Possible Future Strategies for Research in Motion Essay

Possible Future Strategies for Research in Motion - Essay Example The major competitors of RIM in the segment of mobile operating system platforms comprise of Nokia Corporation (Symbian), Apple Inc (iOS), Microsoft Corporation (Windows Phone), HTC Corporation, Google Inc (Android) and Motorola (Research in Motion (a), 2012,p.9). This is a highly competitive market and in recent years RIM has experienced a progressively declining market share that has led the organization to a current crisis situation. Currently, the organization is tasked with making large-scale strategic changes or even potentially prepare for sale or takeover (De la Merced 2012). In terms of recent developments, the next generation systems (4G) like HSPA+, WiMax and LTE were commercially introduced for the first time in 2011 (Research in Motion (a), 2012, p.10).. The wireless communication industry is also observing the union of computing with personal entertainment competences on wireless communications gadgets throughout the world. In the present day market, almost all the Blac kBerry Smartphones include multimedia facilities that consist of music, playback, video recording, camera, and entrà ©e to content, games and other applications (Research in Motion (a), 2012, p.10). Increasingly, however, tablet technology has come to dominate the wireless market. The tablet, as originally released through Apple’s iPad, operates as a medium between handheld Smartphone’s and the larger-scale laptop. PEST is an ellipsis for political, economic, social, and technological analysis. The political issues in the analysis generally comprise of government policies pertaining to the industry, tax regulations, laws and policies, trade limitations and duties among others (Wheelen et al, 2008, p. 58). In comparison to other industrialised countries, the United States has the maximum corporate tax rate. The tax rates pertaining in the developing countries are much lower than that of the US, where RIM predominantly operates. A deduction in the tax rate would have en abled the management of RIM to have more cash to pay out dividends or reinvest.  

Economic Growth Essay Example for Free

Economic Growth Essay In any nation, the government policies, institutions, and laws collaborate to create a growth infrastructure which coordinates, enables, and encourages the economic behavior that results in the accumulation of human capital, physical capital, natural resources, and technology. These resources have a role in generating sustained long-run economic growth. Physical capital refers to the tools that are used to leverage the productive ability of an average worker. Physical capital includes transportation equipments, computers, machinery, and factories which facilitate the production of goods and services. They expand the capacity of an economy to produce goods in the future, thereby promoting economic growth. (Jones, 2002) Human capital refers to the numerous abilities that enable an average worker to apply and understand new, productive knowledge. An increase in the stock of human capital is achieved through education and on the job training. This equips workers with the appropriate skills to increase production, and, therefore, increasing economic growth. Natural resources provide the raw materials that are used in the production of goods and services. A nation that is endowed with adequate natural resources and has tools to extract them, can acquire the necessary raw materials for production and improve its economic growth in the long-run. Technological knowledge is used to bring scarce resources together to produce the required services and goods. Technology facilitates the production of better and more output from a given quantity of scarce economic resources, and this is what sustains the economic well-being, and drives economic growth of a nation. (Jones, 2002) The government through its policies and institutions can discourage or contribute to long-run growth. The government can encourage growth by developing power, transport, and other utilities. Growth can also be encouraged by using policies that will result in stable and low inflation. Heavy taxation by the government will discourage economic growth as it will reduce investments in the economy. Reference Jones, I. C. (2002). Introduction to economic growth. New York, NY: W. W. Norton Company.

Great Gatsby :: essays research papers

Gatsby meets a woman and falls in love with her. However, Gatsby does not have the fame and fortune a classy lady like Daisy desires. Gatsby decides to devote his whole life to achieving the material goods with which to satisfy Daisy. He lives in the past on a moment of absolute happiness hoping he can relive that state of emotion sometime in the future. F. Scott Fitzgerald published the book in 1925 using the actual time in history, the Roaring Twenties to help create Gatsby's character. Gatsby's participation in the bootlegging business, the extravagant parties he throws, and the wealthy, careless lifestyle the Buchanans represent, are all vivid pictures of that time frame. Fitzgerald's portrayal of the time period creates lifelike characters in the novel. By creating these personable characters, Fitzgerald is allowing the reader to associate himself with Gatsby, and letting him use his imagination, so that in the end, the reader can decide if the Great Gatsby is truly 'great'. Fitzgerald allows the reader to incorporate the story into their own past and past relationships, ultimately putting the reader in Gatsby's shoes and seeing what the reader would do in the same situation. It raises a great debate; should people live their lives yearning for something in the past? Is it acceptable to live one's whole life on a past experience or memory hoping to reach back in time and pull the past to the present. Is it healthy? In this case, Fitzgerald is saying no its not healthy. He says it ruins a person and things change. Is Gatsby great? In some ways he is, you have to admire a man who lives his whole life devoting himself to his passion and never getting sidetracked. But you also have to realize that some things are foolish to live a dream upon, because nothing ever stays the same. Things change and when you reach a goal you realize it wasn't what you

Truancy: A Symptom of a Larger Problem Essay -- mental health, justic

The movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, is the epitome of adolescent rebellion and independence – the benchmark of free-spirited insubordination that lies in the heart of all teenagers. Sure, the movie depicts skipping school as nothing more than a harmless and fun pastime, something that is enjoyable due in large part to its riskiness. But essentially, it documents the day of a truant. A truant whose wild antics entertain, but a truant nonetheless. Like most things, Hollywood’s characterization of adolescent truancy is incorrect, not just in the sense that most kids will not be singing in parades whilst cutting class. It downplays the rather serious nature of chronic absences that permeates all levels of society. Adolescent rebellion and the need to distance away from authority figures and find ones’ own individuality is a normal part of growing up and the developmental process (Steinberg, 1987). However, problems arise when this distinctive need manifests itself in overtly negative activities. Whether it be experimenting with drugs and alcohol or skipping out on class, the undercurrent of teenage self-exploration is present. Going back to the point of truancy, this need, coupled with boredom and peer pressure, can increase the occurrence of absenteeism. Nevertheless, a number of other factors do play a significant role. Chronic absenteeism is often a symptom of larger problems than teen rebellion. Bullying, family issues, financial difficulties, drug use, and lack of academic skills are only some of the potential causes of truancy within the United States (Reid, 2012). And while schools across the country continue desperately to try and mitigate truancy, it seems to be on the rise; in 2012, data indicated that up to 15 percent... ...tiative. Crime & Delinquency, 214-234. National Institute of Mental Health . (2011). The Teen Brain: Still Under Construction . Besthesda : U.S. Department of Health and HUman Services . Prevention, O. o. (1996). Truancy: First Step to a Lifetime of Problems . Washington : U.S. Department of Justice . Reid, K. (2012). The causes, views and traits of school absenteeism and truancy: An analytical review. Research in Education, 59-82. Statistics, B. (2010). Bullying Statistics 2010. Retrieved from Bullying Statistics: http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/bullying-statistics-2010.html Steinberg, L. D. (1987). Family processes at adolescence: A developmental perspective. Family Therapy, 77-86. Zik, M. (2009). The Effects of Participation in Contingent Music Experiences on Truancy Rates of Junior High School Students . Dayton : University of Dayton.

Effect of computer usage to the academic performance of the selected senior students Essay

INTRODUCTION Video games have come a long way since today’s adults sat down at a computer to play Pong or Donkey Kong. The newest-generation gaming consoles are as powerful as personal computers, and can accomplish many of the same things. And today’s games are increasingly realistic and technologically advanced. Social networking has even made its way into the video game industry with online gaming. These virtual worlds can be complicated and perplexing to parents, which is why it’s important for you to understand what your child is playing and when to get worried. Did You Know? In 2009, over 11 million people played World of Warcraft, an online, subscription fee-based multiplayer game. According to one study, nearly 1 in 10 young gamers displayed behavior patterns similar to addiction.1 The Kaiser Family Foundation found that 8- to 18-year-olds are exposed to an average of 10 hours and 45 minutes of media each day. Whether your child is an avid gamer or rarely picks up a controller, it’s important to understand the world of video games–especially in the age of online gaming–so you can make your child’s experience with games both a positive and a beneficial one. ————— 1. Douglas Gentile, â€Å"Pathological Video Game Use among Youth 8 to 18: A National Study,† CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Background of the study The youth of today no longer seem to spend their leisure activities like in the olden days; outdoor games or playing with toys, instead, they spend their free time in their homes, internet cafà ©s or computer shops simply to satisfy their hunger; and that hunger is Online Gaming. Online gaming has such a profound impact on not only the young, but dynamically every age group as well. So far, virtually anyone is able to go on a computer and  punch through the keys and mouse in order to get a high score, chat with players, get the rarest items, and level up as fast as possible. Yes, there seems to be no restriction as to whom, how or what online gaming can extend to. As in any situation where new technology is introduced, the social impact of the Internet is being looked at. One social problem that has been observed is that the Internet cafà © has become mainly game centres. About one-half to two-thirds of the computers in a typical Internet cafà ©, according to one study, are devoted to games (violent and gory games). The use of the remaining computers was roughly split between browsing, email, online chat, word processing and research. The Internet cafà ©s have become not just game centres. They are becoming centres off addiction among the youth, mostly boys, including elementary school pupils. According to one concerned Internet cafà © entrepreneur, â€Å"Internet cafà ©s are seducing youths to a new form of addiction, one which may not destroy their bodies as drugs do, but which is certainly twisting their minds. To the young play is reality and reality is play.† (Maslog C. (1998) Internet and Social Issues, Philippine Communication Today, Quezon City: New Day Publishers). Online gaming has emerged as a popular and successful source of entertainment and play for people of all ages, especially for the students. It refers to the games that are played over some forms of computer network, typically on the internet. These games are played online, in which you can connect with multiple players. It is normally platform independent, relying on the web browser and appropriate plug-in. It is one of the best inventions that is made ever by human beings. It has the ability to link players together. It has been one of the most popular activities in entertaining for younger people. Because of this, almost everybody is into it. Its fantastic characteristic makes a lot of students become hook on it. It provides entertainment and at the same time, online socialization with different kind of people. But sometimes, it causes negative effects. Development in technology brings many things that people don’t have many years back. One of these things is online gaming that is provided by the internet. Online gaming is one of the widely used leisure  activities by many people. Teenagers who are playing these online games said that they are playing these games just for fun, to keep away from the heat of the sun, without knowing that there are a lot of effects of playing these games that are more than what they think. Playing online games, according to some research is beneficial. It enables the mind of the players to be more active, especially those puzzle-based games. It helps the player to come up with decisions in tight situations, especially those adventure games that keep the players to be alert, active and strategic. Playing these types of games makes the player experienced different feelings because it is as if the player is really the one taking the challenges. Introduction As time passes by, technology continues to evolve. Because of technology, new things were created that sustains and lightens human work. Computers were created because of technology. Computers were the greatest thing ever invented by man itself. In the modern age, computers have become a part of man’s life. Almost all the things around us were made by computers with the aid of modern machines. From the edited books, design, special effects in movies, and televisions etc., were all made by computers. Along with the evolution of technology, computers continue to upgrade as well until the time that computer has now become a part of man’s everyday life that are hooked to computers. Computers can now edit documents to your PC, play mini games, search information you need using the internet, save documents to your PC and play online games. It’s like an all-in-one gadget that can do all the things you want anytime you need it. From 1990 to the present year, online games had a big impact to us especially teenagers. Online games have many genres, including FPS games, MMORPG, Casual games and multiplayer games. A game will become an online game if it involves in using a computer or a series of computers with one player in each computer to battle it out with other players using the Internet depending on the game genre. â€Å"Effects of computer usage to the academic performance of students† Chapter II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE The scope of Computer effects derives a wide scope of related literature that is worth mentioning. In this regard, this literature review concerning the effects of computer usage to the academic performance of students, will address the following areas relevant to this study: History of the Computer; Importance of Computers, Negative Effects of Gaming; Computer Crime; Computer Use recommendations; and conclusion. HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER Many people do not know how, or even when computers were first made. Even before the first electronic computers were made, many people believe that computers started with the abacus, a simple counting device. The abacus is believed to have been built in Babylon in the fourth century B.C. The â€Å"First Generation† of computers started in the very late 1930’s. These computers were grotesquely slow, colossal in size, created much heat, used hundreds of kilowatts of power, and were about as reliable as a used up match (www.pbs.org). As time went on, these computers evolved from using vacuum tubes to transistors. Transistors mark the beginning of the â€Å"Second Generation† of computers in 1947. Unfortunately, the 2nd Generation did not advance as much as most people hoped, but eventually, the â€Å"Third Generation† was brought about by the invention of integrated circuits in 1958. Integrated circuits replaced transistors, and many computer languages came out in this time. Many more computer companies were born during this time, and eventually this led to personal computers for everyday use. Microprocessors introduced the beginning of the â€Å"Fourth Generation† and a time where computers were in almost every house. What Is The Importance Of Computer? Computers are extremely important in the modern world of today. In the fast moving life of the modern world of today, computers hold tremendous significance. Many of us will feel crippled without a computer, as we have gotten so used to this machine. The importance of computers can not be denied in the corporate or business world, at the work place and even in one’s personal life. In the modern work place, pen are paper are becoming extent. It will not be long ,before pen and paper stop to exist altogether. Same is the case in schools and colleges. Children today are forgetting how to write and many blame their awful hand writing on this machine which has taught everyone to type at a speed of at least 50 to 60 words per minute. The children of today have bad handwritings and the children of tomorrow may not even know how to hold a pen. Thanks to the computer. Computer has become an important tool for keeping databases, filing systems, track records. It has made record keeping and account keeping much much easier than it ever was. It helps an organization save tons of times. It has made data analysis extremely easy, and it can be done at a single click of the mouse. Computers also serve as useful tools for communications . Normal post is now commonly referred to as snail mail, as the must faster email has replaced it. INTRODUCTION Development in technology brings many things that people don’t have many years back. One of these things is online gaming that is provided by the internet. Online gaming is one of the widely used leisure activities by many people. Teenagers who are playing these online games said that they are playing these games just for fun, to keep away from the heat of the sun, without knowing that there are a lot of effects of playing these games that are more than what they think. Playing online games, according to some research is beneficial. It enables the mind of the players to be more active, especially those puzzle-based games. It helps the player to come up with decisions in tight situations, especially those adventure games that keep the players to be alert, active and strategic. Playing these types of games makes the player experienced different feelings because it is as if the player is really the one taking the challenges. Despite those benefits, playing these games also bring negative effects. It requires much of the player’s time, leaving school activities and home works unattended. DEFINITION OF TERMS Online gaming —– are games that are played online via the Internet Internet ————— an electronic network of computers that includes nearly every university, government, and research facility in the world. ICAD——————- Internet Cafes Association of Davao City Eyestrain————- pain and fatigue of the eyes, often accompanied by headache, resulting from prolonged use of the eyes, uncorrected defects of vision, or an imbalance of the eye muscles. Obesity————— the condition of being obese; increased body weight caused by excessive accumulation of fat. Aping—————– the act, practice, or art of copying the manner or expression of another Epidemic———— as used in the study, is a widespread or scattering youth violence

