Australian Science

Blog

  • Somewhere in the Future … How Does Cyber Security Look Like?

    Somewhere in the Future … How Does Cyber Security Look Like?

    Throughout this article, we do not plan to tell you some fictional story, but rather to provide you with very realistic predictions for the future of cyber defence which relies on current research and development trends and a way which cyber industry makes for us. The focus of this review will be on cyber security automatic solutions which will include an intelligent software for monitoring, prevention and incident response. A human’s effort will be replaced with machine’s skills and people will be the ones who will just use benefits of such an intelligent system.

    The Path We Have to Walk

    The main problem with a modern cyber security is that it is still based on very passive principles. For instance, recent cyber solutions are quite good in monitoring and prevention, while they still suffer a serious lack of a good incident response. Security experts believe that an appropriate cyber defence system should provide a mix of all of three – monitoring, prevention and incident response.

    What we should have in mind at this stage is that today’s security solutions are still very human-dependent and, from such a perspective, the greatest challenge for the future would be an automatic operation of cyber systems with a minimum human’s effort invested. Many researchers and software engineers forecast that the future of cyber security will rely on some sort of (security) software that will have its own self-defence capabilities.

    The idea which stays behind this software is related to solution that automatically generates the patches. In other words, such a software has an ability to learn what a normal behaviour is and what an error could be and to repair itself if any vulnerability appears.

    Some suggests that the path we have to walk would lead us to very sophisticated solutions which will be governed with intelligence. Such a scenario predicts a piece of code that will be capable of learning, adapting and predicting. Further, we will attempt to give a better insight on what exists on the market at the moment and to explain a course of the future discoveries and inventions.

    A Self-Defending Software Already Exists

    Quite recently the US research team was investigating and testing the capabilities of an intrusion prevention software (IPS). Such a software is able to protect itself from external attacks and intruders.

    The testing included the list of questions which researchers carefully prepared and sent to vendors of the IPS expecting them to provide the answers and to share some of their industry experience with them. Once the research team got the response from the industry, they selected the best software for a testing in the laboratory conditions. The results suggest that a recant version of the IPS can be assumed as a good prototype of self-defending software that we will have in the future.

    A theoretical background of such a solution is based on ‘automatically patching an error’ system. A current model given in [1] indicates that an automatic patching or a generating of the repair code is feasible only throughout a good learning and repairing algorithm. Some advanced studies invoke adaptive algorithms and predictive analytics as a trend in the coming times.

    In general, some types of initial self-defending software already exist and as it is given in [2], they find their applications in military sector. In other words, if some testings have been made for army, we can expect that the first commercial versions of the software will appear on the market soon.

    What Would Happen the Next?

    In not that distant future, we can expect that a software with a self-defence mechanism governed with intelligence will become a part of our lives. General science defines intelligence as an ability to adapt to new conditions, while security sees intelligence as an information with some analysis applied. The key word here would be ‘an ability to adapt’ or ‘a capacity to track a change’.

    Whatever a software of the future would appear, it will include two characteristics – an adaptivity and a self-defence. Intelligent systems are definitely something that will gain their place in the future, but what is also possible is a system with an automatic incident response.

    The incident response is a big challenge of cyber security nowadays, so it’s natural that in the future such a security element will be a part of the (security) system which will need a minimum human-machine interaction.

    Few Words at the End

    As anything else, cyber security must get along with a change, because that’s the only certain thing in the future. In such a case, it is necessary to rely on intelligence, so what we need to do is to think in multidisciplinary manner and to try to connect everything with everything as the ‘Internet of things’ concept suggests. That’s how we can get ready for the coming days.

    References:

    [1] Ernst M., Self-defending software: Automatically patching errors in deployed software, Lecture notes, University of Washington, 2009
    [2] Kerivan, J.E., Brothers, K., Self-defending security software, Military Communications Conference (2005 MILCOM), IEEE, 2005

  • “Ageing well

    “Ageing well

    A major new Series on health and ageing, published in “The Lancet”, warns that unless health systems find effective strategies to address the problems faced by an ageing world population, the growing burden of chronic disease will greatly affect the quality of life of older people. As people across the world live longer, soaring levels of chronic illness and diminished wellbeing are poised to become a major global public health challenge.

    Effective health interventions increasing life expectancy

    Worldwide, life expectancy of older people continues to rise. By 2020, for the first time in history, the number of people aged 60 years and older will outnumber children younger than 5 years. By 2050, the world’s population aged 60 years and older is expected to total 2 billion, up from 841 million today. Eighty per cent of these older people will be living in low-income and middle-income countries.

    The increase in longevity, especially in high-income countries (HICs), has been largely due to the decline in deaths from cardiovascular disease (stroke and ischaemic heart disease), mainly because of simple, cost-effective strategies to reduce tobacco use and high blood pressure, and improved coverage and effectiveness of health interventions.

    Challenge of ageing healthily

    However, although people are living longer, they are not necessarily healthier than before – nearly a quarter (23%) of the overall global burden of death and illness is in people aged over 60, and much of this burden is attributable to long-term illness caused by diseases such as cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, heart disease, musculoskeletal diseases (such as arthritis and osteoporosis), and mental and neurological disorders.

