acm chapter newsletter

Newsletter of the ACM Chapter in Mauritius

2014

The Members of the ACM Chapter and the authors would like to thank the following people:

Professor Romeela MOHEE, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Mauritius

Professor Toolseeram RAMJEAWON, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, UoM

Dr Razvi DOOMUN, Head of the Computer Science and Engineering Department, FoE, UoM

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

EDITORIAL TEAM

Sameerchand PUDARUTH, Chief Editor

LecturerComputer Science and Engineering DepartmentFaculty of EngineeringUniversity of MauritiusPhone: 403 7754Email: [email protected]

Kevin Roopesh SUNGKUR

Urvashi SADASING

Jeet GOHEE

Jessica NARAYANASAWMY

Copyright @ 2014 by the ACM Chapter in Mauritius

No part of this publication may be reproduced for commercial purposes without the permission of the copyright holder. However, readers are allowed to distribute this newsletter via electronic means.

Disclaimer of liability

While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, neither the authors nor the ACM chapter members assume any responsibility for errors, omissions or contrary interpretation of the subject matter therein. You should not rely upon the material or information in this newsletter as a basis for making any business, legal or any other decisions. Any reliance you place on such material is therefore strictly at your own risk.

The websites referred to in this newsletter are in the public domain and the addresses are provided in good faith and for information only.

All trademarks, trade names logos, brand names and service marks contained in this newsletter are the sole property of their respective owners.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

MEMBERS OF THE ACM CHAPTER IN MAURITIUS 2

PREFACE 3

ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTING MACHINERY 4

HOUR OF CODE 5

SEMI-AUTOMATIC CREATION OF SONG LYRICS USING CONTEXT-FREE GRAMMARS 6

USING STEGANOGRAPHY TECHNIQUES FOR HIDING INFORMATION INSIDE IMAGE MOSAICS 8

AN INTEGRATED E-GOVERNMENT PLATFORM FOR MAURITIUS 10

BIOAPP: AN APP FOR SELF-LEARNING OF O-LEVEL BIOLOGY 12

MYICT: AN AUTOMATIC QUESTION ANSWERING SYSTEM FOR ICT 14

USING WEB SERVICES TO INCREASE INTEROPERABILITY OF LEARNING CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS 15

AN INTERACTIVE LEARNING TOOL FOR THE MAURITIAN SIGNLANGUAGE 18

EYE TRACKING SYSTEM FOR MONTORING A PERSON’S BEHAVIOUR DURING THE LEARNING PROCESS 20

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REAL-TIME PASSENGER INFORMATION SYSTEM 22

PIXIE PIE AND TIM 25

HAVE YOU EVER CREATED YOUR OWN FONT? 27

UNIVERSITY OF MAURITIUS IN 3D 28

INVESTIGATING THE PERFORMANCE OF A MAIN MEMORY DATABASE (MMDB) IN A WEB ENVIRONMENT 30

PHOTOGRAPHY AND DIGITAL IMAGE PROCESSING 34

THE PORTRAIT OF A MAURITIAN GEEK, LOGANADEN VELVINDRON 36

2

MEMBERS OF THE ACM CHAPTER IN MAURITIUS


Sameerchand PUDARUTH, University of Mauritius

Kevin Roopesh SUNGKUR, University of Mauritius

Somveer KISHNAH, University of Mauritius

Hemraj JULHA, TNT Express Ltd

Aroun POLIGADU, TNT Express Ltd

Ashwina MOORUTH-THONDRAYEN, Accenture

Rushda Bibi BAHADOOR, Proximity BBDO Indian Ocean

Arshad GOBURDHUN, Proximity BBDO Indian Ocean

Nishta RAWA, Orange Business Services

Reezwanah Bibi ROZBULLY, Professor Basdeo Bissoondoyal College

Premanand RAMSAHA, Denim de L’Ile Ltd

Urvashi SADASING, Spoon Consulting Ltd

Mahendranath RAMODHIN

Nirvan Rai SEWUMBER

Jeet GOHEE, IT Educator

Ashvind GOPAUL, IT Administrator

Rajiv RUGHOOBUR, Nursing Officer

Kajal BOODHOO, Ceridian (Mauritius) Technology Ltd

Lushika GOOLBUDUN, Spoon Consulting Ltd

Kharuna MOONEEAPILLAY, CISD, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology

Jessica NARAYANASAWMY, Student, University of Mauritius

Designed by: Jessica NARAYANASAWMY

xxx

2014 | ACM CHAPTER NEWSLETTER 3

PREFACE

Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, HP, Ceridian, Accenture,

Cisco, Orange, InfoSys and others are re-shaping the IT

landscape of Mauritius. The development of a trustworthy

and reliable legal framework has acted as a catalyst for

such metamorphosis. The recent update in the Copyright

Act reveals the longing desire of the government to offer

a secure platform for innovators to market their products.

Having said all this, I now wish to seize this golden

opportunity to thank all our members and contributing

authors for their relentless efforts to contribute to this

newsletter. I would like to say a special thanks to Jessica

Narayanasawmy, our Graphics Designer, and to Urvashi

Sadasing, Editor, for their devotion to make this venture a

success.

