ENG2575 OL68 Technical Writing, Fall 2021

500-Word Summary of Article About Smart Home And Smart Home Automation Using IoT

TO:       Prof. Ellis
FROM:     Jared Williams
DATE:     Oct. 6, 2021
SUBJECT: 500-Word Summary of Article About Smart Home and Home Automation Using IoT.

The following is a 500-word summary of an article about the performance of wireless smart home automation using the Internet of Things (IoT). The authors discuss energy consumption around the world setting new records due to the increasing scope of technology. As energy consumption rises, new ways to lower it are being developed. Smart homes and smart home technology can reduce energy consumption and save people money.

A principal feature of smart home technology is its simplicity, which is something the authors wanted to retain for their project. Agarwal et al. state, “We designed a home automation system using the concept of internet of things (IOT) enabling us to automate basic home functionalities like switching on/off Equipment lights, cooling systems, refrigerators and other home appliances that are operational in homes” [1, p. 630]. The authors discuss a Bluetooth based automation system and a GSM based automation system facilitated through a cell phone. The many ways a GSM based automation system can be used is briefly touched on.

The authors wanted to remotely control their appliance through the use of a Wi-Fi connection. A html page was created in order to control their appliance for the test. Pseudocode for the project is provided to give a brief understanding of the goal. The authors use a device called an optocoupler, which – depending on their input – completes the circuit transmitting infrared light to a light-sensitive diode that powers on a lightbulb. The authors are using an Arduino device outfitted with Wi-fi capabilities and Bluetooth for their test.

The steps to achieve the desired outcome are expanded upon from the previously stated pseudocode: The Arduino powers on and attempts to connect to Wi-Fi. If it can’t connect, the Arduino will continue to try until a connection is successful. Once connection is established, it will then await a command. When it receives an “on” or “off” command, the device sends a signal to the opto-coupler to complete the circuit or to break the current. The range of Bluetooth is very limited, which makes Wi-Fi based home automation more appealing as you can control appliances from wherever you have access to the internet. The Arduinos Wi-Fi module allowed for wireless control over the local network.

The purpose of the project was to demonstrate the quality-of-life benefits from using smart home automation and show its potential in reducing power consumption. While smart homes can enhance our quality of life, one major concern is security. You must make sure all security and privacy precautions are taken when implementing the technology. Neglecting the security aspect of smart home technology can leave you vulnerable to attack and a potential invasion of privacy.

Reference

[1] K. Agarwal, A. Agarwal, and G. Misra, “Review and Performance Analysis on Wireless Smart Home and Home Automation using IoT,” 2019 Third International conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC), 2019, pp. 629-633, doi: 10.1109/I-SMAC47947.2019.9032629.

500-word summary on Persistent URLs and Citations

TO: Prof. Ellis

FROM: Alex Cheung

DATE: Oct. 6, 2021

SUBJECT: 500-Word Summary of Article About Persistent URLs and Citations

Persistent URLs and Citations are one of the most important elements of an article, scholarly paper, or any academic writing. These persistent URLs provide a link to a full-text article that will never change thus always linking to the article that is a part of a database or journal. Without them, it might be hard to find that specific full-text article later down the road and. Nicholas Homenda believes that persistent URLs and citations are a necessity as evident by his thought, “As libraries, archives, and museums make unique digital collections openly available via digital library platforms, they expose these resources to users who may wish to cite them” [1, p. 1].

There are four main methods used for persistent URLs that include: Handle, DOI, ARK, and PURL. As libraries, archives, and museums move more of their collections to digital mediums, having a persistent URL to access these materials are essential to find the said material which is part of certain collections [1, p. 1]. Most of these persistent URL services have been around since the 1990s to the early 2000s [1, p. 2]. Each site uses their own version of persistent URLs thus resulting in many different types of links. This calls for more standards for persistent URLs.

There is a term called “link rot” which means that overtime the link will eventually not point to the page or file that it was meant to point to. There have been several studies done on link rot by tracking the availability of the resource over time [1, p. 3]. In recent works by Koster, he mentions that the persistent URL method that appears the most often in literature is the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) [1, p. 4].

For over 20 years, persistent URLs have been providing persistent links to digital objects allowing users worldwide to access the content [1, p. 4]. Persistent URLs are even used to create permanent links to government information. This was an early effort by the Cendi Persistent Identification Task Group to implement the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) and a theoretical Federal Persistent Identification Resolver [1, p. 4].