Apply for the CPP Retirement Pension

Apply for the CPP Retirement Pension The application for the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) retirement pension is quite simple. However, there are a lot of things to learn and decide  before you apply. What is the CPP Retirement Pension? The CPP retirement pension is a government pension based on workers earnings and contributions. Just about everybody over the age of 18 who works in Canada (except in Quebec) contributes to the CPP. (In Quebec, the Quebec Pension Plan (QPP) is similar.) The CPP is planned to cover about 25 percent of pre-retirement earnings from work. Other pensions, savings and interest income are expected to make up the other 75 percent of your retirement income. Who is Eligible for a CPP Retirement Pension? In theory, you must have made at least one valid contribution to the CPP. Contributions are based on employment income between a set minimum and maximum. How much and how long you contribute to the CPP affects the amount of your pension benefits. Service Canada maintains a Statement of Contributions and can provide an estimate of what your pension would be if you were eligible to take it now. Register for and visit My Service Canada Account to see and print a copy. You can also get a copy by writing to: Contributor Client ServicesCanada Pension PlanService CanadaPO Box 9750 Postal Station TOttawa, ON K1G 3Z4 The standard age to start receiving a CPP retirement pension is 65. You can receive a reduced pension at the age of 60 and an increased pension if you delay starting your pension until after the age of 65. You can see some of the changes that are taking place in the reductions and increases in CPP retirement pensions in the article Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Changes. Important Considerations There are numerous situations that can affect your CPP retirement pension, and some may increase your pension income. Some of those are: Child rearing provision  can be requested if you stopped working or received a lower income as the primary caregiver of your children under the age of seven, which could increase your retirement pension.Pension sharing with your spouse or common-law partner could mean tax savings for you.Credit splitting  after a divorce or separation  allows CPP contributions made by you and your spouse or common-law partner to be equally divided.International social security agreements  may make you eligible for a pension if youve lived and worked in certain countries. How to Apply for the CPP Retirement Pension You must apply for the CPP retirement pension. It is not automatic. For your application to be eligible You must be at least a month past your 59th birthdayYou must have contributed to the CPPYou must want your pension payments to begin within 11 months. You can apply online. This is a two-part process. You can submit your application electronically. However, you must print and sign a signature page that you then must sign and mail to Service Canada. You could also print and complete the ISP1000 application form and mail it to the appropriate address. Dont miss the detailed information sheet that comes with the application form. After You Apply for the CPP Retirement Pension You can expect to receive your first CPP payment approximately eight weeks after Service Canada receives your application. Service Canada has other  useful information to be aware of once you start receiving your benefits.

Hamlet Essays (169 words) - Fiction, Literature, Theatre, Hamlet

Hamlet Essays (169 words) - Fiction, Literature, Theatre, Hamlet Hamlet Throughout our lives we have to deal with the changing emotions within us. Our emotions can sometimes be as unpredictable as the weather and yet weve all found uses for the phrase Im having a bad week. More over, while life can be a roller coaster ride, it can seem at times that we have a string of fortunate or unfortunate luck. These shifting highs and lows that we experience are a mild form of melancholy. While Hamlets melancholy in the play is much more pronounced then that which most of us experience, its still effects us the same way as it does him. Its usual to have weeks where everything seems to go wrong and your temperament changes from what could have been a lighted hearted, fun mood, to a dark, unpleasant mood. It can even seem at times that youre about to go crazy, if one more bad thing happens to you. This situation resembles that of Hamlet.

Seguro médico de viaje internacional para EE.UU.

Seguro mà ©dico de viaje internacional para EE.UU. Los turistas extranjeros no estn obligados por ley a comprar seguro mà ©dico internacional para viajar a Estados Unidos. Sin embargo, carecer de cobertura mà ©dica en ese paà ­s puede causar consecuencias econà ³micas y migratorias muy graves. Puntos Clave: seguro mà ©dico de viaje para EE.UU. Costo medio visita a Emergencias: $2.168 dà ³lares americanosCosto seguro mà ©dico de viaje: a partir de $1.50Cà ³mo elegir el mejor seguro: Travel Insurance Center, SquaremouthProblemas migratorios: Cancelacià ³n de visa de turista o ESTA. Problema cada vez ms frecuente. Costo de gastos mà ©dicos en EE.UU. No cabe duda de que en Estados Unidos hay mà ©dicos y hospitales que son los mejores en su especialidad a nivel mundial como, por ejemplo, en el tratamiento de cncer. Pero tambià ©n es la sanidad ms cara del mundo. Segà ºn datos del National Institute for Health, el costo promedio de una factura por asistencia mà ©dica en Urgencias de un hospital (ER, por sus siglas en inglà ©s), es de $2.168. Adems, hay que tener en cuenta que el costo puede variar enormemente no sà ³lo segà ºn la naturaleza del problema de salud, sino que tambià ©n depende del tratamiento, de los anlisis practicados y del lugar en el que se reciben los cuidados mà ©dicos. Por ejemplo y segà ºn datos de International Insurance Travel Group, los gastos facturados pueden ser los siguientes: Dolor de cabeza: de $15 a $17.797Infeccià ³n de orina: de $50 a $73.002Piedra en rià ±Ãƒ ³n: de $128 a $39.408Consulta mà ©dica tà ­pica: de $150 a $200Anlisis de sangre: pueden llegar a costar $1.200 Recientemente varios medios de comunicacià ³n se han hecho eco de dos casos en los que una mujer recibià ³ una factura de $2.229.11 por tres puntos de sutura y un hombre de ms de $3.500 por cinco puntos, a pesar de que el costo promedio est entre $150 y $350. En esas cifras queda claro que los costes son altà ­simos y que dependen en gran medida del lugar dà ³nde se recibe el cuidado mà ©dico. El problema es tan grande que, de hecho, los costos mà ©dicos son la principal causa de bancarrota familiar en el paà ­s ya que tan solo en 2016 se solicitaron 770.846 segà ºn el National Bankkrupcy Forum. Los turistas internacionales visitando los Estados Unidos deberà ­an comprar un seguro mà ©dico antes de salir de sus paà ­ses para evitar tener que pagar ese tipo de gastos mà ©dicos por problemas que puedan surgir durante la visita.  ¿Cul es el mejor seguro mà ©dico de viaje para EE.UU. y quà © est excluido? Un buen nà ºmero de aseguradoras que venden seguros de viaje internacionales excluyen a Estados Unidos de sus pà ³lizas por el alto costo de los servicios mà ©dicos en este paà ­s. Por ello es fundamental asegurarse de que el seguro que se quiere cubre Estados Unidos. Adems, es altamente recomendable preguntar cun grande es la red de mà ©dicos y hospitales en el paà ­s de la aseguradora, si est incluido un servicio de traduccià ³n si no se habla inglà ©s y tambià ©n de evacuacià ³n mà ©dica, ambulancia y repatriacià ³n. Una vez que esos puntos se han clarificado, lo que es el mejor seguro depende de las necesidades de la persona que lo contrata, de su salud e incluso de su edad. Tambià ©n de si prefiere pagar una cantidad alta y no hacer co-pagos o prefiere abonar una pequeà ±a y, si hay un accidente o enfermedad, realizar un pago junto con el seguro. Cabe destacar que en la mayorà ­a de los seguros para turistas que viajan a EE.UU. estn excluidos todas ls enfermedades y condiciones pre-existentes entre los que se encuentran la diabetes, el cncer, problemas de corazà ³n, etc. Adems, con carcter general no estn incluidos en estas pà ³lizas los gastos ocasionados por un embarazo, el parto, consultas genà ©ricas de cualquier clase, vacunas, exmenes oculares o dentales y procedimientos cosmà ©ticos.  ¿Cà ³mo comprar un seguro mà ©dico de viaje para EE.UU? Se puede comprar cualquier seguro mà ©dico internacional que expresamente incluya Estados Unidos. A la hora de comprar es recomendable consultar con precios y condiciones de varias aseguradoras. Adems, el seguro mà ©dico de viaje se puede comprar online en la pgina web de Travel Insurance Center, que est afiliada con USA Tourist.com y ofrece una gran variedad de seguros. Tambià ©n es recomendable verificar con Squaremouth y comparar entre cientos de seguros para ver cul es el ms conveniente para cada caso. Tanto Travel Insurance Center como Squaremouth estn recomendadas por embajadas y consulados americanos.  ¿Cul es el costo de un seguro mà ©dico de viaje para EE.UU.? Hay una gran variedad de precios dependiendo de, entre otras cosas, quà © cantidad de cobertura mà ©dica se compra. Es prctica frecuente asegurar entre $50.000 y $100.000 para viajes inferiores a tres meses y de $100,000 a $500,000 para estancias previstas superiores a un trimestre. Obviamente, se puede asegurar ms cantidad o, incluso, sin tope mximo. Adems de la cantidad asegurada influye en el precio del seguro mà ©dico el tipo de beneficios que se incluye y quà © se excluye, si hay co-pago cada vez que se utiliza el seguro, si hay deducible y la cantidad de à ©ste. El deducible –deductible en inglà ©s – es la cantidad de dinero que el asegurado debe pagar por un gasto mà ©dico cubierto por la pà ³liza antes de que empiece a pagar el seguro. Por ejemplo, si hay un deducible de $2.000 eso quiere decir que el asegurado debe gastar esa cantidad en recibir servicios y cuidados mà ©dicos antes de que el seguro comience a pagar. El deducible es diferente al costo del seguro, que se conoce en inglà ©s como premium, y debe pagarse en el momento en que se contrata el seguro. Teniendo en cuenta todo lo dicho en los prrafos anteriores, el seguro mà ©dico puede costar entre $1.50 por dà ­a a ms de $10 por dà ­a, dependiendo de lo que se asegure. Es muy recomendable guardar facturas siempre si se acude a un mà ©dico o a un hospital. Adems, en el caso de las medicinas la mayorà ­a de las aseguradoras siguen la polà ­tica de que el turista debe pagar por ellas y ms tarde le regresa el gasto, pero debe recibir factura que le debe enviar el asegurado.  ¿Dà ³nde recibir tratamiento mà ©dico barato en EE.UU.? Los tratamientos mà ©dicos en Estados Unidos pueden ser muy caros aà ºn estando asegurados porque, por lo general, la mayorà ­a de los asegurados deben pagar parte de la consulta o procedimiento. Por esta razà ³n es muy comà ºn que, salvo casos de emergencia, se acuda a centros econà ³micos y nunca a Salas de Emergencia de hospitales para asuntos como dolor de garganta, resfriados, infeccià ³n de orina, dolores de cabeza, etc. En Estados Unidos prestan estos servicios un abanico de centros, entre los que destacan las Clà ­nicas de Salud Comunitarias, las Clà ­nicas de Cuidado Urgente y las clà ­nicas Walk-in. Se puede consultar sus ubicaciones y cul es la ms cercana en la pgina de la Asociacià ³n Nacional de Clà ­nicas Gratuitas y Caritativas (National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics, en inglà ©s. Por à ºltimo, cabe destacar que en cadenas como CVS, Walgreens o Walmart es habitual que brinden un servicio para rutinas mà ©dicas a cargo de enfermeros y asistentes mà ©dicos.  ¿Por quà © cuando un turista no paga una factura mà ©dica puede tener consecuencias graves? Los turistas, tanto los que viajan con visa como los que pueden hacerlo con ESTA, pueden sufrir la revocacià ³n de esos documentos y la prohibicià ³n de ingresar a Estados Unidos por no pagar un gasto mà ©dico. La razà ³n est en la Ley de Tratamiento Mà ©dico de Emergencia (EMTALA, por sus siglas en inglà ©s) que dice que los hospitales y mà ©dicos tienen la obligacià ³n de atender las emergencias de todas las personas que lo necesiten. Emergencia en EE.UU. significa, entre otras cosas, que no se haya ingresado al paà ­s para recibir ese tipo de tratamiento y que de no recibir el cuidado mà ©dico urgente la persona enferma o accidentada puede morir o sufrir un fallo de un à ³rgano o parte de su cuerpo. Adems, para ser emergencia el problema debe haber surgido de repente, es decir, no puede ser el resultado de una condicià ³n previa debilitante. Como ejemplos de emergencias pueden citarse los partos, la amputacià ³n de una pierna o brazo, un ataque de apendicitis, etc. En estos casos de emergencia que el hospital debe atender si el enfermo o accidentado no paga o/y no tiene seguro mà ©dico el que acaba pagando es Medicaid, que est financiado con dinero de impuestos de los estadounidenses a travà ©s de aportaciones de los estados y de dinero del gobierno federal. Precisamente esto à ºltimo es lo que puede causar problemas migratorios de anulacià ³n de visa o ESTA y de no poder conseguir visas inmigrantes o no inmigrantes a partir de ese momento porque se puede considerar a la persona que no pagà ³ como una carga pà ºblica y, por lo tanto, inadmisible para ingresar a EE.UU. Puede tomar esa decisià ³n un agente consular o cualquier miembro de la CBP (Patrulla Pronteriza). Asà ­, puede darse casos como, por ejemplo, que una seà ±ora dà © a luz en EE.UU. como turista y a partir de ese dà ­a ingrese al paà ­s en varias ocasiones sin ningà ºn tipo de problema. Y de repente un dà ­a en el puesto de control migratorio se le niegue la entrada al paà ­s y se le revoque la visa o la ESTA por decisià ³n de la persona encargada en ese momento de checar los papeles. En la actualidad, à ©ste es un problema cada vez ms frecuente que afecta a unas personas pero no a todos, ya que depende de la decisià ³n personal de agente de la CBP o del consulado. En estos momentos no es posible saber con certeza ni quià ©n se va a quedar sin visa por esta causa ni cundo pero sà ­ que es una situacià ³n cada vez ms comà ºn. La CBP no ha notificado pà ºblicamente cà ³mo se entera de que una persona no pagà ³ una emergencia mà ©dica pero en algà ºn momento durante la emergencia mà ©dica se obtiene el pasaporte del turista, se escanea y se envà ­a a las autoridades en todos los controles migratorios en las aduanas. Adems, en el caso de haber dado a luz a un nià ±o en EE.UU. los datos de ambos padres se obtienen fcilmente al solicitar el pasaporte estadounidense para el menor. Cada vez son ms frecuentes los casos en los que en ese momento se anula las visas de los dos progenitores. Adems, destacar que à ©stos no tienen derechos migratorios mientras el hijo es menor de 21 aà ±os. Por à ºltimo, cabe destacar que ningà ºn hospital o mà ©dico atiende a turistas sin seguro o sin pago previo exceptuando ese caso de emergencia explicado en los prrafos anteriores por lo que es altamente recomendable comprar un seguro mà ©dico de viaje antes de ingresar a EE.UU. Este es un artà ­culo informativo. No es consejo legal para ningà ºn caso en particular.

