Research Publications

Permanent URI for this communityhttps://rda.sliit.lk/handle/123456789/4194

This main community comprises five sub-communities, each representing the academic contribution made by SLIIT-affiliated personnel.

Browse

Filters

2020 - 2021825

Advanced Search

Filter by

Settings

Start date: 2020End date: 2021

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 825
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
    Advisory Opinion on Kosovo’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence: Strategic Silence by the International Court of Justice
    (Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, SLIIT, 2020) Jayamaha, J.M.D.S.U
    Kosovo, one of Serbia’s autonomous provinces unilaterally declared independence in 2008. In denial of such, Serbia sought an opinion from the International Court of Justice, which returned an advisory opinion stating that Kosovo’s said declaration does not violate the contemporary international law. The opinion has attracted much criticism for failing to adopt a broader interpretation of the question posed and the limited discussion engaged with, in terms of law related to the posited question. Despite the non-binding nature of the advisory opinions, and the supposedly narrow approach of this opinion, it still has posed many implications not only on the status of Kosovo but also on the development of the international law in relation. This paper attempts to engage in an analysis of the said advisory opinion, its alleged narrowness, and the wider implications it may pose to the international law and its actors, more pertinently on issues of statehood, recognition of states, territorial integrity, and future ramifications for UN peace arrangements.
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
    Should claims for Colonial Reparations be recognized under International Law?
    (Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, SLIIT, 2020) Ratwatte, I.M.A.
    The article examines the social and economic consequences of colonialism and colonial state policy, underscoring the exploitation and suffering of the colonized under such policies. The writer specifically refers to India and Sri Lanka and the human and economic costs to the two countries. The writer emphasizes that these must be acknowledged, apologized and atoned for, by the former colonial governments. Counter arguments to this are examined, as to why exactly reparations are owed in the current environment. As justification, the writer seeks guidance from the examples of two nations – the Mau Mau and the Herero, who have obtained reparations as examples of marginal success. Yet, in these small ‘victories’ too, there is much to be desired. In conclusion, the writer suggests that the international community should take note of this very poignant, ignored and pivotal aspect of collective human rights and strongly recommends that action be taken immediately to provide redress for a most damaging, longterm phenomenon which is already fading from the consciousness of the colonizers. The writer proposes that the Right to Reparations be made an integral part of International Law, be made a Fundamental Human Right recognized by a duly signed International Convention which should constitute a specialized Tribunal to adjudicate such claims.
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
    Compromising Health to Gain Wealth: A Legal Response to Adverse Health Effects of Night Work
    (Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, SLIIT, 2020) Selvaraj, P
    Although night work has responded to a variety of social, technical, and economic reasons, it has adversely affected the health, safety, and work-life balance of such night workers. Thus, this article aims to explore the hiatus in Sri Lankan law in devising effective legal measures responding to such health issues encountered by night workers due to their engagement in irregular work time. This research is conducted as a literature review based on secondary sources approaching both qualitative and quantitative methods. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) and its recommendations provide for an effective mechanism for an organised night working culture in response to the health effects of such working community. However, Sri Lanka, not being a signatory to those Conventions, failed to address the issue through legislative measures. Further, the delinquency of statistics and medical researches on the health status of night workers in Sri Lanka also worsened the situation. Thus, the author attempts to draw a Constitutional justification to delineate the fundamental duty of the State to address the said issue and recommends suitable strategies and mechanisms to truncate the adverse health effects to those workers by drawing examples from initiatives taken by the European Union, especially from Spain.
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
    Combatting Cyber-Sextortion; Lessons for Sri Lanka from Australia and the United States
    (Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, SLIIT, 2020) Harasgama, K. S.; Munasinghe, M.A.P.M.