All persistent links should ideally be accessible via URLs that will outlast the information that it is linking to unless that link is subjected to “link rot” [1, p. 4]. In one investigation into “link rot” on information from Medline abstracts from the years 1994-2006, shows that about 20% of the links were dead in 2008. The topic of “link rot” has been discussed as early as 2003 in a book by Markwell and Brooke named ““Broken Links: Just How Rapidly Do Science Education Hyperlinks Go Extinct”, which is cited by many link rot studies but it looks like this too has suffered from link rot in works that cited this book [1, p.4].

In a recent study, they tried to locate digital collections that met the following criteria:

Openly available
Part of a repository service
Gathered as part of a site or service that contains multiple collections
Unique to an institution but not duplicated or licensed content

With these criteria in place, it helps to find unique and publicly available digital collections [1, p. 5]. The study found that the DLF institution had 171 out of 197 member institutions that had accessible digital collections, while only 153 out of the 171 met the criteria for this study [1, p. 6].

Reference

[1] Homenda, N. (2021) ‘Persistent URLs and Citations Offered for Digital Objects by Digital Libraries’, Information Technology & Libraries, 40(2), pp. 1–12. doi: 10.6017/ital.v40i2.12987.

Lecture, Week 5

For this week’s homework, read the “Instructions” section of David McMurrey’s Online Technical Writing Textbook. Make notes on your reading to prepare for our discussion next week on the next major project: the Instruction Manual.

Weekly Writing Assignment, Week 5

For this week’s Weekly Writing Assignment, continue your research and writing for the next two sections of the Expanded Definition Project: Context and Working Definition. As discussed at length in this week’s lecture, which you should watch before proceeding, write drafts of the Context and Working Definition sections and include in-text citations for quotes and corresponding references to those quotes at the end of your document. Copy-and-paste just those sections into a comment made to this post to demonstrate your on-going progress on the project.

Separately, you should aim for having a rough draft of your Expanded Definition project ready for peer review next week.

I am including the sample quotes and citations from today’s lecture below. Also, links to IEEE citation guides are at the bottom of the post.

TO: Prof. Jason Ellis
FROM: Your Name
DATE: Due Date
SUBJECT: Expanded Definition of Your Term

Introduction [Heading Level 2]
What is the purpose of this document? What term are you defining? How are you discussing the way it is defined and the way it is used in context? Describe a road map for what follows (definitions and context). This content should be published as paragraphs, unlike the heading for this section, which is a level 2 heading.

Definitions [Heading Level 2]
Compare and contrast at least two quoted definitions from different sources of the term that you selected. Provide quotes and IEEE in-text citations for each definition, and include your sources in the References section at the end of the document. Each definition that you include deserves discussion in your words about what it means and how it relates to the other definitions that you include. Consider how they are alike, how are they different, who might use one versus another, etc. And, as a part of your compare and contrast, discuss the etymology or history of the word (e.g., one definition might be more like what the word meant originally or more recently). Each quote should have an IEEE in-text citation and reference entry.

Context [Heading Level 2]
Compare and contrast at least two sentences that use the term as it appears in different sources. This discussion should focus on how the context of the word shapes its meaning. A range of sources would provide the best source material for your discussion of how the term is used in these contexts. For example, a quote from an academic journal, a quote from a newspaper or magazine, a quote from a blog, and a quote from social media would give you a range of uses that might have different audiences. For each quote, you should devote at least as much space as the quote discussing what it means in that context and how it relates to the other quotes in context. Each quote should have an IEEE in-text citation and reference entry.

Here’s a quote example from The New York Times: Technology Opinion Writer Kara Swisher wrote about the bombshell allegations made by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen in a television interview: “Everything the former product manager on Facebook’s dispersed/disbanded (depending on whom you believe) Civic Integrity team said in her interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday rang true, including her allegations that the company’s algorithm is a wildfire that feeds on rancor and that the company always chooses its business over safety” [3]. The use of the term algorithm here refers to how Facebook surfaces certain content and submerges other content on a given Facebook user’s feed.

Another quote example from a book on optimizing Rust language programming applications: While Swisher uses the term algorithm to refer to a specific decision-making technology at Facebook, Moraza uses it in a more general way where he writes: “You will also understand the difference between the common standard library collections so that you can choose the right one for your algorithm” [4, p. 1]. Algorithm here refers to the programming code that the reader of Moraza’s book is developing using the Rust programming language. Any computer code that is performing a process would qualify as an algorithm in this context while Swisher’s use of the term algorithm referred to a specific algorithm developed and used by a specific company.

