Is the Transit Industry Prepared for the Cyber Revolution? Policy Recommendations to Enhance Surface Transit Cyber Preparedness

The intent of this study is to assess the readiness, resourcing, and structure of public transit agencies to identify, protect from, detect, respond to, and recover from cybersecurity vulnerabilities and threats. Given the multitude of connected devices already in use by the transit industry and the vast amount of data generated (with more coming online soon), the transit industry is vulnerable to malicious cyber-attack and other cybersecurity-related threats. This study reviews the state of best cybersecurity practices in public surface transit; outlines U.S. public surface transit operators’ cybersecurity operations; assesses U.S. policy on cybersecurity in public surface transportation; and provides policy recommendations that address gaps or identify issues for Congress, the Executive Branch, and the public surface transit agencies. Research methods include an online survey of public surface transit professionals in the United States and oral interviews conducted with members of the Executive Branch (e.g., U.S. Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, The White House, and others), as well as research of literature published in periodicals

The Influence of Gender -Related Beliefs on Students Motor Skill Learning.

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of beliefs about gender appropriateness and conceptions of ability on perceived and actual competence and patterns of behavior during practice of a sex typed masculine task, the hockey wrist shot. Sixty-eight undergraduate females formed four homogeneous treatment conditions based on their beliefs about gender appropriateness and conceptions of ability: Masculine Innate (MI), Masculine Acquired (MA), Neutral Innate (NI), and Neutral Acquired (NA). Four teachers taught across all of the treatment conditions for a total of 16 learning groups. Each of the learning episodes reinforced the gender appropriateness and conception of ability beliefs held by that group and began with an audio-video tape which introduced the critical skill cues and successful practice trials of the hockey wrist shot. The teacher provided eight minutes of skill practice and feedback, while reinforcing the group\u27s gender and ability beliefs. The teacher then left the room so that the learning groups would have an equal amount of time to practice independently. The subjects were given a skill test at the end of the learning episode. Data were collected through a three part questionnaire and from audio-video taping of the entire episode to ascertain the participant\u27s competency beliefs, effort, and performance. Multivariate analysis revealed a main effect for gender appropriateness for both competency beliefs and Performance but no effect on effort. No main effect for conception of ability nor an interactional effect were found. Gender appropriateness impacted the subjects, perceptions of competence and actual performance in the study while beliefs about conceptions of ability did not produce a significant difference. This study reaffirms that educators must work diligently to combat the stereotypical beliefs that many hold with respect to the gender appropriateness of physical activities in order to maximize the potential for positive outcomes in developing a wide array of motor skills

Aligning the Transit Industry and Their Vendors in the Face of Increasing Cyber Risk: Recommendations for Identifying and Addressing Cybersecurity Challenges

Public transit agencies in the United States depend on external vendors to help deliver and maintain many essential services and to provide critical technologies, from ticket purchases to scheduling to email management. While the integration of new, advanced technologies into the public transit industry brings important advancements to U.S. critical transportation infrastructure, the application of digital technologies also brings with it a new assortment of digital risks. Transit agencies of all sizes are finding themselves subject to cyber incidents—most notably ransomware attacks—like those experienced by larger, more prominent companies and critical infrastructure providers. The findings in this report focus on helping all parties involved improve in three key areas: cyber literacy and procurement practices, the lifecycle of technology vis-à-vis transit hardware, and the importance of embracing risk as a road to resiliency

Effects of whole life exposure to Bisphenol A or 17α-ethinyl estradiol in uterus of nulligravida CD1 mice

AbstractBisphenol A (BPA) is an endocrine disrupting chemical (EDC) with known estrogenic activity. Exposure to BPA in adult mice was shown previously to increase uterine pathology with associated alterations in the immune response and fibrosis. Reported here are uterine histopathology findings from CD1 mice exposed to BPA or 17α-ethinyl estradiol at multiple doses from conception through postnatal day 90. Along with uterine pathology, impacts of exposure on collagen accumulation and F4/80 positive macrophage numbers, as an indicator of immune response in the endometrium and myometrium, are presented. These companion data are from offspring (F1) of the dams analyzed for effects of adult exposures published in the Reproductive Toxicology manuscript titled “Strain-Specific Induction of Endometrial Periglandular Fibrosis in Mice Exposed during Adulthood to the Endocrine Disrupting Chemical Bisphenol A” (doi: 10.1016/j.reprotox.2015.08.001)

The interaction of fire and mankind:Introduction

Fire has been an important part of the Earth system for over 350 Myr. Humans evolved in this fiery world and are the only animals to have used and controlled fire. The interaction of mankind with fire is a complex one, with both positive and negative aspects. Humans have long used fire for heating, cooking, landscape management and agriculture, as well as for pyrotechnologies and in industrial processes over more recent centuries. Many landscapes need fire but population expansion into wildland areas creates a tension between different interest groups. Extinguishing wildfires may not always be the correct solution. A combination of factors, including the problem of invasive plants, landscape change, climate change, population growth, human health, economic, social and cultural attitudes that may be transnational make a re-evaluation of fire and mankind necessary. The Royal Society meeting on Fire and mankind was held to address these issues and the results of these deliberations are published in this volume. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The interaction of fire and mankind’

