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Can LLM-Generated Misinformation Be Detected: A Study On Cyber Threat Intelligence
Get PDFGiven the increasing number and severity of cyber attacks, there has been a surge in cybersecurity information across various mediums such as posts, news articles, reports, and other resources. Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) involves processing data from these cybersecurity sources, enabling professionals and organizations to gain valuable insights. However, with the rapid dissemination of cybersecurity information, the inclusion of fake CTI can lead to severe consequences, including data poisoning attacks. To address this challenge, we have implemented a three-step strategy: generating synthetic CTI, evaluating the quality of the generated CTI, and detecting fake CTI. Unlike other subdomains, such as fake COVID news detection, there is currently no publicly available dataset specifically tailored for fake CTI detection research. To address this gap, we first establish a reliable groundtruth dataset by utilizing domain-specific cybersecurity data to fine-tune a Large Language Model (LLM) for synthetic CTI generation. We then employ crowdsourcing techniques and advanced synthetic data verification methods to evaluate the quality of the generated dataset, introducing a novel evaluation methodology that combines quantitative and qualitative approaches. Our comprehensive evaluation reveals that the generated CTI cannot be distinguished from genuine CTI by human annotators, regardless of their computer science background, demonstrating the effectiveness of our generation approach. We benchmark various misinformation detection techniques against our groundtruth dataset to establish baseline performance metrics for identifying fake CTI. By leveraging existing techniques and adapting them to the context of fake CTI detection, we provide a foundation for future research in this critical field. To facilitate further research, we make our code, dataset, and experimental results publicly available on GitHub
A state-of-the-art review of registries in spinal muscular atrophy: A valuable resource for clinical research
Get PDFSince 2016/17, three disease modifying therapies for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) have been translated into clinical practice. This has driven the implementation of newborn screening to transform health outcomes and clinical practice. SMA registries have provided important sources of data on the evolution of novel phenotypes within the therapeutic era, treatment patterns, epidemiology, genotype-phenotype correlations, care and lived experiences of people living with SMA, to enrich knowledge and learnings of the condition in this changed landscape. In this state-of-the-art review, we consider the utility and outcomes of SMA registries and evaluate their role and importance. In 2024 there are more than 35 national registries cataloguing over 8000 individuals with SMA. Additional registries are operated by advocacy groups and pharmaceutical companies, compiling data for more than 10,000 individuals with this condition. This review highlights the essential role of registries in supporting clinical trial recruitment, defining the changing incidence and prevalence of SMA in an age of reproductive carrier and newborn screening, establishing natural history data, contributing to post market drug surveillance, assessing real world clinical and cost effectiveness and capturing patient-reported outcome measures (PROMS) and experience measures (PREMS). Whilst their utility is broad, barriers to effective data curation and management are evaluated including challenges of data curation and fragmentation, quality and sharing, alongside resource constraints and sustainability. Strategies to enhance the value of registries include the imperative to collaborate across clinical research networks and the value of interoperability, enabled by standardization of data collection and entry, sharing procedures and public and patient involvement. As new phenotypes and unmet needs emerge in the post therapeutic era, registries remain central tools in generating new insights now and into the future and are poised to respond meaningfully to the priorities of individuals living with SMA
World Stroke Organization and World Hypertension League position statement on hypertension control strategies in prevention and management of stroke
No full textBackground and purpose: The goal of this consensus is to provide a comprehensive set of recommendations in regard to hypertension control strategies for the prevention and management of stroke. This document is intended for prehospital care providers, physicians, allied health professionals, and hospital administrators and healthcare policymakers. Methods: Members of the writing group were representatives of the World Stroke Organization and World Hypertension League. The writing group reviewed articles searched from PubMed and Google Scholar using selected search strings. The document was sent to 12 peer reviewers. The writing group considered the feedback from peer reviewers and made revisions accordingly. Every member of the writing group gave their approval of the final document. Results: This article details the various techniques for blood pressure (BP) measurement, BP classification, BP and stroke risk, antihypertensive drug therapy for the primary and secondary prevention of stroke, choice of antihypertensive drug therapy, optimal BP targets, non-drug approaches to the prevention of stroke through BP lowering, BP management separately for acute ischemic stroke and spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage, and the implementation of BP prevention, treatment, and control in the community. Conclusion: This article provides general recommendations based on currently available evidence to guide healthcare practitioners caring for adults with hypertension for the prevention and management of stroke. Future studies are needed to better define approaches to hypertension control in the community and high-risk groups
Glutamine Transport via Amino Acid Transporter NTT4 (SLC6A17) Maintains Presynaptic Glutamate Supply at Excitatory Synapses in the CNS
Get PDFThe glutamate-glutamine cycle is thought to be the principle metabolic pathway that recycles glutamate at synapses. In this cycle, synaptically released glutamate is sequestered by astrocytes and forms glutamine, before being returned to the presynaptic terminal for conversion back into glutamate to replenish the neurotransmitter pool. While many aspects of this cycle are established, a key component remains unknown: the nature of the transporter responsible for the presynaptic uptake of glutamine. We hypothesise that neurotransmitter transporter 4 (NTT4/SLC6A17) plays this role. Accordingly, we generated NTT4 knockout mice to assess its contribution to presynaptic glutamine transport and synaptic glutamate supply. Using biochemical tracing of 13C metabolites in awake mice, we observe a reduction of neuronal glutamate supply when NTT4 is absent. In addition, direct electrical recording of hippocampal mossy fibre boutons reveals a presynaptic glutamine transport current that is eliminated when NTT4 is removed or inhibited. The role of NTT4 in neurotransmission was demonstrated by electrophysiological recordings in hippocampal slices, which reveal that NTT4 is required to maintain vesicular glutamate content and to sustain adequate levels of glutamate supply during periods of high-frequency neuronal activity. Finally, behavioural studies in mice demonstrate a deficit in trace fear conditioning, and alterations in anxiety behaviour and social preference. These results demonstrate that NTT4 is a presynaptic glutamine transporter, which is a central component of the glutamate-glutamine cycle. NTT4 and hence the glutamate-glutamine cycle maintain neuronal glutamate supply for excitatory neurotransmission during high-frequency synaptic activity, and are important regulators of memory retention and normal behaviour
Accessibility to great local places: Understanding the promise of access-based planning for the Six Cities Region
Get PDFAppealing chrono-urbanist concepts such as ‘15 minute cities’ have recently sparked discussion across the world, but there is no international agreement on optimal measurement practice nor consensus on the most productive approaches to implementation. Time-based access goals have also begun appearing in Australian planning documents and can provide a way to crystallise visions of socially and environmentally sustainable access that creates vibrant local places. This report summarises recent developments and suggests opportunities to optimise time-based access goal use, specifically in the Six Cities Region of New South Wales, Australia.
Firstly, a summary of time-based access goals in current NSW planning documents is provided, and an introduction to the concept of access-based planning. Secondly, review of the academic and policy literature reveals that the x-minute city is a problematic concept as it is used as a label for a diverse mix of goals and actions. Nevertheless, its popularity points to the unmet need for methods to quantify and prioritise local, active transport-based access, and the importance of being able to explain how making changes could benefit residents in terms of time saved and increased access to opportunities.
In the third part of the paper, discussion of the difficulty of turning goals into action in this area is followed by review of approaches that have been taken to target setting, and an outline of feasible options for local access measurement (including opportunities for data enhancement and long-term monitoring).
Major conclusions are that targets need to be developed with local communities; international models are not fit for the Six Cities geographic and social context and stakeholder buy-in involved in target setting is also essential for implementation. In terms of measurement, while a plethora of data sources have been identified, currently there is no accepted ‘off the shelf’ or even best practice approach to measurement of time-based access goals. Thus, it is important to develop the skills of planners to program analyses using a range of data sources and tools
The Regenerative Turn in Australian Agriculture: Mustering Stock into Green Frontiers
No full textLivestock agriculture has often propelled concerns about destructive environmental change in Australia and in recent years there has been growing critique over its causal effect on the climate crisis. Framed as a nature-based-solution, the emergent alternative farming movement, regenerative agriculture seeks to address these concerns by rendering livestock farming as compatible with ecological restoration and climate mitigation. Agriculture, which was once the villain of environmental destruction, here emerges as the hero. In doing so, the project examines regenerative efforts to steward the harmonisation of soils, grass and cows as part of a redemptive re-storying of agriculture in environmental terms. Regenerative agriculture encourages us to see how environmental restoration might be a part of farming and not in spite of it. However, concepts like restoration and renewal cannot be understood from regenerative perspectives alone. Instead, questions of who is being nourished by whom must be understood within particular ecocultural contexts. Situated between the fields of environmental humanities and more-than-human geography, this thesis responds to scholarly calls for new ways of understanding care and restoration in the Anthropocene. I add to these debates by exploring how notions of nature, agriculture and environmentalism are converging as a particular articulation of an Australian livestock- centric land care ethic in the context of the climate crisis. I find that regenerative attempts to naturalise livestock production is not as simple as a green rebranding of an environmentally destructive industry but is embedded within broader settler colonial nation-building histories of pastoral expansionism and its underlying Judeo-Christian agricultural stewardship ethos. This thesis argues that these dynamics - along with the emergent politics of nature-based-solutions - will have to be reckoned with, as various forms of agricultural production lay claim to a climate-secure future. As the term regeneration is increasingly applied to a diversity of projects such as environmental rehabilitation, neoliberal extraction and retrospective, neo-agrarian agricultural revival this thesis is a timely investigation into alternative forms of hope and environmental care in a period of escalating environmental crisis
Reconstituting 'youth participation in drug policy'
Get PDFThis thesis builds on critical social science literature that has called for new ways of exploring and doing ‘political participation’ in relation to both ‘young people’ and ‘drugs’. The overarching aims of my thesis were to explore how ‘youth participation in drug policy’ is done in Australia, and how ‘youth participation in drug policy’ can be done differently. I first sought to surface foundational assumptions and discursive constitutions relating to ‘youth participation in drug policy’, asking how ‘young people’ are constituted and governed in drug policy discourses. I then sought to explore many different ways in which young people participate in drug policy, ways that they do not participate, and the ways that ‘young people’ are imagined as participants in drug policy. Finally, I sought to develop a novel creative methodological approach to generating accounts of youth participation in drug policy in ways that attend to ‘non-recognised’ parts of participation. My approach to exploring these aims was underpinned by an ontological politics approach. I drew on three methods throughout my thesis. The first was a poststructural policy analysis of Australian policy documents that govern ‘young people’ and ‘drugs’. The second was in-depth interviews (N=22) with interlocutors who had participated in drug policy as young people in Australia. The third was an experimental creative mapping method with four people that had completed the in-depth interviews. Throughout this thesis, I argue that foundational assumptions that constitute ‘young people’ and ‘drugs’ delimit possibilities for how they can be governed in drug policy. I surface many different formal and informal ways that young people have participated in drug policy and highlight the importance of attending to specific practices that affect how various kinds of participation are experienced. I argue that exploring hidden and alternative modes of participation beyond the ‘formal’ and surfacing productive effects of participation has potential to unsettle power dynamics and contexts that delimit possibilities for drug policy participation among young people. By opening up and questioning conventional understandings and practices of ‘young people’ and their ‘participation in drug policy’, this thesis seeks to reconstitute what youth participation in drug policy is, and what it might become
Changing Behaviour: What Works and Why for Dementia Risk Reduction?
