Understanding malware autostart techniques with web data extraction

The purpose of this study was to investigate automatic execution methods in Windows operating systems, as used and abused by malware. Using data extracted from the Web, information on over 10,000 malware specimens was collected and analyzed, and trends were discovered and presented. Correlations were found between these records and a list of known autostart locations for various versions of Windows. All programming was written in PHP, which proved very effective. A full breakdown of the popularity of each method per year was constructed. It was found that the popularity of many methods has varied greatly over the last decade, mostly following operating system releases and security improvements, but with some frightening exceptions

Peace at any price: the visit of Nazi Women’s leader Gertrud Scholtz-Klink to London in March 1939 and the response of British Women Activists

In early March 1939 the Nazi women’s leader (Reichsfrauenfühererin) Gertrud Scholtz-Klink made a little-known visit to London at the invitation of the Women’s League of Health and Beauty and the Anglo-German Fellowship. Taking place against the background of intense efforts to maintain peace, and growing expectations of war, the visit prompted a variety of responses from British women activists. Through analysing these responses, as well as examining why this visit has been overlooked in historical writing, this article sheds new light both on women’s particular contribution to appeasement and on the gendering and feminising of internationalist activism in the aftermath of the First World War more generally. The German intentions behind accepting the invitation, the protests by a small number of London-based anti-fascist women and the reason why even some pro-appeasement women like Nancy Astor refused to meet Scholtz-Klink, are also explored

Resistance to BRAF inhibitors induces glutamine dependency in melanoma cells

BRAF inhibitors can extend progression-free and overall survival in melanoma patients whose tumors harbor mutations in BRAF. However, the majority of patients eventually develop resistance to these drugs. Here we show that BRAF mutant melanoma cells that have developed acquired resistance to BRAF inhibitors display increased oxidative metabolism and increased dependency on mitochondria for survival. Intriguingly, the increased oxidative metabolism is associated with a switch from glucose to glutamine metabolism and an increased dependence on glutamine over glucose for proliferation. We show that the resistant cells are more sensitive to mitochondrial poisons and to inhibitors of glutaminolysis, suggesting that targeting specific metabolic pathways may offer exciting therapeutic opportunities to treat resistant tumors, or to delay emergence of resistance in the first-line setting

Insomnia as an Independent Predictor of Incident Cardiovascular Disease in HIV: Data from the Veterans Aging Cohort Study

Background: Insomnia is associated with increased cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in the general population and is highly prevalent in people with HIV. The CVD risk conferred by insomnia in the HIV population is unknown. Methods: Using the Veterans Aging Cohort Study-Survey Cohort, insomnia symptoms were measured and dummy coded with the item, “Difficulty falling or staying asleep?” (5-point scale from no difficulty to bothers a lot). Incident CVD event ICD-9 codes (acute myocardial infarction, stroke, or coronary artery revascularization) were identified with VA and Medicare administrative data and VA fee-for-service data. Those with baseline CVD were excluded. Results: HIV-infected (N=3,108) veterans had a median follow-up time of 10.8 years, during which 267 CVD events occurred. Compared to HIV-infected veterans with no difficulty falling or staying asleep, HIV-infected veterans bothered a lot by insomnia symptoms had an increased risk of incident CVD after adjusting for demographics (HR=1.64, 95%CI=1.16-2.31, p=.005), CVD risk factors (HR=1.62, 95%CI=1.14-2.30, p=.007), additional potential confounders (hepatitis C infection, renal disease, anemia, alcohol use, cocaine use; HR=1.70, 95%CI=1.19-2.43, p=.003), and HIV-specific factors (HIV-1 RNA, CD4+ T-cell count, ART; HR=1.66, 95%CI=1.16-2.37, p=.005). Additional adjustment for non-benzodiazepine sleep medication (HR=1.62, 95%CI=1.13-2.32, p=.009) did not attenuate the association; however, it fell short of significance at p < .01 after adjustment for depressive symptoms (HR=1.51, 95%CI=0.98-2.32, p=.060) or antidepressant medication (HR=1.51, 95%CI=1.04-2.19, p=.031). Conclusion: Highly bothersome insomnia symptoms were significantly associated with incident CVD in HIV-infected veterans, suggesting that insomnia may be a novel, modifiable risk factor for CVD in HIV

Light hadron spectrum---MILC results with the Kogut-Susskind and Wilson actions

We present the current status of our ongoing calculations of the light hadron spectrum with both Kogut-Susskind (KS) and Wilson quarks in the valence or quenched approximation. We discuss KS quarks first and find that the chiral extrapolation is potentially the biggest source of systematic error. For the Wilson case, we focus on finite volume and source size effects at 6/g^2=5.7. We find no evidence to support the claim that there is a finite volume effect between N_s=16 and 24 of approximately 5%.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, LaTeX, uses espcrs2, epsf, Invited talk presented by S. Gottlieb at Lattice QCD on Parallel Computers, University of Tsukuba, March, 1997, to appear in the proceeding

Jets with a Twist: Emergence of FR0 Jets in 3D GRMHD Simulation of Zero Angular Momentum Black Hole Accretion

Spinning supermassive black holes (BHs) in active galactic nuclei (AGN) magnetically launch relativistic collimated outflows, or jets. Without angular momentum supply, such jets are thought to perish within $3$ orders of magnitude in distance from the BH, well before reaching kpc-scales. We study the survival of such jets at the largest scale separation to date, via 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of rapidly spinning BHs immersed into uniform zero-angular-momentum gas threaded by weak vertical magnetic field. We place the gas outside the BH sphere of influence, or the Bondi radius, chosen much larger than the BH gravitational radius, $R_\text{B}=10^3R_\text{g}$. The BH develops dynamically-important large-scale magnetic fields, forms a magnetically-arrested disk (MAD), and launches relativistic jets that propagate well outside $R_\text{B}$ and suppress BH accretion to $1.5\%$ of the Bondi rate, $\dot{M}_\text{B}$. Thus, low-angular-momentum accretion in the MAD state can form large-scale jets in Fanaroff-Riley (FR) type I and II galaxies. Subsequently, the disk shrinks and exits the MAD state: barely a disk (BAD), it rapidly precesses, whips the jets around, globally destroys them, and lets $5-10\%$ of $\dot{M}_\text{B}$ reach the BH. Thereafter, the disk starts rocking back and forth by angles $90-180^\circ$: the rocking accretion disk (RAD) launches weak intermittent jets that spread their energy over a large area and suppress BH accretion to $\lesssim 2 \% ~ \dot{M}_\text{B}$. Because BAD and RAD states tangle up the jets and destroy them well inside $R_\text{B}$, they are promising candidates for the more abundant, but less luminous, class of FR0 galaxies