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As cyberattacks increase in frequency and intensity around the globe, private actors have turned to more innovative cyber defense strategies. For many, this involves considering the use of cutting-edge active cyber defense measures--that is, tactics beyond merely erecting firewalls and installing antivirus software that permit cyber defenders to detect and respond to threats in real time. The legality of such measures under international law is a subject of intense debate because of definitional uncertainty surrounding what qualifies as an "active" cyber defense measure. This Comment argues that active defense measures that do not rise to the level of a cybercrime are permissible under international law. Accordingly, it analyzes the Budapest Convention, the only binding international instrument related to cybercrime, and uses its definition of illegal conduct under international law to construct a "stoplight framework" to guide cyber defenders in their actions. Ultimately, this Comment concludes that cyber defenders have a "green light" to use purely passive measures, such as monitoring one's own network traffic, because these measures are highly unlikely to involve conduct the Budapest Convention criminalizes. Active-passive measures, such as attaching code to intruders that tracks them back to their home base, can in some cases be justified under exceptions to the Convention; accordingly, cyber defenders should proceed with caution. Finally, outright active defense measures nearly always rise to the level of offense conduct under the Budapest Convention, and should not be used. This analysis provides needed clarity as to the legality of conduct in cyberspace, and provides cyber defenders with the guideposts they need to confidently innovate in today's complex cyber landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Scaitcliffe armoury and museum was a Lancashire country house museum, formed by two generations of the Crossley family of Scaitcliffe Hall, Todmorden c.1810–40, and dispersed at auction in Leeds in 1892. But details of the works in the collection, bound into seven folio volumes, along with an index volume to the entire collection, survived in collateral descent until 2011 when the last owner died. Enough documentation remains, in a private collection, to enable a tentative reconstruction of the museum, to examine the motives of the Crossley family in founding it and the way in which the collection was implemented; it also allows us to form comparisons with other contemporary northern country house museums and armouries such as Sir Walter Scott's at Abbotsford and Thomas Lister Parker's at Browsholme. By 1904, only twelve years after its final dissolution, the Scaitcliffe museum was completely forgotten – not even accorded a mention in Sir David Murray's monumental Museums, their History and their Use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This volume comprises a selected set of high‐quality and extended articles of the 26th Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement (EuroSPI) Conference, held during September 18–20, 2019 in Edinburgh, UK. Conferences were held in Dublin (Ireland) in 1994, in Vienna (Austria) in 1995, in Brighton (UK) in 1996, in Budapest (Hungary) in 1997, in Gothenburg (Sweden) in 1998, in Pori (Finland) in 1999, in Copenhagen (Denmark) in 2000, in Limerick (Ireland) in 2001, in Nuremberg (Germany) in 2002, in Graz (Austria) in 2003, in Trondheim (Norway) in 2004, in Budapest (Hungary) in 2005, in Joensuu (Finland) in 2006, in Potsdam (Germany) in 2007, in Dublin (Ireland) in 2008, in Alcala (Spain) in 2009, in Grenoble (France) in 2010, in Roskilde (Denmark) in 2011, in Vienna (Austria) in 2012, in Dundalk (Ireland) in 2013, in Luxembourg in 2014, in Ankara (Turkey) in 2015, in Graz (Austria) in 2016, in Ostrava (Czech Republic) in 2017, in Bilbao (Spain) in 2018, and in Edinburgh (UK) in 2019. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Critical Infrastructures (CIs) use systems and equipment that are separated by long distances, Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are used to monitor their behaviour and to send commands remotely. For a long time, operator of CIs applied the air gap principle, a security strategy that physically isolates the control network from other communication channels. True isolation, however, is difficult nowadays due to the massive spread of connectivity: using open protocols and more connectivity opens new network attacks against CIs. To cope with this dilemma, sophisticated security measures are needed to address malicious intrusions, which are steadily increasing in number and variety. However, traditional Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) cannot detect attacks that are not already present in their databases. To this end, we assess in this paper Machine Learning (ML) techniques for anomaly detection in SCADA systems using a real data set collected from a gas pipeline system and provided by the Mississippi State University (MSU). The contribution of this paper is two-fold: 1) The evaluation of four techniques for missing