Effect of Intravenous or Perivascular Injection of Synthetic Adrenocorticotropic Hormone on Stimulation Test Results in Dogs.

BackgroundStandard protocols for adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) stimulation testing (ACTHst) often involve intravenous (IV) injection of corticotropin. ACTH might be unintentionally injected into the perivascular (PV) space.ObjectiveTo compare stimulation test results after IV and PV injections of ACTH.AnimalsTwenty privately owned dogs were studied: 10 healthy and 10 with trilostane-treated naturally occurring hyperadrenocorticism (HAC).MethodsProspective study. Each of 20 dogs underwent 2 ACTHst not <4 nor more than 14 days apart. Five healthy and 5 HAC dogs had an IV ACTHst first and PV second; 5 healthy and 5 HAC dogs had a PV ACTHst first and IV second. Blood samples for measurement of serum cortisol concentration were collected before and 1 hour after ACTH administration.ResultsNo significant difference in results was demonstrated when comparing serum cortisol concentrations after IV and PV ACTH administration in all 20 dogs (median μg/dL; interval μg/dL: 8.2; 1.4-17.4 versus 7.8; 0.9-16.9; P = .23). No significant difference in results was demonstrated when comparing serum cortisol concentrations after IV and PV ACTH administration in the 10 healthy dogs (median μg/dL; interval μg/dL: 10.9; 7.3-17.4 versus 10.6; 7.1-16.9; P = .54) or in the 10 HAC dogs (median μg/dL; interval μg/dL: 6.3; 1.4-8.6 versus 5.2; 0.9-8.7; P = .061).Conclusions and clinical importancePerivascular administration of ACTH does not significantly alter stimulation test results in healthy dogs or in dogs with HAC undergoing therapy with trilostane

Towards Vulnerability Discovery Using Staged Program Analysis

Eliminating vulnerabilities from low-level code is vital for securing software. Static analysis is a promising approach for discovering vulnerabilities since it can provide developers early feedback on the code they write. But, it presents multiple challenges not the least of which is understanding what makes a bug exploitable and conveying this information to the developer. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a practical vulnerability assessment framework, called Melange. Melange performs data and control flow analysis to diagnose potential security bugs, and outputs well-formatted bug reports that help developers understand and fix security bugs. Based on the intuition that real-world vulnerabilities manifest themselves across multiple parts of a program, Melange performs both local and global analyses. To scale up to large programs, global analysis is demand-driven. Our prototype detects multiple vulnerability classes in C and C++ code including type confusion, and garbage memory reads. We have evaluated Melange extensively. Our case studies show that Melange scales up to large codebases such as Chromium, is easy-to-use, and most importantly, capable of discovering vulnerabilities in real-world code. Our findings indicate that static analysis is a viable reinforcement to the software testing tool set.Comment: A revised version to appear in the proceedings of the 13th conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware & Vulnerability Assessment (DIMVA), July 201

Human capability evaluation approach for cybersecurity in critical industrial infrastructure

Every organization is as frail as its frailest human link in the cyber security of Industry Control System (ICS), which is without predisposition to conceivable technological solutions for enforcing security. Noticeably, human-involved systems are becoming more chaotic, and gravely under attacks due to irregular actions or inactions of human entities in the constituent chain. Many industrial cyber-attacks have successfully defeated technological security solutions through preying on human weaknesses in knowledge and skills, and manipulating insiders within organizations into unsuspectingly delivering entry and access to sensitive industrial assets. In order to help enterprises assess the level of employees’ cyber security awareness and responsiveness, and enhance ICS Cyber security knowledge and skills for ICS protection, a Workforce Cyber Security Capability evaluation model is presented, and theoretically validated. A capability evaluation will allow industries to have a better understanding of the potential state of consciousness, readiness and diagnostic abilities of the industries; thus improve the prevention, detection, and response to any cyber-specific incidents

Physical Education 2

Exam paper for first semester 201

An Analysis of Preliminary and Post-Discussion Priority Scores for Grant Applications Peer Reviewed by the Center for Scientific Review at the NIH

There has been the impression amongst many observers that discussion of a grant application has little practical impact on the final priority scores. Rather the final score is largely dictated by the range of preliminary scores given by the assigned reviewers. The implication is that the preliminary and final scores are the same and the discussion has little impact. The purpose of this examination of the peer review process at the National Institutes of Health is to describe the relationship between preliminary priority scores of the assigned reviewers and the final priority score given by the scientific review group. This study also describes the practical importance of any differences in priority scores. Priority scores for a sample of standard (R01) research grant applications were used in this assessment. The results indicate that the preliminary meeting evaluation is positively correlated with the final meeting outcome but that they are on average significantly different. The results demonstrate that discussion at the meeting has an important practical impact on over 13% of the applications

Investing in Prevention or Paying for Recovery - Attitudes to Cyber Risk

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Broadly speaking an individual can invest time and effort to avoid becoming victim to a cyber attack and/or they can invest resource in recovering from any attack. We introduce a new game called the pre-vention and recovery game to study this trade-off. We report results from the experimental lab that allow us to categorize different approaches to risk taking. We show that many individuals appear relatively risk loving in that they invest in recovery rather than prevention. We find little difference in behavior between a gain and loss framing

Monitoring the Growth of an Orthotopic Tumour Xenograft Model: Multi-Modal Imaging Assessment with Benchtop MRI (1T), High-Field MRI (9.4T), Ultrasound and Bioluminescence

BACKGROUND: Research using orthotopic and transgenic models of cancer requires imaging methods to non-invasively quantify tumour burden. As the choice of appropriate imaging modality is wide-ranging, this study aimed to compare low-field (1T) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a novel and relatively low-cost system, against established preclinical techniques: bioluminescence imaging (BLI), ultrasound imaging (US), and high-field (9.4T) MRI. METHODS: A model of colorectal metastasis to the liver was established in eight mice, which were imaged with each modality over four weeks post-implantation. Tumour burden was assessed from manually segmented regions. RESULTS: All four imaging systems provided sufficient contrast to detect tumours in all of the mice after two weeks. No significant difference was detected between tumour doubling times estimated by low-field MRI, ultrasound imaging or high-field MRI. A strong correlation was measured between high-field MRI estimates of tumour burden and all the other modalities (p < 0.001, Pearson). CONCLUSION: These results suggest that both low-field MRI and ultrasound imaging are accurate modalities for characterising the growth of preclinical tumour models

Synergy between intention recognition and commitments in cooperation dilemmas

Commitments have been shown to promote cooperation if, on the one hand, they can be sufficiently enforced, and on the other hand, the cost of arranging them is justified with respect to the benefits of cooperation. When either of these constraints is not met it leads to the prevalence of commitment free-riders, such as those who commit only when someone else pays to arrange the commitments. Here, we show how intention recognition may circumvent such weakness of costly commitments. We describe an evolutionary model, in the context of the one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma, showing that if players first predict the intentions of their co-player and propose a commitment only when they are not confident enough about their prediction, the chances of reaching mutual cooperation are largely enhanced. We find that an advantageous synergy between intention recognition and costly commitments depends strongly on the confidence and accuracy of intention recognition. In general, we observe an intermediate level of confidence threshold leading to the highest evolutionary advantage, showing that neither unconditional use of commitment nor intention recognition can perform optimally. Rather, our results show that arranging commitments is not always desirable, but that they may be also unavoidable depending on the strength of the dilemma.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe