Mathematical Approach to Security Risk Assessment

The goal of this paper is to provide a mathematical threat modeling methodology and a threat risk assessment tool that may assist security consultants at assessing the security risks in their protected systems/plants, nuclear power plants and stores of hazardous substances: explosive atmospheres and flammable and combustible gases and liquids, and so forth, and at building an appropriate risk mitigation policy. The probability of a penetration into the protected objects is estimated by combining the probability of the penetration by overcoming the security barriers with a vulnerability model. On the basis of the topographical placement of the protected objects, their security features, and the probability of the penetration, we propose a model of risk mitigation and effective decision making

In-depth investigation of the molecular pathogenesis of bladder cancer in a unique 26-year old patient with extensive multifocal disease: A case report

Background. The molecular characteristics and the clinical disease course of bladder cancer (BC) in young patients remain largely unresolved. All patients are monitored according to an intensive surveillance protocol and we aim to gain more insight into the molecular pathways of bladder tumors in young patients that could ultimately contribute to patient stratification, improve patient quality of life and reduce associated costs. We also determined whether a biomarker-based surveillance could be feasible. Case Presentation. We report a unique case of a 26-year-old Caucasian male with recurrent non-muscle invasive bladder tumors occurring at a high frequency and analyzed multiple tumors (maximal pTaG2) and urine samples of this patient. Analysis included FGFR3 mutation detection, FGFR3 and TP53 immunohistochemistry, mircosatellite analysis of markers on chromosomes 8, 9, 10, 11 and 17 and a genome wide single nucleotide polymorphism-array (SNP). All analyzed tumors contained a mutation in FGFR3 and were associated with FGFR3 overexpression. None of the tumors showed overexpression of TP53. We found a deletion on chromosome 9 in the primary tumor and this was confirmed by the SNP-array that showed regions of loss on chromosome 9. Detection of all recurrences was possible by urinary FGFR3 mutation analysis. Conclusions. Our findings would suggest that the BC disease course is determined by not only a patient's age, but also by the molecular characteristics of a tumor. This young patient contained typical genetic changes found in tumors of older patients and implies a clinical disease course comparable to older patients. We demonstrate that FGFR3 mutation analysis on voided urine is a simple non-invasive method and could serve as a feasible follow-up approach for this young patient presenting with an FGFR3 mutant tumor

Telomerase reverse transcriptase promoter mutations in bladder cancer: High frequency across stages, detection in urine, and lack of association with outcome

Background Hotspot mutations in the promoter of the gene coding for telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) have been described and proposed to activate gene expression. Objectives To investigate TERT mutation frequency, spectrum, association with expression and clinical outcome, and potential for detection of recurrences in urine in patients with urothelial bladder cancer (UBC). D

Active Control of Oscillation Patterns in the Presence of Multiarmed Pitchfork Structure of the Critical Manifold of Singularly Perturbed System

We analyze the possibility of control of oscillation patterns for nonlinear dynamical systems without the excitation of oscillatory inputs. We propose a general method for the partition of the space of initial states to the areas allowing active control of the stable steady-state oscillations. Furthermore, we show that the frequency of oscillations can be controlled by an appropriately positioned parameter in the mathematical model. This paper extends the knowledge of the nature of the oscillations with emphasis on its consequences for active control. The results of the analysis are numerically verified and provide the feedback for further design of oscillator circuits

The design of pamanet the paderborn mobile ad-hoc network (Extended Abstract)

Wireless connectivity is state of the art for local area networks. Currently, most W-LAN networks rely on a centralized design with access points routing all inner and outbound traffic. These access points are intrinsic communication bottlenecks. Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET) overcome this problem, because every participant works as well as a simple node and as a router. Current MANETs are restricted in scalability, because they rely on flooding mechanisms or complete routing tables. Other approaches, providing better scalability use clustering, yet network performance deteriorates in case of high node mobility. We describe the design of a PAMANET, the Paderborn Mobile Ad Hoc Network, a MANET overcoming these problems providing scalability and reliability in a mobile scenario. When implemented, PAMANET works with standard W-LAN IEEE 802.11 radio devices, provides IPv6 communication interfaces and works on personal computers under a standard Linux distribution. First, we present current routing protocols and classify them with respect to scalability and stability in dynamically evolving MANETs. Then, we discuss related research in the area of distributed hash tables and consistent hashing, used for relieving hot spots in the Web, storage area networks and peer-to-pee