Despite technological advances in the information security field, attacks by unauthorized individuals and groups continue to penetrate defenses. Due to the rapidly changing environment of the Internet, the appearance of newly developed malicious software or attack techniques accelerates while security professionals continue in a reactive posture with limited time for identifying new threats. The problem addressed in this study was the perceived value of threat intelligence as a proactive process for information security. The purpose of this study was to explore how situation awareness is enhanced by receiving advanced intelligence reports resulting in better decision-making for proper response to security threats. Using a qualitative case study methodology a purposeful sample of 13 information security professionals were individually interviewed and the data analyzed through Nvivo 11 analytical software. The research questions addressed threat intelligence and its impact on the security analyst's cognitive situation awareness. Analysis of the data collected indicated that threat intelligence may enhance the security analyst's situation awareness, as supported in the general literature. In addition, this study showed that the differences in sources or the lack of an intelligence program may have a negative impact on determining the proper security response in a timely manner. The implications for positive social change include providing leaders with greater awareness through threat intelligence of ways to minimize the effects of cyber attacks, which may result in increasing business and consumer confidence in the protection of personal and confidential information.

Complex cognitive functions require interactions within and between different brain regions by direct anatomical connections or synchronous activation. As such, damage to any region involved in a cognitive process has the potential to affect its function. Impulsivity is a multifaceted construct that, when dysfunctional, contributes to many psychiatric conditions. The striatum has been implicated as an integral part of the neural circuitry of impulsivity. The current work aims to contribute to the understanding of neural dysfunction underlying disorders of impulsivity by examining how striatal damage affects impulsive behavior. It also aims to improve our understanding of whether neural processes involved in impulsivity are also involved in maintaining awareness of one's thoughts and actions. No studies have systematically examined the extent to which damage to the striatum correlates with both changes in impulsive behavior and changes in self-awareness of impulsive personality. In the first experiment, I examined the effects of focal unilateral striatal damage on self-awareness of impulsivity and other personality traits. I predicted that participants with striatal damage (SD) would have less self-awareness of changes in impulsivity and other personality traits after brain damage, as compared to brain damage comparisons (BDC), due to indirect disruption of neural networks responsible for self-referential processing. I tested this prediction using self and collateral versions of the Barratt Impulsiveness scale (BIS) and the Iowa Scales of Personality Change. In partial support of my hypothesis, there were mean differences in self- and collateral-reported impulsivity on the BIS, with self ratings higher than collateral ratings in the SD group. There were no significant differences in the correlations between self- and collateral-reports for current impulsivity, change in impulsivity, or change in other personality traits. In the second experiment, I examined the effects of focal unilateral striatal damage on laboratory measures of impulsivity. I predicted that participants with striatal damage would exhibit lower levels impulsivity than brain damaged comparisons due to structural loss of regions involved in reward/motivation and motor activity. I tested this using impulsive action tasks (Go/NoGo and Stop Signal Tasks) and impulsive choice tasks (Delay and Probability Discounting). In contrast to my hypothesis, SD participants did not exhibit less impulsive action or impulsive choice than BDC participants. In the third experiment, I examined the effects of focal unilateral striatal damage on the integrity of frontostriatal resting state functional connectivity. I predicted that participants with striatal damage would exhibit alterations in functional connectivity between the remaining regions of the frontostriatal network. I tested this by comparing the strength of functional connectivity of the caudate head and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. While my hypothesis was not directly supported, the data showed interesting trends that warrant further exploration. These included stronger caudate-vmPFC resting state functional connectivity on the lesion side, and weaker functional connectivity on the non-lesioned side in striatal participants compared to brain damaged comparisons. Together, these experiments suggest that although unilateral striatal damage does not appear to affect subjective reports or laboratory measures of impulsivity, it may affect the underlying neural networks utilized by the striatum, as evidenced by changes in frontostriatal resting state functional connectivity. This work extends our understanding of the neurobiology of impulsive behavior and self-awareness, at systems level, and may help pave the way for treatments of those with brain injury, such as traumatic brain injury and stroke patients, or psychiatric disorders involving impulsivity.

Cervical cancer is the single most common cancer in India, affecting an estimated 134,420 women in 2008. With access to early detection and basic treatments, most cases of cervical cancer are preventable. Moreover, if treatment is administered during the earliest stages of cervical cancer, 5-year survival rates can be increased to higher than 90 percent. Unfortunately, despite the availability of methods for prevention, more than 95 percent of women in India have never been screened for cervical cancer. Consequently, women in India are most often diagnosed during later stages of cervical cancer, significantly reducing survival prognosis. The objective of this study was to explore the role of awareness and knowledge of cervical cancer as a barrier to screening participation among urban women in Tamil Nadu; and further to identify the potential impact of increased cervical cancer awareness and knowledge on screening attitude. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to characterize existing levels of awareness and knowledge of cervical cancer and screening among 207 women from the metropolitan area of Chennai. The results suggest that the majority of women (69.6%) were not aware of cervical cancer and very few (16.4%) were aware of screening. Demographically, women with secondary levels of education or higher were significantly more likely to have heard of cervical cancer and screening. Of the women that were aware of cervical cancer screening, most reported receiving information through television (33%) or a healthcare provider (28.6%). To describe the potential benefit of providing women with basic information about the secondary prevention of cervical cancer, levels of knowledge, measured before and after an educational session, were compared. This study further explored changes in associations between awareness, knowledge, perceived susceptibility, and screening attitude. It was observed that an overwhelming majority of women were receptive to participating in free cervical cancer screening, independent of previous knowledge of cervical cancer. Results also suggest that although lack of awareness appears to be a major barrier to participation in cervical cancer screening, providing women with information about cervical cancer has the potential to change the attitude of a significant proportion (58.3%) of women who were previously unreceptive to screening. Further, perceived susceptibility to cervical cancer appeared to be strongly associated with a positive screening attitude before and after receiving information. Finally, we examined and compared the socio-demographic characteristics of three subgroups of women: those who were receptive to screening without information, those who were receptive to screening after receiving information, and those who were not receptive to screening at either point. We found that younger, more educated women were receptive to screening without information. In addition, previously unscreened women who were less educated and illiterate in Tamil were most likely to acquire a positive attitude toward screening after receiving information. It also appeared that women who were most likely to be unreceptive to cost-free cervical cancer screening were more likely to be older and previously screened. These findings from our exploratory research with insights from additional comments made by several participants who were unreceptive to cost-free screening suggest that perceptions of free versus private healthcare may have influenced responses in this study.

Participants for this study were 56 four-year-old children and their parents. All children were enrolled or on a waiting list to be enrolled in a preschool program in the Cache Valley area. A parent questionnaire and environmental assessment were utilized to determine whether a) the physical environment, b) behaviors of parents, and c) birth order of children is related to development of print awareness as measured by a print awareness test. A variety of statistical analyses was used to explore relationships among the above variables. Major findings suggest that the behaviors that reflect parents' attitudes regarding literacy are most important in the development of their children's print awareness. Fathers' use of the library and mothers' education are significantly related to their children's performance on the print Awareness Test. The amount of time that children spend watching videos is also significantly correlated to their print Awareness Test scores. Significant differences were found in what mothers and fathers do to prepare their children for reading, with mothers taking a more active role in reading to the children and teaching them literacy skills. Other notable findings suggest that the reading pleasure of each parent is important to their children's enjoyment in being read to and to creating positive feelings about reading. Parents tend to predict that their children will learn to read at about the same ages as they themselves learned to read.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the effects of awareness on experimentally induced anxiety. Forty college undergraduates were conditioned with a mild electric shock as the UCS (unconditioned stimulus) and a tone a s the CS (conditioned stimulus). After conditioning, the experimental group was taught to discriminate between the CS and six other tones which were both higher and lower in frequency than the CS. The control group was not given these learning trials. After learning to discriminate the tones, the experimental subjects had a higher GSR (Galvanic Skin Response) to the seven tones as compared to the control group. The discrimination process thus facilitated an association among the tones. This increase in anxiety was relatively greater with the passage of time as the experimental subjects also had a higher GSR to the seven tones 24 hours after conditioning compared with 30 minutes after conditioning. These increases, however, were not significant in all cases.

In response to water supply depletion challenges, countries such as Australia, the United States, and Namibia have implemented technologies that treat wastewater up to the standards permissible to use for irrigation, toilet flushing, and even drinking water. However, many of these countries have been unable to successfully implement some of their ambitious reclaimed water reuse projects due to negative public perceptions of recycling wastewater. The focus of this study was to understand which factors in risk perception theory are the most influential in shaping community perceptions of reclaimed water reuse as a future source of drinking water within Hillsborough County. The research design was comprised of a mixed methodology approach (quantitative and qualitative analyses). The methods for assessing how each of the five main factors played a role in shaping risk perception in each of the communities was comprised of three main analyses, including spatial, statistical (through multiple regression modelling in R), and personal interview data (an HOA leader, one key informant, and a focus group). Residents (n=417) from various neighborhoods were interviewed through surveys which will evaluate factors found in literature that have been shown to have the most effect in shaping risk perception theory.

No description available.

Research on racism in Australia by white psychologists is often fraught with tensions surrounding a) accounting for privilege, b) the depiction of particular racial minorities, and c) how individual acts of racism are understood. Nowhere is this more evident than in research that focuses on the relationship between Indigenous and white Australians. Such research, as this thesis will demonstrate, has at times failed to provide an account of the ongoing acts of racism that shape the discipline of psychology, and which thus inform how white psychologists in Australia write about Indigenous people. As a counter to this, I outline in this thesis an alternate approach to understanding racism in Australia, one that focuses on the ways in which racism is foundational to white subjectivities in Australia, and one that understands white violence against Indigenous people as an ongoing act. In order to explicate these points, and to examine what they mean in relation to white claims to belonging in Australia, I employ psychoanalytic concepts within a framework of critical psychology in order to develop an account of racism which, whilst drawing on the insights afforded by social constructionist approaches to racism and subjectivity, usefully extends such approaches in order to understand their import for examining racism in Australia. More specifically, I demonstrate how racism in Australia displays what Hook (2005) refers to as a 'psychic life of colonial power', one that implicates all people in histories of racism, and one that highlights the collective psychical nature of racism, rather than understanding it as an individual act. In the analyses that follow from this framework I demonstrate how white privilege and its corollary - the disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty - are warranted by white Australians. To do this, I engage in a textual analysis of empirical data, focusing on both the everyday talk of white Australians as gathered via focus groups and a speech by Prime Minister Howard. In particular, I highlight how claims by white Australians to 'doing good' for Indigenous people (what I refer to as 'benevolence') may in fact be seen to evidence one particular moment where the originary violence of colonisation is yet again played out in the name of the white nation. More specifically, and following Ahmed (2004), I suggest that claims to 'anti-racism' may be seen as 'non-performatives' - they do not require white Australians to actually challenge our unearned privilege, nor to examine how we are located within racialised networks of power. In contrast to this, I sketch out an approach to examining racism, both within the discipline of psychology and beyond, that is accountable for ongoing histories of colonial violence, which acknowledges the role that the discipline often continues to play in the legitimation of race, and which is willing to address the relationship that white Australians are already in with Indigenous Australians. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Psychology, 2005.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.