The impact of interaction quality factors on the effectiveness of Web-based information system: the mediating role of user satisfaction

Recently, IS researchers have focused on the assessment of Web-based information system (WBIS) at the individual level as it highly contributes to the organizations’ employees. The evaluation and development of WBIS is significantly needed because the top management is in need of justifying their costly IT investment in terms of its impacts on employee performance. For this purpose, this study is primarily concerned with the development and validation of new multidimensional instrument, and also a theoretical framework for assessing the impacts of user interface quality, online communication quality, and user satisfaction on the effectiveness of Web employee portals. The effectiveness is assessed in terms of contextual performance. In a large-scale study, a sample of 384 United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees respondents are gathered in order to validate and check the reliability of the adapted study instrument. The results of validity and reliability analysis provide enough confidence to proceed toward validating the proposed theoretical framework. The results of multiple-regression analysis indicate that there is a positive significant relationship between user interface quality, communication quality, user satisfaction, and effectiveness at significance level (sig. < 0.01). As another important point, the results of hierarchical regression showed that user satisfaction has a mediating role on the relationship between user interface quality, communication quality, and contextual employee performance. The findings and implications of this research are discussed. Finally, it is expected that this study would contribute to empirical studies in the fields of IS and user behavior assessment.     

Insecticidal Effects of Organotin(IV) Compounds on Plutella Xylostella (L.) Larvae. II. Inhibitory Potencies Against Acetylcholinesterase and Evidence for Synergism in Tests With Bacillus Thuringiensis(BER.) and Malathion

Features of pesticide synergism and acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibition (in vitro) were studied using a selected range of organotin compounds against the early 4th instar larvae of a highly resistant strain of the diamondback moth (DBM), Plutella xylostella, a major universal pest of cruciferous vegetables.Fourteen triorganotin compounds were evaluated for their ability to enhance the toxicity of the microbial insecticide, Bacillus thuringiensis (BT) and of the commercial insecticide, Malathion to Plutella xylostella larvae. Supplemental synergism was observed with triphenyl- and tricyclopentyltin hydroxides in combinations with Bacillus thuringiensis. Increased synergism was observed with an increase in the number of cyclopentyl groups on tin in the mixed series, Cyp(n) Ph(3-n) SnX, where X = OH, and 1-(1,2,4-triazolyl). The combination of (p-chlorophenyl)diphenyltin N,N-dimethyldithiocarbamate at LD(10) and LD(25) concentrations with sublethal concentrations of Malathion as well as of tricyclohexyltin methanesulphonate at the 0.01% (w/v) concentration with Malathion exerted strong synergistic effects (supplemental synergism) with toxicity index (T.I) values of 7.2, 19.8 and 10.1, respectively.Studies on the in vitro inhibition of acetylcholinesterase prepared from the DBM larvae showed that while most of the triorganotin Compounds tested were without effect on the enzyme, compounds containing the thiocarbamylacetate or the dithiocarbamylacetate moieties demonstrated appreciable levels of inhibition, being comparable in efficacy to commercial grades of Malathion and Methomyl.     

Enhanced halftone-based secure and improved visual cryptography scheme for colour/binary Images

Visual Cryptography (VC) is gaining attraction during the past few years to secure the visual information in the transmission network. It enables the visual data i.e. handwritten notes, photos, printed text, etc. to encrypt in such a way that their decryption can be done through the human visual framework. Hence, no computational assistance is required for the decryption of the secret images they can be seen through naked eye. In this paper, a novel enhanced halftoning-based VC scheme is proposed that works for both binary and color images. Fake share is generated by the combination of random black and white pixels. The proposed algorithm consists of 3 stages i.e., detection, encryption, and decryption. Halftoning, Encryption, (2, 2) visual cryptography and the novel idea of fake share, make it even more secure and improved. As a result, it facilitates the original restored image to the authentic user, however, the one who enters the wrong password gets the combination of fake share with any real share. Both colored and black images can be processed with minimal capacity using the proposed scheme.

     

A novel secure solution of using mixed reality in data transmission for bowel and jaw surgical telepresence: enhanced rivest cipher RC6 block cipher

Security threats are crucial challenges that deter Mixed reality (MR) communication in medical telepresence. This research aims to improve the security by reducing the chances of types of various attacks occurring during the real-time data transmission in surgical telepresence as well as reduce the time of the cryptographic algorithm and keep the quality of the media used. The proposed model consists of an enhanced RC6 algorithm in combination. Dynamic keys are generated from the RC6 algorithm mixed with RC4 to create dynamic S-box and permutation table, preventing various known attacks during the real-time data transmission. For every next session, a new key is created, avoiding possible reuse of the same key from the attacker. The results obtained from our proposed system are showing better performance compared to the state of art. The resistance to the tested attacks is measured throughout the entropy, Pick to Signal Noise Ratio (PSNR) is decreased for the encrypted image than the state of art, structural similarity index (SSIM) closer to zero. The execution time of the algorithm is decreased for an average of 20%. The proposed system is focusing on preventing the brute force attack occurred during the surgical telepresence data transmission. The paper proposes a framework that enhances the security related to data transmission during surgeries with acceptable performance.

