An Approach to Select Cost-Effective Risk Countermeasures Exemplified in CORAS

Risk is unavoidable in business and risk management is needed amongst others to set up good security policies. Once the risks are evaluated, the next step is to decide how they should be treated. This involves managers making decisions on proper countermeasures to be implemented to mitigate the risks. The countermeasure expenditure, together with its ability to mitigate risks, is factors that affect the selection. While many approaches have been proposed to perform risk analysis, there has been less focus on delivering the prescriptive and specific information that managers require to select cost-effective countermeasures. This paper proposes a generic approach to integrate the cost assessment into risk analysis to aid such decision making. The approach makes use of a risk model which has been annotated with potential countermeasures, estimates for their cost and effect. A calculus is then employed to reason about this model in order to support decision in terms of decision diagrams. We exemplify the instantiation of the generic approach in the CORAS method for security risk analysis.Comment: 33 page

Role of immunostimulants in the culture of decapod crustacean

Increased concerns on antibiotics used in aquaculture have promoted research toward alternative products. Immunostimulants have been approved to be good alternatives for antibiotics used in the culture of many species. A series of experiments were conducted under laboratory conditions to investigate the roles of immunostimulants, beta glucan (BG) and mannan oligosaccharides (MOS) in the culture of marron (Cherax tenuimanus), tropical rock lobster (Panulirus ornatus) and yabbies (Cherax destructor).BG showed survival, physiological and immunological improvements in marron through dietary supplementary levels of 0.1 to 0.2%. Dietary MOS at 0.2 to 0.4% inclusion level improved survival, health status and immune system of marron. Similar improvements of dietary MOS were observed in yabbies and tropical rock lobster. In addition, the growth of yabbies and tropical rock lobster increased with MOS supplemented diets. Dietary MOS also benefited marron, tropical rock lobster and yabbies by enhancing the biological functions of their digestive system. Marron and lobster fed MOS diets revealed a healthier gut condition with improvement in morphological structure and microbiota structure. MOS also changed digestive enzyme activities of yabbies. Further, dietary MOS lowered mortality of marron and tropical rock lobster when they were infected with bacteria. The resistance ability of marron to environmental stressors such as NH3 and air exposure during live transportation was also enhanced in marron fed MOS. In addition, there were no adverse effects of BG and MOS on the performances of above crustaceans.The current research implies that MOS and BG could be the used as alternatives to antibiotics in crustacean cultured under laboratory environment. In order to attain the optimum benefits of MOS and BG dietary supplementation in the commercial production of crustaceans, however, further research is suggested

Sources of Patient Information for Type 2 Diabetes Self-Care in Northern Mississippi

Given the prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in the United States and the continuous rise of cases, especially within Mississippi, there is an increasing need to identify if, and how, patients with Type 2 Diabetes receive information about self-care. While there is data available on the topic of where patients receive their information and the influence it has on their health in other countries of the world, the research on the source of Type 2 Diabetes education in the United States is scarce. Therefore, this study aims to bridge the gap of understanding where patients with Type 2 Diabetes acquire their information, what information they receive, and the impact the obtained information has on their state of well-being. This was a descriptive and cross-sectional study that employed self-administered paper surveys to collect study data from diabetes patients. The survey was a questionnaire consisting of quantitative and qualitative questions including basic demographic data, a series of questions regarding the education received and who provided it, and the patient’s perception on the reliability of the information they received. The findings of the study revealed that patients mainly received pertinent information on diabetic self-management from their doctors, as expected, but there is a great demand to receive information from pharmacists. This study is crucial to help give pharmacists insight on how to develop future methods that could aid in effectively delivering diabetes information to control this complex disease and avoid complications. It can also contribute to continuing conversations among other healthcare providers to collaborate and strategize the best method on curating diabetic education that is personalized for each patient

Improving performance of far users in cognitive radio: Exploiting NOMA and wireless power transfer

In this paper, we examine non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and relay selection strategy to benefit extra advantage from traditional cognitive radio (CR) relaying systems. The most important requirement to prolong lifetime of such network is employing energy harvesting in the relay to address network with limited power constraint. In particular, we study such energy harvesting CR-NOMA using amplify-and-forward (AF) scheme to improve performance far NOMA users. To further address such problem, two schemes are investigated in term of number of selected relays. To further examine system performance, the outage performance needs to be studied for such wireless powered CR-NOMA network over Rayleigh channels. The accurate expressions for the outage probability are derived to perform outage comparison of primary network and secondary network. The analytical results show clearly that position of these nodes, transmit signal to noise ratio (SNR) and power allocation coefficients result in varying outage performance. As main observation, performance gap between primary and secondary destination is decided by both power allocation factors and selection mode of single relay or multiple relays. Numerical studies were conducted to verify our derivations.Web of Science1211art. no. 220

Enabling non-linear energy harvesting in power domain based multiple access in relaying networks: Outage and ergodic capacity performance analysis

