How safe is Azeroth, or, are MMORPGs a security risk?

Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) are at a basic level a networked application. Blizzard’s World of Warcraft is currently the largest example of such a type of application, with over nine million subscribers at last count. Whilst the idea of researching a game for network security may sound trivial, nine million potential backdoors into home and business computers is not. The ports used by the game, as well as authentication methods and client update programs were examined using packet analysis software. No obvious vulnerabilities were discovered as a result of this analysis. In addition to this analysis, an examination of the literature in terms of other types of attack that are present was also performed. These include such common attacks as SPAM, malware and trojans. The conclusion is that while no specific network vulnerability appears to exist in the games launcher or updater, there are still a number of other attack vectors that need to be considered and protected against

A Importância do Controlo de Gestão no Sucesso Empresarial: estudo de caso

Face à instabilidade cada vez maior do contexto empresarial, provocada pela incerteza e inovação constantes e pela globalização dos mercados e da concorrência, a informação assume-se como um recurso cada vez mais importante para a gestão das organizações. Nesse sentido, nas últimas décadas tem existido um desenvolvimento dos sistemas de controlo de gestão, de forma a proporcionar aos gestores instrumentos de trabalho que lhes permitam a informação necessária para a realização do planeamento e da monitorização constante da atividade, a fim de garantir-se uma resposta atempada aos desvios e uma adequação permanente das competências e dos recursos aos desafios. Sendo assim, este trabalho de investigação, tem por objetivo analisar o contributo dos sistemas de controlo de gestão para o sucesso das empresas. Tal, exige um conhecimento pormenorizado do funcionamento e dos procedimentos internos das organizações. Assim, escolheu-se a metodologia de investigação designada de estudo de caso, que foi posta em prática através da triangulação de diferentes fontes de informação, como entrevistas, observações diretas e consulta de documentos e relatórios internos.A empresa selecionada pertence a um dos maiores grupos portugueses de tecnologias de informação, detém um sistema de controlo de gestão bastante desenvolvido e apresentou um crescimento exponencial nos últimos anos. Relativamente à estrutura do trabalho, está constituída em duas partes principais, a revisão da literatura e o estudo empírico, tendo sido realizada uma reflexão sobre os instrumentos de controlo de gestão referidos pela bibliografia e os que efetivamente foram colocados em prática pela empresa. Os resultados da investigação, evidenciaram que embora os instrumentos de controlo de gestão tenham sido importantes no desenvolvimento e sucesso do negócio, porque permitiram uma melhor monitorização da atividade e um maior envolvimento dos gestores, existiam diversas oportunidades para melhorar a eficácia do sistema implementado, nomeadamente, ao nível do controlo da atividade (gestão de projetos e implementação do balanced scorecard, a fim de se monitorizarem os fatores críticos de sucesso do negócio) e ao nível do alinhamento dos gestores através da transformação das unidades de suporte em centros de resultados, permitindo a avaliação e o estabelecimento de incentivos para todos os gestores da empresa.The instability is growing in the business environment, caused by uncertainty and constant innovation and by the globalization of markets and competition, and because of that, information is assumed as an important resource for the management of organizations Accordingly, in recent decades there has been a development of management control systems in order to provide working tools to managers to allow them the necessary information to carry out the planning and constant monitoring of activities to guarantee a timely response to deviations and fitness permanently the skills and resources to the challenges. Thus, this research work aims to analyze the contributionof management control systems to business success. This requires a detailed knowledge of the workings and procedures of organizations. So, we chose the research methodology of the case study, which was carried out through triangulation of different sources of information, such as interviews, direct observations and consultation of internal documents and reports. The selected company belongs to one of the largest Portuguese groups of information technology, has a very developed management control system and presented an exponential growth in recent years. Regarding the structure of the work is made up of two main parts, the literature review and the empirical study, being carried out a reflection on the management control instruments referred by literature and which were actually put into practice by the company. The results of the investigation showed that although the management control instruments have been important in the development and success of business because they allow better monitoring of activity and greater involvement of managers, there were several opportunities to improve the effectiveness of the implemented system, in particular at the activity level control (project management and implementation of the balanced scorecard in order to monitor the critical success factors of the business) and at the level of alignment of managers through the transformation of support units in results centers, enabling assessment and the establishment of incentives to all company managers

A robust pipeline with high replication rate for detection of somatic variants in the adaptive immune system as a source of common genetic variation in autoimmune disease

The role of somatic variants in diseases beyond cancer is increasingly being recognized, with potential roles in autoinflammatory and autoimmune diseases. However, as mutation rates and allele fractions are lower, studies in these diseases are substantially less tolerant of false positives, and bio-informatics algorithms require high replication rates. We developed a pipeline combining two variant callers, MuTect2 and VarScan2, with technical filtering and prioritization. Our pipeline detects somatic variants with allele fractions as low as 0.5% and achieves a replication rate of > 55%. Validation in an independent data set demonstrates excellent performance (sensitivity > 57%, specificity > 98%, replication rate > 80%). We applied this pipeline to the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis (MS) as a proof-of-principle. We demonstrate that 60% of MS patients carry 2-10 exonic somatic variants in their peripheral blood T and B cells, with the vast majority (80%) occurring in T cells and variants persisting over time. Synonymous variants significantly co-occur with non-synonymous variants. Systematic characterization indicates somatic variants are enriched for being novel or very rare in public databases of germline variants and trend towards being more damaging and conserved, as reflected by higher phred-scaled combined annotation-dependent depletion (CADD) and genomic evolutionary rate profiling (GERP) scores. Our pipeline and proof-of-principle now warrant further investigation of common somatic genetic variation on top of inherited genetic variation in the context of autoimmune disease, where it may offer subtle survival advantages to immune cells and contribute to the capacity of these cells to participate in the autoimmune reaction.Peer reviewe

