White Hats Chasing Black Hats: Careers in IT and the Skills Required to Get There

The aim of this paper is to illuminate the exciting world in which “white hat crackers” operate and to suggest topics that can help prepare students to enter this high-demand field. While currently there is extraordinary demand for graduates to fill these positions that have relatively high starting salaries, employers find it difficult to hire students right out of universities who possess the right technical and social skill sets. The education needed to execute the requisite tasks is dynamic, broad and difficult, and there is a severe lack of qualified entrants into the industry. Accordingly, we suggest twelve subject areas to which students interested in the field should be exposed. The suggested framework is the by-product of the authors’ industry experience, which includes presentations at Defcon and Blackhat. It is our hope that by describing the activities of “white hat crackers” and highlighting the basic social and technical skill sets required to be successful in this area, faculty members can become valuable partners in filling the pipeline with well-prepared graduates. We conclude the paper by suggesting that students in all business disciplines should have exposure to these topics that we consider to be an integral part of general information systems literacy

Moving the Needle: Evaluating the Impact of New Care Delivery Models on Hospital Profitability

Objective: To evaluate the impact of emerging care delivery models on hospital profitability. Data Sources/Study Setting: Data was collected from the 2014 American Hospital Association (AHA) survey. Study Design: We used binary logistic regression analyses to assess the relationships between historically significant and recent evolutionary hospital care delivery characteristics and profitability measures. We considered four profitability measures: operating margin, net patient revenues, net income and return on assets. Our independent variables of interest focused on hospitalist staffing, patient centered medical home and accountable care organizational development. Data: We had a usable sample of 2,049 hospitals from the AHA dataset. Principal Findings: Our findings suggest medical home development is significantly associated with improved financial performance across four profitability measures – operating margin, net patient revenue, net income and return on assets. Hospitalists are associated with improved operating margin and net patient revenue. Accountable Care Organizations were neither positively or negatively associated with any measures of financial performance. Conclusions: Hospitals that have progressively taken steps to adopt patient centered medical homes as a care delivery modality appear be well positioned to have stronger organizational financial performance. Additional organizational enhancements such as hiring hospitalists are associated with better financial performance

Conchoidal transform of two plane curves

The conchoid of a plane curve $C$ is constructed using a fixed circle $B$ in the affine plane. We generalize the classical definition so that we obtain a conchoid from any pair of curves $B$ and $C$ in the projective plane. We present two definitions, one purely algebraic through resultants and a more geometric one using an incidence correspondence in \PP^2 \times \PP^2. We prove, among other things, that the conchoid of a generic curve of fixed degree is irreducible, we determine its singularities and give a formula for its degree and genus. In the final section we return to the classical case: for any given curve $C$ we give a criterion for its conchoid to be irreducible and we give a procedure to determine when a curve is the conchoid of another.Comment: 18 pages Revised version: slight title change, improved exposition, fixed proof of Theorem 5.3 Accepted for publication in Appl. Algebra Eng., Commun. Comput

Disproportionality as a Framework to Target Pollution Reduction from Urban Landscapes

New federal water quality regulations regarding impaired waters and urban stormwater alongside a growing need to reverse eutrophication of urban lakes are creating demand to decrease nutrient export from urban landscapes, particularly lawns. We propose that Nowak’s disproportionality framework could be used to target specific households likely to generate disproportionate levels of nutrient export. The biophysical dimension would be based on landscape vulnerability (slope; soil type; proximity to lakes); the social dimension would target “inappropriate” lawn management behaviors leading to high nutrient export on these vulnerable landscapes. Understanding of lawn nutrient cycling (biophysical dimension) and homeowner beliefs and attitudes (social dimension) would be used to develop targeted, specific messages for homeowners with inappropriate management practices. A lawn management program developed with this disproportionality framework would probably be very effective, highly economical and fair, targeting only homeowners who are creating a disproportionate impact

An analysis of the relationships between speech and reading abilities of four hundred and twenty-five first grade children.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

D-Brane Gauge Theories from Toric Singularities and Toric Duality

Via partial resolution of Abelian orbifolds we present an algorithm for extracting a consistent set of gauge theory data for an arbitrary toric variety whose singularity a D-brane probes. As illustrative examples, we tabulate the matter content and superpotential for a D-brane living on the toric del Pezzo surfaces as well as the zeroth Hirzebruch surface. Moreover, we discuss the non-uniqueness of the general problem and present examples of vastly different theories whose moduli spaces are described by the same toric data. Our methods provide new tools for calculating gauge theories which flow to the same universality class in the IR. We shall call it ``Toric Duality.''Comment: 38 pages, 6 figures, 2 references added and 1 equation correcte

An outbreak of monkeypox in Doedain District, Rivercess County, Liberia, June, 2017

Introduction: Monkeypox is a zoonotic virus disease with symptoms similar to smallpox, although less severe. The last confirmed monkeypox case in Liberia was recorded in 1970 from Grand Gedeh County. On June 23, 2017, Rivercess County Health Team received information from Dodain District, Rivercess County about a suspected monkeypox that reported at the clinic on June 19. We investigated to verify the report, confirm the diagnosis, determine the source and magnitude of the disease, and recommend evidence-based control and prevention measures. Methods: We defined a suspected case as any person who presented with generalized rash with fever, headache, lymphadenopathy, back pain, myalgia, and weakness in Dodain District from June 1 to July 1, 2017. We defined the probable case as a suspected case in whom the clinician suspected monkeypox. A confirmed case was a suspected or probable case with laboratory confirmed monkeypox. We reviewed patient records, and using the case definitions, we conducted active case search and contact tracing in the affected community to identify cases. We interviewed family and community members to identify cases and contacts. We performed laboratory tests on identified cases to confirm the diagnosis. We monitored and followed up contacts for 21 days to see if any developed signs and symptoms. Results: We identified two cases, one confirmed, and one suspected. The confirmed case was an 8-year old male with onset of symptoms on 17 June 2017. He presented with rashes, fever, and headache. His mother (a suspected case/primary case) was a farmer married to a hunter. She had similar symptoms (onset date, 19th April 2017) but recovered two weeks before her son's onset. Although the suspected case's husband was a hunter, there was no clear information that the primary case had been exposed to bush meat. Both the mother and her child had not traveled outside their area of residence. Both cases responded well to symptomatic treatment. None of the 15 contacts developed signs and symptoms in the 21-day follow-up. Conclusion: This was a confirmed outbreak of monkeypox in Dodain District, Rivercess County whose source was not identified. The outbreak was most likely spread through person-to-person transmission. The outbreak was controlled through effective case management, awareness in the community and early reporting

A Generating Function for all Semi-Magic Squares and the Volume of the Birkhoff Polytope

We present a multivariate generating function for all n x n nonnegative integral matrices with all row and column sums equal to a positive integer t, the so called semi-magic squares. As a consequence we obtain formulas for all coefficients of the Ehrhart polynomial of the polytope B_n of n x n doubly-stochastic matrices, also known as the Birkhoff polytope. In particular we derive formulas for the volumes of B_n and any of its faces.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure. To appear in Journal of Algebraic Combinatoric