Destination Areas (DAs)
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Destination Areas provide faculty and students with new tools to identify and solve complex, 21st-century problems in which Virginia Tech already has significant strengths and can take a global leadership role. The initiative represents the next step in the evolution of the land-grant university to meet economic and societal needs of the world. DAs connect the full span of relevant knowledge necessary for addressing issues comprehensively. Humanistic, scientific, and technological perspectives are addressed in relationship to one another and they are treated as complementary to overcome traditional academic boundaries, such as those that separate the STEM fields and liberal arts. [http://provost.vt.edu/destination-areas.html]
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Browsing Destination Areas (DAs) by Content Type "Conference proceeding"
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- Applying Best Supply Chain Practices to Humanitarian ReliefRussell, Roberta S.; Hiller, Janine S. (Penn State, 2015-05)With the growth in length and breadth of extended supply chains, more companies are employing risk management techniques and resilience planning to deal with burgeoning and costly supply chain disruptions. As companies can learn from humanitarian groups, so can humanitarian groups learn from industry how to respond, recover, and prepare for these disruptive events. This paper looks at industry leaders in supply chain risk management and explores how humanitarian supply chains can learn from industry best practices.
- Back to Reality: Cross domain deterrence and cyberspaceBrantly, Aaron F. (2018-09-01)This paper examines cross domain deterrence strategies involving cyber incidents. By focusing on efforts to halt Russian and Chinese cyber operations against the United States this paper examines the importance of developing, maintaining and implementing (when necessary) cross domain deterrence strategies. This paper departs from more theoretic debates on the value and potential success, or lack thereof relating to cyber deterrence strategies and focuses on two cases in which cross domain retaliations were utilized to halt adversary behavior. From these two cases this paper posits a preliminary theory of cross domain deterrence applicable to cyber interactions between states and advances the debates in the field by shifting the center of gravity away from within domain responses to other mechanisms to deter adversary behavior.
- Battling the Bear: Ukraine's Approach to National CybersecurityBrantly, Aaron F. (2018-09-29)Ukraine has faced substantial challenges across multiple fronts its successful 2014 Revolution of Dignity. Among the greatest challenges Ukraine has faced is the establishment of a national cybersecurity infrastructure capable of withstanding cyberattacks and information operations against military and civilian infrastructures. Ukraine’s experience is counterintuitive to the constant refrain in cyberspace regarding asymmetric advantage. Ukraine has struggled with the help of European and NATO allies to forge multiple organizational structures capable to facilitating national cyber defense. This work offers detailed analysis on the construction of national cyber capabilities by a medium sized state under duress and coercion from an adversary state by leveraging interviews with and documents from Ukrainian ministers, General Staffs, Security Service personnel, soldiers, journalists, civilians and academics conducted over two years. The result is analysis that informs the underlying notions about small to medium state cyber defenses in relation to well-resourced adversaries.
- ‘Beating the news’ with EMBERS: Forecasting Civil Unrest using Open Source IndicatorsRamakrishnan, Naren; Butler, Patrick; Self, Nathan; Khandpur, Rupinder P.; Saraf, Parang; Wang, Wei; Cadena, Jose; Vullikanti, Anil Kumar S.; Korkmaz, Gizem; Kuhlman, Christopher J.; Marathe, Achla; Zhao, Liang; Ting, Hua; Huang, Bert; Srinivasan, Aravind; Trinh, Khoa; Getoor, Lise; Katz, Graham; Doyle, Andy; Ackermann, Chris; Zavorin, Ilya; Ford, Jim; Summers, Kristen; Fayed, Youssef; Arredondo, Jaime; Gupta, Dipak; Mares, David; Muthia, Sathappan; Chen, Feng; Lu, Chang-Tien (2014)We describe the design, implementation, and evaluation of EMBERS, an automated, 24x7 continuous system for forecasting civil unrest across 10 countries of Latin America using open source indicators such as tweets, news sources, blogs, economic indicators, and other data sources. Unlike retrospective studies, EMBERS has been making forecasts into the future since Nov 2012 which have been (and continue to be) evaluated by an independent T&E team (MITRE). Of note, EMBERS has successfully forecast the uptick and downtick of incidents during the June 2013 protests in Brazil. We outline the system architecture of EMBERS, individual models that leverage specific data sources, and a fusion and suppression engine that supports trading off specific evaluation criteria. EMBERS also provides an audit trail interface that enables the investigation of why specific predictions were made along with the data utilized for forecasting. Through numerous evaluations, we demonstrate the superiority of EMBERS over baserate methods and its capability to forecast significant societal happenings.
