Human and Organizational Issues for Resilient Communications

Human and organizational issues are able to create both vulnerabilities and resilience to threats. In this chapter, we investigate human and organizational factors, conducted through ethnographic studies of operators and sets of interviews with staff responsible for security, reliability and quality in two different organizations, which own and operate utility networks. Ethnography is a qualitative orientation to research that emphasizes the detailed observation and interview of people in naturally occurring settings. Our findings indicate that 'human error' forms the biggest threat to cyber-security and that there is a need for Security Operational Centres to document all cyber-security accidents. Also, we conclude that it will always be insufficient to assess mental security models in terms of their technical correctness, as it is sometimes more important to know how well they represent prevailing social issues and requirements. As a practical recommendation from this work, we suggest that utility organizations engage in penetration testing and perhaps other forms of vulnerability analysis, not only to discover specific vulnerabilities but also to learn more about the mental models they use

Recruitment and Activation of Pancreatic Stellate Cells from the Bone Marrow in Pancreatic Cancer: A Model of Tumor-Host Interaction

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer are characterised by extensive stellate cell mediated fibrosis, and current therapeutic development includes targeting pancreatic cancer stroma and tumor-host interactions. Recent evidence has suggested that circulating bone marrow derived stem cells (BMDC) contribute to solid organs. We aimed to define the role of circulating haematopoietic cells in the normal and diseased pancreas. METHODS: Whole bone marrow was harvested from male β-actin-EGFP donor mice and transplanted into irradiated female recipient C57/BL6 mice. Chronic pancreatitis was induced with repeat injections of caerulein, while carcinogenesis was induced with an intrapancreatic injection of dimethylbenzanthracene (DMBA). Phenotype of engrafted donor-derived cells within the pancreas was assessed by immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence and in situ hybridisation. RESULTS: GFP positive cells were visible in the exocrine pancreatic epithelia from 3 months post transplantation. These exhibited acinar morphology and were positive for amylase and peanut agglutinin. Mice administered caerulein developed chronic pancreatitis while DMBA mice exhibited precursor lesions and pancreatic cancer. No acinar cells were identified to be donor-derived upon cessation of cerulein treatment, however rare occurrences of bone marrow-derived acinar cells were observed during pancreatic regeneration. Increased recruitment of BMDC was observed within the desmoplastic stroma, contributing to the activated pancreatic stellate cell (PaSC) population in both diseases. Expression of stellate cell markers CELSR3, PBX1 and GFAP was observed in BMD cancer-associated PaSCs, however cancer-associated, but not pancreatitis-associated BMD PaSCs, expressed the cancer PaSC specific marker CELSR3. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that BMDC can incorporate into the pancreas and adopt the differentiated state of the exocrine compartment. BMDC that contribute to the activated PaSC population in chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer have different phenotypes, and may play important roles in these diseases. Further, bone marrow transplantation may provide a useful model for the study of tumor-host interactions in cancer and pancreatitis

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)1.

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field

Safety culture and models: Regime change - Chap. 10

Abstract The goal of this chapter is to explore the generic organizational challenges faced by any high-risk organization and how they shape the social production of safety. Confronted with six generic categories of challenging dilemmas, high-risk organizations differ in their organizational responses, and in the mitigation strategies they put in place. However, this diversity does not mean that there is an infinite number of options. In the chapter, we introduce the concept of “safety regimes”, as a way to tackle the diverse ways in which companies operate, hence leaving aside the somewhat overused “safety culture” concept. The notion of “regime”, understood as a stable enough organizational equilibrium, offers an alternative way of documenting the organizational responses that high-risk organizations choose to develop and their direct or indirect consequences for the production of safety. The conditions for devoting such attention to the quality of organizing cannot be prescribed and decided upon once and for all. Rather than proposing top-down safety culture programs, and trying to make them fit into an ever-diverse and surprising reality on the ground, this chapter looks at another analytical option: clarifying the key dimensions that are fundamental to the establishment and comparison of safety regimes

Risk and Organizational Networks: Making Sense of Failure in the Division of Labour

Recent crises have implicated organizational networks, rather than individual, unitary organizations, suggesting that the network rather than the single organization is the appropriate unit of analysis for understanding risk. It is the division of labour across organizational boundaries that appear to be especially threatening. This study investigated how sense is made of the risk that arises from this division of labour, analysing journalistic commentary on two iconic cases in the UK: the Hatfield derailment and the Sudan 1 food contamination scandal. In both cases it was the nature of networks that was central to most explanations of the events that took place, and in both cases it was the societal perception of risk that was more consequential than the objective physical harm. The main conclusion from the analysis was that this sensemaking was ambivalent about organizational networks – seeing advantages as well as drawbacks, and indicating that the main problem was not the choice of how to divide labour but to ensure that the chosen division was rigorously developed and maintained

Leadership in Resilient Organizations

his chapter focuses on organizations’ ability to change between differentmodes of operation as a key adaptive capacity that fosters resilience. Four modesare described which represent responses to low versus high demands on stability andflexibility respectively. The operational requirements for leaders both in enactingthe different modes of operation and in instigating switches between the modes aredetailed. Strategic recommendations are outlined that should help organizations tobuild the needed leadership abilities and to support organizational change towardsbetter handling fundamental tensions and trade-offs embedded in the requirement tostay in control while facing unexpected uncertainties

Error climate and individuals dealing with errors in the workplace

This cross-sectional field study investigates the effect of contextual influences (error climate) on reactions to errors (how individuals deal with errors). We surveyed n = 830 apprentices in various trainee positions in the hotel and restaurant industry. The responses show that perceived error climate in the training company, as well as the self-concept of professional competence, predict the way in which apprentices deal individually with errors. Moreover, the findings indicate that both – socio-demographic group and the characteristics of the organization – also influence affective responses to errors