High Privilege Research Articles

Community Privilege and Unplanned Surgery for Access-Sensitive Surgical Conditions.

We sought to define the association of privilege on rates of unplanned surgery and perioperative outcomes for access-sensitive surgical conditions. Social determinants of health (SDOH) are critical in influencing timely access to healthcare. Privilege represents a right, benefit, advantage, or opportunity that positively influences all SDOH. The California Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI) database identified patients who underwent abdominal aortic aneurysm repair, ventral hernia repair, or colectomy for colon cancer between 2017 and 2020 and was merged using ZIP codes with the Index of Concentration of Extremes, a validated measure of racial and economic privilege obtained from the American Community Survey. Clustered multivariable regression was performed to assess the association between privilege and outcomes. Among 185,316 patients who underwent a surgical procedure for one of three access-sensitive surgical conditions, roughly 1 in 5 individuals resided in areas with the highest (Q5; n=37,308; 20.1%) or lowest (Q1; n=36,352, 19.6%) privilege. Nearly one-half of the surgeries were unplanned (n=88,814, 46.9%), and colectomy for colon cancer was the most performed emergent procedure. Patients residing in the lowest privileged areas had higher rates of unplanned surgery compared with those residing in the highest privilege (Q1; 55.4% vs. 39.4%; referent: Q5; adjusted odds ratio [OR], 1.23, 95%CI 1.16-1.31; P<0.001). For each access-sensitive surgical condition, patients in the least privileged areas were more likely to experience higher rates of inpatient mortality (Q1; 3.1% vs. 2.1%; referent: Q5; adjusted OR, 1.41, 95%CI 1.24-1.60; P<0.001), perioperative complications (Q1; 30.4% vs. Q5; 23.8%; referent: Q5; adjusted OR, 1.24, 95%CI 1.18-1.31; P<0.001) and extended hospital stays (Q1; 26.3% vs. 20.1%; referent: Q5; adjusted OR, 1.16, 95%CI 1.09-1.22; P<0.001). Privilege was associated with rates of unplanned surgery and adverse clinical outcomes. This indicates the role privilege as a key SDOH that influences patient access to and quality of surgical care.

Association of Racial and Economic Privilege on Postoperative Outcomes Among Medicare Beneficiaries

BackgroundSocial determinants of health (SDOH) can play an important role in patients’ health. Privilege is a right, benefit, advantage, or opportunity that can positively affect all SDOH. We sought to assess variations in the prevalence of privilege among patient populations and define the association of privilege on post-operative surgical outcomes. MethodsMedicare beneficiaries who underwent elective coronary artery bypass grafting, abdominal aortic aneurysm repair, total hip arthroplasty, total knee arthroplasty, colectomy, and lung resection were identified. The Index of Concentration of Extremes (ICE), a validated metric of both social spatial polarization and privilege was calculated and merged with county-level data obtained from the American Community Survey. Textbook outcome (TO) was defined as absence of post-operative complications, extended length of stay, 90-day mortality and 90-day readmission. Multivariable regression analysis was performed to assess the relationship between ICE and TO. ResultsAmong 1,885,889 Medicare beneficiaries who met inclusion criteria, 655,980 (34.8%) individuals resided in areas with the highest privilege (i.e., White, high-income homogeneity), whereas 221,314 (11.7%) individuals resided in areas of the lowest privilege (i.e., Black, low-income homogeneity). The overall incidence of TO was 66.2% (n = 1,247,558). On multivariable regression, residence in the most advantaged neighbourhoods was associated with a lower chance of surgical complications (odds ratio (OR) 0.90, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.88-0.91), a prolonged length of stay (OR 0.81, 95% CI 0.79-82), 90-day readmission (OR 0.94, 95% CI 0.92-0.95) and 90-day mortality (OR 0.71, 95% CI 0.68-0.74) (all p<0.001). Residence in the most privileged areas was associated with 19% increased odds of achieving TO (OR 1.19, 95% CI 1.18-1.21), as well as a 6% reduction in Medicare expenditures versus individuals in the least privileged counties (OR 0.94, 95%CI 0.94-0.94) (both p<0.001). ConclusionPrivilege, based on the ICE joint measure of racial/ethnic and economic spatial concentration, was strongly associated with the likelihood to achieve an “optimal” TO following surgery. As healthcare is a basic human right, privilege should not be associated with disparities in surgical care.

