Changing fluxes of sediments and salts as recorded in lower River Murray wetlands, Australia
- Gell, Peter, Fluin, Jennie, Tibby, John, Haynes, Deborah, Khanum, Syeda, Walsh, Brendan, Hancock, Gary, Harrison, Jennifer, Zawadzki, Atun, Little, Fiona
- Authors: Gell, Peter , Fluin, Jennie , Tibby, John , Haynes, Deborah , Khanum, Syeda , Walsh, Brendan , Hancock, Gary , Harrison, Jennifer , Zawadzki, Atun , Little, Fiona
- Date: 2006
- Type: Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: The River Murray basin, Australia's largest, has been significantly impacted by changed flow regimes and increased fluxes of salts and sediments since settlement in the 1840s. The river's flood plain hosts an array of cut-off meanders, levee lakes and basin depression lakes that archive historical changes. Pre-European sedimentation rates are typically approx. 0.1-1 mm year-1, while those in the period after European arrival are typically 10 to 30 fold greater. This increased sedimentation corresponds to a shift in wetland trophic state from submerged macrophytes in clear waters to phytoplankton-dominated, turbid systems. There is evidence for a decline in sedimentation in some natural wetlands after river regulation from the 1920s, but with the maintenance of the phytoplankton state. Fossil diatom assemblages reveal that, while some wetlands had saline episodes before settlement, others became saline after, and as early as the 1880s. The oxidation of sulphurous salts deposited after regulation has induced hyperacidity in a number of wetlands in recent years. While these wetlands are rightly perceived as being heavily impacted, other, once open water systems, that have infilled and now support rich macrophyte beds, are used as interpretive sites. The rate of filling, however, suggests that the lifespan of these wetlands is short. The rate of wetland loss through such increased infilling is unlikely to be matched by future scouring as regulation has eliminated middle order floods from the lower catchment.
- Authors: Gell, Peter , Fluin, Jennie , Tibby, John , Haynes, Deborah , Khanum, Syeda , Walsh, Brendan , Hancock, Gary , Harrison, Jennifer , Zawadzki, Atun , Little, Fiona
- Date: 2006
- Type: Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: The River Murray basin, Australia's largest, has been significantly impacted by changed flow regimes and increased fluxes of salts and sediments since settlement in the 1840s. The river's flood plain hosts an array of cut-off meanders, levee lakes and basin depression lakes that archive historical changes. Pre-European sedimentation rates are typically approx. 0.1-1 mm year-1, while those in the period after European arrival are typically 10 to 30 fold greater. This increased sedimentation corresponds to a shift in wetland trophic state from submerged macrophytes in clear waters to phytoplankton-dominated, turbid systems. There is evidence for a decline in sedimentation in some natural wetlands after river regulation from the 1920s, but with the maintenance of the phytoplankton state. Fossil diatom assemblages reveal that, while some wetlands had saline episodes before settlement, others became saline after, and as early as the 1880s. The oxidation of sulphurous salts deposited after regulation has induced hyperacidity in a number of wetlands in recent years. While these wetlands are rightly perceived as being heavily impacted, other, once open water systems, that have infilled and now support rich macrophyte beds, are used as interpretive sites. The rate of filling, however, suggests that the lifespan of these wetlands is short. The rate of wetland loss through such increased infilling is unlikely to be matched by future scouring as regulation has eliminated middle order floods from the lower catchment.
Interdisciplinary higher education and the Melbourne model
- Davies, Martin, Devlin, Marcia
- Authors: Davies, Martin , Devlin, Marcia
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Relation: Philosophy of Educaiton Society of Australasia Conference; Wellington, New Zealand; 6th-9th December 2007; published in Creativity, enterprise, policy : New directions in education p. 1-16
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: The so-called ‘Melbourne Model’ has recently been adopted by the Council of the University of Melbourne, Australia after a long consultation process and widespread media attention. It proposes the design of new subjects which offer what are referred to as ‘different ways of knowing’ from students’ ‘core’ disciplines, partly through ‘the delivery of breadth subjects that are interdisciplinary in character’. This paper explores interdisciplinary higher education in the light of The Melbourne Model’. Definitional issues associated with the term ‘academic discipline’, as well as the newer terms ‘interdisciplinary’, ‘pluridisciplinary’, ‘cross-disciplinary’, ‘transdisciplinary’ and ‘multidisciplinary’ are examined. Some of the pedagogical issues inherent in a move from a traditional form of educational delivery to that underlined by the Melbourne Model are outlined. Some epistemological considerations relevant to multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity are discussed.
