Department of Computer science

Accelerometry-derived Moderate-to-vigorous Physical Activity Predicts Overall Survival In Patients With Cancer In The Pleural Space: 2896

2024-10-01T00:00:00Z

Accelerometry-derived Moderate-to-vigorous Physical Activity Predicts Overall Survival In Patients With Cancer In The Pleural Space: 2896 Carolyn J Peddle-McIntyre, Pedro Lopez, Emily Jeffery, Robert U Newton, Sanjeevan Murugananda, Ken Chan, David CL Lam, Joanne A McVeigh, Deidre Fitzgerald, YC Lee To investigate the association of accelerometry-derived moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) with 3-year overall survival (OS) in patients with MPE.

Evaluation Of A State-wide, Community-based Exercise Program In Patients Undergoing Cancer Treatment: A Subgroup Analysis Of The Life Now Exercise Program : 2927

2024-10-01T00:00:00Z

Evaluation Of A State-wide, Community-based Exercise Program In Patients Undergoing Cancer Treatment: A Subgroup Analysis Of The Life Now Exercise Program : 2927 Hao Luo, Daniel A Galvão, Dennis R Taaffe, Vinicius Cavalheri, Robert U Newton To assess the uptake and effectiveness of a community exercise program (Life Now Exercise) in patients during cancer treatment. https://doi.org/10.1249/01.mss.0001062036.22169.fa

Immediate Versus Delayed Exercise on Health-related Quality of Life in Patients Initiating Androgen Deprivation Therapy: Results from a Year-long Randomised Trial

2024-10-05T00:00:00Z

Immediate Versus Delayed Exercise on Health-related Quality of Life in Patients Initiating Androgen Deprivation Therapy: Results from a Year-long Randomised Trial Dennis R Taaffe, Robert U Newton, Suzanne K Chambers, Christian J Nelson, Nigel Spry, Hao Luo, Oliver Schumacher, David Joseph, Robert A Gardiner, Dickon Hayne, Daniel A Galvão An array of treatment-related toxicities result from androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) in patients with prostate cancer (PCa), compromising function and health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Exercise has been demonstrated to counter a number of these adverse effects including decreased HRQoL; however, when exercise should be initiated is less clear. This study aims to examine whether commencing exercise when ADT is initiated rather than later during treatment is more effective in countering adverse effects on HRQoL.

Effects of short-and long-term exercise training on cancer cells in vitro: Insights into the mechanistic associations

2024-10-05T00:00:00Z

Effects of short-and long-term exercise training on cancer cells in vitro: Insights into the mechanistic associations Bettariga, Francesco; Taaffe, R .Dennis; Galvão, A.Daniel; Newton, U.Robert Exercise is a therapeutic approach in cancer treatment, providing several benefits. Moreover, exercise is associated with a reduced risk for developing a range of cancers and for their recurrence, as well as with improving survival, even though the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Preclinical and clinical evidence shows that the acute effects of a single exercise session can suppress the growth of various cancer cell lines in vitro. This suppression is potentially due to altered concentrations of hormones (e.g., insulin) and cytokines (e.g., tumor necrosis factor alpha and interleukin 6) after exercise. These factors, known to be involved in tumorigenesis, may explain why exercise is associated with reduced cancer incidence, recurrence, and mortality. However, the effects of short- (<8 weeks) and long-term (≥8 weeks) exercise programs on cancer cells have been reported with mixed results. Although more research is needed, it appears that interventions incorporating both exercise and diet seem to have greater inhibitory effects on cancer cell growth in both apparently healthy subjects as well as in cancer patients. Although speculative, these suppressive effects on cancer cells may be driven by changes in body weight and composition as well as by a reduction in low-grade inflammation often associated with sedentary behavior, low muscle mass, and excess fat mass in cancer patients. Taken together, such interventions could alter the systemic levels of suppressive circulating factors, leading to a less favorable environment for tumorigenesis. While regular exercise and a healthy diet may establish a more cancer-suppressive environment, each acute bout of exercise provides a further “dose” of anticancer medicine. Therefore, integrating regular exercise could potentially play a significant role in cancer management, highlighting the need for future investigations in this promising area of research.

