Static authentication, where user identity is checked once at login time, can be circumvented no matter how strong the authentication mechanism is. Through attacks such as man-in-the-middle and its variants, an authenticated session can be hijacked later after the initial login process has been completed. In the last decade, continuous authentication (CA) using biometrics has emerged as a possible remedy against session hijacking. CA consists of testing the authenticity of the user repeatedly throughout the authenticated session as data becomes available. CA is expected to be carried out unobtrusively, due to its repetitive nature, which means that the authentication information must be collectible without any active involvement of the user and without using any special purpose hardware devices (e.g. biometric readers). Stylometry analysis, which consists of checking whether a target document was written or not by a specific individual, could potentially be used for CA. Although stylometric techniques can achieve high accuracy rates for long documents, it is still challenging to identify an author for short documents, in particular when dealing with large author populations. In this dissertation, we propose a new framework for continuous authentication using authorship verification based on the writing style. Authorship verification can be checked using stylometric techniques through the analysis of linguistic styles and writing characteristics of the authors. Different from traditional authorship verification that focuses on long texts, we tackle the use of short messages. Shorter authentication delay (i.e. smaller data sample) is essential to reduce the window size of the re-authentication period in CA. We validate our method using different block sizes, including 140, 280, and 500 characters, and investigate shallow and deep learning architectures for machine learning classification. Experimental evaluation of the proposed authorship verification approach based on the Enron emails dataset with 76 authors yields an Equal Error Rate (EER) of 8.21% and Twitter dataset with 100 authors yields an EER of 10.08%. The evaluation of the approach using relatively smaller forgery samples with 10 authors yields an EER of 5.48%. / Graduate

ITC/USA 2010 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Sixth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 25-28, 2010 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / Decoding and Turbo Equalization (TEQ) algorithms based on the Sum-Product Algorithm (SPA) are well established for LDPC codes. However there is increasing interest in linear and nonlinear programming (NLP)-based decoders which may offer computational and performance advantages over the SPA. We present NLP decoders and Turbo equalizers based on an Augmented Lagrangian formulation of the decoding problem. The decoders update estimates of both the Lagrange multipliers and transmitted codeword while solving an approximate quadratic programming problem. Simulation results show that the NLP decoder performance is intermediate between the SPA and bit-flipping algorithms. The NLP may thus be attractive in some applications as it eliminates the tanh/atanh computations in the SPA.

Surprisingly little experimental research has explored the psychological function of soul belief given its prevalence. As some have noted (e.g., Rank, 1930/1998), soul belief may have evolved to help individuals cope with existential concerns through promises of literal immortality. The research that has been conducted on the function of literal immortality shows that belief in an afterlife minimizes death-related concerns (Dechesne et al., 2003). I propose two separate hypotheses testing the psychological function of soul belief. Hypothesis 1 states that soul belief should minimize the threat of a death reminder (or mortality salience; MS); this hypothesis was supported in Study 1 where soul believers did not show an increase in death-thought accessibility (DTA) following MS, but low soul believers did show an increase. Hypothesis 2 states that soul belief should also offer protection from threats to symbolic immortality related to the prospect of the end-of-world. Studies 2, 3, 4, and 6 support the reasoning behind this hypothesis. However, Study 5 did not support Hypothesis 2. Considering the data that did support Hypothesis 2, soul believers showed less resistance to end-of-world arguments and also did not show an increase in DTA following such arguments; whereas, low soul believers respond to end-of-world arguments with more resistance and heightened DTA. The discussion focuses on interpretations of these findings and remaining questions.

Within a distributed system, autonomous agents may find it necessary to cooperate in order to achieve their objectives. Interaction protocols provide standard frameworks within which to conduct common classes of interaction, but they are only useful when the agents using them have a common interpretation of the constraints imposed by those protocols. In open systems, where there are no system-wide objectives and components are contributed from a variety of sources, this is difficult to ensure. An agent within a sufficiently complex environment will find it necessary to draw inferences from information sources of varying integrity and completeness. Given flawed or incomplete information, it may be necessary for an agent to resort to nonmonotonic reasoning in order to be able to make concrete decisions within limited windows of opportunity. This can be expected to create inconsistencies in the joint beliefs of agents which can only be repaired by dialogue between peers. To verify and repair all possible sources of inconsistency is impractical for any sizable body of inference however—any belief revision must therefore be subject to prioritisation. In this thesis, we introduce a mechanism by which agents can perform opportunistic argumentation during dialogue in order to perform distributed belief revision. An interaction portrayal uses the protocol for a given interaction to identify the logical constraints which must be resolved during the interaction as it unfolds. It then compares and reconciles the expectations of agents prior to the resolution of those constraints by generating and maintaining a system of arguments. The composition and scope of arguments is restricted in order to minimise the information exchange whilst still trying to ensure that all available admissible viewpoints are adequately represented immediately prior to any decision. This serves both to make interaction more robust (by allowing agents to make decisions based on the distributed wisdom of its peer group without being explicitly directed by a protocol) and to reconcile beliefs in a prioritised fashion (by focusing only on those beliefs which directly influence the outcome of an interaction as determined by its protocol).

This thesis presents an investigation into the beliefs held by practising teachers of L1 (first language) English in English secondary schools about the value of teaching grammar. Through case studies, it also relates beliefs to pedagogical practice. The study was conducted in two phases. The participants in the first phase were thirty-one teachers, all of whom were taking part in the ESRC-funded Grammar for Writing? project (grant number RES-062-23-0775). Participants taught three writing schemes to their year eight class over the course of a year, and were observed and interviewed once during each scheme. The interviews elicited their beliefs about the teaching of writing in general and about teaching sentence level grammar in particular. The interview data were inductively analysed to explore the participants’ espoused beliefs. The case-study participants in the second phase were three volunteers from the original cohort. These teachers were each observed for a period of three weeks, teaching their own writing schemes to key stage three classes. Stimulated recall interviews were used to capture their reflections on their teaching practices, and think-aloud protocols were used to capture their thinking as they assessed writing samples. Phase one and two data were analysed to explore some of the different ways in which teachers practise grammar teaching, along with the matches, mismatches and tensions between their practice and their espoused beliefs. The findings are presented using a model which explores teachers’ conceptual, affective and evaluative beliefs about grammar, along with episodic influences. The study is significant in offering an up-to-date picture of teachers’ beliefs and practice in this highly-contested aspect of English, as well as in offering insights into the relationships between conceptual, affective and evaluative aspects of belief, and into some of the causes reported by teachers for mismatches and tensions between beliefs and practices.

Research on theory of mind (ToM) has been dominated by the traditional False Belief tasks; however, recent work has established a developmental sequence for children’s mental-state understanding. Wellman and Liu (2004) formulated a ToM scale that tests four additional aspects of ToM abilities in the visual realm: Diverse Desires, Diverse Beliefs, Knowledge Access, and Real-Apparent Emotions. Our study extended the scale to include five parallel tasks assessing ToM in the auditory realm. Sixty-six typically developing preschoolers (30 female) between the ages of 3- and 5-years-old were tested using 10 ToM tasks (5 visual, 5 auditory). A 3(age) x 2(modality) x 2(gender) repeated measures ANOVA yielded significant effects for age and gender, where 4- and 5-year-olds demonstrated greater mental-state understanding than 3-year-olds and girls passed more tasks than boys. There was no effect of modality nor did any interactions emerge. Like the visual tasks in the theory-of-mind scale, the auditory tasks form a scalable set, with Diverse Desires and Diverse Beliefs occurring earlier in the scale than Knowledge Access, False Belief, and Real-Apparent Emotions. Our new scale provides researchers with five novel tasks to measure the progression of theory-of-mind development in the auditory realm and may be extended to assess preschoolers, such as children with visual impairments and children with autism spectrum disorder, who have shown delays in mental-state understanding when tested using predominantly visual tasks

Moral skeptics sometimes argue that science is at odds with morality. These arguments sometimes privilege scientific explanations of moral belief at the expense of objective moral knowledge. More specifically, since morality is (arguably) a biological adaptation involving belief, Richard Joyce and Sharon Street doubt the justification and objective truth of moral belief, respectively. This thesis defends objective normative facts from this empirical problem. Reasons for moral skepticism are not compatible with arguments against objective normativity. Put simply, without objective normativity, skeptics have no ultimate reason to doubt anything in particular, moral or otherwise. So, on pain of incoherence, moral skeptics should doubt the truth, rather than the objective normativity, of moral belief. / Graduate / 0422

