Volume 4, Issue 9, September 2012

Challenges for Security in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs)

M. A. Khan, Atiq. Rehman, M. Zakaya, G. A. Shah

Wireless sensor network is formed with the combination of sensor nodes and sink nodes. Recently Wireless sensor network has attracted attention of the research community. The main application of wireless sensor network is security from different attacks both for mass public and military. However securing these networks, by itself is a critical issue due to many constraints like limited energy, computational power and lower memory. Researchers working in this area have proposed a number of security techniques for this purpose. Still, more work needs to be done. In this paper we provide a detailed discussion on security in wireless sensor networks. This paper will help to identify different obstacles and requirements for security of wireless sensor networks as well as highlight weaknesses of existing techniques.

Keywords: Wireless Senor Networks (WSNs), Security, Denial of Service, Message Authentication Code (MAC), black hole, cryptography, stenography

Multicast Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs)

M. A. Khan, M. Ahsan, G. A. Shah, Muhammad Sher

Wireless sensor network (WSN) is formed by collaboration of sensor nodes and static sink nodes. The sensor nodes sense certain information about an event from its environment and forward them to a sink node for processing and analysis. Besides unicast routing to a single sink node, a wide variety of WSN applications have also realized the presence of multiple sinks that necessitates multicast routing for efficient data dissemination to multiple destinations. For example, in emergency scenarios such as fire handling or any disaster surveillance, it isgenerally required to report event information to multiple sinks that includes hospitals, ambulatory service, rescue cell etc.However there are certain challenges in multicast routing protocols such as nodes mobility, energy and bandwidth constraints which need to be addressed. Various multicast routing protocols have been proposed by many researchers. This survey contributes in providing a comprehensive understanding of these multicast routing protocols, and identifies the future research directions in multicasting. We provide a detail survey of the existing multicast routing protocols and identify different issues and challenges that need to be resolved. Conclusion derived in this paper can lead to a new paradigm of multicast routing in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs).

Keywords: Wireless Senor Networks (WSNs), Priced Trackand Transmit (PTNT), Branch Aggregation Multicast (BAM), Geographic Multicast Protocol (GMR), Hierarchical Rendezvous Point base multicast (HRPM)

Applying Kalman Filtering in solving SSM estimation problem by the means of EM algorithm with considering a practical example

Mehdi Darbandi, Mohammad Abedi, Meysam Panahi, Negar Roshan, Mohsen Kariman Khorasani

This paper discuss about SSM estimation (State Space Model estimation) with use of EM algorithm. At first, we explain SSM estimation and tell about its parameters from observed time series data, after that by the means of one example we estimates the normal SSM of the mink-muskrat data by using the EM algorithm.

Keywords: Kalman filtering, SSM estimation, MATLAB Simulink, EM algorithm, Mink-Muskrat

Unabridged collation about multifarious computing methods and outreaching cloud computing based on innovative procedure

Mehdi Darbandi, Mohammad Abedi, Meysam Panahi, Ali Hamzenejad, Mohsen Kariman Khorasani