The US-China trade relationship Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

The US-China trade relationship - Research Paper Example The United States imposed selective controls on trade with China immediately after the communist forces commenced to win the civil war in the early 1949. U.S export controls were then progressively tightened until a whole ban was set in place against China by the U.S following the outbreak of the Korean War (Louis and Bull 127). The United States was fundamental in creating the coordinating Committee on Multinational Export Controls (COCOM). It comprised of representatives of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Japan. It was intended to supervise a ban, which was imposed on China and the U.S. This study reveals that, by 1951, no trade existed between the two countries. In 1971, China recaptured its seat in the UN. President Richard Nixon made a historic visit to China In 1972 and these unfolding events compelled COCOM to loosen the export controls and allowed China to get equal treatment like the Soviet Union (Louis and Bull 124). This forced the US to permit its populace to make purchases from the Republic of China and compensate for them in dollars. The move by COCOM made USA’s exports be under the identical export control precincts as sales made to the Soviet Union. The trend of partial loosening of barriers continued until after nearly twenty years trade between the two countries has been seen growing tremendously (Louis and Bull 124). The total trade between the two nations has expanded from zero to nearly $2.4 billion in the late 1970s. This is the year when the two countries formally established diplomatic relations. The US and China formally signed the Trade Relation Agreement. This agreement was intended to accord each of the two nations the most favoured nation treatment based on the reciprocal trend (Lehmann and Lehmann 158). This study establishes that, this was just the begging of the numerous trade agreements that followed in the subsequent years. Some of them included Agreement on Civil Aviation and Sea Transportation and the Agreement on Avoidance of Double Taxation. In addition, three joint committees on commerce, science and technology and economic affairs were formed. These committees were intended to serve as effective instruments of promoting dialogue between the two nations. As from 1981, China was given relatively higher levels of the USA’s technology than the Soviet Union. COCOM adopted a green line policy toward China in 1985 (Lehmann and Lehmann 159). This policy gave preferential licensing treatment, which enabled China to control up to 27 categories of items for exports to China. China became more advantaged than other countries prescribed under the COCOM. This saw China grow in labour intensive industries, which later became China’s driving force for China’s exports. It is worth noting that, by 1988, China’s exports had reached over $40 billion and total trade topped 480 billion. This study establishes that, the USA imposed broad sanctions against China after the Tiananmen Square incident in the summer 1989. The sanctions included a deferral of authorized and military interactions between the two nations, a ban on the US trade financing and investment insurance for China projects and a prohibition on exports to military and police

MARKETING PLAN FOR SKAGEN DESIGN Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

MARKETING PLAN FOR SKAGEN DESIGN - Essay Example Entry Modes for International Marketing 9 Export-based Entry Mode 11 Contractual Entry Modes 11 Foreign Direct Investment 12 Joint Venture as appropriate mode for Skagen Design to enter China 13 Why Joint Venture for Skagen Design? 13 Marketing Objectives of Skagen Design 14 Product Mix 16 Price mix 16 Place mix 16 Promotion Mix 17 STP strategy of Skagen Design 17 Segmentation strategy of Skagen Design 17 Targeting Strategy of Skagen Design 18 Positioning Strategy of Skagen Design 18 Conclusion 18 References 19 Introduction 3 Skagen Design: Company Overview 3 Analysis of Internal and External Environments 5 SWOT analysis 5 Strengths and Opportunities 6 Weaknesses and Threats 6 Market Choice for Skagen Design 7 China and Business opportunities 7 Entry Modes for International Marketing 9 Export-based Entry Mode 11 Contractual Entry Modes 11 Foreign Direct Investment 12 Joint Venture as appropriate mode for Skagen Design to enter China 13 Why Joint Venture for Skagen Design? 13 Marketing Objectives of Skagen Design 14 Product Mix 16 Price mix 16 Place mix 16 Promotion Mix 17 STP strategy of Skagen Design 17 Segmentation strategy of Skagen Design 17 Targeting Strategy of Skagen Design 18 Positioning Strategy of Skagen Design 18 Conclusion 18 References 19 Introduction In today’s competitive business environment, marketers are required to develop certain strategies to help them achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Out of various marketing strategies, going global is one of the most effective strategies as it not only widens the market potential but also help the firm seize more marketing opportunities. A marketer is one who designs and creates benefit or utility that deliver the want or need-satisfying power to the customers (Boone and Kurtz, 2009, p. 5). In a global marketing perspective, marketers are to identify its customers, research in to their requirements and develop products or services accordingly so as to market them globally. This piece of research paper presents an international marketing plan for Skagen Design to help the management team in deciding about the best appropriate entry mode to launch its business in China. The report presents a detailed marketing audit of Skagen Design and investigates marketing objectives an d better marketing strategies for the company in relation to its international marketing plan to China. Skagen Design: Company Overview Skagen design, started as a small business upstart in 1989 in Denmark, has now emerged to be a successful multinational company designing, making and marketing stylish Danish designed watches, sun glasses, jewels and related accessories (Zacks Equity Research, 2012). It’s co-founders Henrik and Charlotte Jorst came to USA to start their own business in 1989 by developing the idea of a business opportunity from the Danish lifestyle and philosophy and started their business by marketing well designed watches and other accessories (Skagen, 2012). This illuminates an example of how effectively a business dream can be converted to reality by exploring newer business opportunities and marketing newer ideas. As Crane (2009, p. 3) noted, a successful entrepreneur starts thinking creatively from finding a hidden marketing opportunity and develops his marketing by identifying customers’ specific requirements and by developing products accordingly. Henrik and Charlotte Jorst developed the business idea based on the marketing potential for supreme quality watches made in Danish spirit, elegant design, skillful craftsmanship, perfect technology and so on. With its mission to create a Skagen Global Community ingrained with a commitment to design impressive and unique products and to offer high valued customer services, the company has long been able to generate a positive zeal among its customers. As of very recent report, Fossil Inc is proposing to purchase Skagen Design for a total value of $236 million including 150,000 shares in Fossil Inc (Zacks Equity Research, 2012). Skagen Design ltd is manufacturing and marketing watches, sun glasses and jewels for both men and women offering its products and services through third party retailers as well as online stores. Apart from administrative offices and manufacturing plants sit uated in Nevada, it operates stores in Tokyo, Nagoya, Japan, Taiwan and markets it products to various countries such as Singapore, Malaysia,

Boundaryless Career Deined Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Boundaryless Career Deined - Essay Example Though the new boundaryless career era brought along with it a number of exciting features, along with the benefits, there are a number of challenges created by it for the modern graduates. The challenges in the new business world According to scholars like Brocklehurst (n.d.p. 3-4), there are certain fundamentals that people seek in their jobs. Some important aspects are security, community and self-fulfillment. Admittedly, gone are the days when an employee was hired by a company for his lifetime, and once employed, the employees felt considerable amount of security in their jobs. However, in the modern workplace, one is not in a position to feel secure as there is a possibility of change at any time. Companies change their strategies on an everyday basis, they change technologies and consequently the employees are met with a flood of newer and newer information that they fail to grasp fully. While the ones who are able to assimilate and adapt according to the changes manage to sta y afloat, the ones who cannot are left behind. The second point is the community feeling. Evidently, as the work place is volatile, it is a place of discontinued events, and hence, the employees normally find it difficult to grow and retain lasting relationships. The last point is the feeling of self-fulfillment. Admittedly, having some relations and the feeling of belonging are essential for the feeling of self fulfillment. However, when the career ladder is ever-climbing, one feels restless and helpless. Thus, admittedly, the first challenge for the young graduates in the modern business arena is to learn to live without the security that is given by a single employer. The second major challenge for the graduates is the need for life-long learning. To illustrate, gone are the days when a fresher joined a company and went on doing the very same job throughout his life. Now, even a person who wants to pursue the same job will have to learn new and new things as technology goes on ch anging and as newer and newer forms of technology go on assaulting the workplace. For example, if an accountant in the past only required accounting skills, the present-day accountant has to do it using computer and modern software that change every now and then. Thus, for a modern day employee, learning has become life-long, and they have to continue applying the skills and knowledge they learned in one situation in another. The third issue facing young graduates is that they should be adaptable in the modern business world. For example, a manger in a multinational firm will have to work in various cultures and various geographical areas, and the skill of a manager is usually assessed by his readiness to get used to the situations. The one who has foreseen the situation is the best and he epitomizes the modern day employee. The one who is able to adapt immediately will also change and survive. Without the ability to adapt, the employee does not get any feeling of security. In other words, as Sullivan and Emerson (n.d., p.3) point out, ones feeling of security is decided by ones own ability to improvise, not by the employee’

Business strstegy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Business strstegy - Essay Example In such changing environment, it is must for the organizations and the institutions to have enough flexibility and adaptability within the policies and procedures of such bodies so that the changing terms can be easily inculcated. Such flexibility and adaptability has become the key for the sustainable growth and development of the organizations and institutions. Forestry Commission was established in England in the year of 1919 through the passing of the Forestry Act. The prime reason of the establishment of such Commission was aimed at supplying the much required timbers that were in scarcity in those years because of the industrial revolution and the First World War. The government of England speculated another war in the near future and thought it was necessary to have proper supply of timber. The secondary reason of the formation of such Commission was to ensure employment in the rural economy because of the changed political equations and also to provide employment to the soldiers those have just returned from the war. Therefore, to serve so many of the objectives the Forestry Commission was formulated which till recently was under the control of the ex-army men and more importantly followed the organizational structure similar to that of the military. The structure was essentially a top-down one with much emphasis on the features like chain of command and order from the top. With the changing times, the role of the Forestry Commission also experienced paradigm shift. The department of the government that came in to existence for the purpose of timber production and rural employment was pressed by the government in the 70s and 80s to inculcate organizational efficiency like other departments of the government. The Forestry Commission also had certain internal conflicts. There was a clear difference among the organizational hierarchy resulting in ‘them’ and ‘us’. Those who were the field

Issue of climate change Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Issue of climate change - Assignment Example The past century alone saw global see levels go up by approximately 8 inches. There is enough evidence of sea ice melting while patterns of precipitation continue to change. As some parts of the world receive more rainfall, others are receiving very little or none at all. As a result of increased absorption of COÂ ­2, the oceans are increasingly becoming acidic. Yes the issue may receive a lot of hype from the media and political fronts but it is real, the planet earth’s climate is undergoing change and may be a threat to life in future. We must do something to avert the situation and protect our environment going forward. There is therefore no doubt that climate on the planet earth is not the same again. Human activity is the greatest culprit. Industrialization, deforestation, heavy economic reliance on fossil fuels and other sources of greenhouse gasses are some human activities behind the global climatic change. It has thus come a time when we must sober up and think about our planet’s climatic condition seriously. Green energy technologies, increasing the forest cover and being energy economical are some of the steps we can take to reverse the current climatic situation. Environmental pollution must stop at all costs so as to permit safe of survival of plant and animal

Business strstegy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Business strstegy - Essay Example In such changing environment, it is must for the organizations and the institutions to have enough flexibility and adaptability within the policies and procedures of such bodies so that the changing terms can be easily inculcated. Such flexibility and adaptability has become the key for the sustainable growth and development of the organizations and institutions. Forestry Commission was established in England in the year of 1919 through the passing of the Forestry Act. The prime reason of the establishment of such Commission was aimed at supplying the much required timbers that were in scarcity in those years because of the industrial revolution and the First World War. The government of England speculated another war in the near future and thought it was necessary to have proper supply of timber. The secondary reason of the formation of such Commission was to ensure employment in the rural economy because of the changed political equations and also to provide employment to the soldiers those have just returned from the war. Therefore, to serve so many of the objectives the Forestry Commission was formulated which till recently was under the control of the ex-army men and more importantly followed the organizational structure similar to that of the military. The structure was essentially a top-down one with much emphasis on the features like chain of command and order from the top. With the changing times, the role of the Forestry Commission also experienced paradigm shift. The department of the government that came in to existence for the purpose of timber production and rural employment was pressed by the government in the 70s and 80s to inculcate organizational efficiency like other departments of the government. The Forestry Commission also had certain internal conflicts. There was a clear difference among the organizational hierarchy resulting in ‘them’ and ‘us’. Those who were the field