We hope that the materials contained in this newsletter

will appeal to our readers. We encourage our readers to

write to us to give us their feedback on our first newsletter

so that future editions can be more attractive

Long Live Mauritius!

Sameerchand PUDARUTH

Founding Chair of the ACM Chapter

With its 680,000 internet subscribers, an internet

penetration rate of 54%, a mobile penetration ratio of

1.21 (the highest in Africa and one of the highest in the

world), its 30 Mbps FttP (Fiber-to-the-Premises) project,

16000 ICT-BPO jobs, a 4G mobile network, IPTV services, its

myriad of e-services, the e-Judiciary and e-Prison projects,

the deployment of IPV6 networks, an ever increasing

contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which is

currently at Rs 31 billion (6.8 %) and a plethora of other

positive indicators, the ICT-BPO sector has already become

the third major pillar of the Mauritian society.

The Ministry of Information and Communication

Technology (MICT) under the leadership of the Honourable

Minister, Tassarajen Pillay Chedumbrum, has left no stone

unturned in converting the country into a Smart Cyber

Island or i-Mauritius. Through its numerous collaborating

institutions such as the National Computer Board

(NCB), the Information and Communication Technology

Authority, the Human Resource Development Council

(HRDC), the ICT Advisory Council, the ICT Appeal Tribunal,

the Data Protection Office (DPO), the Business Parks

of Mauritius Ltd (BPML), the Government of Mauritius

has crafted a fertile business environment to encourage

large multinational companies to invest in Mauritius.


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Conferences are a major part of ACM programs. The

ACM sponsors various conferences such as the annual

Supercomputing Conference and the Conference on

Information and Knowledge Management to name a few.

Some conferences are also hosted by ACM Student branches,

namely the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

student chapter of ACM, which include Reflections

Projections – an annual technology-related conference

featuring job fairs, numerous guest speakers from various

fields in computing and AI programming competitions.

Eventually, the ACM recognizes excellence through its

eminent series of awards for outstanding technical and

professional achievements and contributions in Computer

Science and Information Technology. These awards are

mostly based on merit, service and paper. Some examples

include the A.M. Turing awards, the Distinguished Service

award and ACM-IEEE CS Kennedy Award

REFERENCEShttp://www.acm.org/http://www.acm.org/about/history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_for_Computing_Machinery

ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTING MACHINERY

ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) is an

international learned-society for Computing. It has been

founded in 1947 in the United States by the American

mathematician, Richard Hamming and has as President,

Prof. Vinton G. Cerf, a computer scientist from America. He is

also known as the father of the Internet. ACM is the world’s

largest educational and scientific computing society, with

over 100,000 members as of 2013. It is organized into more

than 170 local chapters, 500 college and university chapters

and 35 Special Interest Groups (SIGs), through which it

conducts most of its activities. Some of the benefits provided

to the chapter’s members are the availability of an Admin

Interface, which allows the management of members’ roster,

contact information updates and the accessibility to web

tools such as web hosting, wikis and blogs, among others.

The ACM press publishes a variety of journals, magazines,

newsletters and conference proceedings. The online

paid subscribers are given access to these published

materials through the ACM Digital Library. The latter

archives all of the ACM publications since the 1950s, in

a comprehensive way by using an extensive underlying

bibliographic database containing keywords of all genres

from all major publishers of computing literature. Its

second database provides the AVM Guide to Computing

Literature, which is a rich discovery service. Urvashi SADASING


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The Hour of Code is indeed a success as more than 39 000 000

people from 170+ countries have tried it so far and this

number is continuously increasing. This has made world

history and has broken the records for computer science

participation in schools. The Hour of Code has become the

fastest-spreading activity in history. Facebook, Twitter,

PInterest, Instagram and Tumbler took at least one year

to reach 15 million users while the Hour of Code took only

5 days. Two billions lines of code have already been written

by participants worldwide. For comparison purposes, the

Microsoft Windows Operating System contains about

50 millions lines of code.

The Professional ACM Chapter in Mauritius also actively

participated in the Hour of Code. Together, our members

encouraged thousands of people to participate in this

activity. A certificate of participation was also given to those

who actually completed the Hour of Code activity

REFERENCEShttp://code.org/http://csedweek.org/http://codeorg.tumblr.com/post/70175643054/stats/

Dependency on technology is on the rise with the increasing

number and variety of phones, tablets, websites and use of

social media. Despite this fact, many people do not know

how these technologies work and how to write codes.

Code.org was hence designed to help mostly the ‘non-

technical’ people to learn (more) how technology functions

and how to build them up. Two brothers, Ali Partovi and

Hadi Partovi, founders of Code.org, have the vision of

making Computer science and programming available in all

schools for each and every student.

The Hour of Code is an initiative they introduced in 2013 with

the support of different organizations and personalities

like Google, Amazon, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. The

campaign started during the Computer Science Education

Week (December 9-15, 2013), whereby every participant

had to spend at least one hour learning about coding.

