FIM4R Position Paper on the Desired Evolution of EOSC Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructures

Authored by: the FIM4R Community The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) will soon enter the next phase of integration and consolidation with the establishment of a common service portal listing underpinning services that enable distributed resources in the areas of computation, data, open access, and above-the-net collaboration services. The existing e-Infrastructures that are anticipated to be part of the EOSC each provide their own capabilities in terms of trust and identity management, integrity protection and risk management, as well as capabilities to support business continuity and disaster recovery in case of security incidents. There are also specific trust, collaboration management, and security services that are jointly managed by multiple e-Infrastructures for the benefit of (but in many cases not exclusively) the European research and collaboration community as a whole. These include for instance the glue between the EOSC AAI suite of services that each implement the AARC Blueprint Architecture (AARC BPA), i.e. the AAI services such as those from both national and pan-European Infrastructures as well as components such as credential translation bridge services

Inferring and constructing origin-affiliation information across infrastructures (AARC G057)

Conveying affiliation information from origin providers across infrastructures proxies as defined in G025 is only possible if the origin identity provider releases such information. In case no eduPersonScopedAffiliation is provided, it may be partially reconstructed according to these guidelines. If there is no reliable way to infer origi

Guidelines for Secure Operation of Attribute Authorities and other issuers of access-granting statements

These guidelines describe the minimum requirements and recommendations for the secure operation of Attribute Authorities and similar services providing statements for the purpose of obtaining access to infrastructure services. Stated compliance with these guidelines may help to establish trust between issuers and Relying Parties. This document does not define an accreditation process

Larval Diet Abundance Influences Size and Composition of the Midgut Microbiota of Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes

The midgut microbiota of the yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti impacts pathogen susceptibility and transmission by this important vector species. However, factors influencing the composition and size of the microbiome in mosquitoes are poorly understood. We investigated the impact of larval diet abundance during development on the composition and size of the larval and adult microbiota by rearing Aedes aegypti under four larval food regimens, ranging from nutrient deprivation to nutrient excess. We assessed the persistent impacts of larval diet availability on the microbiota of the larval breeding water, larval mosquitoes, and adult mosquitoes under sugar and blood fed conditions using qPCR and high-throughput 16S amplicon sequencing to determine bacterial load and microbiota composition. Bacterial loads in breeding water increased with increasing larval diet. Larvae reared with the lowest diet abundance had significantly fewer bacteria than larvae from two higher diet treatments, but not from the highest diet abundance. Adults from the lowest diet abundance treatment had significantly fewer bacteria in their midguts compared to all higher diet abundance treatments. Larval diet amount also had a significant impact on microbiota composition, primarily within larval breeding water and larvae. Increasing diet correlated with increased relative levels of Enterobacteriaceae and Flavobacteriaceae and decreased relative levels of Sphingomonadaceae. Multiple individual OTUs were significantly impacted by diet including one mapping to the genus Cedecea, which increased with higher diet amounts. This was consistent across all sample types, including sugar fed and blood fed adults. Taken together, these data suggest that availability of diet during development can cause lasting shifts in the size and composition of the microbiota in the disease vector Aedes aegypti

Education and social care predictors of offending trajectories: A UK administrative data linkage study

