Enhancing relationships between criminology and cybersecurity

‘Cybercrime’ is an umbrella concept used by criminologists to refer to traditional crimes that are enhanced via the use of networked technologies (i.e. cyber-enabled crimes) and newer forms of crime that would not exist without networked technologies (i.e. cyber-dependent crimes). Cybersecurity is similarly a very broad concept and diverse field of practice. For computer scientists, the term ‘cybersecurity’ typically refers to policies, processes and practices undertaken to protect data, networks and systems from unauthorised access. Cybersecurity is used in subnational, national and transnational contexts to capture an increasingly diverse array of threats. Increasingly, cybercrimes are presented as threats to cybersecurity, which explains why national security institutions are gradually becoming involved in cybercrime control and prevention activities. This paper argues that the fields of cyber-criminology and cybersecurity, which are segregated at the moment, are in much need of greater engagement and cross-fertilisation. We draw on concepts of ‘high’ and ‘low’ policing (Brodeur, 2010) to suggest it would be useful to consider ‘crime’ and ‘security’ on the same continuum. This continuum has cybercrime at one end and cybersecurity at the other, with crime being more the domain of ‘low’ policing while security, as conceptualised in the context of specific cybersecurity projects, falls under the responsibility of ‘high’ policing institutions. This unifying approach helps us to explore the fuzzy relationship between cyber-crime and cyber-security and to call for more fruitful alliances between cybercrime and cybersecurity researchers

Surveillance, Governance and Professional Sport

The surveillance capacities of professional sports clubs and Leagues are directly related to their modes of governance. This paper identifies how private sports clubs enact surveillance through processes of inclusion and exclusion. Using three examples to demonstrate these processes, we argue that the surveillance mechanisms associated with sports governance at times replicate, at other times contradict, and at other times influence those associated with broader law enforcement and security developments. These examples also suggest potential increases in surveillance activities that emerge in club governance often flow from external concerns regarding allegations of crime, national security breaches and corruption. These context-specific case studies (Flyvbjerg 2001) demonstrate how surveillance and identity authentication are closely tied to the complex, multi-tiered governance structures and practices in three distinct sports. We then explore how these patterns can be interpreted as either connected to or distinct from equivalent developments involving the surveillance surge (Murakami Wood 2009) and concepts of inclusion and exclusion under the criminal law. We conclude by discussing how both internal and external regulatory forces can shape interrelated facets of surveillance, governance and exclusion in elite sports

High Frequency Radar Wind Turbine Interference Community Working Group Report

Land-based High Frequency (HF) Radars provide critically important observations of the coastal ocean that will be adversely affected by the spinning blades of utility-scale wind turbines. Pathways to mitigate the interference of turbines on HF radar observations exist for small number of turbines; however, a greatly increased pace of research is required to understand how to minimize the complex interference patterns that will be caused by the large arrays of turbines planned for the U.S. outer continental shelf. To support the U.S.’s operational and scientific needs, HF radars must be able to collect high-quality measurements of the ocean’s surface inand around areas with significant numbers of wind turbines. This is a solvable problem, but given the rapid pace of wind energy development, immediate action is needed to ensure that HF radar wind turbine interference mitigation efforts keep pace with the planned build out of turbines

Ransomware through the lens of state crime: Conceptualizing ransomware groups as cyber proxies, pirates, and privateers

Cybercrime and other cybersecurity harms are gaining increasing political and public attention across many countries. One of the most serious and fastest growing categories of such harms relates to ransomware attacks. Many of the groups responsible for ransomware attacks have come under political pressure in recent years as they have become more aggressive in their methods and targeting. On a geopolitical level, an area attracting increasing interest is the complex relationships between ransomware groups and states, in particular, Russia. This paper introduces the concept of state crime to ransomware groups. Starting with the concept of proxies before turning to the historical examples of privateering and piracy, we focus on the notion of “cyber privateers” to analyze two select ransomware groups—DarkSide and REvil—that are believed to be affiliated with the Russian state. We argue that approaching these ransomware groups as cyber privateers engaged in state crime has the potential to enhance our understanding of how these groups operate. We further posit that a state crime perspective also assists in identifying how ransomware may be countered, highlighting the need for policy responses that are effective even when ransomware groups may be tacitly protected by a state

Counter-terrorism across the policing continuum

Over the past two decades private and hybrid forms of policing have grown considerably in Australia. As a result, governments have begun to recognize the role played by non-state police agencies and personnel in the provision of public order and safety, further extending and legitimizing non-state policing. In addition, the private ownership of critical infrastructure and \u27communal spaces\u27 has led to a central role for non-state police in the area of \u27high policing\u27 counter-terrorism. In response to changes to the auspices and providers of policing, state police were beginning to explore new ways of working with private and hybrid forms of policing, with the emergence of a new type of experiment in policing partnerships, the Police-Private Security Committee (POLSEC). This paper examines these trends and implications for ongoing developments in Australian policing.<br /

Upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage: Have new therapeutics made a difference?

