Common Browser Research Articles

Security of ISES Measureserver® Module for Remote Experiments against Malign Attacks

This paper focuses on the security of the remote laboratories, formed by remote experiments, against malign attacks. Surprisingly, in spite of the fact the remote laboratories have been existing for at least three decades, virtually no attention has been devoted to this vital subject. Specifically, the paper deals with the issues related to diverse attacks on the Measureserver® module, which is the basic unit of the ISES (Internet School Experimental System), based remote experiments, accessed by clients via web pages by common browsers. Such laboratories are sometimes called e-laboratories. In the introduction the basic features, principles and state of the art of this new ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) tool is described. The following chapter describes general security risks of remote laboratories for their software, hardware and as well as their specific risks. Next, the possible and existing attacks are analyzed for the Measureserver module. Finally, the suggestions for adequate security software and hardware solutions are outlined to secure the module.

Automatic optimisation of gamma dose rate sensor networks: The DETECT Optimisation Tool

Fast delivery of comprehensive information on the radiological situation is essential for decision-making in nuclear emergencies. Most national radiological agencies in Europe employ gamma dose rate sensor networks to monitor radioactive pollution of the atmosphere. Sensor locations were often chosen using regular grids or according to administrative constraints. Nowadays, however, the choice can be based on more realistic risk assessment, as it is possible to simulate potential radioactive plumes. To support sensor planning, we developed the DETECT Optimisation Tool (DOT) within the scope of the EU FP 7 project DETECT. It evaluates the gamma dose rates that a proposed set of sensors might measure in an emergency and uses this information to optimise the sensor locations. The gamma dose rates are taken from a comprehensive library of simulations of atmospheric radioactive plumes from 64 source locations. These simulations cover the whole European Union, so the DOT allows evaluation and optimisation of sensor networks for all EU countries, as well as evaluation of fencing sensors around possible sources. Users can choose from seven cost functions to evaluate the capability of a given monitoring network for early detection of radioactive plumes or for the creation of dose maps. The DOT is implemented as a stand-alone easy-to-use JAVA-based application with a graphical user interface and an R backend. Users can run evaluations and optimisations, and display, store and download the results. The DOT runs on a server and can be accessed via common web browsers; it can also be installed locally.

An Interactive Remote Laboratory on Basic Computer Architecture Using Altera DE2 Board

This paper proposes an interactive RL (Remote Laboratory) on basic computer architecture. The students through this RL are able to understand basic theoretical concepts by observing the step by step operation of two 8-bit CPUs (Central Processing Units). The simple architectures of these CPUs which are also presented in this paper are ideal for introductory courses on computer architecture. The hardware implementations of two ?Computers (micro-computers) based on the above CPUs were achieved using the FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) based Altera DE2 board. The implemented systems around these two ?Computers allow both local and remote control of the corresponding CPUs. The students using the proposed RL, select the desired ?Computer which is automatically downloaded to the FPGA. They are also able to program the selected ?Computer in assembly language and to observe the step by step execution of the downloaded program. This procedure is achieved using the virtual push buttons and toggle switches of the RL GUI (Graphical User Interface) which is accessible by a common web browser. The values of the registers, internal buses and the DE2 LEDs are also displayed in the GUI during the program execution. Through this process, the students become familiar not only with the assembly language programming but they also understand in depth the internal micro-operations of the implemented CPUs.

Web Apollo: a web-based genomic annotation editing platform

Web Apollo is the first instantaneous, collaborative genomic annotation editor available on the web. One of the natural consequences following from current advances in sequencing technology is that there are more and more researchers sequencing new genomes. These researchers require tools to describe the functional features of their newly sequenced genomes. With Web Apollo researchers can use any of the common browsers (for example, Chrome or Firefox) to jointly analyze and precisely describe the features of a genome in real time, whether they are in the same room or working from opposite sides of the world.

MMWeb--an online platform for employing multiple ecological niche modeling algorithms.

BackgroundPredicting the ecological niche and potential habitat distribution of a given organism is one of the central domains of ecological and biogeographical research. A wide variety of modeling techniques have been developed for this purpose. In order to implement these models, the users must prepare a specific runtime environment for each model, learn how to use multiple model platforms, and prepare data in a different format each time. Additionally, often model results are difficult to interpret, and a standardized method for comparing model results across platforms does not exist. We developed a free and open source online platform, the multi-models web-based (mMWeb) platform, to address each of these problems, providing a novel environment in which the user can implement and compare multiple ecological niche model (ENM) algorithms.MethodologymMWeb combines 18 existing ENMs and their corresponding algorithms and provides a uniform procedure for modeling the potential habitat niche of a species via a common web browser. mMWeb uses Java Native Interface (JNI), Java R Interface to combine the different ENMs and executes multiple tasks in parallel on a super computer. The cross-platform, user-friendly interface of mMWeb simplifies the process of building ENMs, providing an accessible and efficient environment from which to explore and compare different model algorithms.

