Browsing by Subject "Policy"
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Item Applying Differential Privacy to Search Queries in a Policy Based Interactive Framework(ACM, 2009-11-06) Kodeswaran, Palanivel Andiappan; Viegas, EvelyneWeb search logs are of growing importance to researchers as they help understanding search behavior and search engine performance. However, search logs typically contain sensitive information about users and therefore considerable caution must be exercised when considering releasing the logs to the research community. Current approaches to releasing search logs focus on either protecting the privacy of users or enhancing the utility of data to researchers. In this work, we address the privacy-utility tradeoff by providing safe access to search logs, instead of releasing them. We propose a policy based safe interactive framework built on semantic policies and differential privacy to allow researchers access to search logs, while maintaining the privacy of the users. Semantic policies are used to infer the higher levels of information that can be mined from a dataset based on the fields accessed by a researcher. The accessed fields are then used to build research profile(s) that guide the amount of privacy to be enforced using differential privacy. We show the additional utility that can be obtained in our framework by two demonstrative experiments that involve access to user level information. Our results indicate that valid research can be conducted in our framework without forgoing the privacy of individuals.Item CAST: Context-Aware Security and Trust framework for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks using Policies(Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg) Li, Wenjia; Joshi, Anupam; Finin, TimDue to lack of pre-deployed infrastructure, nodes in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) are required to relay data packets for other nodes to enable multi-hop communication between nodes that are not in the radio range with each other. However, whether for selfish or malicious purposes, a node may refuse to cooperate during the network operations or even attempt to interrupt them, both of which have been recognized as misbehaviors. Significant research efforts have been made to address the problem of detecting misbehaviors. However, little research work has been done to distinguish truly malicious behaviors from the faulty behaviors. Both the malicious behaviors and the faulty behaviors are generally equally treated as misbehaviors without any further investigation by most of the traditional misbehavior detection mechanisms. In this paper, we propose and study a Context-Aware Security and Trust framework (CAST) for MANETs, in which various contextual information, such as communication channel status, battery status, and weather condition, are collected and then used to determine whether the misbehavior is likely a result of malicious activity or not. Simulation results illustrate that the CAST framework is able to accurately distinguish malicious nodes from faulty nodes with a limited overhead.Item Cyber-Enabled Financial Abuse of Older Americans: A Public Policy Problem(2019-11) Lyons, Christine; Wyatt-Nichol, Heather; University of Baltimore. College of Public Affairs; University of Baltimore. Doctorate of Public AdministrationGlobal cybercrime and cyber-enabled crime costs more than $400 billion annually with an estimated cost to the US of over $120 billion dollars annually. With the spread of cyber-enabled crime, a troubling trend has evolved in which the victim is unknowingly complicit in the offence. These incidents have arisen as an evolving public policy challenge at all levels of government, including municipal, county, state, federal, and global. This dissertation examines the social, economic, and policy characteristics of cyber-enabled elder financial abuse. Elder financial abuse perpetrated over the Internet straddles two challenging areas of public policy: cybercrime and elder abuse. In the context of cyber-enabled crime, this study first explains the mechanisms whereby individuals fall prey to abuse and second; conducts an older American cyber-safety needs assessment, which collects information to identify the extent to which regulatory policies either mitigate or contribute to the financial abuse of older citizens.Item A Declarative Approach for Secure and Robust Routing(ACM, 2010-10-04) Kodeswaran, Palanivel Andiappan; Joshi, Anupam; Finin, Tim; Perich, FilipMany Internet failures are caused by misconfigurations of the BGP routers that manage routing of traffic between domains. The problems are usually due to a combination of human errors and the lack of a high-level language for specifying routing policies that can be used to generate router configurations. We describe an implemented approach that uses a declarative language for specifying network-wide routing policies to automatically configure routers and show how it can also be used by software agents to diagnose and correct some networking problems. The language is grounded in an ontology defined in OWL and polices expressed in it are automatically compiled into low-level router configurations. A distributed collection of software agents use the high-level policies and a custom argumentation protocol to share and reason over information about routing failures, diagnose probable causes, and correct them by reconfiguring routers and/or recommending actions to human operators. We have evaluated the framework in both a simulator and on a small physical network. Our results show that the framework performs well in identifying failure causes and automatically correcting them by reconfiguring routers when permitted by the policies.Item FACTORS THAT IMPACT FEMALE VETERAN UTILIZATION OF VETERANS HEALTH ADMINISTRATION(2020-01-20) Carr, Faizah Seraz; Miller, Nancy; School of Public Policy; Public PolicyThe Background There are approximately 19.9 million veterans who served the country across the nation, comprising about 6.1% of the U.S. population (National Center for Veteran Analysis and Statistics, 2018 and U.S. Census Bureau, 2018). There are currently 14.5 million veterans who are eligible to receive VA health care services. Although 72.9% of total veterans are eligible for VA health care, only 45% are actually enrolled to receive services (National Center for Veteran Analysis and Statistics, 2018). Little is known about the factors that impact the personal decisions of enrolled women veterans to choose VA health care instead of private health care services. Nor are the factors that influence women veterans? use of private health care, despite eligibility and enrollment in VA health services, well understood. Currently, women comprise 9-10% of the total veteran population (Women Veterans Report, 2015) and according to population model estimates, the share of women veterans is expected to double to 18% by 2025 (Women Veterans Report, 2015). Anticipating the health care needs for the forecasted growth of veteran women should include the anticipation of unintended consequences of those who slip through the cracks of care and extreme outcomes, such as suicide (Washington, 2007). Prior literature and work about the preferences and decision-making about VA health care use inspired this study. Specifically, I sought to understand the decisions to not use VA health care when women have access to other coverage and learned the decision may not solely be about access to other health insurance, but may be related to trust in VA as a system. Research Methods By analyzing the socioeconomic, enabling and need characteristics of veteran women who are enrolled in VA health care services, this study examines the variables that impact their current and planned patterns of utilization of VA health services. Descriptive statistics summarize the study sample. Findings of the analysis of the logistic regression related to prior year use and multinominal logistic regression models for outcomes related to level of use and anticipated future use are discussed. Data The data for this study comes from information presented in the VA Survey of Veteran Enrollees? Health and Use of Health Care (SOE). The SOE is an annual survey that allows veterans to self-report on their personal demographics, patterns of current and planned utilization of VA health services, and information about additional health care coverage. The results of the survey inform annual VHA projections of enrollment, utilization, and expenditures and various budget and policy related analyses. Findings The availability of health insurance coverage, in addition to eligibility for the VA, veteran women'sVA Priority status and their level of trust in the VA, were the most consistent factors associated with use. Veteran women with other sources of coverage and lower priority status had lower levels of use, and they anticipated future use in specific ways, such as a safety net, relative to as a primary source of care. Increasing levels of trust in the VA were associated with greater use of VA services. Policy Implications The research findings give insight to the current utilization, level of use of VA services, and planned ways for future use among veteran women. The VA could leverage these findings to direct communication tactics, not only between the VA and veteran women patients but also information sharing among organizations that have contact with veteran women (Washington, 2007). The data also support opportunities for greater communication and collaboration between VA and public sector agencies that provide health insurance coverage and medical facilities. Increasing education about VA initiatives and benefits, through direct patient communication and indirect communication, via collaboration with other public sector organizations, could increase trust in VA among veteran women. Increasing cultural competence about military culture could