Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) entail the tight integration of and coordination between computational and physical resources. These systems are increasingly becoming vital to modernizing the national critical infrastructure systems ranging from healthcare, to transportation and energy, to homeland security and national defense. Advances in CPS technology are needed to help improve their current capabilities as well as their adaptability, autonomicity, efficiency, reliability, safety and usability.  Due to the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated cyber threats with exponentially destructive effects, CPS defense systems must systematically evolve their detection, understanding, attribution, and mitigation capabilities. Unfortunately most of the current CPS defense systems fall short to adequately provision defense services while maintaining operational continuity and stability of the targeted CPS applications in presence of advanced persistent attacks. Most of these defense systems use un-coordinated combinations of disparate tools to provision defense services for the cyber and physical components. Such isolation and lack of awareness of and cooperation between defense tools may lead to massive resource waste due to unnecessary redundancy, and potential conflicts that can be utilized by a resourceful attacker to penetrate the system.   Recent research argued against the suitability of the current security solutions to CPS environments. We assert the need for new defense platforms that effectively and efficiently manage dynamic defense missions and toolsets in real-time with the following goals: 1) Achieve asymmetric advantage to CPS defenders, prohibitively increasing the cost for attackers; 2) Ensure resilient operations in presence of persistent and evolving attacks and failures; and 3) Facilitate defense alliances, effectively and efficiently diffusing defense intelligence and operations transcending organizational boundaries. Our proposed solution comprehensively addresses the aforementioned goals offering an evolutionary CPS defense system. The presented CPS defense platform, termed CyPhyCARD (Cooperative Autonomous Resilient Defenses for Cyber-Physical systems) presents a unified defense platform to monitor, manage, and control the heterogeneous composition of CPS components. CyPhyCARD relies on three interrelated pillars to construct its defense platform. CyPhyCARD comprehensively integrates these pillars, therefore building a large scale, intrinsically resilient, self- and situation-aware, cooperative, and autonomous defense cloud-like platform that provisions adequate, prompt, and pervasive defense services for large-scale, heterogeneously-composed CPS. The CyPhyCARD pillars are: 1) Autonomous management platform (CyberX) for CyPhyCARD's foundation. CyberX enables application elasticity and autonomic adaptation to changes by runtime diversity employment, enhances the application resilience against attacks and failures by multimodal recovery mechanism, and enables unified application execution on heterogeneously composed platforms by a smart employment of a fine-grained environment-virtualization technology. 2) Diversity management system (ChameleonSoft) built on CyberX. ChameleonSoft encrypts software execution behavior by smart employment of runtime diversity across multiple dimensions to include time, space, and platform heterogeneity inducing a trace-resistant moving-target defense that works on securing CyPhyCARD platform against software attacks. 3) Evolutionary Sensory system (EvoSense) built on CyberX. EvoSense realizes pervasive, intrinsically-resilient, situation-aware sense and response system to seamlessly effect biological-immune-system like defense. EvoSense acts as a middle layer between the defense service provider(s) and the Target of Defense (ToD) creating a uniform defense interface that hides ToD's scale and heterogeneity concerns from defense-provisioning management. CyPhyCARD is evaluated both qualitatively and quantitatively. The efficacy of the presented approach is assessed qualitatively, through a complex synthetic CPS attack scenario. In addition to the presented scenario, we devised multiple prototype packages for the presented pillars to assess their applicability in real execution environment and applications. Further, the efficacy and the efficiency of the presented approach is comprehensively assessed quantitatively by a set of custom-made simulation packages simulating each CyPhyCARD pillar for performance and security evaluation.  The evaluation illustrated the success of CyPhyCARD and its constructing pillars to efficiently and effectively achieve its design objective with reasonable overhead. / Ph. D.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Refugees undergo different kinds of stressors between fleeing their home country and resettling in a new one. Most studies have examined negative aspects of the refugee experience such as mental disorders or resettlement challenges. Building on strengths-based approach, the purpose of this study is to examine resilience-related outcomes. This researcher believes that refugees demonstrate adaptive and positive outcomes in the face of adversities. For this purpose, resilience-related outcomes are conceptualized as local language improvement and social connections in the host country. Using the stress coping model, trauma theory, and resilience theory, this research examines these adaptive outcomes in association with experienced war-trauma and post-migration stressors among Arab-speaking war-affected refugees in the U.S. This researcher recruited 130 participants through mosques and resettlement agencies in Indianapolis. Participants completed a paper-based survey. The researcher conducted several hierarchical regression analyses and found not strong social connections and local language proficiency among the participants. Participants applied problem-focused coping strategies more than other types of strategies. There was a considerable probability of PTSD. Health status and stay length significantly predicted social connections and English language proficiency. In addition, education was found as a significant factor in improving language proficiency. The analysis indicated that problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies buffer the negative effects of war trauma and feeling of loss on social connections. The study revealed negative impact of dysfunctional coping strategies on potential PTSD among the participants. Implications for social work practice, education, and policy, as well as, recommendations for future studies are discussed.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・論文博士 / 博士(地球環境学) / 乙第12901号 / 論地環博第11号 / 新制||地環||26(附属図書館) / 31655 / (主査)教授 渡邉 紹裕, 教授 宇佐美 誠, 准教授 小林 広英 / 学位規則第4条第2項該当 / Doctor of Global Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DFAM

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(情報学) / 甲第19115号 / 情博第561号 / 新制||情||99(附属図書館) / 32066 / 京都大学大学院情報学研究科社会情報学専攻 / (主査)教授 林 春男, 教授 田中 克己, 教授 喜多 一 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Informatics / Kyoto University / DFAM