Working Definition [Heading Level 2]
Based on the definitions and word history that you quoted and discussed, and the contextual uses of the term that you quoted and discussed, write a working definition of the term that's relevant to your career field or major, which you will need to identify (this is the specific context for your working definition).

References [Heading Level 2]
Order your IEEE references in the order that they appear in your document. The first would be [1], the second would be [2], etc.

[1] "Algorithm," in Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press, Mar. 2012, def. 2. [Online]. Available: https://www.oed.com
[2] “Algorithm,” in Science and Technology Encyclopedia, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000. [Online]. Available: https://archive.org/details/sciencetechnolog00univ/mode/2up

[3] K. Swisher, "Brazen is the order of the day at Facebook," The New York Times, Oct. 5, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/opinion/facebook-blackout-2021.html

[4] I. E. Moraza, Rust High Performance: Learn to Skyrocket the Performance of Your Rust Applications. Birmingham, UK: Packt Publishing, 2018. [Online]. Available: ProQuest Ebook Central.

IEEE Citation Guides

500-word summary on Cyber-attacks and Countermeasures

From: Anthony Cuomo
Date: 10/6/2021
Subject: 500-word summary on Cyber-attacks and Countermeasures.

Cyber-attacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated due to human error, which are not being accounted for properly by current cyber security protocols. There are three main types of protection tools that are being used in the fight against cybercrimes such as, blacklisting, heuristics, and a hybrid of the two techniques. Cyber protection tools are not fool proof, and users need to learn how to identify a potential attack and how to identify what measures to take to prevent said attack by learning cyber-attack taxonomy and classifications. [1, p. 37]

The author argues that this article is trying to contribute to the advancement of helping users identify and assess potential cyber security threats online. Cyber-attacks are a type of attack that targets the users’ vulnerabilities, these attacks including phishing, drive-by downloads, and social engineering. There are technical and non-technical tools that are being used to help fight against cybercrimes. One of the non-technical tools being implemented is the legislative tool which passes laws against illegal cyber activities. Another non-technical tool that is being used is training and education tools, one of the tools being used is the Cybersecurity Nexus by ISACA.

Anti-virus software is the most common approach in dealing with cyber security threats, but as the threats get more sophisticated, it could take upwards of hundreds of days before the software can provide adequate protection from a new attack. According to the author, “It is important to educate users, to improve awareness of threats, risks, and what security warnings are about”. More measures need to be taken to help educate people on potential risks. In the meantime, there are web browser filters that utilize the blacklisting technique which compares the requested web page with a database of currently known fake web pages, but this method comes with a drawback of having to constantly update and maintain an increasingly large amount of fake web pages. Google uses a tool called safe browsing, that has two flaws in which users can potentially be tracked and websites will not get filtered if users do not synchronize their accounts.

Mozilla Thunderbird and Internet Explorer use a protection tool called CANTINA which uses the heuristic technique, the drawback to this is the protection will sometimes block legitimate sites and label them fraudulent. Fuzzy data mining technique is heuristic based and tries to determine the legitimacy of websites through associating the pages URL and domain identity. The Neuro-Fuzzy model attempts to decide a webpage legitimacy by going through a list of five inputs that would make it possible to determine the legitimacy in real time. There are three protections tools called Anti-phishing Phil, CyberCIEGE and BigAmbition, which the goal is to help educate users and increase awareness in potential cyber security risks. Smart Protection Tools would include artificial intelligence and machine-learning to be able to filter out illegitimate websites with much better accuracy.

Reference:

[1] A. M. Shabut, K. T. Lwin and M. A. Hossain, “Cyber attacks, countermeasures, and protection schemes — A state of the art survey,” 2016 10th International Conference on Software, Knowledge, Information Management & Applications (SKIMA), 2016, pp. 37-44, doi: 10.1109/SKIMA.2016.7916194.