- CCS 2017- Women in Cyber Security (CyberW) WorkshopYao, Danfeng (Daphne); Bertino, Elisa (ACM, 2017)The CyberW workshop is motivated by the significant gender imbalance in all security conferences, in terms of the number of publishing authors, PC members, organizers, and attendees. What causes this gender imbalance remains unclear. However, multiple research studies have shown that a diverse group is more creative, diligent, and productive than a homogeneous group. Achieving cyber security requires a diverse group. To maintain a sustainable and creative workforce, substantial efforts need to be made by the security community to broaden the participation from underrepresented groups in cyber security research conferences. We hope this workshop can attract all underrepresented cybersecurity professionals, students, and researchers to attend top security and privacy conferences, engage in cutting-edge security and privacy research, excel in cyber security professions, and ultimately take on leadership positions.
- Choices and Challenges 2019: Self-driving Cars in the New River ValleyChoices and Challenges (Virginia Tech, 2019-04-04)The Choices and Challenges Forum brochure includes a schedule of events held April 4, 2019, at the Inn at Virginia Tech. This event seeks to explore the choices we still face and the challenges raised by the potential presence of self-driving cars on our roads and in our lives. While most thinking about and planning for self-driving cars has focused on urban environments, the New River Valley’s mixture of small town and rural communities offers a unique opportunity for exploring a range of questions. Will these vehicles interfere with our privacy? Are they safe, for passengers, pedestrians, bicyclists, and others? Will they undermine existing public transportation options, or expand public transportation into new communities? Will they increase or decrease transportation accessibility for poor communities, the elderly, and the disabled? Will they shift patterns of vehicle ownership? Will they improve traffic or create new problems? Will they require new regulations, and if so, by whom and of what sort? Are they ultimately good or bad for our environment, our communities, and our personal lives? Our Choices and Challenges forum will bring together internationally-recognized experts and the public to discuss these and other important questions.
- Cognition, Affect, and Psychophysiology Lab at Virginia TechBell, Martha Ann (2012-10-12)Martha Ann Bell in the department of psychology describes how research into typical childhood development informs the study of atypical development, and a psychobiological conceptual framework and its applications to the study of physiological and developmental mechanisms of behavior. Findings from studies on social responsiveness are summarized.
- CrowdLayout: Crowdsourced Design and Evaluation of Biological Network VisualizationsSingh, Divit P.; Lisle, Lee; Murali, T. M.; Luther, Kurt (ACM, 2018-04)Biologists often perform experiments whose results generate large quantities of data, such as interactions between molecules in a cell, that are best represented as networks (graphs). To visualize these networks and communicate them in publications, biologists must manually position the nodes and edges of each network to reflect their real-world physical structure. This process does not scale well, and graph layout algorithms lack the biological underpinnings to offer a viable alternative. In this paper, we present CrowdLayout, a crowdsourcing system that leverages human intelligence and creativity to design layouts of biological network visualizations. CrowdLayout provides design guidelines, abstractions, and editing tools to help novice workers perform like experts. We evaluated CrowdLayout in two experiments with paid crowd workers and real biological network data, finding that crowds could both create and evaluate meaningful, high-quality layouts. We also discuss implications for crowdsourced design and network visualizations in other domains.
