bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Framework for Self-adaptive Collaborative Computing on Reconfigurable Platforms
Authors: van Tol Michiel W.  , Pohl Zdenek  , Tichy Milan
Published: February 2025

As the number and complexity of computing devices in the environment around us increases, it is interesting to see how we could exploit that and glue them together to create larger co-operative distributed systems. This paper describes a framework for dynamically aggregating and configuring processing resources in order to meet local requirements and constraints. The capability of this framework is demonstrated by a case study using an adaptive least mean squares filter (ALMS) application. ALMS improves convergence of least mean squares filters at the cost of more resources, and allows us to demonstrate abilities of the framework such as task offloading and run-time adaptation to available resources.
Hybrid Parallel Programming with MPI/StarSs
Authors: Labarta Jesus  , Marjanović Vladimir  , Ayguadé Eduard  , Badia Rosa M.  , Valero Mateo
Published: February 2025

This paper describes how hybrid MPI/StarSs programming provides an efficient way to program future clusters of multicore nodes. The use of the programming model results in achieving overlap between communication and computation while maintaining a simple source code structure. Additional benefits include tolerance to limited bandwidth availability and tolerance to OS noise. This paper presents three different implementations of this approach due to the requirements of three different supercomputing platforms: MareNostrum, Jugene and Juropa.
PRACE: Europe's Supercomputing Research Infrastructure
Authors: Lippert Thomas  , Eickermann Thomas  , Erwin Dietmar
Published: February 2025

Since June 2010, the “Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe” (PRACE) is established as a persistent pan-European research infrastructure for High Performance Computing (HPC). It represents the leadership-level (Tier-0) of the European HPC ecosystem. PRACE has been created within the last four years by a consortium of as yet 22 European countries. A preparatory project, supported by the EU's DG INFSO, has built PRACE's legal and technical foundations. Today PRACE is an international non-profit association with seat in Brussels.
National, Homeland and Human Security: Conceptual Development, Globalization and Risk
Authors: Spence Keith
Published: February 2025

Since the events of September 11, 2001, the concept of homeland security has achieved prominence in mainstream political discourse and institutional form in the domestic policies of many NATO members and international partners. Homeland security is assessed in this discussion as a development that is continuous with national security. Insofar as this is the case, its utility is constrained by a definition that establishes the principal site of the security – the homeland – in a bounded and limited form. This excludes and potentially marginalises identities, territories and interests that fall outside its meanings, in turn calling into question the efficacy of homeland security as a vehicle of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, pointing to the requirement for a more comprehensive conception in keeping with the demands and complexity of an irreversibly globalized security environment. To address this lacuna, the concept of ‘human security,’ established as a practical approach within the United Nations Development Report of 1994, is outlined. Uncertainties surrounding its development indicate that security itself is a concept in transition that is located and developed within the context of globalization and cosmopolitan risk that are characteristic of the Risk Society thesis expounded by Ulrich Beck. Human security does not present itself as a simple alternative to, or replacement for, established models of physical and territorial security. In establishing an agenda for security that exceeds these conventional boundaries it does, however, enable a necessary rethinking of both conceptual limits and practical materializations of security in response to the challenges and possibilities that globalization presents. Elements of this rethinking are considered in the context of ongoing NATO operations in Afghanistan, and the relevance of human security to the reformulation of NATO's strategic concept noted.
Homeland Security in the United States: Lessons from the American Experience
Authors: Bellavita Christopher
Published: February 2025

“What did it take to produce the United States homeland security enterprise?” That is the central question discussed in this paper. I conclude that homeland security is the emergent consequence of a complex adaptive system. The paper explains how I reached that conclusion, and outlines the implications for homeland security practitioners of adopting a complexity perspective.
Law as a Homeland Security Tool in the Defence against Terrorism: The Universal Legal Framework for the Criminal Justice Response to Terrorism
Authors: Švarc Dominika
Published: February 2025

A strong criminal justice response, supported by the core principles of international law and human rights standards, remains the crucial tool in the global efforts to fight the scourge of terrorism. Several elements of international law are directly applicable to strengthen this tool. This paper examines three: first, the obligation to prohibit and criminalize terrorist offences in domestic criminal legal orders; second, obligations aimed at strengthening prevention and repression of terrorism; and third, the framework and tools for international cooperation in prevention of terrorist acts and in prosecution and punishment of the perpetrators.
An Access-Control Agent-Based Security System
Authors: Dovgan Erik  , Gams Matjaž
Published: February 2025

This chapter presents a high-security access-control system. The system consists of a set of intelligent agents that are organized in several layers and store the global knowledge in a global ontology. They learn user behavior at the access points and recognize significant behavior deviations produced by intruders or due to other unwanted situations. This chapter also presents three prototypes of the system, each specialized for a subset of security problems. The experiments show that the system is efficient in recognizing stolen-identification entries.
Ambient Utopia
Authors: Heylen Dirk
Published: February 2025