Towards Interactive 3D City Models on the Web

A ubiquitous accessibility of data over the Web nowadays is very common. Although the Web, 3D graphics, and geographic data are crossing their ways, common applications are typically based on technologies that are rather esoteric to most web-developers. Nevertheless, in the last couple of months, some efforts towards a seamless integration of 3D graphics into common Web browsers have been performed. Regarding the data of such applications, they are mostly proprietary and commercial data, which are collected by professional cartographers or surveyors. Nevertheless, following the Web 2.0 approach, within the last five years the trend of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) became popular, describing an ever expanding range of users who voluntarily and collaboratively collect geographic data. Trying to merge the mentioned trends and desires, within this paper the authors present a way to transform the crowdsourced OpenStreetMap data into a 3D city model. Contrary to other existing approaches towards OpenStreetMap 3D, they combine emerging and established Web technologies, allowing an easy consumption in arbitrary web browsers. The applied technologies are easy to learn and understand by the web community and allow for quick prototyping, and creating mash-ups with further spatially enabledWeb2.0 data.

Assessing Aggressiveness via Reaction Times Online

Aggressive tendencies can be assessed either commonly by explicit measures (self-report questionnaires), or by implicit measures that require the speeded classification of quickly presented stimuli and the recording and analysis of the reaction-times. We explored the psychometric properties of implicit measures assessing aggressiveness objectively: the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and its derivate, the Single-Target IAT. While the IAT focused on the automatic attitude towards aggressiveness, the ST-IAT focused on the self-concept. This feasibility study describes in methodological detail how a diversity of game players can be recruited to take these measures with common web-browser technology, even though reaction-time measurement in the range of a few hundred milliseconds is at stake. Self-reported and objective characteristics of users of violent, less violent, and no games differed. The results are partly in line with what can be expected on the basis of psychological theorizing, but structural-equation modelling shows that implicit measures on attitudes and self-concept differ in quality. Pitfalls and challenges for internet studies on computer players involving reaction-time measures are pointed out.

Using Crowdsourced Indoor Geodata for the Creation of a Three-Dimensional Indoor Routing Web Application

Routing services for outdoor areas are omnipresent and also three-dimensional (3D) visualization is quite common within this area. Recent research efforts are now trying to adapt well known outdoor routing services to complex indoor environments. However, most of the current indoor routing systems only focus on two-dimensional visualization, thus only one level can be depicted. Especially multi-level routes therefore lack visualization. Also, most of the (few) existing 3D indoor routing services utilize proprietary software or plugins, thus a widespread accessibility for those services by using common computers or mobile devices is not feasible. Therefore this paper describes the development of a web-based 3D routing system based on a new HTML extension. The visualization of rooms as well as the computed routes is realized with XML3D. Since this emerging technology is based on WebGL and will likely be integrated into the HTML5 standard, the developed system is already compatible with most common browsers such as Google Chrome or Firefox. Another key difference of the approach presented in this paper is that all utilized data is actually crowdsourced geodata from OpenStreetMap (OSM). Such data is collaboratively collected by both amateurs and professionals and can be used at no charge under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL). Our research combines user-generated geo content of the Web 2.0 with future Internet technology for the provision of a ubiquitously accessible 3D indoor routing application.

Evaluating Web browser graphics rendering system performance by using dynamically generated SVG

This paper evaluates common web browsers graphics rendering system performance by using SVG on Windows platform. Performance was measured using two extreme case applications: application which generates simple SVG objects (called “simple application”) and application which generates complex SVG objects (called “complex application”) based on random data often used for science purposes. Both simple and complex applications were hosted on local web server. Performance tests were performed using dedicated chamber environment.

A novel semantic web browser for user centric information retrieval: PERSON

As semantic web technologies mature and consequently more semantic web data is published on the web, there is a growing need for tools to access and use this data in user friendly ways. The most generic tool to access semantic web data is the common web browser. Developing plug-ins for advanced web browsers is one way of adding semantic information to web documents automatically or semi-automatically. To enable this enhancement, we present a novel semantic web browser called PERSON which is short for PERsonal Semantic extensiON. PERSON is an extension for Mozilla Firefox Web Browser and it adds semantics to users’ browsing experience by annotating web resources, associating them in categorical, entity-based manner and presenting more meaningful, structured documents to users. As a notable difference, semantic layer provided by PERSON works not only on web pages navigated by users but also on RSS data of user choice. Additionally, acquired content from web resources associated with linked data domains bring users together with structured information easily. In this paper, we evaluate PERSON as a new approach for semantic web browsing and present the analysis, design and implementation of PERSON and compare its features with related tools.