Personal Letter to University Statement Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Letter to University - Personal Statement Example The best reason for me to pursue university studies (say, post-secondary education) is to correlate my career interests and personal interests under a single roof. My personal experience with inequalities in our (Afghanistan) society forced me to take a pledge to make use of every opportunity to serve the needy. As the wide gap between rich and poor is getting wider, the role of a social worker is crucial. Besides, as a person who represents third world countries, I am well aware of the fact that my responsibility is high. So, my plan is to acquire the skills and knowledge that the undergraduate program in social work can offer in order to make a difference in the world. Therefore, I have chosen to pursue a post-secondary education in Bachelor of Social Work because this course can help me materialize my personal and career goals. As a person with intense admiration towards social work, my preferred area of study is Social Work and I am applying for Bachelor of Social Work at the York University. My future career goals are deeply rooted in my personal experiences. For example, my personal experience in my motherland, i.e. Afghanistan motivated me a lot to pursue a career in social work. My ethnic identity as a person from Afghanistan, which faces the fame/problem of internal insurgencies, natural calamities, insufficiency in infrastructure development, poor living condition of the citizens, etc force me to be in the forefront of social work. I feel quite sure that a generation with education and unending aspiration towards social work can transform the future of my nation. Now that I have moved to Canada, there still remains the urge in me to serve the society within my private and public domain. Ming-sum Tsui in the work ‘Social work supervision: contexts and concepts’ makes clear that training programs conducted by universities transformed the formal social work scenario (Tsui 7). Thus, the most important motivation for my decision to

Characters of Romeo and Juliet Essay Example for Free

Characters of Romeo and Juliet Essay In The Prologue of Romeo And Juliet, the fate of the star-crossed lovers, the title characters, is already told. They have been doomed to take their [lives] before the play has even begun. This foretelling of what the audience is about to see displays that the play is about how and why the events unfold, and not what happens. Act Two, Scene Two is an important scene in the play, which is because this is where Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, the two children born of the fatal loins of their feuding parents, meet for the second time, after Capulets Masquerade. They fall in love, starting the chain of fated events that cause their deaths. Before meeting Juliet, Romeo was seen to be melancholic; he was supposedly in love with Rosaline, which was unrequited. He seemed to be introspective, and have a very negative outlook; in Act One, Scene One his father, Montague, said that Romeo had been shutting himself [a]way from light in his room. Romeo appeared to have a very poetic, yet bleak, attitude to love. This is demonstrated by Romeos use of extended oxymoron in Act One, Scene One, where he talked of loving hate, and misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms. His poetic words seemed to indicate that perhaps Romeo was not in love, rather in love with the idea of being in love. He spoke of Rosaline, the object of his love, as though she was a deity, even stating she has characteristics of the goddess Diana (she has Dians wit). The goddess Diana was an emblem of chastity, and the object of Romeos affections has taken a vow of chastity. Ironically, Romeo refuses to examine other beauties, as his friend and kinsman Benvolio suggests at the end of Act One, Scene One. In Act One, Scene Five, when Romeo firsts saw, spoke to, and kissed Juliet, he still used decorative language, and said similar to what he had previously said about Rosaline. He said that Juliet doth teach the torches to burn bright, a metaphor, after first seeing her in Act one, Scene Five, after calling Rosaline the all-seeing sun in Act One, Scene Three. This seems to indicate that Romeo is too quick to announce his love, saying of Juliet what he had said not long ago about Rosaline. He did, however, denounce his previous love and say that his love of Rosaline was not comparable to his love for Juliet in Act One, Scene Five, with the rhetorical question [d]id my hear love till now? . In Act One, Scene Three Juliet is seen to be polite and respectful young girl. Her mother, Lady Capulet, who is less close to Juliet than her Nurse, tried to persuade Juliet to marry a suitor that has been chosen for her. Marriage was an honour that [Juliet] dream[ed] not of, being only thirteen years of age. Lady Capulet, in Act One, Scene Three, told her daughter that [t]he valiant Paris seeks [Juliet] for his love. Juliet seemed in no rush to fall in love and marry at such a young age, she stated she would look to like, but no more deep [ ] endart [her] eye. She appeared grounded, with no unrealistic expectations about love, and in no hurry to find a husband, despite her mothers insistence that girls younger than Juliet [are] made already mothers. When Juliet met Romeo for the first time in Act One, Scene Five, although she echoed Romeos poetic and metaphor rich language, she appeared more playful and flirtatious, telling Romeo he kiss[es] by thbook. In Act Two, Scene Two, Romeo speaks of his love for Juliet and watches her after she appears at the window. He compares her beauty to that of the sun: [it] is the east and Juliet is the sun/Arise, fair sun, when she appears at her window. Shakespeare uses this language to depict that Romeo has elevated Juliet to the stature of a goddess. This is reinstated, with Juliets beauty repeatedly being compared to (and bettering) the brightness of celestial objects; Romeo says that the brightness of her cheek would shame [the] stars. Shakespeare used more positive metaphor, repetition, and a less structured and poetic approach to Romeos speech to show that Romeos newly found love of Juliet has effected a change in his language. Romeo is presented as more happy to love, and simply be in the presence of Juliet: he is eager for her to speak again, rather than strike up a conversation instantly. When Romeo begins speaking to Juliet, after hearing her speak of her love and asking why she must love a member of the family she hates, asking wherefore [is he] Romeo? , Shakespeare wants us to understand Romeos devotion to Juliet. Romeo offers to forsake his name, saying that [h]enceforth [he] never will be Romeo demonstrating his willingness to make sacrifices for the love of Juliet. During this scene Shakespeare repeatedly uses names, or words referring to names (for example, name, or called) to show the conflict between language, the words and names, and experience, reality; Juliet states that a rose/By any other word would spell as sweet. Romeo is eager to exchange [Juliets] loves faithful vow for [his], which shows not only Romeos eagerness to prove his unchangeable love to Juliet, but his need to be loved in return. He tries to swear his love many things, including yonder blessed moon, Juliet takes vowing love much more seriously, and asks Romeo not to swear by the inconstant moon as it is too changing to vow such an important thing on. This presents Juliet as a mature girl, who tries to consider the consequences of actions and promises, whereas Romeo is completely absorbed in the idea of love. Juliet is concerned that her and Romeos love is moving too fast, saying that it is too like the lightening. Shakespeare uses this again showing Juliets rationality, but also showing that she is young, love is new to her and she is in no rush. Romeo does not appear to share these concerns; he is more concerned with loving and being loved, only satisfied by Juliets faithful vow. She is however in love with Romeo, and is not happy to see him go, [p]arting is such sweet sorrow, but is eager to see him again. Towards the end of the scene Juliets language becomes more like Romeos in eagerness to vow love, and in use of simile, comparing Romeo to a wantons bird, tethered by her love. Romeos rashness, loyalty, and need to love Juliet and be loved in return are important characteristics that will end up sealing his grim fate at the end of the play. Juliets young age, and contrasting maturity, grounding in reality and strong will in her love will be ever important, and her need to see a plan through will be important factors that help lead her towards her tragic ending. For never was there a story of more woe/Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Emphasize the importance of vision

Emphasize the importance of vision 1. Introduction This critique report explores the article ‘Understanding the role of vision in project success by Dale Christenson and Derek H.T. Walker. The sole purpose of this article was to emphasize the importance of ‘vision in project success as it states â€Å"this paper focuses on an examination of the impact of the leadership construct of project vision on expected project outcomes†. This article is interesting as it focuses on project vision being the key to creating successful project outcomes by understanding that development, communication and maintenance are important when considering stakeholder management. This article contained the four characteristics of vision and a total of four case studies, comparing and contrasting with one another, however only two have been looked at in this report. The article had gathered information from past project experiences which helped its argument that vision is in fact critical in project success. The main points discussed in th is report will be the definition and role of vision in project management, analysis of the case studies and strengths and weaknesses of vision. 2. Terms of Reference Requested was a critique report on a chosen article. This report will be exploring the article â€Å"Understanding the role of vision in project success† and investigating its strengths and weaknesses. This report is due on Monday 22 March 2010. 3. Findings 3.1 Definition of Vision Having read this article, I have concluded that vision is a strong means of clarification and communication that surround a team within a project by an appointed central project manager whom inspires a vision of the projects requirements and how they will positively influence the project. The definition described in the article however was as Bennis and Nanus (1987, p. 82) explain, â€Å"The concept of vision becomes one of a tool or means to engender passion and meaning to a project to meet the envisioned end manifestation.† A project vision can also be an object that defines the projects foundation. 3.2 Analytical summary 3.2.1 The Importance of Vision There are many factors that, when put together guarantee project success. However, this article focuses on the role of vision as a critical achievement factor in project success. â€Å"The type of project influences the way that a project vision may develop, no matter the situation regarding goal definition, vision has an impact on the possibilities for developing a project vision.† A vision is linked to the end benefits and should be understood at the beginning of the project, but with â€Å"foreknowledge that both the vision and end benefits are likely to change and evolve throughout the project lifecycle†. â€Å"It is important to discuss the basis of change management because projects are about instigating a process or product change.† â€Å"Vision clearly seeks to convince its audience that change is worthwhile and bestows benefits. A project vision concept, summarized within a vision statement, often seeks to motivate and inspire team members and other stakeholders to positively participate and shed negative behaviors.† Stretch goals are encouraged within this article such as BHAG which stands for big hairy audacious goal. Stretch goals are needed to â€Å"provide a framework for progressing towards the envisioned future† and to improve the overall system. A successful project must have both an appropriate relationship structure and the individual leaders must have the leadership skills and abilities and personal motivation to make it work. 3.2.2 Communication in Vision In project management the â€Å"projects require a strong cohesive team focus on the desired project outcomes† and â€Å"it is important for project teams to have a common and shared idea of what difference they are trying to make as a result of the project† I agree with these two statements as for a project to succeed, you need to both co-operate and except others viewpoints, so that if there are contrasting ideas you may look from each others perspective and come to a resolution without interfering with the project. This article stated that communication is a key factor in project success and coheres with vision as it states that â€Å"Creating an effective project vision requires excellent communication skills and a deep understanding of both organizational culture and the history and trigger mechanisms that create underlying assumptions of individuals and groups comprising project teams.† It is also suggested that team building exercises help create vision fo r the team, as it indicates that those who are team orientated people will stick around and cohere with the group and the â€Å"problematic† people will often walk away. Leaders use vision-making and vision-communicating as their tools to achieve strategic goals. A vision statement may become an artifact, a document describing project goals and aspiration. 3.2.3 Stakeholders in Vision Attention is focused on stakeholder analysis and project leader behavior in the promotion and adoption of project vision.â€Å"Identifying the need to conduct a stakeholder analysis, alert the central project manager as to the motivation of some project participants and create a better opportunity to better manage the risks that these stakeholders presented to the project.† This vision can be built by exploring questions and ideas with both stakeholders and project team members. â€Å"A clear understanding is needed of stakeholder goals and their aspirations for the project.† Identification of three stakeholders, internal, external and customers, meeting stakeholder requirements, is of key importance. â€Å"Vision must be continually ingrained in the minds of project teams and active stakeholders; often the focus is on the business requirements and technical specifications of the system.† 3.2.4 The four characteristics of Vision The four characteristics of vision are seen as a ‘must to ensure that vision operates to its full effectiveness, all strongly advise clear and positive communication, emphasis on goals, objectives and the importance of stakeholder input within a project. It must be understood: it must capture the core purpose, preferred future state and essence of project objectives It must be motivational: it must make a convincing case for following the project vision concept that can be internalized by project stakeholders and that provides a compelling value proposition. It must be credible: It must be consistent with stakeholder cultures to appeal at the assumptions and values level so that the vision statement artifact resonates with them It must be demanding and challenging: It should be proactive to facilitate teams to work smarter and more effectively, perhaps identifying stretch goals. 3.3 Analysis of the JIMS and Global Knowledge case studies Four case studies were described in this article, however I will only be exploring the downfalls of one and the positive aspects of the other as I found the JIMS case study contained many weaknesses and the Matsushita consisted of strengths. 3.3.1 A brief overview of the JIMS project The JIMS project which stands for Joint information management system had a life of ten years, however, evolved from a loose group of individuals into a project management structure with a good sense of vision. The stakeholders required separate meetings to discuss business requirements and were assigned someone each without formal training â€Å"Their authority was uncertain within their respective agencies and dubious within the context of the project management structure† there was an assumption that this would help them gain experience and learn, however resulted in greater stress. The article states that â€Å"a successful project must have both an appropriate leadership structure and the individual leaders must have the leadership skills, abilities and the motivation to make it work† Although the vision was apparently understood, business requirements were identified and signed, design specifications approved and proof of concept modules displayed, front end core agencies participating in the system still had the opinion to walk away from the project if they didnt like it. â€Å"Thus at the point of inflection, both motivational and inspirational characteristics were revived and the vision became credible once again.† the project vision with this change came greater decision making, problem solving and a better positioning of stakeholders through understanding the role of vision in project success. 3.3.2 Weaknesses within the project Leadership structure did not stay consistent as it evolved from being structured to a maintaining a more flexible approach. The contract was not binding to both the team members and stakeholders giving them the option to abort at any chosen time with no mechanism to preserve their continued participation. Stakeholders were allowed too much input into the project with contrasting ideas and personal reflections of â€Å"their individual agency or department interests† getting in the way. There was lack of executive sponsorship, due to costs. Lack of sponsorship is seen as a number one way to set projects out to fail. Leadership of the central project manager was driven by technology and resource concerns. 3.3.3 A brief scenario of the global knowledge project The Global knowledge project, known as ‘Vision 21 had senior level personals from a successful project team The Novo Nordisk visited their business units and discussed standard approaches, the importance of communication and their best practices. ‘The Novo Nordisk personals acted as models for the Vision 21 team, thus producing vision and positivity for the business unit to successfully complete their project. 3.3.4 Strengths within the project Emphasis on the importance of vision and bringing past successful personal to encourage and motivate the business unit. Teamwork is shown and stakeholders are questioned, but not have the power to influence the project. 3.3.5 Case study analysis Extreme problems had to be encountered first for the JIMS team to get together and come up with a strategy to better their project so it did not fail completely. The project lacked in management experience and knowledge, thus proved to be a big learning curve for the development team. However, I believe from this case study, sometimes in order to learn, mistakes need to be made, to better further them for the next project. The JIMS team would have benefited if vision was used better within their project, they would have worked better as a team, reduced risks and would have experienced less problems with stakeholders both internally and externally. The Global knowledge project proved successful through bringing in experienced personal to give insight on how they achieved sanction and motivating the Vision 21 team to follow their footsteps and create a vision for their project. I believe this was a good idea as it gives knowledge and insight into the ways of creating a successful project, this would have benefited the JIMS team as they lacked in experience and knowledge. 4. Conclusion To conclude, project vision is viewed as a critical success factor in projects, it determines the final outcome of the projects and gives the project team some motivation and structure which leads to efficiency, better team co-operation and project accomplishment. Explored have been the four characteristics, which convey vision as a whole, they need to be considered for vision to produce its full capability. I have analyzed two case studies, one of a successful outcome and another that experiences problems but solved them in the end. I believe that vision is an important aspect of project success through reading this article, not only have the case studies proved it, but it also makes sense to consult your stakeholders on a regular basis, rather than just focusing on the business requirements. It is important that both the team itself and the stakeholders are informed of any changes to the requirements and are kept up to date with all that is happening. I feel that it is also important for good team communication and goal setting when doing a project, it creates an optimistic vision of what the project has to achieve and how it can make an important impact. All the information in this article was useful and displayed clearly and helped me gain a better understanding of factors that underlie project success. 5. Reference Christenson, D., Walker,D. (n.d). Understanding the role of vision in project success. Project management Journal, 39-52. Retrieved March 1 2010.

