Adaptive conflict-free optimization of rule sets for network security packet filtering devices

Packet filtering and processing rules management in firewalls and security gateways has become commonplace in increasingly complex networks. On one side there is a need to maintain the logic of high level policies, which requires administrators to implement and update a large amount of filtering rules while keeping them conflict-free, that is, avoiding security inconsistencies. On the other side, traffic adaptive optimization of large rule lists is useful for general purpose computers used as filtering devices, without specific designed hardware, to face growing link speeds and to harden filtering devices against DoS and DDoS attacks. Our work joins the two issues in an innovative way and defines a traffic adaptive algorithm to find conflict-free optimized rule sets, by relying on information gathered with traffic logs. The proposed approach suits current technology architectures and exploits available features, like traffic log databases, to minimize the impact of ACO development on the packet filtering devices. We demonstrate the benefit entailed by the proposed algorithm through measurements on a test bed made up of real-life, commercial packet filtering devices

Decoupling the implementation processes of Corporate Environmental Management in the Danish Hospitality Industry. An Explorative Analysis

Organizations are progressively being pressured by stakeholders to acknowledge and achieve their interests. Conflicts can arise where multiple stakeholders have differing interests, especially if certain stakeholder groups are prioritized above others when decisions are made about the allocation of scarce resources. Consequentially, it is argued that not all stakeholders can be satisfied simultaneously. Responding to stakeholder concerns for environmental preservation is a relatively recent requirement for managers, who face a great deal of ambiguity in understanding the issues in general, the implications for their organizations, and the ways to respond to these issues. This study is concerned with the general area of organizational sensemaking, stakeholder theory and environmental management. More attention should be given to effective actions and processes that facilitate this kind of interactions as the sensemaking and sensegiving literature do but in regarding of stakeholders. The overall aim of the study is to investigate and evaluate the impact of stakeholders’ engagement in making sense of environmental issues through as a result of implementation of Corporate Environmental Management practices. The empirical analysis is based on a qualitative case study approach. To address the nature of the research problem a qualitative approach using in-depth-semi-structured interviews as the data collection method was deemed to be the most appropriate methodology for gaining an understanding how the processes of sense making influence stakeholders relations. Therefore the idea is to study, in the Danish Hospitality Industry how companies (hotels) implement their Corporate Environmental Management practices engaging with stakeholders in different sensemaking activities. Case study research is preferable in this context, since it allows the investigation to retain the holistic and important uniqueness of daily events (Yin, 1994). That is why the choice of the industry and of the cases is so important. The aim of the study is to understand the internal and external dynamics that facilitate the implementation of Corporate Environmental Management Practices so both practitioners and academics can use my results to orientate future directions of studies and works on this topic.Organizations are progressively being pressured by stakeholders to acknowledge and achieve their interests. Conflicts can arise where multiple stakeholders have differing interests, especially if certain stakeholder groups are prioritized above others when decisions are made about the allocation of scarce resources. Consequentially, it is argued that not all stakeholders can be satisfied simultaneously. Responding to stakeholder concerns for environmental preservation is a relatively recent requirement for managers, who face a great deal of ambiguity in understanding the issues in general, the implications for their organizations, and the ways to respond to these issues. This study is concerned with the general area of organizational sensemaking, stakeholder theory and environmental management. More attention should be given to effective actions and processes that facilitate this kind of interactions as the sensemaking and sensegiving literature do but in regarding of stakeholders. The overall aim of the study is to investigate and evaluate the impact of stakeholders’ engagement in making sense of environmental issues through as a result of implementation of Corporate Environmental Management practices. The empirical analysis is based on a qualitative case study approach. To address the nature of the research problem a qualitative approach using in-depth-semi-structured interviews as the data collection method was deemed to be the most appropriate methodology for gaining an understanding how the processes of sense making influence stakeholders relations. Therefore the idea is to study, in the Danish Hospitality Industry how companies (hotels) implement their Corporate Environmental Management practices engaging with stakeholders in different sensemaking activities. Case study research is preferable in this context, since it allows the investigation to retain the holistic and important uniqueness of daily events (Yin, 1994). That is why the choice of the industry and of the cases is so important. The aim of the study is to understand the internal and external dynamics that facilitate the implementation of Corporate Environmental Management Practices so both practitioners and academics can use my results to orientate future directions of studies and works on this topic.LUISS PhD Thesi

Rendere sociali le imprese. Impatto sociale, confini dell\u2019impresa e rete di stakeholder

E\u2019 possibile ampliare il concetto di impresa sociale fino a comprendere imprese for profit posizionate fuori dai confini fissati dalla definizione ex lege? La risposta a questa domanda necessita di un cambio di punti di vista: la gestione dell\u2019eventuale surplus non pu\uf2 pi\uf9 essere una discriminante di ci\uf2 che viene inteso come impresa sociale. E\u2019 necessario muovere l\u2019attenzione verso i processi che invece permettono di realizzare l\u2019impatto sociale a prescindere da ci\uf2 che accade dal lato degli eventuali profitti. Fatto ci\uf2, \ue8 quindi importante capire quale determinante di questi processi pu\uf2 essere posta alla base della creazione di impatto sociale anche in presenza di soggetti che perseguano fini for profit. In particolare, l\u2019impresa for profit dovr\ue0 essere vista nel contesto del pi\uf9 ampio network di stakeholder che deve essere mobilitato per raggiungere i fini sociali. La mobilitazione degli stakeholder ha il ruolo fondamentale di \u201cfar quadrare il cerchio\u201d, cio\ue8 di permettere ad attori for profit di raggiugere fini sociali, e di poter quindi essere assimilati concettualmente all\u2019idea di imprese sociali. Questo tuttavia non pu\uf2 avvenire lasciando invariate le organizzazioni che decidono di intraprendere questa strada (non ancora riconosciuta, e forse difficilmente catturabile, dalla legge). Appare evidente, infatti, come la mobilitazione degli stakeholder a fini sociali influenzi profondamente i confini dell\u2019impresa: quando gli attori operano sulla base di valori condivisi finalizzati a raggiungere un certo impatto sociale, le imprese parte del network devono optare per comportamenti trasparenti, rendendo ulteriormente permeabili i propri confini. Per rendere evidente questo processo, andremo ad analizzare un network di organizzazioni costituito da piccole imprese manifatturiere, organizzazioni non profit e gruppi di acquisto solidale che, senza rinunciare ognuno alla propria vocazione, hanno sviluppato un modello virtuoso di produzione finalizzata sia al raggiungimento di un impatto sociale che alla sostenibilit\ue0 economica delle imprese partecipanti. In questo caso vedremo che le imprese for profit possono mobilitare una rete di stakeholder a fini sociali a patto di gestire la propria filiera attraverso quella che chiameremo global openness, intesa non solo come trasparenza dei processi interni all\u2019impresa ma anche come necessit\ue0 di rendere trasparente l\u2019intera catena del valore, ben oltre i propri confini e quelli dei propri partner diretti

Toll-like receptors 4 and 9 are responsible for the maintenance of the inflammatory reaction in canine steroid-responsive meningitis-arteritis, a large animal model for neutrophilic meningitis

BACKGROUND: Steroid-responsive meningitis-arteritis (SRMA) is a systemic inflammatory disease affecting young adult dogs and a potential large animal model for neutrophilic meningitis. Similarities between SRMA and infectious central nervous system (CNS) diseases in lymphocyte subsets suggest an infectious origin. Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are pattern recognition receptors playing an important role in innate immunity. Due to their ability to recognize both self and non-self antigens, we hypothesize that TLRs are among the key factors for the induction of the inflammatory process in SRMA and provide an indirect hint on the etiology of the disease. METHODS: The expression profile of cell surface TLRs (TLR2, TLR4 and TLR5) and intracellular TLRs (TLR3 and TLR9) of canine leukocytes was analyzed by immunophenotyping and subsequent flow cytometric measurements. Experiments were performed on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and peripheral blood (PB) samples of dogs affected with SRMA during the acute phase (n = 14) as well as during treatment (n = 23) and compared with those of dogs with bacterial meningitis (n = 3), meningoencephalitis of unknown etiology (n = 6), neoplasia of the central nervous system (n = 6) and a group of dogs with miscellaneous neurological diseases (n = 9). Two additional control groups consisted of dogs with pyogenic infections (n = 13) and of healthy dogs (n = 6). RESULTS: All examined groups showed a high percentage of TLR2, TLR4 and TLR5 positive PB polymorphonuclear cells (PMNs) in comparison to healthy dogs. Very high values of TLR9 positive PB PMNs were detected in acute SRMA. Only a few similarities were found between SRMA patients and dogs with pyogenic infections, both groups were characterized by high expression of TLR4 positive PB monocytes. Glucocorticosteroid therapy reduced TLR2, TLR4 and TLR9 expression in PB monocytes. CONCLUSIONS: A relatively high expression of TLR4 and TLR9 in acute SRMA suggests that these two receptors might be involved in the inflammatory process in SRMA, enhancing the autoimmune reaction. Systematic CSF cell analysis for TLRs can be performed in future treatment studies in larger animals, such as dogs

Settling distances of benthic invertebrates in a sediment mobilization simulation in semi-natural flumes

