Investigation of Attitudes Towards Security Behaviors

Cybersecurity attacks have increased as Internet technology has proliferated. Symantec’s 2013 Internet Security Report stated that two out of the top three causes of data breaches in 2012 were attributable to human error (Pelgrin, 2014). This suggests a need to educate end users so that they engage in behaviors that increase their cybersecurity. This study researched how a user’s knowledge affects their engagement in security behaviors. Security behaviors were operationalized into two categories: cyber hygiene and threat response behaviors. A sample of 194 San José State University students were recruited to participate in an observational study. Students completed a card sort, a semantic knowledge quiz, and a survey of their intention to perform security behaviors. A personality inventory was included to see if there would be any effects of personality on security behaviors. Multiple regression was used to see how card sorting and semantic knowledge quiz scores predicted security behaviors, but the results were not significant. Despite this, there was a correlation between cyber hygiene behaviors and threat response behaviors, as well as the Big Five personality traits. The results showed that many of the Big Five personality traits correlated with each other, which is consistent with other studies’ findings. The only personality trait that had a correlation with one of the knowledge measures was neuroticism, in which neuroticism had a negative correlation with the semantic knowledge quiz. Implications for future research are discussed to understand how knowledge, cyber hygiene behaviors, and threat response behaviors relate

Transnational Judicial Dialogue and Evolving Jurisprudence in the Process of European Legal Integration

European legal integration can be envisioned as containing two dimensions of legal integration: vertical and horizontal. Vertical legal integration is a top down process where the establishment of a hierarchical legal order of courts and laws causes national courts to make more similar decisions over time as they increasingly come under the formal authority of a higher court. The European legal integration literature speaks mainly to vertical, formal, legal integration where the ECJ and EU law have asserted themselves as a formal authority over the national courts of the member states and compel the integration of the national courts. Horizontal legal integration involves national courts making more similar decisions over time because the national courts interact, borrow, and imitate each other informally. Vertical legal integration can compel national courts to take into account EU law and ECJ precedent, but it cannot control for variances in interpretation. The focus of this paper is not just on how the power dynamics of courts and laws have changed in Europe, but also how the legal realm of Europe has shifted to a greater frequency of shared legal outcomes. There have been hints in the European integration literature about horizontal legal integration in many vertical integration studies (See Jupille and Caporaso 2009; Burley and Mattli 1993; Mattli and Slaughter 1995). This paper will pursue further the notion that there are distinct dynamics of horizontal and informal legal integration and that horizontal legal integration in conjunction with vertical legal integration can contribute to a more complete understanding of the process of European legal integration. In this paper I argue that the historical progression of increasingly autonomous and powerful national courts (court empowerment) in Western Europe has allowed a process of transnational judicial dialogue to occur. Transnational judicial dialogue is composed of horizontal, transnational interactions between national high courts judges, where judges across countries voluntarily draw upon each other‟s rulings, logics, and academic writings and incorporate them into their own logics and rulings. I argue that this process of transnational judicial dialogue has furthered legal integration through the transmission of jurisprudence and legal concepts between different member state national judiciaries through informal, horizontal legal integration

Making Memories: Why Time Matters

In the last decade advances in human neuroscience have identified the critical importance of time in creating long-term memories. Circadian neuroscience has established biological time functions via cellular clocks regulated by photosensitive retinal ganglion cells and the suprachiasmatic nuclei. Individuals have different circadian clocks depending on their chronotypes that vary with genetic, age, and sex. In contrast, social time is determined by time zones, daylight savings time, and education and employment hours. Social time and circadian time differences can lead to circadian desynchronization, sleep deprivation, health problems, and poor cognitive performance. Synchronizing social time to circadian biology leads to better health and learning, as demonstrated in adolescent education. In-day making memories of complex bodies of structured information in education is organized in social time and uses many different learning techniques. Research in the neuroscience of long-term memory (LTM) has demonstrated in-day time spaced learning patterns of three repetitions of information separated by two rest periods are effective in making memories in mammals and humans. This time pattern is based on the intracellular processes required in synaptic plasticity. Circadian desynchronization, sleep deprivation, and memory consolidation in sleep are less well-understood, though there has been considerable progress in neuroscience research in the last decade. The interplay of circadian, in-day and sleep neuroscience research are creating an understanding of making memories in the first 24-h that has already led to interventions that can improve health and learning