184,206 research outputs found
The build, operate, and transfer ("BOT") approach to infrastructure projects in developing countries
Get PDFBuild, operate and transfer (BOT) projects are exceedingly complex from both a financial and a legal point of view. They require an extended period of time to develop and negotiate. If a country is not able to finance all of its needed infrastructure on the basis of budgetary resources or sovereign borrowings, the BOT approach is an option to be considered. A BOT project appears to provide some"additionality"in tapping sources of private sector financing which otherwise might not be available. The sponsors'commitment of substantial equity to a project assures that they will also remain committed to the project's successful operation over the concession period. Their investment provides a strong incentive to have the project perform above its minimum expectations. Likewise, having the design, implementation and operation of a BOT project largely in the hands of the private sector may provide economies and efficiencies that will balance out or even outweight the higher financing costs of non sovereign borrowing and equity investment. The BOT approach appears to be a useful possible alternative to the conventional financing and operation of infrastructure projects in developing countries.Municipal Financial Management,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Housing Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform
"On Modelling Negotiations within a Dynamic Multi-objective Programming Framework: Analysis of Risk Measurement with an Application to Large BOT Projects"
Get PDFThe dynamic and multi-objective programming is used here to establish a risk measurement model. We develop an iterative algorithm and the convergence conditions for the model solution. The results obtained from the model developed here show that the sum of the interactive utility value (IUV) could determine whether or not the interactive relationship is characterized by independence among negotiators. In addition, the numerical example shows that this risk measurement model of the negotiation group can reflect risk assessment by the negotiation group for certain events and can analyze interaction characteristics among negotiators. We show the feasibility and applicability of the model and the exact solution algorithm, and their policy relevance for analyzing BOT projects.
CJCE (2e Ch.), 25 octobre 2007, Commission des Communautés européennes c/ Irlande, affaire C-248/05 Manquement d'État - Protection des eaux souterraines contre la pollution causée par des substances dangereuses - Directive n° 80/68/CEE.
No full textBot Y. CJCE (2e Ch.), 25 octobre 2007, Commission des Communautés européennes c/ Irlande, affaire C-248/05 Manquement d'État - Protection des eaux souterraines contre la pollution causée par des substances dangereuses - Directive n° 80/68/CEE. . In: Revue Européenne de Droit de l'Environnement, n°1, 2008. pp. 77-95
Detection and Blocking of DGA-based Bot Infected Computers by Monitoring NXDOMAIN Responses
Get PDFCyberattacks by botnets keep on increasing. In this research, we aim to detect and block Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA)-based bot-infected computers by focusing on the characteristics of domain name resolution for searching the Command & Control (C&C) servers. The attackers register only few of the DGA-based domain names for the C&C servers and make the bot-infected computers search them using DNS domain name resolution for the further instructions. This makes the DNS domain name resolution in C&C server searching process inevitably causing NXDOMAIN responses for queries about nonexistence domain names. In this paper, we designed and implemented a detection and blocking system against DGA-based bot-infected computers searching for the C&C servers by analyzing the DNS traffic resulted with NXDOMAIN responses. According to the feature evaluation results, we confirmed that the prototype system was effective for multiple types of DGA-based bots thus the approach could be applicable to detect and block the malicious DNS traffic from the bot-infected computers at the early stage.2020 7th IEEE International Conference on Cyber Security and Cloud Computing (CSCloud)/2020 6th IEEE International Conference on Edge Computing and Scalable Cloud (EdgeCom).1-3 Aug. 202
SWARM-BOT: A Swarm of Autonomous Mobile Robots with Self-Assembling Capabilities
No full textWe present a new robotic concept, called SWARM-BOT, based on a swarm of small and simple autonomous mobile robots called S-BOTs. S-BOTs have a particular assembling capability that allows them to connect physically to other S-BOTs and form a bigger robot entity, the SWARM-BOT. A SWARM-BOT is typically composed by 10 to 30 S-BOTs physically interconnected. S-BOTs can autonomously assemble into a SWARM-BOT but also disassemble again. This feature of the S-BOTs provides SWARM-BOT with self-assembling and self-reconfiguring capabilities. Such a concept, by taking advantage from the collective and distributed approaches, ensures robustness to failures even in hard environment conditions. The approach presented finds its theoretical roots in recent studies on swarm intelligence.LISLSALSROIn C. K. Hemelrijk and E. Bonabeau (eds
Microdon janne Bot, sp. n.
No full text<i>Microdon janne</i> Bot sp. n. <p>(Figs 31–35)</p> <p> <b>Diagnosis.</b> A moderately elongate species with dark face, blackish pleuron and blackish abdomen.</p> <p> <b>Type material.</b> HOLOTYPE. Adult male. MADAGASCAR. Label 1: “ MADAGASCAR / Ranomafana NP / lat-21.235 lng 47.400 / 27 XI 2014 leg. S.Bot". Coll. RMNH.</p> <p> <b>Description of male holotype.</b> Body size: 10 mm. <b>Head.</b> Face and gena dark reddish brown, almost black near the antennal fossa; entirely white pilose; with narrow band of whitish pollinosity along eye margins. Oral margin slightly produced. Frons and vertex dark reddish brown, turning black around antennal fossa, ocelli and occiput; yellowish white pilose, except anterior part of frons and ocellar triangle black pilose. Occiput black; white pilose and pollinose. Eye almost bare, very sparse and short pile only visible under high magnification. Antennal fossa about as wide as high. Antenna black. Arista black, about 4/5 of length of basoflagellomere. <b>Thorax.</b> Mesoscutum black, lateral margins dark reddish brown; with faint blue-green metallic hues three indistinct longitudinal purplish vittae; yellow-white pilose, except for central submedian pair of patches of black pile. Postpronotum and postalar callus dark reddish brown to black; yellow-white pilose. Scutellum semicircular with pair of apical calcars with mutual distance about 1/4 of width of scutellum at base, slightly concave between calcars; apices of calcars slightly diverging; blackish brown with faint metallic hues; yellow-white pilose. Pleuron blackish except anepisternum and katepisternum dorsally dark reddish brown; all pilosity white. Propleuron bare. Anepisternum with deep sulcus separating anterior from posterior part; pilose anteriorly and posteriorly, with widely bare part in between. Anepimeron entirely pilose. Katepisternum pilose dorsally; bare ventrally. Katepimeron bare and shining. Katatergum and anatergum microtrichose. Calypter white and halter yellow. <b>Wing.</b> Yellowish in cells bc, c, sc and r1, vein R1 yellow; infuscated greyish brown around veins at apical half. Microtrichose, except bare on cell bc, on cell br (only microtrichose along vena spuria and in apical part), posterobasal 1/2 of cell bm, anterobasal 1/3 of cell cup, along A 2 in anal lobe and centre of alula. <b>Legs.</b> Femora black except narrowly dark red at apex; white pilose. Tibiae dark red with faint black ring 1/3 from apex, most conspicuous on hind leg; white pilose. Tarsi dark red to orange; white pilose. Coxae black; white pilose. Trochanters black wit narrow dark red apex; white pilose. <b>Abdomen</b>. Tergite 1 black; white pilose. Tergite 2 black, except lateral margins narrowly reddish brown; white pilose. Tergite 3 black; short black pilose, except longer white pilose along lateral and posterior margins. Tergite 4 black; short black pilose on anterior half, with longer appressed golden pile on posterior half, lateral margins long white pilose. Sternites black, except narrowly yellowish along posterior margins; white pilose (incl. sternite 1). Male genitalia as in Fig. 35.</p> <p> <b>Female</b>. Unknown.</p> <p> <b>Etymology.</b> The species is named after Sander Bot’s girlfriend, Janne Ouwehand, since for long Sander promised her to name after her the first new species for science he would describe. The epithet is a noun in apposition.</p>Published as part of <i>Reemer, Menno & Bot, Sander, 2015, Six new species of Microdon Meigen from Madagascar (Diptera: Syrphidae), pp. 127-147 in Zootaxa 4034 (1)</i> on pages 138-139, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4034.1.6, <a href="http://zenodo.org/record/243180">http://zenodo.org/record/243180</a>
Benzoic acid derivatives from piper species and their fungitoxic activity against Cladosporium cladosporioides and C-sphaerospermum
No full textPiper crassinervium, P. aduncum, P. hostmannianum, and P. gaudichaudianum contain the new benzoic acid derivatives crassinervic acid (1), aduncumene (8), hostmaniane (18), and gaudichaudianic acid (20), respectively, as major secondary metabolites. Additionally, 19 known compounds such as benzoic acids, chromenes, and flavonoids were isolated and identified. The antifungal activity of these compounds was evaluated by bioautographic TLC assay against Cladosporium cladosporioides and C. sphaerospermum.Univ São Paulo, Inst Quim, BR-05599970 São Paulo, BrazilUniv Estadual Paulista, Inst Quim, BR-14800900 Araraquara, BrazilInst Pesquisas Jardin Bot, BR-22460030 Rio de Janeiro, BrazilInst Bot, Secao Fisiol & Bioquim Plantas, BR-01051 São Paulo, BrazilUniv Estadual Paulista, Inst Quim, BR-14800900 Araraquara, Brazi
Mirai Bot Scanner Summation Prototype
