Comparing Approaches for the Sustainability of Scientific Data Repositories

Sustainable data systems are critical components of the cyberinfrastructure needed to provide long-term stewardship of scientific data, including Earth science data, throughout their entire life cycle. A variety of approaches may help ensure the sustainability of such systems, but these approaches must be able to survive the demands of competing priorities and decreasing budgets over long time periods. Analyzing and comparing various approaches can identify viable aspects of each approach and inform decisions for developing, managing, and supporting the cyberinfrastructure needed to facilitate discovery, access, and analysis of data by future communities of users. A typology of sustainability approaches is proposed, and example use cases are offered for assessing the approaches over time. These examples help illustrate the potential strengths and weaknesses of each approach under various conditions and with regard to different objectives, e.g., open vs. limited access. By applying the results of these analyses to their particular circumstances, systems stakeholders can assess their options for a sustainable systems approach, which may incorporate multiple sustainability options, along with other metrics to ensure the sustainability of the scientific data and information for which they are responsible. In addition, clarifying and comparing sustainability approaches should inform the design of new systems and the improvement of existing systems to meet the needs for long-term stewardship of scientific data, and support education and workforce development efforts needed to ensure that the appropriate scientific and technical skills are available to operate and further develop sustainable cyberinfrastructure

DoubleEcho: Mitigating Context-Manipulation Attacks in Copresence Verification

Copresence verification based on context can improve usability and strengthen security of many authentication and access control systems. By sensing and comparing their surroundings, two or more devices can tell whether they are copresent and use this information to make access control decisions. To the best of our knowledge, all context-based copresence verification mechanisms to date are susceptible to context-manipulation attacks. In such attacks, a distributed adversary replicates the same context at the (different) locations of the victim devices, and induces them to believe that they are copresent. In this paper we propose DoubleEcho, a context-based copresence verification technique that leverages acoustic Room Impulse Response (RIR) to mitigate context-manipulation attacks. In DoubleEcho, one device emits a wide-band audible chirp and all participating devices record reflections of the chirp from the surrounding environment. Since RIR is, by its very nature, dependent on the physical surroundings, it constitutes a unique location signature that is hard for an adversary to replicate. We evaluate DoubleEcho by collecting RIR data with various mobile devices and in a range of different locations. We show that DoubleEcho mitigates context-manipulation attacks whereas all other approaches to date are entirely vulnerable to such attacks. DoubleEcho detects copresence (or lack thereof) in roughly 2 seconds and works on commodity devices

The Feasibility of Using Behavioural Profiling Technique for Mitigating Insider Threats: Review

Insider threat has become a serious issue to the many organizations. Various companies are increasingly deploying many information technologies to prevent unauthorized access to getting inside their system. Biometrics approaches have some techniques that contribute towards controlling the point of entry. However, these methods mainly are not able to continuously validate the users reliability. In contrast behavioral profiling is one of the biometrics technologies but it focusing on the activities of the users during using the system and comparing that with a previous history. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis, literature review and limitations on behavioral profiling approach and to what extent that can be used for mitigating insider misuse

Reading spike timing without a clock: intrinsic decoding of spike trains

The precise timing of action potentials of sensory neurons relative to the time of stimulus presentation carries substantial sensory information that is lost or degraded when these responses are summed over longer time windows. However, it is unclear whether and how downstream networks can access information in precise time-varying neural responses. Here, we review approaches to test the hypothesis that the activity of neural populations provides the temporal reference frames needed to decode temporal spike patterns. These approaches are based on comparing the single-trial stimulus discriminability obtained from neural codes defined with respect to network-intrinsic reference frames to the discriminability obtained from codes defined relative to the experimenter's computer clock. Application of this formalism to auditory, visual and somatosensory data shows that information carried by millisecond-scale spike times can be decoded robustly even with little or no independent external knowledge of stimulus time. In cortex, key components of such intrinsic temporal reference frames include dedicated neural populations that signal stimulus onset with reliable and precise latencies, and low-frequency oscillations that can serve as reference for partitioning extended neuronal responses into informative spike patterns

Disability issues, trends and recommendations for the World Bank

This paper is intended to provide the World Bank with the information, and insights necessary for policy formulation, and strategic planning in the area of disability. After describing the two major contemporary disability definitions, and comparing their suitability for disability policy, and planning, the paper presents a descriptive analysis of the evolution, and current status of disability policy, and practice. Based on this information, a political and economic case is made in favor of investing public, and private resources, including World Bank resources, in policies and strategies designed to increase access for people with disabilities to social, and economic opportunities. The essential elements of such policies, and strategies are then described, and incorporated into a strategic framework for possible use by the World Bank in its ongoing effort to develop appropriate, and cost-effective approaches to disability.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Social Protections&Assistance,Social Cohesion,Gender and Law,Work&Working Conditions