468 research outputs found
Conversational Sensing
Recent developments in sensing technologies, mobile devices and context-aware
user interfaces have made it possible to represent information fusion and
situational awareness as a conversational process among actors - human and
machine agents - at or near the tactical edges of a network. Motivated by use
cases in the domain of security, policing and emergency response, this paper
presents an approach to information collection, fusion and sense-making based
on the use of natural language (NL) and controlled natural language (CNL) to
support richer forms of human-machine interaction. The approach uses a
conversational protocol to facilitate a flow of collaborative messages from NL
to CNL and back again in support of interactions such as: turning eyewitness
reports from human observers into actionable information (from both trained and
untrained sources); fusing information from humans and physical sensors (with
associated quality metadata); and assisting human analysts to make the best use
of available sensing assets in an area of interest (governed by management and
security policies). CNL is used as a common formal knowledge representation for
both machine and human agents to support reasoning, semantic information fusion
and generation of rationale for inferences, in ways that remain transparent to
human users. Examples are provided of various alternative styles for user
feedback, including NL, CNL and graphical feedback. A pilot experiment with
human subjects shows that a prototype conversational agent is able to gather
usable CNL information from untrained human subjects
Direct Spectrophotometric Determination of Cefuroxime Axetil in Pure Form and Pharmaceutical Dosage Forms.
A simple, direct and cost-effective spectrophotometric method for determination of cefuroxime axetil (CRXA) in pure and tablet dosage forms was applied. This method is based on formation of ion-pair complex ([CRXA]:[BTB]) between CRXA and bromothymol blue (BTB) in chloroform. Beerās law in the optimum experimental conditions using [CRXA]:[BTB] complex is valid within a concentration range of 2.00-50.00 ?M (1.021ā25.524 ?g.mL-1). The developed method is applied for the determination of CRXA in pure and its commercial tablets without any interference from excipients with average assay of 96.8 to 101.6% and the results are in good agreement with those obtained by the HPLC reference method. Associated drugs (sulbactam and linesolid) with cefuroxime axetil are considered to be interfere, while metronidazole can be considered as non-interfere
Is It Ethical for Patients with Renal Disease to Purchase Kidneys from the World's Poor?
Background to the debate: In many countries, the number of patients waiting for a kidney transplant is increasing. But there is a widespread and serious shortage of kidneys for transplantation, a shortage that can lead to suffering and death. One approach to tackling the shortage is for a patient with renal disease to buy a kidney from a living donor, who is often in a developing country, a sale that couldāin theory at leastāhelp to lift the donor out of poverty. Such kidney sales are almost universally illegal. Proponents of kidney sales argue that since the practice is widespread, it would be safer to formally regulate it, and that society should respect people's autonomous control over their bodies. Critics express concern about the potential for exploitation and coercion of the poor, and about the psychological and physical after-effects on the donors of this illegal kidney trade
A cultural exploration of the social media manipulators
The widespread use of Internet social media sites for the production and dissemination of propaganda continues to grow and gather attention. Social media sites spread information faster and wider than those institutions and methods historically limited to state-affiliated organizations. There are several characteristics that are unique to virtual space and make the production and dissemination of propaganda different; they include the Internetās global reach, the recipientās apparent trust placed in information source as well as the information sources, and the low cost of participation. Thus, the use of social media as a method to spread misleading information exploits trust relationships between the reader and the source. Although propaganda is a weapon with a long history in war, in the 21st century, the delivery and distribution of propaganda through the trusted channel of social media is markedly different than what was historically observed. We investigated the relationships among state-affiliated actors who use social media to produce and distribute propaganda along with their national cultural values. Prior research inferred a link between culture and social media usage (Hofstede et al., 2010; Sample & Karamanian 2014). Specifically, Hofstede et al. (2010) contended that cultures that are more masculine use the Internet for information seeking, whereas more feminine-oriented cultures use social media sites for sharing information, seeking to build better ātrustingā relationships. We sought to explore whether masculine countries would leverage the trust relationships that are present with social media users to further the reach of state-affiliated propaganda. We built upon Bradshaw & Howardās (2017) study on propaganda purveyors, which examined preferred social media deployment techniques across 29 different countries. Using previously published methods, we examined associations with culture using Hofestedeās scale. Since masculine countries have previously been associated with information-seeking behaviors, we sought to explore the potential that more masculine cultural values are associated with greater information-shaping and -distributing behaviors compared with more feminine cultural values. The results showed a strong difference in distributions, countries that deployed fake news via social media tended to have more masculine cultural values. Moderate differences were observed in other cultural values, purveyors of social media propaganda exhibited more authoritarianism and uncertainty avoidance. These findings suggest that specific cultural values associate with the distrubtion of fake news, indicating that culturally aware responses may be more effective when responding to these events
Forensic Science Journals - Where do we stand?
Scientific journals play a vital role in enhancing the capabilities of a society to develop successfully They are at the heart of recent research findings, new discoveries and via a peer-reviewing and publishing process, vital research information is shared among the scientific community. The strong and positive role of scientific journals is well recognized across the globe in improving educational standards, giving the new direction to scientific research, discovering new remedies for diseases, revolutionizing industries, developing the latest technologies, and boosting the economic progress of the society
Malware in the Future? Forecasting of Analyst Detection of Cyber Events
There have been extensive efforts in government, academia, and industry to
anticipate, forecast, and mitigate cyber attacks. A common approach is
time-series forecasting of cyber attacks based on data from network telescopes,
honeypots, and automated intrusion detection/prevention systems. This research
has uncovered key insights such as systematicity in cyber attacks. Here, we
propose an alternate perspective of this problem by performing forecasting of
attacks that are analyst-detected and -verified occurrences of malware. We call
these instances of malware cyber event data. Specifically, our dataset was
analyst-detected incidents from a large operational Computer Security Service
Provider (CSSP) for the U.S. Department of Defense, which rarely relies only on
automated systems. Our data set consists of weekly counts of cyber events over
approximately seven years. Since all cyber events were validated by analysts,
our dataset is unlikely to have false positives which are often endemic in
other sources of data. Further, the higher-quality data could be used for a
number for resource allocation, estimation of security resources, and the
development of effective risk-management strategies. We used a Bayesian State
Space Model for forecasting and found that events one week ahead could be
predicted. To quantify bursts, we used a Markov model. Our findings of
systematicity in analyst-detected cyber attacks are consistent with previous
work using other sources. The advanced information provided by a forecast may
help with threat awareness by providing a probable value and range for future
cyber events one week ahead. Other potential applications for cyber event
forecasting include proactive allocation of resources and capabilities for
cyber defense (e.g., analyst staffing and sensor configuration) in CSSPs.
Enhanced threat awareness may improve cybersecurity.Comment: Revised version resubmitted to journa
What's in a name? Cultural observations on nationally named hacking groups
Culture's role in cognition has long been established, but understanding national culture's role in cyber events currently remains an understudied research area. Michael Minkov observed that culture influences thought; even when people think they are in control, cultural biases are actually controlling their thoughts. Cultural values endure, and because they do, these cultural values leave artifacts can be revealed in thought patterns. This philosophy serves as a foundation for further work in progress on name choices by hackers. In this study, we examined 10 years' worth of Zone-H archives where hacker names that identified with national identities were analysed using Hofstede's cultural framework to determine whether culture may play a role in hacker name and name choices. The findings revealed cultural preferences in several of the six cultural dimensions. In addition, trending the results showed significant findings in two cultural dimensions: (1) masculinity versus femininity and (2) uncertainty avoidance. The results suggest that assumptions about the anonymous nature of the Internet influencing behaviours may not be universally applicable, and that culture should also be considered when evaluating cyber actor behaviours
A cultural exploration of social media manipulators
Internet social media sites enable the rapid and widespread production and dissemi- nation of propaganda. Although propaganda has a long history in warfare, the spreading of propaganda via social media is markedly different from past distribution methods. The authors investigated the relationships between state-affiliated actors who use social media to produce and distribute propaganda and their national cultural values. The results showed that countries that deployed fake news via social media tended to have more masculine cultural values. These findings suggest that specific cultural values are associated with fake news distribution, which may indicate that culturally aware responses may be more effective in responding to propaganda
Using AI Uncertainty Quantification to Improve Human Decision-Making
AI Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) has the potential to improve human
decision-making beyond AI predictions alone by providing additional useful
probabilistic information to users. The majority of past research on AI and
human decision-making has concentrated on model explainability and
interpretability. We implemented instance-based UQ for three real datasets. To
achieve this, we trained different AI models for classification for each
dataset, and used random samples generated around the neighborhood of the given
instance to create confidence intervals for UQ. The computed UQ was calibrated
using a strictly proper scoring rule as a form of quality assurance for UQ. We
then conducted two preregistered online behavioral experiments that compared
objective human decision-making performance under different AI information
conditions, including UQ. In Experiment 1, we compared decision-making for no
AI (control), AI prediction alone, and AI prediction with a visualization of
UQ. We found UQ significantly improved decision-making beyond the other two
conditions. In Experiment 2, we focused on comparing different representations
of UQ information: Point vs. distribution of uncertainty and visualization type
(needle vs. dotplot). We did not find meaningful differences in decision-making
performance among these different representations of UQ. Overall, our results
indicate that human decision-making can be improved by providing UQ information
along with AI predictions, and that this benefit generalizes across a variety
of representations of UQ.Comment: 10 pages and 7 figure
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