The aim of this movement was to introduce and explain

computer programming to students of all ages with the

help of schools, teachers and parents and consequently

reduce the gap that separates regular ones from the

technical people. Basic exposure to the programming world

is given through tutorials, mostly in the form of games,

which can be accessed online through any device and even

tackled with mere tools like pen and paper.

HOUR OF CODE

Urvashi SADASING &

Sameerchand PUDARUTH

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

One of the oldest art that ever existed –

music – has been here since the very

dawn of the human kind. Today with the

flourishing entertainment industry –

music and song writing is a career which

has gained much popularity. Presently,

the music industry is becoming so

demanding that singers will have to

record many more songs and together

with singing comes song writing.

Writing lyrics has always been a challenge

even to the best song writers. This is the

reason why we have developed a song-

writing software that has the potential

to become a very effective tool for song

writers.

Our system allows a person to write

song lyrics in a very little amount of

time. However, writing lyrics is even

more difficult for a computer to write.

The ability to use language comes to us

naturally. However, the same is not true

for computers. Computers are simply

electronic machines that are programmed

according to some predefined set of

rules. Summarising the English language

in a set of rules is quite impossible due to

its vastness, dynamicity and ambiguous

nature.

Our lyrics generator is an application

designed with comfort and easy

maneuvering in mind. The interface is

attractive looking and provides a user

with a user friendly environment to

work with. It allows a user to input words

or short phrases which will later be

included in the song lyrics. Unlike other

semi-automatic song lyrics generators,

our system does not make use of

predefined template of words that just

add the user’s inputs into pre-defined

locations. Instead, the sentences in the


SEMI-AUTOMATIC CREATION OF SONG

LYRICS USING CONTEXT-FREE GRAMMARS

lyrics are built based on the structured

we extracted by analysing hundreds of

existing songs. A survey was conducted

to see whether the common man could

distinguish between existing songs and

those that were generated by our system.

The results that were obtained are very

encouraging as about 40% respondents

believed that our generated lyrics were

written by professional song writers.

Hence, as the music industry becomes

more and more competitive, the need

to have quick song lyrics will become

a necessity. Thus, we believe this lyrics

generator software will prove to be very

useful. It will not only allow song writers

to save enormous amount of time but

also help them when their inspiration is

at a low level


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Youth is lostWe whisper and must step

That took not thee butBaby, we have taste

Reason become mama besideEscalade to climb to unnoticed timesGuys that all deny just hide and kissMissing across silence later brushes

ohohohohoh later makes elegance to another

Express nowhere apart may cause sorrowCredit though emeralds

Wanted every sayIn mellow business

Till called alright besidePure girls clothes shining

Fill us with swear somehow

Simple thrill comesUnless ablaze touch

It is upon drown but dress over meltGet men this under however whenever

Brain what fooled mamaShe ends to bling

Sandiana AMOURDON &

Jean Yves Joey ANSELINE

XXX


USING STEGANOGRAPHY TECHNIQUES

FOR HIDING INFORMATION INSIDE IMAGE MOSAICS

Miss Henriette Pascaline ARTHÉ

and Christopher David LI CHUN

FONG, students at the University of

Mauritius have developed a smart

application for hiding confidential

information inside image mosaics. An

image mosaic is simply an artistic way

in which an image can be displayed.

The construction of the photomosaic

is done by splitting a big image into

smaller images which are then known

as tiles (square blocks of pixels).

These tiles are then replaced either

by a random image or a similar image

to the tile. These small images must

be stored in the system as well. The

mosaic will look better if there are

a very large number of such small

images. Next, text messages are

hidden inside the image mosaic. The

message is not visible to the naked

eyes. The scientific term for this

process is called steganography. They

have also been able to develop the

corresponding program to extract the

hidden messages so that this secret

message can be viewed or used only

by the authorized receiver.

The major strengths of this system

are: the user can upload photos of any

format and the message can be hidden

in many interesting and unimaginable

ways. The drawbacks of this system

are that it requires a fast computer to

create the mosaic and it is advisable

not to load images larger than one

megapixel otherwise the creation of

the mosaic will take several minutes.

The program developed in this project

can be used in both good and bad

ways. Legitimate users will be able to

transfer confidential data by hiding

them in casual images. Unfortunately,

people with bad intentions can also

steal data secretly by embedding

them inside innocent-looking images.


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MOSAICORIGINAL IMAGE

In the future, we also intend to hide

small images inside larger images and

more sophisticated techniques will be

employed for hiding and extracting the

secret information


AN INTEGRATED E-GOVERNMENT

PLATFORM FOR MAURITIUS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

An e-Government web portal for higher

education has been developed with the

aim of regrouping a list of strategic online

services under a single platform whereby

Mauritian people would highly benefit

from. A profound desktop-based study

was carried out on different countries

such as Singapore, Malaysia, India and

Mauritius in order to meet the objectives

of the project. Upon analysis of each

selected country, based on the facts

and figures of the findings in Mauritius,

in order to overcome issues such as

university applications and enrolment

and unanswered complaints from citizens,

a list of e-Government services was set

up. In addition, the most appropriate

web technologies were selected for the

software development process. The

software implemented touches several

actors of e-Government namely citizens,

employers, workers and businessmen.