Drift time and distance depend on the ability of the drifting invertebrates to alter their body posture or by swimming, and these behaviors may change according to the local hydraulic environment, resulting in different distances travelled before exiting the drift. Such drift and settlement mediated invertebrate movement determine dispersal processes and ultimately generates distribution patterns within streams. We conducted an experiment in an open-air, artificial flume system directly fed by an Alpine stream, where we disturbed the sediment in the flumes, inducing catastrophic drift in the benthic community, and then assessed the settlement distances of benthic invertebrates. For each flume, we collected drift samples by disturbing the substrate at 1.5 m intervals, at increasing distance from the downstream end, for a total of 7 disturbances and a maximum settling distance of 10 m in each flume, with five replicates (i.e., five flumes) for each disturbance. The disturbances induced a massive catastrophic drift in Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera, always higher than the behaviorally-occurring basedrift. The Settling Index calculated over the total drift collected at each distance increased with increasing distance, and after 10 m, 90% of the drifting animals had settled. Evenness and taxa richness progressively decrease with increasing settling distance. All drifting taxa were represented mainly by young instars. We used the drift collected at 1 m from the disturbance to standardize the remaining samples, based on the assumption that 1 m is not a distance long enough to allow animals to settle at that water velocity. We calculated the percentage of possible drifters which settled by computing a Settling Index for each taxon. The drifting taxa listed by decreasing Settling Index scores were Epeorus sp., Rhithrogena semicolorata, Isoperla spp., Sericostoma spp., Ecdyonurus spp., Nemoura spp., Leuctra spp., Baetis spp., Hydropsyche spp., Rhyacophila spp. We have shown, in accordance with numerous other studies, that entrained EPT nymphs travel only short distances before returning to the substratum, and that the actual distance travelled while drifting and the total time spent in drift varies between species. The results of this study can provide suggestions to assess taxon-specific availability to colonization which generates distribution patterns within streams and, on a smaller scale (i.e., flume simulations), our results can be extrapolated to other studies conducted in artificial flumes, or to support evidences from field studies.</p

Does Generation Matter in Strategic Change Implementation? Effects of the Age on Change Propensity of Managers After a Privatization

The aim of this paper is to find evidence of managers’ generation effects on a component of resistance to change: the cognitive rigidity. We analyzed data collected during 88 interviews to managers of 16 social security organizations that were transformed by law from public into private entities. These organizations needed to have managers with a new idea of their responsibility. Findings suggest a positive relationship of cognitive rigidity with (old) generation and (high) tenure and a negative relationship with a heterogeneous experience.The aim of this paper is to find evidence of managers’ generation effects on a component of resistance to change: the cognitive rigidity. We analyzed data collected during 88 interviews to managers of 16 social security organizations that were transformed by law from public into private entities. These organizations needed to have managers with a new idea of their responsibility. Findings suggest a positive relationship of cognitive rigidity with (old) generation and (high) tenure and a negative relationship with a heterogeneous experience.Uninvited Submission

Machine learning predicts histologic type and grade of canine gliomas based on MRI texture analysis.

Conventional MRI features of canine gliomas subtypes and grades significantly overlap. Texture analysis (TA) quantifies image texture based on spatial arrangement of pixel intensities. Machine learning (ML) models based on MRI-TA demonstrate high accuracy in predicting brain tumor types and grades in human medicine. The aim of this retrospective, diagnostic accuracy study was to investigate the accuracy of ML-based MRI-TA in predicting canine gliomas histologic types and grades. Dogs with histopathological diagnosis of intracranial glioma and available brain MRI were included. Tumors were manually segmented across their entire volume in enhancing part, non-enhancing part, and peri-tumoral vasogenic edema in T2-weighted (T2w), T1-weighted (T1w), FLAIR, and T1w postcontrast sequences. Texture features were extracted and fed into three ML classifiers. Classifiers' performance was assessed using a leave-one-out cross-validation approach. Multiclass and binary models were built to predict histologic types (oligodendroglioma vs. astrocytoma vs. oligoastrocytoma) and grades (high vs. low), respectively. Thirty-eight dogs with a total of 40 masses were included. Machine learning classifiers had an average accuracy of 77% for discriminating tumor types and of 75.6% for predicting high-grade gliomas. The support vector machine classifier had an accuracy of up to 94% for predicting tumor types and up to 87% for predicting high-grade gliomas. The most discriminative texture features of tumor types and grades appeared related to the peri-tumoral edema in T1w images and to the non-enhancing part of the tumor in T2w images, respectively. In conclusion, ML-based MRI-TA has the potential to discriminate intracranial canine gliomas types and grades