- The Cyber Deterrence ProblemBrantly, Aaron F. (Nato Ccd Coe, 2018-05-30)What is the role of deterrence in an age where adept hackers can credibly hold strategic assets at risk? Do conventional frameworks of deterrence maintain their applicability and meaning against state actors in cyberspace? Is it possible demonstrate credibility with either in-domain or cross-domain signaling or is cyberspace fundamentally ill-suited to the application of deterrence frameworks? Building on concepts from both rational deterrence theory and cognitive theories of deterrence this work attempts to leverage relevant examples from both within and beyond cyberspace to examine applicability of deterrence in the digital age and for digital tools in an effort to shift the conversation from Atoms to Bits and Bytes.
- A Declarative Approach to Hardening Services Against QoS VulnerabilitiesKwon, Young-Wo; Tilevich, Eli (IEEE, 2011)The Quality of Service (QoS) in a distributed service-oriented application can be negatively affected by a variety of factors. Network volatility, hostile exploits, poor service management, all can prevent a service-oriented application from delivering its functionality to the user. This paper puts forward a novel approach to improving the reliability, security, and availability of service-oriented applications. To counter service vulnerabilities, a special service detects vulnerabilities as they emerge at runtime, and then hardens the applications by dynamically deploying special components. The novelty of our approach lies in using a declarative framework to express both vulnerabilities and hardening strategies in a domain-specific language, independent of the service infrastructure in place. Thus, our approach will make it possible to harden serviceoriented applications in a disciplined and systematic fashion.
- Designing for Schadenfreude (or, how to express well-being and see if youʼre boring people)André, Paul; Schraefel, M.C.; Dix, Alan; White, Ryen W.; Bernstein, Michael; Luther, Kurt (ACM, 2010)This position paper presents two studies of content not normally expressed in status updates—well-being and status feedback—and considers how they may be processed, valued and used for potential quality-of-life benefits in terms of personal and social reflection and awareness. Do I Tweet Good? (poor grammar intentional) is a site investigating more nuanced forms of status feedback than current microblogging sites allow, towards understanding self-identity, reflection, and online perception. Healthii is a tool for sharing physical and emotional well-being via status updates, investigating concepts of self-reflection and social awareness. Together, these projects consider furthering the value of microblogging on two fronts: 1) refining the online personal/social networking experience, and 2) using the status update for enhancing the personal/social experience in the offline world, and considering how to leverage that online/offline split. We offer results from two different methods of study and target groups—one co-workers in an academic setting, the other followers on Twitter—to consider how microblogging can become more than just a communication medium if it facilitates these types of reflective practice.
- Detecting Malicious Landing Pages in Malware Distribution NetworksWang, Gang Alan; Stokes, Jack W.; Herley, Cormac; Felstead, David (IEEE, 2013-06)Drive-by download attacks attempt to compromise a victim’s computer through browser vulnerabilities. Often they are launched from Malware Distribution Networks (MDNs) consisting of landing pages to attract traffic, intermediate redirection servers, and exploit servers which attempt the compromise. In this paper, we present a novel approach to discovering the landing pages that lead to drive-by downloads. Starting from partial knowledge of a given collection of MDNs we identify the malicious content on their landing pages using multiclass feature selection. We then query the webpage cache of a commercial search engine to identify landing pages containing the same or similar content. In this way we are able to identify previously unknown landing pages belonging to already identified MDNs, which allows us to expand our understanding of the MDN. We explore using both a rule-based and classifier approach to identifying potentially malicious landing pages. We build both systems and independently verify using a high-interaction honeypot that the newly identified landing pages indeed attempt drive-by downloads. For the rule-based system 57%of the landing pages predicted as malicious are confirmed, and this success rate remains constant in two large trials spaced five months apart. This extends the known footprint of the MDNs studied by 17%. The classifier-based system is less successful, and we explore possible reasons.