    With the world rapidly becoming digitalized and the internet being an indispensable part of human life, incidents of cyber harassment including cyber-sextortion have also increased. Cyber-sextortion often involves a perpetrator threatening to disseminate private sexual images or videos of a victim unless more sexual image/sexual favours, money or other benefit are provided by the victim. This paper analyses the adequacy of current laws in Sri Lanka in comparison with those of Australia and USA in combating cyber-sextortion. The analysis reveals that although Sri Lank lacks specific laws on cyber-sextortion, some of its existing criminal laws such as the Penal Code provisions on extortion, criminal intimidation, sexual harassment and obscene publications relating to children can be used to a certain extent to prosecute cyber-sextortion. Some provisions of the Computer Crime Act of 2007, Prohibition of Ragging and Other Forms of Violence in Educational Institutions Act of 1998 and Obscene Publications Ordinance No. 4 of 1927 too can be used to a certain extent for this purpose. Australia, on the other hand, has targeted laws on cyber-sextortion, both at federal and state levels. At the Commonwealth level, section 474.14A of the Criminal Code of 1995 and several provisions of the Enhancing Online Safety Act 2015 (as amended) provide an apt gateway to combat cyber sextortion, while at states level, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Australian Capital Territory, Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria appear to have more comprehensive cyber sextortion laws in terms of capturing the offence. USA at the federal level does not have specific provisions on cyber-sextortion but has used non-specific provisions such as general extortion, child pornography, hacking and stalking laws for prosecutions on cyber-sextortion while at the state level, some states have introduced quite comprehensive targeted laws on cyber-sextortion, some have provisions that cover only certain types of cybersextortion. The paper concludes by proposing adoption of a targeted law on cyber sextortion outlining the key elements of a suitable law for Sri Lanka and until then to rely on non-specific provisions which are already available, in order to prosecute perpetrators of cyber-sextortion.
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
    Emerging Challenges in Regulation of E-Commerce: An Insight of Laws in Sri Lanka
    (Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, SLIIT, 2020) Balendra, S.
    The growth of e-commerce in Sri Lanka is posing significant legal and regulatory challenges. The paper attempts to study and highlight deficiencies in the present legal framework regulating e-commerce in Sri Lanka. Content analysis of Electronic Transactions Act No.19 of 2006 (as amended) and other relevant legislations revealed, the existing framework recognises e-contract, e-signature, and e-documents. Still, certain drawbacks are unsettled in practice. In addition, areas like privacy and data protection, intermediary liability, security, and consumer protection are left unaddressed in the current regulatory framework. The study further identifies that the traditional dispute resolution mechanisms are no more effective in e-commerce disputes. Finally, adhering to the international standards, the paper makes key suggestions for policy and decision-makers to overcome these challenges.
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
    LEXISGURU: Mobile Application for Learning Basic Lexis in English for Kids
    (Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH, 2021-11-05) Jayasinghe, M. J. W; Hennayaka, W. H. M. A. D. H; Fernando, M. P. M; Thilakarathne, K. N. U; Samarakoon, U; Kumari, S
    Lexis is an essential part of English vocabulary that puts a good foundation on a child’s English knowledge. In this rapidly globalizing world, it is fundamentally essential to learn English from a young age. In recent years eLearning, mobile applications have been developed for teaching Lexis to children. The market of educational mobile apps, especially for English language learning, has been rapidly growing. Especially in a country like Sri Lanka, English is not the mother tongue, it is the second language. So, when that second language is not taught right the child will lose interest in learning that language. The problem is that the existing lexical learning mobile applications does not aim at keeping the child interested and interactive in the learning process and in Sri Lanka, children find it difficult to understand these lexical parts. As a result, teachers and parents had to spend a lot of time to teach them those lexical parts. We designed and developed a mobile application called “LexisGuru” that uses interactive and effective ways to teach three lexical parts that are homophones, synonyms, and antonyms to children aged between 8–10 in Sri Lanka. This mobile application uses Machine Learning (ML), Image Processing (IP), gamification that includes collaborative environments, and speech recognition techniques. The developed mobile application was introduced to primary level learners, and they were all very attracted and interested while using this application. The attractive user interfaces, the pretests, and posttests, notifying the child when he loses focus while learning, using interesting stories and activities to teach lexis, playing a game with multiple players, and asking questions from the lesson and taking the voice inputs gave a new experience and showed that making the mobile application interactive as possible is an effective way to teach lexis to children.
