The testing effect is described as an improvement of memory performance at a final test as a result of previous test sessions. Several studies reported that initial testing during learning provides a better memory representation at a delayed retention interval. The aim of present study is to assess whether an Overt or a Covert retrieval procedure leads to better final recall. Participants were at initial testing instructed to retrieve and write down the words (Overt group), retrieve it without writing down (Covert group) or only restudy the words (SSS group). Memory was tested after[1]15 minutes and again after 1 week. The results indicated a significant main effect of learning group and retrieval interval, where the Overt group performed reliably better than remaining groups. The idea behind the testing effect may work as a guideline of how the testing procedure can be conformed into educational contexts, which advocates for more consistent use of testing in classroom for optimal learning.

This study reports on the development and revision of an instrument to measure the relationship between workplace bullying and envy, as reported by the perpetrator of bullying. In the pilot study, referred to as Phase A, measures of workplace bullying, direct envy and indirect envy were developed. The constructs of envy and bullying were captured without the undesirable labels of ‘bullying’ and ‘envy’. The pilot instrument was administered to a random sample of 200 employees. A total of 74 questionnaires were returned, resulting in a 37% response rate. Psychometric analysis included Cronbach’s alpha and exploratory factor analysis. Written participant feedback was sought on question clarity and construct validity. The results indicated that the envy and bullying subscales had satisfactory internal reliability and construct validity and that the indirect participant-character methodology was the preferred measure of envy for the affect of anger. The relationship between envy and workplace bullying was investigated using Pearson product moment correlation coefficients. Results showed a positive relationship between envy and informal bullying. It was concluded that the instrument was a reliable and valid self-reported measure of envy and workplace bullying. The pilot instrument was adapted in Phase B of the study to improve its psychometric properties. Using the revised instrument, self-reported data on envy and workplace bullying were collected from a population of Australian workers in nursing, teaching and electrical trades. There were 1545 questionnaires distributed. A total of 413 usable questionnaires were returned, giving a response rate of 27%. Psychometric analysis included Cronbach’s alpha and confirmatory factor analysis. Gossip related behaviours were found to be related to a different construct than ‘bullying’ and these items were deleted from the analysis. A one way between-groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) with post hoc tests was performed to explore the impact of industry (nursing, teaching and electrical trades) on bullying scores. Results showed small yet significant between-industry differences for informal bullying, with significant moderate differences for total bullying. In Phase B of the study, the relationship between envy and workplace bullying was investigated for the sample (N = 413) and ‘high anger’ envy groups, using Pearson product moment correlation coefficients. ‘High anger’ was not measured as ‘overt aggression’, but as envious anger felt toward the possessor of superior traits. The major findings from this research were that envy had a positive significant (p < .05) relationship with all types of workplace bullying: informal bullying, formal bullying and total bullying. Further, the correlations between envy and all types of workplace bullying were found to increase for ‘high anger’ groups. Large (r > .70) significant (p < .05) correlations were found for some of the highest anger groups. As envious anger increased, the strength of the correlation between envy and workplace bullying increased. An important finding to emerge from this research was that it is the psychoanalytic view of envy, marked by a ‘feeling of envious anger at the possessor of superior traits’, which was most associated with all types of workplace bullying. The results demonstrated that the self-report study managed to overcome some of the methodological challenges of studying bullying from the perspective of the perpetrator and of measuring undesirable concealed emotions such as envy. Several recommendations for future research and preventative workplace practice arose from the findings of this study. Future research should apply the objective methodology employed in this study to longitudinal self-reported studies. Such studies could provide insight into whether bullying is a static or an escalating process. Related to this, future studies need to investigate why bullying, as reported by the perpetrators of bullying in this study, is either not deterred by organisations or not formally reported by targets. The role of organisations in monitoring and preventing workplace bullying and the apparent inadequacy of workplace bullying policies and internal grievance processes warrant further research. There needs to be greater awareness of the potential for organisations to elicit [harmful] envy through workplace ‘rewards’. Investigation of the ‘progression of envious feelings’ at work may assist organisations to mitigate the escalation of envious feelings toward anger, which was found to be most associated with workplace bullying in this study. Importantly, organisations need to be aware of the potential for rewarded and talented workers to become targets of workplace bullying. As such, further workplace research is needed on narcissists, who envy those who receive more attention, praise or acknowledgement than themselves (Australian Government Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, 2007). Given the ubiquitousness of envy reported on in this study, the ‘spectrum’ of narcissistic tendencies in the general population (Foster & Campbell, 2007) should be measured.