Deep Learning-based Framework for Detecting Malicious Insider-Inspired Cyberattacks Activities in Organisations

&#x0D; Abstract— Cyberattacks are happening at an alarming rate both in developed and developing countries. This is due to more users now being connected to the global village (internet). Significant strides have been taken by organisations to protect information technology assets together with data, by doing defense-in-depth, using firewalls and access control approaches collectively. These approaches work well in detecting attacks by outsider cyber-attackers. In recent cyberattacks the perpetrators have been those within the organisation, as they can easily bypass security measures especially those with high privileges and they can go undetected for quite a long time. We propose a deep learning approach termed Automatic_ IDS_ Deep model (framework) that is infused with intrusion detection systems to give timely detection of malicious activities by those within the organisation. Experiments were conducted and averaging of results was done to determine accuracy, recall, and precision of the proposed model. The model (framework) offers better results on its performance in detecting attacks that are perpetrated within the organisation.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

Imperceptible graph injection attack on graph neural networks

In recent years, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have achieved excellent applications in classification or prediction tasks. Recent studies have demonstrated that GNNs are vulnerable to adversarial attacks. Graph Modification Attack (GMA) and Graph Injection Attack (GIA) are commonly attack strategies. Most graph adversarial attack methods are based on GMA, which has a clear drawback: the attacker needs high privileges to modify the original graph, making it difficult to execute in practice. GIA can perform attacks without modifying the original graph. However, many GIA models fail to take care of attack invisibility, i.e., fake nodes can be easily distinguished from the original nodes. To solve the above issue, we propose an imperceptible graph injection attack, named IMGIA. Specifically, IMGIA uses the normal distribution sampling and mask learning to generate fake node features and links respectively, and then uses the homophily unnoticeability constraint to improve the camouflage of the attack. Our extensive experiments on three benchmark datasets demonstrate that IMGIA performs better than the existing state-of-the-art GIA methods. As an example, IMGIA shows an improvement in performance with an average increase in effectiveness of 2%.

PRAKTIK KOMUNIKASI FLEXING PUBLIK DI MEDIA

Flexing communication is a form of symbolic interaction communication that puts pressure on image users, in practice symbols and diction have high privileges, so that the perceptions that appear are of double value. Through a case study in the form of a single descriptive form, it was found that the use of place, diction, expression, style, and intonation of the user is a form of flexing communication using symbols. So that the relationship between the communicator, the message, and the recipient becomes the main component in composing a communication message, this component influences the style of symbolic interaction that is built according to the communicator's message, the communicator's message is transmitted through the transmitter, through the message that is built then rearranged by the recipient, until it reaches the destination, at this point it is not always the same between the messages sent and those received, this is what the communicator must understand, otherwise a communication failure will occur, because in the course of the message it has the potential to be disrupted by various sources of interference that are around it.

Who is Most at Risk for Developing Physical Aggression After Playing Violent Video Games? An Individual Differences Perspective From Early Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood.

Many theories of development suggest that playing violent video games would not impact all adolescents the same way, yet empirical research is sparse. To date there have been no within-subjects analyses that examine which adolescents are most at risk for developing aggression after playing violent video games and under what context, and no longitudinal studies encompassing multiple developmental stages (i.e., early adolescence to emerging adulthood) that examine the long-term effects of playing violent video games. To address this gap, the current study used a longitudinal design (spanning 8 years and encompassing multiple developmental periods) with a sample of U.S. adolescents who completed questionnaires on aggression, video gaming, and multiple risk and protective factors for aggression. Participants included 488 adolescents (M age = 13.82, SD = 1.03 at the initial wave, 51% female, with 65% being White, 12% Black, 19% multiethnic, and 4% other). Mixture regression was utilized to model physical aggression over time and to examine how playing violent video games might be related to aggression on an individual level. There were four classes: "Multi-risk", "High Gaming, High Aggression" (both of which had high levels of aggression over time), "Moderate Risk", and "Low Risk, High Privilege" (both of which had lower levels of aggression over time). Individuals were most aggressive with multiple risk factors or higher levels of violent game play and playing violent video games likely increased aggression more in individuals with other gaming problems and in males with low self-regulation. The results are discussed using a balanced perspective and recognize that violent video games do not affect all adolescents the same way. This research has direct implications for designing interventions around reducing aggressive behavior among adolescents.

