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BACKGROUND: Prostate cancer mortality rates are high in Nigeria. While prostate cancer is highly curable with early detection and effective multidisciplinary management, the quality of care is suboptimal in this setting. Sustainable delivery of high-quality care for patients with localized prostate cancer is needed to save more lives. To inform future interventions to improve care, this study aimed to identify barriers and facilitators that influence prostate cancer detection and management in Nigeria. METHODS: Six focus group discussions (FGDs), stratified by stakeholders were conducted with a purposive sample of prostate cancer patients (n = 19), caregivers (n = 15), and healthcare providers (n = 18), in two academic tertiary hospitals in northern and southern Nigeria. A discussion guide organized based on the socio-ecological model was used. FGDs were recorded, transcribed, and analysed using the framework technique. RESULTS: Barriers and facilitators were identified at the individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels. Barriers to detection included limited knowledge and misperceptions among patients, caregivers, and community-based non-specialist healthcare providers, and limitations of centralized opportunistic screening; while facilitators included the potential for religious institutions to encourage positive health-seeking behaviour. Barriers to management included non-uniformity in clinical guideline usage, treatment abandonment amidst concerns about treatment and survival, absence of patient interaction platforms and follow-up support systems, difficulty in navigating service areas, low health insurance coverage and limited financial resource of patients. Facilitators of management included the availability of resource stratified guidelines for prostate cancer management and the availability of patient peers, caregivers, nurses, and medical social workers to provide correct medical information and support patient-centred services. Participants also

Secure and trustworthy execution in heterogeneous SoCs is a major priority in the modern computing system. Security of SoCs mainly addresses two broad layers of trust issues: 1. Protection against hardware security threats(Side-channel, IP Privacy, Cloning, Fault Injection, and Denial of Service); and 2. Protection against malicious software attacks running on SoC processors. To resist malicious software-level attackers from gaining unauthorized access and compromising security, we propose a root of trust-based trusted execution mechanism \textbf{\textit{(named as \textbf{TrustToken}) }}. TrustToken builds a security block to provide a root of trust-based IP security: secure key generation and truly random source. \textbf{TrustToken} only allows trusted communication between the non-trusted third-party IP and the rest of the SoC world by providing essential security features, i.e., secure, isolated execution, and trusted user interaction. The proposed design achieves this by interconnecting the third-party IP interface to \textbf{TrustToken} Controller and checking IP authorization(Token) signals \texttt{`correctness'} at run-time. \textbf{TrustToken} architecture shows a very low overhead resource utilization LUT (618, 1.16 \%), FF (44, 0.04 \%), and BUFG (2 , 6.25\%) in implementation. The experiment results show that TrustToken can provide a secure, low-cost, and trusted solution for non-trusted SoC IPs.

Because FPGAs outperform traditional processing cores like CPUs and GPUs in terms of performance per watt and flexibility, they are being used more and more in cloud and data center applications. There are growing worries about the security risks posed by multi-tenant sharing as the demand for hardware acceleration increases and gradually gives way to FPGA multi-tenancy in the cloud. The confidentiality, integrity, and availability of FPGA-accelerated applications may be compromised if space-shared FPGAs are made available to many cloud tenants. We propose a root of trust-based trusted execution mechanism called \textbf{TrustToken} to prevent harmful software-level attackers from getting unauthorized access and jeopardizing security. With safe key creation and truly random sources, \textbf{TrustToken} creates a security block that serves as the foundation of trust-based IP security. By offering crucial security characteristics, such as secure, isolated execution and trusted user interaction, \textbf{TrustToken} only permits trustworthy connection between the non-trusted third-party IP and the rest of the SoC environment. The suggested approach does this by connecting the third-party IP interface to the \textbf{TrustToken} Controller and running run-time checks on the correctness of the IP authorization(Token) signals. With an emphasis on software-based assaults targeting unauthorized access and information leakage, we offer a noble hardware/software architecture for trusted execution in FPGA-accelerated clouds and data centers.

With the exponentially increasing demand for performance and scalability in cloud applications and systems, data center architectures evolved to integrate heterogeneous computing fabrics that leverage CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs. FPGAs differ from traditional processing platforms such as CPUs and GPUs in that they are reconfigurable at run-time, providing increased and customized performance, flexibility, and acceleration. FPGAs can perform large-scale search optimization, acceleration, and signal processing tasks compared with power, latency, and processing speed. Many public cloud provider giants, including Amazon, Huawei, Microsoft, Alibaba, etc., have already started integrating FPGA-based cloud acceleration services. While FPGAs in cloud applications enable customized acceleration with low power consumption, it also incurs new security challenges that still need to be reviewed. Allowing cloud users to reconfigure the hardware design after deployment could open the backdoors for malicious attackers, potentially putting the cloud platform at risk. Considering security risks, public cloud providers still don't offer multi-tenant FPGA services. This paper analyzes the security concerns of multi-tenant cloud FPGAs, gives a thorough description of the security problems associated with them, and discusses upcoming future challenges in this field of study.