The expanding role of exercise oncology in cancer care: An editorial highlighting emerging research

2024-01-01T00:00:00Z

The expanding role of exercise oncology in cancer care: An editorial highlighting emerging research Mizrahi, David; Rees-Punia, Erika; Newton, U. Robert; Sandler, X. Carolina Cancer remains a leading cause of global morbidity and mortality [1]. Despite improved survival rates, many survivors face treatment-related side effects that compromise recovery, increase disease risk, and lower quality of life [2]. Over the past 20 years, exercise oncology has gained recognition for improving physical, psychological, cognitive, and clinical outcomes in cancer patients [4]. Epidemiological studies have also demonstrated that cancer survivors can reduce their recurrence risk when participating in regular exercise [3]. Due to this growing evidence base, physical activity and exercise are now recommended by major cancer organizations across the continuum of care—before, during, and after treatment [5,6]. http://www.journals.elsevier.com/jsams-plus

Detecting Remote Access Network Attacks Using Supervised Machine Learning Methods

2023-04-01T00:00:00Z

Detecting Remote Access Network Attacks Using Supervised Machine Learning Methods Ndichu, Samuel; McOyowo, Sylvester; Okoyo, Henry; Wekesa, Cyrus Remote access technologies encrypt data to enforce policies and ensure protection. Attackers leverage such techniques to launch carefully crafted evasion attacks introducing malware and other unwanted traffic to the internal network. Traditional security controls such as anti-virus software, firewall, and intrusion detection systems (IDS) decrypt network traffic and employ signature and heuristic-based approaches for malware inspection. In the past, machine learning (ML) approaches have been proposed for specific malware detection and traffic type characterization. However, decryption introduces computational overheads and dilutes the privacy goal of encryption. The ML approaches employ limited features and are not objectively developed for remote access security. This paper presents a novel ML-based approach to encrypted remote access attack detection using a weighted random forest (W-RF) algorithm. Key features are determined using feature importance scores. Class weighing is used to address the imbalanced data distribution problem common in remote access network traffic where attacks comprise only a small proportion of network traffic. Results obtained during the evaluation of the approach on benign virtual private network (VPN) and attack network traffic datasets that comprise verified normal hosts and common attacks in real-world network traffic are presented. With recall and precision of 100%, the approach demonstrates effective performance. The results for k-fold cross-validation and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) mean area under the curve (AUC) demonstrate that the approach effectively detects attacks in encrypted remote access network traffic, successfully averting attackers and network intrusion

A Review of Smartphone as an Office: Security Risks and Mitigation Measures

2023-04-24T00:00:00Z

A Review of Smartphone as an Office: Security Risks and Mitigation Measures Murumba Julius, Mukisa; Muhambe Titus, Mukisa Smartphones have become the most popular mode of communication as well as a novel mode of work, allowing users to work from anywhere and increasing their efficiency and responsiveness. However, the flexibility and convenience of mobile phones are associated with security risks. The objective of this study was to examine the threats and risks that smartphones face and to suggest mitigation strategies. A literature searches of scientific research articles published in online journals and databases was carried out. Some of the databases used are Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore Digital Library and Science Direct. The paper concludes that smartphones are not only capable of supporting office work but can also serve as a gateway to the Internet of Things (IoT) and a tool for user interaction with numerous electronic devices. This comes with concerns about technical threats associated with cybercrime, privacy infringements, and hidden data collection tendencies. The paper recommends advanced research to enhance counter-measures to mitigate the many existing security threats as well as those that may emerge in the future. https://doi.org/10.54327/set2023/v3.i2.75

Phonemic Representation and Transcription for Speech to Text Applications for Under-resourced Indigenous African Languages: The Case of Kiswahili