- Authors: Davies, Martin , Devlin, Marcia
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Relation: Philosophy of Educaiton Society of Australasia Conference; Wellington, New Zealand; 6th-9th December 2007; published in Creativity, enterprise, policy : New directions in education p. 1-16
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: The so-called ‘Melbourne Model’ has recently been adopted by the Council of the University of Melbourne, Australia after a long consultation process and widespread media attention. It proposes the design of new subjects which offer what are referred to as ‘different ways of knowing’ from students’ ‘core’ disciplines, partly through ‘the delivery of breadth subjects that are interdisciplinary in character’. This paper explores interdisciplinary higher education in the light of The Melbourne Model’. Definitional issues associated with the term ‘academic discipline’, as well as the newer terms ‘interdisciplinary’, ‘pluridisciplinary’, ‘cross-disciplinary’, ‘transdisciplinary’ and ‘multidisciplinary’ are examined. Some of the pedagogical issues inherent in a move from a traditional form of educational delivery to that underlined by the Melbourne Model are outlined. Some epistemological considerations relevant to multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity are discussed.
An argument structure abstraction for Bayesian belief networks: Just outcomes in on-line dispute resolution
- Muecke, Nial, Stranieri, Andrew
- Authors: Muecke, Nial , Stranieri, Andrew
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: There are many different approaches for settling disputes on-line, such as simple email systems, fixed bid systems and intelligent systems. However, to date there have been no attempts to integrate decision support methods into the dispute resolution process for the purpose of supporting outcomes that are consistent with judicial reasoning. This paper describes how a model of judicial reasoning can be used to assist divorcees with the resolution of property issues online, in a manner that is consistent with decisions a judge would make if the matter was heard in Court. The approach uses an argument based model of the discretionary nature of decisions made by judges in Australian Family Law. This is integrated with a protocol for online dispute dialogue. Predictions of the likelihood of alternates outcomes is achieved with a series of Bayesian Belief Networks
- Authors: Muecke, Nial , Stranieri, Andrew
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: There are many different approaches for settling disputes on-line, such as simple email systems, fixed bid systems and intelligent systems. However, to date there have been no attempts to integrate decision support methods into the dispute resolution process for the purpose of supporting outcomes that are consistent with judicial reasoning. This paper describes how a model of judicial reasoning can be used to assist divorcees with the resolution of property issues online, in a manner that is consistent with decisions a judge would make if the matter was heard in Court. The approach uses an argument based model of the discretionary nature of decisions made by judges in Australian Family Law. This is integrated with a protocol for online dispute dialogue. Predictions of the likelihood of alternates outcomes is achieved with a series of Bayesian Belief Networks
Food gardens : Cultivating a pedagogy of place
- Authors: Green, Monica
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Place-based education attempts to position the individual in relationship with the human and non-human elements of the life-world, at a place that is welcoming of educational experience and a knowledge base from which to construct a more ecologically sustainable culture. Food gardens, along with ecological restoration projects within schools are experiencing a significant renaissance and are important sites for place-based education. Many of these places are located in and around the immediate environment of a school ground and become significant educational portals through which children explore their world. This paper reports on the literature reviewed for a study on how a pedagogy of place is cultivated within garden experiences. There is limited research about the use of school gardens as an educational tool and the specific pedagogies that support learning in this context. A number of themes emerge from various bodies of literature that provide a conceptual framework for the study of food garden pedagogies. These themes include placebased education, ecological literary, and nature as teacher. It is useful to think about primary school gardens in the light of this literature because it helps frame a research question for a study into how pedagogies of place can be cultivated within food gardens. [Author abstract, ed]
- Authors: Green, Monica
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Place-based education attempts to position the individual in relationship with the human and non-human elements of the life-world, at a place that is welcoming of educational experience and a knowledge base from which to construct a more ecologically sustainable culture. Food gardens, along with ecological restoration projects within schools are experiencing a significant renaissance and are important sites for place-based education. Many of these places are located in and around the immediate environment of a school ground and become significant educational portals through which children explore their world. This paper reports on the literature reviewed for a study on how a pedagogy of place is cultivated within garden experiences. There is limited research about the use of school gardens as an educational tool and the specific pedagogies that support learning in this context. A number of themes emerge from various bodies of literature that provide a conceptual framework for the study of food garden pedagogies. These themes include placebased education, ecological literary, and nature as teacher. It is useful to think about primary school gardens in the light of this literature because it helps frame a research question for a study into how pedagogies of place can be cultivated within food gardens. [Author abstract, ed]
The potential affordances of enterprise wikis for creating community in research networks
- Johnson, Nicola, Clarke, Rodney, Herrington, Jan
- Authors: Johnson, Nicola , Clarke, Rodney , Herrington, Jan
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: In this paper, we describe some of the affordance, the (specific enabling features or characteristics) of an enterprise wiki to meet the needs of a developing community of practice. The Social Innovation Network (SInet) is a nascent research network that spans the social sciences, education and commerce at the University of Wollongong. It will use the enterprise wiki software Confluence to assist in the development of communities of practice across its groups and sub-groups. This paper, describes some of the features of the software and how it might be used to perform some of the common activties identified by Wenger (nd) as contributing to development of community.