- Determining Relative Airport Threats from News and Social MediaKhandpur, Rupinder P.; Ji, Taoran; Ning, Yue; Zhao, Liang; Lu, Chang-Tien; Smith, Erik R.; Adams, Christopher; Ramakrishnan, Naren (AAAI, 2017)Airports are a prime target for terrorist organizations, drug traffickers, smugglers, and other nefarious groups. Traditional forms of security assessment are not real-time and often do not exist for each airport and port of entry. Thus, homeland security professionals must rely on measures of attractiveness of an airport as a target for attacks.We present an open source indicators approach, using news and social media, to conduct relative threat assessment, i.e., estimating if one airport is under greater threat than another. The three ingredients of our approach are a dynamic query expansion algorithm for tracking emerging threat-related chatter, news-Twitter reciprocity modeling for capturing interactions between social and traditional media, and a ranking scheme to provide an ordered assessment of airport threats. Case studies based on actual aviation incidents are presented.
- Distributed Storage Systems with Secure and Exact Repair - New ResultsTandon, Ravi; Amuru, SaiDhiraj; Clancy, Thomas Charles III; Buehrer, R. Michael (IEEE, 2014-02)Distributed storage systems (DSS) in the presence of a passive eavesdropper are considered in this paper. A typical DSS is characterized by 3 parameters (n, k, d) where, a file is stored in a distributed manner across n nodes such that it can be recovered entirely from any k out of n nodes. Whenever a node fails, d ∈ [k, n) nodes participate in the repair process. In this paper, we study the exact repair capabilities of a DSS, where a failed node is replaced with its exact replica. Securing this DSS from a passive eavesdropper capable of wiretapping the repair process of any l < k nodes, is the main focus of this paper. Specifically, we characterize the optimal secure storagevs- exact-repair-bandwidth tradeoff region for the (4, 2, 3) DSS when l = 1 and the (n, n − 1, n − 1) DSS when l = n − 2.
- Dynamic Travel Time Prediction using Pattern RecognitionChen, Hao; Rakha, Hesham A.; McGhee, Catherine C. (TU Delft, 2013)Travel-time information is an essential part of Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATISs) and Advanced Traffic Management Systems (ATMSs). A key component of these systems is the prediction of travel times. From the perspective of travelers such information may assist in making better route choice and departure time decisions. For transportation agencies these data provide criteria with which to better manage and control traffic to reduce congestion. This study proposes a dynamic travel time prediction algorithm that matches current traffic patterns to historical data. Unlike previous approaches that use travel time as the control variable, the approach uses the temporal-spatial traffic state evolution to match traffic states and predict travel times. The approach first identifies candidate historical time intervals by matching real-time traffic state data against historical data for use in prediction purposes. Subsequently, the selected candidates are used to predict the temporal-spatial evolution of traffic. Lastly, dynamic travel times are constructed using the identified candidate historical data. The proposed algorithm is tested on a 37-mile freeway segment from Newport News to Virginia Beach along the I-64 and I-264 freeways using historical INRIX data. The prediction results indicate that the proposed method produces predictions that are more accurate than the state-of-the-art K-Nearest Neighbor methods reducing the prediction error by 15 percent to less than 3 minutes on a 50-minute trip.
- Emotion socialization and socio-emotional developmentDunsmore, Julie C. (2012-10-12)Julie Dunsmore of the social development lab discussed family attitudes toward emotion and emotional communication, child outcomes, and relevant research findings, and suggests applying basic developmental research to autism spectrum disorders.
- Emotional and Social Functioning in ASDScarpa, Angela (2012-10-12)The slides describe potential areas of research related to Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), especially those areas involving emotional and social functioning. A clinical program for stress and anger management (STAMP) is described. Possible collaborations that would become possible through the proposed center for autism research are listed.