BACKGROUND: To explore the distribution of etiologies and risk factors of upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage (UGH) in the context of new pharmacologic therapies that may alter the risk of UGH. METHODS: Retrospective study performed on eligible UGH inpatients at 2 academic medical centers, between July 1, 2001 and June 30, 2003. Administrative data and chart review were used to identify demographics, UGH risk factors, and UGH etiologies. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed to describe distributions and associations of risk factors and etiologies. RESULTS: UGH was identified in 227 subjects, with ED (n = 99; 44%), peptic ulcer disease (PUD) (n = 75; 33%), and variceal bleeds (n = 39; 17%) accounting for the majority of bleeds. Known risk factors for UGH occurred in 70% (n = 156) of subjects (prior UGH 43% [n = 90], nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) use 23% [n = 52], aspirin [ASA] use 25% [n = 57], NSAID + ASA use 6.6% [n = 15]), while 19% (n = 42) were using a proton-pump inhibitor (PPI) and 5% (n = 11) a cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibitor. Subjects at site 1 were more likely to have ED (odds ratio [OR], 7.1; P < 0.001) and less likely to have variceal bleeding (OR, 0.12; P = 0.009) in multivariate analyses. Preventive therapy did not differ between sites. CONCLUSIONS: Unlike older studies, PUD was not the most common etiology, suggesting that advances in Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) eradication may affect the epidemiology of UGH. Despite advances in therapeutics of acid-related disease, ED accounted for the majority of UGH. Most subjects had risk factors for UGH and most were not receiving protective therapy. Large between site-differences in the distribution of etiologies existed

Regulation of Liver Regeneration by Hepatocyte O-GlcNAcylation in Mice

A grant from the One-University Open Access Fund at the University of Kansas was used to defray the author's publication fees in this Open Access journal. The Open Access Fund, administered by librarians from the KU, KU Law, and KUMC libraries, is made possible by contributions from the offices of KU Provost, KU Vice Chancellor for Research & Graduate Studies, and KUMC Vice Chancellor for Research. For more information about the Open Access Fund, please see http://library.kumc.edu/authors-fund.xml.Background & Aims The liver has a unique capacity to regenerate after injury in a highly orchestrated and regulated manner. Here, we report that O-GlcNAcylation, an intracellular post-translational modification regulated by 2 enzymes, O-GlcNAc transferase (OGT) and O-GlcNAcase (OGA), is a critical termination signal for liver regeneration following partial hepatectomy (PHX). Methods We studied liver regeneration after PHX on hepatocyte specific OGT and OGA knockout mice (OGT-KO and OGA-KO), which caused a significant decrease (OGT-KO) and increase (OGA-KO) in hepatic O-GlcNAcylation, respectively. Results OGA-KO mice had normal regeneration, but the OGT-KO mice exhibited substantial defects in termination of liver regeneration with increased liver injury, sustained cell proliferation resulting in significant hepatomegaly, hepatic dysplasia, and appearance of small nodules at 28 days after PHX. This was accompanied by a sustained increase in expression of cyclins along with significant induction in pro-inflammatory and pro-fibrotic gene expression in the OGT-KO livers. RNA-sequencing studies revealed inactivation of hepatocyte nuclear 4 alpha (HNF4α), the master regulator of hepatic differentiation and a known termination signal, in OGT-KO mice at 28 days after PHX, which was confirmed by both Western blot and immunohistochemistry analysis. Furthermore, a significant decrease in HNFα target genes was observed in OGT-KO mice, indicating a lack of hepatocyte differentiation following decreased hepatic O-GlcNAcylation. Immunoprecipitation experiments revealed HNF4α is O-GlcNAcylated in normal differentiated hepatocytes. Conclusions These studies show that O-GlcNAcylation plays a critical role in the termination of liver regeneration via regulation of HNF4α in hepatocytes

Improving the sensitivity of a search for coalescing binary black holes with nonprecessing spins in gravitational wave data

We demonstrate for the first time a search pipeline with improved sensitivity to gravitational waves from coalescing binary black holes with spins aligned to the orbital angular momentum by the inclusion of spin effects in the search templates. We study the pipeline recovery of simulated gravitational wave signals from aligned-spin binary black holes added to real detector noise, comparing the pipeline performance with aligned-spin filter templates to the same pipeline with nonspinning filter templates. Our results exploit a three-parameter phenomenological waveform family that models the full inspiral-merger-ringdown coalescence and treats the effect of aligned spins with a single effective spin parameter χ. We construct template banks from these waveforms by a stochastic placement method and use these banks as filters in the recently developed gstlal search pipeline. We measure the observable volume of the analysis pipeline for binary black hole signals with M_(total) and χ∈[0,0.85]. We find an increase in observable volume of up to 45% for systems with 0.2≤χ≤0.85 with almost no loss of sensitivity to signals with 0≤χ≤0.2. We also show that the use of spinning templates in the search pipeline provides for more accurate recovery of the binary mass parameters as well as an estimate of the effective spin parameter. We demonstrate this analysis on 25.9 days of data obtained from the Hanford and Livingston detectors in LIGO’s fifth observation run

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected