2,320 research outputs found

    HIV and AIDS in Greater Manchester: service delivery in times of devolution, neoliberalism and austerity

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    This research examines the impact of devolution, neoliberalism and austerity on the governance and delivery of specialist HIV and AIDS physical and mental health services for service users across the Manchester City Region. This research further documents the decline of specialist HIV and AIDS healthcare, including mental health services, over the last decade and details the extent of these changes on people living with HIV and AIDS across the Manchester City Region. Focusing on the interplay of neoliberal policy interventions with the structural changes implied in devolution, the research locates the participants' accounts within the broader analysis of cultural, political and economic developments in health policy and (urban) governance. This thesis draws on a queer-feminist methodology and a series of semi-structured interviews with service users of HIV and AIDS healthcare provisions; organisations specialising in HIV and AIDS support, advice and advocacy services to improve health outcomes; healthcare staff specialising in HIV and AIDS healthcare and those who advocate for improved treatments; academics who work in the field of HIV studies; and activists who are campaigning for improved HIV and AIDS services. The interview data was analysed to show how funding changes have affected the delivery of HIV and AIDS healthcare services. Secondary data sources, such as public health data, were also utilised to address gaps within the interview data. The interview data shows that the shift to cheaper generalist services results in poorer service provision because healthcare staff may not understand the full range of needs of service users with HIV and AIDS. Moreover, the study participants pointed to the persistence of discrimination in healthcare settings, leading to poorer mental health. As a result, service users may stop taking their antiretroviral treatments. Historically, HIV has been heavily stigmatised, and this is a theme which arose in the data. This study focuses on specific campaigns, such as “U=U” and “You Can’t Pass It On,” which attempt to combat HIV-associated stigma and discrimination by creating awareness. Still, the efforts of these campaigns have only tended to reach those who know about HIV. In response, there has been some work in Manchester to educate healthcare professionals, but this is limited and still in its infancy. This study further argues that there is an urgent need for increased investment in specialist HIV and AIDS healthcare services. There needs to be a refocus on providing services across the Manchester City Region. Furthermore, the research data analysis suggests that even more funding may be required to achieve the goal of advanced specialist training among health professionals to secure adequate healthcare provisions for people living with HIV and AIDS within the Greater Manchester City Region

    Lovers, not fighters : docility influences reproductive fitness, but not survival, in male Cape ground squirrels, Xerus inauris

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    Over their lifetime, individuals may use different behavioural strategies to maximize their fitness. Some behavioural traits may be consistent among individuals over time (i.e., ‘personality’ traits) resulting in an individual behavioural phenotype with different associated costs and benefits. Understanding how behavioural traits are linked to lifetime fitness requires tracking individuals over their lifetime. Here, we leverage a long-term study on a multi-year living species (maximum lifespan ~ 10 years) to examine how docility (an individual’s reaction to trapping and handling) may contribute to how males are able to maximize their lifetime fitness. Cape ground squirrels are burrowing mammals that live in social groups, and although males lack physical aggression and territoriality, they vary in docility. Males face high predation risk and high reproductive competition and employ either of two reproductive tactics (‘natal’ or ‘band’) which are not associated with different docility personalities. We found that although more docile individuals sired more offspring on an annual basis, docility did not affect an individual’s long-term (lifetime) reproductive output. Survival was not associated with docility or body condition, but annual survival was influenced by rainfall. Our findings suggest that although docility may represent a behavioural strategy to maximize fitness by possibly playing a role in female-male associations or female mate-choice, variations in docility within our study population is likely maintained by other environmental drivers. However, individual variations in behaviours may still contribute as part of the ‘tool kit’ individuals use to maximize their lifetime fitness

    Authentication enhancement in command and control networks: (a study in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks)

