of distributed artificial intelligence is possible on the level of software-agents. On this basis, four fun...

The book has an introductory chapter that gets the reader started quickly with programming in Perl. The initial part of the book discusses Perl expressions, statements, control flow, built-in data types such as arrays and hashes, and complex data structures built using references. The chapter on regular expressions is exemplary with about fifty well-motivated example programs that make this useful topic particularly accessible. The book has an excellent chapter on modules and object-oriented programming. On Perl has several chapters covering specialized topics. The chapter on socket-based network programming deals with forking and using fork to write complex interactive client-server programs. There is a chapter with in-depth discussion of CGI programming including error-ha...

The Information Systems Department of the College of Economics and Political Science at Sultan Qaboos University organized an international conference on Information Systems (iiSC) in October 2011. The conference proceedings contain written versions of selected contributions presented during the conference. The conference theme was 'information systems for sustainable business development.' The conference provided a forum for discussion on current issues and challenges as well as recent and future developments across a wide range of areas in information systems including. - Trends in Information Systems - E-commerce and E-business Challenges - Knowledge Management and IS industrial applications - Trends in Web technologies - IS Security and Mobile Computing - E-Governmen...

Are all Wireless LANs equal? A network administrator is faced with a plethora of wireless services, complex radio issues, and products for wireless data. There are brand new protocols and products that could become obsolete a day after installation! Over 40% of all deployed WLANs do not even have minimum security activated, exposing the company's network and records to easy outsider access.The WLAN industry is characterized by rapidly changing, incomplete or proprietary standards, which can impact interoperability goals. There are complicated ownership costs, performance limitations, and security configurations that exist for WLANs which many network administrators may not understand or know how to compare. This dissertation presents a decision support system (DSS) that enables a nov...

The NWO-programme "the societal aspects of genomics", has called for stronger means of collaboration and deliberative involvement between the various stakeholders of genomics research. Within the project group assembled at the UH, this call was translated to the 'lingua democratica', in which the prerequisites of such deliberative efforts were put to scrutiny. The contribution of this thesis has taken a more or less abstract angle to this task, and sought to develop a vocabulary that can be shared amongst various stakeholders with different backgrounds, interests and stakes for any complex theme, although genomics has more or less been in focus throughout the research. As 'complexity thinking' is currently a theme in both the 'hard' sciences as the social sciences and the humanities, and ...

Context Mediation is a field of research that is concerned with the interchange of information across different environments, which provides a vehicle to bridge semantic gaps among disparate entities. Knowledge Discovery is concerned with the extraction of actionable information from large databases. A challenge that has received relatively little attention is knowledge discovery in a highly disparate environment, that is multiple heterogeneous data sources, multiple domain knowledge sources and multiple knowledge patterns. This thesis tackles the problem of semantic interoperability among data, domain knowledge and knowledge patterns in a knowledge discovery process using context mediation. Context fundamentals are introduced, which encompasses the concepts of context identity, sem...

The main problem addressed by this work is how to model and combine bodies of knowledge (or evidence) while maintaining the representation of the unkowledge and of the conflict among the bodies. This is a problem with far-reaching applications in many knowledge segments, in particular for the fields of artificial intelligence, product design, decision making, knowledge engineering and uncertain probability. It must be kept in mind that knowledge based systems depend on algorithms able to relate the inputs of a system to a correct answer coming out of the knowledge-base, and both the inputs and the knowledge-base are subject to information imperfections caused by the unknowledge and the conflict. There are several formalism to deal with knowledge representation and combination, among them...

Computational Finance, an exciting new cross-disciplinary research area, depends extensively on the tools and techniques of computer science, statistics, information systems and financial economics for educating the next generation of financial researchers, analysts, risk managers, and financial information technology professionals. This new discipline, sometimes also referred to as “Financial Engineering” or “Quantitative Finance” needs professionals with extensive skills both in finance and mathematics along with specialization in computer science. Soft-Computing in Capital Market hopes to fulfill the need of applications of this offshoot of the technology by providing a diverse collection of cross-disciplinary research. This edited volume covers most of the recent, advanced r...