Web phishing remains a serious cyber threat responsible for most data breaches. Machine Learning (ML)-based anti-phishing detectors are seen as an effective countermeasure, and are increasingly adopted by web-browsers and software products. However, with an average of 10K phishing links reported per hour to platforms such as PhishTank and VirusTotal (VT), the deficiencies of such ML-based solutions are laid bare. We first explore how phishing sites bypass ML-based detection with a deep dive into 13K phishing pages targeting major brands such as Facebook. Results show successful evasion is caused by: (1) use of benign services to obscure phishing URLs; (2) high similarity between the HTML structures of phishing and benign pages; (3) hiding the ultimate phishing content within Javascript and running such scripts only on the client; (4) looking beyond typical credentials and credit cards for new content such as IDs and documents; (5) hiding phishing content until after human interaction. We attribute the root cause to the dependency of ML-based models on the vertical feature space (webpage content). These solutions rely only on what phishers present within the page itself. Thus, we propose Anti-SubtlePhish, a more resilient model based on logistic regression. The key augmentation is the inclusion of a horizontal feature space, which examines correlation variables between the final render of suspicious pages against what trusted services have recorded (e.g., PageRank). To defeat (1) and (2), we correlate information between WHOIS, PageRank, and page analytics. To combat (3), (4) and (5), we correlate features after rendering the page. Experiments with 100K phishing/benign sites show promising accuracy (98.8%). We also obtained 100% accuracy against 0-day phishing pages that were manually crafted, comparing well to the 0% recorded by VT vendors over the first four days., Comment: 12 pages

With the widespread use of toxic language online, platforms are increasingly using automated systems that leverage advances in natural language processing to automatically flag and remove toxic comments. However, most automated systems -- when detecting and moderating toxic language -- do not provide feedback to their users, let alone provide an avenue of recourse for these users to make actionable changes. We present our work, RECAST, an interactive, open-sourced web tool for visualizing these models' toxic predictions, while providing alternative suggestions for flagged toxic language. Our work also provides users with a new path of recourse when using these automated moderation tools. RECAST highlights text responsible for classifying toxicity, and allows users to interactively substitute potentially toxic phrases with neutral alternatives. We examined the effect of RECAST via two large-scale user evaluations, and found that RECAST was highly effective at helping users reduce toxicity as detected through the model. Users also gained a stronger understanding of the underlying toxicity criterion used by black-box models, enabling transparency and recourse. In addition, we found that when users focus on optimizing language for these models instead of their own judgement (which is the implied incentive and goal of deploying automated models), these models cease to be effective classifiers of toxicity compared to human annotations. This opens a discussion for how toxicity detection models work and should work, and their effect on the future of online discourse., Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures, CSCW '21

As toxic language becomes nearly pervasive online, there has been increasing interest in leveraging the advancements in natural language processing (NLP), from very large transformer models to automatically detecting and removing toxic comments. Despite the fairness concerns, lack of adversarial robustness, and limited prediction explainability for deep learning systems, there is currently little work for auditing these systems and understanding how they work for both developers and users. We present our ongoing work, RECAST, an interactive tool for examining toxicity detection models by visualizing explanations for predictions and providing alternative wordings for detected toxic speech., Comment: 8 Pages, 3 figures, The eighth International Workshop of Chinese CHI Proceedings

This thesis covers the dynamic modelling of un-cracked and cracked rotating beams. Accordingly, a new model of a rotating cracked beam is developed using the finite element and the Rayleigh-Ritz method to characterise and analyse its dynamic behaviour. The effect of various parameters are investigated, such as rotational speed, hub ratio and slenderness ratio. In addition, the critical speed, buckling speed and veering phenomena are identified. The numerical results produced are shown to be in good agreement with models based on finite element representations. In addition to the theoretical investigations, experimental validation is presented. A test rig was designed and manufactured with a changeable rotating hub mount for different test requirements. Moreover, the rig was conceived to incorporate capabilities such as applying variable rotational speed using a variable frequency driver and provide vertical base excitation input to the centre of rotation of the hub. The tests were performed using random excitation at the root of the rotating cantilever beam to excite the flapwise modes of the beam. The responses were then measured optically using a high-speed camera, and the images were post-processed using a digital image correlation (DIC) method. This non-invasive optical method was used to extract the temporal deflection of the beam. The frequency response functions are then obtained from the measured responses. The estimated modal frequencies were compared with numerical simulations to validate the Rayleigh-Ritz and FE numerical models at various rotational speeds. Furthermore, an experimental crack detection was implemented and the results showed a good match to the introduced actual crack location and depth. The crack detection approach on the rotating cracked beam uses the fundamental and second natural frequencies. For vibration control of the rotating beam, a real-time velocity feedback control was applied using a remote single optical high-speed

This thesis covers the dynamic modelling of un-cracked and cracked rotating beams. Accordingly, a new model of a rotating cracked beam is developed using the finite element and the Rayleigh-Ritz method to characterise and analyse its dynamic behaviour. The effect of various parameters are investigated, such as rotational speed, hub ratio and slenderness ratio. In addition, the critical speed, buckling speed and veering phenomena are identified. The numerical results produced are shown to be in good agreement with models based on finite element representations. In addition to the theoretical investigations, experimental validation is presented. A test rig was designed and manufactured with a changeable rotating hub mount for different test requirements. Moreover, the rig was conceived to incorporate capabilities such as applying variable rotational speed using a variable frequency driver and provide vertical base excitation input to the centre of rotation of the hub. The tests were performed using random excitation at the root of the rotating cantilever beam to excite the flapwise modes of the beam. The responses were then measured optically using a high-speed camera, and the images were post-processed using a digital image correlation (DIC) method. This non-invasive optical method was used to extract the temporal deflection of the beam. The frequency response functions are then obtained from the measured responses. The estimated modal frequencies were compared with numerical simulations to validate the Rayleigh-Ritz and FE numerical models at various rotational speeds. Furthermore, an experimental crack detection was implemented and the results showed a good match to the introduced actual crack location and depth. The crack detection approach on the rotating cracked beam uses the fundamental and second natural frequencies. For vibration control of the rotating beam, a real-time velocity feedback control was applied using a remote single optical high-speed

One of the agendas for addressing environmental protection in construction is to reduce impacts and make the construction activities more sustainable.This important consideration has generated several research interests within the construction industry, especially considering the construction damaging effects on the ecosystem, such as various forms of environmental pollution, resource depletion and biodiversity loss on a global scale. Using Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling technique, this study validates environmental sustainability (ES) construct in the context of large construction firms in Malaysia.A cross-sectional survey was carried out where data was collected from Malaysian large construction firms using a structured questionnaire.Results of this study revealed that business innovativeness and new technology are important in determining environmental sustainability (ES) of the Malaysian construction firms. It also established an adequate level of internal consistency reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity for each of this study’s constructs. And based on this result, it could be suggested that the indicators for organisational innovativeness dimensions (business innovativeness and new technology) are useful to measure these constructs in order to study construction firms’ tendency to adopt environmental sustainability (ES) in their project execution.

This exploratory study aims to examine financial behaviour and experiences of British Muslims. Consumer Financial behaviour is defined as any human behaviour related to money management. Consumers' financial decisions are increasingly complex and essential for their financial well-being. The research context focuses on a minority religious consumer group that seeks to meet their financial needs whilst abiding stringent religious laws of financial dealings which are at odds with the predominant modern capitalist financial system. Thus this study explores the moderating role of religiosity and cultural orientation of key financial behaviours such as savings, borrowings and investment behaviours and their antecedents. This thesis adopts pragmatism as the research philosophy as the exploration of the complex financial experiences of British Muslims requires understanding multiple realities. By taking an integrative approach to research strategies, this thesis utilised an exploratory sequential mixed methods research design. This included data collection conducted over two phases. Firstly, the qualitative method of in-depth interviews (n=14) and secondly, the quantitative method of online questionnaire (n=314). This tested the comprehensive framework to measure the financial experiences and behaviour of participants. Using multiple regress analysis this study established links with financial attitudes, financial knowledge, financial well-being, financial goals with religiosity and cultural orientation.

This exploratory study aims to examine financial behaviour and experiences of British Muslims. Consumer Financial behaviour is defined as any human behaviour related to money management. Consumers' financial decisions are increasingly complex and essential for their financial well-being. The research context focuses on a minority religious consumer group that seeks to meet their financial needs whilst abiding stringent religious laws of financial dealings which are at odds with the predominant modern capitalist financial system. Thus this study explores the moderating role of religiosity and cultural orientation of key financial behaviours such as savings, borrowings and investment behaviours and their antecedents. This thesis adopts pragmatism as the research philosophy as the exploration of the complex financial experiences of British Muslims requires understanding multiple realities. By taking an integrative approach to research strategies, this thesis utilised an exploratory sequential mixed methods research design. This included data collection conducted over two phases. Firstly, the qualitative method of in-depth interviews (n=14) and secondly, the quantitative method of online questionnaire (n=314). This tested the comprehensive framework to measure the financial experiences and behaviour of participants. Using multiple regress analysis this study established links with financial attitudes, financial knowledge, financial well-being, financial goals with religiosity and cultural orientation.