Kernel Code Integrity Protection at the Physical Address Level on RISC-V

An operating system kernel has the highest privilege in most computer systems, making its code integrity critical to the entire system’s security. Failure to protect the kernel code integrity allows an attacker to modify the kernel code pages directly or trick the kernel into executing instructions stored outside the kernel code pages. Existing prevention mechanisms rely on the memory management unit in which certain memory pages are marked as not-executable in supervisor mode to prevent such attacks. However, an attacker can bypass these existing mechanisms by directly manipulating the page table contents to mark the memory pages with malicious code as supervisor-executable. This paper shows that a small architectural extension enables a physical address-level mechanism to stop this threat without relying on page table integrity. PrivLock lets, at boot time, the kernel specifies the physical address ranges containing its code. At run time, PrivLock ensures that the content within the range is not manipulated and that only the instructions from those pages are executed while the processor runs in supervisor mode. Despite this protection, the kernel can still create new code pages ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">e.g</i> ., for loadable kernel modules) and make them executable with the help of PrivLock’s secure loader. The experimental results show that PrivLock incurs low performance (<0.5%), area (0.14–0.3%), and energy/power (0.053–2%) overhead.

Neighborhood segregation, tree cover and firearm violence in 6 U.S. cities, 2015–2020

Neighborhood segregation by race and income is a structural determinant of firearm violence. Addressing green space deficits in segregated neighborhoods is a promising prevention strategy. This study assessed the potential for reducing firearm violence disparities by increasing access to tree cover. Units of analysis were census tracts in six U.S. cities (Baltimore, MD; Philadelphia, PA; Richmond, VA; Syracuse, NY; Washington, DC; Wilmington, DE). We measured segregation using the index of concentration at the extremes (ICE) for race-income. We calculated proportion tree cover based on 2013–2014 imagery. Outcomes were 2015–2020 fatal and non-fatal shootings from the Gun Violence Archive. We modeled firearm violence as a function of ICE, tree cover, and covariates representing the social and built environment. Next, we simulated possible effects of “tree equity” programs, i.e., raising tract-level tree cover to a specified baseline level.In our fully-adjusted model, higher privilege on the ICE measure (1 standard deviation, SD) was associated with a 42% reduction in shootings (incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 0.58, 95% CI [0.54 0.62], p < 0.001). A 1-SD increase in tree cover was associated with a 9% reduction (IRR = 0.91, 95% CI [0.86, 0.97], p < 0.01). Simulated achievement of 40% baseline tree cover was associated with reductions in firearm violence, with the largest reductions in highly-deprived neighborhoods. Advancing tree equity would not disrupt the fundamental causes of racial disparities in firearm violence exposure, but may have the potential to help mitigate those disparities.

Prevalence Of Placenta Previa In Pregnant Women With Previous Self Selected Caesarean

Background: with the increasing numbers of elected caesarean the cases of abnormal placental implantation such as previa is also increasing. Mortality and morbidity of mother increase with placenta previa due to increase in the incidence of bleeding during pregnancy. &#x0D; Objective: this study was performed to evaluate the prevalence between repeated elective caesarean section and abnormal implantation of plancenta / previa. &#x0D; Material and Patients: It is a cross-sectional study conducted over a period of 4 months from February 2022 to May 2022. A sample size of 35 patients was collected using purposive sampling technique. Data was collected from Lady Atchison Hospital Lahore and Christian Memorial Hospital. Patients with history of elected caesarean without any medical emergency were included in the current study. Patients with multiple gestations, patients with placental abruption, female with gestational age less than 28 weeks, smoker, diabetic patients and hypertensive patients were excluded. Data was analyzed using SPSS 20&#x0D; Results: In the present study 35 patients were selected .Out of total 35 participants females aged 30yrs were more prevalent.. Regarding gestational age most femalesin this study had gestational age 28weeks In total 35 participants Placenta Previa was seen in 20 participates. Most cases of placenta Previa are seen in females who are gravida4 and para3.&#x0D; Conclusion: The study concluded that elected C-section and placenta previa are closely linked. It showed that pregnancies at the gestational age of 28 – 29 weeks have high privilege of placenta previa.

Selective electrochemical reduction of CO2 on compositionally variant bimetallic Cu–Zn electrocatalysts derived from scrap brass alloys

The electrocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2RR) into value-added fuels is a promising initiative to overcome the adverse effects of CO2 on climate change. Most electrocatalysts studied, however, overlook the harmful mining practices used to extract these catalysts in pursuit of achieving high-performance. Repurposing scrap metals to use as alternative electrocatalysts would thus hold high privilege even at the compromise of high performance. In this work, we demonstrated the repurposing of scrap brass alloys with different Zn content for the conversion of CO2 into carbon monoxide and formate. The scrap alloys were activated towards CO2RR via simple annealing in air and made more selective towards CO production through galvanic replacement with Ag. Upon galvanic replacement with Ag, the scrap brass-based electrocatalysts showed enhanced current density for CO production with better selectivity towards the formation of CO. The density functional theory (DFT) calculations were used to elucidate the potential mechanism and selectivity of the scrap brass catalysts towards CO2RR. The d-band center in the different brass samples with different Zn content was elucidated.

An Occupational Source of Racial Inequality: The Roles of Conscientiousness and Education

The literature on racism in the workplace has shed much light on the impact of racial discrimination on career outcomes, especially with respect to psychological processes (e.g., biases, attributions, perceptions, and decision-making). However, there has been relatively little research on the role of the occupational environment in racial inequality. Because the focus of most previous studies has been on income or types of occupations, a comprehensive understanding of the occupational contexts associated with racism has remained elusive. We argue that certain occupations tend to confer significant systemic, and often implicit, advantages and that racial minorities have less access to occupations with high privilege. Invoking the theory of work adjustment, status process theory, and racial stereotyping, we theorize that the socially desirable occupational characteristics of status, recognition, authority, and advancement constitute occupational privilege and are distributed unevenly across racial groups. Furthermore, we propose that occupational privilege serves to create racial disparities in extrinsic and intrinsic career outcomes. Finally, it was argued that educational level and conscientiousness, two robust predictors of career outcomes, are positively associated with occupational privilege but that the positive associations are weaker for members of racial minorities than for the racial majority owing to negative racial stereotypes. We tested these hypotheses with a large (N = 4,445) longitudinal sample created from two comprehensive datasets collected over 20 years. Results of multi-level regression supported our hypotheses. Thus, our research demonstrates that occupational privilege is a fundamental aspect of racism in the workplace.

How education and racial segregation intersect in neighborhoods with persistently low COVID-19 vaccination rates in Philadelphia

BackgroundCOVID-19 infection has disproportionately affected socially disadvantaged neighborhoods. Despite this disproportionate burden of infection, these neighborhoods have also lagged in COVID-19 vaccinations. To date, we have little understanding of the ways that various types of social conditions intersect to explain the complex causes of lower COVID-19 vaccination rates in neighborhoods.MethodsWe used configurational comparative methods (CCMs) to study COVID-19 vaccination rates in Philadelphia by neighborhood (proxied by zip code tabulation areas). Specifically, we identified neighborhoods where COVID-19 vaccination rates (per 10,000) were persistently low from March 2021 – May 2021. We then assessed how different combinations of social conditions (pathways) uniquely distinguished neighborhoods with persistently low vaccination rates from the other neighborhoods in the city. Social conditions included measures of economic inequities, racial segregation, education, overcrowding, service employment, public transit use, health insurance and limited English proficiency.ResultsTwo factors consistently distinguished neighborhoods with persistently low COVID-19 vaccination rates from the others: college education and concentrated racial privilege. Two factor values together – low college education AND low/medium concentrated racial privilege – identified persistently low COVID-19 vaccination rates in neighborhoods, with high consistency (0.92) and high coverage (0.86). Different values for education and concentrated racial privilege – medium/high college education OR high concentrated racial privilege – were each sufficient by themselves to explain neighborhoods where COVID-19 vaccination rates were not persistently low, likewise with high consistency (0.93) and high coverage (0.97).ConclusionsPairing CCMs with geospatial mapping can help identify complex relationships between social conditions linked to low COVID-19 vaccination rates. Understanding how neighborhood conditions combine to create inequities in communities could inform the design of interventions tailored to address COVID-19 vaccination disparities.

Utility of the Rey 15-Item Test for Detecting Memory Malingering

People seeking higher privileges or disability benefits are prone to simulate cognitive difficulties (van Oorsouw, Merckelbach, 2010). The most common is the simulation of memory impairment, but there is no adapted test in Lithuania that could identify it. The purpose of this study is to determine Rey Fifteen-Item Test (FIT; Rey, 1964; Lezak, Howieson, Bigler, Tranel, 2012) sensitivity and specificity by comparing three groups of subjects: healthy responders, who perform tests, as usual, healthy responders, who were instructed to simulate memory impairments and patients with traumatic brain injuries. The study included 91 subjects aged 18 to 86 years (M=42.04 SD=13.5). The study used the “Short Term Memory Test” (STMT; Vasserman, Dorofeeva, Meyerson, 1997), the FIT, socio-demographic questions. The results of the study revealed that the malingerers and nonmalingerers did not differ in the STMA scores. Whereas in patients with traumatic brain injuries STMA scores were significantly lower. Nonmalingerers and patients with traumatic brain injuries performed better on FIT than malingerers. The probability that the malingerers score lower than people with memory difficulties is 62 up to 78 percent; FIT sensitivity ranges between 73 and 90 percent, specificity between 41 and 72 percent, depending on the RPOT cut-off score.

Built-in Security Computer: Deploying Security-First Architecture Using Active Security Processor

Continually disclosed vulnerabilities reveal that traditional computer architecture lacks the consideration of security. This article proposes a security-first architecture, with an Active Security Processor (ASP) integrated to conventional computer architectures. To reduce the attack surface of ASP and improve the security of the whole system, the ASP is physically isolated from Computation Processor Units (CPU) with an asymmetric address space, which enables both ASP and CPU to run their operating system and applications independently in their own memory space. Furthermore, the ASP, which has the highest privilege (Super Root) of the whole system, possesses two advantageous features. First, the ASP can efficiently access all CPU resources and collect multi-dimensional information to monitor malicious behaviors, meanwhile, the CPU cannot access the ASP's private resources in any way. Second, instead of being scheduled by CPUs, the ASP can actively manage the security mechanisms employed in either CPUs or the ASP. Based on the security-first architecture, we introduce several typical security tasks running on ASP. With different considerations in terms of system overhead, complexity and performance, we also explore four typical system-level implementations for integrating the ASP to the security-first architecture. The first-generation ASP was designed and implemented based on the 40nm technology, and a security computer system was implemented based on it. Evaluations on this real hardware platform demonstrate that the security-first architecture can protect the system effectively with minor performance impacts on computing workloads.

Przyczynki do dziejów szpitali gdańskich w średniowieczu

Inputs to the history of hospitals in medieval Gdańsk The network of hospital in the three‑strand urban settlement unit of Gdańsk (Main Town, Old Town and Young Town) was shaped in the 14th and the start of the 15th century in accordance with a certain rule known also in other towns of the Teutonic Prussia, namely of establishing care homes intended for specific social groups. On the other hand, hospitality in Gdańsk also shows certain specificity resulting from the position of Gdańsk as the most important city in Prussia. The group of main or general hospitals included two facilities. The Hospital of the Holy Spirit established and opulently benefited by the Teutonic Order (before 1333) was given to the Main Town in 1382. It was directly controlled by the city council, which appointed hospital providers from among its ranks. Arguably, from that moment on its character began to change; gradually, among its residents the role of prebendaries –persons who had purchased a place in the home, would increase (at the beginning of the 15th century the fee amounted to 100–200 grzywna). It seems that the financial situation of the hospital in the first half of the 15th century was good and perhaps already then its extension occurred. The hospital of St. Elisabeth was of different character, also founded and opulently benefited by the Order in 1394 and run by it until 1454, previously a mansion for strangers, meaning people travelling. The sick were looked after here, as well as pilgrims and children, whereas prebendaries were not received. Its financial situation was good, incomes would systematically increase, also thanks to rich donations, such as those from Małgorzata Winterfeld. Running the facility gave the Teutonic Order the possibility to influence the society of Gdańsk, yet at the same time it created a field for conflicts due to the Order taking over financial resources of the city inhabitants. A separate group consisted of facilities for lepers of St. George (in the Main and the Young Town) and of Corpus Christi (the Old Town), as well as shelters intended for „strangers”: St. Gertrude hospital in the western suburb of the Main Town, initially the mansion of St. Elisabeth and probably the home of All God’s Angels in the Young Town. The home of St. James in New Dyke (Nowa Grobla – Łagiewniki Street), subordinate to the Teutonic Order was intended for sailors and was most probably the only „professional” shelter in the vicinity of the settlement system of Gdańsk. St. Roch hospital, as well as St. Barbara hospital in Long Gardens (Długie Ogrody) perhaps, should be excluded from the network of medieval hospitals in Gdańsk. Little is known on the subject of the genesis of hospitals for lepers and newcomers. It is likely they were established as initiatives of brotherhoods or private persons and approved by the Church and the Teutonic Order. Such facilities, except for St. Elisabeth hospital and St James hospital in New Dyke, quickly came under financial and personal control of city authorities, who appointed from among their own ranks or the ranks of burghers people who would exercise a direct control over the homes, which were under current management of hospitallers. The social position of shelter residents varied. Some of them had purchased a place in the facility and depending on the character of the emolument enjoyed lower or higher privileges. It must be highlighted that the process of buying out places also included homes which had initially been intended for those suffering from leprosy. There is no more complete information on the subject of some hospital chapels’ staff. In accordance with the privilege of Wilhelm of Modena from 1242, the right to present candidates was reserved for the Teutonic Order, whereas the institution to the bishop of Wrocław, yet there is no source information that would confirm that practice.

Slavery and Class in the American South: A Generation of Slave Narrative Testimony, 1840–1865 by William L. Andrews

Reviewed by: Slavery and Class in the American South: A Generation of Slave Narrative Testimony, 1840–1865 by William L. Andrews Adrienne Monteith Petty (bio) Slavery and Class in the American South: A Generation of Slave Narrative Testimony, 1840–1865. By William L. Andrews. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. 389. Cloth, $35.00.) To one of William L. Andrews’s slave-owning ancestors, slave narratives were such “nefarious publications” that he helped organize an antiabolition vigilance committee to halt their dissemination (ix). For Andrews himself, however, slave narratives have been the wellspring of a distinguished scholarly life. He has written or edited more than forty books. He curated the North American Slave Narratives collection for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Documenting the American South website, making antislavery texts publicly accessible in ways his great-great-grandfather could never have envisioned. His latest book, Slavery and Class in the American South: A Generation of Slave Narrative Testimony, 1840–1865, offers an intriguing but discomfiting analysis of how antebellum and Civil War–era slave narrators discussed social distinctions within slave society, especially divisions among slaves. Whether readers are persuaded by his argument, Andrews’s rich evidence and unapologetically assumption-rattling conclusions will challenge and engross new and seasoned scholars of slavery alike. Andrews argues that distinct classes existed among slaves in the ante-bellum South. He bases his contention on an analysis of more than sixty famous and obscure mid-nineteenth-century slave narratives, those published during the national and international heyday of this remarkable genre. Class, as Andrews defines it, refers to social differences among slaves based on their variable access to and control of material resources such as property, money earned for hiring out their labor, family status on the plantation, literacy, and even the “high privilege of living in a cabin” (157). In considering the class hierarchy within antebellum slavery, Andrews sees himself entering into conversation with historians Ira Berlin, John Blassingame, Michael Gomez, Deborah Gray White, and Steven Hahn. His work also intersects with Jeff Forret’s on slave-on-slave violence, Jessica [End Page 561] Millward’s on enslaved and free black women in Maryland, and Dylan Penningroth’s on slaves who owned property. “Higher-echelon” slaves, who often performed skilled work or lived in urban areas, had relatively more privileged existences under slavery than “lower-echelon” enslaved field-workers, Andrews argues. Their “peculiar advantages” bolstered their aspiration for freedom (141). An insight from Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) influenced this particular thread of Andrews’s argument: “Give [a slave] a bad master, and he aspires to a good master. Give him a good master, and he wishes to become his own master” (66). It is no coincidence, Andrews maintains, that many authors of mid-nineteenth-century slave narratives were men and women who enjoyed certain privileges. In chapter 2, “Work, Status, and Social Mobility,” Andrews writes a work biography of many of his narrators. He pays close attention to the role their work played in how they viewed themselves, how they viewed other slaves, and what they aspired to do with their lives. Andrews argues that slaves who engaged in supervisory roles and “skilled work” held a higher status than slaves who worked in the field (although, as Daina Ramey Berry has argued, slave owners prized certain enslaved field-workers’ agricultural knowledge and discernment as well). Likewise, Andrews contends that enslaved domestic workers derived certain material benefits from their positions but also faced the constant threat of sexual violence and cruel punishment at the hands of slave-owning men and women. Nevertheless, he insists, narrators who performed domestic work and other nonagricultural roles found avenues for “social mobility” in the context of slavery. For instance, he points to Aunt Sally Williams of Fayetteville, North Carolina, who persisted in finding ways to hire her time out as a dressmaker and baker in order to improve her economic status. Andrews also uses the narratives to show that higher-echelon slaves had strong views about the laziness and idleness of slave owners, and about the exploitation of lower-class white workers. Andrews clearly establishes that mid-nineteenth-century slave...