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF Lisa Nelson-Majewski, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Education, presented on October 30, 2015, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: THE ASSOCIATION OF RESILIENCE WITH CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE AMONG MEMBERS OF THE COWLITZ INDIAN TRIBE MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Dhitinut Ratnapradipa Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, and among the American Indian population (AHA, 2012; IHS, 2013). The concept of resilience is receiving increasing attention in chronic conditions. Resilience has been shown to play a protective role in patients with chronic disease conditions including osteoarthritis (Wright, Zautra, & Going, 2008), breast and ovarian cancer (Brix et.al., 2008; Costanzo et. Al., 2009) and diabetes (DeNisco, 2010; Yi, Vataliano, Smith, Yi, & Weinger, 2008; Yi-Frazier et al., 2010). This study follows the paradigm shift from research focusing on risk factors of cardiovascular disease, to explore if resilience is significantly different among study participants of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe without a diagnosis of cardiovascular disease versus tribal participants with heart disease. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between resilience and cardiovascular health status, as well the relationship between resilience and the top six modifiable risk factors for cardiovascular disease, within the members of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe. Method. Following IRB approval, enrolled tribal members of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, over the age of 18 years completed two survey tools. The tool utilized measure resilience this study is the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). The second survey tool, including demographics and questions to assess cardiovascular risk factors, is the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). The cardiovascular risk factor questions include the same BFRSS questions utilized from the 2009-2010 BRFSS tribal questionnaires. Results. Resilience and six selected cardiovascular disease risk factors were surveyed from a total of 201 enrolled members of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe after informed consent obtained. Statistical analysis, with an alpha level of .05, revealed statistical difference between resilience and members with CVD versus resilience of members without CVD, (F (1,199) = 16.563, p = .000, ) (Table 5). All constructs of resilience impact overall resilience, while the second construct of resilience (trust in one’s instincts, tolerance of negative affect and strengthening effects of stress, emotional/cognitive control under pressure), had the most impact on overall resilience for those without CVD (r =0.909) (Table 6). HTN and resilience versus no HTN and resilience and resilience scores between those with normal cholesterol versus resilience scores of those with hyperlipidemia were the only two risk factors for CVD significantly impacted by resilience p = .049 and p = .020 respectively (Table 11; Table 13). While there was not a statistically significant difference (t (657) = -0.985) between Cowlitz Indian (N=201) resilience scores and the general population (N=458) (Davidson, 2003) (Table 22). The Cowlitz Indians (N=201) overall resilience score was statistically lower (t(359) = -3.12) than another federally recognized tribe (N = 160) Goins, Gregg, and Fiske (2012) (Table 21). Conclusion. Resilience is significantly different in members of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe who have not been diagnosed with CVD versus resilience scores of those self-identified as having CVD. Trust in one’s instincts, tolerance of negative affect and strengthening effects of stress, and emotional/cognitive control under pressure, was the construct of resilience that has the most impact on overall Cowlitz Indian resilience scores. Cowlitz participants with hypertension and hyperlipidemia, two of the six risk CVD factors evaluated, had statistical significance between the resilience scores versus the participants without the presence of these CVD risk factors.

Background: The current energy and inflation crisis presents a challenge for businesses in Europe. One of the countries that is especially affected by the crisis is Germany. Family firms are an important factor for the German and European economies, as they account for 65 to 80 percent of all European companies. Although family firms have been thoroughly researched, as presented by the current body of knowledge, the existing gap in the literature on family firm strategies during a crisis is significant, which is the basis for this thesis.  Purpose: This study aims to investigate German family firms' strategies in times of crisis, specifically the current inflation and energy crisis, and assesses how they help achieve economic resilience. Method: This thesis represents a qualitative and inductive research approach. Twelve case studies have been conducted using an inductive method to collect data for this exploratory study. The chosen data collection method for this thesis is qualitative interviews. The empirical data is analyzed following the models by Gioia et al. (2013) and Hair et al. (2020). The existing literature serves as a basis for this research approach.  Conclusion: The study concludes that this energy and inflation crisis affects family firms in Germany on different dimensions. The shock magnitude, the family capabilities, and the overall management of the family firms are key factors influencing the economic resilience of the company. The performance on each individual level leads to certain actions, such as leveraging networks, by the family firm to cope with this crisis.

An intersectionality-based content analysis was done; an eclectic and abductive approach was needed to understand the entanglement of comorbidity and intersectionalities impacting self-identified women transnationally.  The research project is presented in three parts detailing its specific features. For example: Part 1 contains the aim and research questions. The scope is nine transcripts/extracts from the narratives collected from sources of public domain (such as web-based channels and platforms where speakers, either orally or in writing, expressed their experience with types of autoimmune disease. Theoretical framework takes place in this section and it is formed by foundations from theories, social transformation-based arguments and contributions from the authors whose expertise in their fields have made a permanent difference in diverse societal, educational and scientific contexts. Authors such as Butler, Ahmed, Crenshaw, Joyce et al., Olkin, Celinski and Gow, Brinkman et al., and many more are valuable citations included in each of their respective sections. Part 2 describes the methods of analysis, coded collected data material and research design; Part 3 describes the analysis on content material and findings to answer the research questions previously created, to address and understand the studied phenomena. The work-in-progress related to our non-profit association (NPA) is also briefly mentioned as the emancipatory technology I have designed from scratch, where I am the main member and first founder. Based in Linköping, Sweden, it is a space to empower one another to face our unique complexities while sharing a place to strengthen each other through education within transnational environments.