IDENTIFYING AND SCHEDULING DDOS-APPLICATION LAYER ATTACKS IN MARINE, OIL & GAS EXPLORATION ASSETS ON-BOARD SYSTEMS LIKE PMS, SENSOR BASED DATA SYSTEMS

For the cost effective & safe operation of ships and other marine assets it is mandatory to develop software solution tool which helps in timely maintenance with priority based to avoid both financial losses and operational downtime. Our idea is to propose concept to develop combined protection mechanisms system for Planned Maintenance system. The research is IDENTIFYING AND SCHEDULING DDOS-APPLICATION LAYER ATTACKS on onboard systems. Countering Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks are becoming ever more challenging with the vast resources and techniques increasingly available to attackers. In this paper, we consider sophisticated attacks that are protocol- compliant, non-intrusive, utilize legitimate. Application-layer requests to overwhelm system resources. We characterize application layer resource attacks on the basis of the application workload parameters that they exploit. Request flooding, asymmetric, repeated one-shot. To protect marine software-based servers from these attacks, we propose a counter-mechanism that consists of a suspicion assignment mechanism and a DDOS-resilient scheduler, DDOS Shield. In contrast to prior work, our suspicion mechanism assigns a continuous value as opposed to a binary measure to each client session, and the scheduler utilizes these values to determine if and when to schedule a session’s requests. This will be done through an integrated working of PMS and Inventory. PMS and Inventory, while performing definite tasks independently, will seamlessly integrate with each other. Further the installations will reside in the vessel, office and other office nodes, where information can be viewed and updated depending on your network of vessels. In office, the Inventory-PMS package will function in a client –server mode and in a single terminal on the ship with LAN for the purpose of accessing Internet. All the database updating and back-up maintenance shall be shown into the system to enable the user to do the database management without incurring exorbitant annual maintenance bills, which normally comes with all similar systems in the market.

Employing a latent variable framework to improve efficiency in composite endpoint analysis

Composite endpoints that combine multiple outcomes on different scales are common in clinical trials, particularly in chronic conditions. In many of these cases, patients will have to cross a predefined responder threshold in each of the outcomes to be classed as a responder overall. One instance of this occurs in systemic lupus erythematosus, where the responder endpoint combines two continuous, one ordinal and one binary measure. The overall binary responder endpoint is typically analysed using logistic regression, resulting in a substantial loss of information. We propose a latent variable model for the systemic lupus erythematosus endpoint, which assumes that the discrete outcomes are manifestations of latent continuous measures and can proceed to jointly model the components of the composite. We perform a simulation study and find that the method offers large efficiency gains over the standard analysis, the magnitude of which is highly dependent on the components driving response. Bias is introduced when joint normality assumptions are not satisfied, which we correct for using a bootstrap procedure. The method is applied to the Phase IIb MUSE trial in patients with moderate to severe systemic lupus erythematosus. We show that it estimates the treatment effect 2.5 times more precisely, offering a 60% reduction in required sample size.

How Poor Are the Poor? Looking beyond the Binary Measure of Income Poverty

This paper contributes to the literature by analysing how poor the income poor are in European countries. Using data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, I go beyond average estimates of the intensity of poverty and analyse the distribution of individual-level poverty gaps in each country of interest. As a next step, I identify which personal and household characteristics predict how far away incomes of the poor fall from the poverty line. The results indicate that, in most European countries, half of the poor have income shortfalls not exceeding 30% of the poverty line whereas only a few percent of the poor have income deficits of 80% and more. The results also suggest that traditional poverty correlates (e.g. age, gender, educational background) are not always significantly associated with the size of normalised poverty gaps at the individual level, or the nature of these associations differs as compared to when the same characteristics are linked to the probability of being poor.

USING THE ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS TO ASSESS THE IMPACT OF INTERNAL CONTROL WEAKNESSES ON FIRM PERFORMANCE

Since the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002, many studies have examined the impact of material weaknesses in internal control systems (MWICS) on firm performance. Overall, these studies indicate that a negative association exists between poor internal control and firm performance. Prior research suggests that the above noted association between internal control and firm performance should be affected by both the actual number and the different types of MWICS. However, this stream of research has focused on using a binary measure for internal control and has not considered the combined impact that the different types of MWICS may have on firm performance. In this study, we create and introduce a new internal control index, derived from the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). We then show that more information regarding the impact of MWICS can be obtained through our AHP index measure as opposed to the binary measure that is commonly used. These findings have important implications for a firm’s stakeholders (e.g., managers, stockholders, creditors, financial analysts, employees, and auditors).

Tell-tale TINT: Does the Time to Incorporate into Nest Test Evaluate Postsurgical Pain or Welfare in Mice?

