The Dialectics of Cyberspace: Communication Ethics as First Response to Cyber Attacks

This project recognizes the need to re-conceptualize cyberspace according to its characteristic dialectical tensions in order to offer lasting, adequate responses to cyber attacks. Scholars across multiple disciplines recognize the ineffectiveness of perimeter defense strategies, or the raising of defensive walls to protect sensitive information as the primary response to cyber attacks (Denning, 2001; Jang-Jaccard & Nepal, 2014; MacKinnon, Bacon, Gan, Loukas, Chadwick, Frangiskatos, 2013). Thus, this project suggests that in addition to a literacy in coding, corporations and policy makers must attend to what Ronald C. Arnett, Janie Harden Fritz, and Leeanne M. Bell McManus (2009/2018) term “communication ethics literacy” to illuminate the goods at stake in cyber attacks. Communication ethics literacy and its emphasis on learning from difference will encourage an examination of the background issues influencing foreground attacks (Arnett, McManus, & McKendree, 2013). The goods that shape cyberspace manifest in the dialectics of cyberspace. After reviewing historic and philosophic approaches to dialectic, this project employs a dialectical framework derived from the work of both Kenneth Burke (1941; 1945/1969) and David Gunkel (2007); Burke recognizes that dialectical terms do not reach a synthesis but rather remain in tension (Tell, 2004), and Gunkel announces the poststructuralist recognition that after their collision, neither term is the same and must be thought of as wholly and radically other. This project examines the dialectics of public/private, anonymity/identity, and national/global and their corresponding attacks of cyberbullying, cyber theft, and cyber terrorism and cyber war. The project concludes with an examination of the goods of public/private, anonymity/identity, and national/global to announce the importance of the maintenance of each pole of the dialectic while engaging cyberspace. This attentiveness yields implications for the continued application of communication ethicists, philosophers of communication, phenomenologists, and philosophers of technology to position communication ethics as a first response to cyber attacks

Housing Code Enforcement - A New Approach

Recognizing the national housing crises and the inadequate progress toward solutions through the utilization of either present code enforcement techniques or the ponderous urban renewal processes, new methods, techniques and approaches for the enforcement of housing code standards were sought

Palmprint principal lines extraction

The palmprint recognition has become a focus in biological recognition and image processing fields. In this process, the features extraction (with particular attention to palmprint principal line extraction) is especially important. Although a lot of work has been reported, the representation of palmprint is still an open issue. In this paper we propose a simple, efficient, and accurate palmprint principal lines extraction method. Our approach consists of six simple steps: normalization, median filtering, average filters along four prefixed directions, grayscale bottom-hat filtering, combination of bottom-hat filtering, binarization and post processing. The contribution of our work is a new method for palmprint principal lines detection and a new dataset of hand labeled principal lines images (that we use as ground truth in the experiments). Preliminary experimental results showed good performance in terms of accuracy with respect to three methods of the state of the art

Effects of dual renin-angiotensin system blockade on proteinuria in a hypertensive black African HIV infected patient

Kidney diseases manifesting as proteinuria or elevated creatinine are increasingly prevalent complications of HIV infection. We report the effects of dual renin-angiotensin system blockade on proteinuria in a hypertensive black African HIV-infected patient

A Parameter Space Exploration of High-resolution Numerically Evolved Early Type Galaxies Including AGN Feedback and Accurate Dynamical Treatment of Stellar Orbits