    This long-term burden of illness and diminished wellbeing affects patients, their families, health systems, and economies, and is forecast to accelerate. For example, latest estimates indicate that the number of people with dementia is expected to rise from 44 million now, to 135 million by 2050.

    “Deep and fundamental reforms of health and social care systems will be required,

  • Weekly Science Picks

    Weekly Science Picks

    It’s Sunday! Maybe some of you are not that happy for that, because it’s the end of the weekend, but for us it’s our time to provide you with a new editor’s selection for this week. The task was very interesting and exciting. We got an opportunity to present at once amazing stories from biology, space industry, neuroscience and much more. So, let’s review this week’s choice.

    The solar explorer built with dead animal bones

    When I meet him in his office at Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage, a non-descript industrial town some an hour’s drive north of London, Chris Draper is sitting at his desk idly flicking a long narrow strip of what looks like cooking foil. Smooth burnished metal on one side, ridged matt black on the other, the thin material makes a crinkly noise as he twists it back and forth.

    Prehistoric ‘groundhog’ identified by scientists

    US lead scientist Dr David Krause, from Stony Brook University in New York, said: “We know next to nothing about early mammalian evolution on the southern continents. This discovery, from a time and an area of the world that are very poorly sampled, underscores how very little we know. No paleontologist could have come close to predicting the odd mix of anatomical features that this cranium exhibits.

  • Farmers should pay for invasive weeds – researchers

    Farmers should pay for invasive weeds – researchers

    Farmers who use plant varieties that become invasive weeds should pay a levy to cover any environmental management costs under a plan put forward by researchers at The Australian National University (ANU).

    The levy is one recommendation in a new paper which aims to combat the global problem of invasive plants caused by agribusiness.

    “It’s a polluter pays principle. If their pastures become invasive, then agribusiness and farmers should be responsible for paying for any control or eradication,

  • How to Dance Your Dissertation: See the Winning Video in the 2014 “Dance Your PhD

    How to Dance Your Dissertation: See the Winning Video in the 2014 “Dance Your PhD

    We’ve seen how modern dance can explain key concepts in statistics (e.g. correlation and sampling error). So why couldn’t dance also illustrate the conclusions of a plant biology doctoral dissertation?

    Uma Nagendra, a graduate student at the University of Georgia, has just won the 2014 edition of the “Dance Your Ph.D.

  • ANU receives $35 million research funding boost

    ANU receives $35 million research funding boost

    The ANU has won more than $35 million in prestigious Australian Research Council (ARC) grants for 90 projects, enabling world-class research across the university.

    “These grants allow the ANU to build on its strengths and further enhance the University’s reputation as a world-leader in research,

  • Bowel cancer cases halve after screening

    Bowel cancer cases halve after screening

    The incidence of bowel cancer is dramatically lower after screening, a new report has found.

    Research involving 200,000 people found that people who had had bowel cancer screening had a 44 per cent lower risk of developing the disease in the four years following screening.

    “This is great news for the community – those who take part in screening and don’t have colorectal cancer have a substantially lower risk of developing the disease over the subsequent years,

  • WHO updates personal protective equipment guidelines for Ebola response

    WHO updates personal protective equipment guidelines for Ebola response

    As part of WHO’s commitment to safety and protection of healthcare workers and patients from transmission of Ebola virus disease, WHO has conducted a formal review of personal protective equipment (PPE) guidelines for healthcare workers and is updating its guidelines in context of the current outbreak.

    About the PPE guidelines

    These updated guidelines aim to clarify and standardize safe and effective PPE options to protect health care workers and patients, as well as provide information for procurement of PPE stock in the current Ebola outbreak. The guidelines are based on a review of evidence of PPE use during care of suspected and confirmed Ebola virus disease patients.

    The Guidelines Development Group convened by WHO included participation of a wide range of experts from developed and developing countries, and international organizations including the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Médecins Sans Frontières, the Infection Control Africa Network and others.

    “These guidelines hold an important role in clarifying effective personal protective equipment options that protect the safety of healthcare workers and patients from Ebola virus disease transmission,

  • Man Hauls a Piano Up a Mountain in Thailand and Plays Beethoven for Injured Elephants

    Man Hauls a Piano Up a Mountain in Thailand and Plays Beethoven for Injured Elephants

    If we’ve featured Jazz for Cows on Open Culture, then why not Classical Music for Elephants?

    Actually, they’re not just any elephants featured above. They’re old, injured, handicapped, sometimes blind elephants who live in the mountains of Thailand. And the gentleman playing a slow movement from Beethoven’s “Pathétique Sonata

  • Weekly Science Picks

    Weekly Science Picks

    One more exciting week is finishing and here what we have to present you this Sunday. We had amazingly interesting 7 days with lot of new discoveries, findings and research. This time we can proudly say we got extraordinary stories from the world of quantum physics, geology, biology and even some nice pieces of scientific information from Australia. We are so excited to share all these with you… Are you excited to hear from us as well? So, let’s start our tour!

