Role assigning and taking in cloud computing

The widespread use of cloud computing (CC) has brought to the forefront information technology (IT) governance issues, rendering the lack of expertise in handling CC-based IT controls a major challenge for business enterprises and other societal organizations. In the cloud-computing context, this study identifies and ranks the determinants of role assigning and taking by IT people. The study’s integrative research links CC and IT governance to humane arrangements, as it validates and ranks role assigning and taking components through in-depth interviews with twelve IT decision-makers and forty-four Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) members, engaged as panelists in a Delphi technique implementation. The empirical results recognize skills and competencies as prioritized determinants of IT controls, while IT security, risk and compliance emerge as capabilities crucial to evaluate and manage CC service providers. Despite the study’s generalizability limitations, its findings highlight future research paths and provide practical guidelines toward the high technology of open-market IT self-governance. The latter entails the humane flows of collegial control and responsibility, as opposed to the inhumane flows of authority and power, under the sequestered technique of the bureaucratically-hierarchized IT hetero-governanc

Nine things to know about elicitins

Elicitins are structurally conserved extracellular proteins in Phytophthora and Pythium oomycete pathogen species. They were first described in the late 1980s as abundant proteins in Phytophthora culture filtrates that have the capacity to elicit hypersensitive (HR) cell death and disease resistance in tobacco. Later, they became well-established as having features of microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs) and to elicit defences in a variety of plant species. Research on elicitins culminated in the recent cloning of the elicitin response (ELR) cell surface receptor-like protein, from the wild potato Solanum microdontum, which mediates response to a broad range of elicitins. In this review, we provide an overview on elicitins and the plant responses they elicit. We summarize the state of the art by describing what we consider to be the nine most important features of elicitin biology

A Secure Fog-based Platform for SCADA-based IoT Critical Infrastructure

The rapid proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as smart meters and water valves, into industrial critical infrastructures and control systems has put stringent performance and scalability requirements on modern Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. While cloud computing has enabled modern SCADA systems to cope with the increasing amount of data generated by sensors, actuators and control devices, there has been a growing interest recently to deploy edge datacenters in fog architectures to secure low-latency and enhanced security for mission-critical data. However, fog security and privacy for SCADA-based IoT critical infrastructures remains an under-researched area. To address this challenge, this contribution proposes a novel security “toolbox” to reinforce the integrity, security, and privacy of SCADA-based IoTcritical infrastructure at the fog layer. The toolbox incorporates a key feature: a cryptographic-based access approach to the cloud services using identity-based cryptography and signature schemes at the fog layer. We present the implementation details of a prototype for our proposed Secure Fog-based Platform (SeFoP) and provide performance evaluation results to demonstrate the appropriateness of the proposed platform in a real-world scenario. These results can pave the way towards the development of more secured and trusted SCADA-based IoT critical infrastructure, which is essential to counter cyber threats against next-generation critical infrastructure and industrial control systems. The results from the experiments demonstrate a superior performance of SeFoP, which is around 2.8 seconds when adding 5 virtual machines (VMs), 3.2 seconds when adding 10 VMs, and 112 seconds when adding 1000 VMs compared to Multi-Level user Access Control (MLAC) platform

Использование технологии критического мышления в обучении слушателей английскому языку на примере учебной дисциплины "Чтение иноязычных текстов"

Разработан сценарий практического занятия для дисциплины "Чтение иноязычных текстов" для слушателей 2 ступени обучения (английский язык) в рамках программы повышения квалификации ППС на основе базовой модели технологии критического мышления, проведен анализ и сопоставление целей и задач базовой модели технологии критического мышления и дисциплины "Чтение иноязычных текстов"

Analogies de méthodes et différences d'appareillage dans l'enregistrement d'informations corrélées