Cloud computing is one of today's most exciting technologies due to its ability to reduce costs associated with computing while increasing flexibility and scalability for computer processes. During the past few years, cloud computing has grown from being a promising business idea to one of the fastest growing parts of the IT industry. IT organizations have expresses concern about critical issues (such as security) that exist with the widespread implementation of cloud computing. These types of concerns originate from the fact that data is stored remotely from the customer's location; in fact, it can be stored at any location. Security, in particular, is one of the most argued-about issues in the cloud computing field; several enterprises look at cloud computing warily due to projected security risks. The risks of compromised security and privacy may be lower overall, however, with cloud computing than they would be if the data were to be stored on individual machines instead of in a so - called "cloud" (the network of computers used for remote storage and maintenance). Comparison of the benefits and risks of cloud computing with those of the status quo are necessary for a full evaluation of the viability of cloud computing. Consequently, some issues arise that clients need to consider as they contemplate moving to cloud computing for their businesses. Cloud computing is emerging as a prominent computing model. It provides a low-cost, highly accessible alternative to other traditional high-performance computing platforms. It also has many other benefits such as high availability, scalability, elasticity, and free of maintenance. Given these attractive features, it is very desirable if automated planning can exploit the large, affordable computational power of cloud computing. However, the latency in inter-process communication in cloud computing makes most existing parallel planning algorithms unsuitable for cloud computing. In this paper, at first we review different aspects of cloud computing and tell about all features and advantages and disadvantages of such network and after that we try to find dynamical system model for cloud computing based on Kalman Filtering and demonstrate basic fundamental equations of these model. This model can be used for modeling and making decision about all aspects of cloud computing, for example we can use this model for making decision about security of such network – by making a model for cloud platforms and estimate and update information about the presence of hackers and malicious actions. Also we can use such dynamical modeling for calculating crowd on different sections of cloud computing resources.

Keywords: Control model, Kalman estimator, estimation and prediction

Heuristics for minimum length geometric embedding of free trees onto a point set

Parya Noorbakhsh and Alireza Bagheri

In the geometric graph embedding problem, a graph with n vertices and a set of n points in the plane are given and the problem deals with finding a mapping between vertices of the graph to these points such that the embedded graph on the point set has the minimum length. The problem is NP-hard, since the traveling salesman problem is one special case of it. In this paper, we present some heuristics for embedding a free tree onto a point set on the plane with minimum total edge length.

Keywords: Geometric embedding, Point-set embedding, Computational geometry, Heuristic algorithm

Feature scruitinization for hand gestures

Sumaira kausar, M.Younis Javed, samabia tehsin

Sign language recognition is applicable to a diversity of areas. That is the reason it is getting high attention of researchers in latest years. This paper focuses on two critical phases of automatic sign language recognition i.e. feature selection and feature extraction. As a matter of fact, a sign language recognizer can never give good results if it does not rely on correct feature selection and their accurate extraction. This paper aimed at presenting some of the possible feature sets and some popular extraction mechanisms with a critical view. This paper anlayzed different geometrical feature sets on the basis of a quality metric. So researchers specially, novice one can get one point access to the issues associated with these two phases for sign language recognition.

Keywords: hand gestures

Appraising the role of cloud computing in daily life and presenting new solutions for stabilization of this technology

Saeed Setayesh, Pariya Shahbazi, Mehdi Darbandi, Saeed Rasti

Cloud computing is fast creating a revolution in the way information technology is used and procured by organizations and by individuals. Although the definition of Cloud is still “cloudy” but we can tell that perhaps the simplest working definition of cloud computing is being able to access files, data, programs and 3rd party services from a web browser via the internet that are hosted by a 3rd party provider and paying only for the computing resources and services used [2]. This technology presents lots of abilities and opportunities such as processing power, storage and accessing it from everywhere, supporting, working – team group - with the latest versions of software and etc., by the means of internet. Cloud computing is reliable services that presenting by next generation data centers and from internet, they based on virtual technologies and computing methods [4]. In recent decades the internet has very deep influences in human lives and also in offer and demand markets; lots of people for trading, reading the news, seeing the movies or to play online games go through the internet. As our daily needs from the internet became more, so that the processing power and amount of storage data and files should increase significantly [8]. With remarkable developments of communication and information technology in recent days, we consider processing and processing power as the fifth vital component in human lives (after water, electricity, gas and telephone) [9]. These days’ lots of technologies migrate from traditional systems into cloud and similar technologies; also we should note that cloud can be used for military and civilian purposes [3]. On the other hand, in such a large scale networks we should consider the reliability and powerfulness of such networks in facing with events such as high amount of users that may login to their profiles simultaneously, or for example if we have the ability to predict about what times that we would have the most crowd in network, or even users prefer to use which part of the Cloud Computing more than other parts – which software or hardware configuration. With knowing such information, we can avoid accidental crashing or hanging of the network that may be cause by logging of too much users. In this paper we propose Kalman Filter that can be used for estimating the amounts of users and software’s that run on cloud computing or other similar platforms at a certain time. After introducing this filter, at the end of paper, we talk about some potentials of this filter in cloud computing platform. In this paper we demonstrate about how we can use Kalman filter in estimating and predicting of our target, by the means of several examples on Kalman filter. Also at the end of paper we propose information filter for estimation and prediction about cloud computing resources.