This chapter presents an analysis of the ambitions that lie behind the concept of Ambient Intelligence as it is presented by the advocates and researchers working in the field. In particular it looks at the ideas regarding the forms of natural and intuitive forms of interaction that are envisaged – including agents and robots – from a philosophical perspective. The views on interaction are analysed and framed in the conceptual framework of Don Idhe's phenomenological analysis that describes how we as humans relate to the world existentially, mediated through the technologies that we construct. We compare and contrast the ambient intelligent vision on technology with some other ones.
Methodological Approaches From Experimental to Computational Analysis in Vibrational Spectroscopy and Microspectroscopy
Authors: Severcan Feride  , Akkas Sara B.  , Turker Sevgi  , Yucel Recai
Published: February 2025

The success of vibrational spectroscopy in diagnosis and screening is closely dependent on the selection of right methodological approaches, which include correct sample preparation and spectral acquisition, as well as accurate data analysis, including pre-processing, statistical analysis, and complementing with different chemometric methods. Throughout this book, various aspects within these steps of infrared (IR) and Raman spectroscopy and microspectroscopy, as well as Terahertz spectroscopy, are discussed extensively. Taking this into consideration, the main concern of this chapter is to summarize methodological approaches and address a variety of practical points that are frequently encountered and need clarification during vibrational spectroscopic studies. Emphasis on computational analysis is also provided due to a lack of such a guide in the biospectroscopic literature especially targeting new starters. The focus is on describing univariate statistical analyses frequently used in biospectroscopy. Less emphasis is given on multivariate statistical analyses, because these subjects are thoroughly discussed with examples in the following chapters.
Classification of drug modes of action on cancer cells by FTIR fingerprinting
Authors: Gasper Régis  , Goormaghtigh Erik
Published: February 2025

IR spectrum of a cell provide an accurate fingerprint of cell metabolism at the moment of the measure. This contribution explores the feasibility and the limits of using IR spectroscopy for the selection of new drugs based purely on their mode of action.
Screening and Diagnosis of Diabetes by Vibrational Spectroscopy
Authors: Guldag Damla  , Bozkurt Ozlem  , Banerjee Sreeparna  , Severcan Feride
Published: February 2025

Diabetes mellitus is one of the common metabolic diseases which severely affect many organs in the body. It involves perturbation of carbohydrate, fat and protein metabolisms and affects a great amount of the world's population. In this chapter, the application of vibrational spectroscopy, namely Infrared and Raman spectroscopy together with microspectroscopy, and Terahertz spectroscopy to the screening and diagnosis of diabetes will be discussed. In the first section, molecular mechanism and the pathophysiology of diabetes are summarized. In the following parts, brief information about the non-invasive blood glucose measurement techniques are mentioned, and the applications of vibrational spectroscopy to the diagnosis of diabetes are given. Vibrational spectroscopic applications are generally used together with different statistical analysis methods and chemometric tools, such as cluster analysis and artificial neural networks which provide determination of diabetes induced changes in various tissue macromolecules. Based on these variations, the discrimination of diseased state from the healthy subjects will become possible. Spectroscopic techniques have growing applicability due to their advantages over conventional techniques. They allow the visualization of the presence and state of the diseases depending on specific spectral database. By this way, the early diagnosis of metabolic diseases, such as diabetes will be possible by analyzing the variations in spectral parameters. Thus, understanding the basis of these spectroscopic techniques become an important issue in terms of the disease recognition.
Applications of Synchrotron-Based Infrared Spectroscopy in Diagnosis and Screening of Feed and Food Quality
Authors: Yu Peiqiang
Published: February 2025

Synchrotron light is million-times brighter than sunlight. Synchrotron-based infrared light is thousands times than globar-sourced infrared light. With synchrotron-radiation based infrared microspectroscopy (SR-IMS), a non-invasive and most powerful research tool has been developed, which can be used to study inherent structure and biopolymer conformations of biomaterials at cellular and molecular levels. The objective of this research program was to use synchrotron-based SR-IMS with molecular chemistry imaging technique plus multivariate spectral analyses to study various biopolymers distribution and intensity at four different locations in a modeled feed tissue (sorghum bicolor L.) within intact tissue. The biopolymers investigated are highly associated with feed and food nutrient availability and included both easily-digested and digestion-resistant biopolymers in complex plant seed systems. The experiment of imaging in complex tissue system was conducted at the U2B beamline station at National Synchrotron Light Sources, Brookhaven National Laboratory (U.S. Dept of Energy). The unique chemical functional groups which are associated with biopolymers were analyzed using molecular spectroscopic technique. The results showed that the architecture of the complex feed system and distribution of biopolymers intensity and their ratios within four different locations in the modeled seed tissue could be revealed at an ultra-spatial resolution within cellular dimensions. The multivariate molecular spectral analyses are conclusive in showing that they can discriminate and classify the different inherent structures within the seed tissues designed for feed and food purpose. Other applications and future direction in diagnosis and screening of feed and food quality are also discussed.
Structured Light and Shape Descriptors for Automatic 3D Object Classification
Authors: Garcia Daniel  , Ornelas Manuel  , Santiago Raul  , Puga Hector  , Carpio Martin
Published: February 2025