L'enregistrement des énergies de particules corrélées : expériences (α, γ), (3He, dγ), (d, pγ), (p, p' γ), expériences de polarisation [4, 6,12], a été effectué indépendamment avec des appareillages de conceptions différentes. L'un est un système d'acquisition et de contrôle utilisant une logique câblée, l'autre un ordinateur en temps réel. L'examen critique de ces appareillages et de leur utilisation conduit à des conclusions voisines

Acquired erythroderma in adults: a clinical and prognostic study

Abstract Background Erythroderma is a severe syndrome and prognostic studies are rare in the literature

A secure fog-based platform for SCADA-based IoT critical infrastructure

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The rapid proliferation of Internet of things (IoT) devices, such as smart meters and water valves, into industrial critical infrastructures and control systems has put stringent performance and scalability requirements on modern Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. While cloud computing has enabled modern SCADA systems to cope with the increasing amount of data generated by sensors, actuators, and control devices, there has been a growing interest recently to deploy edge data centers in fog architectures to secure low-latency and enhanced security for mission-critical data. However, fog security and privacy for SCADA-based IoT critical infrastructures remains an under-researched area. To address this challenge, this contribution proposes a novel security “toolbox” to reinforce the integrity, security, and privacy of SCADA-based IoT critical infrastructure at the fog layer. The toolbox incorporates a key feature: a cryptographic-based access approach to the cloud services using identity-based cryptography and signature schemes at the fog layer. We present the implementation details of a prototype for our proposed secure fog-based platform and provide performance evaluation results to demonstrate the appropriateness of the proposed platform in a real-world scenario. These results can pave the way toward the development of a more secure and trusted SCADA-based IoT critical infrastructure, which is essential to counter cyber threats against next-generation critical infrastructure and industrial control systems. The results from the experiments demonstrate a superior performance of the secure fog-based platform, which is around 2.8 seconds when adding five virtual machines (VMs), 3.2 seconds when adding 10 VMs, and 112 seconds when adding 1000 VMs, compared to the multilevel user access control platform

Cutting Edge: Lessons from fraxinus, a crowd-sourced citizen science game in genomics

In 2013, in response to an epidemic of ash dieback disease in England the previous year, we launched a Facebook-based game called Fraxinus to enable non-scientists to contribute to genomics studies of the pathogen that causes the disease and the ash trees that are devastated by it. Over a period of 51 weeks players were able to match computational alignments of genetic sequences in 78% of cases, and to improve them in 15% of cases. We also found that most players were only transiently interested in the game, and that the majority of the work done was performed by a small group of dedicated players. Based on our experiences we have built a linear model for the length of time that contributors are likely to donate to a crowd-sourced citizen science project. This model could serve a guide for the design and implementation of future crowd-sourced citizen science initiatives

Heterologous expression screens in Nicotiana benthamiana identify a candidate effector of the wheat Yellow Rust Pathogen that associates with processing bodies

Rust fungal pathogens of wheat (Triticum spp.) affect crop yields worldwide. The molecular mechanisms underlying the virulence of these pathogens remain elusive, due to the limited availability of suitable molecular genetic research tools. Notably, the inability to perform high-throughput analyses of candidate virulence proteins (also known as effectors) impairs progress. We previously established a pipeline for the fast-forward screens of rust fungal candidate effectors in the model plant Nicotiana benthamiana. This pipeline involves selecting candidate effectors in silico and performing cell biology and protein-protein interaction assays in planta to gain insight into the putative functions of candidate effectors. In this study, we used this pipeline to identify and characterize sixteen candidate effectors from the wheat yellow rust fungal pathogen Puccinia striiformis f sp tritici. Nine candidate effectors targeted a specific plant subcellular compartment or protein complex, providing valuable information on their putative functions in plant cells. One candidate effector, PST02549, accumulated in processing bodies (P-bodies), protein complexes involved in mRNA decapping, degradation, and storage. PST02549 also associates with the P-body-resident ENHANCER OF mRNA DECAPPING PROTEIN 4 (EDC4) from N. benthamiana and wheat. We propose that P-bodies are a novel plant cell compartment targeted by pathogen effectors