An Evaluation of the Information Security Awareness of University Students

Between January 2017 and March 2018, it is estimated that more than 1.9 billion personal and sensitive data records were compromised online. The average cost of a data breach in 2018 was reported to be in the region of US$3.62 million. These figures alone highlight the need for computer users to have a high level of information security awareness (ISA). This research was conducted to establish the ISA of students in a university. There were three aspects to this piece of research. The first was to review and analyse the security habits of students in terms of their own personal device and examine their password habits, including their student account and their own personal accounts. The second was to assess and evaluate each student on a variety of scenarios related to security, using a quiz which had a series of multiple choice questions. Respondents were required to select the option that would be deemed the most secure. Finally, the third aspect of this research was to establish if respondents who had participated in ISA training in the past, scored higher in either the quiz or the assessment of their own device and password habits when compared with users who had not participated in any form of training. This was to determine if ISA training had any bearing on these types of behaviours

A Preliminary Investigation of the Role of Problem Based Learning (PBL)

In recent years (since the mid 1970’s) there has been an increased interest in Problem Based Learning (PBL) as an educational methodology which is not a instructor-centred as traditional educational methodologies. Education professionals are legitimately asking if PBL is applicable generally to most disciplines, and if so, should it be viewed as an alternative or a complementary methodology. Traditional teaching methodologies for technical disciplines place the instructor very much at the centre of learning for the student (with formal lectures, supervised laboratory work and tutorials), particularly in the early years of study at third level. A common view in education is that “assessment drives learning” and that “the curriculum shows you what the teaching staff are doing, assessment tells you what the students are doing”1. Current assessment methodologies at second–level can place more emphasis on knowledge recall rather than actual understanding and this experience can be reinforced at third-level. It may be unrealistic to expect learning not to be primarily driven by assessment, but better assessment methodologies may map the student’s learning more closely to the course objectives. The careful specification of course objectives and the design of curriculum, learning and assessment methodologies to support them is a problem to which PBL offers a solution. It is not the only solution. This article represents a first step in trying to define what is meant by PBL and if it can be applied to the teaching of computing at third level in an Institute of Technology

Reduced brain mammillary body volumes and memory deficits in adolescents who have undergone the Fontan procedure.

BackgroundAdolescents with single ventricle heart disease (SVHD) who have undergone the Fontan procedure show cognitive/memory deficits. Mammillary bodies are key brain sites that regulate memory; however, their integrity in SVHD is unclear. We evaluated mammillary body (MB) volumes and their associations with cognitive/memory scores in SVHD and controls.MethodsBrain MRI data were collected from 63 adolescents (25 SVHD; 38 controls) using a 3.0-Tesla MRI scanner. Cognition and memory were assessed using Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning 2. MB volumes were calculated and compared between groups (ANCOVA, covariates: age, sex, and total brain volume [TBV]). Partial correlations and linear regression were performed to examine associations between volumes and cognitive scores (covariates: age, sex, and TBV).ResultsSVHD group showed significantly lower MoCA and WRAML2 scores over controls. MB volumes were significantly reduced in SVHD over controls. After controlling for age, sex, and TBV, MB volumes correlated with MoCA and delayed memory recall scores in SVHD and controls.ConclusionAdolescents with SVHD show reduced MB volumes associated with cognitive/memory deficits. Potential mechanisms of volume losses may include developmental and/or hypoxic/ischemic-induced processes. Providers should screen for cognitive deficits and explore possible interventions to improve memory

Early Holocene decadal-scale ocean variability recorded in Gulf of California laminated sediments

Scanning electron microscope examination of Holocene laminated sediment from Guaymas Basin, Gulf of California, resolves up to five depositional events per year. Each lamina/sublamina of an early Holocene section of continuously laminated sediment was recorded from backscattered electron imagery photomosaic analysis. Diatom mat laminae, composed predominantly of Thalassiothrix longissima, are associated with early winter mixed diatom flora laminae. Mats are probably brought into the Gulf with Pacific water during the summer, concentrated at the surface or at the pycnocline, and then rapidly deposited in the early winter as water column stratification breaks down. Time series analysis of one ∼300-year section from piston core JPC56 revealed significant periodicities in the deposition of mat laminae at ∼50 years, ∼11 years, and 22–24 years. An ∼50-year cycle in fish populations has been related to changing North Pacific ocean/atmosphere circulation. These Pacific-wide changes in circulation affect the currents dominant at the mouth of the Gulf. When the California Current is dominant, fewer diatom mats are imported into the Gulf, and when the north equatorial Pacific gyre is dominant, more are imported. The ∼11-year, 22- to 24-year, and ∼50-year cycles are all suggested to be influenced by solar cycles