This paper presents a methodology for classification of 3D objects that can be useful to solve some problems in context-awareness, automatic surveillance and ambient assisted living.
Generation of instances for the revision of beliefs
Authors: Aguirre Rodolfo  , Bello Pedro  , Cervantes Ana Patricia  , Contreras Meliza
Published: February 2025

Given a set of agents with valid previous knowledge bases obtained by a generator of beliefs, we wish to know how new knowledge affects each agent. To model the new knowledge, boolean logic is used, expressed by 2CNF clauses, to reduce the complexity. Upon recieving new knowledge, one or more agents may find it inconsistent with their previous knowledge base, so a mechanism is applied which removes knowledge by using a contraction operation,described by the AGM model in order to ensure consistency of the knowledge base. The goal is to determinate if that contradicting knowledge significantly affects the set of beliefs of each agent.
A Comparative Study of Intelligent Bio-inspired Algorithms Applied to Minimizing Cyclic Instability in Intelligent Environments
Authors: Romero Leoncio  , Zamudio Victor  , Baltazar Rosario  , Sotelo Marco  , Lino Carlos  , Mezura Efren  , Callaghan Vic
Published: February 2025

Cyclic instability is a problem that, despite being shown to affect intelligent environments and in general any rule-based system, the strategies available to prevent it are still limited and mostly focused on centralized approaches. These approaches are based on topological properties of the Interaction Network (IN) associated, and locking a set of agents. In this paper we present a comparative study of the performance of different optimization techniques when solving the problem of cyclic instability in synthetic scenarios. Instead of using the Interaction Network of the System (which can be computationally expensive, specially in very dense systems). We introduced the concept of Average Change of the System (ACS) in order to measure the oscillatory behavior of the system and an optimization strategy. In particular Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Micro-Particle Swarm Optimization (μ-PSO), Bee Swarm Optimization (BSO), Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) and Genetic Algorithms (GA) were considered. The results found are very promising, as they can successfully prevent unwanted oscillations. Additionally, some of these strategies could be implemented using parallel and distributed processing, in order to be used in real-time scenarios.
Ambient Intelligence Used for Fall Detection
Authors: Saldivar Vanessa  , Zamudio Víctor M.  , Baltazar Rosario  , Alanis Arnulfo  , Lopez Miguel
Published: February 2025

In this article we present a comparative study between a Bayesian classifier and the method SPC (Statistical Process Control). The Bayesian classifier is included in the virtual machine WEKA, and SPC is manly used to monitor processes in different domains. These two methods are applied to a set of data collected from a SunSPOT in order to detect falls. A comparative analysis of these two approaches was performed in order to have the best strategy to be apply in real scenarios.
Adapting e-learning contents based on navigation styles and preferences
Authors: Basagoiti Rosa  , Aztiria Asier  , Ordoñez Igor  , Padilla Ion
Published: February 2025

Personalized access to e-learning contents is based on suggesting routes to users considering their preferences. Recent studies show that navigation styles can content much of the information related to cognitive learning styles and preferences. These navigation styles can be defined by means of different parameters. In order to develop a system that provides personalized learning contents, it is necessary to automatically extract student's characteristics and preferences. For that, we use data mining techniques that are methods that, basically, use indicators about student's activity to generate models that can direct the content selection process. In this paper, we address the problem of generating student's learning characteristics and preferences, which can make the task of designing adaptation models easier. This work classifies students in each of the next dimensions: (Active/Reflexive, Deductive/Inductive, Visual/Verbal, Sensitive/Intuitive and Local/Global).
Knee Rehabilitation with fuzzy Velocity and force control and compensation of weight
Authors: Prado-Prichardo Juan Alberto  , Segovia-de los Ríos Armando  , Portillo-Rodriguez Otniel
Published: February 2025

This work reflects the intention of reduce import costs of rehabilitation equipments in México. This rehabilitation requires the integration of several disciplines, not just engineering also medicine. The mechanical design is the main and the most important factor for safety, but also the design considers the detection of force in flexion and extension to increase patient safety which is their main concern. This will redundant with the electronic system, the fuzzy control is implemented for your interaction with nature in biomechanical systems.
PAC-Means: clustering algorithm based on c-Means technique and associative memories
Authors: Padierna Luis C.  , González Martha B.  , Romero Leoncio A.
Published: February 2025

