Podcasts about erlangen nuremberg

We discuss the principles and application of automatic tube compensation (ATC) on modern ventilators, with its creator Ben Fabry. Dr. Fabry is a professor and chair of biophysics at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, originally trained as an electrical engineer, who originally developed ATC as part of his PhD program. Find us on Patreon here! Buy your … Continue reading "Episode 75: Automatic tube compensation, with Ben Fabry"

Episode 22. A conversation with Prof Thomas Ritter who, with his team in University of Galway, is embarking on a journey of advancing treatments for rare eye diseases in Europe. Restore Vision is a project funded by the European Commission aiming to develop and test new treatments for 7 rare eye diseases (REDs). The consortium joins 10 European key players on rare eye diseases and is led by University of Galway. With 25+ years of experience in immunology and gene therapies for eye diseases, Prof. Ritter's research focuses on novel gene and cell therapies. He earned his Ph.D. in 1994 from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, and completed his Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Marseille Center of Immunology in 1995. At Charité University Hospital in Berlin, Germany, Prof. Ritter led the gene therapy program in experimental transplantation under Prof. Volk's directorship. He obtained significant funding from the German Research Foundation, Ministry of Health and Research, and industry (Schering). In 2002, he completed his ‘Habilitation' in Immunology, becoming an assistant professor in 2003. Since joining the University of Galway in 2005, Prof. Ritter secured significant funding from various agencies, totaling approximately €7M. He has published 90+ research articles and 30 reviews in peer-reviewed journals, delivered 50+ invited lectures, and served as Vice-Dean for Research at NUI Galway. He is an Associate Editor for Molecular Therapy, serves as a referee for high-impact journals, and is involved in multiple European networks for Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST-Action). For more information visit: https://restorevision-project.eu https://www.aniridia.eu  

This episode features not one but two guests. Rhys Borchert is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Arizona in the United States and Dr Aliya Dewey is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence Research Centre at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. We talk discuss Rhys and Aliya's paper ‘In Praise of Animals', which was the winner of the inaugural essay prize competition of The Philosophy of Animal Minds and Behavior Association. ‘In Praise of Animals' was published in the journal Biology & Philosophy in 2023.

#supplychain #supplychainrisk #procurement #logistics #analytics #data #military This week I had the pleasure to talk to David Shillingford, who had an amazing story to tell, how he came from the military, hunted stolen art, worked for insurance to then end up in supply chain with a focus on data and analytics. His unique view on supply chain and its technology future is really inspiring! ------- Welcome to the Supply Chain Pioneers podcast, where we highlight industry leaders on the forefront of innovation and technology in planning, procurement, and logistics. Hosted by your supply chain pro to know Ulf Venne. ------ About Ulf Venne: Over the past 10 years, Ulf Venne has been instrumental in raising awareness of supply chain risk management and helping clients improve their supply chain resilience and agility. He has authored and published multiple articles and white papers on resilience, agility and sustainability tools and methodologies in numerous books and magazines and was recognized as a 2023 Supply Chain Pro-to-Know. Ulf Venne is the world 1st supply chain thought memer and a regular conference speaker, workshop moderator, and LinkedIn as well as Youtube Content creator. Before joining Everstream Analytics, Ulf Venne worked as a supply chain operations lead in the telecom industry, where he received multiple awards for supply chain excellence and his implementation of a supply chain risk management program. Ulf Venne holds a Magister Artium degree in Sinology (Chinese culture and language) and Economics from the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. Socials: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ulf-venne-a885a633/ https://www.youtube.com/@ulfv

This week we interview Jon Bovit from Everstream Analytics, one of my colleauges! But this episode is not about our company, but about his passion for supply chain and procurement. And there is a lot of passion.   Learn what motivates Jon to stand up every day and help companies work on supply chain risk and sustainability and you will learn that supply chains are changing the world as we know it.   If you ever looked for inspiration, this is the episode for you!   --------------- Welcome to the Supply Chain Pioneers podcast, where we highlight industry leaders on the forefront of innovation and technology in planning, procurement, and logistics.  Hosted by your supply chain pro to know Ulf Venne. ------ About Ulf Venne: Over the past 10 years, Ulf Venne has been instrumental in raising awareness of supply chain risk management and helping clients improve their supply chain resilience and agility. He has authored and published multiple articles and white papers on resilience, agility and sustainability tools and methodologies in numerous books and magazines and was recognized as a 2023 Supply Chain Pro-to-Know. Ulf Venne is the world 1st supply chain thought memer and a regular conference speaker, workshop moderator, and LinkedIn as well as Youtube Content creator. Before joining Everstream Analytics, Ulf Venne worked as a supply chain operations lead in the telecom industry, where he received multiple awards for supply chain excellence and his implementation of a supply chain risk management program. Ulf Venne holds a Magister Artium degree in Sinology (Chinese culture and language) and Economics from the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. Socials: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ulf-venne-a885a633/ https://www.youtube.com/@ulfv  

