Security in Cyber Physical Systems

The need for protecting our nation\u27s critical infrastructures is a pressing one that is undergoing much research. In the current approach for protecting our national power grid, assumptions are made that suggest that traditional approaches to cyber security may be applied without further analysis. However, systems involving information resources as well as physical resources present additional complexity in their protection needs. This research takes formal analysis of the proposed security architecture of a Cooperating Flexible Alternating Current Transmission System Device (CFO) and applies results of lab experiments to indicate weaknesses in the suggested architecture

Intellectual Property Infringement: The Question of Advertising Injury

Over the past several decades, business entities have increasingly relied on Commercial General Liability insurance for coverage and protection against the significant costs of defending against intellectual property lawsuits. However, despite this increased usage, the coverage provided for intellectual property infringement claims by Commercial General Liability insurance policies remains uncertain and indeterminate. This frustrating conclusion, reached by numerous courts, legal scholars and insurance practitioners, captures the current state of the law as it applies to coverage for intellectual property infringement claims. Consequently, many business entities seeking to apply their insurance policies to defend against intellectual property claims may face uncertainty or, worse, non-coverage. This note ultimately concludes that Commercial General Liability policies should be adapted to address the special needs of intellectual property infringement claims in order to avoid continued confusion and unnecessarily expensive litigation. This note further concludes also that these adaptations should be made with an eye towards the importance of maintaining the valuable quality of standardization that Commercial General Liability policies provide

Social assistance performance in Central and Eastern Europe: A pre-transfer post-transfer comparison

The anti-poverty impact of national social assistance programmes in eight Central and Eastern European countries is examined using data from the European Union-Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). Results indicate that social assistance programmes achieve only limited poverty reduction, while spending a significant amount of their resources on the non-poor. The more extensive and generous programmes achieve higher effectiveness in reducing poverty. Efficiency on the other hand appears to be linked only to programme size and not to benefit levels. Unlike Western Europe, no trade-off between effectiveness and efficiency could be detected

Acute Potentiation on Vertical Jump Performance Following Accentuated Eccentric Loaded Back Squats in Male High School Basketball Players

The purpose of this study was to investigate the acute responses of accentuated eccentric loaded (AEL) back squats to induce a postactivation performance enhancement (PAPE) effect in youth athletes across three jump conditions: countermovement jump (CMJ), squat jump (SJ), and novel propulsive-only jump (POJ). Fifteen participants (age: 15.6 ± 1.1 years; RT experience: 1.3 ± 0.9 years; relative strength: 1.32 ± 0.3) three sessions (one familiarization, two experimental). AEL interventions were performed on each experimental session, (3 sets x 3 repetitions) (ECC: 95%, 105%, 115%: CON: 60% 1RM) with pre- and post-testing (3 min, 6 min, 9 min, 12 min). Using a crossover design, random assignment to either (a) CMJ, (b1) SJ+POJ, or (b2) POJ+SJ, where jump height (JH), net propulsive impulse (NPI) and peak relative propulsive power (PRPP) were assessed for each jump. Three 3x5 repeated measures ANOVAs were used to analyze each dependent variable across jump conditions and time. Results revealed a significant increase in POJ JH performance at 9 min (+12.26% ± 13.65%, p \u3c 0.05), whereas CMJ and SJ performance did not show statistically different values from pre-testing for JH, NPI, or PRPP. No significant changes were found for JH, NPI, or PRPP for CMJ or SJ. Although, JH performances peaked at 12 minutes for CMJ (+2.22% ± 7.71%) and SJ (+5.03% ± 12.77%) but did not reach statistical significance. The findings of the study suggest that male high school basketball players may realize superior or unaffected jump performances at 9-12min post-supramaximal AEL back squats. In addition, no significant deficits in performance outcomes were found for any condition from pre- to post-testing. Future research should expand the use of AEL with youth populations, and the practical use of the POJ as a training and performance tool

Locating regional cultures of drag in medium-sized English cities: an ethnographic case study of Nottingham’s drag scene

