Securing Data in Storage: A Review of Current Research

Protecting data from malicious computer users continues to grow in importance. Whether preventing unauthorized access to personal photographs, ensuring compliance with federal regulations, or ensuring the integrity of corporate secrets, all applications require increased security to protect data from talented intruders. Specifically, as more and more files are preserved on disk the requirement to provide secure storage has increased in importance. This paper presents a survey of techniques for securely storing data, including theoretical approaches, prototype systems, and existing systems currently available. Due to the wide variety of potential solutions available and the variety of techniques to arrive at a particular solution, it is important to review the entire field prior to selecting an implementation that satisfies particular requirements. This paper provides an overview of the prominent characteristics of several systems to provide a foundation for making an informed decision. Initially, the paper establishes a set of criteria for evaluating a storage solution based on confidentiality, integrity, availability, and performance. Then, using these criteria, the paper explains the relevant characteristics of select storage systems and provides a comparison of the major differences.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures, 3 table

Situation awareness measurement: A review of applicability for C4i environments

The construct of situation awareness (SA) has become a core theme within the human factors (HF) research community. Consequently, there have been numerous attempts to develop reliable and valid measures of SA but there is a lack of techniques developed specifically for the assessment of SA in command, control, communication, computers and intelligence (C4i) environments. During the design, development and evaluation of novel systems, technology and procedures, valid and reliable situation awareness measurement techniques are required for the assessment of individual and team SA, in order to determine the improvements (or in some cases decrements) resulting from proposed design and technological interventions. The paper presents a review of existing situation awareness measurement techniques for their suitability for use in the assessment of SA in C4i environments. Seventeen SA measures were evaluated against a set of HF methods criteria. It was concluded that current SA measurement techniques are inadequate by themselves for use in the assessment of SA in C4i environments, and a multiple-measure approach utilising different approaches is recommended

A degenerate PCR-based strategy as a means of identifying homologues of aminoglycoside and ß-lactam resistance genes in the gut microbiota

peer-reviewedBackground: The potential for the human gut microbiota to serve as a reservoir for antibiotic resistance genes has been the subject of recent discussion. However, this has yet to be investigated using a rapid PCR-based approach. In light of this, here we aim to determine if degenerate PCR primers can detect aminoglycoside and β-lactam resistance genes in the gut microbiota of healthy adults, without the need for an initial culture-based screen for resistant isolates. In doing so, we would determine if the gut microbiota of healthy adults, lacking recent antibiotic exposure, is a reservoir for resistance genes. Results: The strategy employed resulted in the identification of numerous aminoglycoside (acetylation, adenylation and phosphorylation) and β-lactam (including bla OXA, bla TEM, bla SHV and bla CTX-M) resistance gene homologues. On the basis of homology, it would appear that these genes originated from different bacterial taxa, with members of the Enterobacteriaceae being a particularly rich source. The results demonstrate that, even in the absence of recent antibiotic exposure, the human gut microbiota is a considerable reservoir for antibiotic resistance genes. Conclusions: This study has demonstrated that the gut can be a significant source of aminoglycoside and β-lactam resistance genes, even in the absence of recent antibiotic exposure. The results also demonstrate that PCR-based approaches can be successfully applied to detect antibiotic resistance genes in the human gut microbiota, without the need to isolate resistant strains. This approach could also be used to rapidly screen other complex environments for target genes.Fiona Fouhy is in receipt of an Irish Research Council EMBARK scholarship and is a Teagasc Walsh fellow. Research in the PDC laboratory is also supported by the Irish Government under the National Development Plan through the Science Foundation Ireland Investigator award 11/PI/113

Fully automated segmentation and tracking of the intima media thickness in ultrasound video sequences of the common carotid artery

Abstract—The robust identification and measurement of the intima media thickness (IMT) has a high clinical relevance because it represents one of the most precise predictors used in the assessment of potential future cardiovascular events. To facilitate the analysis of arterial wall thickening in serial clinical investigations, in this paper we have developed a novel fully automatic algorithm for the segmentation, measurement, and tracking of the intima media complex (IMC) in B-mode ultrasound video sequences. The proposed algorithm entails a two-stage image analysis process that initially addresses the segmentation of the IMC in the first frame of the ultrasound video sequence using a model-based approach; in the second step, a novel customized tracking procedure is applied to robustly detect the IMC in the subsequent frames. For the video tracking procedure, we introduce a spatially coherent algorithm called adaptive normalized correlation that prevents the tracking process from converging to wrong arterial interfaces. This represents the main contribution of this paper and was developed to deal with inconsistencies in the appearance of the IMC over the cardiac cycle. The quantitative evaluation has been carried out on 40 ultrasound video sequences of the common carotid artery (CCA) by comparing the results returned by the developed algorithm with respect to ground truth data that has been manually annotated by clinical experts. The measured IMTmean ± standard deviation recorded by the proposed algorithm is 0.60 mm ± 0.10, with a mean coefficient of variation (CV) of 2.05%, whereas the corresponding result obtained for the manually annotated ground truth data is 0.60 mm ± 0.11 with a mean CV equal to 5.60%. The numerical results reported in this paper indicate that the proposed algorithm is able to correctly segment and track the IMC in ultrasound CCA video sequences, and we were encouraged by the stability of our technique when applied to data captured under different imaging conditions. Future clinical studies will focus on the evaluation of patients that are affected by advanced cardiovascular conditions such as focal thickening and arterial plaques

The People Down the Hill: Parks Equity in San Francisco\u27s East Bay

The public parkland system managed by the East Bay Regional Park District (East Bay Parks) is impressive in its geographic scope. It covers nearly 100,000 acres of land in Alameda and Contra Costa counties east of San Francisco, with 55 separate units comprising 14 Regional Parks, 19 Regional Preserves, 9 Regional Recreation Areas and 13 Regional Shorelines. The acreage under East Bay Parks’ jurisdiction constitutes the largest regional metropolitan regional park system in the United States. In selecting East Bay Parks as an initial focus of environmental justice inquiry, this article is mindful that East Bay Parks is only one among many public agencies that own and manage public parkland in the East Bay. Other parkland agencies operating in this region include the federal National Park Service, the California Department of Parks and Recreation, and the City of Oakland Office of Parks and Recreation. Thus, it may be appropriate to consider East Bay Parks in the context of these other regional park systems. For instance, to the extent these other regional park systems (such as city park systems) were in fact already providing low-income minority residents with ready and safe access to extensive parklands with strong naturalist elements, the existence of such access via these other park systems might affect environmental justice evaluations of East Bay Parks. An environmental justice review of these other park systems operating in the East Bay is beyond the scope of this article, but readers are encouraged to keep this broader context in mind in considering the analysis that follows

CUEL Comments on December 2013 Draft EIR/EIS for Proposed Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP)

In July 2014 CUEL submitted comments on the draft environmental impact assessment for the proposed Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP). The following comments are submitted by the Center on Urban Environmental Law (CUEL) at Golden Gate University School of Law. The focus of CUEL\u27 s comments is on Chapter 11 (Fish and Aquatic Resources) of the December 2013 Draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Bay Delta Conservation Plan (December 2013 Draft EIR/ EIS). The December 2013 Draft EIR/ EIS was prepared and circulated for public review pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). CUEL\u27s comments address the relationship between the proposed BDCP and the authority of the State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board), the relationship between the proposed BDCP and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal\u27s April 2014 decision on federal Endangered Species Act {ESA) compliance in San Luis v. Jewell, and CEQA/N EPA compliance issues pertaining to information on baseline conditions in the December 2013 Draft EIR/EIS

The Public Trust Navigates California\u27s Bay Delta

California\u27s Bay Delta, where freshwater from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers meets the saltwater from San Francisco Bay, has been mired in litigation and political controversy for decades. In the 2009 Delta Reform Act, the California State Water Board was ordered to conduct hearings to establish flow criteria to protect public trust resources in the Bay Delta. This article examines how the statutory deployment of the public trust in the 2009 Delta Reform Act built on the California Supreme Court\u27s 1983 National Audubon decision, and details the California State Water Board proceedings leading up to the public trust Delta flow criteria adopted in August 2010