- Exposing chemical engineering students to real world problems: health care and renewable energy systemsAu, Nichole; Bayles, Taryn; Ross, Julia M. (ASEE, 2008)High school and entry level engineering students seldom have a good understanding of the types of problems that chemical engineers solve. Two design projects have been developed to introduce high school and entry level engineering students to real world problems related to health care and energy systems. We have found that through these design projects our students begin to understand the breadth of chemical engineering. For our Engineering in Health Care design project, students are introduced to a patient suffering from kidney disease, who explains her experience with dialysis in a professional produced video segment. The students then go through a number of hands-on activities, demonstrations and computer simulation where they learn about the factors that influence dialysis. The patient and her doctor then challenge the students to design, build and test a hemodialysis system. The hemodialysis system must remove a minimum amount of ‘impurities’ from simulated blood, while minimizing both the cost of the dialysate (water) and the hemodialysis system. The teams subsequently evaluate the performance of the prototype that they create. The second design project, Engineering Energy Solutions, focuses on the world’s energy crisis. As the world moves further into the 21st century, the need for development in the field of renewable energy is becoming more apparent. The amount of fossil fuels available continues to decline and statistics show that only one barrel of oil is discovered for every six that are utilized. In fact, if the current rate of consumption is maintained, worldwide oil reserves are slated to last only for the next forty years. Therefore it is essential that renewable energy technology must continue to grow. The next generation of students represents those engineers who will struggle with energy issues over the ensuing century. In our Engineering Energy Solutions design project, students are asked to design, construct, test, and evaluate a system for collecting, storing, transporting, converting, and utilizing renewable energy from a water, wind, or solar source. The overall goal of the project is to light a 1 cell AAA Maglite® light bulb after being allowed to collect energy for 45 minutes and up to two hours. As part of the INSPIRES (INcreasing Student Participation, Interest and Recruitment in Engineering and Science) Curriculum (funded by the NSF), the design projects have been tested with a wide range of students who include: high school pre-engineering students, freshmen engineering students and sophomore and junior chemical engineering students. In conjunction with the design projects a series of hands-on activities and mini design challenges have been developed to enhance the understanding of the fundamental principles related to the design challenge. A web based tutorial features interactive animations and design simulations that allow students to adjust parameters to investigate the effect that each has on the efficiency of their simulated design. In addition, an on-line tutorial features pre and post assessments on content knowledge of the design process and underlying concepts. The results of these assessments will be compiled and presented; as well as details of the design projects and their solutions.
- Forecasting the Flu: Designing Social Network Sensors for EpidemicsShao, Huijuan; Hossain, K.S.M. Tozammel; Wu, Hao; Khan, Maleq; Vullikanti, Anil Kumar S.; Prakash, B. Aditya; Marathe, Madhav V.; Ramakrishnan, Naren (Virginia Tech, 2016-03-08)Early detection and modeling of a contagious epidemic can provide important guidance about quelling the contagion, controlling its spread, or the effective design of countermeasures. A topic of recent interest has been to design social network sensors, i.e., identifying a small set of people who can be monitored to provide insight into the emergence of an epidemic in a larger population. We formally pose the problem of designing social network sensors for flu epidemics and identify two different objectives that could be targeted in such sensor design problems. Using the graph theoretic notion of dominators we develop an efficient and effective heuristic for forecasting epidemics at lead time. Using six city-scale datasets generated by extensive microscopic epidemiological simulations involving millions of individuals, we illustrate the practical applicability of our methods and show significant benefits (up to twenty-two days more lead time) compared to other competitors. Most importantly, we demonstrate the use of surrogates or proxies for policy makers for designing social network sensors that require from nonintrusive knowledge of people to more information on the relationship among people. The results show that the more intrusive information we obtain, the longer lead time to predict the flu outbreak up to nine days.
- Global Systems Science (GSS) DA and Policy SGA (PSGA) Synergies and Opportunities Workshop(Virginia Tech, 2017-09-29)The goals of this day-long event, held on September 29, 2017, were to identify areas for collaborative synergy and cooperation between the GSS DA and PSGA and showcase a model for future DA/SGA collaboration and shared innovation.
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