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationEmbargo
    ARCSECURE: Centralized Hub for Securing a Network of IoT Devices
    (Springer, Cham, 2021-07-06) Yapa Abeywardena, K; Abeykoon, A. M. I. S; Atapattu, A. M. S. P. B; Jayawardhane, H. N; Samarasekara, C. N
    As far as it is considered, IoT has been a game changer in the advancement of technology. In the current context, the major issue that users face is the threat to their information stored in these devices. Modern day attackers are aware of vulnerabilities in existence in the current IoT environment. Therefore, securing information from being gone into the hands of unauthorized parties is of top priority. With the need of securing the information came the need of protecting the devices which the data is being stored. Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) environments working with IoT devices are particularly in need of such mechanism to protect the data and information that they hold in order to sustain their operations. Hence, in order come up with a well-rounded security mechanism from every possible aspect, this research proposes a plug and play device “ARCSECURE”.
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationEmbargo
    Use of Interpretable Evolved Search Query Classifiers for Sinhala Documents
    (Springer, Cham, 2021-01) Haddela, P; Hirsch, L; Brunsdon, T; Gaudoin, J
    Document analysis is a well matured yet still active research field, partly as a result of the intricate nature of building computational tools but also due to the inherent problems arising from the variety and complexity of human languages. Breaking down language barriers is vital in enabling access to a number of recent technologies. This paper investigates the application of document classification methods to new Sinhalese datasets. This language is geographically isolated and rich with many of its own unique features. We will examine the interpretability of the classification models with a particular focus on the use of evolved Lucene search queries generated using a Genetic Algorithm (GA) as a method of document classification. We will compare the accuracy and interpretability of these search queries with other popular classifiers. The results are promising and are roughly in line with previous work on English language datasets.
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationEmbargo
    An Automated System for Estimating GSM Value of Fabrics using Beta Particle Absorption Characteristics
    (IEEE, 2021-11-22) Dias, S; Sandaruwan, K. G. D; Jayasekara, S
    Grams per square meter (GSM) or Grammage is an ISO-recommended term to express the mass per unit area of papers, metal sheets, plastic-made products, and fabric materials. GSM tests are widely used in the textile industry to measure GSM of knitted fabrics, and to ensure quality and other standard fabrics' specifications. Meanwhile, most textile organizations prefer the manual GSM measuring procedure, which leads to many disadvantages, including fabric wastage. An automated non-contact type fabric Grammage measuring method is proposed as an alternative solution for this industrial issue. This paper introduces mathematical models for determining GSM values based on beta particle absorption characteristics of three selected fabrics. Moreover, this study discusses a real-time GSM measuring system, which utilizes the generated mathematical models. Through this paper, developed mathematical models are investigated over the goodness of fit parameters. Developed models are appropriate for GSM value estimation with R2 values over 0.99, and lower Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) Values. Error percentages obtained during the validation of these mathematical models are less than 1% for all fabric types.
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationEmbargo
    Optimum Music: Gesture Controlled, Personalized Music Recommendation System
    (IEEE, 2021-12-09) Wijekoon, R; Ekanayaka, D; Wijekoon, M; Perera, D; Samarasinghe, P; Seneweera, O; Peiris, A
    Music plays an important role in everyone’s life since it helps to relax the mind when appropriate music is played. This paper presents a music recommendation system based on the user’s current emotions, activities as well as demographic information such as age, gender, and ethnicity. In addition, the system can be controlled by hand gestures and vocal commands. Unsupervised learning methods in were used to recommend music according to the demographic data and emotions of the user. Finally, the important idea is to recommend music based on all of the user’s data, such as demographics, emotions, and activities. The overall system performance was manually tested and evaluated with a group of individuals, yielding a 70% satisfaction rate for the recommendation; additionally, supporting models such as demographic identification, emotion identification, and hand gesture identification have received a higher proportion of accuracies, contributing to the research’s success. Unlike other systems, ours utilizes all of the user’s information while making music recommendations.