Smart Home and Ambient Assisted Living (SHAAL) systems utilize advanced and ubiquitous technologies including sensors and other devices that are integrated in the residential infrastructure or wearable, to capture data describing activities of daily living and health related events. However, with the introduction of these technology-orientated services come a number of challenges, which to date are still largely unsolved. The management and processing of the large quantities of data generated from multiple sensors is recognized as one of the most significant challenges. Therefore, a simple yet efficient data scheduling scheme is proposed in this paper to manage incoming data packet from the system based on their application types and priorities. The performances of this lightweight context-aware scheme are investigated in a real SHAAL setting under two scenarios; centralized and distributed set-ups. The experimental results show the proposed scheme offers a promising solution for guaranteeing higher throughput to the high priority data while giving sufficient access to low priority data without introducing much delay impact.

Due to the growing dependence on the WWW User- Generated Content (UGC) as a primary source for information and news, the research on web credibility is becoming more important than ever before. In this paper we review previous efforts to evaluate information credibility, focusing specifically on microblogging. In particular, we provide a comparison of different systems for automatic assessment of information credibility based on the used techniques and features, and we classify the Twitter credibility surveys based on the features considered. We then propose a general model to assess information credibility on UGC different platforms, including Twitter, which employs a contextual credibility approach that examines the effect of culture, situation, topic variations, and languages on assessing credibility, using Arabic context as an example. We identify several factors that users may consider in determining credibility, and argue that the importance of each factor may vary with a context. Future work will include both a user study and machine learning techniques to evaluate the effectiveness of various factors for information credibility classification in different contexts.

Requirement engineering (RE) process clear description can be an important factor for guiding the team members involved in the RE process, which may help organizations not exceeding the estimated schedule and budget for the software project. There can be many reasons of not having efficient RE process such as changing situations among the organizations involved in the RE process. It is certainly one of the various other reasons of having non-efficient RE process. Due to these changing situations the RE process customization accordingly should be performed. As part of our current research project, where we are investigating situational RE in Global Software Development (GSD), first we need to identify the factors which may results in changing situations. This paper we have critically reviewed the domain of “standards and models”, and identified the initial list of situational factors from them. These standards and models are related to software engineering, which directly or indirectly discusses RE process. We have adopted the constant comparison and memoing techniques of the Grounded theory for identification of unique initial list of the situational factors. This initial list is a significant consideration for a comprehensive list of situational factors affecting RE process in GSD.

Usability is an important factor in ensuring development of quality and usable software product. Ignorance and unawareness about the concept of usability and failure to address usability during software development process has led to usability problems in software product. Many efforts has been suggested in literature to overcome usability problem in software products but current practices faces challenges in reducing these usability problems. Alternatively, the concept of risk management can be used to control usability problems even though these problems cannot be eliminated totally. The concept of risk management is important to deal with usability problem before it occurs. Unfortunately, there is still lack of proper definition of usability risk and a proper model to identify, analyze and prioritize potential usability risk during Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). This paper presents comprehensive study on the need for Usability Risk Assessment Model to reduce usability problems in software products.

In this paper the performance of a cooperative wireless communication system based on combined best relay selection (BRS) and adaptive LDPC coded modulation (ACM) scheme is investigated. These investigations are focused on evaluating the performance of the proposed cooperative wireless communication system over independent non-identical Rayleigh fading channels in terms of bit-error rate (BER) using MATLAB® computer simulations and comparing the system performance with ACM direct transmission and ACM cooperative with single relay. The simulations results show that the proposed cooperative scheme achieves lower signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values for desired bit-error rate (BER) and high spectral efficiency as compared to ACM direct transmission and ACM cooperative with single relay.

In today’s world, an optimal and intelligent problem solving approaches are required in every field, regardless of simple or complex problems. Researches and developers are trying to make machines and software's more efficient and intelligent. This is where the Artificial Intelligence plays its role in developing efficient and optimal searching algorithm solutions. Genetic algorithm is one of most pervasive and advanced developed heuristic search technique in AI. Genetic algorithm (GA) is developed to find the most optimized solution for a given problem based on inheritance, mutation, selection and some other techniques. It was proved that genetic algorithms are the most powerful unbiased optimization techniques for sampling a large solution space. In this paper, we have used GA for the image optimization and Knapsack Problems, which are commonly found in a real world scenario. Furthermore, a research based on a tool that uses Genetic Algorithm, called the GA Playground is done to demonstrate the capability of solving the Knapsack Problem with the fitness function and a case study on how images can be reproduced using the optimal parameters. Lastly, a few methods such as the Hash Table and the Taguchi Method are suggested to improve the performance of the Genetic Algorithm.

The service level agreement (SLA) is a mutual contract between the service provider and consumer which determines the agreed service level objective (SLO). The common SLA is a plain documental agreement without any relation to other dependent SLAs during the different layers of cloud computing. Hence, the cloud computing environment needs the hierarchical and autonomic SLA. This paper proposes the SH-SLA model to generate a hierarchical self-healing SLA in cloud computing. The self-healing ability contains the SLA monitoring, violation detecting and violation reacting processes. In SH-SLA, the related SLAs communicate with each other hierarchically. The SLA would be able to check its QoS and notify the recent status to dependent SLAs. Furthermore, SH-SLA could prevent or propagate the notified violations by an urgent reaction. Consequently, the service providers have a great chance to prevent the violated SLA before sensing by end users. The SH-SLA model is simulated and the experiment results have presented the violation detection and reaction abilities of the proposed model in cloud computing. Besides, the end users meet the lesser violations in SH-SLA than the common SLA.