Everyday Use :: essays research papers

"Everyday Use" is a short story written by Alice Walker. Walker did a wonderful job illustrating her characters. There are all types of characters in this short story from round to static. Her use of simple symbolism prompts the reader to take a deeper look into the story. Walker’s humble way of conveying the theme makes the reader take a second look at him or herself. Walker did an excellent job in writing this story, so she could warn people of what might happen if they do not live properly. Every possible type of character is displayed in this short story. Dee starts out the story as a stereotypical light-skinned black person. Feeling as though she was better than everyone else was because her: waist was small, skin was light, a nice grade of hair, and she was somewhat educated. Dee was in a hurry to get out of the country and never come back. She wrote to her mother saying "no matter where we choose to live, she will manage to come see us. But she will never bring her friends" (Walker 63), letting everyone know that she thought she was too good to continue to take part in her heritage. Maggie was portrayed as a flat character. The reader is not told much about her, and she never changes throughout the whole story. The mother would be the static character. She is seen as an older women set in her ways from life experiences, and from what she had been taught growing up black in the south. She made up her mind that the two family quilts would go to Maggie and sh e did not give it a second thought. Dee is also the dynamic character round. She is dynamic when she returns home to the country. She had previously said she would not bring any of her friends home, but when she gets there she is accompanied by a gentleman. Other aspects of her dynamics are displayed when she changes her name to "Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo". She went from dyeing and hating her upbringing to wanting to take a piece of it with her back to the city. To show off where and what she comes from. Dee is truly a round character. Walker did an excellent job with these characters especially Dee. Walker’s use of lucid symbolism prompts the reader to take a deeper look into the story and into him or herself.

La Cancion de mi Corazon :: essays research papers

Memories to me are songs that play over and over again in my head. My heart keeps the beat and notes fall from my breath. After awhile not even the physical self exists. My soul is squashed between bars and lines. Sometimes I’m running, other times I’m resting. I see images flash by in four-four time then three-four time then six-eight time†¦there is no pattern. Erratic sharps lift me up and make me smile only to become flat again and drop me back into confusion. Confusion is the endless melody that carries on in my blood. The music stops only when I think of him, my lost harmony, my Che†¦   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  My father would hold me on his lap and tell me that the wind whispered of change. He said the sun was beginning to light the way to a new path for Cuba. He’d tell me the water was stirring in anticipation of underground action. These things bounced off me and rolled into unswept corners of my mind. When my father spoke to me each day I was too preoccupied chasing chickens (add more detail bit about chasing chickens). Now that I think back to those times I realise my father spoke more to reassure him self than me that the country would find its glory.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  My mother was less optimistic about the future improvement of Cuba. Perhaps this was due to the realities of our current standard of living. My mother’s bitterness splashed down upon us as she complained of the lack of a morsel of meat in the house. She complained of our scrawny chickens and how my father sold their eggs. Many times as a child I would hear her say to my father â€Å"How can I raise our children to be strong when you sell our eggs and bring home no meat?† My father would sigh and in a tired voice would reply â€Å"Tomorrow will be better.† But it never seemed to be. I suppose though that no matter how destitute a child’s life is one’s imagination can serve as a comfort. I would stave off hunger by flipping through my recollections of life beyond the rural land of Mantanzas. The city of Havana, despite the crime and corruption, held me firmly fixed in fascination. The last time the city came into my sight my mother was buying a new dress. She seldom bought machine made, market quality clothes.

A Response to John Gatto’s Article Essay

In an article written by John Gatto, who is a very good teacher as proven by his numerous awards received, it seems that he is no longer an adherent of a curriculum of contemporary education. It seems that he is a bit late in knowing that he, as a teacher, is a slave of this kind of system. For more than two decades and a half, he never refuses to be part of it. Why a sudden change? As for my personal opinion, I am certainly agreed with the current type of contemporary education designed for kid’s learning at certain level but I hope that it would not be misunderstood with my position about the article of John Gatto because I am really opposed in his idea. I am not a believer of John Gatto’s description about the said scheme, because I guess, he made such exaggerated illustration of core curriculum according to his belief alone and is not proper to just be put in general situation. If, for any reason that John Gatto’s description is true, perhaps that only exists in his area of jurisdiction and is therefore an isolated case. To further explain my viewpoint, let me discuss and elaborate it. What is a teacher’s role anyway? Ever since formal schooling is born, which says by John Gatto that the blueprint of school procedure is from an Egyptian custom and that only brought in US trough Puritans, the teacher, or rabbi in their term, has the several roles. Firstly, a teacher is the one who educates students any lessons, in accordance to what they need to learn. Of course they know that a grade school kid does not need to learn at early age some subjects like accounting, trigonometry or geophysics because those types of subjects are much more complex things that young minds would not understand whether these kids are normal kids or gifted, and this will only be justified by a licensed teacher. Hence, it is but a right thing to call a teacher an educator. The second role of a teacher could be viewed as equal as parent’s role. Since kids spend most of the time of their growing years at school than at home, the teacher has all the responsibility in disciplining these kids especially when troubled with bad manners and behavior. Disciplining kids that are not biologically them would never be an easy task that only good teacher can do. Teachers mold these kids and prepare them to become a well-disciplined and well-behaved citizen of the country. To end this essay, I want to emphasize my position of disagreeing with John Gatto’s viewpoint and to once again make an appeal to the public, to every public school teacher, and especially to John Gatto himself to understand the disadvantages and advantages of teaching within the standardization scheme set by the norm and traditional custom, to realize that teaching is not just a work for a living. Teaching is, and will always be, a noble profession! R E F E R E N C E Gatto, J. T. (1991, July 25). I May Be A Teacher But I am Not An Educator. The Wall Street Journal.