Hardware Design Improvements to the Major Constituent Analyzer

The Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) onboard the International Space Station (ISS) is designed to monitor the major constituents of the ISS's internal atmosphere. This mass spectrometer based system is an integral part of the Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) and is a primary tool for the management of ISS atmosphere composition. As a part of NASA Change Request CR10773A, several alterations to the hardware have been made to accommodate improved MCA logistics. First, the ORU 08 verification gas assembly has been modified to allow the verification gas cylinder to be installed on orbit. The verification gas is an essential MCA consumable that requires periodic replenishment. Designing the cylinder for subassembly transport reduces the size and weight of the maintained item for launch. The redesign of the ORU 08 assembly includes a redesigned housing, cylinder mounting apparatus, and pneumatic connection. The second hardware change is a redesigned wiring harness for the ORU 02 analyzer. The ORU 02 electrical connector interface was damaged in a previous on-orbit installation, and this necessitated the development of a temporary fix while a more permanent solution was developed. The new wiring harness design includes flexible cable as well as indexing fasteners and guide-pins, and provides better accessibility during the on-orbit maintenance operation. This presentation will describe the hardware improvements being implemented for MCA as well as the expected improvement to logistics and maintenance

Good Laboratory Practices: Myers et al. Respond

Reproduced with permission from Environmental Health Perspectives. DOI:10.1289/ehp.0900884RMyers et al. respond to a letter written by Becker et al. regarding Myers' article "Why public health agencies cannot depend on Good Laboratory Practices as a criterion for selecting data: the case of bisphenol A.

Framing interculturality: a corpus-based analysis of on-line promotional discourse of higher education intercultural communication courses

This paper examines how intercultural communication (ICC) and the notion of culture are framed in on-line promotional discourse of higher education intercultural communication courses. It analyses a specialised corpus comprised of 14,842 words from 43 course websites of master’s programmes in intercultural communication in the UK and the US—internationally, the two largest providers of such programmes. Through combining corpus tools with a ‘situated meaning’ approach, the analysis reveals that while a small number of courses acknowledge cultural ‘complexity’, culture is still very often reduced to an essentialised and static notion, despite growing criticism against such an approach in ICC literature. Intercultural communication is valorised as a combination of desirable skills and knowledge conducive to effective communication of different cultural groups and for those working in international arenas. Significant differences between the UK and US courses are identified with regard to the extent of associations with diversity-related social categories. The lack of interpretive, critical and constructivist positions on culture in promotional discourse is discussed in the context of neoliberal discourse and the current thinking towards professional competences dominant in Britain, North America, and other parts of the world

A vision for safer food contact materials: Public health concerns as drivers for improved testing

Food contact materials (FCMs) and food contact articles are ubiquitous in today's globalized food system. Chemicals migrate from FCMs into foodstuffs, so called food contact chemicals (FCCs), but current regulatory requirements do not sufficiently protect public health from hazardous FCCs because only individual substances used to make FCMs are tested and mostly only for genotoxicity while endocrine disruption and other hazard properties are disregarded. Indeed, FCMs are a known source of a wide range of hazardous chemicals, and they likely contribute to highly prevalent non-communicable diseases. FCMs can also include non-intentionally added substances (NIAS), which often are unknown and therefore not subject to risk assessment. To address these important shortcomings, we outline how the safety of FCMs may be improved by (1) testing the overall migrate, including (unknown) NIAS, of finished food contact articles, and (2) expanding toxicological testing beyond genotoxicity to multiple endpoints associated with non-communicable diseases relevant to human health. To identify mechanistic endpoints for testing, we group chronic health outcomes associated with chemical exposure into Six Clusters of Disease (SCOD) and we propose that finished food contact articles should be tested for their impacts on these SCOD. Research should focus on developing robust, relevant, and sensitive in-vitro assays based on mechanistic information linked to the SCOD, e.g., through Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOPs) or Key Characteristics of Toxicants. Implementing this vision will improve prevention of chronic diseases that are associated with hazardous chemical exposures, including from FCMs

Shared Care After Separation in the United Kingdom: Limited Data, Limited Practice?

Despite legislative reform in the last five years aimed at giving non-resident parents (NRPs) official rights to ‘involvement’ in the lives of their children, the UK has not enacted a presumption of ‘50/50’ shared care. The emphasis on individual arrangements follows an overall policy trend toward privatization of family disputes. The little data that exists suggests that the UK lags behind other countries in numbers of separated or divorced couples engaging in shared care, though the actual prevalence and practice of shared care in the UK is difficult to assess for several reasons: definitions of shared care range from 50/50 living arrangements to less definitive timeshares; data on shared parenting practices are relatively rare and fragmented; and it is too early to assess the impact of the new legislative presumption of ‘parental involvement’ on judicial decisions. This article outlines recent legislative changes, examines the available information on post separation contact and shared care, discusses reasons for the scarcity of data, and concludes with observations on the importance of improved data-gathering on UK post separation parenting