Get PDFThe Mirai botnet deploys a distributed mechanism with each Bot continually scanning for a potential new Bot Victim. A Bot continually generates a random IP address to scan the network for discovering a potential new Bot Victim. The Bot establishes a connection with the potential new Bot Victim with a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) handshake. The Mirai botnet has recruited hundreds of thousands of Bots. With 100,000 Bots, Mirai Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on service provider Dyn in October 2016 triggered the inaccessibility to hundreds of websites in Europe and North America (Sinanović & Mrdovic, 2017). A month before the Dyn attack, the source code was released publicly on the Internet and Mirai spread to half a million bots. Hackers offered Mirai botnets for rent with 400,000 Bots. Recent research has suggested network signatures for Mirai detection. Network signatures are suggested to detect a Bot brute forcing a new Bot Victim with a factory default user-id and password. Research has not been focused on the Bot scanning mechanism. The focus of this research is performing experimentation to analyze the Bot scanning mechanism for when a Bot attempts to establish a connection to a potential new Bot Victim with a TCP handshake. The thesis is presented: it is possible to develop a solution that can analyze network traffic to identify a Bot scanning for a potential new Bot Victim. The three research questions are (a) Can the Bots be identified for summation? (b) Can the potential new Bot Victims be identified for summation? (c) Is it possible to monitor the Bot scanning mechanism over time? The research questions support the thesis. The Design Science Research (DSR) methodology is followed for designing and evaluating the solution presented in this study. The original Mirai Bot code is used as a research data source to perform a Bot scanner code review. A dataset containing Bot scanning network activity, recorded by the University of Southern California (USC), is utilized as the research data source for experimentation performed with the Mirai Bot Scanner Summation Prototype solution. The Bot scanner code review is performed to identify the Bot scanning functionality and network communications with a potential new Bot Victim. A sampling from the Bot scanning dataset is confirmed from the analysis performed by the code review. The solution created in this study, the Mirai Bot Scanner Summation Prototype, evaluates a Bot scanning dataset. Researchers can use the prototype to tabulate the number of Mirai Bots, the number of potential new Bot Victims, as well as the number of network packet types associated with a Bot attempting to connect to a potential new Bot Victim. Using a database, permanent storage is utilized for counting Bots, potential new Bot Victims, and network packet types. Reporting as well as line-graphs is provided for assessing the Bot scanning mechanism over a time period. Single case experimentation performed with the Mirai Bot Scanner Summation Prototype provides answers to the research questions (a) Bots are identified for summation; (b) Potential new Bot Victims are identified for summation; (c) the Bot scanner is monitored over time. A comparison to a NIDS solution highlights the advantages of the prototype for summating and assessing the Bot scanning dataset. Experimentation with the Mirai Bot Scanner Summation Prototype and NIDS verifies it is possible to develop a solution that can analyze network traffic to identify a Bot scanning for a potential new Bot Victim. Future research could include adding the additional functionality to the Bot Scanner Summation Prototype for evaluating a Bot scanner dataset for non-potential Bot Victims
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Inferring and Visualizing Social Networks on Internet Relay Chat
Get PDFInternet Relay Chat is a system that allows groups of people to collaborate and chat from anywhere in the world. Clearly defined by several RFC documents, it is arguably the most standard real-time chat system currently in use. This paper describes a method of inferring the social network of a group of IRC users in a channel. An IRC bot is used to monitor a channel and perform a heuristic analysis of events to create a mathematical approximation of the social network. From this, the bot can produce a visualization of the inferred social network on demand. These visualizations reveal the structure of the social network, highlighting connectivity, clustering and strengths of relationships between users. Animated output allows viewers to see the evolution of the social network over time. Some novel ideas for future work are discussed, showing other useful applications of this system
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