also be a training opportunity for care in the community contracts and affiliations. Recent legislation such as the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014 and the MISSION Act were created with objectives to increase care in the community and coordination of services to best serve veterans. Although these laws and subsequent initiatives would help alleviate the physical barriers to access for veterans who lived 40 miles or more from the nearest VA medical center, studies have shown that there are other cultural obstacles. A greater focus should be on the perceived barriers for women veterans and reasons for not choosing VA health care services, even when they are eligible for and enrolled in VA health care system. Research has shown that there are lower rates of suicide among female veterans who use VA health care services (Hoffmire, et al., 2015; Veterans Affairs, 2014). Understanding patterns of utilization may be key to decreasing rates of suicide rates among veteran women and findings from this study could influence policy to implement military cultural competence about suicide risks for veteran women across organizations that partner with VA.Item "Leave Her Johnny Leave Her:" The Cold War and the Decline of American Shipbuilding(2023-01-01) Morris, Michael F; Chapin, Christy F; History; Historical StudiesThis study seeks to enhance our understanding of the American shipbuilding industry during the Cold War period. It argues against the widespread notion that the decline of the American shipbuilding industry during this period was caused by an ideological preference for privatization, arguing instead that changes in Government structure and policy are responsible for the decline both of public and private shipyards. Several case studies are provided, illustrating how the industry was affected by: the creation of the Department of Defense; McNamara?s management practices; developments in the commercial sector; and competition in the Reagan era. I conclude that the decline of the American shipbuilding industry after WWII was caused not simply by the forces of privatization but by short-sighted Government policies that failed to adequately address the economic realities faced by the shipbuilding industry.Item Policy based Cloud Services on a VCL platform(2012-04-19) Joshi, Karuna Pande; Yesha, Yelena; Finin, Tim; Joshi, AnupamManaging and delivering virtualized cloud based services is an open challenge. Current research is focused on specific parts like service discovery; composition etc. and there is no holistic view of what would constitute a lifecycle of virtualized services delivered on a cloud environment. We have developed a policy-based integrated framework for automating acquisition and consumption of Cloud services. This framework divides the cloud service lifecycle into five phases of requirements, discovery, negotiation, composition, and consumption. We have also developed a tool to automatically discover, negotiate and consume services from the cloud for a specific use case described by NIST around storage services. It is built upon the service lifecycle ontology that we have developed. We have built the tool using Semantic Web technologies like SPARQL, RDF and OWL to represent and reason about services and service requirements. This paper describes our methodology and the tool we have developed as well as its implementation on VCL platform.Item Policy Driven Negotiations for Managing Virtualized Services on the Cloud(2010-06-10) Joshi, Karuna Pande; Joshi, Anupam; Finin, Tim; Yesha, YelenaThis detailed abstarct presents our approach of using policy driven negotiations for managing Virtualized services on the cloud. We present the option of declaring "hard" and "soft" constraints . In addition constraints can be 'private' or 'public' when negotiating service procurement.Item Proceedings of the Second Semantic Web Policy Workshop(2006-11-05) Bonatti, Piero A.; Ding, Li; Finin, Tim; Olmedilla, DanielThis volume contains the papers presented at the 2nd International Semantic Web Policy Workshop (SWPW’06) held on Athens in Georgia, USA on November 5th, 2006, in conjunction with the 5th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC).Item Toward a biopsychosocial ecology of the human microbiome, brain-gut axis, and health(2017) Maier, Karl; al‘Absi, MustafaThis is a non-final version of the article published in final form in Maier, K. J., & Al'Absi, M. (2017). Toward a biopsychosocial ecology of the human microbiome, brain-gut axis, and health. Psychosomatic medicine, 79(8), 947-957. OBJECTIVE: Rapidly expanding insights to the human microbiome and health suggest that Western medicine is poised for significant evolution, or perhaps revolution – this while the field continues on a trajectory from reductionism to a biopsychosocial (BPS) paradigm recognizing biological, psychological, and social influences on health. The apparent sensitivity of the microbiota to perturbations across BPS