2022-01-01T00:00:00Z

Phonemic Representation and Transcription for Speech to Text Applications for Under-resourced Indigenous African Languages: The Case of Kiswahili Awino Ebbie, Lilian Wanzare, Lawrence Muchemi, Barack Wanjawa, Edward Ombui, Florence Indede, Owen McOnyango, Benard Okal Building automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems is a challenging task, especially for under resourced languages that need to construct corpora nearly from scratch and lack sufficient training data. It has emerged that several African indigenous languages, including Kiswahili, are technologically under-resourced. ASR systems are crucial, particularly for the hearing-impaired persons who can benefit from having transcripts in their native languages. However, the absence of transcribed speech datasets has complicated efforts to develop ASR models for these indigenous languages. This paper explores the transcription process and the development of a Kiswahili speech corpus, which includes both read-out texts and spontaneous speech data from native Kiswahili speakers. The study also discusses the vowels and consonants in Kiswahili and provides an updated Kiswahili phoneme dictionary for the ASR model that was created using the CMU Sphinx speech recognition toolbox, an open-source speech recognition toolkit. The ASR model was trained using an extended phonetic set that yielded a WER and SER of 18.87% and 49.5%, respectively, an improved performance than previous similar research for under-resourced languages.

A Software Agent for Vehicle Driver Modeling

2019-01-01T00:00:00Z

A Software Agent for Vehicle Driver Modeling James Imende Obuhuma, Henry Okora Okoyo, Sylvester Okoth McOyowo The world is experiencing a paradigm shift towards intelligent agents in form of machine learning for modeling any given task or process. Human vehicle drivers are agents that operate under stochastic environments, full of other agents. Such environments are complex to perceive and model. This study explores how a utility-based agent could be used to model human vehicle drivers. The motivation behind the study was established on the assumption that a driver agent founded on GPS data, Mixture Models and probabilistic reasoning methodologies could effectively model human vehicle drivers. The data collected by GPS receivers was appropriately analysed to establish a driver behaviour dataset. The dataset was then divided into three sets: training, test and validation sets that were used to formulate the driver agent. The agent's successive actions were evaluated against sets of performance metrics to determine accuracy, precision and recall levels. The evaluation yielded over 50% successful performance rates at all levels. The significance of the study is four-fold: First, the function of the system could be extended to providing advisory services to drivers in real-time. Second, data gathered from the system could be used by road safety stakeholders to vet drivers and to diagnose causes of road accidents. Thirdly, the resulting knowledge-base could establish standards of rationality in driving and/or formulate rules for use in driverless vehicle control systems. Finally, the model could be used to build a dataset on driver behaviour for any given vehicle driver and type and nature of operational environment. The article can be accessed in full via:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9134033

Social engineering based cyber-attacks in kenya

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

Social engineering based cyber-attacks in kenya OBUHUMA, James , Shingai ZIVUKU Cybersecurity is a major challenge especially as the world transitions to the fourth industrial revolution. Cybercriminals are always perceived to be using complex sophisticated mechanisms to launch attacks to information systems. It is however worth exploring Social Engineering as one of the arts used to exploit the weakest layer of information security systems, who are the users. In the recent past, the world has witnessed a gradual gain in popularity of Social Engineering attacks propagated through varied forms, including, phishing, vishing and smishing. Hence, this paper presents and demonstrates an analytical approach towards Social Engineering. The study explored the level of understanding of three forms of Social Engineering and the prevalence of Social Engineering attacks with their countermeasures. Qualitative and quantitative data was collected from a random sample through an online survey and face-to-face interviews. Data analysis showed that vishing and smishing are the most commonly used forms of Social Engineering in Kenya with the use of authority featuring as a persuasion strategy used by attackers striving for financial gain. The lack of user education and awareness outstandingly came out as the main reason behind a majority of successful attacks. The study was limited to Kenya as a representative of developing Nations in Africa. The resulting study outcomes could form a foundation for the development of information security policies and awareness programs. This could further translate into National or International Laws on Social Engineering based Cyber-attacks. The article can be accessed in full via:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9144006/