This paper presents co-resident watermarking, a traffic analysis attack for cloud environments that allows a malicious co-resident virtual machine to inject a watermark signature into the network flow of a target instance. This watermark can be used to exfiltrate co-residency data, compromising isolation assurances. While previous work depends on virtual hypervisor resource management, our approach is difficult to defend without costly underutilization of the physical machine. We evaluate co-resident watermarking under many configurations, from a local lab environment to production cloud environments. We demonstrate the ability to initiate a covert channel of 4 bits per second, and we can confirm co-residency with a target VM instance in less than 10 seconds. We also show that passive load measurement of the target and behavior profiling is possible. Our investigation demonstrates the need for the careful design of hardware to be used in the cloud. This thesis includes unpublished co-authored material.

The languages of the world are constantly changing and slang intrudes the vocabulary of many people all over the world. But what is slang and where does it come from? Are there differences in the slang that men and women use? And what is the point of using slang? It seems that the slang that was used by previous generations has either gone out of use or has now become a part of accepted standard language; basically, the youth of today reject the slang that their parents used. This would indicate that it is not “cool” to use the same slang as one’s parents did and to avoid this, new slang is invented to replace old slang aiding the youth of today to be able to be shocking or amusing by speaking in a certain way. In this essay the focus lies on the slang of British English and this is investigated by an analysis of a contemporary film and a TV-show to see how common the use of slang is in these kinds of medias. The intention is also too see if slang differs according to gender and in what different areas slang is used. The film “Football factory” and the TV-show “Little Britain” were closely watched and all slang was noted down and categorized in terms of users and areas of use. To make this easier and to make sure not to lose any parts of the dialogues scripts were found on the internet and used as aids when analyzing. “Football factory” is a movie about British football hooligans which is a very male-dominated world. “Little Britain” is a TV-show consisting of many small sketches with very different characters of both genders but mostly played by male actors. The results were somewhat surprising as the expectation was to find some slang in the chosen material but the amount of slang use exceeded the expectations. Slang seems to besomething that people use in many different areas of use, such as, when talking about sex,drugs or other things that might be taboo. It seems that slang is a big part of the language thatboth men and women use. However, in the material used for this study, young men were theones who used slang the most.

Atenção refere-se ao conjunto de processos que leva à seleção ou processamento preferencial de informações presentes em determinadas porções da rede nervosa. Existem relatos de que músicos exibem melhor desempenho que não-músicos em tarefas que envolvem atenção dado que a tarefa de leitura à primeira vista (de partituras) ativa múltiplas regiões encefálicas, entre elas, áreas envolvidas na orientação da atenção. O presente estudo investigou a orientação encoberta da atenção em músicos capazes de realizar leitura à primeira vista. Investigou ainda, se a continuidade do estudo formal de música ao longo de três anos, depois do ingresso na Universidade (ECA - Escola de Música) produz alterações significativas na memória operacional, avaliada por meio do teste 2-back, em relação a não-músicos que também ingressaram na Universidade, porém em área distinta (Biologia, IB-USP) que não envolve música. Os resultados no teste de atenção encoberta mostraram que não-músicos exibem assimetrias na orientação da atenção visuo-espacial; seu tempo de reação para estímulos apresentados no hemicampo direito é significantemente menor que o observado para estímulos apresentados no hemicampo esquerdo. Ademais, não-músicos exibem efeito de validade apenas para estímulos-alvo apresentados no hemicampo direito. Em músicos, não houve diferenças significantes nos tempos de reação a estímulos apresentados nos hemicampos direito e esquerdo; esses tempos foram significantemente menores que os exibidos pelos não-músicos, para estímulos apresentados no hemicampo esquerdo. Não obstante essa diferença, os músicos também exibiram efeito de validade apenas para estímulos-alvo apresentados no hemicampo direito. Não houve diferenças significantes de desempenho entre músicos e não-músicos no teste de memória operacional. Assim, o estudo formal de música parece relacionar-se com alterações nos processos de orientação da atenção. / Attention corresponds to selection or preferential processing of information maintained in certain portions of the neural network. Musicians seem to exhibit better performance relative to non-musicians in attention-dependent tasks, which is ascribed to sight-reading of scores that activates multiple brain regions, including areas involved on orienting of attention. The present study investigated covert orienting of visual attention in people exposed to prolonged study of music, thus becoming capable of sight-reading. In addition, we investigated if continuation of formal music study after getting into the University (School of Music) leads to significant chance in working memory, as evaluated by the 2-back test involving letters, relative to non-musicians that also get into the University but in a distinct area (Biology). The results in the covert attention test showed that non-musicians exhibit an asymmetry in visuo-spatial orienting of attention; their reaction times for target-stimuli presented in the right hemifield were significantly smaller than those observed for stimuli presented in the left hemifield. In addition, non-musicians exhibited validity effect only for target-stimuli presented in the right hemifield. In contrast, musicians did not exhibit significant differences in reaction times for target stimuli presented in the left or right hemifields; however, these reaction times were smaller than those seen for non-musicians for stimuli presented in the left hemifield. Despite this difference, musicians also exhibited an asymmetry, that is, their validity effect was also restricted to target stimuli presented in the right hemifield. Musicians and non-musicians did not differ in the working memory test. Together, these results indicate that formal music study relates with changes in the processes of orienting of attention.