    Are there ‘oceans’ hiding inside the Earth?

    We know more about the surface of Mars than we do the mantle of the planet we live on. As little as 30kms (19 miles) below the surface – the distance between the centre of London and Heathrow Airport – the continental crust turns into the Earth’s mantle, a layer some 2,900km (1,800 miles) thick that surrounds the Earth’s molten outer core.

    Scientists grow miniature human stomachs from stem cells

    Scientists have grown miniature human stomachs from stem cells as a way of studying gastric diseases such as ulcers and stomach cancer and in the future creating tissue to repair patients’ stomachs.

    Shale gas, coal seam gas… what’s the difference?

    In Australia, hydraulic fracturing – a technique that increases the rate of gas flow for extraction – is used in CSG production 20-40% of the time, whereas in shale gas production it’s used every time.

    Can the wave function of an electron be divided and trapped?

    Electrons are elementary particles — indivisible, unbreakable. But new research suggests the electron’s quantum state — the electron wave function — can be separated into many parts. That has some strange implications for the theory of quantum mechanics.

    Please stay curious and scientifically passionate! New stories are coming shortly.

  • New CSIRO software opens Windows to science

    New CSIRO software opens Windows to science

    New software which offers scientists and researchers an easy way to analyse, model and visualise scientific datasets has been released by CSIRO.

    The free software, known as Workspace, is purpose-built for scientific applications and allows researchers to present their findings through stunning visualisations.

    Developed over the past eight years at CSIRO, Workspace has already been used for a wide range of projects, including natural disaster modelling, human movement and industrial and agricultural research.

    One CSIRO team has already used the software to model and visualise simulations for storm surges and flash flooding, helping with disaster management planning. Working with the Australian Institute of Sport, another team has produced a 3D biomechanical computer model of different swimming strokes, allowing athletes to adjust their technique for maximum performance.

    Dr John Taylor from CSIRO’s Digital Productivity Flagship said the software offered huge efficiency savings for researchers from all fields who work with datasets and complex analysis, freeing them up to spend more time focused on their scientific expertise.

    “In institutions all around the world, researchers operate within similar workflows; sourcing data, analysing it, processing it – often using high-performance computing environments,

  • The Best of Australian Science: October 2014

    The Best of Australian Science: October 2014

    It’s the end of October, 2014 and it our time to review the top highlights for this month.

    These would be our choice for the previous period.

    Efficiency and Benefits of Massage Therapy by Maya Edberg

    The advancements in medicine have provided numerous cures and treatments for diseases that were terminal just a hundred years ago. And while there is a pill that can solve many problems, there isn’t one that can give you what a simple old-fashioned massage can – a total relaxation. But, there is more to it.

    Microbiota and us – we feed our bacteria even when we are sick! by Lia Zambetti

    There are good bacteria and bad bacteria. For millennia, we humans never made a distinction: bacteria were associated with diseases and death, no exception. It was known that we are carrying along a large assortment of microbes in our gut, but this was considered to be an evolutionary accident or a coincidence rather than a lucky occurrence for us. Recently, in the last 10-15 years, the scientists’ view on the bacteria living in our gut has changed drastically. Now we know that they are good for us in ways that we are just beginning to understand. What is already clear is that, without the bugs in our gut, we would be way worse off than we are.

    A Futuristic Review of Cyber Defence by Milica Djekic

    Cyber age has begun in the previous century and includes everything related to the web, computers and mobile technologies. As cyberspace has been developing, some security concerns have appeared. The future of computing technologies is clear – we are going quantum. But, how would be the future of cyber defence? Let’s say, we will get all those ultra fast, quantum-based computers in the coming decades, but how would we make them be a secure place for us? There is a lot of theories, but we will present you only some of them. So, let’s start our overview.

    Are synthetics overcoming the natural materials? by Maya Edberg

    In 1935, Percy L. Julian (1899-1975) synthesized physostigmine, the compound that was only available in its natural source, the Calabar bean, now used in the treatment of glaucoma. This pioneering research opened a door to widespread usage of chemical materials; however, it also started a “synthetic versus natural

  • Electric Car Batteries that Last for 20 Years

    Electric Car Batteries that Last for 20 Years

    The benefits of using electric cars are indisputable and numerous. They help in reducing greenhouse gases as they don’t emit tailpipe pollutants. They are fast, elegant and popular. However, there are some problems that seem to be impossible to solve – and this is what makes electric cars less desirable than their internal combustion engine counterparts.

    Most electric car models are quite expensive, but the thing that makes them even pricier is regular battery replacement. However, electricity is cheaper than gas and drivers who boast electric vehicles say that saving the environment is definitely worth it. (more…)

  • A Quick Introduction to Literary Theory: Watch Animated Videos from the Open University

    A Quick Introduction to Literary Theory: Watch Animated Videos from the Open University

    Just what is an author? It might seem like a silly question, and an academic dissection of the term may seem like a needlessly pedantic exercise.

    But the very variability of the concept means it isn’t a stable, fixed idea at all, but a shifting set of associations we have with notions about creativity, the social role of art, and that elusive quality known as “genius.