Age and Gender Impact on Password Hygiene

Password hygiene plays an essential part in securing systems protected with single-factor authentication. A significant fraction of security incidents happen due to weak or reused passwords. The reasons behind differences in security vulnerable behaviour between various user groups remains an active research topic. The paper aims to identify the impact of age and gender on password strength using a large password dataset. We recovered previously hashed passwords of 102,120 users from a leaked customer database of a car-sharing company. Although the measured effect size was small, males significantly had stronger passwords than females for all age groups. Males aged 26–45 were also significantly different from all other groups, and password complexity decreased with age for both genders equally. Overall, very weak password hygiene was observed, 72% of users based their password on a word or used a simple sequence of digits, and passwords of over 39% of users were found in word lists of previous leaks.

National or Global? Moderated Mediation Impact of Sports Celebrity Credibility on Consumer’s Purchase Intention

The paper aims to examine the role of localness of a sports celebrity and a level of product involvement in the mediated impact of the perceived product quality on the relationship between a sports celebrity’s credibility and consumers’ purchase intention in a developing economy. A total of 253 respondents participated in an experiment including the localness of 2 sports celebrities (global vs national) and2 product involvement (high vs low) levels. The study determined that sports celebrity credibility had both direct and indirect effects on respondents’ intention to buy, but product involvement moderated the direct impact of sports celebrity credibility on the consumer’s intention to buy a product. The direct impact was noticed in the case of low involvement products, and no impact was observed in the situation of high involvement. Besides, the study showed that global sports celebrities enjoyed a higher level of attractiveness, but the trustworthiness was higher for national celebrities. Finally, moderation analysis showed that the mediation effect of the localness of a sports celebrity on the relationship between credibility and intention to purchase depended on the type of measured effect – direct or indirect. This study expands the research on the effects of celebrity credibility on the consumer’s intention to purchase in developing economies.

The Type and Source of Reactive Oxygen Species Influences the Outcome of Oxidative Stress in Cultured Cells

Oxidative stress can be modeled using various different experimental approaches, such as exposing the cells or organisms to oxidative chemicals. However, the actual effects of these chemicals, outside of the immediate measured effect, have attracted relatively little attention. We show here that three commonly used oxidants, menadione, potassium bromate, and hydrogen peroxide, while known to function differently, also elicit different types of responses in HEK293T cells. Menadione and bromate exposure mainly trigger an integrated stress response, whereas hydrogen peroxide affects cellular processes more diversely. Interestingly, acute oxidative stress does not universally cause notable induction of DNA repair or antioxidant defense mechanisms. We also provide evidence that cells with previous experience of oxidative stress show adaptive changes in their responses when the stress is renewed. Our results urge caution when comparing studies where different sources of oxidative stress have been used or when generalizing the findings of these studies to other oxidant types or tissues.

Finding the Differences in Capillaries of Taste Buds between Smokers and Non-Smokers Using the Convolutional Neural Networks

Taste function and condition may be a tool that exhibits a rapid deficit to impress the subject with an objectively measured effect of smoking on his/her own body, because smokers exhibit significantly lower taste sensitivity than non-smokers. This study proposed a visual method to measure capillaries of taste buds with capillaroscopy and classified the difference between smokers and non-smokers through convolutional neural networks (CNNs). The dataset was collected from 26 human subjects through the capillaroscopy with the low and high magnification directly; of which 13 were smokers, and the other 13 were non-smokers. The acquired dataset consisted of 2600 images. The results of gradient-weighted class activation mapping (grad-cam) enabled us to understand the difference in capillaries of taste buds between smokers and non-smokers. Through the results, it was found that CNNs gave us a good performance with 79% accuracy. It was discussed that there was a shortage of extracted features when the conventional methods such as structural similarity index (SSIM) and scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) were used to classify.

The type and source of reactive oxygen species influences the outcome of oxidative stress in cultured cells

Oxidative stress can be modeled using various different experimental approaches, such as exposing the cells or organisms to oxidative chemicals. However, the actual effects of these chemicals, outside of the immediate measured effect, have attracted relatively little attention. We show here that three commonly used oxidants, menadione, potassium bromate and hydrogen peroxide, while known to function differently, also elicit different types of responses in cultured cells. While cells response to menadione and bromate exposure mainly by an integrated stress response, hydrogen peroxide has more indirect effects. Primary oxidative stress does not induce DNA repair or antioxidant defense mechanisms. However, cells with previous experience of oxidative stress show adaptive changes when the stress is renewed. Our results urge caution when comparing studies using different sources of oxidative stress or generalizing the findings of these studies to different tissue or oxidant types.

