Defense Support to the Private Sector: New Concepts for the DoD\u27s National Cyber Defense Mission

A primary mission of the Department of Defense (DoD) remains defending the nation in cyberspace, a function which has until this point has been oriented around the traditional Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA) framework. However, conceptual confusion as to the most effective mechanisms for DoD support during national cyber emergencies has generated a perpetual “fog” that restricts the frameworks optimal employment. This paper examines the typical forms of DoD cyber support currently employed, and presents four additional pillars for consideration. These proposed pillars highlight the potential value of the DoD’s defined role and functionality as a supporting command to the private sector during national cyber emergencies. Furthermore, this paper recommends new, adaptable structures and defined roles that can serve as a model for the DoD’s future composition, disposition, and employment in cyberspace when called upon to defend the nation. Because the private sector is on the front lines of the conflict, a new model of Defense Support to the Private Sector (DSPS) needs consideration

Precise Environmental Searches: Integrating Hierarchical Information Search with EnviroDaemon

Information retrieval has evolved from searches of references, to abstracts, to documents. Search on the Web involves search engines that promise to parse full-text and other files: audio, video, and multimedia. With the indexable Web at 320 million pages and growing, difficulties with locating relevant information have become apparent. The most prevalent means for information retrieval relies on syntax-based methods: keywords or strings of characters are presented to a search engine, and it returns all the matches in the available documents. This method is satisfactory and easy to implement, but it has some inherent limitations that make it unsuitable for many tasks. Instead of looking for syntactical patterns, the user often is interested in keyword meaning or the location of a particular word in a title or header. This paper describes some precise search approaches in the environmental domain that locate information according to syntactic criteria, augmented by the utilization of information in a certain context. The main emphasis of this paper lies in the treatment of structured knowledge, where essential aspects about the topic of interest are encoded not only by the individual items, but also by their relationships among each other. Examples for such structured knowledge are hypertext documents, diagrams, logical and chemical formulae. Benefits of this approach are enhanced precision and approximate search in an already focused, context-specific search engine for the environment: EnviroDaemon

Combined carbonate carbon isotopic and cellular ultrastructural studies of individual benthic foraminifera : method description

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2010. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Paleoceanography 25 (2010): PA2211, doi:10.1029/2009PA001846.Carbon isotopes of foraminiferal tests provide a widely used proxy for past oceanographic environmental conditions. This proxy can be calibrated using live specimens, which are reliably identified with observations of cell ultrastructure. Observations of ultrastructures can also be used for studies of biological characteristics such as diet and presence of symbionts. Combining biological and isotopic studies on individual foraminifera could provide novel information, but standard isotopic methods destroy ultrastructures by desiccating specimens and observations of ultrastructure require removal of carbonate tests, preventing isotope measurements. The approach described here preserves cellular ultrastructure during isotopic analyses by keeping the foraminifera in an aqueous buffer (Phosphate Buffered Saline (PBS)). The technique was developed and standardized with 36 aliquots of NBS-19 standard of similar weight to foraminiferal tests (5 to 123 μg). Standard errors ranged from ± 0.06 to ± 0.85‰ and were caused by CO2 contaminants dissolved in the PBS. The technique was used to measure δ13C values of 96 foraminifera, 10 of which do not precipitate carbonate tests. Calcareous foraminiferal tests had corrected carbon isotope ratios of −8.5 to +3.2‰. This new technique allows comparisons of isotopic compositions of tests made by foraminifera known to be alive at the time of collection with their biological characteristics such as prey composition and presence or absence of putative symbionts. The approach may be applied to additional biomineralizing organisms such as planktonic foraminifera, pteropods, corals, and coccolithophores to elucidate certain biological controls on their paleoceanographic proxy signatures.Support was provided by NSF grants OCE‐0550396 (to J.B.M.), OCE‐0551001 (to J.M.B.), and OCE‐ 0550401 (to A.E.R.)

