The Federal Cybersecurity Workforce: Background and Congressional Oversight Issues for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security

[Excerpt] This report examines congressional oversight of two strategies undertaken by Congress and the executive branch to strengthen the federal cybersecurity workforce: (1) initiatives to define and identify the federal cybersecurity workforce, and (2) hiring and pay flexibilities applicable to cybersecurity positions at DOD and DHS. This report focuses on DOD and DHS because of their key roles in federal cybersecurity and because the majority of hiring and pay flexibilities for cybersecurity professionals authorized by Congress apply to DOD and DHS

The Department of Defense Acquisition Workforce: Background, Analysis, and Questions for Congress

[Excerpt] This report provides background on the Department of Defense (DOD) acquisition workforce. Specifically, the report addresses the following questions: What is the acquisition workforce? What is the current size of the acquisition workforce? How has Congress sought to improve the acquisition workforce in the past? What are some potential questions for Congress to explore in the area of acquisition workforce management to improve acquisitions

Developmental Resting State Functional Connectivity for Clinicians

Resting state functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) is a novel means to examine functional brain networks. It allows investigators to identify functional networks defined by distinct, spontaneous signal fluctuations. Resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) studies examining child and adolescent psychiatric disorders are being published with increasing frequency, despite concerns about the impact of motion on findings. Here we review important RSFC findings on typical brain development and recent publications of child and adolescent psychiatric disorders. We close with a summary of the major findings and current strengths and limitations of RSFC studies

Social prescribing and behaviour change : proposal of a new behaviour change technique concerning the ‘connection’ step

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An empirical investigation of intuitions about uptake

Since Austin’s introduction of the locutionary-illocutionary-perlocutionary distinction, it has been a matter of debate within speech act theory whether illocutionary acts like promising, warning, refusing and telling require audience ‘uptake’ in order to be performed. Philosophers on different sides of this debate have tried to support their positions by appealing to hypothetical scenarios, designed to elicit intuitive judgements about the role of uptake. However, philosophers’ intuitions appeared to remain deadlocked, while laypeople’s intuitions have not yet been probed. To begin rectifying that, we ran two experiments probing lay intuitions about the implications of uptake failure. Overall, we found that participants’ responses were skewed towards agreement that speech acts were performed, despite the lack of uptake. There were, however, significant differences across the four different speech act types we investigated (with the highest levels of agreement found for refusing, followed by warning, then telling, and finally promising). We also obtained evidence of complex effects relating to the (high or low) stakes involved in the scenarios. While this study only represents an initial exploration of intuitions about uptake, our results form a basis for further research into their nature and significance, across a range of speech acts, scenarios, and experimental designs

Simulating Moral Actions: An Investigation of Personal Force in Virtual Moral Dilemmas

Advances in Virtual Reality (VR) technologies allow the investigation of simulated moral actions in visually immersive environments. Using a robotic manipulandum and an interactive sculpture, we now also incorporate realistic haptic feedback into virtual moral simulations. In two experiments, we found that participants responded with greater utilitarian actions in virtual and haptic environments when compared to traditional questionnaire assessments of moral judgments. In experiment one, when incorporating a robotic manipulandum, we found that the physical power of simulated utilitarian responses (calculated as the product of force and speed) was predicted by individual levels of psychopathy. In experiment two, which integrated an interactive and lifelike sculpture of a human into a VR simulation, greater utilitarian actions continued to be observed. Together, these results support a disparity between simulated moral action and moral judgment. Overall this research combines state-of-the-art virtual reality, robotic movement simulations, and realistic human sculptures, to enhance moral paradigms that are often contextually impoverished. As such, this combination provides a better assessment of simulated moral action, and illustrates the embodied nature of morally-relevant actions

Speech perception from monaural and binaural information

Two experiments explored the concept of the binaural spectrogram [Culling and Colburn, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 107, 517-527 (2000)] and its relationship to monaurally derived information. In each experiment, speech was added to noise at an adverse signal-to-noise ratio in the NoS pi binaural configuration. The resulting monaural and binaural cues were analyzed within an array of spectro-temporal bins and then these cues were resynthesized by modulating the intensity and/or interaural correlation of freshly generated noise. Experiment 1 measured the intelligibility of the resynthesized stimuli and compared them with the original NoSo and NoS pi stimuli at a fixed signal-to-noise ratio. While NoS pi stimuli were approximately equal to 50% intelligible, each cue in isolation produced similar (very low) intelligibility to the NoSo condition. The resynthesized combination produced approximately equal to 25% intelligibility. Modulation of interaural correlation below 1.2 kHz and of amplitude above 1.2 kHz was not as effective as their combination across all frequencies. Experiment 2 measured three-point psychometric functions in which the signal-to-noise ratio of the original NoS pi stimulus was increased in 3-dB steps from the level used in experiment 1. Modulation of interaural correlation alone proved to have a flat psychometric function. The functions for NoS pi and for combined monaural and binaural cues appeared similar in slope, but shifted horizontally. The results indicate that for sentence materials, neither fluctuations in interaural correlation nor in monaural intensity are sufficient to support speech recognition at signal-to-noise ratios where 50% intelligibility is achieved in the NoS pi configuration; listeners appear to synergistically combine monaural and binaural information in this task, to some extent within the same frequency region

Occupational Exposure to Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons and Elevated Cancer Incidence in Firefighters

Cancer incidence appears to be higher amongst firefighters compared to the general population. Given that many cancers have an environmental component, their occupational exposure to products of carbon combustion such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is of concern. This is the first UK study identifying firefighters exposure to PAH carcinogens. Wipe samples were collected from skin (jaw, neck, hands), personal protective equipment of firefighters, and work environment (offices, fire stations and engines) in two UK Fire and Rescue Service Stations. Levels of 16 US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) PAHs were quantified together with more potent carcinogens: 7,12-dimethylbenzo[a]anthracene, and 3-methylcholanthrene (3-MCA) (12 months post-initial testing). Cancer slope factors, used to estimate cancer risk, indicate a markedly elevated risk. PAH carcinogens including benzo[a]pyrene (B[a]P), 3-MCA, and 7,12-dimethylbenz[a]anthracene PAHs were determined on body surfaces (e.g., hands, throat), on PPE including helmets and clothing, and on work surfaces. The main exposure route would appear to be via skin absorption. These results suggest an urgent need to monitor exposures to firefighters in their occupational setting and conduct long-term follow-up regarding their health status

Automatic Redshift Determination by use of Principal Component Analysis --- I: Fundamentals

With the advent of very large redshift surveys of tens to hundreds of thousands of galaxies reliable techniques for automatically determining galaxy redshifts are becoming increasingly important. The most common technique currently in common use is the cross-correlation of a galactic spectrum with a set of templates. This series of papers presents a new method based on Principal Component Analysis. The method generalizes the cross-correlation approach by replacing the individual templates by a simultaneous linear combination of orthogonal templates. This effectively eliminates the mismatch between templates and data and provides for the possibility of better error estimates. In this paper, the first of a series, the basic mathematics are presented along with a simple demonstration of the application.Comment: 23 pages, 9 Figures, minor revisions, accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journa