March'19
The IUP Journal of Information Technology
Focus
Blockchain technology is one such disruptive technological innovation. It came to the limelight when Bitcoin, a form of electronic cash, made its public appearance. Popularity of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum drew considerable research attention towards this new digital technology Blockchain and motivated researchers to explore its potential applications in other areas. The first paper, "Blockchain Technology and Its Application: A Review", by Richa Bhargava, provides an introduction to this existing technology and presents a survey of its applications in several domains.
Use of technology in banking and finance is not new. However, digital technologies have revolutionized this sector in the past couple of decades. The technology ecosystem in banking and finance sector includes virtual currency, identity verification and authorization, credential security, blockchain application and big data technologies, which have made the financial system more technologically advanced. The second paper, "FinTech and the Younger Generation", by Gurendra Nath Bhardwaj, Gauri Sinha and Soumi Pal, presents a study on the awareness and usage of various financial technologies in India.
Face recognition is a biometric application that uniquely identifies a person by analyzing patterns based on the facial contours of the person. It has a wide range of applications, including security, surveillance and law enforcement. Although various techniques are available for face recognition, implementing a robust face recognition system remains challenging due to several reasons. The third paper, "Exploring the Efficacy of Face Recognition Algorithm on Different Skin Colors", by Martins Irhebhude, Agwi Uche Celestine and Bok Jessica Aget, presents an experimental study that considers different feature selection algorithms for face recognition. It finds that principal component analysis performs better recognition than histogram-oriented gradient, particularly when skin color accounts for reduced recognition accuracy.
Human-computer interaction is a multi-disciplinary field that focuses on the design of interaction between human user and computer system with an objective to achieve efficient, effective and safe usability of the system functionalities. It remains a challenging task for designers while developing applications considering a heterogeneous set of users. The last paper, "Human-Computer Interactions: The Way Forward", by Swapan Purkait, Harsh Raj and Souryendu Das, presents a refreshing introduction to human-computer interaction design.
Consulting Editor
Blockchain Technology and Its Application: A Review
With the advent of every of new technology, we feel that we are at the dawn of a revolution. Blockchain, also commonly referred to as 'Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)'(synonym but not the same), is one of those technologies that have brought revolution in the field of technology. While blockchain technology might be considered as disruptive in various contexts, there is still a need to understand the term and to know the effective areas, particularly different industries (in broader sense), where the technology is applicable. The aim of this paper is to understand the term as defined by various researchers; investigate its effective application in various industries by reviewing different papers; and understand the success rate of blockchain in its various applications.
FinTech and the Younger Generation
FinTech is the embodiment of technology with finance. The future-savvy firms are now including FinTech for augmentation of the financial structure of their companies. The FinTech ecosystem includes virtual currency, identity verification and authorization, credential security, blockchain application and analytics in big data technologies, which makes the financial system more technologically advance. The Government of India has spent around $19 bn for encouraging FinTech start-ups. However, the main concern is now to adapt a transformative approach rather than additive. In this paper, we have examined the feasibility of the technologies being used in the present generation. We have also scrutinized the future scope of FinTech in India from a post-demonetization perspective. Awareness level of young generation about FinTech was accessed through a structured questionnaire and its future scope predicted.
Exploring the Efficacy of Face Recognition Algorithm on Different Skin Colors
Face recognition is applied in several application domains such as access control, law enforcement, identification (ID) and surveillance, basically for security purposes. It is used to identify a person when deployed at critical government installations and also at public places like airports and ATM machines. The implementation of a face recognition system is quite challenging, and the outcome can be influenced by many factors. Basically, variations in appearances can be caused by changes in illumination, facial expression, variations in pose, various viewing angles, image resolution, sensor noise, viewing distance, occlusions, etc. Developing a robust and efficient face recognition system offers lots of research opportunities that will challenge scientists and engineers for years to come. This paper implements a face recognition using the Histogram-Oriented Gradient (HOG) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) feature techniques. Feature vectors were extracted from twelve distinct faces from the AT&T face database and another 12 distinct faces from the custom face database to train Support Vector Machine (SVM) multi-classifier as implemented in MATLAB. Running the model on both databases resulted in 96% and 100% accuracies for HOG and PCA using the AT&T face database, and 72% and 100% accuracies for HOG and PCA using the custom database. Skin color accounts for the reduced accuracy in the custom database since HOG extracts global and local information. This is so because dark skins look alike locally which is why there was a drop in accuracy when HOG was used as feature. PCA, on the other hand, gave excellent recognition rates. For face recognition, PCA is better suited for representation of human face, be it dark or light skinned.
Human-Computer Interactions: The Way Forward
Humans and computers interact in many ways and facilitating this interaction is the interface between them. With Graphical User Interface (GUI) and Voice User Interface (VUI) having advanced manifold, Human-Computer Interactions (HCI) have move to developing responsiveness to cognitive loads and basic human emotions. This paper brings various aspects of HCI with an introduction to Fitt's Law, a brief description of the design principles involved, some of the current and future areas of work, and finally, the surprising impact that areas of psychology and emotions can make on interactions.