Bakgrund: Depression är en psykisk sjukdom som går i skov och är annorlunda från person till person i hur länge det håller i sig och hur pass allvarligt depressionen anses vara. För varje nytt skov en person får så ökas risken för framtida skov som kan bli allt mer allvarligare och därmed svårare att återhämta sig från. Då depression är en vanlig sjukdom som blir allt vanligare så finns det ingenstans inom vården där en sköterska inte kommer att möta dessa människor.   Syfte: Syftet med föreliggande arbete var att beskriva hur sjuksköterskor upplever att vårda människor som har depression samt beskriva vilka undersökningsgrupper som finns i de valda artiklarna.   Design: En beskrivande litteraturstudie.   Resultat: Sjuksköterskor kände sig säkra i att känna igen depressionssymtom, men ändå förblev många depressionstillstånd odiagnostiserade och obehandlade. Frustration kring sjukdomen och dess behandling uppstod då det inte fanns tid eller rätt kunskap för att kunna hantera det. Viljan att lära sig mer och vara lyhörda för patienternas behov fanns vilket hänvisade till ett behov av att ha en bra relation mellan sjuksköterskan och patienten. Det var en tydlig dominans av kvinnor i de 10 utvalda artiklarna. Det fanns allt från nyanställda sköterskor till sjuksköterskor som arbetat i flera år även om de flesta av deltagarna i de olika studierna var i medelåldern.   Slutsats: Sjuksköterskor upplever frustration och maktlöshet när de vårdar människor med depression vilket leder till känslan av stigmatisering och dåliga relationer mellan vården och patienten. Viljan att bli bättre på att känna igen depression och kunna vara ett stöd för människorna med sjukdomen finns hos sköterskorna, men bristen på tid, kunskap och kommunikation gör att sjuksköterskor känner att de inte kan hantera patienterna och blir otrygga i sin arbetsroll som vårdare. / Background: Depression is a mental illness that relapses and is different from person to person in how long it lasts and how serious the depression is considered. For each new relapse a person has the risk of future relapses increased which can become more serious and more difficult to recover from. Considering that depression is a common disorder that is becoming more common, there is no place in health care where a nurse will not meet these people.   Aim: To describe how nurses experience caring for people who have depression. The aim is also to describe the study groups of the selected articles.   Design: A descriptive study of literature.   Findings: Nurses felt confident in recognizing symptoms of depression, but many depressions remained undiagnosed and untreated. Frustration towards the disease and its treatment were experienced since there was no time or the right knowledge to be able to handle depressed patients. The desire to learn more and be empathetic to the needs of patients was present which supported the need for a good relationship between the nurse and the patient. There was a dominance of women in the 10 selected articles. Everything from newly hired nurses to nurses who've worked for several years participated although most of them were middle-aged.   Conclusion: Nurses are experiencing frustration and powerlessness when they care for people with depression, which leads to the feeling of stigmatization and poor relationships between nurse and patient. The desire to become better at recognizing depression and be a support for people with the disease exists, but the lack of time, knowledge and communication makes nurses feel insecure in their role as caregivers.

Miljoner människor har tvingats ur sina hem på grund av det våld som pågår i Mellanöstern. Sättet som omvärlden förhåller sig till den kontext flyktingarna befinner sig i påverkar den fortsatta utvecklingen. Omvärldens attityder till de flyende och flyktproblematiken varierar och har förändrats över tid till exempel här i Sverige. Något som delvis påvekar attityder är hur media rapporterar kring denna kontext. Annat som kan förklara uppkomsten av dessa attityder är psykologiska dimensioner såsom avhumanisering och välmående samt teorier som Belief in a just world och locus of control. Urvalet i tidigare forskning har varit individer i välfärdsländer medan människor med andra erfarenheter som till exempel flyktingar inte har studerats.   Åtta kurdsvenskar med tidigare flyktingstatus intervjuades för att addera information och med hjälp av de nämnda psykologiska teorierna studera deras attityder. Utifrån den tematiska analysen framträdde fem huvudteman: BJW, Locus of control, subjektivt välmående, tidigare trauman, attityder till flyktingar och flyktingfrågan. Deltagarna hade en varierande tro på världen som rättvis. De uttryckte stark egenkontroll och deras subjektiva välmående visade sig positivt trots tidigare trauman där man hade kommit till en accepterande fas. Även synen på flyktingar var varierande med alltifrån liberala och medsympatiserande åsikter till konservativa och exkluderande. Studien bidrar till en mer nyanserad bild av vad flyktingfrågan kan handla om. Det i sig är viktigt i strävan efter jämlikhet och långsiktigare lösningar för att undvika motsättningar och rasism.

<p>Research has long assumed that the process of self-control involves mechanisms for overcoming temptations. Such mechanisms, however, may not necessarily be consciously deployed, and relatively little is known about how individuals’ explicit beliefs about temptations may impact their response to them. With this in mind, five studies were conducted to examine the self-regulatory impact of individuals’ general beliefs about the necessity of avoiding temptations and the potential utility of having indulged in them. These studies considered how the impact of these beliefs may themselves depend on an individual’s ability to implement self-control. Study 1 tested the connection between an individual’s decision to avoid temptations and the two beliefs on overcoming temptations – beliefs in the necessity of avoidance and in the utility of indulgence. Studies 2 and 3 examined the relationship between self-control and the general belief that the utility of indulging in temptations affects self-control related behaviors. Study 4 explored how these beliefs may impact healthy dietary choices in the face of food temptations. Finally, Study 5 employed a different task paradigm to examine how various beliefs about temptations may mitigate the negative experiences of failures in self-control. Overall, the findings indicated that a general belief in the utility of avoiding temptations may positively impact goal pursuit, especially when self-control is low. Alternatively, a belief in the value of indulging in temptations may negatively impact goal pursuit when individuals’ self-control is low. This belief, however, may mitigate the consequences of temptation indulgence for future self-control.</p> / Dissertation