The Battlefield of Tomorrow, Today: Can a Cyberattack Ever Rise to an “Act of War?”

In a sense, war has not changed. The end results will always remain the same: death and destruction; even if that destruction is not fully tangible. The results may be instantaneous, or they may be delayed. It is only the means implemented to achieve these destructive ends that evolve. Cyberwarfare is a product of that evolution. Most importantly, we must always remain abreast of evolution and the changes in warfare in order to effectively and efficiently respond to new attacks, and to prevent them as well. This Note sheds light on recent evolution in warfare. It enlightens the reader of the history and science behind cyberattacks through recent incidents involving cyber; argues that cyberattacks can constitute an act of war in international law by triggering the right to self-defense; proposes a tiered analysis in order to effectively, proportionally, and legally respond to attacks in cyberspace; and recommends that the international and national community take the necessary measures to implement this suggestion in order to prepare for the inevitable: a devastating cyberattack

Social Engineering Knowledge Measured as a Security Countermeasure

Social Engineering has become a significant threat to the security of business, government, and academic institutions. As vulnerabilities to social engineering attacks increase, organizations must incorporate risk mitigation strategies to their portfolios of Information Systems Security Countermeasures (ISSC). The goal is to implement mitigation strategies that balance the cost of implementation, the privacy of employees, and the resulting expected costs of social engineering attacks. In this paper we develop an analytical model that calculates the total cost of protection, including the trade-off between the cost of implementing protection strategies and the resulting expected cost of social engineering attacks. We use the model to examine the sensitivity of total costs to various model parameters, including costs of training, knowledge retention and depreciation rate, and number of employees. This model builds on prior work from the Ponemon Institute examining the economic costs of social engineering attacks and the methods implemented to reduce the risk and mitigate the costs of such attacks. In particular, we leverage the empirical analysis presented in Ponemon Institute(2015) to develop a model that examines the economic impacts of various mitigation strategies and the resulting economic trade-offs. This works illustrates that knowledge and awareness among users is an effective method for controlling social engineering threats. The scenarios highlighted in this work illustrated how costs play a role in protection using knowledge as a countermeasure and found the most cost-effective solutions using the same model used by Ponemon(2015). This analysis may help companies develop efficient ways to protect themselves from social engineering attacks while efficiently managing resources in the social engineering realm

The downstream well-being effect of encounters with the criminal justice system

This dissertation explores the relationship between encounters with the criminal justice system and well-being in a large nationally representative sample of U.S. adults. Previous literature has documented several negative health and well-being outcomes associated with encounters with law enforcement, the court/legal system, and the penal system, though little is known about the long-term implications of these experiences for a person's well-being and particularly their sense of meaning or purpose in life. Meaning and purpose in life are important protective factors that can help individuals buffer against and recover from trauma and stress. A loss of meaning or purpose through exposure to the criminal justice system could potentially lead to compounding problems, so understanding this relationship is crucial. The present study found that the most predictive element of criminal justice system exposure was the number of former arrests or detentions by the police, with the first arrest being related to a sharper decline in well-being than subsequent arrests. While race and gender played a role in who was exposed to the criminal justice system, with Black and multiracial men demonstrating the highest prevalence of exposure, the well-being effect of this exposure did not appear to differ by race or gender. Well-being was measured in terms of subjective well-being and a sense of meaning or purpose in life, and we found that the effect of arrests on meaning and purpose was explained by the effect on subjective well-being. The findings add to the extant body of literature on the health and well-being consequences of criminal justice system exposure and demonstrate that previous encounters with the police are linked to reductions in well-being years later.Includes bibliographical references

Trump, Energy Policy, and Hard Look Review

For those concerned about climate change, the Trump administration’s energy policy is alarming. It aims to unravel every corner of the Obama administration’s climate legacy, consistent with an overall sweep of deregulation. Substantively, the Trump policy also departs starkly from the approach of the last decade, embracing traditional energy sources—fossil fuels and nuclear power—above all else. The Trump administration’s moves on energy beg the question: What limits, if any, does this policy approach face? This chapter begins to answer that question. Employing the lens of arbitrary and capricious, or “hard look,” review from administrative law, the chapter outlines principles that may constrain the Trump administration going forward—as well as areas where the administration has room to move.Our contributions are threefold. First, we detail the pentagonal principles that define the Trump energy policy (yes, there is a policy). Second, we establish that this policy is highly political in nature, in that it both predates Trump’s time in office and is connected to very specific projects and rules (even if that focus is short- rather than long-term). Third, we summarize the administration’s efforts to date and then explain the ways in which hard look review is likely (or unlikely) to throw up barriers to those actions

ISLEX foråret 2013

Anmeldt værk: ISLEX.Udarbejdet i samarbejde mellem Stofnun Árna Magnússonarí íslenskum fræðum ved Háskóli Íslands, Reykjavik, Det DanskeSprog- og Litteraturselskab i København, Institutt for lingvistiske,litterære og estetiske studier ved Universitetet i Bergen og Institutionenför svenska språket ved Göteborgs universitet. Publiceret på<islex.is>, <islex.dk>, <islex.no> og <islex.se>

Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog som en historisk ordbog

This article aims to place Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog (ONP) within thecontext of the discussion of just how historical various so-called “historicaldictionaries” are or aim to be. The principal focus for ONP is the order in which thesenses of polysemous words are presented. The abstract noun dyggð (‘virtue’) ischosen to demonstrate both what is typical and what is perhaps peculiar to ONP inthis respect

A METHOD OF QUANTIFYING TORSO SHAPE TO ASSESS ITS INFLUENCE ON RESISTIVE DRAG IN SWIMMING

Torso shape characteristics such as cross-sectional area, curvatures and indentations influence the pressure distribution of fluid flow around the torso. The purpose of this study was to introduce a new method of quantifying torso shape using photographic imaging. The contours of the torso in the frontal and sagittal planes were obtained by tracing photographs of the swimmers. Anterior, posterior and lateral flow lines were interpolated to samples spaced at 1mm vertically and used to determine continuous form gradients of four elite male swimmers. The maximum rate of change in cross-sectional area was estimated from chest-waist and waist-hip by modelling each vertical sample of the torso as an ellipse. The method provides implications for discussion with coaches and athletes and future research to determine the role of torso shape in talent identification and swimming performance

Excitonic effects on coherent phonon dynamics in single wall carbon nanotubes

We discuss how excitons can affect the generation of coherent radial breathing modes in ultrafast spectroscopy of single wall carbon nanotubes. Photoexcited excitons can be localized spatially and give rise to a spatially distributed driving force in real space which involves many phonon wavevectors of the exciton-phonon interaction. The equation of motion for the coherent phonons is modeled phenomenologically by the Klein-Gordon equation, which we solve for the oscillation amplitudes as a function of space and time. By averaging the calculated amplitudes per nanotube length, we obtain time-dependent coherent phonon amplitudes that resemble the homogeneous oscillations that are observed in some pump-probe experiments. We interpret this result to mean that the experiments are only able to see a spatial average of coherent phonon oscillations over the wavelength of light in carbon nanotubes and the microscopic details are averaged out. Our interpretation is justified by calculating the time-dependent absorption spectra resulting from the macroscopic atomic displacements induced by the coherent phonon oscillations. The calculated coherent phonon spectra including excitonic effects show the experimentally observed symmetric peaks at the nanotube transition energies in contrast to the asymmetric peaks that would be obtained if excitonic effects were not included.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev. B on 7 May 2013, revised on 17 July and 13 August 2013, published 30 August 201