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Exploring the feasibility and acceptability of the contents, design, and functionalities of an online intervention promoting mental health, wellbeing, and study skills in higher education students
Get PDFBackground: Substantial numbers of students in Higher Education (HE) are reporting mental health difficulties, such as mild to moderate symptoms of depression and anxiety. Coupled with academic skills challenges, these difficulties can lead to decreased academic performance, low levels of study satisfaction, and eventually drop out. Student support services are facing budget cuts and can only attend to limited numbers of students, usually the ones who present with more severe mental health problems. Moreover, face-to-face contact may not appeal to those students who feel embarrassed by their problems or are afraid of being stigmatised. To address this important problem, an online psychological wellbeing and study skills support system called MePlusMe, has been developed to provide personalised support to its users. In the present study we investigated the feasibility and acceptability of the contents, design, and functionalities of the system.
Methods: An offline version of the system was introduced to 13 postgraduate and undergraduate students (mean age = 31.3 yrs, SD = 10.25 yrs; 4 males) in a UK HE Institution, who presented with mild or moderate mental health difficulties. The participants evaluated the design of the system, its functionalities, and contents at Baseline and at Weeks 2, 4, and 8.
Results: Participants found the system easy to use, professional, and efficient and its contents non-judgemental and informative. Participants stated that engaging with and practicing the techniques targeted at mental health difficulties led to improvements in positive thinking and self-confidence, while the study skills techniques were practical. Suggestions for further improvement included the development of an app and an option for direct engagement with professionals.
Conclusions: The findings confirmed the acceptability of the contents, design and functionalities of the system, while providing useful information to inform its further development. Next steps include a feasibility study, which will test and quantify the effects on everyday functioning, mood, mental wellbeing, and academic self-efficacy after using the system, and subsequently a randomized controlled trial, which will evaluate its effectiveness
R-PEKS: RBAC enabled PEKS for secure access of cloud data
Get PDFIn the recent past, few works have been done by combining attribute-based access control with multi-user PEKS, i.e., public key encryption with keyword search. Such attribute enabled searchable encryption is most suitable for applications where the changing of privileges is done once in a while. However, to date, no efficient and secure scheme is available in the literature that is suitable for these applications where changing privileges are done frequently. In this paper our contributions are twofold. Firstly, we propose a new PEKS scheme for string search, which, unlike the previous constructions, is free from bi-linear mapping and is efficient by 97% compared to PEKS for string search proposed by Ray et al in TrustCom 2017. Secondly, we introduce role based access control (RBAC) to multi-user PEKS, where an arbitrary group of users can search and access the encrypted files depending upon roles. We termed this integrated scheme as R-PEKS. The efficiency of R-PEKS over the PEKS scheme is up to 90%. We provide formal security proofs for the different components of R-PEKS and validate these schemes using a commercial dataset
Dispositional disinhibition and alcohol use disorders: personality, risk appraisal and problematic alcohol consumption
Get PDFBackground: The relationship between psychopathic personality and problematic alcohol consumption could be important for understanding risk and potential interventions. This existing work on psychopathy and alcohol abuse is typically conducted in criminal and hospitalised populations and little attention has been paid to investigating the general populations’ psychopathic personality and problematic consumption of alcohol. The psychopathy-focused Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM) and the more general Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of personality (RST) focus on individual differences related to low self-control and sensation seeking, and could relate to problematic alcohol consumption in non-forensic samples. The current study brings together RST and psychopathic personality traits to predict alcohol use disorders. We hypothesise that impulsivity and anxiety predict problematic alcohol consumption and related risk appraisal.
Methods: We analysed data from a sample of 349 general population participants who had completed measures of the TriPM, RST, alcohol use disorders (AUDIT) and their perceived negative outcomes of high risk behaviour with the Cognitive Appraisal of Risky Events (CARE) measure.
Results: We find some evidence that TriPM’s disinhibition and RST’s anxious personality traits relate to AUDIT scores. We find limited evidence that personality traits predict the negative appraisal of risky events, but alcohol use was related to increased perceptions of the negative outcomes of alcohol consumption.
Conclusions: Overall this study shows that individual differences do relate to problematic alcohol consumption but not the appraisal of risks related to alcohol consumption. This has implications for the structuring of intervention for those at risk of problematic consumption of alcohol
Sustainable development of medium strength concrete using polypropylene as aggregate replacement
Get PDFAbstract—Plastic as an environmental burden is a well-rehearsed topic in the research area. This is due to its global demand and destructive impacts on the environment, which has been a significant concern to the governments. Typically, the use of plastic in the construction industry is seen across low-density, non-structural applications due to its diverse range of benefits including high strength-to-weight ratios, manipulability and durability. It can be said that with the level of plastic consumption experienced in the construction industry, an ongoing responsibility is shown for this sector to continually innovate alternatives for application of recycled plastic waste such as using plastic made replacement from polyethylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl and polypropylene in the concrete mix design. In this study, the impact of partially replaced fine aggregate with polypropylene in the concrete mix design was investigated to evaluate the concrete’s compressive strength by conducting an experimental work which comprises of six concrete mix batches with polypropylene replacements ranging from 0.5 to 3.0%. The results demonstrated a typical decline in the compressive strength with the addition of plastic aggregate, despite this reduction generally mitigated as the level of plastic in the concrete mix increased. Furthermore, two of the six plastic-containing concrete mixes tested in the current study exceeded the ST5 standardised prescribed concrete mix compressive strength requirement at 28-days containing 1.50% and 2.50% plastic aggregates, which demonstrated the potential for use of recycled polypropylene in structural applications, as a partial by mass, fine aggregate replacement in the concrete mix
Investigating performance constraints for blockchain based secure e-voting system
Get PDFVoting is one of the fundamental pillars of modern democracy. Continuous efforts have been made to strengthen the processes and methods involved to achieve verifiable, transparent voting systems. In recent years, blockchain has been increasingly used to address multi-dimensional challenges across widespread application domains including healthcare, finance and e-voting. However, achieving an efficient solution via use of blockchain requires consideration of a range of factors such as block generation rate, transaction speed, and block size which have a profound role in determining the overall performance of the solution. Current research into this aspect of blockchain is focused on Bitcoin with the objective to achieve comparable performance as of existing online payment systems such as VISA. However, there exists a gap in literature with respect to investigating performance constraints for wider application domains. In this paper, we present our efforts to address this gap by presenting a detailed study into performance and scalability constraints for an e-voting system. Specifically, we conducted rigorous experimentation with permissioned and permissionless blockchain settings across different scenarios with respect to voting population, block size, block generation rate and transaction speed. The experiments highlighted interesting observations with respect to the impact of these parameters on the overall efficiency and scalability of the e-voting model including trade-offs between different parameters as well as security and performance.
present our efforts to address this gap by presenting a detailed study into performance and scalability constraints for an e-voting system. Specifically, we conducted rigorous experimentation with permissioned and permissionless blockchain settings across different scenarios with respect to voting population, block size, block generation rate and transaction speed. The experiments highlighted interesting observations with respect to the impact of these parameters on the overall efficiency and scalability of the e-voting model including trade-offs between different parameters as well as security and performance
Score scroll: replacing page-based notation with a technology-enhanced solution in composition and performance.