     

Model reduction based on limited‐time interval impulse response Gramians

In this paper, three new Gramians are introduced namely ‐ limited‐time interval impulse response Gramians (LTIRG), generalized limited‐time Gramians (GLTG) and generalized limited‐time impulse response Gramians (GLTIRG). GLTG and GLTIRG are applicable to both unstable systems and also to systems which have eigenvalues of opposite polarities and equal magnitude. The concept of these Gramians is utilized to develop model reduction algorithms for linear time‐invariant continuous‐time single‐input single‐output (SISO) systems. In the cases of GLTIRG and GLTG based model reduction, the standard time‐limited Gramians are generalized to be applied to unstable systems by transforming the original system into a new system which requires the solution of two Riccati equations. Two numerical examples are included to illustrate the proposed methods. The results are also compared with standard techniques.     

A scalable hybrid decision system (HDS) for Roman word recognition using ANN SVM: study case on Malay word recognition

An off-line handwriting recognition (OFHR) system is a computerized system that is capable of intelligently converting human handwritten data extracted from scanned paper documents into an equivalent text format. This paper studies a proposed OFHR for Malaysian bank cheques written in the Malay language. The proposed system comprised of three components, namely a character recognition system (CRS), a hybrid decision system and lexical word classification system. Two types of feature extraction techniques have been used in the system, namely statistical and geometrical. Experiments show that the statistical feature is reliable, accessible and offers results that are more accurate. The CRS in this system was implemented using two individual classifiers, namely an adaptive multilayer feed-forward back-propagation neural network and support vector machine. The results of this study are very promising and could generalize to the entire Malay lexical dictionary in future work toward scaled-up applications.     

A secure image encryption scheme based on chaotic maps and affine transformation

Due to the interesting nonlinear dynamic properties of chaotic maps, recently chaos-based encryption algorithms have gained much attention in cryptographic communities. However, many encryption schemes do not fulfil the minimum key space requirement, which is an essential concern in many secure data applications. In this paper, an efficient chaos-based image encryption scheme with higher key space is presented. Even with a single round of encryption, a significantly larger key space can be achieved. The proposed scheme removes correlation among image pixels via random chaotic sequences, simply by XOR and addition operations. In order to resist against numerous attacks, we apply the affine transformation to get the final ciphertext image. The security of the proposed scheme is proved through histogram, contrast, PSNR, entropy, correlation, key space, key sensitivity and differential attack analysis. Many significant properties of chaotic maps, sensitivity to initial condition and control parameters, structure and attack complexity, make the anticipated scheme very reliable, practical and robust in various secure communication applications.     

A cross-layer approach for partition detection at overlay layer for structured P2P in MANETs

Due to limited radio range and mobility of nodes in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), the network partitioning and merging could occur frequently. When structured peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are running over MANETs, then network partition in the physical network can also cause network partition at the overlay layer. Existing approaches for structured P2P overlay over MANETs do not detect network partition at the overlay layer. This paper proposes a cross-layer approach to detect network partition at the overlay layer for structured P2P overlay over MANETs. Simulation results show that the proposed approach is highly effective and efficient in terms of routing overhead, success ratio and false-negative ratio.     

Evolving Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy model based on switching to neighboring models

In this paper, we propose a new online identification approach for evolving Takagi–Sugeno (TS) fuzzy models. Here, for a TS model, a certain number of models as neighboring models are defined and then the TS model switches to one of them at each stage of evolving. We define neighboring models for an in-progress (current) TS model as its fairly evolved versions, which are different with it just in two fuzzy rules. To generate neighboring models for the current model, we apply specially designed split and merge operations. By each split operation, a fuzzy rule is replaced with two rules; while by each merge operation, two fuzzy rules combine to one rule. Among neighboring models, the one with the minimum sum of squared errors – on certain time intervals – replaces the current model.To reduce the computational load of the proposed evolving TS model, straightforward relations between outputs of neighboring models and that of current model are established. Also, to reduce the number of rules, we define and use first-order TS fuzzy models whose generated local linear models can be localized in flexible fuzzy subspaces. To demonstrate the improved performance of the proposed identification approach, the efficiency of the evolving TS model is studied in prediction of monthly sunspot number and forecast of daily electrical power consumption. The prediction and modeling results are compared with that of some important existing evolving fuzzy systems.     

Performance analysis of multimedia based web traffic with QoS constraints

During the recent years, there has been a tremendous growth in the development and deployment of multimedia based networked applications such as video streaming, IP telephony, interactive games, among others. These applications, in contrast to elastic applications such as email and data sharing, are delay and delay jitter sensitive but can tolerate certain level of packet loss. A vital element of end-to-end delay and delay jitter is the random queueing delays in network switches and routers. Analysis of robust mechanisms for buffer management at network routers needs to be carried out in order to reduce end-to-end delay for traffic generated by multimedia applications. In this context, a threshold based buffer management scheme for accommodating multiple class multimedia traffic in network routers has been analysed. This technique effectively controls the allocation of buffer to various traffic classes according to their delay constraints. The forms of the joint state probabilities, as well as basic performance measures such as blocking probabilities are analytically established at equilibrium. Typical numerical experiments are included to illustrate the credibility of the proposed mechanism in the context of different quality of service (QoS) grades for various network traffic classes. This model, therefore, can be used as a powerful tool to provide a required grade of service to a particular class of multimedia based web traffic in any heterogeneous network.