Biodiversity, distribution patterns and trophic position of meiobenthos associated with reduced environments at continental margins

The discovery of reduced deep-sea environments and their remarkable communities of bacteria and metazoan organisms became one of the most important events in marine biology of last decades. The variable reduced environments share common features such as high content of reduced compounds (sulphides and hydrocarbons), often oxygen deficiency, high abundance and metabolic activity of bacterial populations, and production of autochthonous organic matter by bacteria using energy of chemical bindings (chemosynthesis). Metazoan macro- and megafaunal life in reduced environments is generally characterised by low diversity (which however may increase to the periphery of the biotope), often high degree of endemism and peculiar biological traits. Round worms or nematodes constitute the most important group of the meiofauna with respect to densities and biomass, followed by harpacticoid copepods, nauplii, polychaetes, tardigrades and other groups (Giere 1993). Because marine nematodes have a worldwide distribution, are the most prominent members of the smaller-sized animals and have a direct link with the sediment and with the processes that occur immediately above the sediment, this group can function as an interesting tool to describe habitat heterogeneity in the marine environment. In this thesis, nematodes are used as key group to explore the meiobenthic communities inhabiting different cold seeps associated with pockmarks or mud volcanoes, and located in the North and South Atlantic Ocean. The following questions were assessed: (1) What factors have an important influence on the seep meiobenthos concerning structure, diversity and distribution at multiple scales? (2) To what extent does the meiobenthos take advantage from the typical seep chemosynthetic food sources? (3) Are the meiofaunal species morphologically or physiologically adapted to resist the often toxic geochemical conditions in seeps? (4) What is the specificity of the successful meiofaunal seep species? In order to obtain this overview, the nematofauna was characterised in terms of taxonomic composition, distribution patterns on different spatial scales, habitat preferences, vertical distribution within sediments, phylogeny, presence of symbionts, and nutritional sources

Analysis of the security and reliability of packet transmission in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) : a case study of Malicious Packet drop attack

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are known for possessing good attributes such as low up-front cost, easy network maintenance, and reliable service coverage. This has largely made them to be adopted in various areas such as; school campus networks, community networking, pervasive healthcare, office and home automation, emergency rescue operations and ubiquitous wireless networks. The routing nodes are equipped with self-organized and self-configuring capabilities. The routing mechanisms of WMNs depend on the collaboration of all participating nodes for reliable network performance. However, it has been noted that most routing algorithms proposed for WMNs in the last few years are designed with the assumption that all the participating nodes will collaboratively be involved in relaying the data packets originated from a source to a multi-hop destination. Such design approach exposes WMNs to vulnerability such as malicious packet drop attack. Therefore, it is imperative to design and implement secure and reliable packet routing mechanisms to mitigate this type of attack. While there are works that have attempted to implement secure routing approach, the findings in this research unearthed that further research works are required to improve the existing secure routing in order to provide more secure and reliable packet transmission in WMNs, in the event of denial of service (DoS) attacks such black hole malicious pack drop attack. This study further presents an analysis of the impact of the black hole malicious packet drop attack with other influential factors in WMNs. In the study, NS-3 simulator was used with AODV as the routing protocol. The results show that the packet delivery ratio and throughput of WMN under attack decreases sharply as compared to WMN free from attack

Proceedings of the Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference (SPARC) 2011

These proceedings bring together a selection of papers from the 2011 Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference(SPARC). It includes papers from PhD students in the arts and social sciences, business, computing, science and engineering, education, environment, built environment and health sciences. Contributions from Salford researchers are published here alongside papers from students at the Universities of Anglia Ruskin, Birmingham City, Chester,De Montfort, Exeter, Leeds, Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores and Manchester

Leveraging The Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Countering Organised Crime

This paper provides a high-level evaluation of organised crime and the threats arising from online organised crime, within a multi-disciplinary perspective. It draws on a range of academic, industry and other materials to distinguish the key characteristics of online organised crime and to identify some of the multi-disciplinary resources which are available to counter it. Real-life case studies and other examples, together with the Tables in the Appendices, are used to demonstrate how contemporary online organised crime is profit-driven and has a strong commercial focus. The paper is accompanied by a series of Appendices and Glossaries and a comprehensive Reference list (provided within a separate document to facilitate crossreferencing with this paper) that includes suggestions for further reading and research. Section Three begins by demonstrating how there are many possible approaches which can be taken towards organised crime, which may at first appear confusing, contradictory or overwhelming. It mentions that law enforcement is adopting a multidisciplinary approach and working in partnership with other sectors, including the business sector, to counter the problem. Next, the paper attempts to separate the ‘fact from the fiction’ of organised crime, highlighting the pitfalls of relying on any single source (for instance, media reports or statistics) when analysing the subject. It identifies reliable sources for information about organised crime (for instance, the United Nations Convention on Transnational Organised Crime and several established, academic sources) and aggregates some of the key organised crime characteristics from the sources within Tables 1 to 6 in Appendix A. Having established that, despite initial impressions, it is possible to obtain a consensus view about theoretical organised crime characteristics within carefully-defined parameters, the project aligns the theoretical criteria against real-life online organised crime case studies. This establishes that, although there are many similarities between terrestrial and online organised crime groups (OOCGs), the online groups also display characteristics which are unique to them, for instance a high dependence on the use of the Internet and transnational strategies. With regard to online involvement by ‘traditional’ organised crime groups such as the Mafia, the paper highlights that, although there is some indication in both the theoretical literature and the case studies that traditional organised crime groups are targeting the Internet, the evidence in the case studies suggests that involvement of traditional organised crime groups is not a dominant feature at the moment. In Section Four, the paper assumes a non-technical IS perspective and describes some of the vulnerable elements within information technology, especially within the structures of the Internet and the Web, which all offenders, including OOCGs, are exploiting. It explains some of the reasons why these vulnerabilities exist and why they are attractive to offenders. In particular, it highlights the serious threat which crimeware, which is often sold and distributed by OOCGs, poses to the Web environment. In Section Five, the paper shifts to a business perspective, emphasising the importance of understanding online organised crime business models and mentioning the work of particular authors whose work in this field adopts a multi-disciplinary approach. The paper then uses Morphological Analysis (MA) to demonstrate how a multidisciplinary approach to strategic analysis can utilise the skills and experience of IS/business professionals, as well as assisting them to manage the threat which OOCGs may pose to their business. The paper concludes with the observation from academic and industry sources that directly targeting the profit-making aspects of an online organised crime business may be one of the most effective responses to the problem