The Power Domain-based Multiple Access (PDMA) scheme is considered as one kind of Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) in green communications and can support energy-limited devices by employing wireless power transfer. Such a technique is known as a lifetime-expanding solution for operations in future access policy, especially in the deployment of power-constrained relays for a three-node dual-hop system. In particular, PDMA and energy harvesting are considered as two communication concepts, which are jointly investigated in this paper. However, the dual-hop relaying network system is a popular model assuming an ideal linear energy harvesting circuit, as in recent works, while the practical system situation motivates us to concentrate on another protocol, namely non-linear energy harvesting. As important results, a closed-form formula of outage probability and ergodic capacity is studied under a practical non-linear energy harvesting model. To explore the optimal system performance in terms of outage probability and ergodic capacity, several main parameters including the energy harvesting coefficients, position allocation of each node, power allocation factors, and transmit signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are jointly considered. To provide insights into the performance, the approximate expressions for the ergodic capacity are given. By matching analytical and Monte Carlo simulations, the correctness of this framework can be examined. With the observation of the simulation results, the figures also show that the performance of energy harvesting-aware PDMA systems under the proposed model can satisfy the requirements in real PDMA applications.Web of Science87art. no. 81

Muon g−2g-2 and semileptonic BB decays in B\'elanger-Delaunay-Westhoff model with gauge kinetic mixing

In the model proposed by B\'elanger, Delaunay and Westhoff (BDW), a new sector consisted of vectorlike fermions and two complex scalars is charged under an extra Abelian symmetry $U(1)_X$. In this paper, we generalize the BDW model by introducing the kinetic mixing between the $U(1)_X$ and the standard model $U(1)_Y$ gauge fields. The new physics contributions to the muon anomalous magnetic moment and the Wilson coefficients $C_{9,10}^{(')}$ are obtained analytically. We have explored the free parameter space of the model, taking into account various constraints on the muon $g-2$ using recent data from the E989 experiment at Fermilab, the lepton universality violation in terms of $R_K$ and $R_{K^*}$, and the branching ratios of the semileptonic decays, $B^+ \rightarrow K^+ \mu^+ \mu^-$ and $B^0 \rightarrow K^{*0} \mu^+ \mu^-$, the LEP and LHC searches for sleptons and $Z'$ boson, as well as the perturbative requirement. The viable parameter regions of the model are identified. In the presence of the gauge kinetic mixing term, those regions are enlarged and significantly deformed in comparison to the case with vanishing kinetic mixing. In the near future, the E989 experiment with the projected sensitivity will be able to test significant parts of the currently allowed parameter regions.Comment: 36 pages, 23 figures. Version to be published in Physical Review

A model with vectorlike fermions and U(1)XU(1)_X symmetry: CKM unitarity, b→sb \rightarrow s transitions, and prospect at Belle II

To address the muon $g-2$ anomaly and the violation of the lepton flavor universality in the semileptonic decays of $B$ mesons, B\'elanger, Delaunay, and Westhoff introduced a new sector consisting of vectorlike fermions and two scalar charged under an extra $U(1)_X$ gauge symmetry. The exotic Yukawa interactions in this model lead to the quark mixing responsible for the additional contributions to the flavor changing neutral currents in $B$-meson decays. In this paper, we derive the analytic expression of the new physics contributions to the Wilson coefficient $C_7$ in the effective Hamiltonian. By calculating the branching ratio of the inclusive radiative $B$ decay, the impact of current experimental data of the $b \rightarrow s \gamma$ transition on the model and the future prospect at the Belle II experiment are investigated. Taking into account the recent data on the CKM unitarity violation, the updated constraints on the flavor observables relevant to the $b \rightarrow s$ transitions, and the perturbation limits of the couplings, the viable parameter regions of the model are identified.Comment: 28 pages, 14 figure

Effects of Mannan Oligosaccharide (MOS) on the Survival, Physiological, and Immunological Response of the Black Tiger Prawn (Penaeus monodon Fabricius, 1798) when Challenged with two Different Stressors

Two trials were conducted to determine the effects of mannan oligosaccharide (MOS) on the resistance of the black tiger prawn (Penaeus monodon) to two different stressors, bacterial infection by Vibrio alginolyticus, and the environmental pollutant ammonia (NH3). Prawns were fed two different diets, 0% (control diet) and 0.15% MOS, for 8 weeks prior to exposure to the stressors. They were then tested for survival, physiological, and immunological parameters, as indicators of health status. When the two groups were exposed to NH3 and bacterial infection, survival of prawns fed the MOS diet was significantly higher (P<0.05) than prawns fed the control diet. Similarly, the wet hepatosomatic index (Hiw), dry hepatosomatic index (Hid), hepatopancreatic moisture content (HM), total hemocyte count (THC), and granular cell percentage (GC%), of the MOS fed prawns was significantly higher (P<0.05) than in prawns fed the control diet. Bacteremia of the MOS fed prawns was lower (P<0.05) than the control diet-fed prawns after bacterial infection. Findings demonstrated the potential of MOS to improve the survival, health status, and immunity of black tiger prawns when challenged with bacterial infection and NH3 exposure

Tractable computation in outage performance analysis of relay selection NOMA

In recent years, using full-duplex (FD) transmission model provides enhanced bandwidth efficiency and improved performance for non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system. However, lack of papers have investigated FD relay together with relay selection issue to improve performance of NOMA system. The problems in power allocation for two NOMA users satisfying fairness as well as relay selection strategy are studied in this paper. By considering the outage performance of proposed scheme with its vital result, general NOMA wireless networks can be developed for future networks due to its improved performance. Simulation results show that the relaying selection scheme can achieve a significant performance improvement by increasing required quantity of relay