Culture, Wasta and perceptions of performance appraisal in Saudi Arabia

This article explores the relationship between Arabic culture and employees’ perceptions of performance appraisal in a Saudi Arabian company named SACO. Using an interpretive and qualitative methodological framework, the article suggests that Western models of performance appraisal rooted in rationality and objectivity conflict with aspects of Saudi Arabian culture. Specifically, the personal relations implicated in the social practice of Wasta. However, the article also shows how SACO employees are beginning to reject Saudi Arabian cultural norms and adopt alternative values which are linked to notions of organisational justice and individual egalitarianism. These values are compatible with Western models of performance appraisal

Securing address registration in location/ID split protocol using ID-based cryptography

The Locator/ID Separation Protocol (LISP) is a routing architecture that provides new semantics for IP addressing. In order to simplify routing operations and improve scalability in future Internet, the LISP separates the device identity from its location using two different numbering spaces. The LISP also, introduces a mapping system to match the two spaces. In the initial stage, each LISP-capable router needs to register with a Map Server, this is known as the Registration stage. However, this stage is vulnerable to masquerading and content poisoning attacks. Therefore, a new security method for protecting the LISP Registration stage is presented in this paper. The proposed method uses the ID-Based Cryptography (IBC) which allows the mapping system to authenticate the source of the data. The proposal has been verified using formal methods approach based on the well-developed Casper/FDR tool

Quantum Cost Optimization for Reversible Sequential Circuit

Reversible sequential circuits are going to be the significant memory blocks for the forthcoming computing devices for their ultra low power consumption. Therefore design of various types of latches has been considered a major objective for the researchers quite a long time. In this paper we proposed efficient design of reversible sequential circuits that are optimized in terms of quantum cost, delay and garbage outputs. For this we proposed a new 3*3 reversible gate called SAM gate and we then design efficient sequential circuits using SAM gate along with some of the basic reversible logic gates.Comment: Quantum 4.12 (2013). arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1312.735

Smart hospital emergency system via mobile-based requesting services

In recent years, the UK’s emergency call and response has shown elements of great strain as of today. The strain on emergency call systems estimated by a 9 million calls (including both landline and mobile) made in 2014 alone. Coupled with an increasing population and cuts in government funding, this has resulted in lower percentages of emergency response vehicles at hand and longer response times. In this paper, we highlight the main challenges of emergency services and overview of previous solutions. In addition, we propose a new system call Smart Hospital Emergency System (SHES). The main aim of SHES is to save lives through improving communications between patient and emergency services. Utilising the latest of technologies and algorithms within SHES is aiming to increase emergency communication throughput, while reducing emergency call systems issues and making the process of emergency response more efficient. Utilising health data held within a personal smartphone, and internal tracked data (GPU, Accelerometer, Gyroscope etc.), SHES aims to process the mentioned data efficiently, and securely, through automatic communications with emergency services, ultimately reducing communication bottlenecks. Live video-streaming through real-time video communication protocols is also a focus of SHES to improve initial communications between emergency services and patients. A prototype of this system has been developed. The system has been evaluated by a preliminary usability, reliability, and communication performance study