- Authors: Johnson, Nicola , Clarke, Rodney , Herrington, Jan
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: In this paper, we describe some of the affordance, the (specific enabling features or characteristics) of an enterprise wiki to meet the needs of a developing community of practice. The Social Innovation Network (SInet) is a nascent research network that spans the social sciences, education and commerce at the University of Wollongong. It will use the enterprise wiki software Confluence to assist in the development of communities of practice across its groups and sub-groups. This paper, describes some of the features of the software and how it might be used to perform some of the common activties identified by Wenger (nd) as contributing to development of community.
Virtual teams : Worlds apart
- Authors: Knox, Ian , Wilmott, Deirdre
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Virtual teams are a relatively new phenomenon. A number of studies have focused on the description of team development and the group process of virtual learning teams as they form. This paper is a study of how Australian and American undergraduates worked together in virtual teams to respond to ethical and business practice problems for a given scenario. The study specifically examined the communication methods, task completion methodology and cultural differences exhibited by two undergraduate classes from the University of Ballarat, Ballarat Australia and Jacksonville State University, Jacksonville, Alabama, United States. Both synchronous and asynchronous communications methods were used with differing levels of enthusiasm and acceptance. Although the study was based on a small sample, which limits its generalisability, there are implications to inform those who are considering similar methods in their teaching. © 2008 Ian Knox and Deirdre Wilmott.
- Description: 2003010647
- Authors: Knox, Ian , Wilmott, Deirdre
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Virtual teams are a relatively new phenomenon. A number of studies have focused on the description of team development and the group process of virtual learning teams as they form. This paper is a study of how Australian and American undergraduates worked together in virtual teams to respond to ethical and business practice problems for a given scenario. The study specifically examined the communication methods, task completion methodology and cultural differences exhibited by two undergraduate classes from the University of Ballarat, Ballarat Australia and Jacksonville State University, Jacksonville, Alabama, United States. Both synchronous and asynchronous communications methods were used with differing levels of enthusiasm and acceptance. Although the study was based on a small sample, which limits its generalisability, there are implications to inform those who are considering similar methods in their teaching. © 2008 Ian Knox and Deirdre Wilmott.
- Description: 2003010647
Novel memetic algorithm for protein structure prediction
- Authors: Islam, M. D. , Chetty, Madhu
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: A novel Memetic Algorithm (MA) is proposed for investigating the complex ab initio protein structure prediction problem. The proposed MA has a new fitness function incorporating domain knowledge in the form of two new measures (H-compliance and P-compliance) to indicate hydrophobic and hydrophilic nature of a residue. It also includes two novel techniques for dynamically preserving best fit schema and for providing a guided search. The algorithm performance is investigated with the aid of commonly studied 2D lattice hydrophobic polar (HP) model for the benchmark as well as non-benchmark sequences. Comparative studies with other search algorithms reveal superior performance of the proposed technique
- Authors: Islam, M. D. , Chetty, Madhu
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: A novel Memetic Algorithm (MA) is proposed for investigating the complex ab initio protein structure prediction problem. The proposed MA has a new fitness function incorporating domain knowledge in the form of two new measures (H-compliance and P-compliance) to indicate hydrophobic and hydrophilic nature of a residue. It also includes two novel techniques for dynamically preserving best fit schema and for providing a guided search. The algorithm performance is investigated with the aid of commonly studied 2D lattice hydrophobic polar (HP) model for the benchmark as well as non-benchmark sequences. Comparative studies with other search algorithms reveal superior performance of the proposed technique
Adaptive clustering with feature ranking for DDoS attacks detection
- Zi, Lifang, Yearwood, John, Wu, Xin
- Authors: Zi, Lifang , Yearwood, John , Wu, Xin
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks pose an increasing threat to the current internet. The detection of such attacks plays an important role in maintaining the security of networks. In this paper, we propose a novel adaptive clustering method combined with feature ranking for DDoS attacks detection. First, based on the analysis of network traffic, preliminary variables are selected. Second, the Modified Global K-means algorithm (MGKM) is used as the basic incremental clustering algorithm to identify the cluster structure of the target data. Third, the linear correlation coefficient is used for feature ranking. Lastly, the feature ranking result is used to inform and recalculate the clusters. This adaptive process can make worthwhile adjustments to the working feature vector according to different patterns of DDoS attacks, and can improve the quality of the clusters and the effectiveness of the clustering algorithm. The experimental results demonstrate that our method is effective and adaptive in detecting the separate phases of DDoS attacks. © 2010 IEEE.
- Authors: Zi, Lifang , Yearwood, John , Wu, Xin
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks pose an increasing threat to the current internet. The detection of such attacks plays an important role in maintaining the security of networks. In this paper, we propose a novel adaptive clustering method combined with feature ranking for DDoS attacks detection. First, based on the analysis of network traffic, preliminary variables are selected. Second, the Modified Global K-means algorithm (MGKM) is used as the basic incremental clustering algorithm to identify the cluster structure of the target data. Third, the linear correlation coefficient is used for feature ranking. Lastly, the feature ranking result is used to inform and recalculate the clusters. This adaptive process can make worthwhile adjustments to the working feature vector according to different patterns of DDoS attacks, and can improve the quality of the clusters and the effectiveness of the clustering algorithm. The experimental results demonstrate that our method is effective and adaptive in detecting the separate phases of DDoS attacks. © 2010 IEEE.
An application of consensus clustering for DDoS attacks detection
- Zi, Lifang, Yearwood, John, Kelarev, Andrei
- Authors: Zi, Lifang , Yearwood, John , Kelarev, Andrei
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: The detection of Distributed Denial of Service (DDos) attacks is very important for maintaining the security of networks and the Internet. This paper introduces a novel iterative consensus process based on Hybrid Bipartite Graph Formulation (HGBF) consensus function for DDos attacks detection. First, the features are extracted during feature extraction process based on the analysis of network traffic. Second, several clustering algorithms are applied in combination with the silhouette index to obtain a collection of independent initial clusterings. Third, the HGBF consensus function and silhouette index are used to find an appropriate consensus clustering of the initial clusterings. Fourth, this new consensus clustering is added to the pool of initial clusterings replacing another clustering with the worst Silhouette index. Fifth, the process continues iteratively until the Silhouette index of the resulting consensus clusterings stabilizes. This iterative consensus clustering process can improve the quality of the clusters. The experimental results demonstrate that our iterative consensus process is effective and can be used in practice for detecting the separate phased of DDos attacks.
- Authors: Zi, Lifang , Yearwood, John , Kelarev, Andrei
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: The detection of Distributed Denial of Service (DDos) attacks is very important for maintaining the security of networks and the Internet. This paper introduces a novel iterative consensus process based on Hybrid Bipartite Graph Formulation (HGBF) consensus function for DDos attacks detection. First, the features are extracted during feature extraction process based on the analysis of network traffic. Second, several clustering algorithms are applied in combination with the silhouette index to obtain a collection of independent initial clusterings. Third, the HGBF consensus function and silhouette index are used to find an appropriate consensus clustering of the initial clusterings. Fourth, this new consensus clustering is added to the pool of initial clusterings replacing another clustering with the worst Silhouette index. Fifth, the process continues iteratively until the Silhouette index of the resulting consensus clusterings stabilizes. This iterative consensus clustering process can improve the quality of the clusters. The experimental results demonstrate that our iterative consensus process is effective and can be used in practice for detecting the separate phased of DDos attacks.
Automatic sleep stage identification: difficulties and possible solutions
- Sukhorukova, Nadezda, Stranieri, Andrew, Ofoghi, Bahadorreza, Vamplew, Peter, Saleem, Muhammad Saad, Ma, Liping, Ugon, Adrien, Ugon, Julien, Muecke, Nial, Amiel, Hélène, Philippe, Carole, Bani-Mustafa, Ahmed, Huda, Shamsul, Bertoli, Marcello, Levy, P, Ganascia, J.G
- Authors: Sukhorukova, Nadezda , Stranieri, Andrew , Ofoghi, Bahadorreza , Vamplew, Peter , Saleem, Muhammad Saad , Ma, Liping , Ugon, Adrien , Ugon, Julien , Muecke, Nial , Amiel, Hélène , Philippe, Carole , Bani-Mustafa, Ahmed , Huda, Shamsul , Bertoli, Marcello , Levy, P , Ganascia, J.G
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: The diagnosis of many sleep disorders is a labour intensive task that involves the specialised interpretation of numerous signals including brain wave, breath and heart rate captured in overnight polysomnogram sessions. The automation of diagnoses is challenging for data mining algorithms because the data sets are extremely large and noisy, the signals are complex and specialist's analyses vary. This work reports on the adaptation of approaches from four fields; neural networks, mathematical optimisation, financial forecasting and frequency domain analysis to the problem of automatically determing a patient's stage of sleep. Results, though preliminary, are promising and indicate that combined approaches may prove more fruitful than the reliance on a approach.
- Authors: Sukhorukova, Nadezda , Stranieri, Andrew , Ofoghi, Bahadorreza , Vamplew, Peter , Saleem, Muhammad Saad , Ma, Liping , Ugon, Adrien , Ugon, Julien , Muecke, Nial , Amiel, Hélène , Philippe, Carole , Bani-Mustafa, Ahmed , Huda, Shamsul , Bertoli, Marcello , Levy, P , Ganascia, J.G
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: The diagnosis of many sleep disorders is a labour intensive task that involves the specialised interpretation of numerous signals including brain wave, breath and heart rate captured in overnight polysomnogram sessions. The automation of diagnoses is challenging for data mining algorithms because the data sets are extremely large and noisy, the signals are complex and specialist's analyses vary. This work reports on the adaptation of approaches from four fields; neural networks, mathematical optimisation, financial forecasting and frequency domain analysis to the problem of automatically determing a patient's stage of sleep. Results, though preliminary, are promising and indicate that combined approaches may prove more fruitful than the reliance on a approach.