User Authentication Through Mouse Dynamics

16 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY, VOL. 8, NO. 1, JANUARY 2013 User Authentication Through Mouse Dynamics Chao Shen, Student Member, IEEE, Zhongmin Cai, Member, IEEE, Xiaohong Guan, Fellow, IEEE, Youtian Du, Member, IEEE, and Roy A. Maxion, Fellow, IEEE Abstract—Behavior-based user authentication with pointing devices, such as mice or touchpads, has been gaining attention. As an emerging behavioral biometric, mouse dynamics aims to address the authentication problem by verifying computer users on the basis of their mouse operating styles.This paper presents a simple and ef? cient user authentication approach based on a ? xed mouse-operation task. For each sample of the mouse-operation task, both traditional holistic features and newly de? ned procedural features are extracted for accurate and ? ne-grained characterization of a user’s unique mouse behavior. Distance-measurement and eigenspace-transformation techniques are applied to obtain featur e components for ef? ciently representing the original mouse feature space.Then a one-class learning algorithm is employed in the distance-based feature eigenspace for the authentication task. The approach is evaluated on a dataset of 5550 mouse-operation samples from 37 subjects. Extensive experimental results are included to demonstrate the ef? cacy of the proposed approach, which achieves a false-acceptance rate of 8. 74%, and a false-rejection rate of 7. 69% with a corresponding authentication time of 11. 8 seconds. Two additional experiments are provided to compare the current approach with other approaches in the literature.Our dataset is publicly available to facilitate future research. Index Terms—Biometric, mouse dynamics, authentication, eigenspace transformation, one-class learning. I. INTRODUCTION T HE quest for a reliable and convenient security mechanism to authenticate a computer user has existed since the inadequacy of conventional password mechanism was reali zed, ? rst by the security community, and then gradually by the Manuscript received March 28, 2012; revised July 16, 2012; accepted September 06, 2012. Date of publication October 09, 2012; date of current version December 26, 2012.This work was supported in part by the NSFC (61175039, 61103240, 60921003, 60905018), in part by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (60825202), in part by 863 High Tech Development Plan (2007AA01Z464), in part by the Research Fund for Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (20090201120032), and in part by Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities (2012jdhz08). The work of R. A. Maxion was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant CNS-0716677. Any opinions, ? dings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors, and do not necessarily re? ect the views of the National Science Foundation. The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Dr. Sviatoslav Voloshynovskiy. C. Shen, Z. Cai, X. Guan, and Y. Du are with the MOE Key Laboratory for Intelligent Networks and Network Security, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710049, China (e-mail: [email  protected] xjtu. edu. cn; [email  protected] xjtu. edn. cn; [email  protected] xjtu. edu. cn; [email  protected] jtu. edu. cn). R. A. Maxion is with the Dependable Systems Laboratory, Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA (e-mail: [email  protected] cmu. edu). Color versions of one or more of the ? gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore. ieee. org. Digital Object Identi? er 10. 1109/TIFS. 2012. 2223677 public [31]. As data are moved from traditional localized computing environments to the new Cloud Computing paradigm (e. g. , Box. net and Dropbox), the need for better authentication has become more pressing.Recently, several large-scale password leakages exposed users to an unprecedented risk of disclosure and abuse of their information [47], [48]. These incidents seriously shook public con? dence in the security of the current information infrastructure; the inadequacy of password-based authentication mechanisms is becoming a major concern for the entire information society. Of various potential solutions to this problem, a particularly promising technique is mouse dynamics. Mouse dynamics measures and assesses a user’s mouse-behavior characteristics for use as a biometric.Compared with other biometrics such as face, ? ngerprint and voice [20], mouse dynamics is less intrusive, and requires no specialized hardware to capture biometric information. Hence it is suitable for the current Internet environment. When a user tries to log into a computer system, mouse dynamics only requires her to provide the login name and to perform a certain sequence of mouse operations. Extracted behavioral features, based on mouse movements and clicks, are compared to a legitimate user’s pro? le. A match authenticates the user; otherwise her access is denied.Furthermore, a user’s mouse-behavior characteristics can be continually analyzed during her subsequent usage of a computer system for identity monitoring or intrusion detection. Yampolskiy et al. provide a review of the ? eld [45]. Mouse dynamics has attracted more and more research interest over the last decade [2]–[4], [8], [14]–[17], [19], [21], [22], [33], [34], [39]–[41], [45], [46]. Although previous research has shown promising results, mouse dynamics is still a newly emerging technique, and has not reached an acceptable level of performance (e. . , European standard for commercial biometric technology, which requires 0. 001% false-acceptance rate and 1% false-rejection rate [10]). Most existing approaches for mouse-dynamics-based user authentication result in a low authentication accuracy or an unreasonably long authenticatio n time. Either of these may limit applicability in real-world systems, because few users are willing to use an unreliable authentication mechanism, or to wait for several minutes to log into a system.Moreover, previous studies have favored using data from real-world environments over experimentally controlled environments, but this realism may cause unintended side-effects by introducing confounding factors (e. g. , effects due to different mouse devices) that may affect experimental results. Such confounds can make it dif? cult to attribute experimental outcomes solely to user behavior, and not to other factors along the long path of mouse behavior, from hand to computing environment [21], [41]. 1556-6013/$31. 00  © 2012 IEEE SHEN et al. : USER AUTHENTICATION THROUGH MOUSE DYNAMICS 17It should be also noted that most mouse-dynamics research used data from both the impostors and the legitimate user to train the classi? cation or detection model. However, in the scenario of mouse-d ynamics-based user authentication, usually only the data from the legitimate user are readily available, since the user would choose her speci? c sequence of mouse operations and would not share it with others. In addition, no datasets are published in previous research, which makes it dif? cult for third-party veri? cation of previous work and precludes objective comparisons between different approaches.A. Overview of Approach Faced with the above challenges, our study aims to develop a mouse-dynamics-based user authentication approach, which can perform user authentication in a short period of time while maintaining high accuracy. By using a controlled experimental environment, we have isolated inherent behavioral characteristics as the primary factors for mouse-behavior analysis. The overview of the proposed approach is shown in Fig. 1. It consists of three major modules: (1) mouse-behavior capture, (2) feature construction, and (3) training/classi? cation. The ? st module serves to create a mouse-operation task, and to capture and interpret mouse-behavior data. The second module is used to extract holistic and procedural features to characterize mouse behavior, and to map the raw features into distance-based features by using various distance metrics. The third module, in the training phase, applies kernel PCA on the distance-based feature vectors to compute the predominant feature components, and then builds the user’s pro? le using a one-class classi? er. In the classi? cation phase, it determines the user’s identity using the trained classi? r in the distance-based feature eigenspace. B. Purpose and Contributions of This Paper This paper is a signi? cant extension of an earlier and much shorter version [40]. The main purpose and major contributions of this paper are summarized as follows: †¢ We address the problem of unintended side-effects of inconsistent experimental conditions and environmental variables by restricting usersâ€℠¢ mouse operations to a tightly-controlled environment. This isolates inherent behavioral characteristics as the principal factors in mouse behavior analysis, and substantially reduces the effects of external confounding factors. Instead of the descriptive statistics of mouse behaviors usually adopted in existing work, we propose newly-de? ned procedural features, such as movement speed curves, to characterize a user’s unique mouse-behavior characteristics in an accurate and ? ne-grained manner. These features could lead to a performance boost both in authentication accuracy and authentication time. †¢ We apply distance metrics and kernel PCA to obtain a distance-based eigenspace for ef? ciently representing the original mouse feature space.These techniques partially handle behavioral variability, and make our proposed approach stable and robust to variability in behavior data. †¢ We employ one-class learning methods to perform the user authentication task, so that the detection model is Fig. 1. Overview of approach. built solely on the data from the legitimate user. One-class methods are more suitable for mouse-dynamics-based user authentication in real-world applications. †¢ We present a repeatable and objective evaluation procedure to investigate the effectiveness of our proposed approach through a series of experiments.As far as we know, no earlier work made informed comparisons between different features and results, due to the lack of a standard test protocol. Here we provide comparative experiments to further examine the validity of the proposed approach. †¢ A public mouse-behavior dataset is established (see Section III for availability), not only for this study but also to foster future research. This dataset contains high-quality mouse-behavior data from 37 subjects. To our knowledge, this study is the ? rst to publish a shared mouse-behavior dataset in this ? eld. This study develops a mouse-dynamics-based user authenticat ion approach that performs user authentication in a short time while maintaining high accuracy. It has several desirable properties: 1. it is easy to comprehend and implement; 2. it requires no specialized hardware or equipment to capture the biometric data; 3. it requires only about 12 seconds of mouse-behavior data to provide good, steady performance. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section II describes related work. Section III presents a data-collection process. Section IV describes the feature-construction process.Section V discusses the classi? cation techniques for mouse dynamics. Section VI presents the evaluation methodology. Section VII presents and analyzes experimental results. Section VIII offers a discussion and possible extensions of the current work. Finally, Section IX concludes. 18 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY, VOL. 8, NO. 1, JANUARY 2013 II. BACKGROUND AND RELATED WORK In this section, we provide background on mouse- dynamics research, and various applications for mouse dynamics (e. g. , authentication versus intrusion detection).Then we focus on applying mouse dynamics to user authentication. A. Background of Mouse Dynamics Mouse dynamics, a behavioral biometric for analyzing behavior data from pointing devices (e. g. , mouse or touchpad), provides user authentication in an accessible and convenient manner [2]–[4], [8], [14]–[17], [19], [21], [22], [33], [34], [39]–[41], [45], [46]. Since Everitt and McOwan [14] ? rst investigated in 2003 whether users could be distinguished by the use of a signature written by mouse, several different techniques and uses for mouse dynamics have been proposed.Most researchers focus on the use of mouse dynamics for intrusion detection (sometimes called identity monitoring or reauthentication), which analyzes mouse-behavior characteristics throughout the course of interaction. Pusara and Brodley [33] proposed a reauthentication scheme using m ouse dynamics for user veri? cation. This study presented positive ? ndings, but cautioned that their results were only preliminary. Gamboa and Fred [15], [16] were some of the earliest researchers to study identity monitoring based on mouse movements.Later on, Ahmed and Traore [3] proposed an approach combining keystroke dynamics with mouse dynamics for intrusion detection. Then they considered mouse dynamics as a standalone biometric for intrusion detection [2]. Recently, Zheng et al. [46] proposed angle-based metrics of mouse movements for reauthentication systems, and explored the effects of environmental factors (e. g. , different machines). Yet only recently have researchers come to the use of mouse dynamics for user authentication (sometimes called static authentication), which analyzes mouse-behavior characteristics at particular moments.In 2007, Gamboa et al. [17] extended their approaches in identity monitoring [15], [16] into web-based authentication. Later on, Kaminsky e t al. [22] presented an authentication scheme using mouse dynamics for identifying online game players. Then, Bours and Fullu [8] proposed an authentication approach by requiring users to make use of the mouse for tracing a maze-like path. Most recently, a full survey of the existing work in mouse dynamics pointed out that mouse-dynamics research should focus on reducing authentication time and taking the effect of environmental variables into account [21]. B.User Authentication Based on Mouse Dynamics The primary focus of previous research has been on the use of mouse dynamics for intrusion detection or identity monitoring. It is dif? cult to transfer previous work directly from intrusion detection to authentication, however, because a rather long authentication period is typically required to collect suf? cient mouse-behavior data to enable reasonably accurate veri? cation. To our knowledge, few papers have targeted the use of mouse dynamics for user authentication, which will be the central concern of this paper. Hashia et al. [19] and Bours et al. 8] presented some preliminary results on mouse dynamics for user authentication. They both asked participants to perform ? xed sequences of mouse operations, and they analyzed behavioral characteristics of mouse movements to authenticate a user during the login stage. Distance-based classi? ers were established to compare the veri? cation data with the enrollment data. Hashia et al. collected data from 15 participants using the same computer, while Bours et al. collected data from 28 subjects using different computers; they achieved equal-error rates of 15% and 28% respectively.Gamboa et al. [17] presented a web-based user authentication system based on mouse dynamics. The system displayed an on-screen virtual keyboard, and required users to use the mouse to enter a paired username and pin-number. The extracted feature space was reduced to a best subspace through a greedy search process. A statistical model based on the Weibull distribution was built on training data from both legitimate and impostor users. Based on data collected from 50 subjects, the researchers reported an equal-error rate of 6. 2%, without explicitly reporting authentication time.The test data were also used for feature selection, which may lead to an overly optimistic estimate of authentication performance [18]. Recently, Revett et al. [34] proposed a user authentication system requiring users to use the mouse to operate a graphical, combination-lock-like GUI interface. A small-scale evaluation involving 6 subjects yielded an average false-acceptance rate and false-rejection rate of around 3. 5% and 4% respectively, using a distance-based classi? er. However, experimental details such as experimental apparatus and testing procedures were not explicitly reported. Aksari et al. 4] presented an authentication framework for verifying users based on a ? xed sequence of mouse movements. Features were extracted from nine move ments among seven squares displayed consecutively on the screen. They built a classi? er based on scaled Euclidean distance using data from both legitimate users and impostors. The researchers reported an equal-error rate of 5. 9% over 10 users’ data collected from the same computer, but authentication time was not reported. It should be noted that the above two studies were performed on a small number of users—only 6 users in [34], and 10 users in [4]—which may be insuf? ient to evaluate de? nitively the performance of these approaches. The results of the above studies have been mixed, possibly due to the realism of the experiments, possibly due to a lack of real differences among users, or possibly due to experimental errors or faulty data. A careful reading of the literature suggests that (1) most approaches have resulted in low performance, or have used a small number of users, but since these studies do not tend to be replicated, it is hard to pin the discr epancies on any one thing; (2) no research group provided a shared dataset.In our study, we control the experimental environment to increase the likelihood that our results will be free from experimental confounding factors, and we attempt to develop a simple and ef? cient user authentication approach based on mouse dynamics. We also make our data available publicly. III. MOUSE DATA ACQUISITION In this study, we collect mouse-behavior data in a controlled environment, so as to isolate behavioral characteristics as the principal factors in mouse behavior analysis. We offer here SHEN et al. USER AUTHENTICATION THROUGH MOUSE DYNAMICS 19 considerable detail regarding the conduct of data collection, because these particulars can best reveal potential biases and threats to experimental validity [27]. Our data set is available 1. A. Controlled Environment In this study, we set up a desktop computer and developed a Windows application as a uniform hardware and software platform for the coll ection of mouse-behavior data. The desktop was an HP workstation with a Core 2 Duo 3. 0 GHz processor and 2 GB of RAM.It was equipped with a 17 HP LCD monitor (set at 1280 1024 resolution) and a USB optical mouse, and ran the Windows XP operating system. Most importantly, all system parameters relating to the mouse, such as speed and sensitivity con? gurations, were ? xed. The Windows application, written in C#, prompted a user to conduct a mouse-operation task. During data collection, the application displayed the task in a full-screen window on the monitor, and recorded (1) the corresponding mouse operations (e. g. , mouse-single-click), (2) the positions at which the operations occurred, and (3) the timestamps of the operations.The Windows-event clock was used to timestamp mouse operations [28]; it has a resolution of 15. 625 milliseconds, corresponding to 64 updates per second. When collecting data, each subject was invited to perform a mouse-operations task on the same desktop computer free of other subjects; data collection was performed one by one on the same data-collection platform. These conditions make hardware and software factors consistent throughout the process of data collection over all subjects, thus removing unintended side-effects of unrelated hardware and software factors. B.Mouse-Operation Task Design To reduce behavioral variations due to different mouse-operation sequences, all subjects were required to perform the same sequence of mouse operations. We designed a mouse-operation task, consisting of a ? xed sequence of mouse operations, and made these operations representative of a typical and diverse combination of mouse operations. The operations were selected according to (1) two elementary operations of mouse clicks: single click and double click; and (2) two basic properties of mouse movements: movement direction and movement distance [2], [39].As shown in Fig. 2, movement directions are numbered from 1 to 8, and each of them is sel ected to represent one of eight 45-degree ranges over 360 degrees. In addition, three distance intervals are considered to represent short-, middle- and long-distance mouse movements. Table I shows the directions and distances of the mouse movements used in this study. During data collection, every two adjacent movements were separated by either a single click or a double click. As a whole, the designed task consists of 16 mouse movements, 8 single clicks, and 8 double clicks.It should be noted that our task may not be unique. However, the task was carefully chosen to induce users to perform a wide variety of mouse movements and clicks that were both typical and diverse in an individual’s repertoire of daily mouse behaviors. 