Ensuring Cyber-Security in Smart Railway Surveillance with SHIELD

Modern railways feature increasingly complex embedded computing systems for surveillance, that are moving towards fully wireless smart-sensors. Those systems are aimed at monitoring system status from a physical-security viewpoint, in order to detect intrusions and other environmental anomalies. However, the same systems used for physical-security surveillance are vulnerable to cyber-security threats, since they feature distributed hardware and software architectures often interconnected by ‘open networks’, like wireless channels and the Internet. In this paper, we show how the integrated approach to Security, Privacy and Dependability (SPD) in embedded systems provided by the SHIELD framework (developed within the EU funded pSHIELD and nSHIELD research projects) can be applied to railway surveillance systems in order to measure and improve their SPD level. SHIELD implements a layered architecture (node, network, middleware and overlay) and orchestrates SPD mechanisms based on ontology models, appropriate metrics and composability. The results of prototypical application to a real-world demonstrator show the effectiveness of SHIELD and justify its practical applicability in industrial settings

The Ontology of Reference: Studies in Logic and Phenomenology

Abstract: We propose a dichotomy between object-entities and meaning-entities. The former are entities such as molecules, cells, organisms, organizations, numbers, shapes, and so forth. The latter are entities such as concepts, propositions, and theories belonging to the realm of logic. Frege distinguished analogously between a ‘realm of reference’ and a ‘realm of sense’, which he presented in some passages as mutually exclusive. This however contradicts his assumption elsewhere that every entity is a referent (even Fregean senses can be referred to by means of suitably constructed expressions). We apply the meaning/object dichotomy to mathematical and fictional entities, and develop a view of mathematical and other abstract objects as the results of certain types of demarcation – as for example the North Sea is the result of demarcations built into naval charts. Such demarcations reflect demarcatory acts, which presuppose complex cognitive and social structures enabling the creation of maps, of theories (of mathematics, of natural science), and of novels

Towards an ontology of common sense

Philosophers from Plotinus to Paul Churchland have yielded to the temptation to embrace doctrines which contradict the core beliefs of common sense. Philosophical realists have on the other hand sought to counter this temptation and to vindicate those core beliefs. The remarks which follow are to be understood as a further twist of the wheel in this never-ending battle. They pertain to the core beliefs of common sense concerning the external reality that is given in everyday experience -the beliefs of folk physics, as we might call them. Just as critics of Churchland et al. have argued that the folk-psychological ontology of beliefs, desires, etc. yields the best explanation we can have of the order of cognitive phenomena conceived from the perspective of first-person experience, so we shall argue that (1) the commonsensical ontology of folk physics yields the best explanation we can have of our externally directed cognitive experience and that (2) an ontology of mesoscopic things, events and processes must play a role, in particular, in our best scientific theory of human action

Creolization and the collective unconscious: locating the originality of art in Wilson Harris' Jonestown, The Mask of the Beggar and The Ghost of Memory

Alongside the essays and fiction of Edouard Glissant, Wilson Harris's writings stand as one of the most important contributions to Caribbean creolization theory. Drawing from the philosophical projects of both authors, this essay argues that while creolization has typically been cast as a process of cultural, linguistic, and racial mixing akin to hybridity, it should, rather, be understood as providing a paradigm for the shifting structural relations necessary for the generation of genuinely original forms. As such, it has great significance for imaginative and literary production, and provides a framework for my readings of Harris's novels, Jonestown (1996), The Mask of the Beggar (2003), and The Ghost of Memory (2006), which explore the creative potential of creolization as a dialogue between consciousness and, what Jung and Harris refer to as, the collective unconsciousness. This essay brings into focus Harris's use of Jungian-inspired concepts, such as archetypes and the collective unconscious, in a development of creolization theory as a imaginative response to historical trauma and the generation of originality in art

Creolization and the collective unconscious : Locating the originality of art in Wilson Harris' Jonestown, The Mask of the Beggar and The Ghost of Memory

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‘A Part’ of the World: Deleuze and the Logic of Creation

Is there a particular danger in following Deleuze's philosophy to its end result? According to Peter Hallward, Deleuze's philosophy has some rather severe conclusions. Deleuze has been portrayed by him as a theological and spiritual thinker of life. Hallward seeks to challenge the accepted view of Deleuze, showing that these accepted norms in Deleuzian scholarship should be challenged and that, initially, Deleuze calls for the evacuation of political action in order to remain firm in the realm of pure contemplation. This article intends to investigate and defend Deleuze's philosophy against the critical and theological accounts portrayed by Hallward, arguing that Deleuze's philosophy is not only creative and vital but also highly revolutionary and ‘a part’ of the given world. It then goes on to examine Hallward's distortion of the actual/virtual distinction in Deleuze because Hallward is not able to come to grips with the concept of life in Deleuze's philosophy. We live in an intensive and dynamic world and the main points of Deleuze's philosophy concern the transformation of the world. Deleuze is not seeking to escape the world, but rather to deal with inventive and creative methods to transform society

Reconsidering the substance of digital video from a Sadrian perspective

The digitisation process is debated as video’s deficiency, where pixels are conceived as isolated fragments without an existential link to the source image. This article explores the ontology of digital-video through Mulla Sadrā’s (1571–1641) theory of Substantial Motion. Sadrā, a Persian-Islamic existentialist, proposed that substance (material/visible and immaterial/invisible) undergoes an internal change. Through imperceptible internal change, intimate connections exist between the smallest parts and the One, visible and invisible. We can think of these dynamic connections in terms of pixels and frames. From the view of Sadrā’s substance, pixels are explored as open to change. The apparent weaknesses of digital materiality become potentials towards understanding its existence in time

Increasing productivity of knowledge workers by ontological training

Proceedings of the International Conference «Business Sustainability BS 2008», Minho, Portugal, 2008. pp. 158-163knowledge-driven organizations, productivity of knowledge workers, learning, thinking, analyst training,