An extensive exploration of the model parameter space of axisymmetric early type galaxies (ETGs) hosting a central supermassive black hole (SMBH) is conducted by means of high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations performed with our code MACER. Global properties such as (1) total SMBH accreted mass, (2) final X-ray luminosity and temperature of the X-ray emitting halos, (3) total amount of new stars formed from the cooling gas, and (4) total ejected mass in the form of supernovae and active galactic nuclei (AGN) feedback induced galactic winds, are obtained as a function of galaxy structure and internal dynamics.An extensive exploration of the model parameter space of axisymmetric early type galaxies (ETGs) hosting a central supermassive black hole (SMBH) is conducted by means of high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations performed with our code MACER. Global properties such as (1) total SMBH accreted mass, (2) final X-ray luminosity and temperature of the X-ray emitting halos, (3) total amount of new stars formed from the cooling gas, and (4) total ejected mass in the form of supernovae and active galactic nuclei (AGN) feedback induced galactic winds, are obtained as a function of galaxy structure and internal dynamics. In addition to the galactic dark matter halo, the model galaxies are also embedded in a group/cluster dark matter halo; finally, cosmological accretion is also included, with the amount and time dependence derived from cosmological simulations. Angular momentum conservation leads to the formation of cold H i disks; these disks further evolve under the action of star formation induced by disk instabilities, of the associated mass discharge onto the central SMBH, and of the consequent AGN feedback. At the end of the simulations, the hot (metal-enriched) gas mass is roughly 10% the mass in the old stars, with twice as much having been ejected into the intergalactic medium. The cold gas disks are approximately kiloparsec in size, and the metal-rich new stars are in 0.1 kpc disks. The masses of cold gas and new stars are roughly 0.1% of the mass of the old stars. Overall, the final systems appear to reproduce quite successfully the main global properties of real ETGs

The entropic cost of quantum generalized measurements

Landauer’s principle introduces a symmetry between computational and physical processes: erasure of information, a logically irreversible operation, must be underlain by an irreversible transformation dissipating energy. Monitoring micro- and nano-systems needs to enter into the energetic balance of their control; hence, finding the ultimate limits is instrumental to the development of future thermal machines operating at the quantum level. We report on the experimental investigation of a lower bound to the irreversible entropy associated to generalized quantum measurements on a quantum bit. We adopted a quantum photonics gate to implement a device interpolating from the weakly disturbing to the fully invasive and maximally informative regime. Our experiment prompted us to introduce a bound taking into account both the classical result of the measurement and the outcoming quantum state; unlike previous investigation, our entropic bound is based uniquely on measurable quantities. Our results highlight what insights the information-theoretic approach provides on building blocks of quantum information processors

Subclinical signs of retinal involvement in hereditary angioedema

To explore retinal abnormalities using spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD‐OCT) and OCT‐angiography (OCT‐A) in a highly selective cohort of patients with type I hereditary angioedema (HAE). This prospective case‐control study included 40 type I HAE patients and 40 age‐/sex‐matched healthy subjects (HC). All participants underwent SD‐OCT‐scanning of retinal posterior pole (PP), peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (pRNFL), and optic nerve head (ONH). Superficial/deep capillary density was analyzed by OCT‐A. A total of 80 eyes from 40 HAE and 40 eyes from HC were evaluated. The pRNFL was thicker in HAE than in HC in nasal superior (p < 0.0001) and temporal quadrants (p = 0.0005 left, p = 0.003 right). The ONH thickness in HAE patients was greater than in HC in the nasal (p = 0.008 left, p = 0.01 right), temporal (p = 0.0005 left, p = 0.003 right), temporal inferior (p = 0.007 left, p = 0.0008 right), and global (p = 0.005 left, p = 0.007 right) scans. Compared to HC, HAE showed a lower capillary density in both superficial (p = 0.001 left, p = 0.006 right) and deep (p = 0.008 left, p = 0.004 right) whole images, and superficial (p = 0.03 left) and deep parafoveal (p = 0.007 left, p = 0.005 right) areas. Our findings documented subclinical retinal abnormalities in type I HAE, supporting a potential role of the retinal assessment by SD‐ OCT/OCT‐A as a useful tool in the comprehensive care of HAE patients

The iron and oxygen content of LMC Classical Cepheids and its implications for the extragalactic distance scale and Hubble constant: Equivalent width analysis with Kurucz stellar atmosphere models

Context. Classical Cepheids are primary distance indicators and a crucial stepping stone in determining the present-day value of the Hubble constant H0 to the precision and accuracy required to constrain apparent deviations from the ΛCDM Concordance Cosmological Model. Aims. We measured the iron and oxygen abundances of a statistically significant sample of 89 Cepheids in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of the anchors of the local distance scale, quadrupling the prior sample and including 68 of the 70 Cepheids used to constrain H0 by the SH0ES program. The goal is to constrain the extent to which the luminosity of Cepheids is influenced by their chemical composition, which is an important contributor to the uncertainty on the determination of the Hubble constant itself and a critical factor in the internal consistency of the distance ladder. Methods. We derived stellar parameters and chemical abundances from a self-consistent spectroscopic analysis based on equivalent width of absorption lines. Results. The iron distribution of Cepheids in the LMC can be very accurately described by a single Gaussian with a mean [Fe/H] =-0.409 ± 0.003 dex and σ = 0.076 ± 0.003 dex. We estimate a systematic uncertainty on the absolute mean values of 0.1 dex. The width of the distribution is fully compatible with the measurement error and supports the low dispersion of 0.069 mag seen in the near-infrared Hubble Space Telescope LMC period-luminosity relation. The uniformity of the abundance has the important consequence that the LMC Cepheids alone cannot provide any meaningful constraint on the dependence of the Cepheid period-luminosity relation on chemical composition at any wavelength. This revises a prior claim based on a small sample of 22 LMC Cepheids that there was little dependence (or uncertainty) between composition and near-infrared luminosity, a conclusion which would produce an apparent conflict between anchors of the distance ladder with different mean abundance. The chemical homogeneity of the LMC Cepheid population makes it an ideal environment in which to calibrate the metallicity dependence between the more metal-poor Small Magellanic Cloud and metal-rich Milky Way and NGC 4258

Identification of <i>Salvia haenkei</i> as gerosuppressant agent by using an integrated senescence-screening assay.

Cellular senescence is a stable cell cycle arrest that is the causative process of aging. The PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway is implicated in the control of cellular senescence and inhibitors of this pathway have been successfully used for life span prolongation experiments in mammals. PTEN is the major regulator of the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway and loss of PTEN promotes a senescence response termed PICS. Here we report a novel-screening assay, for the identification of compounds that block different types of senescence response. By testing a library of more than 3000 natural and chemical compounds in PTEN deficient cells we have found that an extract from &lt;i&gt;Salvia haenkei&lt;/i&gt; (SH), a native plant of Bolivia is a potent inhibitor of PICS. SH also decreases replicative and UV-mediated senescence in human primary fibroblasts and in a model of &lt;i&gt;in vitro&lt;/i&gt; reconstructed human epidermis. Mechanistically, SH treatment affects senescence driven by UV by interfering with IL1-α signalling. Pre-clinical and clinical testing of this extract by performing toxicity and irritability evaluation &lt;i&gt;in vitro&lt;/i&gt; also demonstrate the safety of SH extract for clinical use as anti-aging skin treatment

Breast mammographic Density: stromal implications on breast cancer detection and therapy

Current evidences state clear that both normal development of breast tissue as well as its malignant progression need many-sided local and systemic communications between epithelial cells and stromal components. During development, the stroma, through remarkably regulated contextual signals, affects the fate of the different mammary cells regarding their specification and differentiation. Likewise, the stroma can generate tumour environments that facilitate the neoplastic growth of the breast carcinoma. Mammographic density has been described as a risk factor in the development of breast cancer and is ascribed to modifications in the composition of breast tissue, including both stromal and glandular compartments. Thus, stroma composition can dramatically affect the progression of breast cancer but also its early detection since it is mainly responsible for the differences in mammographic density among individuals. This review highlights both the pathological and biological evidences for a pivotal role of the breast stroma in mammographic density, with particular emphasis on dense and malignant stromas, their clinical meaning and potential therapeutic implications for breast cancer patients