Keywords: Information Technology, Information filter Cloud computing, Security, Kalman Filter

New and novel technique in designing electromagnetic filter for eliminating EMI radiations and optimization performances

Mehdi Darbandi, Ali Aminalsharie Najafi, Mohammad Golmakani, Shahriar Eslami

Electromagnetic interference (EMI) filters are often used on automotive 13.8 V power networks to reduce high frequency noise from being conducted off the printed circuit boards (PCB) and resulting into EMI problems. The filter performance is difficult to predict and often compromised at high frequencies due to parasitic associated with the filter itself, or the PCB layout. The power line filters with Surface Mount Technology ferrite and Multi Layer Ceramic Capacitors are attractive solutions for mitigation of RF noise in high-density automotive PCBs. A lumped-element SPICE model is introduced DC for optimized ?-filter design, including frequency dependent ferrite component model. The PCB implementation of EMI filter is outlined for optimum filter performance.

Keywords: Designing of high frequency filters, Print Circuit board layout design, filtering, and noise

Spectrum Saving Evaluation using Bandwidth Saving Model

Neeti Gupta and Pradeep Kumar Chopra

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) the Indian telecom sector continued to register an impressive growth in the year 2011-12. Over the past two decades the Indian telecom sector has seen a remarkable growth. The number of mobile phone subscriptions increased from 13 million in 2003 to 919.17 million by March 2012 while the wireline base recorded a decline from 41.48 million in 2003 to 32.17 million by March 2012. Such explosive growth in number of mobile subscribers resulted in poor quality of service with frequent call dropouts. Limited availability of spectrum for mobile cellular networks adds to the problem. The adoption of Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) can be of great help in mobile bandwidth saving. Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) is a step towards the utilization of fixed telephone network to divert the traffic from mobile network and save the mobile cellular spectrum. A survey has been conducted in residential areas of Ghaziabad, India to determine mobile and landline usage pattern of subscribers. A case wise study has been done to evaluate the percentage of spectrum that can be saved by the adoption of FMC by using the Mobile Bandwidth Saving Estimate Model(MBSEM).

Keywords: FMC(Fixed Mobile Convergence), MBSEM(Mobile Bandwidth Saving Estimate Model), Spectrum, Subscriber

Design, Analysis and Simulation of 7-T SRAM Memroy Cell

Amit Kumar, Sukhveer Singh

The increasing market of portable and battery powered electronic devices is creating demands for chips that consume the smallest possible amount of power in electronics devices. SRAM consists of almost 60% power dissipation of the total digital system [2] and no digital system gets complete without memories. This paper focuses on the power dissipation during the Write operation in six-T CMOS SRAM as well as read operation also. In this paper analysis is done 7-T SRAM cell which will includes one more extra transistor that will control the overall capacitances during the write and read operation and will optimize the total capacitance will result out the decrease in the power dissipation. Here in this paper we are targeting the short circuit power dissipation as well as switching power dissipation which is also known as dynamic power optimization. The circuit is characterized by using the 130nm technology which is having a supply voltage 0f 1.5 volt.

