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An Intelligent Context-Aware Biometrics System Based on Agent Technology
No full textTraditional biometric systems deal with each instance of identification in the same way irrespective of the circumstances in which the biometric samples were captured at different times or for different applications. Our main objective is to enhance the traditional biometric identification process and improve the decision making process. This is by giving biometric systems an intelligent and flexible identification mechanism using agent technology. Our aim is to develop a multiagent based framework to represent a context-aware adaptive biometric system with multimodalities
Automatic Quantification of Epidermis Curvature in H&E Stained Microscopic Skin Image of Mice
No full textChanges in the curvature of the epidermis layer is often associated with many skin disorders, such as ichthyoses and generic effects of ageing. Therefore, methods to quantify changes in the curvature are of a scientific and clinical interest. Manual methods to determine curvature are both laborious and intractable to large scale investigations. This paper proposes an automatic algorithm to quantify curvature of microscope images of H&E-stained murine skin. The algorithm can be divided into three key stages. First, skin layers segmentation based on colour deconvolution to separate the original image into three channels of different representations to facilitate segmenting the image into multiple layers, namely epidermis, dermis and subcutaneous layers. The algorithm then further segments the epidermis layer into cornified and basal sub-layers. Secondly, it quantifies the curvature of the epidermis layer by measuring the difference between the epidermis edge and a straight line (theoretical reference line) connecting the two far sides of the epidermis edge. Finally, the curvature measurements extracted from a large number of images of mutant mice are used to identify a list of genes responsible for changes in the epidermis curvature. A dataset of 5714 H&E microscopic images of mutant and wild type mice were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the algorithm
Beyond the School Gates: Experiences of Cyberaggression and Cyberbullying Among Adolescents in the U.K.
No full textThe use of digital technology has increased considerably since the late 1990’s and for young people in particular digital platforms are an integral part of their lives. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have a range of important benefits for children and adolescents, but children can also encounter a range of online risks that can have serious effects on their well-being and development. An increasing amount of research is being carried out into young people’s experiences of cyberaggression and cyberbullying, which have been found to have serious psychological, emotional, behavioural and educational effects. This is an issue that not only impacts the individuals involved, but also has serious implications in relation to school safety and the school social climate.
This report outlines a study conducted by the University of Buckingham and Sir John Cass’s Foundation, that examined the online behaviours and experiences of 320 adolescents aged 13-18 years as well as the perceptions of 130 parents.
The findings showed that adolescents had a high level of access to ICTs and engaged in a number of online activities which were mainly social in nature. Most adolescents in the sample (69%) had experienced at least one type of cyberaggression, which was most likely to involve being called a hurtful name online, having a picture posted online to embarrass them, or having rumours or gossip spread about them online. Of these adolescents, 43% reported that they had been cyberbullied. These findings are towards the high end of those reported in other studies
globally. In addition to victimisation, nearly half of adolescents (48%) admitted perpetrating an act of cyberaggression and most adolescents (77%) had witnessed cyberbullying while online. The findings show the complexity of cyberbullying acts and the need to address the multiple roles associated with these behaviours. When asked about their experiences in the past 12 months, a quarter of adolescents reported that they had been cyberbullied during this time. Although face-to-face
bullying continues to be the most common form of bullying experienced by young people, experiences of cyberbullying and face-to-face bullying were often linked. Adolescents reported serious emotional effects due to these experiences. Our findings also indicated that adolescents were most likely to confide in friends about these experiences rather than adults and that parents and teachers were largely removed from young people’s online experiences. This was clear from the data obtained from
parents, which showed that they significantly underestimated their child’s experiences and engagement in cyberaggression and overestimated their monitoring of ICT use in the home.
The findings in this report reflect the importance of working with adolescents to build digital literacy, empathy and resilience as well as the importance of including parents in online safety efforts. Importantly, the report advocates a multi-level approach to addressing the issue of
cyberaggression and cyberbullying and highlights the need for action by government, external support services, funding bodies and organisations, schools and teachers as well as parents and young people. A comprehensive approach to tackling cyberaggression and cyberbullying and enhancing online safety of young people is needed, which would include effort at all levels. The report outlines key recommendations for involvement at each level in an effort to drive forward an impactful response to this important issue
The ICJ Bakassi Decision: The rights of the indigenous communities and populations in the Bakassi Peninsula in Edwin Egede, Mark Igiehon (eds)The Bakassi Dispute and the International Court of Justice: Continuing Challenges
No full textThis chapter appraises the 2002 judgment delivered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case of Cameroon v. Nigeria. It considers the meaning of indigeneity and indigenous peoples in international law and shows whether the peoples and communities within the Bakassi Peninsula can be regarded as indigenous communities. The chapter evaluates the significance of the link between land and the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples and communities. It explores whether the resettlement of indigenous peoples as required by the Greentree Agreement constitutes a forceful removal of indigenous peoples from their land and cultural heritage. The chapter also addresses the role that an award of fair and just compensation can play in ensuring that the removal of indigenous peoples from their land is not in breach of international law. It also appraises the relevance of free prior informed consent (FPIC) on matters impacting the rights of indigenous peoples in the Bakassi Peninsula
Towards an effective anti-corruption regimen in Nigeria : examination of the anti-corruption legal framework of the United Nations, the African Union and Nigeria
No full textThe main aim of this research is to attain an effective anti-corruption regime in Nigeria. In order to achieve this aim, the research has four main objectives. The first is that it identifies the level of compliance of the Nigerian anti-corruption legal framework with the United Nations and African Union anti-corruption conventions by using three key anti-corruption pillars. The second, which is incidental to the first, is the identification of gaps that exist under the current Nigerian anti-corruption legal framework. Thirdly, it identifies and analyses the root causes of corruption, as well as the challenges of combating corruption and establishes links between the challenges of combating corruption in Nigeria and the identified gaps in the Nigerian legal framework. The fourth and the most fundamental objective is the development of strategies that will engender an effective anti-corruption regime in Nigeria. The research argues that attaining an effective anti-corruption regime in Nigeria requires addressing the root causes of corruption, the legal gaps and the challenges facing anti-corruption efforts in Nigeria. The research concludes that rather than the present reactive approach, a holistic approach consisting of more proactive strategies is required to achieve a more efficient anti-corruption regime in Nigeria
Understanding the Nigerian Way of National Security : Towards a theoretical Framework for National Security Strategic Personality
Get PDFThis thesis develops an explanatory typology, called the "National Security Strategic Personality theory (NSSP)". This theory is aimed at revealing how the operationalisation of national security, against threats with agency, is different from state to state. In developing this theory, the author focuses on identifying Nigerian state behaviour towards its perceived malicious threats, from 1960 through 2014. The NSSP theory is the result of an informed development of existing theoretical frameworks namely; Strategic Culture, and National Strategic Personality, into a coherent analytical tool.
This framework utilises a constructivist ontology, to carefully extract viable elements (such as the state, security and referent objects) of the strategic culture and national strategic personality theoretical frameworks respectively. The NSSP framework then proceeds to reapply the extracted concepts, into an explanatory typology, so as to maximise their explanatory and predictive efficiency.
The National Security Strategic Personality framework proposes that national security strategies of states, indeed share discernible similarities, but also possess distinct differences in character. This proposition is based on a systemic investigation into state behaviour against malicious threats, which identifies where state behaviour occurs, why such behaviour occurs, and how it occurs. The framework then proposes that the similarities and differences which one observes amounts to unique strategic personalities that can be documented. The hypotheses put forward in this thesis ascertain that:
Every State possesses a unique National Security Strategic Personality which guides state actions against its perceived malicious threats to its referent objects.
The unique National Security Strategic Personalities of states can be identified and adequately characterised by utilising the three elements of the National Security Strategic Personality Theoretical Framework
The three elements proposed to be of fundamental importance to understanding the personality of national security strategies, are:
Orientation, the physical location which a state considers as being within its theatre of operations, within which one can observe state behaviour.
Inflationary Containment, active and passive coercive means enacted by a state, which enables one to identify what referent objects the state prioritises.
Compression, the strategic means which a state chooses to control or exterminate its perceived malicious threats.
Orientation, Inflationary Containment and Compression are treated as independent variables which enable us to characterise the individual dimensions of a National Security Strategic Personality. Together, the characterised independent variables provide us with a comprehensive understanding of the characteristics of the National Security Strategic Personality as a whole, which is identified as a dependent variable.
The development of an explanatory typological theory and the case study method of evaluation go hand-in-hand. The typological nature of the NSSP theory enables researchers to identify the NSSP of a state at any given time, while the implementation of case study analysis enables the researcher to comparatively analyse and distinguish between NSSPs of a state which may change over time.
The researcher views the case study method of analysis, as the most appropriate tool to superimpose the NSSP theory on the selected case studies to evaluate its validity. The employment of the case study method in this thesis, facilitates comparative analysis of four phases of governance in Nigeria. These comparative observations highlight the creation and normalisation of essential aspects of Nigeria's national security strategy, which have a significant impact on the nature of Nigeria's response to national security threats today. This method also increases the probability of identifying developmental patterns, by ascertaining the aspects of Nigeria's National Security Strategic Personality which have persisted over the period under review, and also detects the aspects of the NSSPs which have been relatively flexible.
The author believes that analysing state behaviour against threats with agency, enables one to understand the nature of state strategic behaviour against them. This analysis enables crisp scholarly characterisation of the true nature of what, up until now, we have believed to be a fog of strategic culture that influences the delivery of national security. The identification and characterisation of National Security Strategic Behaviour is capable of empowering scholars with more accurate predictive capabilities when anticipating the future of the security strategy of an observed state. These predictive capabilities would be reliably based on the observed dynamics of state behaviour
Topological Data Analysis for Image Tampering Detection
Get PDFThis paper introduces a topological approach to detection of image tampering for forensics purposes. This is based on the emerging Topological Data Analysis (TDA) concept of persistent homological invariants associated with certain image features. Image features of interest are pixels that have a uniform Local Binary pattern (LBP) code representing texture feature descriptors. We construct the sequence of simplicial complexes for increasing sequence of distance thresholds whose vertices are the selected set of pixels, and calculate the corresponding non-increasing sequence of homology invariants (number of connected components). The persistent homology of this construction describes the speed with which the sequence terminates, and our tamper detection scheme exploit its sensitivity to image tampering/degradation. We test the performance of this approach on a sufficiently large image dataset from a benchmark dataset of passport photos, and show that the persistent homology sequence defines a discriminating criterion for the morphing attacks (i.e. distinguishing morphed images from genuine ones)
Topological Image Texture Analysis for Quality Assessment
Get PDFImage quality is a major factor influencing pattern recognition accuracy and help detect image tampering for forensics. We are concerned with investigating topological image texture analysis techniques to assess different type of degradation. We use Local Binary Pattern (LBP) as a texture feature descriptor. For any image construct simplicial complexes for selected groups of uniform LBP bins and calculate persistent homology invariants (e.g. number of connected components). We investigated image quality discriminating characteristics of these simplicial complexes by computing these models for a large dataset of face images that are affected by the presence of shadows as a result of variation in illumination conditions. Our tests demonstrate that for specific uniform LBP patterns, the number of connected component not only distinguish between different levels of shadow effects but also help detect the infected regions as well
The Militarisation of the Indigenous Peoples in the Niger Delta Region by the Nigerian Government; from a Constructivist Grounded Theory to Actionable-Based Policy Recommendations Geared Towards the Legal Protection of the Region's Indigenous Peoples
Get PDFThis research thesis, from the Niger Delta indigenous peoples' accounts and experiences, explores the social and legal factors that have motivated the Nigerian government's decision to militarise the Niger Delta region. The premise of this thesis stands on empirical work, which saw data gathered from interviews; these data were analysed using Charmaz's constructivist grounded theory methodology. Data were also gathered from documents to support the interviews codes; they were in the form of official documents derived from the State and indigenous organisations, and documents from mass-media outputs, all of which were also analysed using Charmaz's constructivist grounded theory methodology. The analyses of all data gathered led to the presentation of a unified theory detailing the social and legal motivations of the Nigerian government's decision to militarise the Niger Delta region. This theory prompted the proposal of actionable-based policy recommendations geared towards the legal protection of the indigenous peoples living in Nigeria's Niger Delta region. This research thesis makes two original contributions to knowledge; first is the methodological choice which saw the use of grounded theory methodology within a transformative framework; second is the provision of a theoretical explanation of indigenous struggles in the Niger Delta region, coupled with policy recommendations, solidly based on indigenous contributions and accounts which reflects the connection between social actions and the laws in Nigeria