Gamification techniques for raising cyber security awareness

Due to the prevalence of online services in modern society, such as internet banking and social media, it is important for users to have an understanding of basic security measures in order to keep themselves safe online. However, users often do not know how to make their online interactions secure, which demonstrates an educational need in this area. Gamification has grown in popularity in recent years and has been used to teach people about a range of subjects. This paper presents an exploratory study investigating the use of gamification techniques to educate average users about password security, with the aim of raising overall security awareness. To explore the impact of such techniques, a role-playing quiz application (RPG) was developed for the Android platform to educate users about password security. Results gained from the work highlightedthat users enjoyed learning via the use of the password application, and felt they benefitted from the inclusion of gamification techniques. Future work seeks to expand the prototype into a full solution, covering a range of security awareness issues

Impacts of fuel consumption taxes on mobility patterns and CO2 emissions using a system dynamic approach

Current transport behaviour leads to increasing congestion of the infrastructure, growing dependence on fossil fuels, increasing energy demand, and growing CO2 emissions. Policies based principally on increasing system speed and in particular car speeds will lead to greater urban sprawl with increases in average trip lengths. Time saved by speed increases are traded for more distance. This trend is not sustainable in the longer term. Transport policies based just on time savings for citizens may not be the basis for our city planning strategy. The same happens with transport cost. With underpriced transport, the market undervalues land use location, which again may lead city to sprawl and could induce greater trip lengths. In this study, the efficiency of a fuel consumption or CO2 tax policy is analysed as a policy to internalise externalities of transport in a fair travel cost. Based on system dynamics theory, an integrated land use and transport model is proposed in order to assess the effects and impacts of such policy in the short, medium and long term. Different scenarios related to clean vehicles are incorporated. This model is applied to three cities Madrid, Vienna and Leeds and compares their results

Women\u2019s human rights when experiencing humanitarian crises and conflicts: the impact of United Nations Security Council Resolutions on women, peace, security, and the CEDAW General Recommendation no. 30.

Violence and insecurity are strictly linked to unequal political, social, and economic power. However, the continuity of violence is obscured by masculinist and patriarchal rules of security within gendered structures, especially inside the division of public/private dimensions and spaces, of production-reproduction activities, and of conflicts of war/peace. Nowadays, there is a general perception of the gendered dimensions of humanitarian emergencies in public policy outcomes and more in general in institutional contexts where the central role of women in security and maintaining peace, at all levels of decision making, both prior to, during, and after the conflict stage, hostilities, and peace-keeping and peace-building stages, as well as in trying to pursue a condition of reconciliation and reconstruction, has been formally recognized at international level. Nevertheless, it is necessary to focus on some problems related to the conceptualization of and legal provision for \u2018gender based security\u2019 and its subsequent effects upon accountability, with particular reference to transitional justice and post-conflict societies. It is important to assess a range of contemporary issues implicated for women and security, such as violence and other forms of harassment in times of post-conflict

Análisis de las tasas sobre emisiones de CO2 en el sector del transporte como medida de alcanzar escenarios sostenibles