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    Intelligent transportation systems contribute to improved traffic safety by facilitating real time communication between vehicles. By using wireless channels for communication, vehicular networks are susceptible to a wide range of attacks, such as impersonation, modification, and replay. In this context, securing data exchange between intercommunicating terminals, e.g., vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication, constitutes a technological challenge that needs to be addressed. Hence, message authentication is crucial to safeguard vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) from malicious attacks. The current state-of-the-art for authentication in VANETs relies on conventional cryptographic primitives, introducing significant computation and communication overheads. In this challenging scenario, physical (PHY)-layer authentication has gained popularity, which involves leveraging the inherent characteristics of wireless channels and the hardware imperfections to discriminate between wireless devices. However, PHY-layerbased authentication cannot be an alternative to crypto-based methods as the initial legitimacy detection must be conducted using cryptographic methods to extract the communicating terminal secret features. Nevertheless, it can be a promising complementary solution for the reauthentication problem in VANETs, introducing what is known as “cross-layer authentication.” This thesis focuses on designing efficient cross-layer authentication schemes for VANETs, reducing the communication and computation overheads associated with transmitting and verifying a crypto-based signature for each transmission. The following provides an overview of the proposed methodologies employed in various contributions presented in this thesis. 1. The first cross-layer authentication scheme: A four-step process represents this approach: initial crypto-based authentication, shared key extraction, re-authentication via a PHY challenge-response algorithm, and adaptive adjustments based on channel conditions. Simulation results validate its efficacy, especially in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) scenarios while proving its resilience against active and passive attacks. 2. The second cross-layer authentication scheme: Leveraging the spatially and temporally correlated wireless channel features, this scheme extracts high entropy shared keys that can be used to create dynamic PHY-layer signatures for authentication. A 3-Dimensional (3D) scattering Doppler emulator is designed to investigate the scheme’s performance at different speeds of a moving vehicle and SNRs. Theoretical and hardware implementation analyses prove the scheme’s capability to support high detection probability for an acceptable false alarm value ≤ 0.1 at SNR ≥ 0 dB and speed ≤ 45 m/s. 3. The third proposal: Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) integration for improved authentication: Focusing on enhancing PHY-layer re-authentication, this proposal explores integrating RIS technology to improve SNR directed at designated vehicles. Theoretical analysis and practical implementation of the proposed scheme are conducted using a 1-bit RIS, consisting of 64 × 64 reflective units. Experimental results show a significant improvement in the Pd, increasing from 0.82 to 0.96 at SNR = − 6 dB for multicarrier communications. 4. The fourth proposal: RIS-enhanced vehicular communication security: Tailored for challenging SNR in non-line-of-sight (NLoS) scenarios, this proposal optimises key extraction and defends against denial-of-service (DoS) attacks through selective signal strengthening. Hardware implementation studies prove its effectiveness, showcasing improved key extraction performance and resilience against potential threats. 5. The fifth cross-layer authentication scheme: Integrating PKI-based initial legitimacy detection and blockchain-based reconciliation techniques, this scheme ensures secure data exchange. Rigorous security analyses and performance evaluations using network simulators and computation metrics showcase its effectiveness, ensuring its resistance against common attacks and time efficiency in message verification. 6. The final proposal: Group key distribution: Employing smart contract-based blockchain technology alongside PKI-based authentication, this proposal distributes group session keys securely. Its lightweight symmetric key cryptography-based method maintains privacy in VANETs, validated via Ethereum’s main network (MainNet) and comprehensive computation and communication evaluations. The analysis shows that the proposed methods yield a noteworthy reduction, approximately ranging from 70% to 99%, in both computation and communication overheads, as compared to the conventional approaches. This reduction pertains to the verification and transmission of 1000 messages in total

    Multidisciplinary perspectives on Artificial Intelligence and the law

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    This open access book presents an interdisciplinary, multi-authored, edited collection of chapters on Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) and the Law. AI technology has come to play a central role in the modern data economy. Through a combination of increased computing power, the growing availability of data and the advancement of algorithms, AI has now become an umbrella term for some of the most transformational technological breakthroughs of this age. The importance of AI stems from both the opportunities that it offers and the challenges that it entails. While AI applications hold the promise of economic growth and efficiency gains, they also create significant risks and uncertainty. The potential and perils of AI have thus come to dominate modern discussions of technology and ethics – and although AI was initially allowed to largely develop without guidelines or rules, few would deny that the law is set to play a fundamental role in shaping the future of AI. As the debate over AI is far from over, the need for rigorous analysis has never been greater. This book thus brings together contributors from different fields and backgrounds to explore how the law might provide answers to some of the most pressing questions raised by AI. An outcome of the Católica Research Centre for the Future of Law and its interdisciplinary working group on Law and Artificial Intelligence, it includes contributions by leading scholars in the fields of technology, ethics and the law.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volume