Objectives The age-crime curve indicates that criminal behaviour peaks in adolescence and decreases in adulthood, but longitudinal studies suggest that this curve conceals distinct patterns of (re)-offending or trajectories. Some trajectories (e.g., life course persistent offenders) are reported to have distinct risk factors and more negative outcomes than others (e.g., adolescent limited offenders). Methods The current study had two main objectives: (1) To use UK administrative crime data to identify trajectories of (re)-offending; and (2) To prospectively identify (re)-offending trajectories using longitudinal administrative education and social care data. This project uses linked UK administrative data containing the anonymised education and social care records for individuals born between September 1985 and August 1999, which have been linked to later official crime records up to the end of 2017. To identify offending trajectories, we used information on offence type, age of first conviction/caution, age of last recorded conviction/caution and offending history at three age points (Juvenile: 10-17 years; Young adult: 18-20 years; Adult: 21-32 years). Results Latent Class Analyses with and without ‘Gender’ and ‘Ever served a custodial sentence’ as covariates was conducted to identify trajectories of (re)-offending. We are currently developing statistical models to see if we can use prospective longitudinal education and social care factors to discriminate between these trajectories. In my talk, I will share findings on the offending trajectories identified and present some early results on the key education and social care drivers of the offending trajectories. Conclusion Findings from this study has the potential to provide deeper insights into how these education and social care factors might affect (re)-offending patterns. This could inform education, social care and criminal justice system responses to offending behaviours which seek to reduce offending and its associated social and economic costs

Solutions for non-web OAuth 2.0 authorisation at CERN

The need for Single Sign-On solutions in command line interfaces is not new to CERN. Different technologies have been introduced and internal solutions have been implemented to allow users to authenticate to remote servers or applications from their console interfaces. In the case of web services, the most common approach was to use cookie-based authentication, for which an internal tool was developed and made available for all the CERN user community. As the authorisation infrastructure evolved and started to fully support the OAuth 2.0 standard, as well as two-factor authentication (2FA), using the internal tool started to show its limitations. In this work, we present the past and present (OAuth-compliant) solutions, and compare them by looking at the advantages and disadvantages we have found. We also present a case study of a service, OpenShift, that implements this new authentication solution for their users

Co-designing long-term agreements for Landscape Recovery: Head of Terms Template Agreement. Environmental Land Management Test and Trial for DEFRA

This document provides Heads of Terms (HoT) guidance for drafting the terms for a long-term agreement (LTA) to enter into a Landscape Recovery (LR) project with Defra and other private sources of funding, should a blended finance approach be adopted. The template HoT has been informed by a combination of desk research, workshops and interviews with land managers and other stakeholders, and the expert knowledge of Strutt & Parker. After an initial review of literature on existing forms of LTA (see Barkley, Short & Chivers 2022), we carried out eight workshops and a series of group and individual interviews with a total of 35 participants (see Barkley, Chivers & Short 2022a, 2022b and 2023). During these, we sought to better understand the key barriers and enablers to participation in LTAs for LR. We also co-designed, with participants, a hypothetical Natural Flood Management (NFM) scenario, around which the template LTA is framed. Initial drafts of clauses for the HoT agreement were shared with participants at workshops and interviews, and final revisions have been made to the document as a result of participant feedback from these sessions. We focused on developing, with participants, an agreement that could meet the needs of agriculturally productive land managers in a lowland, multi-party context. In this document, we detail the clauses that would likely need to be included when drawing up an LTA in this context. By presenting these clauses as they are shown here, we illustrate the many variations that may arise when working with different land managers and stakeholders, each of whom are likely to have differing requirements of an agreement

Principles for delivering transformative co‐design methodologies with multiple stakeholders for achieving nature recovery in England

Achieving successful multi‐stakeholder collaboration for sustainable outcomes is complex. This paper provides key principles for future co‐design projects aimed at fostering an inclusive approach to research. These have been developed based on a novel methodology that co‐designed the essential components of a long‐term, collaborative agreement for a nature recovery scheme in England. Using an assortment of iterative, deliberative participatory methods, this research engaged a wide variety of stakeholders to produce a template agreement for an agri‐environmental policy. We demonstrate that a flexible, highly reflective approach resulted in positive engagement with previously marginalised stakeholders. The approach also successfully navigated the unequal power dynamics seen both within and between groups. Finally, multiple feedback loops allowed participants to continually build on previous interactions as they developed and reviewed the agreement. By drawing out the complexities of the co‐design process, this paper explains how co‐design efforts can produce potentially transformative outputs. We hope that the principles introduced here offer a useful starting point for those planning to undertake multi‐stakeholder co‐design