The web portal includes a systematic

online application for a university seat

Source: http://gridtalk-project.blogspot.com/2012/10/tips-from-

koreas-award-winning-e.html


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at any of the four government funded

university in Mauritius. The system allows

respective administrators to retrieve the

list of applicants from a single database.

Furthermore, a online service has been

setup with the aim of bringing relevant

statistics about the performance of

students on each programme for each

year. This online facility was made

possible through the use of a web

service which acted as a middleman

between the server and the client. An

online complaint desk has also been

implemented for the ease of citizens

to register any queries or complaint

pertaining to any of the four universities.

A university back-end system was also

set up for the appropriate staff to help

in processing all the applications and

complaints. Security measures were also

implemented using the authentication

of both citizens and employees. Once

the system was fully functional, a user

acceptance testing was performed by

potential users and it was found to be

very user-friendly and useful system

Thamodaren VYTHILINGUM &

Kamlesh SUNASSEE


A quiz was developed in the form of

an educational game to assist learners

during the learning process. To capture

the attention of the students and to

make it more interactive, the question

“shakes“ and an appropriate message is

displayed on the bottom of the screen

when a wrong answer is selected. On

completion of the quiz, the system

outputs the performance of the student

in terms of the number of incorrect

answers.

The “My Notes“ feature permits users

to generate their personal notes by

capturing images and making live

recordings and combine them into a

slideshow. The software was tested

and rated by forty Form 4 students. The

average score for BioApp was estimated

at 8.5 over 10.

BIOAPP: AN APP FOR SELF-LEARNING OF O-LEVEL BIOLOGY

This project was developed to be used

on tablets for Form 4 students. The

software was implemented only for

biology. Emphasis was laid mainly on

making the application user friendly

and interactive and at the same time

delivering the relevant educational

materials. The App was developed on

Android Software Development Tool

version 4.2.2.

The learning materials have been

presented in different ways such

as notes, diagrams, quiz, tutorials,

animations, slideshow maker and online

resources. This application considers

the fact that the expanse of contents

in books is the major factor that affects

the learning process of students. Unlike

other educational applications, this

software was designed with minimal

textual contents in order to prevent the

screen from being daunting. Embedded

vocabulary was implemented for the

purpose of providing definitions of

biological terms.


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Further improvements comprise the

integration of other O-Level subjects

and also including a planner to help

learners keep track of their activities.

Subsequently, we intend to upload

BioApp on Play Store. A pedagogical

tool with the features mentioned

above will aid students to learn and

assess themselves in an interesting and

effective manner

2. QUIZ WHEN INCORRECT ANSWER SELECTED

1. POP UP SHOWING EMBEDDED VOCABULARY 3. DIAGRAM LABELLING TUTORIAL

Joanna MOOTOOSAMY &

Girish MOHITH


on the words present in the question,

MyICT will decide whether to return

the name of a person, a place or a date

as answer. On average it takes about

100 milliseconds to process a query.

At worst, it takes about 5 seconds.

This system can be enhanced by

continuously increasing its knowledge

rules and building a smarter inferencing

engine which can cope with many other

different types of questions

MYICT: AN AUTOMATIC QUESTION ANSWERING

SYSTEM FOR ICT

Demand for question answering

systems is increasing day by day since

they deliver short, precise and question

specific answers as compared to

search results received from traditional

search engines like yahoo.com, bing.

com and google.com. Huge amount

of redundant data from irrelevant

documents through the World Wide

Web has given rise to this ICT Question

Answering system branded as MyICT.

The aim of developing such a system

is to allow students obtain concise and

relevant answers.

The system has been designed for

secondary-level students. A large

number of ICT websites were scanned

and their contents were saved in the

hard disks of our computers. This

constitute the knowledge base of the

system. The inferencing engine has

been developed in such a way that it

can handle general questions as well

as questions which contain words such

as ‘Who’, ‘Where’ and ‘When’. Depending

Kajal BOODHOO &

Lushika GOOLBUDUN


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A Learning Content Management System

(LCMS) is a platform where users can get

access to materials which help them in

their learning, such as text documents,

pictures, videos and sound files. The

platform itself is usually accessed over

the internet through a web application.

The LCMS can, in addition to this sharing

of information, track progress of learners

through the use of quizzes.

LCMS are great tools for e-learning

purposes and as thus, many of them

have been developed. Examples of such

systems are Moodle, ATutor, WebCT

and Blackboard. Problems arise when

sharing has to be done between the

different systems. These systems are

generally developed using different

programming languages, which means

that they are not always compatible.

To solve this problem, we propose

to develop an LCMS using a Service-

Oriented Architecture. Basically, under

this architecture, the application’s

functionalities are provided through the

use of web-services, just like in real life,

different services in society are provided

by various instances, such as banks,

insurance companies, government

authorities, etc. Web services allow the

LCMS to be accessed from any platform

using any language and therefore

remove the issue of interoperability.

