Deloitte 2019 Future of Cyber Survey Indicates Organizations Are Not Ready

According to a new Deloitte 2019 Future of Cyber survey, there are notable gaps in organizations' abilities to meet cybersecurity demands for the future. The report highlights the dissonance between what organizations aspire to versus the current reality of their cyber posture. Results from the survey indicate that many cyber organizations are challenged by their ability in data management complexities (16 percent), followed closely - better prioritization of cyber risks across the enterprise and rapid IT changes, each at 15 percent

Associating sporadic, foodborne illness caused by Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli with specific foods : a systematic review and meta-analysis of case-control studies

Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) infections are a significant public health issue, with foodborne transmission causing >1 million illnesses worldwide each year. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis (PROSPERO registry # CRD42017074239), to determine the relative association of different food types with sporadic illnesses caused by STEC. Searches were conducted from 01 August to 30 September 2017, using bibliographic and grey literature databases, websites and expert consultation. We identified 22 case-control studies of sporadic STEC infection in humans, from 10 countries within four World Health Organization subregions, from 1985 to 2012. We extracted data from 21 studies, for 237 individual measures in 11 food categories and across three status types (raw or undercooked, not raw and unknown). Beef was the most significant food item associated with STEC illness in the Americas and Europe, but in the Western Pacific region, chicken was most significant. These findings were not significantly moderated by the raw or cooked status of the food item, nor the publication year of the study. Data from the African, South-East Asian and Eastern Mediterranean subregions were lacking and it is unclear whether our results are relevant to these regions

The Summary of Asia Reassurance Initiative Act of 2018

On December 31, 2018, U.S. President Donald J. Trump signed Asia Reassurance Initiative Act of 2018 (ARIA) along with 12 other bills. The ARIA Act, specifically, calls for America's increased engagement in the Indo-Pacific region and strengthened support, including arms sales, for U.S. allies in the region. The legislation is authored by Senators Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Ed Markey (D-MA), Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity.   Before being signed by the President and enacted as a law, the subcommittee conducted five hearings, examining a range of national security, economic, and rule of law challenges in the Indo-Pacific region. The bill was introduced on April 24, 2018, by Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), was referred to the Senate, and passed by unanimous consent on December 4. Consecutively, the act was introduced into Congress on September 25 and it was approved by the Congress on December 12

Sharjah Energy Future Rises From Pioneering Past

In November 1978, a team of engineers crisscrossing 600,000 acres of Sharjah's desert pinned down a sweet spot; the Sajaa asset. Their efforts paid dividends. When the Sajaa-1 well was drilled in May 1980 to 16,656 feet – roughly six times the height of the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa – it was one of the largest gas discovery in the UAE at the time. The engineering team worked without today's technological luxuries – real-time updates from mobile phones and satellites – and navigated their way to success by unrolling dog-eared maps of the desert on the hot bonnets of their four-wheel drive vehicles. This pioneering spirit heralded the beginning of Sharjah's energy industry.&nbsp

The Black Hole Binary Nova Scorpii 1994 (GRO J1655-40): An improved chemical analysis

The chemical analysis of secondary stars of low mass X-ray binaries provides an opportunity to study the formation processes of compact objects, either black holes or neutron stars. Following the discovery of overabundances of $\alpha$-elements in the HIRES/Keck spectrum of the secondary star of Nova Scorpii 1994 (Israelian et al. 1999), we obtained UVES/VLT high-resolution spectroscopy with the aim of performing a detailed abundance analysis of this secondary star. Using a $\chi2$-minimization procedure and a grid of synthetic spectra, we derive the stellar parameters and atmospheric abundances of O, Mg, Al, Ca, Ti, Fe and Ni, using a new UVES spectrum and the HIRES spectrum.The abundances of Al, Ca, Ti, Fe and Ni seem to be consistent with solar values, whereas Na, and especially O, Mg, Si and S are significantly enhanced in comparison with Galactic trends of these elements. A comparison with spherically and non-spherically symmetric supernova explosion models may provide stringent constraints to the model parameters as mass-cut and the explosion energy, in particular from the relative abundances of Si, S, Ca, Ti, Fe and Ni. Most probably the black hole in this system formed in a hypernova explosion of a 30--35 \Msun progenitor star with a mass-cut in the range 2--3.5 \Msun. However, these models produce abundances of Al and Na almost ten times higher than the observed values.Comment: New Accepted version for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics Table 2: Correcte

Additive quantile regression for clustered data with an application to children's physical activity

Additive models are flexible regression tools that handle linear as well as nonlinear terms. The latter are typically modelled via smoothing splines. Additive mixed models extend additive models to include random terms when the data are sampled according to cluster designs (e.g., longitudinal). These models find applications in the study of phenomena like growth, certain disease mechanisms and energy consumption in humans, when repeated measurements are available. In this paper, we propose a novel additive mixed model for quantile regression. Our methods are motivated by an application to physical activity based on a dataset with more than half million accelerometer measurements in children of the UK Millennium Cohort Study. In a simulation study, we assess the proposed methods against existing alternatives.Comment: 50 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables (18 supplementary tables

Observation of lobes near the X-point in resonant magnetic perturbation experiments on MAST

The application of non-axisymmetric resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) with a toroidal mode number n=6 in the MAST tokamak produces a significant reduction in plasma energy loss associated with type-I Edge Localized Modes (ELMs), the first such observation with n>3. During the ELM mitigated stage clear lobe structures are observed in visible-light imaging of the X-point region. These lobes or manifold structures, that were predicted previously, have been observed for the first time in a range of discharges and their appearance is correlated with the effect of RMPs on the plasma i.e. they only appear above a threshold when a density pump out is observed or when the ELM frequency is increased. They appear to be correlated with the RMPs penetrating the plasma and may be important in explaining why the ELM frequency increases. The number and location of the structures observed can be well described using vacuum modelling. Differences in radial extent and poloidal width from vacuum modelling are likely to be due to a combination of transport effects and plasma screening.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure