DRASTIC model is the most widely used method for aquifer vulnerability mapping which consists of seven hydrogeological parameters. Despite of its popularity, this technique disregards the effect of regional characteristics and there is no specific validation method to demonstrate the accuracy of this method. The main goal of this research was developing an integrated GIS-based DRASTIC model using Depth to water, Net Recharge, Aquifer media, Soil media, Topography, Impact of vadose zone and Hydraulic Conductivity (DRASTIC). In order to obtain a more reliable and accurate assessment, the rates and weights of original DRASTIC were modified using Wilcoxon rank-sum non-parametric statistical test and Single Parameter Sensitivity Analysis (SPSA). The methodology was implemented for the Shahrekord plain in the southwestern region of Iran. Two different sets of measured nitrate concentrations from two monitoring events were used, one for modification and other for validation purposes. Validation nitrate values were compared to the calculated DRASTIC index to assess the efficacy of the DRASTIC model. The validation results obtained from Pearson's correlation and chi-square values, revealed that the modified DRASTIC is more efficient than original DRASTIC. The modified rate/weight DRASTIC (spline) model showed the highest correlation coefficient and chi square value as 0.88 and 72.93, respectively, compared to -0.3 and 25.2 for the original DRASTIC (spline) model. The integrated vulnerability map showed the high risk imposed on the southeastern part of the Shahrekord aquifer. In addition, sensitivity analysis indicated that the removal of net recharge parameter from the modified model caused larger variation in vulnerability index showing that this parameter has more impact on the DRASTIC vulnerability of the aquifer. Moreover, Aquifer media (A), Topography (T) and Impact of vadose zone (I) were found to have less effect and importance compared to other variables as expected. Therefore, reduced modified DRASTIC model was proposed by eliminating A, T and I parameters. Pearson's correlation coefficient and chi-square value for the reduced model were calculated as 0.88 and 100.38, respectively, which was found to be as reliable as full modified DRASTIC model.

This thesis fills a gap in the political philosophy of liberalism by elaborating the conceptions of the human subject implicit in a central ideal of liberalism. The essence of that ideal is that fortuitous facts about an individual – one’s race, gender, religion, nationality, sexual orientation – ought not to determine one’s life chances. This ideal, I maintain, presupposes a philosophical anthropology. Tacit but essential in this presupposition is that contingency and vulnerability are ineliminable features of the human condition. One of the central aspirations of liberalism is to construct a world in which fortuitous facts about an individual do not determine the individual’s prospects of having a flourishing and dignified life. This thesis argues that a close scrutiny of leading theories of liberal justice reveals that the indisputable fact of human vulnerability is regularly depicted as peripheral. I contend that the marginal depiction of vulnerability in liberalism constitutes a basic problem in the philosophical anthropology implicit in liberalism. I demonstrate this claim by analysing three broad models of philosophical anthropology that can be uncovered in liberal theories and that are the subjects of this study: the Economic Model, as exemplified in Rawls among others, the Sociological Model, exemplified in Will Kymlicka and theorists focusing on cultural concerns, and the Integrationist Model, occurring in at least two somewhat contrasting versions, one by Martha Nussbaum and one by Kwame Anthony Appiah. I argue that the Economic and Sociological Models are in some ways inconsistent with the motifs of contingency and human vulnerability. Unlike the two other models, the Integrationist Model, I argue, is compatible with the motifs of the ideal of liberalism insofar as this Model portrays human beings as vulnerable subjects, as a consequence of universal features of humanity but also of specific features associated with a legitimate degree of local rootedness and partiality. The thesis thus argues by way of the Integrationist Model that liberal cosmopolitanism furnishes liberalism with a matching philosophical anthropology. The overall aim of the thesis is to counter the tendency in an array of liberal theorists to ignore or deny the need for an underlying philosophical anthropology and ultimately to elaborate the essentials of the requisite conception.