domains suggests that a broad and inclusive framework is needed to develop applicable knowledge in this area. We outline an ecological framework of the human microbiome by extending the BPS concept to better incorporate environmental and human factors as members of a global, dynamic set of systems that interact over time. METHODS: We conducted a selective literature review across disciplines to integrate microbiome research into a BPS framework. RESULTS: The microbiome can be understood in terms of ecological systems encompassing BPS domains at four levels: (1) immediate (molecular, genetic, and neural processes); (2) proximal (physiology, emotion, social integration); (3) intermediate (built environments, behaviors, societal practices); and (4) distal (physical environments, attitudes, and broad cultural, economic, and political factors). The microbiota and host are thus understood in terms of their immediate interactions and the more distal physical and social arenas where they exist. CONCLUSIONS: A BPS ecological paradigm encourages replicable, generalizable, inter/transdisciplinary research and practices that take into account the vast influences on the human microbiome that may otherwise be overlooked or understood out of context. It also underscores the importance of sustainable bio-environmental, psychological, and social systems that broadly support microbial, neural, and general health.Item Utilizing Semantic Tags for Policy Based Networking(IEEE, 2007-11-26) Kodeswaran, Sethuram Balaji; Ratsimor, Olga Vladi; Perich, Filip; Joshi, AnupamPolicy based networks provide high levels of flexibility by allowing definition of packet handling rules within a network, resource allocation strategies, network management, access control etc. However, commonly used policy specification mechanisms are limited in their expressibility and rely mostly on packet headers that convey limited information about the semantics of the content. In this paper, we propose a new model for policy based networking that utilizes OWL tags carried in data packets that can provide detailed semantic information about the packet or stream. Using this model, a policy decision point can reason over these tags and infer the correct set of operations to invoke. Policies are expressed in SWRL using a common ontology and take into consideration the content of the streams, relevant contextual information and external domain constraints. Using this framework, fine grained, highly specialized services can be offered within the network that are context-aware, easy to manage, deploy and verify for consistency.Item VALIDATING THE BEST BEGINNINGS DEVELOPMENTAL SCREEN IN A CHILDCARE SETTING(2015-01-01) Shannon, Katherine Flynn; Schultz, David; Psychology; PsychologyOn July 1, 2016 the Code of Maryland Regulations (COMAR) will require all licensed childcare programs in the state to regularly conduct developmental screenings on children ages 0-5 years. Maryland will also introduce a list of state-recommended developmental screening tools from which programs can select their tool of choice. One tool, the Best Beginnings Developmental Screen (BBDS), is being considered as one of the included tools. However, researchers must first determine if childcare teachers complete this screening tool accurately. In this study childcare teachers completed and scored the BBDS, and trained researchers completed a more thorough developmental assessment, the Battelle Developmental Inventory (Battelle-2). The primary aim of this study was to examine the validity of the BBDS when completed by childcare teachers. A secondary aim was to examine the validity of the Best Beginnings Family Questionnaire (BBFQ), a parent completed screen. Finally, the study examined parents' and teachers' perception of the screening tools (e.g., how much they liked them). Sensitivity is the ability of a screening tool to correctly identify children with developmental delays. In the present study, the sensitivity of the BBDS and BBFQ were lower than the American Academy of Pediatrics' (AAP) recommendation of at least 70%. After reviewing possible reasons for low sensitivity, it was determined that conceptual differences between the Battelle-2 and the BBDS and BBFQ accounted for the largest percentage of differences that lead to low sensitivity. For example, whereas on the Battelle-2 a child under the age of 6 months failed an item if he/she had not been exposed to solid foods yet, the BBDS and BBFQ do not address solid foods until a child is at least 6 months old. The AAP does not support giving children under the age of 6 months solid foods, questioning the validity of this Battelle-2 item. The study'sresults do not support the use of the BBDS and BBFQ by childcare teachers at this time. However, parents and teacher received these tools well. Researchers should conduct another study to examine the validity of childcare teachers as raters of the BBDS and BBFQ with a different developmental assessment.