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    LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volum

    Effects of municipal smoke-free ordinances on secondhand smoke exposure in the Republic of Korea

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    ObjectiveTo reduce premature deaths due to secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure among non-smokers, the Republic of Korea (ROK) adopted changes to the National Health Promotion Act, which allowed local governments to enact municipal ordinances to strengthen their authority to designate smoke-free areas and levy penalty fines. In this study, we examined national trends in SHS exposure after the introduction of these municipal ordinances at the city level in 2010.MethodsWe used interrupted time series analysis to assess whether the trends of SHS exposure in the workplace and at home, and the primary cigarette smoking rate changed following the policy adjustment in the national legislation in ROK. Population-standardized data for selected variables were retrieved from a nationally representative survey dataset and used to study the policy action’s effectiveness.ResultsFollowing the change in the legislation, SHS exposure in the workplace reversed course from an increasing (18% per year) trend prior to the introduction of these smoke-free ordinances to a decreasing (−10% per year) trend after adoption and enforcement of these laws (β2 = 0.18, p-value = 0.07; β3 = −0.10, p-value = 0.02). SHS exposure at home (β2 = 0.10, p-value = 0.09; β3 = −0.03, p-value = 0.14) and the primary cigarette smoking rate (β2 = 0.03, p-value = 0.10; β3 = 0.008, p-value = 0.15) showed no significant changes in the sampled period. Although analyses stratified by sex showed that the allowance of municipal ordinances resulted in reduced SHS exposure in the workplace for both males and females, they did not affect the primary cigarette smoking rate as much, especially among females.ConclusionStrengthening the role of local governments by giving them the authority to enact and enforce penalties on SHS exposure violation helped ROK to reduce SHS exposure in the workplace. However, smoking behaviors and related activities seemed to shift to less restrictive areas such as on the streets and in apartment hallways, negating some of the effects due to these ordinances. Future studies should investigate how smoke-free policies beyond public places can further reduce the SHS exposure in ROK

    Secure storage systems for untrusted cloud environments

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    The cloud has become established for applications that need to be scalable and highly available. However, moving data to data centers owned and operated by a third party, i.e., the cloud provider, raises security concerns because a cloud provider could easily access and manipulate the data or program flow, preventing the cloud from being used for certain applications, like medical or financial. Hardware vendors are addressing these concerns by developing Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) that make the CPU state and parts of memory inaccessible from the host software. While TEEs protect the current execution state, they do not provide security guarantees for data which does not fit nor reside in the protected memory area, like network and persistent storage. In this work, we aim to address TEEs’ limitations in three different ways, first we provide the trust of TEEs to persistent storage, second we extend the trust to multiple nodes in a network, and third we propose a compiler-based solution for accessing heterogeneous memory regions. More specifically, • SPEICHER extends the trust provided by TEEs to persistent storage. SPEICHER implements a key-value interface. Its design is based on LSM data structures, but extends them to provide confidentiality, integrity, and freshness for the stored data. Thus, SPEICHER can prove to the client that the data has not been tampered with by an attacker. • AVOCADO is a distributed in-memory key-value store (KVS) that extends the trust that TEEs provide across the network to multiple nodes, allowing KVSs to scale beyond the boundaries of a single node. On each node, AVOCADO carefully divides data between trusted memory and untrusted host memory, to maximize the amount of data that can be stored on each node. AVOCADO leverages the fact that we can model network attacks as crash-faults to trust other nodes with a hardened ABD replication protocol. • TOAST is based on the observation that modern high-performance systems often use several different heterogeneous memory regions that are not easily distinguishable by the programmer. The number of regions is increased by the fact that TEEs divide memory into trusted and untrusted regions. TOAST is a compiler-based approach to unify access to different heterogeneous memory regions and provides programmability and portability. TOAST uses a load/store interface to abstract most library interfaces for different memory regions

    2023-2024 Catalog

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    The 2023-2024 Governors State University Undergraduate and Graduate Catalog is a comprehensive listing of current information regarding:Degree RequirementsCourse OfferingsUndergraduate and Graduate Rules and Regulation

    The Individual And Their World

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