1,008 research outputs found

    Trusted Provenance with Blockchain - A Blockchain-based Provenance Tracking System for Virtual Aircraft Component Manufacturing

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    The importance of provenance in the digital age has led to significant interest in utilizing blockchain technology for tamper-proof storage of provenance data. This thesis proposes a blockchain-based provenance tracking system for the certification of aircraft components. The aim is to design and implement a system that can ensure the trustworthy, tamper-resistant storage of provenance documents originating from an aircraft manufacturing process. To achieve this, the thesis presents a systematic literature review, which provides a comprehensive overview of existing works in the field of provenance and blockchain technology. After obtaining strategies to utilize blockchain for the storage of provenance data on the blockchain, a system was designed to meet the requirements of stakeholders in the aviation industry. The thesis utilized a systematic approach to gather requirements by conducting interviews with stakeholders. The system was implemented using a combination of smart contracts and a graphical user interface to provide tamper-resistant, traceable storage of relevant data on a transparent blockchain. An evaluation based on the requirements identified during the requirement engineering process found that the proposed system meets all identified requirements. Overall, this thesis offers insight into a potential application of blockchain technology in the aviation industry and provides a valuable resource for researchers and industry professionals seeking to leverage blockchain technology for provenance tracking and certification purpose

    Linking provenance and its metadata in multi-organizational environments

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    Reproducibility issues are widely reported in life sciences. As a response, scientific communities have called for enhanced provenance information documenting the complete research life cycle, starting from biological or environmental material acquisition and ending with translating research results into practice. The integrity and trustworthiness of such provenance can be achieved by applying versioning mechanisms and cryptographic techniques, such as hashes or digital signatures, which are provenance metadata. However, the available provenance literature lacks an analysis of mechanisms for the exchange of provenance and its metadata between organizations as well as a grounded proposal of linking provenance and its metadata. In this work, we provide an in-depth analysis of the approaches for coupling provenance information and its metadata with documented research objects in the context of multi-organizational processes, leading to the categorization of possible approaches, description of their key properties, and derivation of requirements for underlying provenance models. We address the requirements by proposing a mechanism for linking provenance and its metadata by extending the Common Provenance Model, the open conceptual foundation for the ISO 23494 provenance standard series, currently under development. The concepts are demonstrated and validated on two complex use cases. This work is intended as a harmonized source of information on provenance coupling in the context of exchange of provenance between organizations, which can be used when designing or choosing a provenance solution. This type of usage is exemplified in the extension of the Common Provenance Model as another step toward a provenance standard for life sciences

    Throwing therapy at the problem mental health and humanitarian intervention in Palabek refugee settlement, northern Uganda

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    This thesis examines the social, moral, and political lives of humanitarian mental health interventions in a refugee settlement in Uganda. It is written at the junction of two increasingly significant trends: the search for durable solutions for mass displacement, and the establishment of the field of global mental health as a key actor in the management of psychological suffering across the Global South. Through a scalar structure, it interrogates the intersections of psychological programmes with socio-economic conditions of chronic poverty and food insecurity, from policy discourses to refugees’ phenomenological experiences of suffering. In so doing, it critically examines the political significance and therapeutic potential of mental health interventions in extremely resource-poor contexts. Global mental health scholars and practitioners have developed approaches to refugee mental health based on three assumptions: that refugees’ emotional distress should be tackled by purely psychological interventions; that these programmes are clinically significant and politically neutral; and that the ‘contextual’ factors that should be considered in their implementation mostly concern ‘local’ interpretations of mental health and illness which diverge from Western biomedical frameworks. By ethnographically exploring experiences of psychological suffering among South Sudanese – and particularly Acholi – refugees in the settlement of Palabek, northern Uganda, this thesis disputes these contentions. Based on fourteen months of in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, this thesis puts forward a critique of global mental health and humanitarian interventions that takes seriously the role of poverty and power in shaping refugees’ afflictions. This thesis shows that forms of suffering experienced by refugees in Uganda are closely linked to the structural constraints of life in displacement. It shows how these interventions intersect with refugees’ phenomenological experiences of temporality and moral personhood. In so doing it argues that, when divorced from direct engagement with forms of structural injustice, current global mental health approaches actively ‘do harm’ by contributing to refugees’ psychological afflictions. Finally, this thesis proposes new directions for refugee and global mental health; it argues for a ‘temporal turn’ in refugee mental health which foregrounds refugees’ moral agency, and for the central role of livelihood interventions in generating therapeutic outcomes

