Incidental catches of pelagic megafauna by the EU pelagic fleet in the Mauritanian exclusive economic zone during the year 2001 : results extracted from the scientific observer program

The joint project between the Netherlands Institute for Fisheries Research (RIVO) and the Mauritanian Institute for Oceanography and Fisheries Research (IMROP) has been initiated in 1998 in order to strengthen Mauritania’s capacity for research on stocks of small pelagic fish. Part of this project is the 'Scientific Observer Program' that monitors the catches (conserved and discarded) of the EU fishery for small pelagics in Mauritania. The EU pelagic fleet in Mauritania focuses their fisheries mainly on the group of sardinella, additional target species are horse mackerel, chub mackerel and pilchard. Still, the unwanted bycatches of non-commercial large animals such as sharks and dolphins is inevitable so far. This report describes the total bycatches of the pelagic megafauna by the EU pelagic fleet in the Mauritanian Exclusive Economic Zone during the year 2001. The current sampling of large bycatches appears to be full of shortcomings and the collected data are inadequate to apply for the evaluation of the impact of the EU pelagic fishery in Mauritania. Therefore it is concluded that the program needs to undergo a thorough renewal. Essential recommendations are given

Attacks by “Anonymous” WikiLeaks Proponents not Anonymous

On November 28, 2010, the world started watching the whistle blower website WikiLeaks to begin publishing part of the 250,000 US Embassy Diplomatic cables. These confidential cables provide an insight on U.S. international affairs from 274 different embassies, covering topics such as analysis of host countries and leaders and even requests for spying out United Nations leaders.\ud The release of these cables has caused reactions not only in the real world, but also on the Internet. In fact, a cyberwar started just before the initial release. Wikileaks has reported that their servers were experiencing distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS). A DDoS attack consists of many computers trying to overload a server by firing a high number of requests, leading ultimately to service disruption. In this case, the goal was to avoid the release of the embassy cables.\ud After the initial cable release, several companies started severed ties with WikiLeaks. One of the first was Amazon.com, that removed the WikiLeaks web- site from their servers. Next, EveryDNS, a company in which the domain wikileaks.org was registered, dropped the domain entries from its servers. On December 4th, PayPal cancelled the account that WikiLeaks was using to receive on-line donations. On the 6th, Swiss bank PostFinance froze the WikiLeaks assets and Mastercard stopped receiving payments to the WikiLeaks account. Visa followed Mastercard on December 7th.\ud These reactions caused a group of Internet activists (or “hacktivists”) named Anonymous to start a retaliation against PostFinance, PayPay, MasterCard, Visa, Moneybrookers.com and Amazon.com, named “Operation Payback”. The retaliation was performed as DDoS attacks to the websites of those companies, disrupting their activities (except for the case of Amazon.com) for different periods of time.\ud The Anonymous group consists of volunteers that use a stress testing tool to perform the attacks. This tool, named LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon), can be found both as a desktop application and as a Web page.\ud Even though the group behind the attacks claims to be anonymous, the tools they provide do not offer any security services, such as anonymization. As a consequence, a hacktivist that volunteers to take part in such attacks, can be traced back easily. This is the case for both current versions of the LOIC tool. Therefore, the goal of this report is to present an analysis of privacy issues in the context of these attacks, and raise awareness on the risks of taking part in them

Distributed time management in transputer networks

For real-time applications in a distributed system a common notion of time is indispensable. Clocks are used for time measurement, determination of causality, process synchronization and generating unique identifications. All this is only possible if there is a time reference of specified accuracy. Since the local clocks in a distributed system tend to drift away from each other, they need to be adjusted periodically. If the application allows an accuracy that can be met by software, this may be achieved by a distributed clock synchronization algorithm, which creates and maintains a global time reference for all nodes of the network. The design and simulation of such an algorithm for a distributed system consisting of transputers is described. It is based on second order filtered adjustment of the clock rates rather than updating the clock values at onc

Are you serious? From fist bumping to hand hygiene: considering culture, context and complexity in infection prevention intervention research

Infection prevention is an under-resourced research and development topic, with limited evidence for practice in the most basic of measures. A survey of IPS R&D members indicated that what might appear to be simple interactions and interventions in healthcare, such as hand shaking and hand hygiene, should be considered complex interventions taking account of behaviour at the individual and social level as well as contextual factors. Future studies need to be designed utilising comprehensive approaches, for example, the Medical Research Council complex interventions framework, tailored to the country and more local cultural context, if we are to be serious about evidence for infection prevention and control practice

Employee Stock Ownership and Financial Performance in European Countries: The Moderating Effects of Uncertainty Avoidance and Social Trust