Mesenchymal stem cells increase proliferation but do not change quiescent state of osteosarcoma cells: Potential implications according to the tumor resection status

Conventional therapy of primary bone tumors includes surgical excision with wide resection, which leads to physical and aesthetic defects. For reconstruction of bone and joints, allografts can be supplemented with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). Similarly, adipose tissue transfer (ATT) is supplemented with adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) to improve the efficient grafting in the correction of soft tissue defects. MSC-like cells may also be used in tumor-targeted cell therapy. However, MSC may have adverse effects on sarcoma development. In the present study, human ADSCs, MSCs and pre-osteoclasts were co-injected with human MNNG-HOS osteosarcoma cells in immunodeficient mice. ADSCs and MSCs, but not the osteoclast precursors, accelerated the local proliferation of MNNG-HOS osteosarcoma cells. However, the osteolysis and the metastasis process were not exacerbated by ADSCs, MSCs, or pre-osteoclasts. In vitro proliferation of MNNG-HOS and Saos-2 osteosarcoma cells was increased up to 2-fold in the presence of ADSC-conditioned medium. In contrast, ADSC-conditioned medium did not change the dormant, quiescent state of osteosarcoma cells cultured in oncospheres. Due to the enhancing effect of ADSCs/MSCs on in vivo/in vitro proliferation of osteosarcoma cells, MSCs may not be good candidates for osteosarcoma-targeted cell therapy. Although conditioned medium of ADSCs accelerated the cell cycle of proliferating osteosarcoma cells, it did not change the quiescent state of dormant osteosarcoma cells, indicating that ADSC-secreted factors may not be involved in the risk of local recurrence

Consensus on guidelines for stereotactic neurosurgery for psychiatric disorders

For patients with psychiatric illnesses remaining refractory to 'standard' therapies, neurosurgical procedures may be considered. Guidelines for safe and ethical conduct of such procedures have previously and independently been proposed by various local and regional expert groups

Multiple sclerosis - How common variants influence disease phenotype and rare variants trigger onset of disease

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a common neuroinflammatory disorder that is characterized by inflammation, demyelination and axonal loss. Epidemiological studies have shown the importance of both genetic and environmental factors in the development of the disease. Large-scale screens in international study populations, of which the Belgian cohort was a part, have identified four classical HLA and 110 non-HLA susceptibility loci. These variants are common in the general population and, with the exception of the HLA region (e.g. HLADRB1*15:01: odds ratio (OR) = 3.1), individually exert modest effects (OR = 1.03–1.34). During my PhD, I will elaborate on previous efforts by calculating MS risk based on the current extended list of MS risk variants and investigate the effect on MS phenotype. Despite the success of GWAS, the currently known genetic risk variants explain only 27% of the variance in MS risk. Therefore, a second question that I will address in my PhD is which additional inherited and non-inherited genetic factors determine whether or not an individual will develop MS.status: publishe

Mood 300 IPTV decoder forensics

Since June 2005, viewers in Belgium can get access digital TV or IPTV available via ADSL through Belgacom, the largest telecommunications provider in the country. The decoders used to enjoy these services are the Mood 300 series from Tilgin (formerly i3 Micro Technology). As of the Mood 337, the decoders contain a hard disk to enable the viewer to record and pause TV programs. Although it is publicly known that the Mood\u27s hard disk is used to save recorded and paused TV programs, it was still unknown if it contains any data that could be of interest during a forensic investigation. Interesting data ranges from which TV programs where watched, over discovery of unauthorized data storage, to criminal profiling and alibi verification. This paper will research the possibilities, especially with regards to which TV programs were watched and alternate data storage, as criminal profiling and alibi verification is not merely a task the forensic investigator can do alone. Just like game consoles that use a hard disk, the Mood 337 can easily be disassembled and attached to a PC for forensic analysis. The reason why analysis of this system is necessary is simply because it contains a hard disk. Anyone with a screwdriver can remove, replace or modify it not only for experimenting purposes but also for illegitimate uses. Analysis shows that most of the 80 Gb of disk space on the disk is not even in use, and can easily have data being written on it without interfering with the system\u27s primary function of providing IPTV services. It was also found that the Mood runs on a Linux base system with a 2.4 kernel, using XML file for the configuration of IPTV functions and services. Analysis reveals that even the (billable) \u27pause\u27 function is nothing more but a \u27yes\u27 or \u27no\u27 flag in an XML file. Other files that would be expected on a Linux system, such as /etc/fstab or /etc/passwd, were not found, while these might have been proven useful in this analysis. Further examination of the hard disk indicates the use of certificates for protection against piracy. However, it was proven to be a trivial task to simply copy recorded data to a PC and play it with a media player. The most important discovery of this research is that correctness of time and date appears to be of lesser value for the creators and/or distributors of the Mood 337. Throughout the system, various different time stamps and time zones were used, and more importantly time and date were changed several times. Even though two NTP servers are configured for time synchronisation, neither one of them seems to be correct. In order for data recovered from this hard disk to be acceptable before a court of law, fixing the time and date should be one of the highest priority changes that are needed

Genetic burden mirrors epidemiology of multiple sclerosis

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Role of genetic factors in pathophysiology of multiple sclerosis

© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Epidemiological studies have pointed to an important role of genetics in the susceptibility to multiple sclerosis. Large-scale collaborations have led to an enormous expansion of known susceptibility variants with a current list of more than 100 established risk loci. In this chapter, we review the identification of these risk variants and explore possible sources of additional genetic variation. Furthermore, we demonstrate the influence of these and additional genetic risk variants on disease phenotype and pathogenesis. © 2016 Copyrightedition: 1ststatus: publishe