Col-OSSOS: Colors of the Interstellar Planetesimal 1I/`Oumuamua

The recent discovery by Pan-STARRS1 of 1I/2017 U1 (`Oumuamua), on an unbound and hyperbolic orbit, offers a rare opportunity to explore the planetary formation processes of other stars, and the effect of the interstellar environment on a planetesimal surface. 1I/`Oumuamua's close encounter with the inner Solar System in 2017 October was a unique chance to make observations matching those used to characterize the small-body populations of our own Solar System. We present near-simultaneous g$^\prime$, r$^\prime$, and J photometry and colors of 1I/`Oumuamua from the 8.1-m Frederick C. Gillett Gemini North Telescope, and $gri$ photometry from the 4.2 m William Herschel Telescope. Our g$^\prime$r$^\prime$J observations are directly comparable to those from the high-precision Colours of the Outer Solar System Origins Survey (Col-OSSOS), which offer unique diagnostic information for distinguishing between outer Solar System surfaces. The J-band data also provide the highest signal-to-noise measurements made of 1I/`Oumuamua in the near-infrared. Substantial, correlated near-infrared and optical variability is present, with the same trend in both near-infrared and optical. Our observations are consistent with 1I/`Oumuamua rotating with a double-peaked period of $8.10 \pm 0.42$ hours and being a highly elongated body with an axial ratio of at least 5.3:1, implying that it has significant internal cohesion. The color of the first interstellar planetesimal is at the neutral end of the range of Solar System $g-r$ and $r-J$ solar-reflectance colors: it is like that of some dynamically excited objects in the Kuiper belt and the less-red Jupiter Trojans.Comment: Accepted to ApJ

Synthesis of N-Acyl-N,O-Acetals from N-Aryl Amides and Acetals in the Presence of TMSOTf

Secondary amides undergo in situ silyl imidate formation mediated by TMSOTf and an amine base, followed by addition to acetal acceptors to provide N-acyl-N,O-acetals in good yields. An analogous, high-yielding reaction is observed with 2-mercaptothiazoline as the silyl imidate precursor. Competing reduction of the acetal to the corresponding methyl ether via transfer hydrogenation can be circumvented by the replacement of i-Pr2NEt with 2,6-lutidine under otherwise identical reaction conditions

xQSM: Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping with Octave Convolutional and Noise Regularized Neural Networks

Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) is a valuable magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast mechanism that has demonstrated broad clinical applications. However, the image reconstruction of QSM is challenging due to its ill-posed dipole inversion process. In this study, a new deep learning method for QSM reconstruction, namely xQSM, was designed by introducing modified state-of-the-art octave convolutional layers into the U-net backbone. The xQSM method was compared with recentlyproposed U-net-based and conventional regularizationbased methods, using peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity (SSIM), and region-of-interest measurements. The results from a numerical phantom, a simulated human brain, four in vivo healthy human subjects, a multiple sclerosis patient, a glioblastoma patient, as well as a healthy mouse brain showed that the xQSM led to suppressed artifacts than the conventional methods, and enhanced susceptibility contrast, particularly in the ironrich deep grey matter region, than the original U-net, consistently. The xQSM method also substantially shortened the reconstruction time from minutes using conventional iterative methods to only a few seconds.Comment: 37 pages, 10 figures, 3 tabl

Plug-and-Play Latent Feature Editing for Orientation-Adaptive Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping Neural Networks

Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) is a post-processing technique for deriving tissue magnetic susceptibility distribution from MRI phase measurements. Deep learning (DL) algorithms hold great potential for solving the ill-posed QSM reconstruction problem. However, a significant challenge facing current DL-QSM approaches is their limited adaptability to magnetic dipole field orientation variations during training and testing. In this work, we propose a novel Orientation-Adaptive Latent Feature Editing (OA-LFE) module to learn the encoding of acquisition orientation vectors and seamlessly integrate them into the latent features of deep networks. Importantly, it can be directly Plug-and-Play (PnP) into various existing DL-QSM architectures, enabling reconstructions of QSM from arbitrary magnetic dipole orientations. Its effectiveness is demonstrated by combining the OA-LFE module into our previously proposed phase-to-susceptibility single-step instant QSM (iQSM) network, which was initially tailored for pure-axial acquisitions. The proposed OA-LFE-empowered iQSM, which we refer to as iQSM+, is trained in a self-supervised manner on a specially-designed simulation brain dataset. Comprehensive experiments are conducted on simulated and in vivo human brain datasets, encompassing subjects ranging from healthy individuals to those with pathological conditions. These experiments involve various MRI platforms (3T and 7T) and aim to compare our proposed iQSM+ against several established QSM reconstruction frameworks, including the original iQSM. The iQSM+ yields QSM images with significantly improved accuracies and mitigates artifacts, surpassing other state-of-the-art DL-QSM algorithms.Comment: 13pages, 9figure