This study investigates how the effect of employee stock ownership on financial performance may hinge on the diverse cultural and societal contexts of European countries. Based on agency and national culture theories, we hypothesize that the positive relationship between employee stock ownership and return on assets (ROA) is stronger in those nations with lower uncertainty avoidance and higher social trust. Using a multisource, time‐lagged, large‐scale dataset of 1,741 firms from 21 countries in Europe, our multilevel, random coefficient modeling analysis found evidence for these hypotheses, suggesting that uncertainty avoidance and social trust serve as important contextual cues in predicting the linkage between employee stock ownership and financial performance. Our supplemental analysis with distinction between the managerial and nonmanagerial employee stock ownership further indicates managerial employee stock ownership has a direct positive effect on ROA. Although nonmanagerial employee stock ownership had a nonsignificant association with ROA, the relationship was positive and significant when uncertainty avoidance was low and social trust was high. This research contributes to the existing literature by illuminating some of the contextual influences altering the effectiveness of employee stock ownership. Our findings also offer practical suggestions for effectively using employee stock ownership

Review of the spatial and temporal distribution by life stage for 19 North Sea fish species

Considering the increase in human activity in the North Sea, particularly cargo shipping and the rapidly expanding construction and operation of oil platforms and wind farms, as well as the continued use of the area for military purposes, fisheries and sand extraction, there is a growing concern about the potentially harmful impacts of such anthropogenic activities on marine life. Particular concerns have been raised about the effect of loud impulse sounds and high noise levels, which may affect marine animal life in different ways: habitat use, such as feeding and migration, and reproduction patterns may be disturbed. In the extreme case animals may suffer from sub-lethal or lethal physical damage such as hearing loss and disrupted swim ladders. Knowledge of the spatial distribution and seasonal patterns in the presence of different life stages of marine species is therefore critical for assessing to what extent the dispersion of marine life overlaps with the distribution of human activities and for estimating how potentially harmful impacts can be mitigated both spatially and temporally. The aim of this desk study is consequently to provide a concise overview of existing information on seasonal patterns in the dispersion of fish species in the North Sea, in particular by highlighting the knowledge gaps

SSHCure: a flow-based SSH intrusion detection system

SSH attacks are a main area of concern for network managers, due to the danger associated with a successful compromise. Detecting these attacks, and possibly compromised victims, is therefore a crucial activity. Most existing network intrusion detection systems designed for this purpose rely on the inspection of individual packets and, hence, do not scale to today's high-speed networks. To overcome this issue, this paper proposes SSHCure, a flow-based intrusion detection system for SSH attacks. It employs an efficient algorithm for the real-time detection of ongoing attacks and allows identification of compromised attack targets. A prototype implementation of the algorithm, including a graphical user interface, is implemented as a plugin for the popular NfSen monitoring tool. Finally, the detection performance of the system is validated with empirical traffic data

Trust in the US-EU fruit and vegetable chain: Do US exporters understand EU importers?

Research on organizational and inter organizational trust has become an important field in management and marketing literature, as it is perceived as a pivotal aspect of business transactions. However, clarifications are still needed on the issue of whom we trust; is the person whom we are trading with trusted, or the organization, or just the product‐quality? Not only has this question not been answered within this field of research, neither have cultural differences have been described to any great extent. Additionally, if the perceived factors important to establish trusting relationships may or may not be the same on the buyers and the sellers side in international business transaction in food chains. The primary objective of this research study therefore is to identify how well US exporters understand the elements of trust that establish strong relationships with EU importers. The Analytical Hierarchy Process was used to evaluate the importance of different trust elements in interviews conducted with US exporters and EU importers of fruits and vegetables. Results are compared, providing both a picture of the important facets of trust, as well as whether the partners understand the perspectives of the other partner

Beoordeling criteria GMT-1 "biologische diversiteit"

In het kader van de Kaderrichtlijn Mariene Strategie (KRM) streeft Nederland (in internationale Noordzee-context) naar een “Goede Milieu Toestand” (GMT, of GES Good Environmental Status) van het mariene milieu. Een element van deze GMT is “biologische diversiteit”. De invulling van dit element is onlangs geformuleerd door een taskgroep onder regie van het Joint Research Centre (JRC) van de Europese Commissie en het International Council for Exploration of the Sea (ICES). Binnen het project ‘Aanvullende beschermde gebieden op de Noordzee’ heeft IMARES een interne workshop georganiseerd, welke tot doel had een oordeel te vormen over de bruikbaarheid en toepasbaarheid van resultaten van de JRC/ICES task-groep ten aanzien van het GMT element 1 “biologische diversiteit”, ten behoeve van het aanwijzen van aanvullend te beschermen gebieden in de Nederlandse Exclusieve Economische Zone (EEZ)