Quick Boot of Trusted Execution Environment With Hardware Accelerators

The Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) offers a software platform for secure applications. The TEE offers a memory isolation scheme and software authentication from a high privilege mode. The procedure uses different algorithms such as hashes and signatures, to authenticate the application to secure. Although the TEE hardware has been defined for memory isolation, the security algorithms often are executed using software implementations. In this paper, a RISC-V system compatible with TEEs featuring security algorithm accelerators is presented. The hardware accelerators are the SHA-3 hash and the Ed25519 elliptic curve algorithms. TileLink is used for the communications between the processor and the register of the accelerators. For the TEE boot, the software procedures are switched with the accelerated counterpart. Comparing to the software approach, a 2.5-decade increment is observed in the throughput of the signature procedure using the SHA-3 acceleration for big chunks of data. The Ed25519 performs 90% better compared to the software counterpart in execution times.

Significant Predictors of Henley Passport Index

Henley Passport Index (HPI) is a rank on the number of countries a passport holder of a country can travel VISA-free. Countries with high HPI ranking enjoy certain passport privileges. Little is known about the relationship between HPI and other global indices. This paper investigates the relationship between HPI and the trio of Corruption Perception Index (CPI), Global Peace Index (GPI), and World Happiness Report (WHR). The data of the country ranks of the 4 indices were obtained from the respective websites of the publishers of the indices. A final sample of 150 countries was analyzed after the cases of missing values were discarded. The result showed positive correlation between HPI and CPI (r = 0.768, p < 0.0005), GPI (r = 0.671, p < 0.005), and WHR (r = 0.775, p < 0.005), respectively. Regression analysis yielded an equation that showed that a unit increase in the country ranking of CPI, GPI, and WHR of countries increases the ranking of HPI by 0.196, 0.149, and 0.352, respectively. The coefficients of the independent variables are all significant at p value equals 0.05 and the model validation showed the absence of multicollinearity and the presence of small non-significant autocorrelation. The research concluded that countries with high passport privileges also have low corruption instances and conflicts and are perceived to be happy. The implications of this research were discussed.

Towards insider threats detection in smart grid communication systems

In today's communication systems, the most damaging security threats are not originating from the outsiders but from the trusted insiders - both malicious insiders and negligent insiders. Always endowed with high privileges, insiders are significantly prone to conduct acts that can cause catastrophic damages to the whole system either intentionally or unintentionally. Characterised by the full and rapid integration of information and communication technologies, smart grid - arguably the largest national critical engineering infrastructure - is suffering from a multitude of security threats initiated from both outsiders and insiders. Without security guarantee, the promising benefits of achieving an efficient, green, and reliable power grid would not be a success. In this study, the authors investigate the insider threats and summarise the existing threats detection solutions in smart grid communication systems. In addition, a novel hybrid insider threats modelling, analysis, and detection framework, which is based on stochastic Petri net and behaviour rule specifications, is proposed to contain insider threats in smart grid communication systems.

A Kernel Rootkit Detection Approach Based on Virtualization and Machine Learning

OS kernel is the core part of the operating system, and it plays an important role for OS resource management. A popular way to compromise OS kernel is through a kernel rootkit (i.e., malicious kernel module). Once a rootkit is loaded into the kernel space, it can carry out arbitrary malicious operations with high privilege. To defeat kernel rootkits, many approaches have been proposed in the past few years. However, existing methods suffer from some limitations: 1) most methods focus on user-mode rootkit detection; 2) some methods are limited to detect obfuscated kernel modules; and 3) some methods introduce significant performance overhead. To address these problems, we propose VKRD, a kernel rootkit detection system based on the hardware assisted virtualization technology. Compared with previous methods, VKRD can provide a transparent and an efficient execution environment for the target kernel module to reveal its run-time behavior. To select the important run-time features for training our detection models, we utilize the TF-IDF method. By combining the hardware assisted virtualization and machine learning techniques, our kernel rootkit detection solution could be potentially applied in the cloud environment. The experiments show that our system can detect windows kernel rootkits with high accuracy and moderate performance cost.