    Cybersecurity: Past, Present and Future

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    The digital transformation has created a new digital space known as cyberspace. This new cyberspace has improved the workings of businesses, organizations, governments, society as a whole, and day to day life of an individual. With these improvements come new challenges, and one of the main challenges is security. The security of the new cyberspace is called cybersecurity. Cyberspace has created new technologies and environments such as cloud computing, smart devices, IoTs, and several others. To keep pace with these advancements in cyber technologies there is a need to expand research and develop new cybersecurity methods and tools to secure these domains and environments. This book is an effort to introduce the reader to the field of cybersecurity, highlight current issues and challenges, and provide future directions to mitigate or resolve them. The main specializations of cybersecurity covered in this book are software security, hardware security, the evolution of malware, biometrics, cyber intelligence, and cyber forensics. We must learn from the past, evolve our present and improve the future. Based on this objective, the book covers the past, present, and future of these main specializations of cybersecurity. The book also examines the upcoming areas of research in cyber intelligence, such as hybrid augmented and explainable artificial intelligence (AI). Human and AI collaboration can significantly increase the performance of a cybersecurity system. Interpreting and explaining machine learning models, i.e., explainable AI is an emerging field of study and has a lot of potentials to improve the role of AI in cybersecurity.Comment: Author's copy of the book published under ISBN: 978-620-4-74421-

    International consensus statement on allergy and rhinology: Allergic rhinitis – 2023

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    Background In the 5 years that have passed since the publication of the 2018 International Consensus Statement on Allergy and Rhinology: Allergic Rhinitis (ICAR-Allergic Rhinitis 2018), the literature has expanded substantially. The ICAR-Allergic Rhinitis 2023 update presents 144 individual topics on allergic rhinitis (AR), expanded by over 40 topics from the 2018 document. Originally presented topics from 2018 have also been reviewed and updated. The executive summary highlights key evidence-based findings and recommendation from the full document. Methods ICAR-Allergic Rhinitis 2023 employed established evidence-based review with recommendation (EBRR) methodology to individually evaluate each topic. Stepwise iterative peer review and consensus was performed for each topic. The final document was then collated and includes the results of this work. Results ICAR-Allergic Rhinitis 2023 includes 10 major content areas and 144 individual topics related to AR. For a substantial proportion of topics included, an aggregate grade of evidence is presented, which is determined by collating the levels of evidence for each available study identified in the literature. For topics in which a diagnostic or therapeutic intervention is considered, a recommendation summary is presented, which considers the aggregate grade of evidence, benefit, harm, and cost. Conclusion The ICAR-Allergic Rhinitis 2023 update provides a comprehensive evaluation of AR and the currently available evidence. It is this evidence that contributes to our current knowledge base and recommendations for patient evaluation and treatment

    The mad manifesto

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    The “mad manifesto” project is a multidisciplinary mediated investigation into the circumstances by which mad (mentally ill, neurodivergent) or disabled (disclosed, undisclosed) students faced far more precarious circumstances with inadequate support models while attending North American universities during the pandemic teaching era (2020-2023). Using a combination of “emergency remote teaching” archival materials such as national student datasets, universal design for learning (UDL) training models, digital classroom teaching experiments, university budgetary releases, educational technology coursewares, and lived experience expertise, this dissertation carefully retells the story of “accessibility” as it transpired in disabling classroom containers trapped within intentionally underprepared crisis superstructures. Using rhetorical models derived from critical disability studies, mad studies, social work practice, and health humanities, it then suggests radically collaborative UDL teaching practices that may better pre-empt the dynamic needs of dis/abled students whose needs remain direly underserviced. The manifesto leaves the reader with discrete calls to action that foster more critical performances of intersectionally inclusive UDL classrooms for North American mad students, which it calls “mad-positive” facilitation techniques: 1. Seek to untie the bond that regards the digital divide and access as synonyms. 2. UDL practice requires an environment shift that prioritizes change potential. 3. Advocate against the usage of UDL as a for-all keystone of accessibility. 4. Refuse or reduce the use of technologies whose primary mandate is dataveillance. 5. Remind students and allies that university space is a non-neutral affective container. 6. Operationalize the tracking of student suicides on your home campus. 7. Seek out physical & affectual ways that your campus is harming social capital potential. 8. Revise policies and practices that are ability-adjacent imaginings of access. 9. Eliminate sanist and neuroscientific languaging from how you speak about students. 10. Vigilantly interrogate how “normal” and “belong” are socially constructed. 11. Treat lived experience expertise as a gift, not a resource to mine and to spend. 12. Create non-psychiatric routes of receiving accommodation requests in your classroom. 13. Seek out uncomfortable stories of mad exclusion and consider carceral logic’s role in it. 14. Center madness in inclusive methodologies designed to explicitly resist carceral logics. 15. Create counteraffectual classrooms that anticipate and interrupt kairotic spatial power. 16. Strive to refuse comfort and immediate intelligibility as mandatory classroom presences. 17. Create pathways that empower cozy space understandings of classroom practice. 18. Vector students wherever possible as dynamic ability constellations in assessment

    Awareness, detection and management of new and emerging tree pests and pathogens in Europe: stakeholders' perspectives

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    Emerging and invasive tree pests and pathogens in Europe are increasing in number and range, having impacts on biodiversity, forest services, ecosystems and human well-being. Stakeholders involved in tree and forest management contribute to the detection and management of new and emerging tree pests and pathogens (PnPs). We surveyed different groups of stakeholders in European countries. The stakeholders were mainly researchers, tree health surveyors and forest managers, as well as forest owners, nurseries, policy-makers, advisors, forestry authorities, NGOs and civil society. We investigated which tools they used to detect and manage PnPs, surveyed their current PnP awareness and knowledge and collated the new and emerging PnP species of concern to them. The 237 respondents were based in 15 European coun-tries, with the majority from the United Kingdom, France and the Czech Republic. There was a strong participation of respondents with a work focus on research and surveying, whereas timber traders and plant importers were less represented. Respondents were surveyed on 18 new, emerging PnPs in Europe and listed an additional 37 pest species and 21 pathogen species as potential future threats. We found that species on EPPO's list of 'priority pests' were better known than those not listed.Stakeholders working in urban environments were more aware of PnPs compared to those working in rural areas. Stakeholders' awareness of PnPs was not related to the number of new, emerging PnP species present in a country. Stakeholders want access to more detection and management tools, including long-term citizen -sci-ence monitoring, maps showing spread and range of new PnPs, pest identification smartphone apps, hand-held detection devices, drone monitoring and eDNA metabarcoding. To help facilitate better forest health across Europe, they called for mixed forest development, reduced nursery stock movement, biosecurity and data sharing amongst organisations. These results indicate that stakeholder knowledge of a few key PnP may be good, but given that the large diversity of threats is so large and future risks unknown, we conclude that multiple and varied methods for generic detection, mitigation and management methods, many in devel-opment, are needed in the hands of stakeholders surveying and managing trees and woodlands in Europe

    International consensus statement on allergy and rhinology: Allergic rhinitis – 2023

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    Background: In the 5 years that have passed since the publication of the 2018 International Consensus Statement on Allergy and Rhinology: Allergic Rhinitis (ICAR-Allergic Rhinitis 2018), the literature has expanded substantially. The ICAR-Allergic Rhinitis 2023 update presents 144 individual topics on allergic rhinitis (AR), expanded by over 40 topics from the 2018 document. Originally presented topics from 2018 have also been reviewed and updated. The executive summary highlights key evidence-based findings and recommendation from the full document. Methods: ICAR-Allergic Rhinitis 2023 employed established evidence-based review with recommendation (EBRR) methodology to individually evaluate each topic. Stepwise iterative peer review and consensus was performed for each topic. The final document was then collated and includes the results of this work. Results: ICAR-Allergic Rhinitis 2023 includes 10 major content areas and 144 individual topics related to AR. For a substantial proportion of topics included, an aggregate grade of evidence is presented, which is determined by collating the levels of evidence for each available study identified in the literature. For topics in which a diagnostic or therapeutic intervention is considered, a recommendation summary is presented, which considers the aggregate grade of evidence, benefit, harm, and cost. Conclusion: The ICAR-Allergic Rhinitis 2023 update provides a comprehensive evaluation of AR and the currently available evidence. It is this evidence that contributes to our current knowledge base and recommendations for patient evaluation and treatment

    Disclosure of Agency Legal Materials

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    This proposed recommendation identifies statutory reforms that, if enacted by Congress, would provide clear standards as to what legal materials agencies must publish and where they must publish them (whether in the Federal Register, on their websites, or elsewhere). The amendments would also account for technological developments and correct certain statutory ambiguities and drafting errors. The objective of these amendments would be to ensure that agencies provide ready public access to important legal materials in the most efficient way possible. Professor Bernard W. Bell (Rutgers Law School), Professor Cary Coglianese (University of Pennsylvania Law School), Professor Michael Eric Herz (Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law), Professor Margaret Kwoka (Ohio State University Moritz College of Law), and Professor Orly Lobel (University of San Diego School of Law) are serving as the consultants for this project. Professor Kwoka is serving as the lead consultant. An Ad Hoc Committee, co-chaired by Public Member Aaron Nielson and Government Member Roxanne Rothschild, considered this project in spring 2023
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