Migration and mobility processes are thought to be important (yet complex) modulators of health related risk and vulnerability as experienced by people who use drugs. Few studies in Canada have examined this relationship, and there is no research available addressing this specific aspect of health and well-being in people who use drugs in Ottawa-Gatineau. While migration can be defined as a permanent (or near permanent) relocation process, mobility refers to a person's temporary or short-term movement between geographic locations (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, 2001). Understanding how the reasons for mobility and migration, typically described as “push and pull” factors, and the processes itself impact on the local community is invaluable for informing intervention in terms of type, location and timing and identifying solutions to reduce the inequalities resulting in and from the migration process. This cross-sectional study aimed to assess the prevalence and geography of mobility and migration among study participants, characterize the circumstances surrounding the mobility and migration process, and explore their impact on health related outcomes, among people who use drugs in Ottawa-Gatineau, Canada. Understanding the prevalence, patterns and characteristics of mobility and migration events may offer greater insight into the associated health risks, which in turn will assist in the development of targeted health and social services for this group. We hypothesized that the act of moving itself, as well as type of mobility and migration (i.e. specific push and pull factors), may be associated with health risk behaviours and health outcomes. People 18 years or older currently living in Ottawa-Gatineau, and who used illicit drugs in the past six months were recruited using respondent-driven sampling. Geography of lifetime migration was mapped, and health related outcomes and access to social support services were evaluated against lifetime and recent migration and travel. Quantitative analysis of health and social support related outcomes was carried out by comparison of means and proportions between groups, and complemented by qualitative exploration of push and pull factors and effects of the last mobility and migration events. Our study identified a heterogeneous inner-city population of people who use drugs where widespread homelessness, incarceration, low income and a high degree of mobility and migration placed individuals at varying levels of health-related vulnerability. Participants moved to Ottawa-Gatineau from all over Canada and other countries, but most arrived from within Ontario. Multiple factors were involved in the decision to migrate and in choosing Ottawa-Gatineau in particular. Escaping a negative environment and seeking out family connections were the most commonly cited “push and pull” factors, respectively. Maintaining family connections was also identified as a major reason for mobility or lack thereof among travelers and non-travelers alike. There was evidence to suggest that the mobility and migration processes affected health, drug use and access to resources among some of the participants and for a wide variety of reasons. Comparing the two groups using t-test for means and Chi-square (or Fisher’s exact) test for proportions, we found crack cocaine and injection drug users who migrated recently to be poorly connected to harm reduction services and thus at particularly high risk for blood-borne infections and other drug-related harms. Similarly, participants using crack cocaine or injection drugs and who traveled were significantly less likely to access social support services. In this study we have shown that within a broad cohort of people who use drugs in Ottawa-Gatineau, subjects are a highly mobile group, and face a considerable number of environmental challenges that predispose individuals to increasing risk behaviour even when using drugs only occasionally. This vulnerability is greatest in the period following migration. While push and pull factors may vary by place, a common theme identified in this study is the perceived and actual positive influence of family. Further research employing a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods using a socioecological, intersectionality and lifecourse approach (Egan, et al., 2011) may provide added insights into the role of family in modulating vulnerability through social connectedness and support among drug users as they navigate the mobility and migration process.

This master thesis is focused on an implementation of application for Android operating system that demonstrates mobile application vulnerabilities. Theoretical part contains security of mobile applications and its current state including a description of the biggest security risks and vulnerabilities. In addition, general development of mobile applications for Android is mentioned. In a practical part of the thesis a custom design of the application is described including vulnerabilities analysis, design of basic application blocks and selection of suitable tools for implementation. The section describing the implementation of the application describes the preparation of the environment, the structure of the created application and especially its implementation. The last part contains an example of implemented application vulnerabilities and also the result of its testing.

abstract: The Java programing language was implemented in such a way as to limit the amount of possible ways that a program written in Java could be exploited. Unfortunately, all of the protections and safeguards put in place for Java can be circumvented if a program created in Java utilizes internal or external libraries that were created in a separate, insecure language such as C or C++. A secure Java program can then be made insecure and susceptible to even classic vulnerabilities such as stack overflows, string format attacks, and heap overflows and corruption. Through the internal or external libraries included in the Java program, an attacker could potentially hijack the execution flow of the program. Once the Attacker has control of where and how the program executes, the attacker can spread their influence to the rest of the system. However, since these classic vulnerabilities are known weaknesses, special types of protections have been added to the compilers which create the executable code and the systems that run them. The most common forms of protection include Address SpaceLayout Randomization (ASLR), Non-eXecutable stack (NX Stack), and stack cookies or canaries. Of course, these protections and their implementations vary depending on the system. I intend to look specifically at the Android operating system which is used in the daily lives of a significant portion of the planet. Most Android applications execute in a Java context and leave little room for exploitability, however, there are also many applications which utilize external libraries to handle more computationally intensive tasks. The goal of this thesis is to take a closer look at such applications and the protections surrounding them, especially how the default system protections as mentioned above are implemented and applied to the vulnerable external libraries. However, this is only half of the problem. The attacker must get their payload inside of the application in the first place. Since it is necessary to understand how this is occurring, I will also be exploring how the Android operating system gives outside information to applications and how developers have chosen to use that information. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Computer Science 2020

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Within the presiding 2021-2022 school year, approximately fifty-five percent of Western Carolina University’s undergraduate population self-identifies as a first-generation student. Subsequently, a student qualifies as being first-generational when their parent(s) and/or guardian (s) does not complete a four-year college or university degree, resulting in a disproportionate measurement of confidence, adaptability, anxiety, and financial instability with respect to their newfound independence. Accordingly, the following study examines the elements that contribute to the vulnerability of first-generation students housed on college campuses. Evidence has been collected through a combination of formal and informal surveys and interviews with individuals who identify as first generational, as well as residing Emergency Management professionals. Upon analysis, a constructed proposal has been established for Disaster Management educators and students of Western Carolina University’s populace to which the institution’s Emergency and Disaster Management Department will further fabricate and promote.

