Software vulnerability due to practical drift

The proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) into all aspects of life poses unique ethical challenges as our modern societies become increasingly dependent on the flawless operation of these technologies. As we increasingly entrust our privacy, our well-being and our lives to an ever greater number of computers we need to look more closely at the risks and ethical implications of these developments. By emphasising the vulnerability of software and the practice of professional software developers, we want to make clear the ethical aspects of producing potentially flawed software. This paper outlines some of the vulnerabilities associated with software systems and identifies a number of social and organisational factors affecting software developers and contributing to these vulnerabilities. Scott A. Snook’s theory of practical drift is used as the basis for our analysis. We show that this theory, originally developed to explain the failure of a military organisation, can be used to understand how professional software developers “drift away” from procedures and processes designed to ensure quality and prevent software vulnerability. Based on interviews with software developers in two Norwegian companies we identify two areas where social factors compel software developers to drift away from a global set of rules constituting software development processes and methods. Issues of pleasure and control and difference in mental models contribute to an uncoupling from established practices designed to guarantee the reliability of software and thus diminish its vulnerability.     

Effect of thiazide drug compound on the testicular protein and cholesterol contents of albino rat

In this study the effect of thiazide diuretic compound on the protein and cholesterol contents in the testes of albino rats as the experimental model. The drug thiazide was administered orally daily for 10,20 and 30 days at the dose of 100mg/kg body weight. Total protein decrease in the testes of rats were evidenced may be due to the side effects of thiazide drug compound which is linked with the hyponatremia and protein metabolism. An elevated level of cholesterol contents observed in thiazide treated rats also revealed that the side effect of drug compound thiazide and also may be due to the stimulation of catecholamine which is stimulated therefore, the biochemical estimation such as protein and cholesterol in the testes after the thiazide treatment determined the effectiveness of diuretic drug compound would provide clinical evidences of their side effects.     

Sands modeling constrained by high-resolution seismic data

In the phase of field evaluation, the changing of interwell reservoir may be out of control if the geological model was built only on well data due to few existing wells. The uncertainty of the interwell reservoir interpolation based only on well data can be decreased by comprehensive utilization of geological, logging and seismic data, especially by using highly relative seismic properties from 3D seismic data adjusted by well point data to restrict interpolation of geological properties. A 3D-geological model which takes the sand body as the direct modeling object was built through stacking the structure, reservoir and water/oil/gas properties together in 3D space.     

WVD和XWVD的统计特征分析

1　Introduction　TheWigner Villedistribution (WVD) [1 7] hasbeenshowntobeefficientintheestimationofinstanta neousfrequency (IF)ofasignal.BecauseWVDisofbettertime frequencyresolutionandabletolocateen ergybasedontheIFlaw ,especiallyforalinearfre quencymodulated(LFM )signalwithaconstantampli tude,WVDwillreducetoarowofdeltafunctions .ThereforeonecanobtainanunbiasedestimateofIFofthesignalusingthepeakofWVD .Butperformanceofthepeakestimatorisdegradedsignificantlywithesti mationvariance quic…     

Free-Space Optical communication using visible light

INTRODUCTION A growing and seemingly insatiable bandwidth demand in the marketplace is bring Free-Space Op- tical (FSO) technology into the carrier space as a means of broadband access for closing the “last mile” connectivity gap throughout metropolitan networks. Terrestrial short-range FSO systems which are gen- erally point-to-point links between buildings on the campus or different buildings of a company can be used to setup wireless communication networks or to supplement radio a…