Keywords: Power dissipation, delay, memory, switching capacitance, frequency

Scrutiny about all security standards in cloud computing and present new novel standard for security of such networks

Mohammad Abedi, Mehdi Darband, Mohsen Kariman Khorasani

Cloud computing is set of resources and services offered through the Internet. Cloud services are delivered from data centers located throughout the world. Cloud computing facilitates its consumers by providing virtual resources via internet. General example of cloud services is Google apps, provided by Google and Microsoft SharePoint. The rapid growth in field of “cloud computing” also increases severe security concerns. Security has remained a constant issue for Open Systems and internet, when we are talking about security cloud really suffers. Lack of security is the only hurdle in wide adoption of cloud computing. In giving a definition to cloud computing, the highest hits on Google scholar are used, in particular the ones with the most references regarding cloud computing. Some scientific papers show up a lot such as (Vaquero 2009) and (Armbrust et al 2010). In total Google scholar shows about 100 to 120 relevant hits regarding cloud computing. Of course there are a lot more hits, but they go out of the scope of this research. Cloud computing is surrounded by many security issues like securing data, and examining the utilization of cloud by the cloud computing vendors. The wide acceptance www has raised security risks along with the uncountable benefits, so is the case with cloud computing. The boom in cloud computing has brought lots of security challenges for the consumers and service providers. How the end users of cloud computing know that their information is not having any availability and security issues? Every one poses, Is their information secure? Although the cloud computing model is considered to be a very promising internet-based computing platform, it results in a loss of security control over the cloud-hosted assets. This is due to the outsourcing of enterprise IT assets hosted on third-party cloud computing platforms. Moreover, the lack of security constraints in the Service Level Agreements between the cloud providers and consumers results in a loss of trust as well. Obtaining a security certificate such as ISO 27000 or NIST-FISMA would help cloud providers improve consumers trust in their cloud platforms' security. However, such standards are still far from covering the full complexity of the cloud computing model. In this paper, at first we consider significant influences of this technology on some of the biggest companies and organizations all over the world, after that we present performance comparison of two stage Kalman filtering technique for surveillance permeating tracking in social networks such as cloud computing, we demonstrate mathematically all the equations and formula of this filter and also by the means of some MATLAB simulations we can use this technique for avoiding the entrance and existence of hacker and crackers.

Keywords: Cloud resources, Security enhancement, privacy and licensing, Intelligence and smart firewalls

Developing concept of electromagnetic filter design by considering new parameters and use of mathematical analysis

Ali Aminalsharie Najafi, Mehdi Darbandi, Mohammad Golmakani

Radiated emission (RE) compliance requirements of automotive sector demands one of the most difficult design challenges for EMC engineers as compared with those of FCC and military standard mandates. Recent revisions to EMC requirements has exasperated the RE compliance levels considerably. Automotive industry radiated emission requirements span over a wide frequency range (150 kHz – 1.583 GHz). The European Long Wave (150 kHz – 280 kHz) and global Medium Wave AM band (0.53 MHz – 1.7 MHz) is the subject of this article. Onboard receivers in modern vehicle intended for the reception of the RF services, indicated as low frequency LW and MW audio broadcast, can be susceptible to unintended noise source(s). The modern vehicle is abundantly rich in noise source with a large number of electrical and electronics components. As a result of integration of electronics in modern vehicle, it hence creates the most demanding electromagnetic environment.

Keywords: Printed Circuit Board (PCB), Surface Mount Technology (SMD), Ferrites, Multi Layer Ceramic Capacitor (MLCC), Switch Mode Power Supply (SMPS), Near Field (NF), Electric Field (EF), Radiated Emission (RE), Absorber Lined Shielded Enclosure (ALSE), Electronic Control Unit (ECU), Transverse Electromagnetic (TEM)

Text Localization Challenges and Solutions

S. Tehsin, A. Masood, S. Kausar, Y. Javed and F. Arif

Multimedia data has increased rapidly in past years. Textual information present in multimedia contains important information about the image/video content. This information can be exploited for image and video retrieval systems. There are few attributes associated with text, which are commonly used for text extraction. But state of the art research in the field is evident that these text extraction methods face many problems that hinder their robustness and reliability. This paper focuses on identification of such problem along with their possible solutions. This paper can be served as a guide for novice researchers of the field about text extraction related problems and their solutions.