En la reciente comunicación del “Libro Verde, Hacia una nueva cultura de la movilidad urbana” claramente se especifica que las ciudades europeas son todas diferentes, pero sin embargo se enfrentan a retos afines tratando de encontrar soluciones similares para hacer nuestras ciudades más sostenibles (COM (2007) 551). . Esto no es una tarea menor cuando en Europa más del 60% de la población vive en áreas urbanas y son responsables del 85% del PIB (COM (2007) 551, Eurostat). A lo largo de toda Europa el incremento del tráfico rodado es un fenómeno común. Estas circunstancias crean una situación adversa en la que las externalidades creadas (congestiones, polución, estrés, inequidades sociales, etc.) conducen a las ciudades en una espiral de degradación. Al mismo tiempo, el cambio climático es reconocido como un problema. En el Protocolo de Kioto, los estados miembros acordaron compromisos importantes de reducción de su capacidad emisora de los gases de efecto invernadero. Bajo este objetivo, diversas políticas se han llevado a cabo de muy diversa índole, ya sea como respuesta a Directivas Europeas o a iniciativas individuales. La sensibilidad hacia entornos urbanos más “verdes” está creciendo, y el transporte está en la agenda de todos, tanto a nivel nacional como local. El interés por la formulación de políticas de movilidad sostenible está creciendo de manera considerable. Algunas de las políticas quedan englobados bajo el título de políticas de gestión de la demanda (TDM), Políticas como las impositivas sobre el combustible caerían también bajo dentro de este concepto. Si bien las implicaciones de este tipo de políticas parece claro que pueden influir sobre la elección modal, principalmente a corto plazo, la efectividad de la medida crece principalmente a largo plazo en el momento en que existan escenarios de mayor eficiencia tecnológica o se tenga en cuanto su implicación sobre las dinámicas urbanas de localización e interacción entre actividades. La política de implementar impuestos a los combustibles inicialmente no se concibió con fines ambientales, aunque sus consecuencias claramente si lo son. Históricamente, las externalidades han jugado un papel pequeño como motivación para los impuestos a los combustibles Parry and Small (2005)). Sin embargo, en la actualidad esta política puede jugar un papel mucho más relevante en la configuración de las políticas de movilidad sostenible, pese a posibles barreras políticas o electoralistas que pueden existir (Hammar et al. (2004)). El objetivo de esta comunicación es analizar como una política de impuestos sobre la energía en el ámbito del transporte bajo esta perspectiva. Si está asumido que mayores velocidades permiten a las personas recorrer mayores distancias para satisfacer sus necesidades dentro de sus condicionantes de tiempo y coste, y por tanto una dispersión, indirectamente también se asume que el incremento del coste del desplazamiento puede producir un efecto gravitatorio que compacte las ciudades en subcentros de actividades. Para ello se plantearán diferentes escenarios tecnológicos e impositivos a evaluar simulando sus efectos en un modelo de usos del suelo y transporte bajo un entorno de Sistemas Dinámicos,. Se aplicará este modelo a las ciudades de Madrid, Viena y Leeds comparándose los resultados obtenidos y la importancia del efecto regional sobre una misma política de transporte

Belowground DNA-based techniques: untangling the network of plant root interactions

Contains fulltext : 91591.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)7 p

Methods for the thematic synthesis of qualitative research in systematic reviews

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There is a growing recognition of the value of synthesising qualitative research in the evidence base in order to facilitate effective and appropriate health care. In response to this, methods for undertaking these syntheses are currently being developed. Thematic analysis is a method that is often used to analyse data in primary qualitative research. This paper reports on the use of this type of analysis in systematic reviews to bring together and integrate the findings of multiple qualitative studies.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We describe thematic synthesis, outline several steps for its conduct and illustrate the process and outcome of this approach using a completed review of health promotion research. Thematic synthesis has three stages: the coding of text 'line-by-line'; the development of 'descriptive themes'; and the generation of 'analytical themes'. While the development of descriptive themes remains 'close' to the primary studies, the analytical themes represent a stage of interpretation whereby the reviewers 'go beyond' the primary studies and generate new interpretive constructs, explanations or hypotheses. The use of computer software can facilitate this method of synthesis; detailed guidance is given on how this can be achieved.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We used thematic synthesis to combine the studies of children's views and identified key themes to explore in the intervention studies. Most interventions were based in school and often combined learning about health benefits with 'hands-on' experience. The studies of children's views suggested that fruit and vegetables should be treated in different ways, and that messages should not focus on health warnings. Interventions that were in line with these suggestions tended to be more effective. Thematic synthesis enabled us to stay 'close' to the results of the primary studies, synthesising them in a transparent way, and facilitating the explicit production of new concepts and hypotheses.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We compare thematic synthesis to other methods for the synthesis of qualitative research, discussing issues of context and rigour. Thematic synthesis is presented as a tried and tested method that preserves an explicit and transparent link between conclusions and the text of primary studies; as such it preserves principles that have traditionally been important to systematic reviewing.</p

A common framework for approaches to extreme event attribution

The extent to which a given extreme weather or climate event is attributable to anthropogenic climate change is a question of considerable public interest. From a scientific perspective, the question can be framed in various ways, and the answer depends very much on the framing. One such framing is a risk-based approach, which answers the question probabilistically, in terms of a change in likelihood of a class of event similar to the one in question, and natural variability is treated as noise. A rather different framing is a storyline approach, which examines the role of the various factors contributing to the event as it unfolded, including the anomalous aspects of natural variability, and answers the question deterministically. It is argued that these two apparently irreconcilable approaches can be viewed within a common framework, where the most useful level of conditioning will depend on the question being asked and the uncertainties involved