Cluster based rule discovery model for enhancement of government's tobacco control strategy
- Huda, Shamsul, Yearwood, John, Borland, Ron
- Authors: Huda, Shamsul , Yearwood, John , Borland, Ron
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Discovery of interesting rules describing the behavioural patterns of smokers' quitting intentions is an important task in the determination of an effective tobacco control strategy. In this paper, we investigate a compact and simplified rule discovery process for predicting smokers' quitting behaviour that can provide feedback to build an scientific evidence-based adaptive tobacco control policy. Standard decision tree (SDT) based rule discovery depends on decision boundaries in the feature space which are orthogonal to the axis of the feature of a particular decision node. This may limit the ability of SDT to learn intermediate concepts for high dimensional large datasets such as tobacco control. In this paper, we propose a cluster based rule discovery model (CRDM) for generation of more compact and simplified rules for the enhancement of tobacco control policy. The clusterbased approach builds conceptual groups from which a set of decision trees (a decision forest) are constructed. Experimental results on the tobacco control data set show that decision rules from the decision forest constructed by CRDM are simpler and can predict smokers' quitting intention more accurately than a single decision tree. © 2010 IEEE.
- Authors: Huda, Shamsul , Yearwood, John , Borland, Ron
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Discovery of interesting rules describing the behavioural patterns of smokers' quitting intentions is an important task in the determination of an effective tobacco control strategy. In this paper, we investigate a compact and simplified rule discovery process for predicting smokers' quitting behaviour that can provide feedback to build an scientific evidence-based adaptive tobacco control policy. Standard decision tree (SDT) based rule discovery depends on decision boundaries in the feature space which are orthogonal to the axis of the feature of a particular decision node. This may limit the ability of SDT to learn intermediate concepts for high dimensional large datasets such as tobacco control. In this paper, we propose a cluster based rule discovery model (CRDM) for generation of more compact and simplified rules for the enhancement of tobacco control policy. The clusterbased approach builds conceptual groups from which a set of decision trees (a decision forest) are constructed. Experimental results on the tobacco control data set show that decision rules from the decision forest constructed by CRDM are simpler and can predict smokers' quitting intention more accurately than a single decision tree. © 2010 IEEE.
GOM: New Genetic Optimizing Model for broadcasting tree in MANET
- Elaiwat, Said, Alazab, Ammar, Venkatraman, Sitalakshmi, Alazab, Mamoun
- Authors: Elaiwat, Said , Alazab, Ammar , Venkatraman, Sitalakshmi , Alazab, Mamoun
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Data broadcasting in a mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is the main method of information dissemination in many applications, in particular for sending critical information to all hosts. Finding an optimal broadcast tree in such networks is a challenging task due to the broadcast storm problem. The aim of this work is to propose a new genetic model using a fitness function with the primary goal of finding an optimal broadcast tree. Our new method, called Genetic Optimisation Model (GOM) alleviates the broadcast storm problem to a great extent as the experimental simulations result in efficient broadcast tree with minimal flood and minimal hops. The result of this model also shows that it has the ability to give different optimal solutions according to the nature of the network. © 2010 IEEE.
- Authors: Elaiwat, Said , Alazab, Ammar , Venkatraman, Sitalakshmi , Alazab, Mamoun
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Data broadcasting in a mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is the main method of information dissemination in many applications, in particular for sending critical information to all hosts. Finding an optimal broadcast tree in such networks is a challenging task due to the broadcast storm problem. The aim of this work is to propose a new genetic model using a fitness function with the primary goal of finding an optimal broadcast tree. Our new method, called Genetic Optimisation Model (GOM) alleviates the broadcast storm problem to a great extent as the experimental simulations result in efficient broadcast tree with minimal flood and minimal hops. The result of this model also shows that it has the ability to give different optimal solutions according to the nature of the network. © 2010 IEEE.
Hybrid wrapper-filter approaches for input feature selection using maximum relevance and Artificial Neural Network Input Gain Measurement Approximation (ANNIGMA)
- Huda, Shamsul, Yearwood, John, Stranieri, Andrew
- Authors: Huda, Shamsul , Yearwood, John , Stranieri, Andrew
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Feature selection is an important research problem in machine learning and data mining applications. This paper proposes a hybrid wrapper and filter feature selection algorithm by introducing the filter's feature ranking score in the wrapper stage to speed up the search process for wrapper and thereby finding a more compact feature subset. The approach hybridizes a Mutual Information (MI) based Maximum Relevance (MR) filter ranking heuristic with an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based wrapper approach where Artificial Neural Network Input Gain Measurement Approximation (ANNIGMA) has been combined with MR (MR-ANNIGMA) to guide the search process in the wrapper. The novelty of our approach is that we use hybrid of wrapper and filter methods that combines filter's ranking score with the wrapper-heuristic's score to take advantages of both filter and wrapper heuristics. Performance of the proposed MRANNIGMA has been verified using bench mark data sets and compared to both independent filter and wrapper based approaches. Experimental results show that MR-ANNIGMA achieves more compact feature sets and higher accuracies than both filter and wrapper approaches alone. © 2010 IEEE.
- Authors: Huda, Shamsul , Yearwood, John , Stranieri, Andrew
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Feature selection is an important research problem in machine learning and data mining applications. This paper proposes a hybrid wrapper and filter feature selection algorithm by introducing the filter's feature ranking score in the wrapper stage to speed up the search process for wrapper and thereby finding a more compact feature subset. The approach hybridizes a Mutual Information (MI) based Maximum Relevance (MR) filter ranking heuristic with an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based wrapper approach where Artificial Neural Network Input Gain Measurement Approximation (ANNIGMA) has been combined with MR (MR-ANNIGMA) to guide the search process in the wrapper. The novelty of our approach is that we use hybrid of wrapper and filter methods that combines filter's ranking score with the wrapper-heuristic's score to take advantages of both filter and wrapper heuristics. Performance of the proposed MRANNIGMA has been verified using bench mark data sets and compared to both independent filter and wrapper based approaches. Experimental results show that MR-ANNIGMA achieves more compact feature sets and higher accuracies than both filter and wrapper approaches alone. © 2010 IEEE.
Improving Naive Bayes classifier using conditional probabilities
- Taheri, Sona, Mammadov, Musa, Bagirov, Adil
- Authors: Taheri, Sona , Mammadov, Musa , Bagirov, Adil
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Naive Bayes classifier is the simplest among Bayesian Network classifiers. It has shown to be very efficient on a variety of data classification problems. However, the strong assumption that all features are conditionally independent given the class is often violated on many real world applications. Therefore, improvement of the Naive Bayes classifier by alleviating the feature independence assumption has attracted much attention. In this paper, we develop a new version of the Naive Bayes classifier without assuming independence of features. The proposed algorithm approximates the interactions between features by using conditional probabilities. We present results of numerical experiments on several real world data sets, where continuous features are discretized by applying two different methods. These results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm significantly improve the performance of the Naive Bayes classifier, yet at the same time maintains its robustness. © 2011, Australian Computer Society, Inc.
- Description: 2003009505
- Authors: Taheri, Sona , Mammadov, Musa , Bagirov, Adil
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Naive Bayes classifier is the simplest among Bayesian Network classifiers. It has shown to be very efficient on a variety of data classification problems. However, the strong assumption that all features are conditionally independent given the class is often violated on many real world applications. Therefore, improvement of the Naive Bayes classifier by alleviating the feature independence assumption has attracted much attention. In this paper, we develop a new version of the Naive Bayes classifier without assuming independence of features. The proposed algorithm approximates the interactions between features by using conditional probabilities. We present results of numerical experiments on several real world data sets, where continuous features are discretized by applying two different methods. These results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm significantly improve the performance of the Naive Bayes classifier, yet at the same time maintains its robustness. © 2011, Australian Computer Society, Inc.
- Description: 2003009505
Risk-based neuro-grid architecture for multimodal biometrics
- Venkatraman, Sitalakshmi, Kulkarni, Siddhivinayak
- Authors: Venkatraman, Sitalakshmi , Kulkarni, Siddhivinayak
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Recent research indicates that multimodal biometrics is the way forward for a highly reliable adoption of biometric identification systems in various applications, such as banks, businesses, governments
- Authors: Venkatraman, Sitalakshmi , Kulkarni, Siddhivinayak
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Recent research indicates that multimodal biometrics is the way forward for a highly reliable adoption of biometric identification systems in various applications, such as banks, businesses, governments
The seven scam types: Mapping the terrain of cybercrime
- Stabek, Amber, Watters, Paul, Layton, Robert
- Authors: Stabek, Amber , Watters, Paul , Layton, Robert
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Threat of cybercrime is a growing danger to the economy. Industries and businesses are targeted by cyber-criminals along with members of the general public. Since cybercrime is often a symptom of more complex criminological regimes such as laundering, trafficking and terrorism, the true damage caused to society is unknown. Dissimilarities in reporting procedures and non-uniform cybercrime classifications lead international reporting bodies to produce incompatible results which cause difficulties in making valid comparisons. A cybercrime classification framework has been identified as necessary for the development of an inter-jurisdictional, transnational, and global approach to identify, intercept, and prosecute cyber-criminals. Outlined in this paper is a cybercrime classification framework which has been applied to the incidence of scams. Content analysis was performed on over 250 scam descriptions stemming from in excess of 35 scamming categories and over 80 static features derived. Using hierarchical cluster and discriminant function analysis, the sample was reduced from over 35 ambiguous categories into 7 scam types and the top four scamming functions - identified as scamming business processes, revealed. The results of this research bear significant ramifications to the current state of scam and cybercrime classification, research and analysis, as well as offer significant insight into the business processes and applications adopted by scammers and cyber-criminals. © 2010 IEEE.
- Authors: Stabek, Amber , Watters, Paul , Layton, Robert
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Threat of cybercrime is a growing danger to the economy. Industries and businesses are targeted by cyber-criminals along with members of the general public. Since cybercrime is often a symptom of more complex criminological regimes such as laundering, trafficking and terrorism, the true damage caused to society is unknown. Dissimilarities in reporting procedures and non-uniform cybercrime classifications lead international reporting bodies to produce incompatible results which cause difficulties in making valid comparisons. A cybercrime classification framework has been identified as necessary for the development of an inter-jurisdictional, transnational, and global approach to identify, intercept, and prosecute cyber-criminals. Outlined in this paper is a cybercrime classification framework which has been applied to the incidence of scams. Content analysis was performed on over 250 scam descriptions stemming from in excess of 35 scamming categories and over 80 static features derived. Using hierarchical cluster and discriminant function analysis, the sample was reduced from over 35 ambiguous categories into 7 scam types and the top four scamming functions - identified as scamming business processes, revealed. The results of this research bear significant ramifications to the current state of scam and cybercrime classification, research and analysis, as well as offer significant insight into the business processes and applications adopted by scammers and cyber-criminals. © 2010 IEEE.
Tinkerers, learning organisations and sustainable innovation
- Authors: Wilmott, Dierdre
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: The contribution of the lone ranger educator who tinkers with applications, testing discarding and working haphazardly around systems, should be seriously considered. Whilst learning organisations want to be perceived as dynamic structures that recognise and support innovation in curriculum and teaching practice they cannot responsibly incorporate every technical change, new invention or application, and idea into their curriculum. Collaborative teams concerned with responsible sustainability, should not be subjecting their ideas to natural selection. Before ideas can be disseminated through collective teams, there needs to be a diffusion of originality, innovation and thought between members of teams, and this frequently stems from the very tinkerers whose willingness to take risks and fail with new technologies is often regarded as inefficient and contradictory to organisational development. As learning organisations embed open source and community developed software, they are finding themselves enmeshed with systems that are never complete and always being changed as the Internet magnifies the opportunities for tinkerers to adapt applications. When learning organisations embrace the open source option instead of using proprietary licences, they too have an obligation to support and participate in the development. This development is often done within a community that exists without concerns for sustainability and responsibility but uses an adaptive process of natural selection. An important way in which they can respond to this obligation is to provide an environment where lone rangers tinkering in the developmental role of resources can function. © 2010 Dierdre Wilmott.
- Description: 2003010649
- Authors: Wilmott, Dierdre
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: The contribution of the lone ranger educator who tinkers with applications, testing discarding and working haphazardly around systems, should be seriously considered. Whilst learning organisations want to be perceived as dynamic structures that recognise and support innovation in curriculum and teaching practice they cannot responsibly incorporate every technical change, new invention or application, and idea into their curriculum. Collaborative teams concerned with responsible sustainability, should not be subjecting their ideas to natural selection. Before ideas can be disseminated through collective teams, there needs to be a diffusion of originality, innovation and thought between members of teams, and this frequently stems from the very tinkerers whose willingness to take risks and fail with new technologies is often regarded as inefficient and contradictory to organisational development. As learning organisations embed open source and community developed software, they are finding themselves enmeshed with systems that are never complete and always being changed as the Internet magnifies the opportunities for tinkerers to adapt applications. When learning organisations embrace the open source option instead of using proprietary licences, they too have an obligation to support and participate in the development. This development is often done within a community that exists without concerns for sustainability and responsibility but uses an adaptive process of natural selection. An important way in which they can respond to this obligation is to provide an environment where lone rangers tinkering in the developmental role of resources can function. © 2010 Dierdre Wilmott.
- Description: 2003010649
Towards understanding malware behaviour by the extraction of API calls
- Alazab, Mamoun, Venkatraman, Sitalakshmi, Watters, Paul
- Authors: Alazab, Mamoun , Venkatraman, Sitalakshmi , Watters, Paul
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: One of the recent trends adopted by malware authors is to use packers or software tools that instigate code obfuscation in order to evade detection by antivirus scanners. With evasion techniques such as polymorphism and metamorphism malware is able to fool current detection techniques. Thus, security researchers and the anti-virus industry are facing a herculean task in extracting payloads hidden within packed executables. It is a common practice to use manual unpacking or static unpacking using some software tools and analyse the application programming interface (API) calls for malware detection. However, extracting these features from the unpacked executables for reverse obfuscation is labour intensive and requires deep knowledge of low-level programming that includes kernel and assembly language. This paper presents an automated method of extracting API call features and analysing them in order to understand their use for malicious purpose. While some research has been conducted in arriving at file birthmarks using API call features and the like, there is a scarcity of work that relates to features in malcodes. To address this gap, we attempt to automatically analyse and classify the behavior of API function calls based on the malicious intent hidden within any packed program. This paper uses four-step methodology for developing a fully automated system to arrive at six main categories of suspicious behavior of API call features. © 2010 IEEE.
- Authors: Alazab, Mamoun , Venkatraman, Sitalakshmi , Watters, Paul
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: One of the recent trends adopted by malware authors is to use packers or software tools that instigate code obfuscation in order to evade detection by antivirus scanners. With evasion techniques such as polymorphism and metamorphism malware is able to fool current detection techniques. Thus, security researchers and the anti-virus industry are facing a herculean task in extracting payloads hidden within packed executables. It is a common practice to use manual unpacking or static unpacking using some software tools and analyse the application programming interface (API) calls for malware detection. However, extracting these features from the unpacked executables for reverse obfuscation is labour intensive and requires deep knowledge of low-level programming that includes kernel and assembly language. This paper presents an automated method of extracting API call features and analysing them in order to understand their use for malicious purpose. While some research has been conducted in arriving at file birthmarks using API call features and the like, there is a scarcity of work that relates to features in malcodes. To address this gap, we attempt to automatically analyse and classify the behavior of API function calls based on the malicious intent hidden within any packed program. This paper uses four-step methodology for developing a fully automated system to arrive at six main categories of suspicious behavior of API call features. © 2010 IEEE.
Understanding victims of identity theft: Preliminary insights
- Turville, Kylie, Yearwood, John, Miller, Charlynn
- Authors: Turville, Kylie , Yearwood, John , Miller, Charlynn
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Identity theft is not a new crime, however changes in society and the way that business is conducted have made it an easier, attractive and more lucrative crime. When a victim discovers the misuse of their identity they must then begin the process of recovery, including fixing any issues that may have been created by the misuse. For some victims this may only take a small amount of time and effort, however for others they may continue to experience issues for many years after the initial moment of discovery. To date, little research has been conducted within Australia or internationally regarding what a victim experiences as they work through the recovery process. This paper presents a summary of the identity theft domain with an emphasis on research conducted within Australia, and identifies a number of issues regarding research in this area. The paper also provides an overview of the research project currently being undertaken by the authors in obtaining an understanding of what victims of identity theft experience during the recovery process; particularly their experiences when dealing with organizations. Finally, it reports on some of the preliminary work that has already been conducted for the research project. © 2010 IEEE.
- Authors: Turville, Kylie , Yearwood, John , Miller, Charlynn
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Identity theft is not a new crime, however changes in society and the way that business is conducted have made it an easier, attractive and more lucrative crime. When a victim discovers the misuse of their identity they must then begin the process of recovery, including fixing any issues that may have been created by the misuse. For some victims this may only take a small amount of time and effort, however for others they may continue to experience issues for many years after the initial moment of discovery. To date, little research has been conducted within Australia or internationally regarding what a victim experiences as they work through the recovery process. This paper presents a summary of the identity theft domain with an emphasis on research conducted within Australia, and identifies a number of issues regarding research in this area. The paper also provides an overview of the research project currently being undertaken by the authors in obtaining an understanding of what victims of identity theft experience during the recovery process; particularly their experiences when dealing with organizations. Finally, it reports on some of the preliminary work that has already been conducted for the research project. © 2010 IEEE.
Windows rootkits: Attacks and countermeasures
- Lobo, Desmond, Watters, Paul, Wu, Xin, Sun, Li
- Authors: Lobo, Desmond , Watters, Paul , Wu, Xin , Sun, Li
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Windows XP is the dominant operating system in the world today and rootkits have been a major concern for XP users. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the rootkits that target that operating system, while focusing on those that use various hooking techniques to hide malware on a machine. We identify some of the weaknesses in the Windows XP architecture that rootkits exploit and then evaluate some of the anti-rootkit security features that Microsoft has unveiled in Vista and 7. To reduce the number of rootkit infections in the future, we suggest that Microsoft should take full advantage of Intel's four distinct privilege levels. © 2010 IEEE.
- Authors: Lobo, Desmond , Watters, Paul , Wu, Xin , Sun, Li
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text:
- Description: Windows XP is the dominant operating system in the world today and rootkits have been a major concern for XP users. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the rootkits that target that operating system, while focusing on those that use various hooking techniques to hide malware on a machine. We identify some of the weaknesses in the Windows XP architecture that rootkits exploit and then evaluate some of the anti-rootkit security features that Microsoft has unveiled in Vista and 7. To reduce the number of rootkit infections in the future, we suggest that Microsoft should take full advantage of Intel's four distinct privilege levels. © 2010 IEEE.