A Dynamic Security Model for Addressing Hacking Risk Factors

Communication technologies have a significant influence on the business industry. Exchanging information, storing and retrieving data, and cutting communication costs are prime reasons for relying heavily on these technologies. However, these technologies are significantly affected by hacking. Due to neglecting the behaviour of hackers during the initial design stage of common security solutions, including firewalls, Intrusion Detection Systems, Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems, Honeypot and Honeynet, successful hacking attempts still exist. This paper aims to investigate pre-hacking steps (footprinting, scanning, and enumeration) and to highlight the risk factors that are not considered during the development of current security solutions. These risk factors are the common causes of the failures of current security solutions against many hacking attempts. Moreover, this paper proposes a dynamic security model to guide security researchers towards proposing security countermeasures that address these risk factors, which eventually lead to minimising hacking risks

Texture-boundary detection in real-time

Boundary detection is an essential first-step for many computer vision applications. In practice, boundary detection is difficult because most images contain texture. Normally, texture-boundary detectors are complex, and so cannot run in real-time. On the other hand, the few texture boundary detectors that do run in real-time leave much to be desired in terms of quality. This thesis proposes two real-time texture-boundary detectors – the Variance Ridge Detector and the Texton Ridge Detector – both of which can detect high-quality texture-boundaries in real-time. The Variance Ridge Detector is able to run at 47 frames per second on 320 by 240 images, while scoring an F-measure of 0.62 (out of a theoretical maximum of 0.79) on the Berkeley segmentation dataset. The Texton Ridge Detector runs at 10 frames per second but produces slightly better results, with an F-measure score of 0.63. These objective measurements show that the two proposed texture-boundary detectors outperform all other texture-boundary detectors on either quality or speed. As boundary detection is so widely-used, this development could induce improvements to many real-time computer vision applications

Collecting Diverse Microorganisms from Rover Spacecraft

. The Planetary Protection discipline at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory develops and implements procedures to prevent both forward and backward contamination between the Earth and solar system bodies. However, there will always be some microorganisms that will be resistant to the strictest of sterilization methods. In order understand the microorganisms found on spacecraft during assembly, and to rapidly identify them, a mass spectrometry approach was developed. As an experimental approach, a custom database was created for a subset of microorganisms in the Planetary Protection Archive. In order to make the database as accurate and efficient as possible, several different procedures have been developed on how to identify and classify each isolate within the database. Building upon previous research in the area, we designed a method characterizing revived isolates with known 16SrRNA gene sequence OTUs (Operational Taxonomy Units) to create MSPs (Mass Spectral Profiles) and RTCs (Real Time Classifications) using MALDI-TOF Mass Spectroscopy. We will use these profiles to enhance the Planetary Protection custom classification database, for immediate and future investigations. This work was carried out at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

Early Exposure to Soy Isoflavones and Effects on Reproductive Health: A Review of Human and Animal Studies

Soy isoflavones are phytoestrogens with potential hormonal activity due to their similar chemical structure to 17-β-estradiol. The increasing availability of soy isoflavones throughout the food supply and through use of supplements has prompted extensive research on biological benefits to humans in chronic disease prevention and health maintenance. While much of this research has focused on adult populations, infants fed soy protein based infant formulas are exposed to substantial levels of soy isoflavones, even when compared to adult populations that consume a higher quantity of soy-based foods. Infant exposure, through soy formula, primarily occurs from birth to one year of life, a stage of development that is particularly sensitive to dietary and environmental compounds. This has led investigators to study the potential hormonal effects of soy isoflavones on later reproductive health outcomes. Such studies have included minimal human data with the large majority of studies using animal models. This review discusses key aspects of the current human and animal studies and identifies critical areas to be investigated as there is no clear consensus in this research field

Conditional probabilities for a single photon at a beam splitter

Published versio

The impact of sustainable construction and knowledge management on sustainability goals. A review of the venezuelan renewable energy sector

The recognition of the relevance of energy, especially of the renewable energies generated by the sun, water, wind, tides, modern biomass or thermal is growing significantly in the global society based on the possibility it has to improve societies′ quality of life, to support poverty reduction and sustainable development. Renewable energy, and mainly the energy generated by large hydropower generation projects that supply most of the renewable energy consumed by developing countries, requires many technical, legal, financial and social complex processes sustained by innovations and valuable knowledge. Besides these efforts, renewable energy requires a solid infrastructure to generate and distribute the energy resources needed to solve the basic needs of society. This demands a proper construction performance to deliver the energy projects planned according to specifications and respecting environmental and social concerns, which implies the observance of sustainable construction guidelines. But construction projects are complex and demanding and frequently face time and cost overruns that may cause negative impacts on the initial planning and thus on society. The renewable energy issue and the large renewable energy power generation and distribution projects are particularly significant for developing countries and for Latin America in particular, as this region concentrates an important hydropower potential and installed capacity. Using as references the performance of Venezuelan large hydropower generation projects and the Guri dam construction, this research evaluates the tight relationship existing between sustainable construction and knowledge management and their impact to achieve sustainability goals. The knowledge management processes are proposed as a basic strategy to allow learning from successes and failures obtained in previous projects and transform the enhancement opportunites into actions to improve the performance of the renewable energy power generation and distribution projects

The impact of sustainable construction and knowledge management on sustainability goals. A review of the venezuelan renewable energy sector

The recognition of the relevance of energy, especially of the renewable energies generated by the sun, water, wind, tides, modern biomass or thermal is growing significantly in the global society based on the possibility it has to improve societies′ quality of life, to support poverty reduction and sustainable development. Renewable energy, and mainly the energy generated by large hydropower generation projects that supply most of the renewable energy consumed by developing countries, requires many technical, legal, financial and social complex processes sustained by innovations and valuable knowledge. Besides these efforts, renewable energy requires a solid infrastructure to generate and distribute the energy resources needed to solve the basic needs of society. This demands a proper construction performance to deliver the energy projects planned according to specifications and respecting environmental and social concerns, which implies the observance of sustainable construction guidelines. But construction projects are complex and demanding and frequently face time and cost overruns that may cause negative impacts on the initial planning and thus on society. The renewable energy issue and the large renewable energy power generation and distribution projects are particularly significant for developing countries and for Latin America in particular, as this region concentrates an important hydropower potential and installed capacity. Using as references the performance of Venezuelan large hydropower generation projects and the Guri dam construction, this research evaluates the tight relationship existing between sustainable construction and knowledge management and their impact to achieve sustainability goals. The knowledge management processes are proposed as a basic strategy to allow learning from successes and failures obtained in previous projects and transform the enhancement opportunites into actions to improve the performance of the renewable energy power generation and distribution projects

Performance of Detecting IgM Antibodies against Enterovirus 71 for Early Diagnosis

Enterovirus 71 (EV71) infection is more likely to induce severe complications and mortality than other enteroviruses. Methods for detection of IgM antibody against EV71 had been established for years, however, the performance of the methods in the very early diagnosis of EV71 infection had not been fully evaluated, which is especially meaningful because of the short incubation period of EV71 infection. In this report, the performance of an IgM anti-EV71 assay was evaluated using acute sera collected from 165 EV71 infected patients, 165 patients infected with other enteroviruses, and more than 2,000 sera from healthy children or children with other infected diseases. The results showed a 90% sensitivity in 20 patients who were in their first illness day, and similar sensitivity remained till 4 days after onset. After then the sensitivity increased to 95% to 100% for more than one month. The specificity of the assay in non-HFMD children is 99.1% (95% CI: 98.6–99.4), similar as the 99.9% specificity in healthy adults. The cross-reaction rate in patients infected with other non-EV71 enteroviruses was 11.4%. In conclusion, the data here presented show that the detection of IgM anti-EV71 by ELISA affords a reliable, convenient, and prompt diagnosis of EV71 infection

The restructuring of market socialism: the contribution of an 'agency' theoretical perspective

Most discussions of the development of market socialism in China adopt an ‘institutional approach’ in which socio-economic and political organizations are described as a complex set of arrangements determined by the policies and role of the Communist Party. Such institutions are often seen to be little more than passive forces responding to the imperatives and stipulations of the Party. However the character and continuing development of market socialism is far more complex than this. It is made up of inter-acting forces that are the outcome of the purposive actions of economic agents that, although created and nurtured by the Party, create tensions within the socio-economic structure and thereby shape the direction of societal change. It is these that constitute many of the defining characteristics of market socialism. There is, the tensions between the imperatives of an emerging market economy and the political imperatives of the Party. But there are others that are determined by the goals and values of a diversity of agents within both the state-owned and privately-owned sectors of the economy. For an understanding of these, we argue in this paper for the need to adopt an ‘agency approach’; that is, one that focuses upon the key roles of actors and agencies, in shaping institutional arrangements of the sort that constitute present-day market socialism. This, we argue, does not displace an ‘institutional’ theoretical perspective but compliments it thereby offers a more complete insight into the generic character of a socio-economic structure; in this case, Chinese market socialism

'You can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink': Exploring children's engagement and resistance in family therapy

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10591-012-9220-8Children’s engagement and disengagement, adherence and non-adherence, compliance and non-compliance in healthcare have important implications for services. In family therapy mere attendance to the appointments is no guarantee of engaging in the treatment process and as children are not the main initiators of attendance engaging them through the process can be a complex activity for professionals. Through a conversation analysis of naturally occurring family therapy sessions we explore the main discursive strategies that children employ in this context to passively and actively disengage from the therapeutic process and investigate how the therapists manage and attend to this. We note that children competently remove themselves from therapy through passive resistance, active disengagement, and by expressing their autonomy. Analysis reveals that siblings of the constructed ‘problem’ child are given greater liberty in involvement. We conclude by demonstrating how therapists manage the delicate endeavour of including all family members in the process and how engagement and re-engagement are essential for meeting goals and discuss broader implications for healthcare and other settings where children may disengage