This thesis interrogates the complex socioeconomic dimensions of regional drag performance scenes based in the Midlands through investigations of performers’ experiences and the infiltration of neoliberal ideologies into their practices. Shifting academic focus away from drag in metropolitan contexts to less-studied lesser-metropolitan contexts, the thesis utilises a methodological framework that combines (i) ethnographic interviews with local drag performers, (ii) participant observations, and (iii) social media analysis, and is framed by the case study of the mid-sized city of Nottingham’s drag scene. The project poses that for local drag performers, the threats to their financial and occupational survival are heightened due to their local socioeconomic and geographic contexts. Therefore, local performers are forced to adopt entrepreneurial strategies in efforts to better situate their position in the hierarchies and economies that construct their drag scene. This thesis explores the entrepreneurial strategies that performers employ both in and around their local drag scene and on virtual social media platforms, and their socioeconomic effect on performers’ personal and occupational lives. Performers’ entrepreneurialism, here, seeks to grow their reputational growth, bolster their self-brands, and allows them to compete in oversaturated markets that already offer scarce employment opportunity. Nottingham’s once rich queer cultural history has eroded over time through the persistent closure of independent queer venues in its night-time economy. Yet, Nottingham houses a complex and culturally rich drag scene which is highlighted by the abundance of drag performers still showcasing their artistry due to an ever-increasing popularity and demand for drag in the city. This project maintains a particular focus on the financial survival of both Nottingham’s drag scene and the performers who construct it, within a local night-time economy accommodating a very limited number of permanent LGBTQIA+-specific safe spaces. Despite the current popularity of drag facilitated by the drag publics generated by RuPaul’s Drag Race, and an arguably more accepting society, precarity and occupational instability continue to be crucial challenges for local performers to overcome. However, the local demand elicited through this lack of queer representation and visibility in Nottingham’s night-time economy has been opportunistically met by bars and event spaces owned by corporate and heteronormative chains. These non-queer spaces infrequently hold LGBTQIA+ events to profit from that demand. This neoliberal opportunism raises further issues for Nottingham’s local drag scene around queer safety and financial opportunity. Yet, in their navigation of this night-time economy and proactive facilitation of performance opportunities, local drag performers work towards a reclamation of the lost safe queer-spaces of Nottingham, and attempt to re-queer the city

The Board Border

Skateboard culture is a lot like high school—cliques rule. You have your technical skaters, your punk skaters blah blah and so on. Certain skateboarders fi t into these cliques and stay within them. When an individual does something diff erent—let’s say longboarding, for example—an openminded few may accept that person, but most will ostracize him or her

Fish, Actinopterygii, Perciformes, Gobiidae, Amblyeleotris rubrimarginata Mohlmann and Randall, 2002: range gap filled in northern Borneo

The present work reports the shrimp goby Amblyeleotris rubrimarginata Mohlmann and Randall, 2002 in coral sand habitats off three different islands within the Tunku Abdul Rahman marine Park (TARP) off western Sabah in northern Borneo

Quantitative risk assessment of continuous liquid spill fires based on spread and burning behaviours

Spill fires usually occur during the storage and transportation of hazardous materials, posing a threat to the people and environment in their immediate proximity. In this paper, a classical Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) method is used to assess the risk of spill fires. In this method, the maximum spread area and the steady burning area are introduced as parameters to clearly assess the range of influence of the spill fire. In the calculations, a modified spread model that takes into consideration the burning rate variation is established to calculate the maximum spread area. Furthermore, the steady burning area is calculated based on volume conservation between the leakage rate and the fuel consumption rate due to burning. Combining these two parameters with leakage frequency, flame model, and vulnerability model, the dynamic individual risk can be calculated quantitatively. Subsequently, large-scale experiments of spill fires on water and a glass sheet were conducted to verify the accuracy and application of the model. The results show that the procedure we developed can be used to quantitatively calculate the risk associated with a continuous spill fire

Distributed Power Balancing for the FREEDM System

The FREEDM microgrid is a test bed for a smart grid integrated with Distributed Grid Intelligence (DGI) to efficiently manage the distribution and storage of renewable energy. Within the FREEDM system, DGI applies distributed algorithms in a unique way to achieve economically feasible utilization and storage of alternative energy sources in a distributed fashion. The FREEDM microgrid consists of residential or industrial nodes with each node running a portion of the DGI process called Intelligent Energy Management (IEM). Such IEM nodes within FREEDM coordinate among themselves to efficiently and economically manage their power generation, utility and storage. Among a variety of services offered by the DGI, the Power Balancing scheme optimizes the distribution of power generation and storage among the IEMs. This paper presents the key aspects in implementing such a scheme and outlines the preliminary results obtained by integrating the proposed methodology with a functional SST model of FREEDM. The results demonstrate the potential benefits of adopting advanced \u27smart\u27 technology on a local grid