The Vimos VLT Deep Survey: Global properties of 20000 galaxies in the I_AB<=22.5 WIDE survey

The VVDS-Wide survey has been designed with the general aim of tracing the large-scale distribution of galaxies at z~1 on comoving scales reaching ~100Mpc/h, while providing a good control of cosmic variance over areas as large as a few square degrees. This is achieved by measuring redshifts with VIMOS at the ESO VLT to a limiting magnitude I_AB=22.5, targeting four independent fields with size up to 4 sq.deg. each. The whole survey covers 8.6 sq.deg., here we present the general properties of the current redshift sample. This includes 32734 spectra in the four regions (19977 galaxies, 304 type I AGNs, and 9913 stars), covering a total area of 6.1 sq.deg, with a sampling rate of 22 to 24%. The redshift success rate is above 90% independently of magnitude. It is the currently largest area coverage among redshift surveys reaching z~1. We give the mean N(z) distribution averaged over 6.1 sq.deg. Comparing galaxy densities from the four fields shows that in a redshift bin Deltaz=0.1 at z~1 one still has factor-of-two variations over areas as large as ~0.25 sq.deg. This level of cosmic variance agrees with that obtained by integrating the galaxy two-point correlation function estimated from the F22 field alone, and is also in fairly good statistical agreement with that predicted by the Millennium mocks. The variance estimated over the survey fields shows explicitly how clustering results from deep surveys of even ~1 sq.deg. size should be interpreted with caution. This paper accompanies the public release of the first 18143 redshifts of the VVDS-Wide survey from the 4 sq.deg. contiguous area of the F22 field at RA=22h, publicly available at http://cencosw.oamp.frComment: Accepted for publication on Astronomy & Astrophysic

Core components for effective infection prevention and control programmes: new WHO evidence-based recommendations

Abstract Health care-associated infections (HAI) are a major public health problem with a significant impact on morbidity, mortality and quality of life. They represent also an important economic burden to health systems worldwide. However, a large proportion of HAI are preventable through effective infection prevention and control (IPC) measures. Improvements in IPC at the national and facility level are critical for the successful containment of antimicrobial resistance and the prevention of HAI, including outbreaks of highly transmissible diseases through high quality care within the context of universal health coverage. Given the limited availability of IPC evidence-based guidance and standards, the World Health Organization (WHO) decided to prioritize the development of global recommendations on the core components of effective IPC programmes both at the national and acute health care facility level, based on systematic literature reviews and expert consensus. The aim of the guideline development process was to identify the evidence and evaluate its quality, consider patient values and preferences, resource implications, and the feasibility and acceptability of the recommendations. As a result, 11 recommendations and three good practice statements are presented here, including a summary of the supporting evidence, and form the substance of a new WHO IPC guideline

Irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease and the microbiome

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: The review aims to update the reader on current developments in our understanding of how the gut microbiota impact on inflammatory bowel disease and the irritable bowel syndrome. It will also consider current efforts to modulate the microbiota for therapeutic effect. RECENT FINDINGS: Gene polymorphisms associated with inflammatory bowel disease increasingly suggest that interaction with the microbiota drives pathogenesis. This may be through modulation of the immune response, mucosal permeability or the products of microbial metabolism. Similar findings in irritable bowel syndrome have reinforced the role of gut-specific factors in this ‘functional’ disorder. Metagenomic analysis has identified alterations in pathways and interactions with the ecosystem of the microbiome that may not be recognized by taxonomic description alone, particularly in carbohydrate metabolism. Treatments targeted at the microbial stimulus with antibiotics, probiotics or prebiotics have all progressed in the past year. Studies on the long-term effects of treatment on the microbiome suggest that dietary intervention may be needed for prolonged efficacy. SUMMARY: The microbiome represents ‘the other genome’, and to appreciate its role in health and disease will be as challenging as with our own genome. Intestinal diseases occur at the front line of our interaction with the microbiome and their future treatment will be shaped as we unravel our relationship with it