109 research outputs found
How Double-Fetch Situations turn into Double-Fetch Vulnerabilities: A Study of Double Fetches in the Linux Kernel
We present the first static approach that systematically
detects potential double-fetch vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel. Using a pattern-based analysis, we identified 90
double fetches in the Linux kernel. 57 of these occur
in drivers, which previous dynamic approaches were unable
to detect without access to the corresponding hardware.
We manually investigated the 90 occurrences, and
inferred three typical scenarios in which double fetches
occur. We discuss each of them in detail. We further developed
a static analysis, based on the Coccinelle matching
engine, that detects double-fetch situations which can
cause kernel vulnerabilities. When applied to the Linux,
FreeBSD, and Android kernels, our approach found six
previously unknown double-fetch bugs, four of them in
drivers, three of which are exploitable double-fetch vulnerabilities.
All of the identified bugs and vulnerabilities
have been confirmed and patched by maintainers. Our
approach has been adopted by the Coccinelle team and
is currently being integrated into the Linux kernel patch
vetting. Based on our study, we also provide practical solutions
for anticipating double-fetch bugs and vulnerabilities.
We also provide a solution to automatically patch
detected double-fetch bugs
Evidence-based activism: Patients' organisations, users' and activist's groups in knowledge
This article proposes the notion of âevidence-based activismâ to capture patientsâ and health activistsâ groupsâ focus on knowledge production and knowledge mobilisation in the governance of health issues. It introduces empirical data and analysis on groups active in four countries (France, Ireland, Portugal and the United Kingdom), and in four condition-areas (rare diseases, Alzheimerâs disease, ADHD â Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and childbirth). It shows how these groups engage with, and articulate a variety of credentialed knowledge and âexperiential knowledgeâ with a view to explore concerned peopleâs situations, to make themselves part and parcel of the networks of expertise on their conditions in their national contexts, and to elaborate evidence on the issues they deem important to address both at an individual and at a collective level. This article argues that in contrast to health movements which contest institutions from the outside, patientsâ and activistsâ groups which embrace âevidence-based activismâ work âfrom withinâ to imagine new epistemic and political appraisal of their causes and conditions. âEvidence-based activismâ entails a collective inquiry associating patients/activists and specialists/professionals in the conjoint fabrics of scientific statements and political claims. From a conceptual standpoint, âevidence-based activismâ sheds light on the ongoing co-production of matters of fact and matters of concern in contemporary technological democracies
The Return of the Repressed: The Persistent and Problematic Claims of Long-Forgotten Trauma
Can purely psychological trauma lead to a complete blockage of autobiographical memories? This longstanding question about the existence of repressed memories has been at the heart of one of the most heated debates in modern psychology. These so-called memory wars originated in the 1990s and many scholars have assumed that they are over. We demonstrate that this assumption is incorrect and that the controversial issue of repressed memories is alive and well and may even be on the rise. We review converging research and data from legal cases indicating that the topic of repressed memories remains active in clinical, legal, and academic settings. We show that the belief in repressed memories occurs on a non-trivial-scale (58%) and appears to have increased among clinical psychologists since the 1990s. We also demonstrate that the scientifically controversial concept of dissociative amnesia, which we argue is a substitute term for memory repression, has gained in popularity. Finally, we review work onthe adverse side effects of certain psychotherapeutic techniques, some of which may be linked to the recovery of repressed memories. The memory wars have not vanished: They have continued to endure and contribute to potentially damaging consequences in clinical, legal, and academic contexts
NOXA-Induced Alterations in the Bax/Smac Axis Enhance Sensitivity of Ovarian Cancer Cells to Cisplatin
Ovarian cancer is the most common cause of death from gynecologic malignancy. Deregulation of p53 and/or p73-associated apoptotic pathways contribute to the platinum-based resistance in ovarian cancer. NOXA, a pro-apoptotic BH3-only protein, is identified as a transcription target of p53 and/or p73. In this study, we found that genetic variants of Bcl-2 proteins exist among cisplatin-sensitive and -resistant ovarian cancer cells, and the responses of NOXA and Bax to cisplatin are regulated mainly by p53. We further evaluated the effect of NOXA on cisplatin. NOXA induced apoptosis and sensitized A2780s and SKOV3 cells to cisplatin in vitro and in vivo. The effects were mediated by elevated Bax expression, enhanced caspase activation, release of Cyt C and Smac into the cytosol. Furthermore, gene silencing of Bax or Smac significantly attenuated NOXA and/or cisplatin-induced apoptosis in chemosensitive A2780s cells, whereas overexpression of Bax or addition of Smac-N7 peptide significantly increased NOXA and/or cisplatin-induced apoptosis in chemoresistant SKOV3 cells. To our knowledge, these data suggest a new mechanism by which NOXA chemosensitized ovarian cancer cells to cisplatin by inducing alterations in the Bax/Smac axis. Taken together, our findings show that NOXA is potentially useful as a chemosensitizer in ovarian cancer therapy
Modelling farmers' action: decision rules capture methodology and formalisation structure: a case of biomass flow operations in dairy farms of a tropical island
Conducting a critical interpretive synthesis of the literature on access to healthcare by vulnerable groups
BACKGROUND: Conventional systematic review techniques have limitations when the aim of a review is to construct a critical analysis of a complex body of literature. This article offers a reflexive account of an attempt to conduct an interpretive review of the literature on access to healthcare by vulnerable groups in the UK METHODS: This project involved the development and use of the method of Critical Interpretive Synthesis (CIS). This approach is sensitised to the processes of conventional systematic review methodology and draws on recent advances in methods for interpretive synthesis. RESULTS: Many analyses of equity of access have rested on measures of utilisation of health services, but these are problematic both methodologically and conceptually. A more useful means of understanding access is offered by the synthetic construct of candidacy. Candidacy describes how people's eligibility for healthcare is determined between themselves and health services. It is a continually negotiated property of individuals, subject to multiple influences arising both from people and their social contexts and from macro-level influences on allocation of resources and configuration of services. Health services are continually constituting and seeking to define the appropriate objects of medical attention and intervention, while at the same time people are engaged in constituting and defining what they understand to be the appropriate objects of medical attention and intervention. Access represents a dynamic interplay between these simultaneous, iterative and mutually reinforcing processes. By attending to how vulnerabilities arise in relation to candidacy, the phenomenon of access can be better understood, and more appropriate recommendations made for policy, practice and future research. DISCUSSION: By innovating with existing methods for interpretive synthesis, it was possible to produce not only new methods for conducting what we have termed critical interpretive synthesis, but also a new theoretical conceptualisation of access to healthcare. This theoretical account of access is distinct from models already extant in the literature, and is the result of combining diverse constructs and evidence into a coherent whole. Both the method and the model should be evaluated in other contexts
Critically evaluating collaborative research: why is it difficult to extend truth tests to reality tests?
We argue that critical evaluation achieves the reflexivity needed to facilitate collaboration by proposing boundary-negotiating artefacts to configure a joint action domain. Those objects become mediators for innovation by triggering controversies, conceived preventatively via an organized extension of what Boltanski calls âtruth testsâ to âreality testsâ so that they dynamize ongoing affairs. However, critical evaluation must also anticipate actorsâ reappropriation of boundary-negotiating artefacts in the effort to protect their rights, stakes or room for manoeuvre. Three scenarios commonly arise: avoidance or utopian projecting, enactment of inverted reality tests, and disavowal through role exchange. The article develops these propositions through the reconstruction of a modified theory-based evaluation of a collaborative research programme. The programme set out to explore how evidence from health research could be used rapidly and effectively in the context of practical problems and organizational challenges, so an internal evaluation was set up to facilitate learning during the process. What ensued, however, was a loss of trust between partners, resolved only by repositioning the evaluation as a reflective academic study, reducing its reflexive capacity to intervene on the level of activity and organizational integration. We conclude that doing successful critical evaluation and, more generally, achieving political pertinence for social scientific discourses depends on creating the conditions in which actors are able to take the risks and share the costs associated with the enhanced level of reflexivity necessary to engage in collective action as well as knowledge production
Validar a guerra: a construção do regime de Expertise estratégica
This article is intended to contribute to the interpretative analysis of war. For that purpose, it investigates how some apparatuses located in strategic thinking help to make modern war a social practice considered both technically feasible and, at the same time, legitimate for soldiers. In so doing, it makes use of two different but closely related theoretical fields, pragmatic sociology (finding inspiration in the work of scholars such as Luc Boltanski, Nicolas Dodier and Francis Chateauraynaud), and the sociology of scientific knowledge (based mostly on the work of Bruno Latour). On the one hand, the sociology of scientific knowledge has developed a productive questioning of the construction of scientific facts that is particularly relevant to the present research. On the other hand, pragmatic sociology generates a compatible framework able to describe collective actions. The combination of both approaches allows the description of the formation of a strategic expertise regime that supports the technical legitimacy of the use of military force. Together, the sociology of scientific knowledge and pragmatic sociology bring a particularly relevant perspective to research pertaining to war.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe
Economic viability of the third milking in systems of production using closed-circuit mechanical milking
A teoria da pessoa de Tim Ingold: mudança ou continuidade nas representaçÔes ocidentais e nos conceitos antropológicos?
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