Identifying early indicators of distress in mice is difficult using either periodic monitoring or current technology. Likewise, poor pain identification remains a barrier to providing appropriate pain relief in many mouse models. The Time to Incorporate to Nest Test (TINT), a binary measure of the presence or absence of nesting behavior, was developed as a species-specific method of identifying moderate to severe distress and pain in mice. The current study was designed to evaluate alterations in nesting behavior after routine surgery and to validate the TINT's ability to measure pain-related behavioral changes. CD1 mice undergoing carotid artery catheterization as part of a commercial surgical cohort were randomly assigned various nesting, surgery, and analgesia conditions. To provide context for the TINT outcomes, we measured other variables affected by pain, such as weight loss, food consumption, and scores derived from the Mouse Grimace Scale (MGS). Mice that had surgery were more likely to have a negative TINT score as compared with controls. All mice were more likely to fail the TINT after receiving postoperative buprenorphine, suggesting that buprenorphine may have contributed to the failures. The TINT, MGS live scoring, and scoring MGS images all loaded strongly on a single component in a principal component analysis, indicating strong convergent validity between these measures. These data indicate that the TINT can provide a quick, objective indicator of altered welfare in mice, with the potential for a wide range of uses.

ALLEVIATING LONELINESS AT 100: IS RELIGION A SOLUTION?

Data from N = 154 centenarians residing in Oklahoma were assessed using the Duke University Religious Index (DUREL). Items assessing religious salience (α=.76) were employed to create a binary measure of high (N=56 or 36.4%; M= 29.77, SD=4.65) and low (N=49 or 31.8%; M=25.10, SD=6.58) religious salience (RS). A series of ANCOVA analyses were then conducted controlling for education, race, self-reported health, and self-care capacity relative to the binary outcome RS. Significant differences for both the corrected model and the pairwise comparisons using Bonferroni adjustment emerged in favor (p ≤.001) of the high RS group (M HI =29.60; M LO=25.29) for life satisfaction and social provisions (M HI =82.43; M LO=76.62). However, the RS group was also significantly higher (p =.004) in reported loneliness (M HI =34.56; M LO=31.63). Implications of the findings for reducing loneliness among centenarians reporting high religious engagement are further highlighted.

Identifying and Scheduling DDOS-Application Layer Attacks in Marine, Oil & Gas Exploration Assets On-Board Systems Like PMS, Sensor Based Data Systems

For the cost effective & safe operation of ships and other marine assets it is mandatory to develop software solution tool which helps in timely maintenance with priority based to avoid both financial losses and operational downtime. Our idea is to propose concept to develop combined protection mechanisms system for Planned Maintenance system. The research is IDENTIFYING AND SCHEDULING DDOS-APPLICATION LAYER ATTACKS on onboard systems. Countering Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks are becoming ever more challenging with the vast resources and techniques increasingly available to attackers. In this paper, we consider sophisticated attacks that are protocol-compliant, non-intrusive, utilize legitimate. Application-layer requests to overwhelm system resources. We characterize application layer resource attacks on the basis of the application workload parameters that they exploit. Request flooding, asymmetric, repeated one-shot. To protect marine software-based servers from these attacks, we propose a counter-mechanism that consists of a suspicion assignment mechanism and a DDOS-resilient scheduler, DDOS Shield. In contrast to prior work, our suspicion mechanism assigns a continuous value as opposed to a binary measure to each client session, and the scheduler utilizes these values to determine if and when to schedule a session’s requests. This will be done through an integrated working of PMS and Inventory. PMS and Inventory, while performing definite tasks independently, will seamlessly integrate with each other. Further the installations will reside in the vessel, office and other office nodes, where information can be viewed and updated depending on your network of vessels. In office, the Inventory-PMS package will function in a client –server mode and in a single terminal on the ship with LAN for the purpose of accessing Internet. All the database updating and back-up maintenance shall be shown into the system to enable the user to do the database management without incurring exorbitant annual maintenance bills, which normally comes with all similar systems in the market.

Are All Jobs Created Equal? A Cross-National Analysis of Women’s Employment and Child Malnutrition in Developing Countries

Using multi-level models, the analysis examines female employment and child stunting across 49 developing countries. At the country level, female labor force participation is not associated with malnutrition after controlling for economic development. At the individual level, a binary measure of employment is not significantly associated with malnutrition. However, a more nuanced measure of seven occupational categories shows that certain types of employment improve malnutrition. Professional, clerical, sales, and domestic jobs are associated with reduced stunting. These effects are only partially mediated by wealth, perhaps suggesting that some jobs may bring benefits to the household beyond the sheer acquisition of tangible resources. Agricultural jobs are associated with increased malnutrition. Manual labor and service work do not have an effect on malnutrition, compared to unemployment. Thus, women’s employment is not necessarily a mechanism for empowerment and wellbeing. Not all jobs are created equal, and many of them do not confer the benefits that are typically associated with working outside the home.

Binary and Nonbinary Measures of Successful Aging: Do They Yield Comparable Conclusions?

Recently, some researchers have employed nonbinary measures of successful aging. Little has been done to determine whether these newer measures yield similar findings compared to traditional binary measures. To test for differences, three measures of successful aging were constructed within five waves of the Americans’ Changing Lives data set. A number of demographic, behavioral, and psychosocial predictors were used to predict each outcome, examining whether estimates of effect sizes and statistical significance were similar across measures. Although many effect sizes were similar, conclusions regarding statistical significance were inconsistent. For instance, the binary measure downplayed income gradients, the ordinal measure found more racial disparities, and the continuous measure was most likely to detect effects for stressful life events. These differences may be due to the statistical techniques used to handle each outcome. Results imply that uneven application of operationalization approaches may complicate replication efforts, suggesting a need for consistent measurement standards.