This paper provides a theoretical model of the state response to the discovery of a peacetime covert operation. Building upon Stephen Krasner's theory of Westphalian sovereignty, the argument is presented that the direct and covert application of force constitutes a violation of national sovereignty. Taking the state's monopoly on control and authority to be the basis of national sovereignty, this paper shows that states will respond most substantively to the discovery of a covert operation when authority is challenged.

The thrust of this paper was two-fold, 1) to confirm a 2-factor model of narcissism in women, and 2) to examine the relationship between narcissistic traits in mothers and several variables associated with parenting efficacy. Participants included 193 mother-child dyads. A 2-factor model of narcissism was confirmed in the present sample of mothers, suggesting that narcissistic traits in women may be manifested in distinct Overt and Covert forms. Contrary to expectations, Covert Narcissistic traits in mothers did not significantly correlate with observed parenting behaviors on the PCIA, including Positive Personal Comments (PPC) towards children, Negative Personal Comments (NPC), and Parental Nurturance. However, children's self-reported maternal rejection on the C-PARQ correlated positively with Covert Narcissistic traits in mothers, as did mother's self-reported dysfunctional parenting attitudes on the AAPI-2. Narcissistic traits in mothers correlated most strongly with risk of child physical abuse on the CAPI (r = .70). Results are also presented for the Overt Narcissism factor, which proved to be less stable as a factor. Overall, results emphasize the need for a more comprehensive understanding of narcissism for women, given its potential Implications for children's healthy development and parenting interventions.

History has shown that assassination could be wielded as an effective weapon in the pursuit of interest, security and power. As the feudal age neared its end in Europe, nation states emerged. Despite its pragmatic usefulness, assassination was considered unfit for this new form of governance. States no longer sought to destroy one another as predicted by Thomas Hobbes, but adhered to John Locke's proposed values, which believed that states could mutually exist as rivals. In this system which favored negotiation and settlements, it was difficult for assassination to have a place. Yet at the start of the 21st century, assassination once again saw employment. As of today, it is preferably referred to as targeted killing by its employers and has become somewhat of a 'new normal.' Clearly, there must be certain permissive catalysts that allowed this to happen. This master's thesis firstly explores the ways the United States, Israel and Russia conduct their assassination/targeted killing operations to present the unique ways these states eliminate their enemies, and secondly pinpoints the permissive causes that allowed these three super and great powers of assassination to transform the international norm against assassination and turn a dishonest, immoral practice into something more acceptable and fit...

This thesis highlights the complex ways in which hate speech operates online, which ties into more general debates on online hate speech as something special. One way of elucidating this complexity is by dividing online hate speech into overt and covert. In doing so, we can gain a better understanding of both motivations for hate speech as well as insights in how to prevent it. While overt hate speech is widely discussed, there is not much discussion on covert hate speech. This is especially so when it comes to covert hate speech in online contexts. The questions this thesis raises are how hate speech operates online, and how we can understand this in terms of hate speech being overt or covert. By introducing two different ways of understanding overt and covert, via slurs and dog-whistles respectively, this thesis shows that covert hate speech also has some harmful consequences. If ambiguous terms laced with negative attitudes as communicative content seeps into the mainstream, there is a risk of normalisation of these negative attitudes. Given the ambiguity of these terms or statements, it makes it difficult to take proactive measures. With these results, I conclude that covert online hate speech is a vital part of understanding the mechanisms of hate speech overall.

Stegomalware is the art of hiding malicious software with steganography. Steganography is the technique of hiding data in a seemingly innocuous carrier. The occurrence of stegomalware is increasing, with attackers using ingenious techniques to avoid detection. Through a literature review, this thesis explores prevalent techniques used by attackers and their efficacy. Furthermore, it investigates detection techniques and defensive measures against stegomalware. The results show that embedding information in images is common for exfiltrating data or sending smaller files to an infected host. Word, Excel, and PDF documents are common with phishing emails as the entry vector for attacks. Most of the common Internet protocols are used to exfiltrate data with HTTP, ICMP and DNS showed to be the most prevalent in recent attacks. Machine learning anomaly-based detection techniques show promising results for detecting unknown malware, however, a combination of several techniques seems preferable. Employee knowledge, Content Threat Removal, and traffic normalization are all effective defenses against stegomalware. The stegomalware landscape shows an increase of attacks utilizing obfuscation techniques, such as steganography, to bypass security and it is most likely to increase in the near future.