In this study a partitional clustering technique is proposed. Our proposal is a variant of the c-Means algorithm that replaces its traditional minimum-distance classifier by a classifier based on associative memories. The variant was compared against the original version by applying both techniques to three datasets belonging to the UCI Machine Learning Repository: Iris, Wine and Pima Indian Diabetes. As a comparison criterion, an intracluster-spread index was used. Results obtained in experimental tests show that, when applied to certain databases, the PAC-Means technique overcomes to the c-Means algorithm.
Virtual Reality Sports Training
Authors: Tripicchio Paolo
Published: February 2025

The use of virtual reality system in the particular field of sports and skills training is here discussed. The article presents the common architectural parts of such systems showing current examples in the literature where Virtual environments are applied successfully for motor skills learning and technique improvement both for the novices and for the athletes.
Contextual Reasoning in Context-Aware Systems
Authors: Schmidtke Hedda R.
Published: February 2025

Adding reasoning abilities to context-aware systems has been a focus of research in pervasive computing for several years and a broad range of approaches has been suggested. In particular, the well-known trade-off between expressivity and inferential power has been discussed as a major concern, as dimensions of context include well-known hard domains, such as spatial, temporal, and causal knowledge. In practice however, experiments report acceptable run-times and complexity of the used reasoning mechanism does not seem to be an issue at all. Two questions are addressed in this paper: why this is the case and whether these positive results will scale up as context-aware systems are leaving their experimental environments, are extended and modified by application developers, and employed in everyday life by millions of end-users.
The Maritime Dimension of International Security: Piracy Attacks
Authors: Ece Nur Jale
Published: February 2025

Nearly 90% of goods imported and exported globally are transported by sea and the international sea transport industry is likely to continue its growth in parallel to global trade rates. One of the foremost threats to maritime security is piracy. Piracy is on the rise, especially in Southeast Asia, Gulf of Aden and Somalia where pirates are becoming increasingly complex, better organized and more violent. In this article, the definition, types, causes, regions, locations, and statistics of piracy and armed robbery attacks are examined, as well as international efforts to combat maritime piracy, which includes legal issues, related regulations and multinational efforts. The Chi Square Test (χ2) was also used to interpret the relationships between the non-parametric parameters for the years and regions of piracy attacks in the period 2003-2009 by using SPSS 16.00. A general evaluation was conducted and required measurements are proposed to prevent.
Terrorism and Media
Authors: Tokgöz Kenan
Published: February 2025

As a global threat, the fight against terrorism requires international cooperation. To make it possible, we should establish a common understanding of terrorism among democratic nations. The media is the main tool to establish this perception both nationwide and internationally. Democratic governments must provide security for their people while protecting the core values of democracy.
Countering the Ideology of Terrorism
Authors: Çelikpala Mitat
Published: February 2025

Terrorist ideologies are explanations of how the social world operates, and calls for individuals to undertake violent actions in support of that vision of the world. Terrorism occurs when ideological motivation meets with operational capability. Ideology provides justification for terrorist acts of violence. Ideology is a language of mass mobilization. How can we counter the ideology of terrorism? Is it possible to counter an ideology? In order to counter the terrorist ideology it is necessary to accumulate sufficient knowledge and expertise in the terrorist ideology before we can develop an effective counter-ideology program.
Terrorism, Media and Censorship
Authors: Nacos Brigitte L.
Published: February 2025

Although a number of freedoms are considered vital in democracies, as well as a basic right under international human rights human law, these freedoms are not absolute. This article looks at the interaction between those rights and government limitations on those rights in the fight against terrorism, breaking the issue into five cases and evaluating each case in turn. The articles concludes that in times of perceived crisis, the majority of the public tends to support government censorship over freedom of the press, but the globalization of communications and media systems has made it far more difficult to restrain the press altogether.
Organized Crime and Terrorism: The Financial Roots of Systematic Violence
Authors: Çitlioğlu Ercan
Published: February 2025

Any systematic violent activity, regardless whether it is political (terrorism) or not (organized crime) needs enduring financing for its existence. Furthermore, the globalization of organized crime and terrorism has also brought about the globalization of criminal/terrorist financing and cooperation between them as well. This study focuses on the financial roots and determinants of organized crime and terrorism, considering the security environment of globalizing international system.
Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism
Authors: Voica Dan Radu
Published: February 2025

During the first decade of this century, terrorist attacks claimed thousands of lives in New York, London, Madrid, Bali, Jakarta, Mumbay, Istanbul, Ankara, Amman, Riyadh, Baghdad, Kabul and many other cities in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world. Meanwhile, in many countries such as Canada, England, Germany, Pakistan and the U.S., among others, significant terror plots have been disrupted. Clearly the international community is facing a terrorist threat of historical proportions; countering this threat requires an understanding of both the intensions and capabilities of terrorist groups and individuals (lone wolves) to carry out violent acts. The national counterterrorist strategies mainly focus on constricting the capabilities of terrorists (through military action and disrupting the financial and logistics networks, all of which require a significant amount of intelligence capabilities) and destroying their will to attack. This is particularly the case when addressing the threat of terrorists who seek to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction (WMD). However, there is much more that nations and international organizations can do to understand and counter the ideological motivations behind the threat of catastrophic terrorism.
The Elements of a Complex Analytical Approach to Suicidal Jihadism
Authors: El Houdaigui Rachid
Published: February 2025

