Vladimir Putin’s justification for Russian action in Crimea undermines his previous arguments over Syria, Libya and Iraq

The European Union and the United States have heavily criticised Russia’s involvement in Crimea, following the referendum on the region’s secession from Ukraine on 16 March. Valerie Pacer writes that while Vladimir Putin has attempted to justify Russian intervention in Ukraine as compatible with international law, his statements completely contradict his previous arguments on western interventions in countries such as Libya and Iraq. She argues that Putin’s prior perspectives on national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and international law no longer seem to be valid if he feels Russia’s interests are threatened

Process Flow Features as a Host-based Event Knowledge Representation

The detection of malware is of great importance but even non-malicious software can be used for malicious purposes. Monitoring processes and their associated information can characterize normal behavior and help identify malicious processes or malicious use of normal process by measuring deviations from the learned baseline. This exploratory research describes a novel host feature generation process that calculates statistics of an executing process during a window of time called a process flow. Process flows are calculated from key process data structures extracted from computer memory using virtual machine introspection. Each flow cluster generated using k-means of the flow features represents a behavior where the members of the cluster all exhibit similar behavior. Testing explores associations between behavior and process flows that in the future may be useful for detecting unauthorized behavior or behavioral trends on a host. Analysis of two data collections demonstrate that this novel way of thinking of process behavior as process flows can produce baseline models in the form of clusters that do represent specific behaviors

Synthesis of potent radiolabeled acetylcholinesterase inhibitors

As positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) become more available, appropriately labeled imaging agents will be needed to aid in the definitive diagnosis of neurological diseases. The goal of this research was the development of radiolabeled derivatives of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitors that could aid in the detection ofAlzheimer\u27s disease. The efficient syntheses of a fluorine-18 and an iodine-123 derivative of 1-(3-benzyl)-4-[2-(N-phthalimid-l-yl)ethyl]piperidine are described

Benedict XVI’s Thought Concerning the Identity of the Priest in Connection with the Eucharist

In the thought of Benedict XVI, the identity of the priesthood is centered on the Eucharist. Through the exploration of Benedict’s writings and homilies most concerned with the priesthood in connection with the Eucharist, this thesis demonstrates how the identity of the priest is informed by the Eucharist. The priest’s close relationship to the Eucharist calls for a unique and radical configuration to Christ; and celibacy, humility, and obedience aid in such a configuration. The thesis focuses on a few of Benedict XVI’s works. The first chapter focuses on the post-synodal exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, and expounds upon Benedict’s more magisterial thought on the Eucharist and the priesthood. The second chapter focuses on Benedict’s essay on the “The Church and the Scandal of Sexual Abuse,” and presents his thought concerning the greatest blights on the priesthood in modern times. The third chapter focuses on Benedict XVI’s chapter “The Catholic Priesthood” from the book From the Depths of Our Hearts published, and focuses on the identity of the priest in comparison to the Old Testament Priesthood and in relation to the Eucharist. The fourth chapter focuses on Benedict XVI’s treatment of the priesthood and Eucharist in his homilies, and thematically treats of how the priest’s identity is informed by the Eucharist. The thesis’s conclusion synthesizes Benedict’s thought on the identity of the priest and offers an area for further study concerning the priest’s ontology

Design from Zeroth Principles

A successful design accounts for the structure of the problemit is aimed at solving. When it is a human-directed design,this includes the expectations of its users. How do we arriveat such a design? One approach starts from first principles(e.g., simplicity, unity, symmetry, balance) to evaluate thequality of proposed designs. Here, we introduce design fromzeroth principles, a form of human-in-the-loop computationthat synthesizes a design that conforms to its users’ expecta-tions. The technique begins by constructing a transmissionchain seeded with a random design. Each user in the chain isexposed to the design and then recreates it, passing alongtheir recreation to the next user, who does the same. Throughthis iterative process, the users’ perceptual, inductive, and re-constructive biases directly transform the initial design intoone that is better fit to human cognition. Such designs are eas-ier to learn and harder to forget. We evaluated the approach inthree domains — stimulus–response mappings, vanity phonenumbers, and letter placement in typeset words — and showthat it produces a good design in each