Keywords: Content-based Image Retrieval, caption text extraction, Scene Text, Multimedia Processing

Considering the high impact of gettering of silicon on fabrication of wafer designing and optimize the designing with new innovative solutions

Pouria Ilka, Mehdi Darbandi, Mohammad Golmakani

Real crystals differ from the ideal in that they possess imperfections or defects [1]. Some defects, due to impurity dopant atoms, are absolutely necessary for creating devices in the crystal. Other crystalline defects may be helpful if present in moderate density. Most however are undesirable, regardless of the density in which they may be found in the crystal. Various forms of defects in single-crystal and their structures, mechanisms of their formation are described by, S. Wolf and R. N. Tauber, in great detail [2]. Unwanted crystalline defects and impurities can be introduced during silicon crystal growth or subsequent wafer fabrication processes. These defects and impurities, some are undesirable because both can degrade device characteristics and overall yield. Gettering is the process whereby impurity concentrations are reduced in the device region of the wafer by localizing them in separate, predefined regions of the wafer where they cannot affect device performance. The management of metal contamination is one of the most important aspects of successful integrated circuit manufacture. Gettering has long been an important part of the silicon fabrication process. Simply, gettering is a stand-by process whereby metal contamination is rendered harmless in the event of a failure of process contamination control. This article covers some of the fundamental principles that underlie this very important technology and discusses various approaches to the problem, highlighting the issues associated with each of them.

Keywords: Getterring applications

Training a Functional Link Neural Network Using an Artificial Bee Colony for Solving a Classification Problems

Yana Mazwin Mohmad Hassim and Rozaida Ghazali

Artificial Neural Networks have emerged as an important tool for classification and have been widely used to classify a non-linear separable pattern. The most popular artificial neural networks model is a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) as is able to perform classification task with significant success. However due to the complexity of MLP structure and also problems such as local minima trapping, over fitting and weight interference have made neural network training difficult. Thus, the easy way to avoid these problems is to remove the hidden layers. This paper presents the ability of Functional Link Neural Network (FLNN) to overcome the complexity structure of MLP by using single layer architecture and propose an Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) optimization for training the FLNN. The proposed technique is expected to provide better learning scheme for a classifier in order to get more accurate classification result.

Keywords: Neural Networks, Functional Link Neural Network, Learning, Artificial Bee Colony

Is the cloud computing real or hype? Affirmation momentous traits of this technology by proffering maiden scenarios

Meysam Panahi, Mehdi Darbandi, Mohammad Abedi, Ali Hamzenejad, Mohsen Kariman Khorasani

Cloud computing is a massively central advancement in the technique that businesses and users devour and work on computing. It's a elementary modify to an prepared model in which applications don't subsist out their lives on a specific section of hardware and in which possessions are more supplely deployed than was the historical standard. It's a primary shift to expansion and utilization model that replaces hard-wired, proprietary associations surrounded by software components and the clients of those components with unimportant Web services and Web-based software admittance. As difficulty under the virtualization is how to allocate resources to every application on-demand and in response to time-varying workloads. As cloud service can be a public, private or mixture of both phenomena, cloud computing is also functioning as “platform as service”, that allow users to implement as virtual system for application development. Among multiple platforms' choices, a new user gets confused about the picking of platform for his own requirement as per cost and performance trade off. Although the cloud computing architecture is so elastic that new numbers of data and processing recourse can easily added but in cloud computing architecture, the massive date for processing will situated in some unknown location and used is constrained to access that data according to provider agreements. Same way a difficulty in the virtualization is allocation of requires resources to each request according to on-demand manner handling with efficient jobs fulfillment with in time. With analyses to date is, that the architectures of cloud computing do not reflect the user perspectives and with the technical requirements fully but it has potential to capture the market of development and dynamic scaling to datacenters. Cloud computing is making it possible to separate the process of building an infrastructure for service provisioning from the business of providing end user services. Today, such infrastructures are normally provided in large data centers and the applications are executed remotely from the users. One reason for this is that cloud computing requires a reasonably stable infrastructure and networking environment, largely due to management reasons. Networking of Information (NetInf) is an information centric networking paradigm that can support cloud computing by providing new possibilities for network transport and storage. It offers direct access to information objects through a simple API, independent of their location in the network. This abstraction can hide much of the complexity of storage and network transport systems that cloud computing today has to deal with. Cloud Computing is becoming a well-known buzzword nowadays. Many companies, such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and so on, accelerate their paces in developing Cloud Computing systems and enhancing their services to provide for a larger amount of users. However, security and privacy issues present a strong barrier for users to adapt into Cloud computing systems. In this paper, at first we consider significant influences of this technology on some of the biggest companies and organizations all over the world, after that we present our new Kalman filter for estimation and prediction of permeating hackers. This filter is a new two-stage Kalman filter that is optimized and became more efficient for this purpose. With the use of this paper we can estimate the behaviors of hackers and/or estimate the crowd sections of cloud, so that we can avoid crashing of the network or hanging of such networks.