500-word Summary of Article About Cyber Attacks

To: Prof.Ellis

From: Muztahid Sakif

Date: Oct. 6, 2021

Subject: 500-word Summary of Article About Cyber Attacks

The following 500-word summary of the article “Covid-19 Pandemic: A New Era of Cyber Security Threat and Holistic Approach to Overcome” by Jabber Ahmed highlights the increased threat of cyber-attacks during the Covid 19 pandemic. With countries across the world going into lockdown, the usage of computers and internet has increased significantly, making cyber criminals more active. The attacks are more prevalent with the lack of personal safety precautions in using the internet. Cyber criminals have found multiple ways to access data causing many banking, government, and non-government organizations to suffer cyber-attacks. This article focuses on safety precautions to protect personal and organization data from cyber criminals.

2020 was the year of pandemic that led to a “New Normal” by forcing many to work and learn from home. Cyber attackers are capitalizing off the pandemic by launching their cyber-attacks across the continents, especially in developing countries. Ahmed supports this using a bar graph which shows the percentage of attacks faced by the different continents. Europe faced 42% of the attacks, America faced 12%, Asia Pacific with 19%, Africa with 17% and the Middle East facing 10% of the attacks. Due to the lack of awareness in developing countries, many sites have been visited by people without security precautions.

Ahmed mentions specific sectors that were attacked during the pandemic including, healthcare and medical sectors, financial sectors, and educational sectors. With the health care system already weakened by the pandemic, attacks saw this sector as the ideal place to attack. With the increase of the remote care system, the hackers were active in getting to the healthcare system around the world. Financial sectors have suffered the attacks with the increased use of online support. Most employees were working from home with an unsecured network which exposed them to attacks. Educational sectors were also affected with students from all levels being dependent on e-learning with the use of independent applications like Zoom which was vulnerable to malware attacks.

Common types of cyber-attack include DDoS Attack, phishing, malware, and ransomware. DDoS attacks are used to make an online service unavailable for the user by increasing traffic. According to the author, “ In the first quarter of the year 2020, the total number of reported DDoS attacks was 242, and in the second quarter, the number was increased to 300 [12] [13]” [1, p. 14]. Phishing hackers send emails to individuals with fake web pages that can capture details of an individual. Attacks spread malware in devices of the users during the pandemic. Malware can create a “backdoor” in the user’s device, allowing criminals to take all personal credentials/ passwords.

Ahmed highlights some ways of preventing these attacks. Ransomware can be prevented with an Updated OS that provides an updated patch file for prevention. To prevent DDos Attacks, users can keep the firewall on which can detect the source of IP address range to control the overflow. Phishing attacks can be prevented by having adequate knowledge of phishing emails, not clicking phishing links, and not providing credentials to unsecured websites.

Reference: [1] J. Ahmed and Q. Tushar, “Covid-19 Pandemic: A New Era Of Cyber Security Threat And Holistic Approach To Overcome,” 2020 IEEE Asia-Pacific Conference on Computer Science and Data Engineering (CSDE), 2020, pp. 1-5, doi: 10.1109/CSDE50874.2020.9411533.

To: Prof. Ellis

From: Mamadou Sakho

Date: 9/29/2021

Subject: Expand Definition term: Artificial Intelligent or AIs.

The goal of this memo is to expand the definition of Artificial Intelligent or AIs. I have long wanted to research more about AIS. The reason why I chose it is that AIs are becoming more and more part of our society. A country like Saudi Arabia even gave citizenship to an AI named Sophia. Such a status previously was guaranteed to human beings only. Therefore, society starts to consider AIs as part of us. To compare and contrast the definition from different sources, I have visited three different sources. The first source is the Oxford English dictionary which gave me valuable information about when the term first appeared in official documents. However, it did not give me the definition I was looking for. The second source is Merriam Webster. This latter provided me with few recent articles that show when the term was first used. Merriam Webster has the definition that is more relevant to the research I am trying to conduct. The third source is Gale Ebooks which has a definition close to the one provided by Merriam Webster. Therefore, my best option out of all the three sources will be Merriam Webster since it gave me a definition close to what I was looking for. Doing research on the term “Artificial Intelligence” will help me and anybody who would like to know more about AIs. Can AIs replace humans?

Lecture, Week 4

Remember to actively watch and make notes from this week’s lecture before proceeding with the Weekly Writing Assignment and submitting your 500-Word Summary Project.

As discussed in the lecture, the following is a model for the overall structure of your 500-Word Summary project. The lecture includes directions on how to create a post on our OpenLab course site to submit your work. Follow those directions carefully for maximum credit. The 500-Word Summary is due by next Wednesday. For those students who have reached out to me needing more time to complete the project, remember to email me after you have submitted your work so that I can go back and grade it.