data estimation and two techniques for data normalization, 2) The performances of Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest (RF), Bidirectional Long Short Term Memory (BLSTM) are assessed in terms of accuracy, precision, recall and F1 score for intrusion detection. Two cases are differentiated: binary and categorical classifications. Our experiments reveal that RF and BLSTM detect intrusions effectively, with an F1 score of respectively > 99% and > 96%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid rise in technological development in various areas in communication, supply chain management, integration of various power resources that are essential and part of critical infrastructure, has brought out new security challenges. This has resulted in securing critical consumer profile and data, operations. Security is not limited to the four walls of the production or generation environment but goes beyond it. As, electric power systems comprise of both IT and power, their interdependence has resulted in gaps in the security. Cyber threats can only be mitigated, reducing its impact but cannot be eliminated. The cyber threat mitigation results in huge expenditure, efforts, downtime, economic and psychological impacts on the industry that could result in damage to company's performance and the national economies. The paper aims to highlight various security attacks on the energy infrastructure and its impacts. While discussing the impacts, the paper presents mechanism and emphasises the need for global security coordination be to mitigate threats. Abbreviation: IoT: Internet of Things; EI: Energy Infrastructure; DER: Distributed Energy Resources; SCADA: Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition; VPN's: Virtual Private Networks; PKI: Public Key Infrastructure; IDS: Intrusion Detection Systems; EMP: Electromagnetic Pulse; MTU: Master Terminal Unit; RTU: Remote Terminal Unit; ICS: Industrial Control Systems; RAT: Remote Access Trojan [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Asia-Pacific Language Variation (APLV) is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The development of science and technology leads to inventing new weapons and respectively new methods for conducting armed or unarmed conflicts. Based on practical examples, this article reveals the capabilities of some modern information and communications technologies and means of radio-electronic warfare that can be and are already used in hybrid war scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the clinical principle of informed choice-the hallmark feature of the midwifery model of care in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on ethnographic history interviews with midwives, I trace the origins of the idea of informed choice to its roots in the social movement of midwifery in North America in the late 1960s and 1970s. At that time informed choice was not the distinctive feature of midwifery but was deeply embedded what I call midwifery's feminist experiment in care. But as midwifery in Ontario transitioned from a social movement to a full profession within the formal health care system, informed choice was strategically foregrounded in order to make the midwifery model of care legible and acceptable to a skeptical medical profession, conservative law makers, and a mainstream clientele. As mainstream biomedicine now takes up the rhetoric of patient empowerment and informed choice, this paper is at once a nuanced history of the making of the concept and also a critique of the ascendant 'regime of choice' in contemporary health care, inspired by the reflections of the midwives in my study for whom choice is impossible without care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose. Pancreatic cancer is a lethal disease and usually is diagnosed at advanced stages of disease. This study assessed the effects of intratumoral ethanol injection using an endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) probe on the control of pancreatic cancer in a mouse orthotopic xenograft model. Materials and Methods. The subcutaneous and orthotopic human pancreatic cancer cell mouse xenograft models were established. Different concentrations of ethanol (0–95%) were injected into subcutaneous xenograft tumors. In the orthotopic tumor model, ethanol was injected into the tumor lesions under the guidance of a high-frequency EUS probe. Tumor volume, relative tumor volume (RTV), and histopathology were evaluated. The serum amylase level was analyzed at baseline and 24 h after treatment in the orthotopic tumor model. Results. Injection of 40–95% ethanol induced tumor necrosis in the subcutaneous tumor model, while there was no statistical difference between the RTVs of the two groups (P=0.81). In the orthotopic tumor model, the RTV of the 80% ethanol treatment group was less than that of the saline injection group (P<0.01); and histologically, there was a large area of necrosis observed in the 80% ethanol group. The serum amylase level was slightly elevated at 24 h after injection and returned to the baseline level at 7 days. Conclusion. Injection of 80% ethanol into xenograft tumor lesions of orthotopic pancreatic cancer resulted in tumor necrosis, and the procedure was safe and effective. Future studies will further confirm its antitumor activity as well as assess its safety and feasibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tensions between the United States and the Russian Federation have broken out into a new Cold War following Russia's actions in Ukraine. Following the seizure of Crimea and the fomenting of civil war in the Donbass, Russia was punished by an international contingent of states following the American lead in sanctioning Russia and isolating it from the world stage. With the sanctions having caused a great deal of damage to the Russian economy, the Russian government struck back by attacking the 2016 US Presidential election. Gambling on candidate Donald Trump, Russia hoped to strike the US at its heart and end this confict before it becomes a prolonged Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PNETs) are increasingly being detected, though usually as incidental findings. Majority of the PNETs are non-functional and surgical resection is the standard of care for most of them. However, in patients with small PNETs localized within the pancreas, who are unfit or unwilling for surgery, alternate methods of treatment are needed. Direct methods of ablation of PNETs, using either ethanol injection or radiofrequency ablation (RFA), are emerging as effective methods. The limited literature available as case reports or case series on endoscopic ultrasound (EUS)-guided local ablation using either ethanol or RFA has demonstrated safety and efficacy along with short- to medium-term sustained relief. Long-term benefits with these local ablative therapies are awaited. Comparative studies are needed to show which of these two competing technologies is superior. Finally, comparative trials of EUS-guided ablation with surgical resection in terms of efficacy and safety will ensure their place in the management algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Real-time guidance of needle advancement has transformed endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) from a diagnostic to an interventional procedure. EUS-guided fine-needle puncture has application in various interventional procedures (drainage of pseudocyst, biliary intervention, and injection of drugs). Celiac plexus or ganglion neurolysis for pain control is the major current EUS-guided fine-needle injection procedure. Feasibility and safety to accurately position needle devices and/or inject under real-time EUS imaging with precise delivery of interventional agent have expanded the use of EUS to ablate tumors. These include radiofrequency ablation, or delivery of fiducial markers, potential antitumor agents, or radioactive seeds, in the cancer mass. Minimally invasive EUS-guided antitumor therapy is primarily used for pancreatic cancer because of better anatomic access (vs other imaging modality) and the dismal prognosis (despite improvements in surgery and chemoradiation). Also, the response to parenteral chemotherapy in pancreatic cancer is poor because of suboptimal drug delivery resulting from hypovascularity and abundant desmoplasia. Other targets for EUS-guided tumor ablation are pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor and pancreatic cyst lesion, which are less aggressive and curable by resection. However, patients non-eligible for surgery may benefit from local EUSguided ablation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyber capabilities, whether used alone or in combination with other military tools, offer an opportunity to influence an adversary’s decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The nature of the geostrategic and military challenges facing the UK and NATO is changing in ways that necessitate a significant rethink of the approach to defence, Ewan Lawson and Richard Barrons argue. Developments in technology have the potential to redress the balance but only with new conceptual approaches and a commitment to spend appropriately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyberattacks have challenged the existing electric utility cybersecurity standards to protect critical assets, their integrated dependents, and public safety from cyberthreats. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, cyber-power has attracted a great deal of attention in government strategy and security reviews. This has been matched by regular increases in budget and the establishment of new organisations to co-ordinate UK activity in cyberspace. The result is the emergence of UK cyber-strategy. However, David J Lonsdale argues that at present UK cyber-strategy is not comprehensive, nor does it cohesively bring together the different elements of cyber-power to effectively serve UK policy objectives. Here, he identifies the components of the UK’s emerging cyber-strategy and assesses the UK’s approach against a comprehensive cyber-strategy framework. The latter includes seven elements: defence; cyber-espionage; information manipulation; widespread disruptive attacks; raids; joint operations; and deterrence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]