Get PDFIn the author’s practice-led research into timbre transformation and the devices required to construct a coherent musical form with a very slow distribution of structural sound events, the aesthetic of the music conflicts with the physical limitations of human ensemble performance. This chapter traces the development back to the 1950s and the ‘mobile score’ experiments of Earle Brown, John Cage and Morton Feldman. The music can be described as slow and stretched out, quiet and fragile, tense and sustained; it is moderately dissonant, with non-directional harmony projected as cyclical transformations of two starting-point chords. The composition has a slow perceived tempo of unfolding. This is achieved by means of a careful placement of stronger musical gestures at timed intervals averaging eight seconds, but ranging from 0.5 seconds to 24 seconds. In order to maintain musical interest over the course of the composition, the decision was made to explore varying textural relationships between the main instruments
Guanxi or weak ties? Exploring Chinese diaspora tourists’ engagements in social capital building
Get PDFMost of existing studies assume that diaspora tourism can facilitate the tourists to reconnect socially to their ancestral home. Yet, how and why diaspora tourists engage in social capital building during their home return trips is still uncertain. Whether they feel socially connected and which groups they are more likely to build connections with are unknown. This study explores the ways in which diaspora tourists foster and sustain social capital by focusing on the case of Chinese immigrants and descendants. Based on 39 in-depth interviews with Chinese home return travellers, four scenarios of how they engage in transnational social capital building are identified. The findings suggest that how a diaspora tourist constructs social capital is influenced by the individual’s place and collective identity, values and perceptions he/she holds, obligations, and personal interests. Migrants in each scenario devote to building different types of social capital with ties of varied strength and depth, suggesting that the effects of diaspora tourism in facilitating the construction of social capital are different. This study advances our understanding of the social functions of diasporic return, and provides practical implications for destination managers who want to better understand the motives and social needs of home return travellers
Membrane insertion and secretion of the Engrailed-2 (EN2) transcription factor by prostate cancer cells may induce antiviral activity in the stroma
Get PDFEngrailed-2 (EN2) is a homeodomain-containing transcription factor that has roles in boundary formation and neural guidance in early development, but which is also expressed in a range of cancers. In addition to transcriptional regulation, it is secreted by cells and taken up by others through a mechanism that is yet to be fully elucidated. In this study, the distribution of EN2 protein in cells was evaluated using immunofluorescence with a set of antibodies raised against overlapping epitopes across the protein, and through the use of an EN2-GFP construct. MX2 expression in primary prostate tumors was evaluated using immunohistochemistry. We showed that EN2 protein is present in the cell membrane and within microvesicles that can be secreted from the cell and taken up by others. When taken up by normal cells from the stroma EN2 induces the expression of MX2 (MxB), a protein that has a key role in the innate immune response to viruses. Our findings indicate that EN2 secretion by tumors may be a means of preventing viral-mediated immune invasion of tissue immediately adjacent to the tumor
Detecting cyber supply chain attacks on cyber physical systems using Bayesian belief network
Get PDFIdentifying cyberattack vectors on cyber supply chains (CSC) in the event of cyberattacks are very important in mitigating cybercrimes effectively on Cyber Physical Systems CPS. However, in the cyber security domain, the invincibility nature of cybercrimes makes it difficult and challenging to predict the threat probability and impact of cyber attacks. Although cybercrime phenomenon, risks, and treats contain a lot of unpredictability's, uncertainties and fuzziness, cyberattack detection should be practical, methodical and reasonable to be implemented. We explore Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) as knowledge representation in artificial intelligence to be able to be formally applied probabilistic inference in the cyber security domain. The aim of this paper is to use Bayesian Belief Networks to detect cyberattacks on CSC in the CPS domain. We model cyberattacks using DAG method to determine the attack propagation. Further, we use a smart grid case study to demonstrate the applicability of attack and the cascading effects. The results show that BBN could be adapted to determine uncertainties in the event of cyberattacks in the CSC domain
Non-destructive assessment and health monitoring of railway infrastructures
Get PDFA continuous increase of the demand for high-speed traffic, freight tonnage as well as of the train operating frequency is worsening the decay conditions of many railway infrastructures. This occurrence affects economy-related business as well as it contributes to raise maintenance cost. It is known that a failure of a railway track may result in tremendous economic losses, law liabilities, service interruptions and, eventually, fatalities. Parallel to this, requirements to maintain acceptable operational standards are very demanding. In addition to the above, a main issue nowadays in railway engineering is a general lack of funds to allow safety and comfort of the operations as well as a proper maintenance of the infrastructures. This is mostly the result of a traditional approach that, on average, tends to invest on high-priority cost, such as safety-related cost, compromising lower-priority cost (e.g., quality and comfort of the operations). A solution to correct this trend can be to move from a reactive to a proactive action planning approach in order to limit more effectively the likelihood of progressive track decay. Within this context, this paper reports a review on the use of traditional and non-destructive testing (NDT) methods for assessment and health monitoring of railway infrastructures. State-of-the-art research on a stand-alone use of NDT methods or a combination of them for specific maintenance tasks in railways is discussed