Keywords: Virtual or reality, Cloud scenarios, Virtual machine

Measurement and collation overriding traits of computer networks and ascertainment consequential exclusivities of cloud computing by the means of Bucy filtering

Pariya Shahbazi, Mehdi Darbandi, Saeed Setayesh, Mohsen Kariman Khorasani

Cloud computing has become one of the key considerations both in academia and industry. Cheap, seemingly unlimited computing resources that can be allocated almost instantaneously and pay-as-you-go pricing schemes are some of the reasons for the success of Cloud computing. The Cloud computing landscape, however, is plagued by many issues hindering adoption. One such issue is vendor lock-in, forcing the Cloud users to adhere to one service provider in terms of data and application logic. Semantic Web has been an important research area that has seen significant attention from both academic and industrial researchers. One key property of Semantic Web is the notion of interoperability and portability through high level models. Significant work has been done in the areas of data modeling, matching, and transformations. The issues the Cloud computing community is facing now with respect to portability of data and application logic are exactly the same issue the Semantic Web community has been trying to address for some time. With the increasing demand and benefits of cloud computing infrastructure, real time computing can be performed on cloud infrastructure. A real time system can take advantage of intensive computing capabilities and scalable virtualized environment of cloud computing to execute real time tasks. In most of the real time cloud applications, processing is done on remote cloud computing nodes. So there are more chances of errors, due to the undetermined latency and lose control over computing node. On the other side, most of the real time systems are also safety critical and should be highly reliable. So there is an increased requirement for fault tolerance to achieve reliability for the real time computing on cloud infrastructure. In this paper, at first we consider significant influences of this technology on some of the biggest companies and organizations all over the world, after that we present simple definitions of Kalman-Bucy filter, after simple definition we present its principle mathematical relations and finally we demonstrate our idea by enough mathematic proofs. With use of this filter we are able to estimate an predict the presence of hackers or spyware actions, and also we’re able to estimate and predict which part of cloud resources were used more than others or even estimate the peak hour of such networks or estimate and predict the next profile or page that the user may used in the next time step; so that by knowing such information we’re able to implement and construct our databases more precisely.

Keywords: Cloud revolution, Information technology, intensification of security

Comparison between miscellaneous platforms that present for cloud computing and accreting the security of these platforms by new filter

Mehdi Darbandi, Saeed Setayesh, Pariya Shahbazi, Mohsen Kariman Khorasani

With the advancement of the modern human society, basic essential services are commonly provided such that everyone can easily access to them. Today, utility services, such as water, electricity, gas, and telephony are deemed necessary for fulfilling daily life routines. These utility services are accessed so frequently that they need to be available whenever the consumer requires them at any time. Consumers are then able to pay service providers based on their usage of these utility services. In 1969, Leonard Kleinrock [1], one of the chief scientists of the original Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) project which seeded the Internet, said: “As of now, computer networks are still in their infancy, but as they grow up and become sophisticated, we will probably see the spread of ‘computer utilities’ which, like present electric and telephone utilities, will service individual homes and offices across the country.” This vision of the computing utility based on the service provisioning model anticipates the massive transformation of the entire computing industry in the 21st century whereby computing services will be readily available on demand, like other utility services available in today’s society. Similarly, computing service users (consumers) need to pay providers only when they access computing services. In addition, consumers no longer need to invest heavily or encounter difficulties in building and maintaining complex IT infrastructure.In this paper, at first we discuss about basic principles of cloud computing and different aspects of this new generation of community networks and after that we consider significant influences of this technology on some of the biggest companies and organizations all over the world, after that we present simple definitions of discrete Kalman filter, after simple definition we present its principle mathematical relations and finally we demonstrate our idea by enough mathematic proofs. With use of this filter we are able to estimate an predict the presence of hackers or spyware actions, and also we’re able to estimate and predict which part of cloud resources were used more than others or even estimate the peak hour of such networks or estimate and predict the next profile or page that the user may use in the next time step; so that by knowing such information we’re able to implement and construct our databases more precisely.

Keywords: Cloud resources, Internet revolution, filter designing for cloud computing

Cloud Computing make a revolution in economy and Information Technology

Mohammad Abedi, Mehdi Darbandi, Jalal Nakhaei

This paper discuss about influences of cloud computing and also other social networks – like cloud computing – on different aspects of one society, for example as a case study we review the impact of these social networks on a economic and cultural aspects of one society; also on the other hand we review some potential parameters that has deep influences on a extension of such networks. Cloud Computing is a powerful and flexible software environment, which delegates the material's management and in which users pay as they go. The migration of enterprise applications on the Cloud is increasing. Most of these applications are available with a standardized access to the business logic through Internet. However, the current cloud offers is not always complying with users' needs. For instance, some providers do not guarantee sufficient resource flexibility and high availability. Other users try to build their own Cloud based on open source technologies.

Keywords: cloud computing

e-Textbooks: Types, Chracteristics and Open Issues

HeeJeong J. Lee, Chris Messom, and Kok-Lim A. Yau

The advantages brought about by electronic textbooks (e-Textbooks) in education have prompted a significant amount of research and products related to e-Textbooks. Generally speaking, an e-Textbook is an electronic and interactive tbooks for K-12 education, which covers both the primary and secondary school curriculum. The e-Textbook products are blooming, and it is foreseen that it will have significance impact on teaching and learning in the future, although its usage in the classroom has been very limited to date. This article provides synopses of various types of e-Textbooks, which can be categorized based on the underlying enabling technology, including web-based, reading software and dedicated devices. Additionally, this article also examines what have been developed and available off the shelf, and finally draws some conclusions. The analysis will help the research community to focus on the key technologies to make e-Textbooks a preferred choice of tool for teaching and learning. This article serves as a foundation for further investigations in developing and distributing e-Textbooks in K-12 education.

Keywords: e-Textbook, electronic textbook, digital textbook, ICT in education

E-Health Dedicated Hybrid Cloud: a Solution to Ghana’s Health Delivery Problems

Mensah Kwabena Patrick, David Sanka Laar

Low-income countries such as Ghana are known to have the World’s major share of sicknesses and a low doctor-topatient ratio coupled with lack of proper health care facilities. The few available doctors are not well motivated leading to numerous industrial actions that further worsen the situation. In addition, there is a clear disparity between the quality of health care delivery in urban and rural areas which favors the urban areas. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions are seen as the requisite tools that can be used to resolve the shortcomings in the health sectors of these countries. In this paper, we propose a low-cost e-health model that is based on hybrid cloud to effectively reduce the numerous problems in the health delivery sector of Ghana.

Keywords: Cloud computing, E-Health, Information and Communications Technology, Web Server