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- Afifi, Mustafa, et al.
(author)
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Egyptian women's attitudes and beliefs about female genital cutting and its association with childhood maltreatment
- 2007
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In: Nursing and Health Sciences. - Carlton, Vic, Australia : Blackwell Publishing. - 1441-0745 .- 1442-2018. ; 9:4, s. 270-276
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This study aimed to establish Egyptian women's attitudes and beliefs about female genital cutting (FGC) or mutilation by applying a questionnaire module about violence to a subsample of 5249 married women from a total of 19 474 women who participated in the 2005 Egypt Demographic Health Survey. Women were interviewed to determine if they had been exposed to marital violence in the year prior to the survey, their attitudes and beliefs about FGC, and if they physically abused their children. The association of beliefs about FGC with maternal physical abuse was examined, adjusting for exposure to marital violence and other socio-demographic variables. Of the women surveyed 16.4% and 3.4% had been exposed to physical and sexual violence, respectively, during the year prior to the survey. Around 76% of the women surveyed intended to continue the FGC practice, and 69.8% had slapped or hit their children during the year prior to the survey. Holding positive beliefs about the practice of FGC or intending to continue it was associated with maternal physical abuse and this has significant implications for health and welfare workers in Egypt and for society in general.
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- Alinaitwe, Henry, et al.
(author)
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Innovation Barriers and Enablers that Affect Productivity in Uganda Building Industry
- 2007
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In: Journal of Construction in Developing Countries. - Penang : Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia / Universiti Sains Malaysia Press. - 1823-6499 .- 2180-4222. ; 12:1, s. 59-75
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Abstract: The construction industry has of recent been blamed for lack of innovation. Lack of innovation in the industry is believed to be responsible for the decreasing or stagnant levels of productivity in comparison with other industries. This paper reviews the major barriers and enables to innovation in general. Propositions were made about the factors that affect innovation in the construction industry which were then formulated into a questionnaire. A survey was made on building contractors in Uganda, a developing country, targeting those with financial strength, large in size, and with high capacity to carry out big projects. The identified factors were then ranked and correlated. The level of training in science, engineering and technical education, and the level of research and development at the industry level are looked at as the greatest innovation enablers in building that will drive forward labour productivity. The size of the domestic market and the level of security are the worst innovation barriers that lead to low productivity in the building industry in Uganda. Contractors, policy makers and the government should address the identified factors in order to improve productivity.
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- Alonso-Fernandez, Fernando, 1978-, et al.
(author)
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A Comparative Study of Fingerprint Image-Quality Estimation Methods
- 2007
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In: IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security. - New York : IEEE Press. - 1556-6013 .- 1556-6021. ; 2:4, s. 734-743
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- One of the open issues in fingerprint verification is the lack of robustness against image-quality degradation. Poor-quality images result in spurious and missing features, thus degrading the performance of the overall system. Therefore, it is important for a fingerprint recognition system to estimate the quality and validity of the captured fingerprint images. In this work, we review existing approaches for fingerprint image-quality estimation, including the rationale behind the published measures and visual examples showing their behavior under different quality conditions. We have also tested a selection of fingerprint image-quality estimation algorithms. For the experiments, we employ the BioSec multimodal baseline corpus, which includes 19 200 fingerprint images from 200 individuals acquired in two sessions with three different sensors. The behavior of the selected quality measures is compared, showing high correlation between them in most cases. The effect of low-quality samples in the verification performance is also studied for a widely available minutiae-based fingerprint matching system.
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| 9. |
- Alonso-Fernandez, Fernando, 1978-, et al.
(author)
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Combining multiple matchers for fingerprint verification : A case study in biosecure network of excellence
- 2007
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In: Annales des télécommunications. - Paris, France : Springer. - 0003-4347 .- 1958-9395. ; 62:1-2, s. 62-82
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We report on experiments for the fingerprint modality conducted during the First BioSecure Residential Workshop. Two reference systems for fingerprint verification have been tested together with two additional non-reference systems. These systems follow different approaches of fingerprint processing and are discussed in detail. Fusion experiments involving different combinations of the available systems are presented. The experimental results show that the best recognition strategy involves both minutiae-based and correlation-based measurements. Regarding the fusion experiments, the best relative improvement is obtained when fusing systems that are based on heterogeneous strategies for feature extraction and/or matching. The best combinations of two/three/four systems always include the best individual systems whereas the best verification performance is obtained when combining all the available systems.
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| 10. |
- Alonso-Fernandez, Fernando, et al.
(author)
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Secure access system using signature verification over Tablet PC
- 2007
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In: IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine. - Piscataway, N.J. : IEEE Press. - 0885-8985 .- 1557-959X. ; 22:4, s. 3-8
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Low-cost portable devices capable of capturing signature signals are being increasingly used. Additionally, the social and legal acceptance of the written signature for authentication purposes is opening a range of new applications. We describe a highly versatile and scalable prototype for Web-based secure access using signature verification. The proposed architecture can be easily extended to work with different kinds of sensors and large-scale databases. Several remarks are also given on security and privacy of network-based signature verification. © 2007 IEEE.
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