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Introduction of information technology into the practice of emergency management and homeland security emerge as the dawn of new applications but are these methods the doom for liberty and privacy. The abundance of disasters from all causes, have illuminated the fragility and weakness in our civilization, the urgency for taking action and the need to make timely decisions to limit property damage and reduce the risk to human life. Information technology systems are emerging as a tool for emergency management practitioners to plan with more efficiency and to achieve sufficient situational awareness with greater speed and accuracy than legacy systems to make good decisions. While information technology systems can speed decision making, can information technology and security measurement methods give us insight into our limits for sacrificing liberty for security?

There are many ways to determine the relative importance of webpages. Specifically, a method that has proven to be very successful in practice is to value a webpage based on its position in the hyperlinked graph of the web. However, there is no generally applicable algorithm to determine the value of webpages based on an arbitrary number social signals such as likes, tweets and shares. By taking such social signals into account a more democratic method arises to determine the value of webpages. In this article we propose an algorithm named the Social Score that takes into account an arbitrary number of social signals to determine the relative importance of a webpage. Also, we present a worldwide top fifty of webpages based on the Social Score. Last, the potential role of the Social Score in an asynchronous Social Search engine is evaluated.

Gender inequalities remain an issue in our society and particularly in the workplace. Several factors can explain this gender difference in top-level managerial positions such as career ambitions but also biases against women. In our chapter, we propose a model explaining why gender inequalities and particularly discrimination against women is still present in our societies despite social norms and existing legislation on gender equality. To this purpose, we review research on discrimination through two different approaches, (a) a prejudice approach through the justification-suppression model developed by Crandall and Eshleman (2003) and (b) a power approach through the social dominance theory (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). In our work, we integrate these two approaches and propose a model of gender prejudice, power and discrimination. The integration of these two approaches contributes to a better understanding of how discrimination against women is formed and maintained over time.

Commonly, disaster contingency calls for separation of location for redundant locations to maintain the needed redundancy. This document addresses issues for the data center redundancy, including limits to the distribution, distance and location that may impact on the efficiency or energy.

Systematic risk analysis can be based on causal analysis of business exceptions. In this paper we describe the concepts of automatic analysis for the exceptional patterns which are hidden in a large set of business data. These exceptions are interesting to be investigated further for their causes and explanations. The analysis process is driven by diagnostic drill-down operations following the equations of the information structure in which the data are organised. Using business intelligence, the analysis method can generate explanations supported by the data.

The pathogenesis of high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) is not well understood. Ventilation and fluid-handling abnormalities at high altitude (HA) may play a role in HAPE. Because ventilatory and cardiopulmonary responses to chronic HA exposure in the Hilltop (H) strain of Sprague-Dawley rat are different from those in the Madison (M) strain, it was hypothesized that these strains would have different susceptibilities to developing HAPE. M and H rats were studied at sea level (SL) and in a hypobaric chamber after 9 and 12 h at a simulated altitude of 24,000 ft (barometric pressure = 295 mmHg) and 1, 12, and 24 h at a simulated altitude of 18,000 ft (barometric pressure = 380 mmHg). Both strains developed HAPE, but the M rat was more susceptible to HAPE, as demonstrated by a higher mortality rate from hemorrhagic pulmonary edema after 9 h at 24,000 ft and an earlier increase in lung water after exposure to 18,000 ft. Minute ventilation was similar in both strains at HA, but arterial PO2 was significantly higher in the M rat. Both strains had a significant decrease in fluid intake and negative sensible water balance at HA. No changes in plasma renin activity, aldosterone concentrations, antidiuretic hormone levels, and atrial natriuretic peptide levels were found at HA. The increased susceptibility of the M rat to HAPE is therefore not explained by ventilation or fluid-handling abnormalities.

In this paper, we propose an approach to transform models derived by applying the Design and Engineering Methodology for Organizations (DEMO) into an exchangeable format. DEMO is based on a founded theory, the Ψ-theory, and satisfies the requirements to be a well defined domain modeling methodology. Having the DEMO models represented in an exchangeable format is beneficial for different types of applications supporting the information system development process. Applications used for the automatic analysis (simulation) of the DEMO models or for the identification of business components are just two examples to be mentioned.