Development of a continuous evaporation system for an API solution stream prior to crystallization

A bubble column was investigated as a method to achieve a desired and controllable rate of evaporation of a pharmaceutical solution in continuous processing mode. Applying a developed thermodynamic model to predict the rate of evaporation, all predicted values achieved accuracies within the bounds of instrumentation errors. The model accounted for the measured effect of reduced vapor pressure caused by dissolved solids as a function of their concentration. A general method to obtain accurate measurement of this effect is introduced and applied, improving the accuracy of model predictions. Predicting the rate of evaporation using the developed model, consistent and repeatable evaporation rates ranging from 0.7–6.9 g/min were achieved. Applying the column as a controllable evaporator, the concentration of a dilute feed stream was increased in a single equilibrium stage and coupled to a crystallizer. The configured system achieved a steady state of controllable operation over a duration of 5 hours

Use of Augmented and Virtual Reality in Remote Higher Education: A Systematic Umbrella Review

In this systematic umbrella review we aggregate the current knowledge of how virtual and augmented reality technologies are applicable to and impact remote learning in higher education; specifically, how they impact such learning outcomes as performance and engagement in all stages of higher education from course preparation to student evaluation and grading. This review was done as part of a state wide research effort of Latvia, to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 and specifically to provide a framework for a technological transformation of education in this context. In this work we search the Scopus and Web of Science databases for articles describing the use of virtual and/or augmented reality technologies in remote learning for higher education and their impact on learning outcomes. We identified 68 articles from which, after multiple screening and eligibility phases, nine review articles were left for extraction phase in which 30 structural elements with corresponding interventions and measured effects were extracted. Of these, 24 interventions had a measured effect on student performance (11 positive, seven negative, six no impact) and six interventions had a measured effect on student engagement (all six positive).

Designing a Virtual World to Mirror the Real Challenges of Life as an Amputee

The purpose of this research was to further understand the experience of using a customized avatar in a virtual world to practice desired health behaviors. By triangulating the quantitative and qualitative data of 12 amputee participants, we discovered that salient factors of having an amputation had a profound impact on the measure of health outcomes. This in turn masked the measured effect of the virtual self-management intervention on health outcomes. We also learned that our training was not closely enough aligned with the constructs that we measured. We discuss how to address these gaps in future studies including adding serious games to a virtual world environment to facilitate disclosure of and adjustment to the salient factors and to better align the simulations with desired outcomes.

Nudging the N170 forward with prior stimulation – Bridging the gap between N170 and recognition potential

Some neural responses are classified by the stimulus conditions leading up to that response while other neural responses are also classified by the morphology of the responses themselves. However, morphology-based classification may not be appropriate if one can nudge a neural response into looking like another neural response. Morphology-based classification occurs with the N170 and RP (Recognition Potential), ERP components that are studied in separate literatures and yet share much in common in terms of functionality. In this study, we demonstrate a gradual transformation in the morphology of the N170 to the RP using a simple parametric manipulation of forward masks that is unlikely to cause a change in the underlying processing. Both the N170 and RP are N1 components, meaning that they are the first negative deflection of the evoked response. However, the RP is often measured with a forward mask that ends at stimulus onset whereas the N170 is often measured with no masking at all. This study investigates how ISI may delay and distort the N170 into an RP by manipulating the temporal gap (ISI) between forward mask and target. The results revealed reverse relationships between the ISI on the one hand, and the N170 latency, single-trial N1 jitter (an approximation of N1 width) and reaction time on the other hand. Importantly, we find that scalp topographies have a unique signature at the N1 peak across all conditions, from the longest gap (N170) to the shortest (RP). These findings prove that the mask-delayed N1 is still the same N170, even under conditions that are normally associated with a different component like the RP. In general, our results suggest that greater caution should be taken to interpret the time course of a measured effect when forward masks are employed.

The Walmart Effect: Testing Private Interventions to Reduce Gun Suicide

This article tests the impact of Walmart's corporate decisions to end the sale of handguns at its stores in 1994 and to discontinue the sale of all firearms at approximately 59% of its stores in 2006 before resuming firearms sales at some of those stores in 2011. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we find that that from 1994 to 2005 counties with Walmarts robustly experienced a reduction in the suicide rate and experienced no change in the homicide rate. These models suggest that Walmart's policy change caused a 3.3 to 7.5% reduction in the suicide rate within affected counties, which represents an estimated 5,104 to 11,970 lives saved over the studied period (425-998 per year). In contrast, Walmart's 2006 and 2011 decisions to discontinue and subsequently resume the sale of rifles and shotguns in many of its stores was not associated with a robustly measured effect on homicide or suicide rates. We do find evidence that Walmart's 2006 decision to reduce the number of its stores that sold firearms caused a statistically significant reduction in the suicide rate for counties in which Walmart did not subsequently resume firearms sales.