There will be service consumers (i.e.,

users of the LCMS platform) who will

then call upon these services, through

a service provider and a service broker.

Using these services, learning materials,

referred to in this context as Learning

Objects, can be retrieved from different

sources very easily. The LCMS built in

this way will allow for easier sharing and

re-use of materials and thus could then

be considered as a valuable knowledge

sharing platform

USING WEB SERVICES TO INCREASE INTEROPERABILITY OF LEARNING CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Pajanee MOONESAWMY &

Brice Christopher Bernie HACK


to their psychological effects. Videos,

animations and interactions have been

employed to build an enthusiasm to

learn while retaining the attention

of students. Once the software was

completed, a test had been carried out

to determine whether the prerequisites

for learning for the hearing impaired

students have been met or not. It

is worth noting that students of

different age groups at various levels

of schooling have used the software.

Moreover, teachers, parents, other

staffs of a school for the hearing

impaired as well as the manager and

the assistant manager have all been

given a demonstration regarding the

software. There were also given the

opportunity to try the software on their

own. The feedbacks received from all

stakeholders were indeed very positive.

AN INTERACTIVE LEARNING TOOL FOR

THE MAURITIAN SIGN LANGUAGE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Over the past decade, the government

has been laying heavy emphasis on the

education of hearing impaired students

because until recently, there have been

serious prejudices towards them when

they can be just as productive as any

other ‘normal’ person. The learning

tool has been designed not only to

make it easy to teach students but

also for teachers and parents to learn.

Before undertaking the project, an in-

depth analysis has been performed

to understand the learning process

of hearing impaired students, the

psychology involved in the learning

process, and the techniques to

encourage and enhance learning. In

order to design a learning tool that

would best meet the requirements

of students, a survey was carried

out and a few meetings with both

teachers and students proved to be

fruitful. Colors have been widely used

throughout the software according


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student. If 50% or more is obtained, the

student will be allowed to process to

learn the remaining alphabets, i.e. N to

Z, otherwise the students need to take

the test again

The diagram above illustrates the main

menu that will appear after a successful

login. A variety of options will be

displayed, from which the student can

choose anyone. The avatar in the center

will move accordingly. The Stats & Score

is a feature that has been devised to

keep track of the performance of each

student in the form of a progress sheet.

When ‘Chapters’ is selected from the

first screen, the student will be able

to choose what to learn. If ‘alphabets’

is chosen, the student can learn via

images and/or videos. Once the

alphabets A to M have been studied, a

‘test’ has to be taken in order to assess

the level of comprehension of the

Waiz LADO &

Technarainsing NUNKOO


a multimodal eye tracking approach

has been envisioned. The system is

deployed with first identifying the user’s

eyes followed by the detection of the iris

and pupil movements. Subsequently,

the information about the eyes and

pupil movements were analysed and

graphs were generated from the values

gathered. Moreover, the proposed system

is a low cost system and is compatible

with any computer or laptop equipped

with an ordinary camera. However, the

system may encounter difficulty when

the required visual features cannot

be acquired accurately or reliably. For

instance, users with glasses could cause

serious problem to those methods based

on detecting eye movements. Glasses can

produce glare and may be totally opaque

to light, thus making it impossible for the

camera to monitor eye movements.

EYE TRACKING SYSTEM FOR MONTORING

A PERSON’S BEHAVIOUR DURING

THE LEARNING PROCESS

A proper interpretation and consequently

an efficient monitoring or supervising

of learners’ eye movements by different

methods of eye tracking may lead to an

enhanced learning process. This project

shall shed light on the various existing

means and contribute to the improvement

of the learning mechanism through

proposing a real time monitoring system

using image processing and eye detection

techniques. Gaze behaviour is a good

indicator of social rejection, acceptance,

trustworthiness, attractiveness, interest

and cooperation. Thus, this system can

be used on a large scale in educational

institutions as well as in e-learning

online examinations. For example, this

system can be used to track a person’s

conduct during an online examination.

At this point, the exam invigilator is a

remote computer which is expected to

follow the person movement through

a webcam using eye tracking method

and also decide whether the person is

involved in suspicious behaviour or not.

To portray such a robust mechanism,

Source: http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/sideways-eye-

tracking-prototype-sees-what-youre-ogling-while-shopping/

PHOTO


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Time Interval Eyes Were Lost In Milliseconds

The graph indicates the times at which

the users’ eyes were no longer in focus,

i.e. they could not be detected by the

camera. Regions of low and flat areas

indicate good behaviour while peaks

indicate suspicious behaviour during

online examinations

Akmaize ANTOAROO MUHAMMUD &

Anuja BEEHARRY


hence visible on the passenger side. The

conductor can notify the Passengers

about events such as when the bus is

full, has had a breakdown or a traffic

jam that is slowing down the flow of

traffic.

In the Passenger Mode, the passenger

has to enter the current bus stop location

and the destination. He will then be

provided with a map displaying all bus

lines and eventually all active buses

on the lines that can service him. The

passenger can also obtain the distance

a bus is currently away from him as

well as the amount of time in which it

will take to reach the bus stop. All these

details are provided in real-time. The

website is mainly for the administrator

to maintain the system and to allow

users to download the app.

REAL-TIME PASSENGER INFORMATION SYSTEM

Despite the various improvements

in the public transport system in

Mauritius, the system still has some

loop holes. One of the problems that

the Real-time Passenger Information

System has tried to solve is to reduce

the waiting time of passengers at bus

stations. All buses do not come at the

scheduled times at their respective bus

stops. The delays are due to various

reasons like traffic jams, fluctuations

in the departure time from the source

station, amongst others.

Our system consists of a mobile app

and a website, which were developed

to help the passengers get better

information about the positions of

‘their’ buses in real-time. The mobile

app has been developed on an Android

platform. It consists of two options: the

Conductor Mode and the Passenger

Mode.

The Conductor Mode is for the bus

conductor who sets a bus as active and


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The conductor can change the status

of the bus depending on the current

circumstances.

A passenger can choose his source

(start) and destination (end) bus stops.

CONTINUED


The passenger can view all the

possible bus lines from his origin to

destination. The status of the buses is

also displayed.

The details of buses are also available.

These details are displayed in ascending

order of their geometrical distance

from the current location

Urvashi SADASING &

Devansh RAMEN


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wine in a new bottle. Consequently, the

new game, “Pixie Pie and Tim”, adds

to the frantic world of platform action

games, on the world’s largest social

network, with two new heroes a duo:

The Pink Pony – Pixie Pie and Tim.

Land of joy, bright colors and wonders!

The first thing most people will observe

about this game world is the colorful

lively graphics. Aside from astonishing

visuals, another delightful element

about the game is that we can change

the characters. Tim’s move list is mostly

confined to the classics of a platform

game character. Still he possesses

extraordinary jumping skills. But, do

you know the feeling of powerlessness?

How will he face the enemies: the snails?

This is how Pixie Pie complements Tim

with fast running, hiding in bushes

and expert shooting abilities. The “new

but fun” concept behind this game is

that you can swap from Tim to Pixie

Pie or vice versa anytime during the

Recent surveys reveal that 375 million

users play games on Facebook each

month. More and more users are

becoming addicted to high score

games. Are people changing taste of

what type of games they want? With

new advancing technologies and

new gadgets available the answer will

probably be yes but it is also a fact that

concerning games, people love old

PIXIE PIE AND TIM

CONTINUED


game. The main aim of the game is to

maximize your score by collecting fruits

and killing the enemies while avoiding

bombs before you run out of time.

Fruits and bombs are spawned at

random positions on screen. Players

require extreme watchfulness to know

where bombs are located before

stepping anyplace. Good music and

sound effects, adorable characters

and earthquakes effects makes it a

desirable game. People who played it

responded with a positive feedback.

Some even mentioned that such a fun

game remove all stress after a hard day

of work. The makers are quite sure this

game should strike the bull’s eye, they

are just waiting for the time when it

will be another “Angry Bird”, “Candy

Crush” or “Flappy Bird”. The game will be

available on Facebook very soon

Chandni CURUM &

Akshaye FOWDAR

PHOTO


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HAVE YOU EVER CREATED YOUR OWN FONT?

very easy to use. Go and download it

right now. When you open it, select

the character that you want to edit

or create and let your imagination do

the rest. You can make use of a panel

of different options such as brushes

to materialize your imagination. You

will be able to distort letters, increase

the size, add colors to it and add more

effects to the font. You can save the

font and install it within your favourite

word processing software.

Within a number of clicks, you will be

able to see your imagination turning

into reality. Are you still reading this

article? Go and joint the 4.5 million

of people which I’m sure are enjoying

this software. Join the Club, I HAVE MY

OWN FONT. And why not use your own

handwriting as a font style in Microsoft

Word or Open Office Writer

Have you ever imagined a world where

your text document does not resemble

any other, a world where you can let

your imagination create your own font,

one that will not be present anywhere

else? Well this world already exists. This

world that will enable you to let your

imagination do everything you want

is known as High Logic FontCreator

8.0 (http://www.high-logic.com/font-

editor/fontcreator.html). FontCreatof is

a popular software that will allow you

to create your own font. With over 4.5

million downloads to date, FontCreator

is the world’s most popular font editor.

FontCreator will allow you to create

your own fonts, redesign existing

characters, edit the spacing between

characters and so on. The software is

Rajeev Roy MOHUN,

Anasthasia MONVOISIN,

Wenda MOOTHY & Dharmesh GOVIND


UNIVERSITY OF MAURITIUS IN 3D

In this work, the WebGL framework

has been used to create a 3D Virtual

Tour of the University of Mauritius for

the web. WebGL enable the display

of interactive real-time 3D graphics

to the browser using JavaScript API.

Unlike VRML, no plug-ins are required.

The adoption of Computer Graphics

in diverse fields such as interactive

media design, 3D modeling tour,

simulation and animation is

growing rapidly. Over the last few

years, several technologies have

emerged to display 3D virtual

tours on the web. A Virtual Tour is

designed to provide viewers with a

more life-like 3D view of an existing

location using advanced simulation

techniques.

Finance Building, University of Mauritius


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SketchUp was used to create, load

and manipulate the 3D objects such

as buildings, trees and roads. After

the 3D models were built, they were

converted into the WebGL format.

This was achieved through the use

of an exporter of 3D objects file.

The system has the capability to

support multi-users navigation

through the virtual environments.

A performance test was also

conducted to acquire knowledge

about the system performance

when loading simple, average and

complex objects with and without

textured

Mahendranath RAMODHIN &

Reezwanah Bibi ROZBULLY

Octave Wiehe Auditorium, University of Mauritius


faster than caching, which some disk-

based database systems use and a

more effective solution than creating

a RAM disk to manage data. With a

RAM disk, regular caching and I/O

operations continue even though

they are redundant. In-memory

databases require only a single data

transfer. In-memory technology

offers the best accessible alternative

to slow, expensive disk-based data

management systems.

Some examples of MMDB that are

commonly used are Oracle Timesten In-

Memory Database, Redis, SAP HANA and

Altibase. To measure the performance

of main memory databases, tools like

Apache JMeter, HammerDB, and Ignite

oracle can used. Optimization tools and

testing scripts can be used also.

INVESTIGATING THE PERFORMANCE

OF A MAIN MEMORY DATABASE (MMDB)

IN A WEB ENVIRONMENT

Main memory databases are relative

newcomers to database management.

In-memory database systems were

developed in the 1990s to address

those applications in which writing

and retrieving data from a disk was

not fast enough. The technology

first came up to improve business

application performance and to cache

Web commerce sites for controlling

peak traffic. In keeping with this

enterprise focus, the initial MMDBs

were comparable to conventional SQL/

relational databases, stripped of certain

functionality and stored entirely in

main memory.

An MMDB is a database that eradicates

disk access by storing and manipulating

data in main memory. It usually features

strict memory based architecture and

direct data manipulation. With an in-

memory database, all data is stored in

the computer’s main memory. At times

these databases are also called main

memory databases. This approach is


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REFERENCES

http://www.linux-magazine.com/var/

linux_magazin/storage/images/media/

linux-magazine-eng-us/images/mainmem-

lead/526872-1-eng-US/mainmem-lead_

reference.jpg

http://www.oracle.com/ocom/groups/public/@

ocom/documents/digitalasset/1895805.png

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E21901_01/doc/

timesten.1122/e21631/img/findingrecords.gif

According to research reports,

approximately 30 percent of companies

and businesses will have one or

more critical applications running

on an in-memory database in the

next five years; by 2014, 30 percent

of analytic applications will use in-

memory functions to add scale and

computational speed

Jeet GOHEE &

Khushal Shiv RAJUB

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PInterest, Flickr, etc. Photography and

photo editing are now much easier due to

the vast availability and user friendliness

of existing technologies such as digital

cameras, laptops, smart phones,

phablets and tablets. Photo editing

enables people to access a universe

where the word impossible does not

exist. From faces full of imperfection to

Barbie like faces, everything is possible

with the help of different programs.

Indeed thousands of online applications

like Pixlr.com, Phixr.com, Lunapic.com,

Fotor.com, iPiccy.com, PicMonkey.com,

Befunky.com, Picmagick.com, Loonapix.

com, Pikock.com, Photomica.com,

Sumopaint.com, etc, are available to

convert one’s dream into reality. Photo

editing allows people to see themselves

in places where they will never be able to

afford to be. We are able to travel around

Photographers use their cameras as

tools of exploration and an instrument

for change. Considered as a luxury a

decade ago, the digital camera is now

a household item. The field of digital

photography has known a drastic

change during the past few years.

Millions of pictures are being uploaded

every minute on Facebook, Instagram,

PHOTOGRAPHY AND DIGITAL IMAGE

PROCESSING


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of this field. In Mauritius photography

and photo editing form part of many

people’s life. Their photos on different

social networks like Facebook are proof

that photography and photo editing

matters – now more than ever

Chitrasen BAGOBAN &

Farhaan TOORABALLY

the world with those advance programs.

Hollywood or Bollywood is just a click

away! With the fast modernization of

society, people are becoming more

and more self-conscious, everyone

wants to look perfect. Photo editing

allows people to have the perfect faces;

imperfections such as wrinkles can be

easily masked. Moreover picture editing

allows people to express their creativity

and building up a professional path out


was when one of his best friends (a

senior software engineer), exploited a

vulnerability in RedHat Linux in order to

gain access to a rogue server that was

trying to crack their Linux-based firewall.

Since then, there was no looking behind

and he had his choice. He knew he was

choosing something where work would

seem like entertainment. His would

describe what I do as improving the

internet by making it more secure and

reliable.

One of the most exciting times in his life

was when Google announced that he

was selected for the Google Summer

of Code. That was way back in 2012.

He was among the 1,212 students that

made it through. He described it as

an amazing experience. He spent his

holidays working on securing various

His name is Velvindron Loganaden but

most people refer to him as Logan.

His love for writing codes began in

high school. After completed his

secondary education at College du

Saint Esprit in Quatre Bornes, he was

hired to administer a French company’s

network and servers. Later, he secured

a seat at the University of Mauritius to

study Computer Science. Interestingly,

he also got several job offers while he was

still studying, and curious as he was, he

worked on a part-time basis on various

interesting projects as a freelancer.

His parents have been incredibly

supportive of his passion. They even

allowed him to build a small server farm

in the family home with cables running

all over the place. His younger brother,

Codarren, runs a custom Linux system

on a router. One could say that it runs in

the family.

The sparking incident that got him

interested in Computer Security

THE PORTRAIT OF A MAURITIAN GEEK,

LOGANADEN VELVINDRON


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Logan wishes to contribute to the ICT

sector in Mauritius in order to make it a

stronger pillar of our economy and also to

improve the lives of Mauritians through

the use of IT in our everyday chores. He

is currently working on an Open Source

policy in collaboration with the National

Computer Board. Improving the

Internet and the ICT sector in Mauritius

requires not only skilled engineers, but

also good policy makers, and the right

business environment. His international

experience will certainly help him in his

endeavours to service his country and to

realise his dreams of a better future for

everyone.

When Logan is not behind a computer

screen, you can catch him fishing, hiking

and hanging out with friends

core components of BSD Unix. This

taught him a lot about engineering

high quality Open Source codes. He

was even more excited when Google

announced that they were awarding

him a Security Award for his work on

improving the OpenSSH protocol.

OpenSSH is a set of programs that

allow a user to establish a secure

connexion. It is typically used by system

administrator to remotely manage Unix

(BSD, Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX)/Linux

servers and by vendors such as CISCO

on their switches and routers. Recently,

he found that OpenSSH that is shipped

on Apple Macbooks contain codes that

he wrote. When questioned about it, he

said it was fun seeing such as expensive

computer running his codes .

Editorial Team, ACM Chapter

Green IT Overview The Kyoto Protocol IT as Green Enabler Dangers of Green Wash External/Internal Organisational Drivers for Green IT Governmental Goals (Global & Local) International Standards & Initiatives (EU / UK / US / Australia / Mauritius) Organisation’s Internal Assessment Green IT Policy Carbon Footprint, ROI, TCO Auditing IT Functions / Processes Lifecycle Analysis ICT Services Green IT Action Plan Deployment of ICT for Sustainability IT Strategy for Sustainability Green IT Champions

Green IT and EU Code of Conduct for

Data Centres Workshops

Domaine Les Pailles 8:30am - 5:30pm Includes Course Materials, Lunch, Tea Breaks & Certificate of Attendance

*Conditions apply. See HRDC for details.

Why is EU CoC for Data Centres needed? Best Practices in Detail Independencies & Interactions Utilisation, Management & Planning IT Equipment & Services Cooling Data Centre Power Equipment Data Centre Building Monitoring Data Centre 2.0 – The Sustainable Data Centre Energy measurement and Metrics Global Data Centre Standards & Guidelines Standards – Data Centre Speci�c & Non Speci�c

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For more info Contact Ms. Priya:

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E -mail: [email protected] www.FocusGlobalLtd.com

Green IT 5-6 August, 2014

EU CoC for Data Centres 7-8 August, 2014

MQA Approval In Process

Back Again!

–

0( Kesseven Cunden Lecturer Faculty of Sustainable Development P Engineering email` tcunden@udm(ac(mu

4( Roshan T RamessurU Ph(D( FICER Associate Professor Faculty of Science email` ramessur@uom(ac(mu

)( Ticiano Costa JordãoU Eng( Director of CRUSUS email`tcjordao@crusus(org

Non5resident participants

Early registrationÀuntil October 0G th U450B3 ` 455 EUR

Late registration Aafter October 0Gth 450B3` 4G5 EUR

Local participants vresidentsé

Early registration Àuntil October 0G thU 450B3 ` 055 EUR

Late registration Àafter October 0G th 450B3` 0G5 EUR

0( Bioenergy4( Solar energy)( Geothermal energy B( Marine energyG( Wind energy

Universityof

Mauritius

International Conference Renewable Energy Sources , Sustainability

RESUS52014December 254: 2014

Faculty of Sustainable Development and Engineering Université des Mascareignes

Conference Focus

RESUSj450B will address how climate change and energy securityissues have been affecting various communities `worldwideU particularly the small island developing states(

It will investigate how local climate change effects are interrelated and the contributing factors to the vulnerability of certain locations(

It will explorethe role of renewable energy possible in the mitigation and adaptation measures for these locations(

The vulnerability and possible means to strengthen resilience of energy systems to environmental impacts will be a relevant issue to be addressed in the workshop

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