Ransomware Mitigation in the Modern Era: A Comprehensive Review, Research Challenges, and Future Directions

Although ransomware has been around since the early days of personal computers, its sophistication and aggression have increased substantially over the years. Ransomware, as a type of malware to extort ransom payments from victims, has evolved to deliver payloads in different attack vectors and on multiple platforms, and creating repeated disruptions and financial loss to many victims. Many studies have performed ransomware analysis and/or presented detection, defense, or prevention techniques for ransomware. However, because the ransomware landscape has evolved aggressively, many of those studies have become less relevant or even outdated. Previous surveys on anti-ransomware studies have compared the methods and results of the studies they surveyed, but none of those surveys has attempted to critique on the internal or external validity of those studies. In this survey, we first examined the up-to-date concept of ransomware, and listed the inadequacies in current ransomware research. We then proposed a set of unified metrics to evaluate published studies on ransomware mitigation, and applied the metrics to 118 such studies to comprehensively compare and contrast their pros and cons, with the attempt to evaluate their relative strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we forecast the future trends of ransomware evolution, and propose future research directions.

Math and Modernity: Critical Reflections

Besides the birth of new revolutionary concepts and methods, and of new areas of research, mathematicians, logicians, and philosophers have put into question the foundations of the discipline itself and the whole meaning of “mathematical truth.” Before then, at the end of the eighteenth century, mathematics was mainly concerned with explaining the “real world” and its laws. At the beginning of the “modern era” things started to change, sometimes slowly, other times abruptly. Abstract mathematics was no longer intimately related to the real world and its description. This abstract approach, both on research and on mathematical education, generated critical reactions in the mathematical community, and some “modern” ideas were rejected or neglected after several decades of experimentation.

A Biographic Researcher in Pursuit of an Aesthetic: The use of arts-based (re)presentations in “performative” dissemination of life stories

The (re)presentation of biographic narrative research benefits greatly from embracing the art of its craft. This requires a renewed interest in an aesthetic of storytelling. Where do we find an aesthetic in which to base our new “performative” social science? The 20th Century was not kind to 18th Century notions of what truth and beauty mean. The terms need to be re-examined from a local, quotidian vantage point, with concepts such as “aesthetic judgment” located within community. Social Constructionism asks us to participate in alterior systems of belief and value. The principles of Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics offer one possible set of convictions for further exploration. Relational Art is located in human interactions and their social contexts. Central to it are inter-subjectivity, being-together, the encounter and the collective elaboration of meaning, based in models of sociability, meetings, events, collaborations, games, festivals and places of conviviality. Bourriaud believes that Art is made of the same material as social exchanges. If social exchanges are the same as Art, how can we portray them? One place to start is in our (re)presentations of narrative stories, through publications, presentations and performances. Arts-based (re)presentation in knowledge diffusion in the post-modern era is explored as one theoretical grounding for thinking across epistemologies and supporting inter-disciplinary efforts. An example from my own published narrative biography work is described, adding credence to the concept of the research report/presentation as a “dynamic vehicle”, pointing to ways in which biographic sociology can benefit from work outside sociology and, in turn, identifying areas of possible collaboration with the narrator in producing “performances” within published texts themselves.

Fatty Acid Biosynthesis: an updated review on KAS inhibitors

Since the early twentieth century, with the isolation of penicillin and streptomycin in the 1940s, the modern era of anti-infective drug development has gained momentum. Due to the enormous success of early drug discovery, many infectious diseases were successfully prevented & eradicated. However, this initial hope was wrongheaded, and pathogens evolved as a significant threat to human health. Drug resistance develops as a result of natural selection's relentless pressure, necessitating the identification of new drug targets and the creation of chemotherapeutics that bypass existing drug resistance mechanisms. Fatty acid biosynthesis (FAS) is a crucial metabolic mechanism for bacteria during their growth and development. Several crucial enzymes involved in this biosynthetic pathway have been identified as potential targets for new antibacterial agents. In Escherichia coli (E. coli), this pathway has been extensively investigated. The present review focuses on progress in the development of Kas A, Kas B, and Fab H inhibitors as mono-therapeutic antibiotics.

Conclusion: The Narrow Road to Martyrdom

The conclusion of this collection of studies endeavors to recapture five major questions that this special issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies poses on the subject of martyrdom: Is this gesture a form of imitation of Christ (or imitatio Christi) or is it itself a sacrifice? How does it get rid of the shadow of suicide or voluntary death? How do the singularity of its experience and the community within which and in the name of which it is exercised articulate? Can martyrdom be defined as a renunciation of human love, and in this sense as the ultimate step in a process of conversion? How does martyrdom take its place in the writing of the religious history of the modern era, in particular, as far as the Society of Jesus is concerned, in the historiography of the nineteenth century? These five questions open this collection of essays to a field of research that remains to be pursued.