The Anatomy of a Grid portal

In this paper we introduce a new way to deal with Grid portals referring to our implementation. L-GRID is a light portal to access the EGEE/EGI Grid infrastructure via Web, allowing users to submit their jobs from a common Web browser in a few minutes, without any knowledge about the Grid infrastructure. It provides the control over the complete lifecycle of a Grid Job, from its submission and status monitoring, to the output retrieval. The system, implemented as client-server architecture, is based on the Globus Grid middleware. The client side application is based on a java applet; the server relies on a Globus User Interface. There is no need of user registration on the server side, and the user needs only his own X.509 personal certificate. The system is user-friendly, secure (it uses SSL protocol, mechanism for dynamic delegation and identity creation in public key infrastructures), highly customizable, open source, and easy to install. The X.509 personal certificate does not get out from the local machine. It allows to reduce the time spent for the job submission, granting at the same time a higher efficiency and a better security level in proxy delegation and management.

Biological sequence motif discovery using motif-x.

The Web-based motif-x program provides a simple interface to extract statistically significant motifs from large data sets, such as MS/MS post-translational modification data and groups of proteins that share a common biological function. Users upload data files and download results using common Web browsers on essentially any Web-compatible computer. Once submitted, data analyses are performed rapidly on an associated high-speed computer cluster and they produce both syntactic and image-based motif results and statistics. The protocols presented demonstrate the use of motif-x in three common user scenarios.

TB-WPRO

For cell phone users and blind people using non-visual browsers, browsing Web by common browsers is quite inefficient due to the problem of information overload. This paper presents the TB-WPRO (Title-Block based Web Page Re-Organization) method, which hierarchically segments web pages into blocks using visual and layout information reflecting the web designers’ intent. TB-WPRO segments the web pages with a clear goal to extract self-described title blocks. To reorganize web pages, the segmentation result is transformed to a serial of small web pages that could be easily accessed. Compared to current methods, the proposed approach obtains a promising segmentation result where blocks are visually and semantically consistent with original web pages.

CardioVINEdb: a data warehouse approach for integration of life science data in cardiovascular diseases.

One of the major challenges in bioinfomatics is to integrate and manage data from different sources as well as experimental microarray data and present them in a user-friendly format. Therefore, we present CardioVINEdb, a data warehouse approach developed to interact with and explore life science data. The data warehouse architecture provides a platform independent web interface that can be used with any common web browser. A monitor component controls and updates the data from the different sources to guarantee up-todateness. In addition, the system provides a "static" and "dynamic" visualization component for interactive graphical exploration of the data.

Implementation of the ITER Conductor Database

The procurement of the conductor for the ITER Toroidal Field (TF), Central Solenoid (CS), and Poloidal Field (PF) magnet systems will generate a significant amount of raw material and product test data that needs to be managed and analysed in a systematic fashion by the six responsible Domestic Agencies (DAs) and the ITER Organization (IO). To do this, ITER has developed and commissioned a conductor database, modeled after the successful CERN LHC conductor database, that can store, track, and analyse the voluminous data being generated during the production process. The database focuses on the business flow associated with superconducting strand, cabling, jacket sections, jacket assembly, jacketing, and full conductor unit length production. Within the database, individual suppliers can enter and track the performance of both raw materials and finished products, and also monitor the acceptance status of all products sent to their DA. Each DA is given a single portal through which they can manage the progress of each domestic supplier, track product performance results, enter verification test results, approve strand for delivery, and notify IO of production progress. The database can be used for long-term statistical process control of both raw material parameters and final product parameters (like I <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">c</sub> and I <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">hys</sub> ), and also utilizes a sophisticated security scheme to protect the confidentiality of suppliers' proprietary data. Additionally, the database can automatically highlight non-conforming products, and can manage the organization of the documentation for deviation requests and non-conformance reports. Technically, the database is an application of ICP (ITER Collaborative Platform). ICP is a software framework for implementing database-driven applications for the ITER project, and it provides a common web browser interface and data storage architecture developed in ASP.NET and MSSQL.

JsMolEditor: an open source molecule editor for the next generation web

Molecule editor have become essential building blocks for modern chemistry related databases with structural operation available. It was quite a challenging task to input molecule structures in a web browser before Java Applets technology was applied in chemoinformatics. Until now, Java Applets are still the de facto standard for web based databases. With the development of web technologies and script programming, Ajax, a Web 2.0 technology, is becoming mainstream in web development. This gradually eliminates the need for plug-ins such as Java and ActiveX. Therefore, it is possible to develop powerful web-based tools without plug-ins. This poster introduces a JavaScript based molecule editor: jsMolEditor, which had made a significant difference from other editors available on web pages. Unlike server side editors such as PubChem editor [1], jsMolEditor implemented all its functionality in JavaScript on the client side. Thus it is not necessary to maintain a connection to a server during operation. jsMolEditor works completely independently on the client side. The JavaScript nature of jsMolEditor also made it able to run in standard web browsers without specific plugins or virtual machines. The 2D drawing system deals with web browser differences. By combining Canvas and VML, jsMolEditor was able to work on all common web browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome. Instead of building jsMolEditor in JavaScript from scratch, GWT [2] is utilized as a cross-compiler from Java to JavaScript, which enables the reuse of existing Java chemoinformatics frameworks. jsMolEditor used a ported version of MX [3] as the bottom layer framework to handle basic molfile I/O. Thanks to MX’s open source license, the development of jsMolEditor saves a lot of time by eliminating the process of reinventing the wheel. The poster represents not only jsMolEditor itself, but also the building process of jsMolEditor and the feasibility of applying the same concept to other chemistry gadgets on web pages, such as spectrum viewers. jsMolEditor’s source code is available at http://github.com/chemhack/jsmoleditor/.

Pwn2Own wrap up and analysis

Each year at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, security company Tipping Point sponsors a competition that pits security researchers against each other in a bid to hack some of the most popular software and hardware products. The 2010 competition yielded some interesting results. Firefox, running on Windows 7, was hacked and forced to run an executable program. Internet Explorer 8 also fell victim to an attack, and Apple's iPhone and MacBook Pro were compromised. Aaron Portnoy of Tipping Point was monitoring the contest to see how things unfolded, and found some lessons in this year's contest. The hacks tell us some useful things about the broader security landscape, and the threats facing today's software and hardware customers. In this article, he details some of the key things that we can take away from the proceedings. We have just wrapped up this year's Pwn2Own contest, an annual event held at CanSecWest, where security researchers compete to find bugs in common browsers and smartphones. This year's contest included several impressive exploits against targets including Internet Explorer 8, Safari, Firefox and the iPhone.

CardioVINEdb: a data warehouse approach for integration of life science data in cardiovascular diseases

SummaryOne of the major challenges in bioinfomatics is to integrate and manage data from different sources as well as experimental microarray data and present them in a user-friendly format. Therefore, we present CardioVINEdb, a data warehouse approach developed to interact with and explore life science data. The data warehouse architecture provides a platform independent web interface that can be used with any common web browser. A monitor component controls and updates the data from the different sources to guarantee up-todateness. In addition, the system provides a “static” and “dynamic” visualization component for interactive graphical exploration of the data.

User-generated content in the digital identification of organisms: the KeyToNature approach

In biology, proper identification is fundamental to retrieve information linked to the name of an organism. Digital identification keys can be easier than the traditional paper-printed keys. However, like the latter, they often cannot be modified by users. A research group of the European Project KeyToNature has developed a new open source software, the KeyToNature Open Key Editor, which permits to easily add digital user-generated content to almost any digital dichotomous or polytomous key with the use of any common web browser. The most interesting features of the Key Editor are discussed together with some of the possible scenarios in which it can be used.

RAMEDIS: a comprehensive information system for variations and corresponding phenotypes of rare metabolic diseases

RAMEDIS is a manually curated resource of human variations and corresponding phenotypes for rare metabolic diseases. The system is based on separate case reports that comprehensively describe various aspects of anonymous case study, e.g. molecular genetics, symptoms, lab findings, treatments, etc. Scientists are able to make use of the database by a simple and intuitive web-based user interface with a common web browser. A registration or login is not necessary for a full reading access to the system content. Furthermore, a mutation analysis table summarizes the submitted variations per diagnosis and enables direct access to detailed information of corresponding case reports. Interested scientists may open an account to submit their case reports in order to share valuable genotype-phenotype information efficiently with the scientific community. Currently, 794 case reports have been submitted, describing 92 different genetic metabolic diseases. To enhance the comprehensive coverage of available knowledge in the field of rare metabolic diseases, all case reports are linked to integrated information from public molecular biology databases like KEGG, OMIM and ENZYME. This information upgrades the case reports by related data of the corresponding diseases as well as involved enzymes, genes and metabolic pathways. Academic users may freely use the RAMEDIS system at http://www.ramedis.de.