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Security Analysis of ECG-Based Authentication in Wearable Devices
No full textIn the past decade, rapid advancement of microprocessors and sensor technologies has made it possible to monitor user health through wearable devices. Although these devices offer significant convenience in daily life, they also store a large amount of sensitive user information, making their security a critical concern. An essential aspect of securing portable devices is the implementation of robust authentication systems to prevent unauthorised access. This study focusses on improving the security and privacy of wearable devices by exploring ECG based authentication methods.
In clinical settings, ECG signals are commonly used by physicians to diagnose cardiac conditions. These signals are collected by recording voltage fluctuations on the surface of the body generated by heartbeats. Due to the influence of genetic and non-genetic factors, ECG signals vary significantly from person to person, making them suitable for biometric authentication. Compared to traditional biometric methods, ECG offers several advantages, including ease of collection, support for continuous authentication, and resistance to external observation and replication. These features make ECG a more secure alternative for authentication in wearable systems.
Although ECG based authentication offers numerous advantages, its security against various types of attacks has not been thoroughly investigated. This thesis begins by introducing existing authentication schemes that are applicable to wearable devices. Then it summarises and discusses the strengths and limitations of these approaches and finally outlines potential directions for future research.
After identifying limitations in current evaluation metrics for ECG based authentication schemes, we introduced a novel assessment framework tailored for ECG based identity verification on wearable devices. To facilitate rigorous testing, we also constructed a standardised dataset. The existing ECG authentication algorithms were comprehensively evaluated in four key dimensions: scalability, adaptability, efficiency, and cancellability. Using a standardised dataset constructed for this purpose, we benchmark several state-of-the-art ECG authentication algorithms. The results show significant performance degradation in cross-session scenarios, with the average true acceptance rates dropping by more than 60% when session variance is introduced.
To build trust and enable the practical deployment of ECG authentication algorithms, it is important to understand their security properties, especially their resistance to traditional biometric attacks. We propose a new dictionary attack against ECG based authentication systems. Unlike traditional targeted attacks, this method uses random pairing to attack a large number of users without requiring specific biometric data from victims. This approach first uses clustering to divide the population into different groups according to the similarity of their ECG signals. Then, adversarial optimisation is performed on each cluster to generate a signal that has a high similarity to all other signals within the cluster and is used as the attack input. Our experiments show that even under the strictest authentication thresholds, this method can break into about 20% of users’ systems in a single attack attempt. When allowed five attempts, it can bypass up to 62% of the user's ECG authentication systems. This study exposes critical weaknesses in the current implementation of ECG based biometric technologies.
Finally, our goal is to test one of the core assumptions behind the authentication security of ECGs: that an attacker cannot obtain a victim’s ECG signal without direct contact. Since many physiological signals in the human body are related to cardiac activity, we aim to use signals that are easier to collect to reconstruct ECG signals. In this study, we designed a cross-signal attack method targeting ECG authentication systems. This method uses a diffusion model to generate ECG signals from the victim’s PPG signals or video recordings, and then uses these generated signals to attack the authentication model. Our experimental results show that, for all algorithms tested, the attack achieved an average success rate of 45% within five attempts. This demonstrates the security threat posed by synthetic signals to ECG authentication systems. This part of the study shows that attackers can obtain and exploit victim ECG information without direct contact, challenging a fundamental security assumption of ECG based authentication.</p
Modeling Aesthetic Preferences in 3D Shapes: A Large-Scale Paired Comparison Study Across Object Categories
No full textHuman aesthetic preferences for 3D shapes are central to industrial design, virtual reality, and consumer product development. However, most computational models of 3D aesthetics lack empirical grounding in large-scale human judgments, limiting their practical relevance. We present a large-scale study of human preferences. We collected 22,301 pairwise comparisons across five object categories (chairs, tables, mugs, lamps, and dining chairs) via Amazon Mechanical Turk. Building on a previously published dataset~\cite{dev2020learning}, we introduce new non-linear modeling and cross-category analysis to uncover the geometric drivers of aesthetic preference. We apply the Bradley-Terry model to infer latent aesthetic scores and use Random Forests with SHAP analysis to identify and interpret the most influential geometric features (e.g., symmetry, curvature, compactness). Our cross-category analysis reveals both universal principles and domain-specific trends in aesthetic preferences. We focus on human interpretable geometric features to ensure model transparency and actionable design insights, rather than relying on black-box deep learning approaches. Our findings bridge computational aesthetics and cognitive science, providing practical guidance for designers and a publicly available dataset to support reproducibility. This work advances the understanding of 3D shape aesthetics through a human-centric, data-driven framework.</p
Ecological Grief, Hope, and Creative Forms of Resilience: A Creative Practice Approach
No full textWith the effects of the climate emergency increasingly shaping our daily lives, feelings of ecological distress – particularly ecogrief and anxiety – have become palpable. In this article, we focus on these affective responses and examine how creative practice collaborations are curating possibilities for hope and resilience. We argue for the importance of such creative engagement, as ecological distress can lead to paralysis, nihilism, or despair, making it imperative to explore how creative practices open pathways for collective healing and actionable hope in the face of crisis. Following Lesley Head’s (2016. Hope and grief in the Anthropocene: Re-conceptualising human-nature relations. Taylor and Francis Group) proposition that grief and hope are intrinsically entwined – hope as an embodied act within the affective fabric of everyday life – we consider how these emotional registers are navigated through artistic and collaborative processes. Increasingly, contemporary practitioners are turning to creative methods to make space for emotional complexity and to cultivate new strategies for connecting grief with hope. This article brings together insights from the environmental humanities and creative practice research to consider how such approaches can support resilience and social change. Through examples where creative practice operates as method, approach, and intervention, we explore the affective terrain of climate justice, arguing that creativity and art are essential for fostering empathetic engagement and imagining more hopeful, liveable futures.</p
Shards and stones, sticks and bones
No full textResearch Statement: Shards and stones, sticks and bones Starkwhite Gallery, Auckland, 2025 Research Background Shards and stones, sticks and bones investigates matter and metamorphosis through sculptural, installation, video, and painting practices that synthesize childhood play, modernist design legacies, and occult knowledge systems. Building upon four decades of experimental practice since the mid-1980s, this project explores the permeable and changeable nature of materials—plastic, fabric, Perspex, clay, wood, plants, and sound—examining relationships between viewer and object through spatial activation. The research draws upon early 20th-century art movements including Dada, Constructivism, and Arte Povera, reinterpreting their material experiments and anti-establishment aesthetics through contemporary concerns. The exhibition's title evokes both nursery rhyme incantation and archaeological fragments, positioning found and elemental materials as repositories of memory and potential transformation. This work continues investigations into shelter, personal biography, and magical thinking, employing heterogeneous materials to create installations that resist singular interpretation and invite participatory engagement. Research Significance This research advances understanding of how artists sustain experimental practices across extended careers while remaining responsive to contemporary contexts. By maintaining commitments to material permeability and metamorphosis, the work contributes to discourse on process-based art and the artwork as unstable entity rather than fixed object. The integration of occult references with modernist formal languages challenges art historical narratives that position rationalism and mysticism as oppositional forces, demonstrating their productive entanglement. The project's significance lies in validating childhood play as epistemological framework—not nostalgic regression but serious inquiry into imaginative world-making and alternative logics. The invocation of "shards and stones, sticks and bones" connects archaeological thinking (fragments as evidence) with elemental materiality (earth, bone, wood), contributing to expanded definitions of sculpture as assemblage practice. The work's playful and fantastical qualities resist institutional solemnity, proposing joy and wonder as legitimate research methodologies within contemporary art. Research Contribution Shards and stones, sticks and bones contributes methodologically by demonstrating sustained engagement with heterogeneous materials as conceptual strategy rather than stylistic inconsistency. The research models how artists can synthesize influences across multiple historical movements without pastiche, extracting formal and philosophical principles to generate new aesthetic possibilities. By working simultaneously across sculpture, installation, video, and painting, the project contributes to discourse on medium-specificity's obsolescence, validating cross-disciplinary practice as intellectually rigorous. The work expands vocabularies for discussing fantastical art, positioning fantasy not as escapism but as critical lens for examining reality's constructed nature. The emphasis on metamorphosis contributes to process philosophy applications in visual art, demonstrating how materials can embody becoming rather than being. The exhibition establishes frameworks for understanding long-term artistic practices that resist market pressures toward signature styles, instead maintaining experimental curiosity and formal risk-taking across decades of production.</p
Event-Triggered Nonsingular Terminal Sliding-Mode Control
No full textThis article studies event-triggered nonsingular terminal sliding-mode control (TSMC) for a class of nonlinear systems. First, a static event-triggering mechanism is implemented in the nonsingular TSMC design. It is shown that the sliding variable can reach the quasi-sliding-mode band and the states can converge to a neighborhood of the equilibrium dependent on the threshold of the event-triggering mechanism. Second, by taking advantage of the internal variable, a dynamic event-triggering mechanism is developed for the nonsingular TSMC design. Compared to the static event-triggered nonsingular TSMC, the designed dynamic event-triggered nonsingular TSMC strategy can reduce the number of events while maintaining the same upper bounds of quasi-sliding-mode and steady states. It is further shown that both event-triggered nonsingular TSMC systems have no Zeno behavior. Finally, simulation results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.</p
Victoria’s Treaty Bill and the evolution of lawmaking in a Westminster democracy
No full textVictoria’s Statewide Treaty Bill (2025) is the first statewide treaty with Indigenous peoples in Australia. This article examines the institutional architecture to be brought about by the Bill, its key implications for lawmaking and public policy, and its significance as a model of good government. It argues that the Statewide Treaty framework enhances democratic legitimacy in Victoria, rectifying the absence of Indigenous contribution to laws and policy that affect First Peoples.</p
Porosity of the Frame: Material Experiments on the Boundary between Art and Everyday Life
No full textWhat can be found when searching for nothing in particular? The lack of preconceived targets enables more attentive exploration of affordances, but findings, if any, may not necessarily be useful. Conversely, how can we find useful things whose existence has not yet been imagined? So, is there a case for open-ended research? The answer depends on how one assesses human optimisation ability in an unfathomably complex world.
This creative practice research project goes against the grain of goal-oriented culture, exploring the possibility of ateleological knowledge production. The latter is envisioned not as a substitute but as a complement that may counterbalance overconfidence in human rationality and singular truths.
Having deferred the content, the researching artist is left with a frame — a placeholder for emerging meanings. Focusing on the frame reveals framing as a negotiation of what things are and what can be done to or with them. Tweaking the frame opens gaps between preconceptions and new perceptions, creating space for new knowledge.
This dissertation develops an art lens ontology and, drawing on actor-network theory, conceptualises art-making as a resource mobilisation to activate the art lens. It recasts art as a more flexible and far-reaching process of material and conceptual translations involving more actors and broader consequences than the traditional model of the artist presenting a resolved artwork to the audience.
The media mix of the underlying conceptual art prac-tice includes photography, video, sound, printmaking, sculpture, installation, public interventions, lecture-performances, texts, digital media, participatory situations, and superfictions.</p
Feeling grounded when watching live streaming shows of highly anthropomorphic interactive virtual influencers: An exploratory study on customer opinions
No full textPowered by generative artificial intelligence, AI live streaming commerce (ALSC) employs virtual influencers (VI) to promote products. Despite its novelty and hype, research on VIs remains limited. We adopt a novel groundedness theory to study customer engagement in ALSC. Through exploratory interviews, we find that customers can feel grounded in ALSC. Such feelings can be primarily affected by VI characteristics and customer characteristics, which can also affect customers’ purchase motivations. The findings contribute to the ALSC literature by examining the emotional motivations of groundedness in customers’ purchase decisions, in contrast to the existing cognitive focus. The findings also extend the groundedness theory by identifying new sources, contextualized antecedents, and dark sides of groundedness. Additionally, the findings contribute to the VI literature by demonstrating that VIs in ALSC can unexpectedly create engaging customer experiences, which contrasts with the existing notion that customers view VIs as inauthentic and less engaging.</p
Exploring the pattern of mental health support-seeking behaviour and related barriers among women experiencing intimate partner violence in urban slums of Bangladesh: perspectives from multiple level stakeholders
No full textIntimate partner violence (IPV) is a recognised global public health concern, substantially impacting women's well-being. While there is growing research on how IPV victim-survivors seek mental health support in the Global North, it remains understudied in the Global South, particularly for those residing in slums in low-income countries like Bangladesh. Through interviews and group discussions with different stakeholders, this study explored the mental healthcare-seeking behaviour of victim-survivors of IPV residing in urban slums, barriers to service utilisation, and recommendations to strengthen care pathways. Stakeholders perceived IPV as normalised in slums, indicating sociocultural norms and interpersonal causes as significant contributors to mental health issues and events of IPV. Seeking healthcare and moral support for IPV from local dispensaries and informal sources was common; however, IPV victim-survivors had no knowledge about mental-health-related services. Low mental health literacy and lack of financial support prevented them from seeking the necessary care. Social stigma regarding accessing mental healthcare, coupled with the absence of professional service providers and community-based services, represent critical systemic challenges. Recommendations included promoting community-level awareness of IPV and mental health issues, increasing mental healthcare services, training health workers, and fostering positive masculinities in community-based interventions. Stakeholders emphasised the need to adopt culturally relevant interventions for tackling IPV and improving mental healthcare pathways, especially for the low-income population of Bangladesh.</p
Characteristics of geographic environments that support the health and wellbeing of young people with disability: A scoping review
No full textPurpose: We aimed to: 1) identify key characteristics of geographic environments relating to the health and wellbeing of young people with disability that have been published in the literature, and 2) determine the coverage of evidence examining these characteristics and current gaps in knowledge of the ways geographic environments support health and wellbeing outcomes for young people with disability. Methods: This scoping review followed Arksey and O'Malley's methodological framework and established reporting guidelines (PRISMA-ScR Checklist). We searched the following databases: Web of Science (Core Collection), PubMed (Medline), Scopus, Proquest Central. Results: We identified 35 studies meeting inclusion criteria, which were mostly from high-income, English-speaking countries. Studies were grouped into ten major themes, which broadly align with place-based social determinants of health (e.g., access to transport, neighbourhood built environments). The largest body of evidence coalesced around neighbourhood social cohesion and related concepts. Notable gaps included a lack of evidence from the Global South, and limited investigation of local employment availability, access to healthcare, leisure and recreation, neighbourhood safety, and transitions into independent living. Conclusions: This scoping review characterised the existing evidence around the key characteristics of geographic environments that support (or hinder) the health and wellbeing of young people with disability, and identified several important gaps and opportunities for future research. This includes developing a better understanding of the place-based experiences, geographic scales, and environmental exposures that are most relevant for young people with disability, including through participatory methods (e.g., participatory mapping).</p