Changes in timber haul emissions in the context of shifting forest management and infrastructure

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Although significant amounts of carbon may be stored in harvested wood products, the extraction of that carbon from the forest generally entails combustion of fossil fuels. The transport of timber from the forest to primary milling facilities may in particular create emissions that reduce the net sequestration value of product carbon storage. However, attempts to quantify the effects of transport on the net effects of forest management typically use relatively sparse survey data to determine transportation emission factors. We developed an approach for systematically determining transport emissions using: 1) -remotely sensed maps to estimate the spatial distribution of harvests, and 2) - industry data to determine landscape-level harvest volumes as well as the location and processing totals of individual mills. These data support spatial network analysis that can produce estimates of fossil carbon released in timber transport.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Transport-related emissions, evaluated as a fraction of transported wood carbon at 4 points in time on a landscape in western Montana (USA), rose from 0.5% in 1988 to 1.7% in 2004 as local mills closed and spatial patterns of harvest shifted due to decreased logging on federal lands.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The apparent sensitivity of transport emissions to harvest and infrastructure patterns suggests that timber haul is a dynamic component of forest carbon management that bears further study both across regions and over time. The monitoring approach used here, which draws only from widely available monitoring data, could readily be adapted to provide current and historical estimates of transport emissions in a consistent way across large areas.</p

Multiplex RT-PCR Amplification of HIV Genes to Create a Completely Autologous DC-Based Immunotherapy for the Treatment of HIV Infection

BACKGROUND: Effective therapy for HIV-infected individuals remains an unmet medical need. Promising clinical trials with dendritic cell (DC)-based immunotherapy consisting of autologous DC loaded with autologous virus have been reported, however, these approaches depend on large numbers of HIV virions to generate sufficient doses for even limited treatment regimens. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The present study describes a novel approach for RT-PCR amplification of HIV antigens. Previously, RT-PCR amplification of autologous viral sequences has been confounded by the high mutation rate of the virus which results in unreliable primer-template binding. To resolve this problem we developed a multiplex RT-PCR strategy that allows reliable strain-independent amplification of highly polymorphic target antigens from any patient and requires neither viral sequence data nor custom-designed PCR primers for each individual. We demonstrate the application of our RT-PCR process to amplify translationally-competent RNA encoding regions of Gag, Vpr, Rev and Nef. The products amplified using this method represent a complex mixture of autologous antigens encoded by viral quasispecies. We further demonstrate that DCs electroporated with in vitro-transcribed HIV RNAs are capable of stimulating poly-antigen-specific CD8+ T cell responses in vitro. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: This study describes a strategy to overcome patient to patient viral diversity enabling strain-independent RT-PCR amplification of RNAs encoding sequence divergent quasispecies of Gag, Vpr, Rev and Nef from small volumes of infectious plasma. The approach allows creation of a completely autologous therapy that does not require advance knowledge of the HIV genomic sequences, does not have yield limitations and has no intact virus in the final product. The simultaneous use of autologous viral antigens and DCs may provoke broad patient-specific immune responses that could potentially induce effective control of viral loads in the absence of conventional antiretroviral drug therapy

Arrhythmic risk prediction in arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy : external validation of the arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy risk calculator

Aims: Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) causes ventricular arrhythmias (VAs) and sudden cardiac death (SCD). In 2019, a risk prediction model that estimates the 5-year risk of incident VAs in ARVC was developed (ARVCrisk.com). This study aimed to externally validate this prediction model in a large international multicentre cohort and to compare its performance with the risk factor approach recommended for implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) use by published guidelines and expert consensus. Methods and results: In a retrospective cohort of 429 individuals from 29 centres in North America and Europe, 103 (24%) experienced sustained VA during a median follow-up of 5.02 (2.05-7.90) years following diagnosis of ARVC. External validation yielded good discrimination [C-index of 0.70 (95% confidence interval-CI 0.65-0.75)] and calibration slope of 1.01 (95% CI 0.99-1.03). Compared with the three published consensus-based decision algorithms for ICD use in ARVC (Heart Rhythm Society consensus on arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy, International Task Force consensus statement on the treatment of ARVC, and American Heart Association guidelines for VA and SCD), the risk calculator performed better with a superior net clinical benefit below risk threshold of 35%. Conclusion: Using a large independent cohort of patients, this study shows that the ARVC risk model provides good prognostic information and outperforms other published decision algorithms for ICD use. These findings support the use of the model to facilitate shared decision making regarding ICD implantation in the primary prevention of SCD in ARVC

Arrhythmic risk prediction in arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy: external validation of the arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy risk calculator

Aims Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) causes ventricular arrhythmias (VAs) and sudden cardiac death (SCD). In 2019, a risk prediction model that estimates the 5-year risk of incident VAs in ARVC was developed (ARVCrisk.com). This study aimed to externally validate this prediction model in a large international multicentre cohort and to compare its performance with the risk factor approach recommended for implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) use by published guidelines and expert consensus.Methods and results In a retrospective cohort of 429 individuals from 29 centres in North America and Europe, 103 (24%) experienced sustained VA during a median follow-up of 5.02 (2.05-7.90) years following diagnosis of ARVC. External validation yielded good discrimination [C-index of 0.70 (95% confidence interval-CI 0.65-0.75)] and calibration slope of 1.01 (95% CI 0.99-1.03). Compared with the three published consensus-based decision algorithms for ICD use in ARVC (Heart Rhythm Society consensus on arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy, International Task Force consensus statement on the treatment of ARVC, and American Heart Association guidelines for VA and SCD), the risk calculator performed better with a superior net clinical benefit below risk threshold of 35%.Conclusion Using a large independent cohort of patients, this study shows that the ARVC risk model provides good prognostic information and outperforms other published decision algorithms for ICD use. These findings support the use of the model to facilitate shared decision making regarding ICD implantation in the primary prevention of SCD in ARVC

Distinguishing Characteristics between Pandemic 2009–2010 Influenza A (H1N1) and Other Viruses in Patients Hospitalized with Respiratory Illness

BACKGROUND: Differences in clinical presentation and outcomes among patients infected with pandemic 2009 influenza A H1N1 (pH1N1) compared to other respiratory viruses have not been fully elucidated. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A retrospective study was performed of all hospitalized patients at the peak of the pH1N1 season in whom a single respiratory virus was detected by a molecular assay targeting 18 viruses/subtypes (RVP, Luminex xTAG). Fifty-two percent (615/1192) of patients from October, 2009 to December, 2009 had a single respiratory virus (291 pH1N1; 207 rhinovirus; 45 RSV A/B; 37 parainfluenza; 27 adenovirus; 6 coronavirus; and 2 metapneumovirus). No seasonal influenza A or B was detected. Individuals with pH1N1, compared to other viruses, were more likely to present with fever (92% & 70%), cough (92% & 86%), sore throat (32% & 16%), nausea (31% & 8%), vomiting (39% & 30%), abdominal pain (14% & 7%), and a lower white blood count (8,500/L & 13,600/L, all p-values<0.05). In patients with cough and gastrointestinal complaints, the presence of subjective fever/chills independently raised the likelihood of pH1N1 (OR 10). Fifty-five percent (336/615) of our cohort received antibacterial agents, 63% (385/615) received oseltamivir, and 41% (252/615) received steroids. The mortality rate of our cohort was 1% (7/615) and was higher in individuals with pH1N1 compared to other viruses (2.1% & 0.3%, respectively; p = 0.04). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: During the peak pandemic 2009-2010 influenza season in Rhode Island, nearly half of patients admitted with influenza-like symptoms had respiratory viruses other than influenza A. A high proportion of patients were treated with antibiotics and pH1N1 infection had higher mortality compared to other respiratory viruses