What Next? The Quest to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Defenders in a Digital World

Around the world, governments and non-state actors are using sophisticated techniques to monitor, threaten, and harass human rights defenders (HRDs) and journalists. The growing use of digital technology has empowered activists to rally citizens around common causes and hold governments accountable, but it has also opened new doors for surveillance and harassment of activists and citizens' activities online. On November 14 -- 15, 2013, Freedom House, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), held a global conference in Mexico City entitled "What Next? The Quest to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Defenders in a Digital World," which brought together over 60 policymakers, donors, and activists to explore the full range of emerging threats and best strategies to overcome them; take an honest look at what is and is not working; and chart a path forward for more proactive and realistic solutions to build the resilience, sustainability, and relevance of HRDs and their movements. The conference sought to answer "what's next?" by identifying opportunities that can be exploited to build up frontline defenders and their ability to uphold human rights principles fearlessly and strategically at home and abroad

Building leadership capacity and future leaders in operational research in low-income countries: why and how?

Very limited operational research (OR) emerges from programme settings in low-income countries where the greatest burden of disease lies. The price paid for this void includes a lack of understanding of how health systems are actually functioning, not knowing what works and what does not, and an inability to propose adapted and innovative solutions to programme problems. We use the National Tuberculosis Control Programme as an example to advocate for strong programme-level leadership to steer OR and build viable relationships between programme managers, researchers and policy makers. We highlight the need to create a stimulating environment for conducting OR and identify some of the main practical challenges and enabling factors at programme level. We focus on the important role of an OR focal point within programmes and practical approaches to training that can deliver timely and quantifiable outputs. Finally, we emphasise the need to measure successful OR leadership development at programme level and we propose parameters by which this can be assessed. This paper 1) provides reasons why programmes should take the lead in coordinating and directing OR, 2) identifies the practical challenges and enabling factors for implementing, managing and sustaining OR and 3) proposes parameters for measuring successful leadership capacity development in OR

Artificial Intelligence approaches in Cyber Security

As we all know that, the data that is been generated every second is increasing exponentially, as this information stored or received in any form is directly or indirectly is through Internet that means the data has to be travelled over a network for its completion of task, due to this the security for proper transmission of data plays a vital role in Cyber Security. The speed of processes and the amount of data to be used in defending the cyber space is cannot be handled by humans without considerable automations. However, it is difficult to develop software with conventional fixed algorithms for effectively defending against the dynamically evolving malicious attacks over the network. This situation can be handled by applying method of Artificial Intelligence that provides flexibility and learning capabilities of a network which later helps us in defending the attacks and as well as tracing down the culprits residing behind the terminology. This topic mainly emphasis on how well a packet is transferred from source to destination with proper security so that the end-user acquires the correct data as per his requirements

Securing access to lower-cost talent globally: The dynamics of active embedding and field structuration

This article examines how multinational corporations shape institutional conditions in emerging economies to secure access to high-skilled, yet lower-cost science and engineering talent. Two in-depth case studies of engineering offshoring projects of German automotive suppliers in Romania and China illustrate how multinational corporations engage in ‘active embedding’ by aligning local institutional conditions with global offshoring strategies and operational needs. Multinational corporations thereby contribute to the structuration of field relations and practices of sourcing knowledge-intensive work from globally dispersed locations. The findings stress the importance of institutional processes across geographic boundaries that regulate and are shaped by multinational corporation activities

NetCluster: a Clustering-Based Framework for Internet Tomography

Abstract — In this paper, Internet data collected via passive measurement are analyzed to obtain localization information on nodes by clustering (i.e., grouping together) nodes that exhibit similar network path properties. Since traditional clustering algorithms fail to correctly identify clusters of homogeneous nodes, we propose a novel framework, named “NetCluster”, suited to analyze Internet measurement datasets. We show that the proposed framework correctly analyzes synthetically generated traces. Finally, we apply it to real traces collected at the access link of our campus LAN and discuss the network characteristics as seen at the vantage point. I. INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATIONS The Internet is a complex distributed system which continues to grow and evolve. The unregulated and heterogeneous structure of the current Internet makes it challenging to obtai

The Dynamics of Active Embedding and Field Structuration

This article examines how multinational corporations (MNCs) shape institutional conditions in emerging economies to secure access to high- skilled, yet lower-cost science and engineering talent. Based on two in-depth case studies of engineering offshoring projects of German automotive suppliers in Romania and China we analyze how MNCs engage in ‘active embedding’ by aligning local institutional conditions with global offshoring strategies and operational needs. MNCs thereby contribute to the structuration of field relations and practices of sourcing knowledge-intensive work from globally dispersed locations. Our findings stress the importance of institutional processes across geographic boundaries that regulate and get shaped by MNC activities