Sample 500-Word Summary
(with IEEE in-text citation and Reference, and Lorem ipsum filler text)

TO: Prof. Ellis
FROM: Your Name
DATE: 10/6/2021
SUBJECT: 500-Word Summary of Article About Virtual Reality

The following is a 500-word summary of a peer-reviewed article about tracking human bodies in virtual reality. The authors discuss the body tracking software that they developed called Pfinder by showing how the software was developed, tested, and improved. According to the authors, “To address this need we have developed a real-time system called Pfinder (“person finder”) that substantially solves the problem for arbitrarily complex but single-person, fixed-camera situations” [1, p. 780].

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum at porttitor neque. Nullam dapibus pulvinar hendrerit. Etiam elementum ipsum quis elit aliquet tincidunt. Aliquam dui augue, tempor quis pretium et, fermentum et dolor. Praesent sit amet velit et ligula iaculis vulputate. Nulla facilisi. Aliquam lobortis pulvinar rhoncus. Aliquam neque sem, tincidunt sollicitudin ante gravida, congue pretium odio. Nullam in vestibulum tellus, accumsan dignissim dolor. Sed convallis nisl vel venenatis sagittis. In eu turpis risus. Phasellus ac rhoncus est.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis felis arcu, luctus sit amet mauris non, vestibulum lobortis massa. Nullam dapibus arcu ac sem dignissim, sed sodales lorem pulvinar. Proin convallis arcu et varius rutrum. Aenean ante dolor, maximus gravida tristique eget, fermentum nec diam. Maecenas accumsan faucibus tortor. Vivamus blandit, massa at pretium mattis, odio neque lobortis turpis, at placerat lorem nulla vitae sem. Sed in enim nec magna consequat malesuada. Suspendisse a lacinia quam, eget mollis lectus. Nam sed rutrum nisl. Vestibulum molestie justo sed pulvinar ultrices. Nam consequat dolor risus, hendrerit hendrerit magna consequat a.

In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Donec tempor metus eros, at accumsan nunc eleifend et. Vivamus velit ligula, commodo at justo non, interdum egestas elit. Nulla tristique facilisis massa quis volutpat. Quisque sollicitudin eu eros commodo mattis. Aliquam vel nisl ut enim rhoncus tristique. Integer placerat sapien et augue placerat interdum. Mauris semper augue eget sapien gravida hendrerit. Integer quis bibendum sem, vel tempus ligula. Nullam ante lorem, laoreet sit amet gravida semper, maximus non magna. Quisque dolor elit, semper a consequat eu, dignissim sed mi. Duis ac nibh efficitur orci gravida lacinia vel a tortor. Aenean quis nisi sit amet turpis molestie interdum.

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References

[1] C. R. Wren, A. Azarbayejani, T. Darrell, and A. P. Pentland, “Pfinder: Real-time tracking of the human body,” IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 19, no. 7, pp. 780-785, July 1997, https://doi.org/10.1109/34.598236.

Weekly Writing Assignment, Week 4

For this week’s Weekly Writing Assignment, you will begin writing your Expanded Definition project. To start, focus on the first two sections as detailed below, which are the Introduction and Definitions sections. For all the definitions and etymological (word history) information that you quote, remember to use IEEE in-text citation numbers and create a corresponding References section at the end of your document in which the numerated IEEE bibliographic references match the numbered quotes in your Definitions section. Format your writing as a memo with the subject, “Expanded Definition of Your Term, First Half, Rough Draft.” There is no word count on this assignment. Its purpose is to demonstrate your best effort on the first half of your Expanded Definition project. Save your work in a safe place and copy-and-paste it into a comment made to this post (remember to click the title “Weekly Writing Assignment, Week 4,” scroll to the comment box, copy-and-paste, and click “Post Comment.”

Overview of the Expanded Definition Project Deliverable

TO: Prof. Jason Ellis
FROM: Your Name
DATE: Due Date
SUBJECT: Expanded Definition of Your Term

References [Heading Level 2]
Order your IEEE references in the order that they appear in your document. The first would be [1], the second would be [2], etc.

[3] Author,Title, volume, edition. City, State, Country: Publisher, year.

[4] Author, “Title,” Journal, volume, number, page range, month year, DOI.

Helpful Resources with IEEE Style

Lecture, Week 3

Remember to watch this week’s lecture in its entirety before proceeding with this week’s assignments.