Jihadism is often reduced by many observers to a simple revival of a strategy rooted in the political practice of traditional Islam. Thus, some see in the Islamist movements the pivot of the said revival and consequently assimilate Jihadism to a religious phenomenon. Without denying the existence of a relationship between the interpretation of Islam and the cognitive motivation for jihadists, other direct variables deserve to be investigated, because they shape the referential frame as well as the operating frame of these variables.
Suicide or Martyrdom: The Roots of Anger that Motivated this Volcano
Authors: Paz Reuven
Published: February 2025

The chapter is entitled “Suicide or Martyrdom: the roots of anger that motivated this volcano”, since it analyzes the Arab roots of this phenomenon; the socio-politico-cultural aspects of suicide/martyrdom; the intellectual reasoning for the phenomenon; and the significance of the Internet in encouraging martyrdom. The focus of the conclusions is on the socio-cultural model set by suicide bombing and bombers in the process of the idealization of Jihad.
Suicide Terrorism as the Most Effective Method of Terrorism. Military and Migratory Aspects. Ideological Basis of Terrorism and the Struggle Against it
Authors: Khramchikhin Alexander
Published: February 2025

It is not possible to analyze suicide terrorism without analyzing terrorism as such. From a military point of view, suicide attacks are an extremely effective type of political action. Above all, terrorism has to be fought in the political and psychological field.
Knowledge Representation and Reasoning for Sensory-rich Smart Environments to Support Independent Living
Authors: Mileo Alessandra  , Merico Davide  , Bisiani Roberto
Published: February 2025

In recent years there has been growing interest in solutions for the delivery of clinical care for the elderly, due to the large increase in aging population. Monitoring a patient in his home environment is necessary to ensure continuity of care in home settings, but, to be useful, this activity must not be too invasive for patients and a burden for caregivers. In this chapter we want to consider how knowledge representation and reasoning techniques can be used in sensory-rich environments, where data about the person and the environment conditions are collected through pervasive Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), and expressive knowledge representation and reasoning techniques can be used to combine these data with external knowledge sources at a symbolic level to support caregivers in understanding patients' well being and in predicting possible evolutions of their health. A hierarchical logic-based model of health is able to combine data from different sources, sensor data, tests results, commonsense knowledge and patient's clinical profile at the lower level, and correlation rules between health conditions across upper levels. The logical formalization and the reasoning process are based on non-monotonic reasoning and the implementation and testing of components is illustrated in the framework of Answer Set Programming. The expressive power of this logic programming paradigm makes it possible to reason about contextual aspects of health evolution even when the available information is incomplete and potentially incoherent, while declarativity simplifies rules specification by caregivers and allows automatic encoding of knowledge. Assuming the presence of such a complex and heterogenous intelligent monitoring system equipped with a pervasive sensor network and a non-monotonic reasoning engine, the rich set of sensors that can be used for monitoring in home environments and their sheer number make it quite complex to provide a correct interpretation of collected data for a particular patient. For this reason, we can take advantage of a logic-based context model for situation assessment, and we use logic programming techniques to reason about different pieces of knowledge for prevention of risky situation and proactive reaction of the system via appropriate policy rules expressed in an event-condition-action style and enforced via reasoning. A concrete example of how this functionality may represent a key aspect of assistive technology is represented by fall prevention for the elderly. This aspect will be illustrated in the chapter as a concrete application of the proposed methodologies.
Possible-World and Multiple-Context Semantics for Common-Sense Action Planning
Authors: Santofimia Maria J.  , Fahlman Scott E.  , del Toro Xavier  , Moya Francisco  , Lopez Juan C.
Published: February 2025

Event management and response generation are two essential aspects of systems for Ambient Intelligence. In this regard, the context notion does also play an essential role, not only in determining the set of activities that take place in it, but also in devising the most appropriate response to those situations. Context is also essential for disambiguating knowledge and meaning. This work therefore proposes handling these issues by means of an approach with which to model and reason about actions and events which, under the umbrella of a philosophical and common-sense point of view, describes what actions and events are, how they are connected, and how computational systems should consider their meaning. Actions and events occur in the frame of situations. In order to leverage Ambient Intelligence systems to autonomously manage their environment these situations need to be characterized and understood. This work also describe an approach to tackle this challenge.
9. User-Centred Design of Technologies to support Care at Home
Authors: McGee-Lennon Marilyn  , Wolters Maria  , Clark Julia
Published: February 2025

This chapter argues that user centred design and evaluation of home care technologies is fundamental for their success. Designing technologies that work and that are acceptable to users is a significant challenge. Including users in the process of design and development increases the likelihood for products that result in good usability and positive user experiences. This in turn should lead to increased uptake and success of assisted living technologies in the homes of users. This chapter provides a brief overview of user centred design methods and presents several examples of how these have been used in the MATCH project in the design of technologies to support care at home. We also present some emerging guidelines for the design of home care technologies.
10. Forum Theatre as a Method for User Requirement Elicitation for Home Care
Authors: Hine Nicolas A.  , Martin Christopher J.  , Newell Alan F.  , Arnott John L.
Published: February 2025

The chapter describes work done in MATCH on using forum theatre to facilitate the process of eliciting requirements from users and stakeholders concerning care technology for the domestic environment. Interactive theatre has been developed previously for requirements gathering purposes and this chapter describes how an interactive theatre exercise was developed for use with a diverse range of user groups and stakeholders. The piece was devised and produced by theatre professionals in collaboration with computer professionals with a focus on the development of home care technology to support older and disabled people. The chapter describes background to the use of theatre in this role and then, using script examples, it explains how the forum theatre exercise was used within MATCH.
Societal life safety risk criteria
Authors: Zielinski P.A.  , Baecher Gregory B.
Published: February 2025

People choose to live in risky landscapes for a variety of reasons: they derive benefits from those places despite the risk. From a planning perspective, how much protection is it reasonable to provide these populations against the risk of death due to coastal flooding? The acceptability of risk due to natural hazard, and the levels of protection that infrastructure should provide, may be approached from several directions: from economic calculations on the value of a statistical life saved, from people's willingness-to-pay to reduce risk, from stated preferences, and from other risks that people willingly accept. This paper focuses on societal risks deemed tolerable from the last consideration, as now widely used for dam safety guidelines. Recent recommendations have been made that coastal defenses should be designed to provide the exceptionally low levels of societal risk associated with modern, well-engineered dams. These seem unreasonable. For fatalities fewer than the low thousands, the tolerable level of risk for coastal protection—based on other risks society accepts—is arguably on the order of 10−3per year. This implies a corresponding acceptable level perhaps two orders of magnitude lower, to be consistent with current practice in other sectors of civil infrastructure. Between these bounds, as-low-as-reasonably-practicable (ALARP) practices seem a reasonable precaution.
Information Support to the Three Component Dynamic Model Development for Terrorist Risk Analysis
Authors: Yudina Olga N.  , Dvoretskaya Tamara N.  , Silova Tamara V.
Published: February 2025

Safety problem in a social, natural and technogenic sphere is of particular importance at present in Russia. In the areas of a direct threat to human-beings life and health in case of man-made emergencies of various origin there are over one hundred million people. In the industrially developed regions, where the largest clusters of potentially hazardous industries are concentrated together with complex social and economic situation, terrorist risks are increasing gravely.
Croatia: Community, Empowerment, Resiliency
Authors: Jackson Katy  , Gursky Elin
Published: February 2025

Emerging from a quasi-socialist economy and civil war, Croatia has demonstrated a community resilience that, along with Croatia's membership in the European Union, bodes well for the future of its public health system.
Development of a European Training Curriculum for International Crisis Management (DITAC/European Research Project): One European Training Curriculum for Each Disaster—Necessary or Impossible?
Authors: Fischer Philipp  , Hrečkovski Boris  , Dobson Bob
Published: February 2025

When the scale of an emergency overwhelms national response capacities, a disaster-stricken country can benefit from civil protection means or teams in other EU countries. However, there is no common, standardized approach for all relief workers. There are two major incident training systems being used across Europe: The British Major Incident Medical Management and Support (MIMMS) system and the European-based and Swedish-led Medical Response to Major Incidents and Disasters (MRMI) course. The DITAC Project proposes to develop a holistic training curriculum for first responders and managers dealing strategically with international crises.
Guidelines for Limb Amputation and Reconstruction in Mass-Casualty Incidents
Authors: Bakota Bore  , Kopljar Mario  , Hrečkovski Boris
Published: February 2025

Treatment of a mangled lower extremity represents a major challenge in mass-casualty incidents. The decision whether to amputate or attempt reconstruction is currently based upon surgical evaluation. The aim of this chapter is to propose a new approach to surgical evaluation based on scoring systems and local clinical status of the patient, as well as comorbidities, mechanism of trauma, and hospital resources.
Cybercrime, Terrorist Use of the Internet and Cyberwarfare: The Importance of a Clear Distinction
Authors: Gercke Marco
Published: February 2025

The attacks against computer systems in Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008, as well as the recently discovered malicious software Stuxnet, are incidents that are frequently quoted in the context of ‘cyberwarfare.’ This article provides an overview of three categories of Internet-related incidents (cybercrime, terrorist use of the Internet and cyberwarfare) and aims to underline the importance of a differentiation between them.
The Evolving Terrorist Threat: Dealing with the Challenge
Authors: Jerard Jolene
Published: February 2025

In the modern world, major political actors are not always nation-states, hence the rise of terrorist groups, like al-Qaeda, as major actors in international affairs. This new situation calls for new paradigms in thinking – one term for this is the ‘Age of Fear.’ The transnational nature of the global terrorist movement presents challenges to our counterterrorist strategy. This article explores the ramifications of this situation and how best to deal with it.
Legal Assessment and Intelligence Difficulties in Combating Terrorist Financing in the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century
Authors: Ridley Nick
Published: February 2025

The financing of terrorism has always been a concern of the counterterrorist community but it did not get a lot of emphasis until after the September 11 attacks. International conventions that had languished for years were quickly ratified. These authorities, coupled with a great deal of resources thrown at the problem, have had a detrimental effect on the ability of terrorist groups, particularly al-Qaeda, to fund global operations. However, the threat still exists and must received continued attention.
Imaging the Onset and Progression of Alzheimer's Disease: Implications for Prevention Trials
Authors: Liang Yuying  , Ryan Natalie S.  , Schott Jonathan M.  , Fox Nick C.
Published: February 2025

Excess neuronal loss—atrophy—is an inevitable feature of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Following studies in the early 1990 s demonstrating that non-invasive imaging can be used to visualize excess volume loss, i.e., the consequences of atrophy in AD, a major interest has been improving and validating methods to quantify measures of atrophy from serially acquired magnetic resonance imaging. Here we summarize our experience of measuring the extent and pattern of atrophy to understand disease pathogenesis, particularly through studies of individuals with or destined to develop familial AD; to aid diagnosis; and as an outcome measure for treatment trials. As the field moves toward earlier diagnosis and prevention, we outline the important roles that we believe structural imaging will play alongside other biomarkers both in identifying individuals in the earliest stages of neurodegeneration and assessing the effects of novel therapies.
Perspectives for Multimodal Neurochemical and Imaging Biomarkers in Alzheimer's Disease
Authors: Teipel Stefan J.  , Sabri Osama  , Grothe Michel  , Barthel Henryk  , Prvulovic David  , Buerger Katharina  , Bokde Arun L.W.  , Ewers Michael  , Hoffmann Wolfgang  , Hampel Harald
Published: February 2025

The diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is presently going through a paradigm shift from disease categories to dimensions and toward the implementation of biomarkers to support identification of predementia and even preclinical asymptomatic stages of the disease. We outline the methodological basis of presently available biomarkers and technological methodologies in AD, including exploratory and hypothesis-based plasma and blood candidates, cerebrospinal fluid markers of amyloid load and axonal destruction, and imaging markers of amyloid deposition, synaptic dysfunction, cortical functional and structural disconnection, and regional atrophy. We integrate biomarker findings into a comprehensive model of AD pathogenesis from healthy aging to cognitive decline, the resilience to cerebral amyloid load (RECAL) matrix. The RECAL framework integrates factors of risk and resilience to cerebral amyloid load for individual risk prediction. We show the clinical consequences when the RECAL matrix is operationalized into a diagnostic algorithm both for individual counseling of subjects and for the identification of at risk samples for primary and secondary preventive trials. We discuss the implication of biomarkers for the identification of prodromal AD for the primary care system that seems presently not even prepared to cope with the increasing number of subjects afflicted with late stage AD dementia, let alone future cohorts of subjects searching counseling or treatment of predementia and asymptomatic stages of AD. The paradigm shift in AD diagnosis and its operationalization into a diagnostic framework will have major implications for our understanding of disease pathogenesis. Now, for the first time, we have access to in vivo markers of key events in AD pathogenesis integrated into a heuristic framework that makes strong predictions on pattern of multimodal biomarkers in different stages of AD. Critical testing of these predictions will help us to modify or even falsify the currently hold assumptions on the pathogenesis of AD based on in vivo evidence in humans.
Long Night's Journey into the Day: Amyloid-β Imaging in Alzheimer's Disease
Authors: Villemagne Victor L.  , Rowe Christopher C.
Published: February 2025

The introduction of radiotracers for the non-invasive in vivo quantification of amyloid-β (Aβ) burden in the brain has revolutionized the approach to the evaluation of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Aβ burden as measured by positron emission tomography (PET) matches histopathological reports of Aβ distribution in aging and dementia. It appears more accurate than FDG for the diagnosis of AD, and is an excellent aid in the differential diagnosis of AD from frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Apolipoprotein E ϵ4 carriers, independent of diagnosis or disease severity, present with higher Aβ burden than non-ϵ4 carriers. As new therapies enter clinical trials, the role of Aβ imaging in vivo is becoming increasingly crucial. Aβ imaging allows the in vivo assessment of brain Aβ pathology and its changes over time, providing highly accurate, reliable, and reproducible quantitative statements of regional or global Aβ burden in the brain, essential for therapeutic trial recruitment and for the evaluation of anti-Aβ treatments. Although Aβ burden as assessed by PET does not strongly correlate with cognitive impairment in AD, it does correlate with memory impairment and a higher risk for cognitive decline in the aging population and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) subjects. This correlation with memory impairment, one of the earliest symptoms of AD, suggests that Aβ deposition is not part of normal aging, supporting the hypothesis that Aβ deposition occurs well before the onset of symptoms and likely represents preclinical AD in asymptomatic individuals and prodromal AD in MCI. Further longitudinal observations, coupled with different disease-specific biomarkers to assess potential downstream effects of Aβ, are required to confirm this hypothesis and further elucidate the role of Aβ deposition in the course of AD.
Selected Findings from the Religious Orders Study and Rush Memory and Aging Project
Authors: Bennett David A.  , Wilson Robert S.  , Arvanitakis Zoe  , Boyle Patricia A.  , de Toledo-Morrell Leyla  , Schneider Julie A.
Published: February 2025

The Religious Orders Study and the Rush Memory and Aging Project are both cohort studies of aging and dementia that include organ donation at death. Together, more than 2,700 persons have agreed to annual clinical evaluation and brain donation at death. A subset of participants also participated in a substudy that included ante-mortem imaging. We highlight recent findings that have been highly cited over the past five years. The findings fall into three general categories. The first relates to the neuropathology of probable Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment, and those without dementia or mild cognitive impairment. The second relates to risk factors for Alzheimer's disease and neuropathology. The third are clinical and imaging studies of mild cognitive impairment. The findings illustrate the range of insights that can be gained into cognitive aging by incorporating neuropathologic indices into well designed, prospective cohort studies.
Patterns of Compensation and Vulnerability in Normal Subjects at Risk of Alzheimer's Disease
Authors: Lopez Oscar L.  , Becker James T.  , Kuller Lewis H.
Published: February 2025

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most frequent form of dementia in elderly individuals and its incidence and prevalence increases with age. This risk of AD is increased in the presence of genetic and demographic factors including apolipoprotein E 4 allele, lower education, and family history of AD. There are medical risk modifiers including systemic hypertension, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, and cerebrovascular disease that increase the vulnerability for AD. By contrast, there are lifestyle risk modifiers that reduce the effects of AD risk factors include diet and physical and cognitive activity. Our research has consistently shown that it is the interactions among these risk factors with the pathobiological cascade of AD that determine the likelihood of a clinical expression of AD—either as dementia or mild cognitive impairment. However, the association between “vulnerability” and “protective” factors varies with age, since the effects of these factors on the risk for AD may differ in younger (age < 80) versus older (age > 80) individuals. The understanding of the dynamic of these factors at different age periods will be essential for the implementation of primary prevention treatments for AD.
From Genetics to Dietetics: The Contribution of Epidemiology to Understanding Alzheimer's Disease
Authors: Barberger-Gateau Pascale  , Lambert Jean-Charles  , Féart Catherine  , Pérès Karine  , Ritchie Karen  , Dartigues Jean-François  , Alpérovitch Annick
Published: February 2025

Late-life dementia results from non-modifiable risk factors such as age and genetics, modulated by deleterious and protective environmental factors among which nutrition may play a major role. This paper highlights five major recent contributions of the French Three-City (3C) and PAQUID epidemiological studies to Alzheimer's disease (AD) knowledge, targeting genetic and dietary risk factors, and the impact of cognitive decline in daily living. The 3C study contributed to a large genome-wide association study to identify new genetic risk factors for AD. In addition to apolipoprotein E (APOE), two loci gave replicated evidence of association: one within CLU, encoding clusterin or apolipoprotein J, and the other within CR1, encoding the complement component receptor 1. Although the attributable fraction of risk for these polymorphisms is moderate, genetic studies provide significant insights into the molecular bases of AD. Regarding dietary data, findings from 3C suggest that healthy diets associating sources of both omega 3 fatty acids (fish) and antioxidants (fruits and vegetables) such as the Mediterranean diet, and caffeine could be associated with decreased risk for AD. However, the protective effect of omega3 fatty acids might be limited to APOE4 non-carriers. Future research should focus on gene-nutrient interactions. Regarding the functional impact of prodromal AD, the PAQUID study showed that taking into account mild functional limitations considerably increases the predictive value of neuropsychological tests for conversion to dementia. Research should focus on sensitive instruments to capture early functional decline to improve the identification of elderly patients at high risk of conversion to dementia.