1The mouse-behavior dataset is available from: http://nskeylab. xjtu. edu. cn/ projects/mousedynamics/behavior-data-set/. Fig. 2. Mouse movement directions: sector 1 covers all operations performed degrees and degrees. with angles between TABLE I MOUSE MO VEMENTS IN THE DESIGNED MOUSE-OPERATION TASK C.Subjects We recruited 37 subjects, many from within our lab, but some from the university at large. Our sample of subjects consisted of 30 males and 7 females. All of them were right-handed users, and had been using a mouse for a minimum of two years. D. Data-Collection Process All subjects were required to participate in two rounds of data collection per day, and waited at least 24 hours between collections (ensuring that some day-to-day variation existed within the data). In each round, each subject was invited, one by one, to perform the same mouse-operation task 10 times.A mouse-operation sample was obtained when a subject performed the task one time, in which she ? rst clicked a start button on the screen, then moved the mouse to click subsequent buttons prompted by the data-collection application. Additionally, subjects were instructed to use only the external mouse device, and they were advised that no keyboard would be needed. S ubjects were told that if they needed a break or needed to stretch their hands, they were to do so after they had accomplished a full round. This was intended to prevent arti? cially anomalous mouse operations in the middle of a task.Subjects were admonished to focus on the task, as if they were logging into their own accounts, and to avoid distractions, such as talking with the experimenter, while the task was in progress. Any error in the operating process (e. g. , single-clicking a button when requiring double-clicking it) caused the current task to be reset, requiring the subject to redo it. 20 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY, VOL. 8, NO. 1, JANUARY 2013 TABLE II MOUSE DYNAMICS FEATURES Subjects took between 15 days and 60 days to complete data collection.Each subject accomplished 150 error-free repetitions of the same mouse-operation task. The task took between 6. 2 seconds and 21. 3 seconds, with an average of 11. 8 seconds over all subjects. The ? nal dataset contained 5550 samples from 37 subjects. IV. FEATURE CONSTRUCTION In this section, we ? rst extract a set of mouse-dynamics features, and then we use distance-measurement methods to obtain feature-distance vectors for reducing behavioral variability. Next, we utilize an eigenspace transformation to extract principal feature components as classi? er input. A.Feature Extraction The data collected in Section III are sequences of mouse operations, including left-single-clicks, left-double-clicks, and mouse-movements. Mouse features were extracted from these operations, and were typically organized into a vector to represent the sequence of mouse operations in one execution of the mouse-operation task. Table II summarizes the derived features in this study. We characterized mouse behavior based on two basic types of mouse operations—mouse click and mouse movement. Each mouse operation was then analyzed individually, and translated into several mouse features.Our study divi ded these features into two categories: †¢ Holistic features: features that characterize the overall properties of mouse behaviors during interactions, such as single-click and double-click statistics; †¢ Procedural features: features that depict the detailed dynamic processes of mouse behaviors, such as the movement speed and acceleration curves. Most traditional features are holistic features, which suf? ce to obtain a statistical description of mouse behavior, such as the mean value of click times. They are easy to compute and comprehend, but they only characterize general attributes of mouse behavior.In our study, the procedural features characterize in-depth procedural details of mouse behavior. This information more accurately re? ects the ef? ciency, agility and motion habits of individual mouse users, and thus may lead to a performance boost for authentication. Experimental results in Section VII demonstrate the effectiveness of these newly-de? ned features. B. Dis tance Measurement The raw mouse features cannot be used directly by a classi? er, because of high dimensionality and behavioral variability. Therefore, distance-measurement methods were applied to obtain feature-distance vectors and to mitigate the effects of these issues.In the calculation of distance measurement, we ? rst used the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) distance [6] to compute the distance vector of procedural features. The reasons for this choice are that (1) procedural features (e. g. , movement speed curve) of two data samples are not likely to consist of the exactly same number of points, whether these samples are generated by the same or by different subjects; (2) DTW distance can be applied directly to measure the distance between the procedural features of two samples without deforming either or both of the two sequences in order to get an equal number of points.Next, we applied Manhattan distance to calculate the distance vector of holistic features. The reasons for th is choice are that (1) this distance is independent between dimensions, and can preserve physical interpretation of the features since its computation is the absolute value of cumulative difference; (2) previous research in related ? elds (e. g. , keystroke dynamics) reported that the use of Manhattan distance for statistical features could lead to a better performance [23]. ) Reference Feature Vector Generation: We established the reference feature vector for each subject from her training feature vectors. Let , be the training set of feature vectors for one subject, where is a -dimensional mouse feature vector extracted from the th training sample, and is the number of training samples. Consider how the reference feature vector is generated for each subject: Step 1: we computed the pairwise distance vector of procedural features and holistic features between all pairs of training feature vectors and .We used DTW distance to calculate the distance vector of procedural features for measuring the similarity between the procedural components of the two feature vectors, and we applied Manhattan distance to calculate the distance vector of holistic features . (1) where , and represents the procedural components of represents the holistic components. SHEN et al. : USER AUTHENTICATION THROUGH MOUSE DYNAMICS 21 Step 2: we concatenated the distance vectors of holistic features and procedural features together to obtain a distance vector for the training feature vectors and by (2) Step 3: we normalized vector: to get a scale-invariant feature nd sample covariance . Then we can obtain the mean of such a training set by (5) (6) (3) is the mean of all where pairwise distance vectors from the training set, and is the corresponding standard deviation. Step 4: for each training feature vector, we calculated the arithmetic mean distance between this vector and the remaining training vectors, and found the reference feature vector with minimum mean distance. (4) 2) Feature-Dis tance Vector Calculation: Given the reference feature vector for each subject, we then computed the feature-distance vector between a new mouse feature vector and the reference vector.Let be the reference feature vector for one subject; then for any new feature vector (either from the legitimate user or an impostor), we can compute the corresponding distance vector by (1), (2) and (3). In this paper, we used all mouse features in Table II to generate the feature-distance vector. There are 10 click-related features, 16 distance-related features, 16 time-related features, 16 speed-related features, and 16 acceleration-related features, which were taken together and then transformed to a 74-dimensional feature-distance vector that represents each mouse-operation sample. C.Eigenspace Computation: Training and Projection It is usually undesirable to use all components in the feature vector as input for the classi? er, because much of data will not provide a signi? cant degree of uniquene ss or consistency. We therefore applied an eigenspace-transformation technique to extract the principal components as classi? er input. 1) Kernel PCA Training: Kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) [37] is one approach to generalizing linear PCA to nonlinear cases using kernel methods. In this study, the purpose of KPCA is to obtain the principal components of the original feature-distance vectors.The calculation process is illustrated as follows: For each subject, the training set represents a set of feature-distance vectors drawn from her own data. Let be the th feature-distance vector in the training set, and be the number of such vectors. We ? rst mapped the measured vectors into the hyperdimensional feature space by the nonlinear mapping Here we centered the mapped point with the corresponding mean as . The principal components were then computed by solving the eigenvalue problem: (7) where and . Then, by de? ning a kernel matrix (8) we computed an eigenvalue problem for t he coef? ients is now solely dependent on the kernel function , that (9) For details, readers can refer to B. Scholkopf et al. [37]. Generally speaking, the ? rst few eigenvectors correspond to large eigenvalues and most information in the training samples. Therefore, for the sake of providing the principal components to represent mouse behavior in a low-dimensional eigenspace, and for memory ef? ciency, we ignored small eigenvalues and their corresponding eigenvectors, using a threshold value (10) is the accumulated variance of the ? st largest eigenwhere values with respect to all eigenvalues. In this study, was chosen as 0. 95 for all subjects, with a range from 0 to 1. Note that we used the same for different subjects, so may be different from one subject to another. Speci? cally, in our experiments, we observed that the number of principal components for different subjects varied from 12 to 20, and for an average level, 17 principal components are identi? ed under the threshold of 0. 95. 2) Kernel PCA Projection: For the selected subject, taking the largest eigenvalues and he associated eigenvectors, the transform matrix can be constructed to project an original feature-distance vector into a point in the -dimensional eigenspace: (11) As a result, each subject’s mouse behavior can be mapped into a manifold trajectory in such a parametric eigenspace. It is wellknown that is usually much smaller than the dimensionality of the original feature space. That is to say, eigenspace analysis can dramatically reduce the dimensionality of input samples. In this way, we used the extracted principal components of the feature-distance vectors as input for subsequent classi? ers. 22IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY, VOL. 8, NO. 1, JANUARY 2013 V. CLASSIFIER IMPLEMENTATION This section explains the classi? er that we used, and introduces two other widely-used classi? ers. Each classi? er analyzes mouse-behavior data, and discriminates between a legitimate user and impostors. A. One-Class Classi? er Overview User authentication is still a challenging task from the pattern-classi? cation perspective. It is a two-class (legitimate user versus impostors) problem. In the scenario of mouse-dynamicsbased user authentication, a login user is required to provide the user name and to perform a speci? mouse-operation task which would be secret, like a password. Each user would choose her own mouse-operations task, and would not share that task with others. Thus, when building a model for a legitimate user, the only behavioral samples of her speci? c task are her own; other users’ (considered as impostors in our scenario) samples of this task are not readily available. In this scenario, therefore, an appropriate solution is to build a model based only on the legitimate user’s data samples, and use that model to detect impostors. This type of problem is known as one-class classi? ation [43] or novelty/anomaly detection [25], [26]. We thus focused our attention on this type of problem, especially because in a real-world situation we would not have impostor renditions of a legitimate user’s mouse operations anyway. B. Our Classi? er—One-Class Support Vector Machine Traditional one-class classi? cation methods are often unsatisfying, frequently missing some true positives and producing too many false positives. In this study, we used a one-class Support Vector Machine (SVM) classi? er, introduced by Scholkopf et al. [36], [38]. One-class SVMs have been successfully applied to a number of real-life classi? ation problems, e. g. , face authentication, signature veri? cation and keystroke authentication [1], [23]. In our context, given training samples belonging to one subject, , each sample has features (corresponding to the principal components of the feature-distance vector for that subject). The aim is to ? nd a hyperplane that separates the data points by the largest margin. To separ ate the data points from the origin, one needs to solve the following dual quadratic programming problem [36], [38]: the origin, and is the kernel function. We allow for nonlinear decision boundaries. Then the decision function 13) will be positive for the examples from the training set, where is the offset of the decision function. In essence, we viewed the user authentication problem as a one-class classi? cation problem. In the training phase, the learning task was to build a classi? er based on the legitimate subject’s feature samples. In the testing phase, the test feature sample was projected into the same high-dimensional space, and the output of the decision function was recorded. We used a radial basis function (RBF) in our evaluation, after comparative studies of linear, polynomial, and sigmoid kernels based on classi? ation accuracy. The SVM parameter and kernel parameter (using LibSVM [11]) were set to 0. 06 and 0. 004 respectively. The decision function would gen erate â€Å" † if the authorized user’s test set is input; otherwise it is a false rejection case. On the contrary, â€Å" † should be obtained if the impostors’ test set is the input; otherwise a false acceptance case occurs. C. Other Classi? ers—Nearest Neighbor and Neural Network In addition, we compared our classi? er with two other widely-used classi? ers, KNN and neural network [12]. For KNN, in the training phase, the nearest neighbor classi? r estimated the covariance matrix of the training feature samples, and saved each feature sample. In the testing phase, the nearest neighbor classi? er calculated Mahalanobis distance from the new feature sample to each of the samples in the training data. The average distance, from the new sample to the nearest feature samples from the training data, was used as the anomaly score. After multiple tests with ranging from 1 to 5, we obtained the best results with , detailed in Section VII. For the neural network, in the training phase a network was built with input nodes, one output node, and hidden nodes.The network weights were randomly initialized between 0 and 1. The classi? er was trained to produce a 1. 0 on the output node for every training feature sample. We trained for 1000 epochs using a learning rate of 0. 001. In the testing phase, the test sample was run through the network, and the output of the network was recorded. Denote to be the output of the network; intuitively, if is close to 1. 0, the test sample is similar to the training samples, and with close to 0. 0, it is dissimilar. VI. EVALUATION METHODOLOGY This section explains the evaluation methodology for mouse behavior analysis.First, we summarize the dataset collected in Section III. Next, we set up the training and testing procedure for our one-class classi? ers. Then, we show how classi? er performance was calculated. Finally, we introduce a statistical testing method to further analyze experimental results. (12) where is the vector of nonnegative Lagrangian multipliers to be determined, is a parameter that controls the trade-off between maximizing the number of data points contained by the hyperplane and the distance of the hyperplane from SHEN et al. : USER AUTHENTICATION THROUGH MOUSE DYNAMICS 23A. Dataset As discussed in Section III, samples of mouse-behavior data were collected when subjects performed the designed mouseoperation task in a tightly-controlled environment. All 37 subjects produced a total of 5550 mouse-operation samples. We then calculated feature-distance vectors, and extracted principal components from each vector as input for the classi? ers. B. Training and Testing Procedure Consider a scenario as mentioned in Section V-A. We started by designating one of our 37 subjects as the legitimate user, and the rest as impostors. We trained the classi? er and ested its ability to recognize the legitimate user and impostors as follows: Step 1: We trained the classi? er to b uild a pro? le of the legitimate user on a randomly-selected half of the samples (75 out of 150 samples) from that user. Step 2: We tested the ability of the classi? er to recognize the legitimate user by calculating anomaly scores for the remaining samples generated by the user. We designated the scores assigned to each sample as genuine scores. Step 3: We tested the ability of the classi? er to recognize impostors by calculating anomaly scores for all the samples generated by the impostors.We designated the scores assigned to each sample as impostor scores. This process was then repeated, designating each of the other subjects as the legitimate user in turn. In the training phase, 10-fold cross validation [24] was employed to choose parameters of the classi? ers. Since we used a random sampling method to divide the data into training and testing sets, and we wanted to account for the effect of this randomness, we repeated the above procedure 50 times, each time with independently selected samples drawn from the entire dataset. C. Calculating Classi? r Performance To convert these sets of classi? cation scores of the legitimate user and impostors into aggregate measures of classi? er performance, we computed the false-acceptance rate (FAR) and false-rejection rate (FRR), and used them to generate an ROC curve [42]. In our evaluation, for each user, the FAR is calculated as the ratio between the number of false acceptances and the number of test samples of impostors; the FRR is calculated as the ratio between the number of false rejections and the number of test samples of legitimate users.Then we computed the average FAR and FRR over all subjects. Whether or not a mouse-operation sample generates an alarm depends on the threshold for the anomaly scores. An anomaly score over the threshold indicates an impostor, while a score under the threshold indicates a legitimate user. In many cases, to make a user authentication scheme deployable in practice, minimizing the possibility of rejecting a true user (lower FRR) is sometimes more important than lowering the probability of accepting an impostor [46]. Thus we adjusted the threshold according to the FRR for the training data.Since calculation of the FRR requires only the legitimate user’s data, no impostor data was used for determining the threshold. Speci? cally, the threshold is set to be a variable ranging from , and will be chosen with a relatively low FRR using 10-fold cross validation on the training data. After multiple tests, we observe that setting the threshold to a value of 0. 1 yields a low FRR on average2. Thus, we show results with a threshold value of 0. 1 throughout this study. D. Statistical Analysis of the Results To evaluate the performance of our approach, we developed a statistical test using the half total error rate (HTER) and con? ence-interval (CI) evaluation [5]. The HTER test aims to statistically evaluate the performance for user authentication, which is de ? ned by combining false-acceptance rate (FAR) and falserejection rate (FRR): (14) Con? dence intervals are computed around the HTER as , and and are computed by [5]: (15) % % % (16) where NG is the total number of genuine scores, and NI is the total number of impostor scores. VII. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND ANALYSIS Extensive experiments were carried out to verify the effectiveness of our approach. First, we performed the authentication task using our approach, and compared it with two widely-used classi? rs. Second, we examined our primary results concerning the effect of eigenspace transformation methods on classi? er performance. Third, we explored the effect of sample length on classi? er performance, to investigate the trade-off between security and usability. Two additional experiments are provided to compare our method with other approaches in the literature. A. Experiment 1: User Authentication In this section, we conducted a user authentication experiment, and compared our c lassi? er with two widely-used ones as mentioned in Section V-C. The data used in this experiment consisted of 5550 samples from 37 subjects.Fig. 3 and Table III show the ROC curves and average FARs and FRRs of the authentication experiment for each of three classi? ers, with standard deviations in parentheses. Table III also includes the average authentication time, which is the sum of the average time needed to collect the data and the average time needed to make the authentication decision (note that since the latter of these two times is always less than 0. 003 seconds in our classi? ers, we ignore it in this study). Our ? rst observation is that the best performance has a FAR of 8. 74% and a FRR of 7. 96%, obtained by our approach (one-class SVM).This result is promising and competitive, and the behavioral samples are captured over a much shorter period of time 2Note that for different classi? ers, there are different threshold intervals. For instance, the threshold interval fo r neural network detector is [0, 1], and for one. For uniform presentation, we mapped all of intervals class SVM, it is . to 24 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY, VOL. 8, NO. 1, JANUARY 2013 TABLE IV HTER PERFORMANCE AND CONFIDENCE INTERVAL AT CONFIDENCE LEVELS DIFFERENT Fig. 3. ROC curves for the three different classi? rs used in this study: oneclass SVM, neural network, and nearest neighbor. TABLE III FARs AND FRRs OF USER AUTHENTICATION EXPERIMENT (WITH STANDARD DEVIATIONS IN PARENTHESES) information about mouse behavior, which could enhance performance. Finally, we conducted a statistical test, using the HTER and CI evaluation as mentioned in Section VI-D, to statistically evaluate the performance of our approach. Table IV summarizes the results of this statistical evaluation at different con? dence levels. The result shows that the proposed approach provides the lowest HTER in comparison with the other two classi? ers used in our study; the 95% con? ence interval lies at % %. B. Experiment 2: Effect of Eigenspace Transformation This experiment examined the effect of eigenspace-transformation methods on classi? er performance. The data used were the same as in Experiment 1. We applied a one-class SVM classi? er in three evaluations, with the inputs respectively set to be the original feature-distance vectors (without any transformations), the projection of feature-distance vectors by PCA, and the projection of feature-distance vectors by KPCA. Fig. 4 and Table V show the ROC curves and average FARs and FRRs for each of three feature spaces, with standard deviations in parentheses.As shown in Fig. 4 and Table V, the authentication accuracy for the feature space transformed by KPCA is the best, followed by the accuracies for feature spaces by PCA and the original one. Speci? cally, direct classi? cation in the original feature space (without transformations) produces a FAR of 15. 45% and FRR of 15. 98%. This result is not encouraging c ompared to results previously reported in the literature. However, as mentioned in Experiment 1, the samples may be subject to more behavioral variability compared with previous work, because previous work analyzed mouse behaviors over a longer period of observation.Moreover, we observe that the authentication results of % % by PCA, and % % by KPCA are much better than for direct classi? cation. This result is a demonstration of the effectiveness of the eigenspace transformation in dealing with variable behavior data. Furthermore, we ? nd that the performance of KPCA is slightly superior to that of PCA. This may be due to the nonlinear variability (or noise) existing in mouse behaviors, and KPCA can reduce this variability (or noise) by using kernel transformations [29].It is also of note that the standard deviations of FAR and FRR based on the feature space transformed by KPCA and PCA are smaller than those of the original feature space (without transformations), indicating that th e eigenspace-transformation technique enhances the stability and robustness of our approach. compared with previous work. It should be noted that our result does not yet meet the European standard for commercial biometric technology, which requires near-perfect accuracy of 0. 001% FAR and 1% FRR [10]. But it does demonstrate that mouse dynamics could provide valuable information in user authentication tasks.Moreover, with a series of incremental improvements and investigations (e. g. , outlier handling), it seems possible that mouse dynamics could be used as, at least, an auxiliary authentication technique, such as an enhancement for conventional password mechanisms. Our second observation is that our approach has substantially better performance than all other classi? ers considered in our study. This may be due to the fact that SVMs can convert the problem of classi? cation into quadratic optimization in the case of relative insuf? ciency of prior knowledge, and still maintain hig h accuracy and stability.In addition, the standard deviations of the FAR and FRR for our approach are much smaller than those for other classi? ers, indicating that our approach may be more robust to variable behavior data and different parameter selection procedures. Our third observation is that the average authentication time in our study is 11. 8 seconds, which is impressive and achieves an acceptable level of performance for a practical application. Some previous approaches may lead to low availability due to a relatively-long authentication time. However, an authentication time of 11. seconds in our study shows that we can perform mouse-dynamics analysis quickly enough to make it applicable to authentication for most login processes. We conjecture that the signi? cant decrease of authentication time is due to procedural features providing more detailed and ? ne-grained SHEN et al. : USER AUTHENTICATION THROUGH MOUSE DYNAMICS 25 TABLE VI FARs AND FRRs OF DIFFERENT SAMPLE LENGTH S Fig. 4. ROC curves for three different feature spaces: the original feature space, the projected feature space by PCA, and the projected feature space by KPCA.TABLE V FARs AND FARs FOR THREE DIFFERENT FEATURE SPACES (WITH STANDARD DEVIATIONS IN PARENTHESES) the needs of the European Standard for commercial biometric technology [10]. We ? nd that after observing 800 mouse operations, our approach can obtain a FAR of 0. 87% and a FRR of 0. 69%, which is very close to the European standard, but with a corresponding authentication time of about 10 minutes. This long authentication time may limit applicability in real systems. Thus, a trade-off must be made between security and user acceptability, and more nvestigations and improvements should be performed to secure a place for mouse dynamics in more pragmatic settings. D. Comparison User authentication through mouse dynamics has attracted growing interest in the research community. However, there is no shared dataset or baseline algor ithm for measuring and determining what factors affect performance. The unavailability of an accredited common dataset (such as the FERET database in face recognition [32]) and standard evaluation methodology has been a limitation in the development of mouse dynamics.Most researchers trained their models on different feature sets and datasets, but none of them made informed comparisons among different mouse feature sets and different results. Thus two additional experiments are offered here to compare our approach with those in the literature. 1) Comparison 1: Comparison With Traditional Features: As stated above, we constructed the feature space based on mouse clicks and mouse movements, consisting of holistic features and procedural features. To further examine the effectiveness of the features constructed in this study, we provide a comparative experiment. We chose the features used by Gamboa et al. 17], Aksari and Artuner [4], Hashia et al. [19], Bours and Fullu [8], and Ahmed a nd Traore [2], because they were among the most frequently cited, and they represented a relatively diverse set of mouse-dynamics features. We then used a one-class SVM classi? er to conduct the authentication experiment again on our same dataset with both the feature set de? ned in our study, and the feature sets used in other studies. Hence, the authentication accuracies of different feature sets can be compared. Fig. 5 and Table VII show the ROC curves and average FARs and FRRs for each of six feature sets, with standard deviations in parentheses.We can see that the average error rates for the feature set from our approach are much lower than those of the feature sets from the literature. We conjecture that this may be due to the procedural features providing ? ne-grained information about mouse behavior, but they may also be due, in part, to: (1) partial adoption of features de? ned in previous approaches C. Experiment 3: Effect of Sample Length This experiment explored the effe ct of sample length on classi? er performance, to investigate the trade-off between security (authentication accuracy) and usability (authentication time).In this study, the sample length corresponds to the number of mouse operations needed to form one data sample. Each original sample consists of 32 mouse operations. To explore the effect of sample length on the performance of our approach, we derived new datasets with different sample lengths by applying bootstrap sampling techniques [13] to the original dataset, to make derived datasets containing the same numbers of samples as the original dataset. The new data samples were generated in the form of multiple consecutive mouse samples from the original dataset. In this way, we considered classi? r performance as a function of the sample length using all bootstrap samples derived from the original dataset. We conducted the authentication experiment again (using one-class SVM) on six derived datasets, with and 800 operations. Table VI shows the FARs and FRRs at varying sample lengths, using a one-class SVM classi? er. The table also includes the authentication time in seconds. The FAR and FRR obtained using a sample length of 32 mouse operations are 8. 74% and 7. 96% respectively, with an authentication time of 11. 8 seconds. As the number of operations increases, the FAR and FRR drop to 6. 7% and 6. 68% for the a data sample comprised of 80 mouse operations, corresponding to an authentication time of 29. 88 seconds. Therefore, we may conclude that classi? er performance almost certainly gets better as the sample length increases. Note that 60 seconds may be an upper bound for authentication time, but the corresponding FAR of 4. 69% and FRR of 4. 46% are still not low enough to meet 26 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY, VOL. 8, NO. 1, JANUARY 2013 Fig. 5. ROC curves for six different feature sets: the feature set in our study, and the features sets in other studies.RESULTS OF TABLE VII CO MPARISON WITH SOME TRADITIONAL FEATURES (WITH STANDARD DEVIATIONS IN PARENTHESES) Note that this approach [2] is initially applied to intrusion detection, and we extracted parts of features closely related to mouse operations in our dataset. The reason for this decision is that we want to examine whether the features employed in intrusion detection can be used in user authentication. because of different data-collection environments; (2) using different types of thresholds on the anomaly scores; (3) using less enrollment data than was used in previous experiments.The improved performance based on using our features also indicates that our features may allow more accurate and detailed characterization of a user’s unique mouse behavior than was possible with previously used features. Another thing to note from Table VII is that the standard deviations of error rates for features in our study are smaller than those for traditional features, suggesting that our features might be more stable and robust to variability in behavior data. One may also wonder how much of the authentication accuracy of our approach is due to the use of procedural features or holistic features.We tested our method using procedural features and holistic features separately, and the set of procedural features was the choice that proved to perform better. Specifically, we observe that the authentication accuracy of % % by using the set of procedural features is much better than for the set of holistic features, which have a FAR of 19. 58% and a FRR of 17. 96%. In combination with the result when using all features, it appears that procedural features may be more stable and discriminative than holistic features, which suggests that the procedural features contribute more to the authentication accuracy.The results here only provide preliminary comparative results and should not be used to conclude that a certain set of mouse features is always better than others. Each feature set has it s own unique advantages and disadvantages under different conditions and applications, so further evaluations and comparisons on more realistic and challenging datasets are needed. 2) Comparison 2: Comparison With Previous Work: Most previous approaches have either resulted in poor performance (in terms of authentication accuracy or time), or have used data of limited size.In this section, we show a qualitative comparison of our experimental results and settings against results of previous work (listed in Table VIII). Revett et al. [34] and Aksari and Artuner [4] considered mouse dynamics as a standalone biometric, and obtained an authentication accuracy of ERR around 4% and 5. 9% respectively, with a relatively-short authentication time or small number of mouse operations. But their results were based on a small pool of users (6 users in [34] and 10 users in [4]), which may be insuf? ient to obtain a good, steady result. Our study relies on an improved user authentication methodolo gy and far more users, leading us to achieve a good and robust authentication performance. Ahmed and Traore [2] achieved a high authentication accuracy, but as we mentioned before, it might be dif? cult to use such a method for user authentication since the authentication time or the number of mouse operations needed to verify a user’s identity is too high to be practical for real systems. Additionally, Hashia et al. 19] and Bours and Fulla [8] could perform user authentication in a relatively-short time, but they reported unacceptably high error rates (EER of 15% in [19], and EER of 26. 8% in [8]). In our approach we can make an authentication decision with a reasonably short authentication time while maintaining high accuracy. We employ a one-class classi? er, which is more appropriate for mouse-dynamics-based user authentication. As mentioned in Experiment 3, we can make an authentication decision in less than 60 seconds, with corresponding error rates are FAR of 4. 9% and FRR of 4. 46%. Although this result could be improved, we believe that, at our current performance level, mouse dynamics suf? ce to be a practical auxiliary authentication mechanism. In summary, Comparison 1 shows that our proposed features outperform some traditional features used in previous studies, and may be more stable and robust to variable behavior data. Comparison 2 indicates that our approach is competitive with existing approaches in authentication time while maintaining high accuracy.More detailed statistical studies on larger and more realistic datasets are desirable for further evaluations. VIII. DISCUSSION AND EXTENSION FOR FUTURE WORK Based on the ? ndings from this study, we take away some messages, each of which may suggest a trajectory for future work. Additionally, our work highlights the need for shared data and resources. A. Success Factors of Our Approach The presented approach achieved a short authentication time and relatively-high accuracy for mouse-dynami cs-based user SHEN et al. : USER AUTHENTICATION THROUGH MOUSE DYNAMICS 27 TABLE VIII COMPARISON WITH PREVIOUS WORKAuthentication time was not explicitly reported in [4], [8], [17]; instead, they required the user to accomplish a number of mouse operations for each authentication (15 clicks and 15 movements for [17]; 10 clicks and 9 movements for [4]; 18 short movements without pauses for [8]). Authentication time was not explicitly stated in [2]; however, it can be assumed by data-collection progress. For example, it is stated in [2] that an average of 12 hours 55 minutes of data were captured from each subject, representing an average of 45 sessions. We therefore assume that average session length is 12. 5 60/45 17. 22 minutes 1033 seconds. authentication. However, it is quite hard to point out one or two things that may have made our results better than those of previous work, because (1) past work favored realism over experimental control, (2) evaluation methodologies were incons istent among previous work, and (3) there have been no public datasets on which to perform comparative evaluations. Experimental control, however, is likely to be responsible for much of our success. Most previous work does not reveal any particulars in controlling experiments, while our work is tightly controlled.We made every effort to control experimental confounding factors to prevent them from having unintended in? uence on the subject’s recorded mouse behavior. For example, the same desktop computer was used for data collection for all subjects, and all system parameters relating to the mouse were ? xed. In addition, every subject was provided with the same instructions. These settings suggest strongly that the differences in subjects were due to individually detectable mouse-behavior differences among subjects, and not to environmental variables or experimental conditions.We strongly advocate the control of potential confounding factors in future experiments. The reaso n is that controlled experiments are necessary to reveal causal connections among experimental factors and classi? er performance, while realistic but uncontrolled experiments may introduce confounding factors that could in? uence experimental outcomes, which would make it hard to tell whether the results of those evaluations actually re? ect detectable differences in mouse behavior among test subjects, or differences among computing environments.We had more subjects (37), more repetitions of the operation task (150), and more comprehensive mouse operations (2 types of mouse clicks, 8 movement directions, and 3 movement distance ranges) than most studies did. Larger subject pools, however, sometimes make things harder; when there are more subjects there is a higher possibility that two subjects will have similar mouse behaviors, resulting in more classi? cation errors. We proposed the use of procedural features, such as the movement speed curve and acceleration curve, to provide mor e ? egrained information about mouse behavior than some traditional features. This may allow one to accurately describe a user’s unique mouse behavior, thus leading to a performance improvement for mouse-dynamics-based user authentication. We adopted methods for distance measurement and eigenspace transformation for obtaining principal feature components to ef? ciently represent the original mouse feature space. These methods not only overcome within-class variability of mouse behavior, but also preserve between-class differences of mouse behavior. The improved authentication accuracies demonstrate the ef? acy of these methods. Finally, we used a one-class learning algorithm to perform the authentication task, which is more appropriate for mousedynamics-based user authentication in real applications. In general, until there is a comparative study that stabilizes these factors, it will be hard to be de? nitive about the precise elements that made this work successful. B. Oppor tunities for Improvement While previous studies showed promising results in mouse dynamics, none of them have been able to meet the requirement of the European standard for commercial biometric technology.In this work, we determined that mouse dynamics may achieve a pragmatically useful level of accuracy, but with an impractically long authentic