<p>A clear picture describing cognitive change in pregnant women has yet to emerge. Recent work investigating pregnancy-induced cognition in women focuses on memory deficits, in contrast to the cognitive advantage and neural plasticity described in the nonhuman literature. The following thesis reviews the literature investigating pregnancy-induced cognitive change, and then reports three empirical studies investigating cognition in pregnant and postpartum women. I hypothesized that, given the high stakes associated with pregnancy and the postpartum period, adaptive mechanisms designed to keep the mother safe exist in the cognitive domain, in much the same way that Nausea and Vomiting in Pregnancy is now believed to buffer the mother and fetus from harm. The results of a meta-analysis and a longitudinal study comparing cognitive performance in pregnant and non-pregnant women suggest that there are cognitive costs associated with becoming a mother, in both pregnancy and the postpartum period. Recent research suggests that pregnant women possess an advantage in processing social stimuli: I report that pregnant women show facilitated recognition of faces. Finally, I examined nesting, and developed a questionnaire that tracked women through pregnancy and into the postpartum period, comparing non-pregnant women at similar time points. I report that nesting peaks in the third trimester, and involves space preparation and social withdrawal. Reproductive state affects cognition in ways that are distinct, and perhaps specialized, including a deficit in some areas (processing speed), and a cognitive advantage in others (face recognition), some of which may serve a protective function.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Basing its foreign policy on the Wilsonian internationalism, the new Turkish Republic established good relations with countries around the world. It signed neutrality and friendship treaties, and pursued a neutral foreign policy. However, at the end of World War II, it abandoned its longtime neutral foreign policy and aimed to establish closer ties with the American-led West. This thesis examines how and why Turkey shifted its foreign policy from neutrality to active alliance. In the first half of the thesis, I closely deal with what role international developments played in that shift. First, I focus on how Josef Stalin's efforts to obtain bases and joint-control with Turkey over the Turkish Straits created a threat to Turkey's national security. Then, I explore how this threat forced Turkey to leave its neutral foreign policy and seek closer ties with the U.S. In the second half of the thesis, I examine how Turkey's search for economic aid and military commitment accelerated and intensified the shift from neutrality to active alliance. First, I focus on how Turkish officials aggressively sought economic assistance from the U.S. and how U.S. officials became resistant to the Turkish requests for additional aid beginning with the second half of 1947. Considering that Turkey was less vulnerable to the Soviet threat, U.S. officials judged that Turkey did not need aid as much as Western Europe did. In order to overcome the resistance, Turkish officials exaggerated the Soviet threat and used the problem of high defense spending. Then, I explore how Turkish officials sought a military commitment from the U.S. A U.S. military commitment could alleviate the problem of high defense spending and facilitate the flow of economic aid from the U.S. Therefore, Turkish officials carried on a diplomatic offensive to secure a military commitment from the U.S. In doing so, they distanced themselves from neutrality and became an institutional ally of the U.S. in 1952. / History

Previous research on Temporal Self-Appraisal Theory demonstrated that people make downward comparisons to their past selves. Researchers have discussed this tendency to denigrate past selves as a self-esteem maintenance strategy; however, little research has been done on how people recall their past selves following active threats to their self-esteem. Reconstruing one’s past self for self-enhancement may lead to changes in construal level. I conducted three studies in which participants were randomly assigned to either an intelligence self-esteem threat or control condition and then tasked to recall an autobiographical memory, rate attributes of their recalled past self, and complete a measure of construal level. In the pilot study (N = 113), participants were free to recall any memory of their choosing. In Studies 1 and 2, participants recalled and rated two memories from early high-school: pre- and post-threat manipulation. Participants in Study 1 (N = 240) recalled their academic experience, while participants in Study 2 (N = 243) recalled their interpersonal relationships. A pattern emerged across studies suggesting that when people recall autobiographical memories related to the domain in which their self-esteem has been threatened (an academic memory and intelligence threat), threatened participants are more likely to denigrate their past selves (lower endorsement of positive self-attributes post-manipulation than pre-test) than controls in threat-relevant traits (competence, knowledge). This pattern is accompanied by an increased likelihood to recall positive transformations and periods of growth, as opposed to stability. However, a relationship with construal level was not observed. Further, when people recall autobiographical memories unrelated to the domain in which their self-esteem has been threatened (an interpersonal memory and intelligence threat), threatened participants are more likely to idealize their past selves (higher endorsement of positive self-attributes post-manipulation than pre-test) than controls in threat-irrelevant traits (likeable, attractive). However, this pattern was only observed for those who demonstrated fixed mindsets, emphasizing stability, and was not associated with an impact on construal level. / Psychology

yes / Cyber-attacks have been an increasing threat on people and organisations, which led to massive unpleasant impact. Therefore, there were many solutions to handle cyber-attacks, including Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS). These solutions will provide a huge number of alarms that produce more are false positives. Therefore, the IDS tool result should be operated by a human intelligent be filtered effectively the huge amount of alerts to identify true positive attacks and perform accordingly to the incident response rule. This requires the IT employees to have enough knowledge and competency on operating IDS, IPS and incident handling. This paper aims to examine the awareness of cyber security threat among all IT employees, focusing on three domains: Knowledge, Monitoring and Prevention.

Yes / Cyber security has become a matter of a global interest, and several attacks target industrial companies and governmental organizations. The advanced persistent threats (APTs) have emerged as a new and complex version of multi-stage attacks (MSAs), targeting selected companies and organizations. Current APT detection systems focus on raising the detection alerts rather than predicting APTs. Forecasting the APT stages not only reveals the APT life cycle in its early stages but also helps to understand the attacker's strategies and aims. This paper proposes a novel intrusion detection system for APT detection and prediction. This system undergoes two main phases; the first one achieves the attack scenario reconstruction. This phase has a correlation framework to link the elementary alerts that belong to the same APT campaign. The correlation is based on matching the attributes of the elementary alerts that are generated over a configurable time window. The second phase of the proposed system is the attack decoding. This phase utilizes the hidden Markov model (HMM) to determine the most likely sequence of APT stages for a given sequence of correlated alerts. Moreover, a prediction algorithm is developed to predict the next step of the APT campaign after computing the probability of each APT stage to be the next step of the attacker. The proposed approach estimates the sequence of APT stages with a prediction accuracy of at least 91.80%. In addition, it predicts the next step of the APT campaign with an accuracy of 66.50%, 92.70%, and 100% based on two, three, and four correlated alerts, respectively. / The Gulf Science, Innovation and Knowledge Economy Programme of the U.K. Government under UK-Gulf Institutional Link Grant IL 279339985 and in part by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), U.K., under Grant EP/R006385/1.

Yes / As one of the most serious types of cyber attack, Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) have caused major concerns on a global scale. APT refers to a persistent, multi-stage attack with the intention to compromise the system and gain information from the targeted system, which has the potential to cause significant damage and substantial financial loss. The accurate detection and prediction of APT is an ongoing challenge. This work proposes a novel machine learning-based system entitled MLAPT, which can accurately and rapidly detect and predict APT attacks in a systematic way. The MLAPT runs through three main phases: (1) Threat detection, in which eight methods have been developed to detect different techniques used during the various APT steps. The implementation and validation of these methods with real traffic is a significant contribution to the current body of research; (2) Alert correlation, in which a correlation framework is designed to link the outputs of the detection methods, aims to identify alerts that could be related and belong to a single APT scenario; and (3) Attack prediction, in which a machine learning-based prediction module is proposed based on the correlation framework output, to be used by the network security team to determine the probability of the early alerts to develop a complete APT attack. MLAPT is experimentally evaluated and the presented system is able to predict APT in its early steps with a prediction accuracy of 84.8%.

Since the Hamas attack, 7 of October 2023, instability in the Red Sea region has occurred. Due to this, the United States, along with other western countries has made a military intervention to targets in Yemen. But the question remains, how has it been possible for the US to carry out a military attack? This paper is aiming to study how the US has made this intervention possible by analyzing the securitization of the threat image from the Red Sea region. The study is going to analyze the ATA (Annual threat Assessment) material from the years 2006-2024, the report shows next year's US threat image. By the Securitization Theory the study is aiming to see how the threat image has been securitized. Combined with a discourse analysis as a method the study will investigate how the Red Sea region is expressed in the reports. This material, theory and method have not been studied before and therefore filled a gap in the previous research field.  The purpose is to contribute to a wider picture of the Securitization theory in the international arena. The analysis shows that ATA reports contain clear signs of securitization. The results show that the reports contained loaded words, an authority that was targeting an audience and macro securitization had occurred by mentioning the conflict in the Red Sea region as a proxy war. Due to these results one could draw the conclusion that Securitization had occurred in the report and therefore made possible for the military invasion.