The problem that will be investigated in this research paper is up to date and contemporary. This thesis research topic is related to the general field “immigrant entrepreneurship” including the “Immigrant Small Business Research” field. Moreover, the field is not well documented and lacks concepts and theories. It is hoped that this paper will contribute to developing the field. In order to examine the issue, the collection of information has been affected through literature review and compilation of the main and most important theories. In addition to responding to my problem, this project endeavors to fill some of gaps in the void or at least narrow them for others to complete and use in turn. The literature review and the data collected highlight factors and difficulties faced by immigrant owned restaurants. To put it in a nutshell, the current virulent sanitary crisis has constrained most countries to close their borders and governments, thereby almost bringing their economies to a standstill. It is jeopardizing and disrupting the entire economic system. Countless immigrants’ restaurants are facing financial difficulties or bankruptcy, whether it is at this very second or in a foreseeable future. Besides habitual struggles with external factors contributing to making them vulnerable, immigrant restaurant owners have no choice but to cope with a major global economic downturn. The sustainability of those businesses is challenged as difficulties and vulnerability factors are exacerbated under this crisis.

The ability to automatically detect and repair vulnerabilities in code before deployment has become the subject of increasing attention. Some approaches to this problem rely on machine learning techniques, however the lack of datasets–code samples labeled as containing a vulnerability or not–presents a barrier to performance. We design and implement a deep neural network based on the recently developed Grammar Variational Autoencoder (VAE) architecture to generate an arbitrary number of unique C functions labeled in the aforementioned manner. We make several improvements on the original Grammar VAE: we guarantee that every vector in the neural network’s latent space decodes to a syntactically valid C function; we extend the Grammar VAE into a context-sensitive environment; and we implement a semantic repair algorithm that transforms syntactically valid C functions into fully semantically valid C functions that compile and execute. Users can control the semantic qualities of output functions with our constraint system. Our constraints allow users to modify the return type, change control flow structures, inject vulnerabilities into generated code, and more. We demonstrate the advantages of our model over other program synthesis models targeting similar applications. We also explore alternative applications for our model, including code plagiarism detection and compiler fuzzing, testing, and optimization.

Foraging behavior has recently become a popular area of research with which ethologists, behavioral ecologists, and experimental psychologists converge their traditionally separate disciplines into a more multidisciplinary framework. Ethologists and behavioral ecologists usually study foraging as it occurs in the natural environment or the "field," while experimental psychologists contrive laboratory simulations of foraging and make the assumption, sometimes incorrectly, that generalization occurs across settings, situations, and species. Scientific advances are now beginning to occur in the ability of laboratory researchers to better simulate foraging as it occurs in the field. Field researchers are also becoming more willing to accept these findings as important. The purpose of this dissertation was to use a laboratory analogue of foraging behavior to examine the effects of prey vulnerability, density, and prey-patch replenishment on the number of prey rejections and switches between patches. This analogue may have more biological validity than previous simulations in the operant laboratory by simulating conditions of replenishing and depleting patches under adjusting (progressive and regressive) random-ratio schedules of reinforcement. Three experiments were conducted. The first examined the effects of response-cost on acceptability of prey items offered. Results indicated that as the cost of obtaining one prey item increased while the cost of another was held constant, subjects consistently pursued the lower-cost prey and rejected higher-cost prey at increasing probability ratios of 1:3, 1:10, and 1:15. The second experiment covaried response cost (vulnerability) with the probability of encounter (density) for two prey types and evaluated their effects on the acceptability of prey. This experiment showed that when the density of the low-cost prey increased (p = .66), the subjects were more selective. Subjects were less selective when the density of the low-cost prey decreased (p = .33). In the third experiment, prey patches were replenished at reinforcer-determined (regressive random ratio) baseline rates and compared to several fixed-time schedules of patch replenishment. Results of Experiment III indicated no major differences in patch use behaviors (number of switches between patches). The validity and utility of this simulation was discussed as a useful model for the experimental analysis of foraging behavior.