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Cyber operations are relatively a new phenomenon of the last two decades. During that period, they have increased in number, complexity, and agility, while their design and development have been processes well kept under secrecy. As a consequence, limited data(sets) regarding these incidents are available. Although various academic and practitioner public communities addressed some of the key points and dilemmas that surround cyber operations (such as attack, target identification and selection, and collateral damage), still methodologies and models are needed in order to plan, execute, and assess them in a responsibly and legally compliant way. Based on these facts, it is the aim of this article to propose a model that i)) estimates and classifies the effects of cyber operations, and ii) assesses proportionality in order to support targeting decisions in cyber operations. In order to do that, a multi-layered fuzzy model was designed and implemented by analysing real and virtual realistic cyber operations combined with interviews and focus groups with technical – military experts. The proposed model was evaluated on two cyber operations use cases in a focus group with four technical – military experts. Both the design and the results of the evaluation are revealed in this article.

Security policy alignment concerns the matching of security policies specified at different levels in socio-technical systems, and delegated to different agents, technical and human. For example, the policy that sales data should not leave an organization is refined into policies on door locks, firewalls and employee behavior, and this refinement should be correct with respect to the original policy. Although alignment of security policies in socio-technical systems has been discussed in the literature, especially in relation to business goals, there has been no formal treatment of this topic so far in terms of consistency and completeness of policies. Wherever formal approaches are used in policy alignment, these are applied to well-defined technical access control scenarios instead. Therefore, we aim at formalizing security policy alignment for complex socio-technical systems in this paper, and our formalization is based on predicates over sequences of actions. We discuss how this formalization provides the foundations for existing and future methods for finding security weaknesses induced by misalignment of policies in socio-technical systems.

We surveyed cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) to quantify the proliferation rate and the presence of normal and atypical mitotic figures. In the cervical tissue specimens of 127 women with CIN, the area with the highest cell proliferation was identified and, at that site, the proliferation rate was assessed by calculating the mitotic index (MI). Lesions with an MI <2 were not considered further. In the area with the highest proliferation rate, 228 mitoses were classified into one of the following groups: normal mitotic figures (NMFs), lag-type mitoses (LTMs) comprising three group metaphases (3GMs), two group metaphases (2GMs) and other lag-type mitoses (OLTMs), multipolar mitoses (MPMs) comprising tripolar mitoses (3PMs) and quadripolar mitoses (4PMs), and other atypical mitotic figures (OAMFs). The median value of the MI increased significantly from 3 in CIN I through 4 in CIN II to 9 in CIN III (P<0.001). The occurrence of the different LTMs was mutually correlated. The frequency of LTMs increased significantly with increasing CIN grade (P<0.001), whereas the frequency of NMFs decreased significantly with increasing CIN grade (P<0.001). The frequency of OAMFs was not related to CIN grade (P=0.94). MPMs were present in low numbers in a minority of the lesions. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient (with 95% confidence limits) between the MI and the number of LTMs, OAMFs and NMFs was 0.66 (0.53; 0.75), -0.14 (-0.32; 0.05) and -0.51 (-0.63; -0.35), respectively. Increasing CIN grade is associated with increasing MI, increasing numbers of LTMs, and decreasing numbers of NMFs. MPMs are very rare events in CIN. The abundant presence of OAMFs seems to be independent of CIN grade and MI.

The level of risk for carcinoma in the uterine cervix depends on the type of human papillomavirus (HPV) present. We examined whether the HPV type influences the proliferation rate and occurrence of mitotic figures with lagging chromosomes in the precursor of cervical carcinoma. The study group comprised 180 women who were referred because of cytologic changes indicating dysplasia and who were subsequently diagnosed with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade III. The HPV-16-associated lesions showed a significantly higher number of mitoses per 1.000 nuclei than the lesions without HPV (p < 0.001). The HPV-16-associated lesions also showed a significantly higher proportion of mitotic figures with lagging chromosomes than did the HPV-18− or HPV-31-associated lesions and lesions without HPV (p = 0.01. p = 0.007. and p = 0.002, respectively). Our results indicate that the differences in oncogenic potential among HPVs become apparent in the precursor lesion through the differences in the extent of chromosomal lag during mitosis.

The DiskusTM/AccuhalerTM inhaler (D/A) is a new multidose powder inhaler, designed to deliver all asthma drugs. This study was carried out to establish clinical equivalence between FP 250 μg twice daily (b.i.d.) via the D/A and FP 250 μg b.i.d. via the current powder inhaler, the Diskhaler (DH). Also, device handling and patient preference for both devices were determined. This was a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, double-dummy, parallel-group study. Adult asthmatics (364, aged 18-79) requiring inhaled corticosteroids in a daily dosage of 400 μg up to and including 1000 μg and demonstrating a mean morning peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) calculated from the last 7 days of the run-in of less than 85% of the response after salbutamol, a baseline forced expiratory volume in 1 sec (FEV1 between 50 and 90% of their predicted normal value, and an ability to correctly use both devices, were randomized to a 12-week treatment period. No statistically significant differences between the two devices were seen for mean morning PEFR (p = 0.76), mean evening PEFR (p = 0.88), median daytime and nighttime symptom score (p = 0.57 and p = 0.47), median percentage of rescue-free days and nights (p = 0.43 and p = 0.24), and clinic visit lung function. No differences in the safety profile of FP were seen. Patients found the D/A easier to use and easier with respect to assessing the number of doses remaining (both p < 0.001). Sixty-five percent of the patients expressed an overall preference for the D/A over the DH (p < 0.001). The results show that FP 250 μg b.i.d. via the D/A is clinically equivalent to delivery via the DH. Both treatments proved to be equally safe and were well tolerated. The D/A was easier to use and patients preferred the D/A over the DH.

The authors performed a cross-sectional epidemiological study on 181 women with a report of cervical cytological abnormality in order to find out whether the presence of oncogenic human papillomavirus was associated with the