IT projects management is not free from risks which are created from various sources of the environment. Thus a comprehensive understanding of these possible risks and creating strategic policies to confront them are one of the fundamental requirements for successful implementation of IT projects. The risks faced during the implementation of IT Projects are not just related to financial aspects. IT Project Managers must embrace these fundamental issues with more holistic view, rather than merely focusing on the financial matters. In order to prevent the potential problems from arising or escalating into bigger magnitude, serious attention must be given to it before the implementation of any IT project. The main focus of this paper is to investigate the impacts of Knowledge Management (KM) on Risk Management (RM) in IT project implementation process.

Today across various businesses, administrative and senior managers seeking for new technologies and approaches in which they can utilize it, more easy and affordable and thereby rise up their competitive profit and utility. Information Communications and Technology (ICT) is no exception from this principle. Cloud computing concept and technology and its inherent advantages has created a new ecosystem in the world of computing and is driving ICT industry one step forward. This technology can play an important role in an organization’s durability and IT strategies. Nowadays, due to progress and global popularity of cloud environments, many organizations moving to cloud and some well-known IT solution providers such as IBM and Oracle have introduced specific architecture to be deployed for cloud environment. On the other hand, using of IT Frameworks can be the best way for integrated business processes and other different processes. The purpose of this paper is to provide a novel architecture for cloud environment, based on recent best practices and frameworks and other cloud reference architecture. Meanwhile, a new service model has been introduced in this proposed architecture. This architecture is finally compared with little other architecture in a form of statistical graphs to show its benefits.

Structured data has an inherently great automation value. It renders itself readily for software tools to help store, organize and search effectively. With the growing dependence of data, we face many new problems. While software applications replace each other, and older software has rapidly diminishing value, data has the extreme opposite nature, which we can call “cumulative effect”. Unlike software, we see new data as an addition to the old one, so we tend to continuously accumulate date without deleting any thing. Even older data is often archived for it’s value, for legal reasons, or just because we can never be sure if we’d need them again. This would not be a problem if we had structured data, as we can automate the storing and retrieval process. However, most of the valuable information lie inside unstructured data, which is extremely difficult to store and retrieve in large scale. Our work shows a new concept of adding structure to highly unstructured, heterogeneous data, which will greatly improve the total process of storing and effectively retrieving them. We use Human- Computer-Interaction (HCI) patterns as a case study to present our proof of concept.

This paper compares the performance of popular AI techniques, namely the Breadth First Search, Depth First Search, A* Search, Greedy Best First Search and the Hill Climbing Search in approaching the solution of a N-Puzzle of size 8, on a 3x3 matrix board and for the solution of the classic 8 Queen Puzzle. It looks at the complexity of each algorithm as it tries to approaches the solution in order to evaluate the operation of each technique and identify the better functioning one in various cases. The N Puzzle and the 8 Queen is used as the test scenario. An application was created to implement each of the algorithms to extract results for each of the cases. The paper also depicts the extent each algorithm goes through while processing the solution and hence helps to clarify the specific cases in which a technique may be preferred over another.

eTOM is a standard framework that is defined in telecommunication business processes area. It contains of three phases, 1. Operations 2. Infrastructure, Strategy and Product 3. Enterprise Management. The goal of this paper is to enrich the processes in operations phase included of service assurance and fulfillment and to increase customer retention and loyalty and SLA fulfillment. For this purpose some processes in DSS domain of COBIT5 is introduced and mapped in different area of eTOM operations phase.

Growth and increasing use worldwide domain is inconsistent with growth of world population. Although in terms of domain usage statistics across the world increased, but the distribution of the domain name registration unevenly between countries around the world. There are a number of users of the gap between the domain names countries around the world. The technologies domain name system (DNS), marketing strategic, domain names services and other factors such as economy in the country, culture, environment, educational, geographical location, political, internet activity trends and so on, are also influenced the use and registration of the domain name. Malaysia is also one of the countries categorized as a developing country that is still minimal use of domain names compared to the rate of population, consumer internet and social media. This paper also presents the comparative analysis is the item-by-item comparison critical factors that influence the registration of domain name. This paper shows how perspectives can be used for comparative analysis, summarizes a soundness proof for critical factors that influence the registration of domain name.

Challenges of Requirements Engineering become adequate when it is performed in global software development paradigm. There can be many reasons behind this challenging nature. “Risks” can be one of them, as there is more risk exposure in global development paradigm. So it is may be one of the main reasons of making Requirement Engineering more challenging. For this first there is a need to identify the factors which actually generate these risks. This paper therefore not only identifies the factors, but also the risks which these factors may generate. A systematic literature review is done for the identification of these factors and the risks which may occur during requirement engineering process in global software development paradigm. The list leads to progressive enhancement for assisting in requirement engineering activities in global software development paradigm. This work is especially useful for the, less experience people working in global software development.