Many military conflicts are fought in urban environments that subject the U.S. soldier to a number of challenges not otherwise found in traditional battle. In the urban environment, the soldier is subject to threatening attacks not only from the organized army but also from civilians who harbor hostility. U.S. enemies use the civilian crowd as an unconventional tactic to blend in and look like civilians, and in response to this growing trend, soldiers must detect and identify civilians as a threat or non-threat. To identify a civilian as a threat, soldiers must familiarize themselves with behavioral cues that implicate threatening individuals. This study elicited expert strategies regarding how to use nonverbal cues to detect a threat and evaluated the best medium for distinguishing a threat from a non-threat to develop a training guide of heuristics for training novices (i.e., soldiers) in the threat detection domain. Forty experts from the threat detection domain were interviewed to obtain strategies regarding how to use nonverbal cues to detect a threat (Phase 1). The use of nonverbal cues in context and learning from intuitive individuals in the domain stood out as strategies that would promote the efficient use of nonverbal cues in detecting a threat. A new group of 14 experts judged scenarios presented in two media (visual, written) (Phase 2). Expert detection accuracy rates of 61% for the visual medium and 56% for the written medium were not significantly different, F (1, 13) = .44, p = .52. For Phase 3 of the study, a training development guide of heuristics was developed and eight different experts in the threat detection domain subjectively rated the heuristics for their importance and relevance in training novices. Nine heuristics were included in the training guide, and overall, experts gave all heuristics consistently high ratings for importance and relevance. The results of this study can be used to improve accuracy rates in the threat detection domain and other populations: 1) the soldier, 2) the average U.S. citizen, and 3) employees of the Transportation Security Administration. / Ph. D.

The events of 9-11 resulted in a slew of policy, procedural, and organizational changes within many government departments as the U.S. government took many steps to enhance security to prevent future terrorist attacks. The emphasis on high threat targets by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other government agencies, such as the White House, the Capitol and Congressional office buildings, major infrastructure and facilities within US cities, airline travel, ports and economic supply chains has generated a great deal of debate and attention. There are however, targets that are considered low risk situated in high threat areas that also provide open access to the public for which security professionals are responsible that should not be overlooked during the War on Terror. The question is how low risk targets in high threat areas should be protected? What resource distribution makes sense? What practices should be applied to achieve security? The purpose of this research is to look at one of these targets, the Smithsonian Institution and how the Smithsonian Institution's Office of Protection Services (SI OPS) responded to the terror attacks of 9-11 and the ongoing threat. Four factors will be examined: (1) the screening process, (2) the budget, (3) the security policy formulation process, and (4) training. The study focus is based on data derived from semi-structured interviews and a review of SI documents. Examining post 9-11 security changes allows one to see how SI OPS has evolved in its attempt to meet both internal security demands and expectations against an external security concern. The findings reveal SI OPS initially underwent significant changes within the four factors in the three years following the attacks of 9-11. However, limited resources and manpower strains have played major roles in the subsequent decline in some of the factors after their initial increases. Although a return to the security levels immediately following 9-11 may not be imminent, it is recommended that OPS management make stronger efforts to communicate with non-security managers and return to more stringent visitor screening procedures. / Ph. D.

People simultaneously hold a multitude of social identifications while at work, some of which are work-related and some of which transcend the workplace. To date, the vast majority of studies on social identities focus on these identities in isolation. Two important identities that transcend the work domain are those associated with gender and ethnicity. These attributes have been widely studied in the workplace, however, there is a lack of understanding in how the identities associated with these attributes (demographic-related identities) have implications for identification in the workplace and work-related outcomes. In this paper, I examine the relationship between perceived threats to these demographic-related identities and work-related attitudes and behavior, specifically turnover intentions, and extra-role behaviors. I also explore moderating (degree of demographic-related identity centrality) and mediating (organizational and workgroup identification) mechanisms in this relationship. Data were collected across two studies. The results demonstrate that perceived threats to demographic-related identities have severe ramifications for work-related identification. The supplemental analysis indicated a direct relationship between demographic-related identity centrality and turnover intentions. Furthermore, demographic-related identity centrality moderated the relationship between perceived threats to demographic-related identity by both the organization and the workgroup on work-related outcomes. / Doctor of Philosophy / This research examined the relationship between perceived threats to gender and ethnic identities in the workplace and the impact these threats have on work-related identification and outcomes. Results suggest that perceived threats to these identities have important implications for both extra-role behaviors and turnover intentions, regardless of how important these identities are to the individual.