No full textStrong evidence exists for the benefits of addressing modifiable risk factors for dementia, including physical inactivity, poor diet, excessive stress, and limited cognitive and social engagement. Despite this knowledge, the features of an effective intervention for dementia risk reduction (DRR) remain unclear, especially for individuals at elevated risk due to subjective cognitive decline (SCD) or mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This ambiguity is deepened by the wide variety of intervention approaches, designs, and technology use, insufficient evaluation of behaviour change techniques (BCTs), and diverse responses between individuals.
This thesis evaluates the determinants of behaviour change in a novel digitally delivered DRR intervention targeting people with SCD/MCI (MyCOACH). Specifically, it presents the first sub-component analysis of the BCT of goal setting in this online context. After an overview of the literature, Chapter 2 outlines the initial empirical study, which surveyed the digital preferences of people with SCD/MCI. The results indicated that the use of technological devices and interest in online learning did not differ between people with and without cognitive concerns but recommended specific supportive strategies for digitally delivered interventions. Chapter 3 outlines the protocol for the MyCOACH randomised controlled trial, the data from which is used in subsequent chapters. Chapter 4 details the development of an evaluative framework assessing the quality of goals set during MyCOACH, providing the first tool adapted to objectively evaluate written goals set within the context of DRR. Chapter 5 consists of the second empirical study which focused on the MyCOACH intervention group (n=148, age range: 65-93) and explored predictors of engagement in goal setting, guided by the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). Using multiple regression and structural equation modelling techniques, results showed that the TPB determinants did not predict engagement in this context, rather mood and external motivation may be more relevant. Chapter 6 consists of the final empirical study which evaluated the impact of goal setting on behaviour change. Findings indicated that engagement in goal setting alone did not significantly predict behavioural changes for DRR, but setting higher quality SMART goals may drive changes specific to MIND diet adherence. Lastly, Chapter 7 discusses the findings within the context of the broader literature and highlights implications and recommendations for future exploration of determinants and BCTs in DRR research
Unravelling The Bacterial Assemblages Associated With Textile Fibres In Intertidal Environments
Get PDFPlastics are ubiquitous contaminants of natural and human environments. Their resistance to degradation allows them to accumulate, increasing the likelihood of interactions with living organisms. It has been suggested that plastics may act as vectors for potentially pathogenic bacteria to new hosts or environments. To assess the weight of evidence for this claim in the literature, I integrated causal frameworks from ecology and epidemiology into one interdisciplinary framework with four stages (colonisation, survival, transfer and disease). Applying this framework, I found that no study showed bacteria can preferentially colonise, survive, transfer and cause more disease on plastics compared to other polymers. I also found that there were a lack of studies involving fibres, the most common form of marine debris.
To address this knowledge gap, I developed a novel fibre-deployment apparatus and investigated bacterial recruitment on three classes (plant, animal and plastic) and nine types of polymers (cotton, rayon, bamboo, wool, mohair, silk, polyester, polyamide and polyacrylonitrile). While there were subtle differences in the bacterial assemblages colonising different classes and types of polymers, spatial influences had the greatest effect. Potential pathogens colonised substrata indiscriminately, showing no preference for plastics. I therefore hypothesised that the perceived risk of a fibrous polymer acting as a vector is not its composition, but rather it is opportunity.
I also aimed to determine whether the presence of stormwater drains increases the abundance of potential pathogens on plastic fabrics and whether potential pathogens detected on fibres after short-term deployment (21 days), persist on plastic fabrics after long-term deployment (3 years). Tide height and spatial variation had the strongest influences on overall composition while type of polymer and the presence of a stormwater drain had a more subtle effect. Only two opportunistic pathogens of immunocompromised patients were found on polymers and were not enriched in response to the presence of stormwater drains.
This thesis therefore advances our understanding of the bacterial assemblages that colonise fibres of different polymeric compositions. It also suggests that potential pathogens are likely to be among the early colonists of fibres and do not discriminate based on polymer composition