In this Episode I met Jan-Henner Theissen from targetP! to deep dive supply chain risk and resilience and how to embedd it into an organization. We also discussed a lot of other interesting concepts around supply chain and resilience.   Welcome to the Supply Chain Pioneers podcast, where we highlight industry leaders on the forefront of innovation and technology in planning, procurement, and logistics.  Hosted by your supply chain pro to know Ulf Venne. ------ About Ulf Venne: Over the past 10 years, Ulf Venne has been instrumental in raising awareness of supply chain risk management and helping clients improve their supply chain resilience and agility. He has authored and published multiple articles and white papers on resilience, agility and sustainability tools and methodologies in numerous books and magazines and was recognized as a 2023 Supply Chain Pro-to-Know. Ulf Venne is the world 1st supply chain thought memer and a regular conference speaker, workshop moderator, and LinkedIn as well as Youtube Content creator. Before joining Everstream Analytics, Ulf Venne worked as a supply chain operations lead in the telecom industry, where he received multiple awards for supply chain excellence and his implementation of a supply chain risk management program. Ulf Venne holds a Magister Artium degree in Sinology (Chinese culture and language) and Economics from the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. Socials: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ulf-venne-a885a633/ https://www.youtube.com/@ulfv

Welcome to the Supply Chain Pioneers podcast, where we highlight industry leaders on the forefront of innovation and technology in planning, procurement, and logistics. Hosted by your supply chain pro to know Ulf Venne.   This week's interview is with Koray Köse, who recently joined Everstream Analytics and was a Gartner Analyst for supply chain risk management prior.   Socials: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ulf-venne-a885a633/ https://www.youtube.com/@ulfv   ------ About Ulf Venne: Over the past 10 years, Ulf has been instrumental in raising awareness of supply chain risk management and helping clients improve their supply chain resilience and agility. He has authored and published multiple articles and white papers on resilience, agility and sustainability tools and methodologies in numerous books and magazines and was recognized as a 2023 Supply Chain Pro-to-Know. Ulf is the world 1st supply chain thought memer and a regular conference speaker, workshop moderator, and LinkedIn as well as Youtube Content creator. Before joining Everstream Analytics, Ulf worked as a supply chain operations lead in the telecom industry, where he received multiple awards for supply chain excellence and his implementation of a supply chain risk management program. Ulf holds a Magister Artium degree in Sinology (Chinese culture and language) and Economics from the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.      

Join Lisa and Dr. Karen Von Merveldt-Guevara as they deep dive into the effects minerals have on the human body. Dr. Von Merveldt-Guevara is a medical doctor holding a German diploma from the State of Bavaria after graduating from Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen-Nuremberg and spent time as a medical student at the Faculté de la Médécine/Université de la Haute-Bretagne in Rennes/ France. She practices in Hawaii as a health consultant to bring biochemical and physiological truths and fundamentals that are lost or disregarded in mainstream treatment approaches of western medicine.

Decolonisation has become a lightning rod for critics who accuse universities and colleges of being full of liberal ideologues, with a number of pundits up in arms about efforts to decolonise reading lists and the curriculum.  But for some scholars, decolonisation is merely a by-product of the work that they do, including our guest Farish Noor, a professor in the department of history in the Faculty of the Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Malaya in Malaysia and a professor in the Standards of Decision Making Across Cultures programme at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Despite its complexity, Noor says, decolonisation is essential to a comprehensive view of humanity. Many in academia doubt decolonisation's relevance for STEM subjects, but in this episode we'll also hear from Brigitte Stenhouse, a lecturer in the history of mathematics in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at The Open University. She has overseen the creation of a database of original sources to give students a global and historical view of the discipline.

There has been a lot of discussion about the importance of good health and well-being, especially as the world population rises and at the same time life expectancy is increasing. The fast-growing cost of acute care are pushing the healthcare systems worldwide to a limit. So, healthcare increasingly places great emphasis on enhancing well-being to prevent illness rather than sporadically treating acute illnesses. The IoT has great potential to support good health and well-being. With smart electronic devices, either worn on the body or even installed at home, it is possible to measure people's fitness and health status and trigger appropriate actions. Here, data mining, algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence play a central role so these topics have received a lot of attention in medical research recently. This is what we want to talk about with our guest today. Professor Björn Eskofier is heading the Machine Learning and Data Analytics Lab of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nuremberg. Currently, this lab has about 50 co-workers in the field of machine learning and signal analysis for wearable computing systems with a focus on sports and healthcare.

“The strength of SRE is in the alignment of operational concerns between the product management, product development, and product operations." Dr. Vladyslav Ukis is the Head of R&D at Siemens Healthineers and author of “Establishing SRE Foundations”. In this episode, Dr. Vlad shared insights on how to establish SRE foundations from scratch based on his firsthand experience at Siemens Healthineers and the concepts described in his book. We started by discussing the basic SRE concept and how it differs from other related concepts, such as ITIL, COBIT, and DevOps. Dr. Vlad then explained in-depth how SRE implementation can help to create an alignment between the product management, product development, and product operations teams. He also shared the importance of having internal SRE coaches to facilitate this transformation and when an organisation can start realizing the benefits of implementing SRE. In the latter half, Dr. Vlad walked us through how we can begin our SRE journey, make further progress in the journey, and measure the success of our SRE implementation. Also, do not miss his sharing on how SRE implementation can help to improve reliability in a stringent industry, such as healthcare. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:06:04] Getting to Know SRE Concept - [00:08:24] SRE vs Other Frameworks - [00:12:20] SRE Definition - [00:16:48] Ops-Development-Product Alignment - [00:19:26] SRE Coach - [00:26:36] Realizing SRE Benefits - [00:28:52] How to Begin SRE Journey - [00:31:37] SRE Journey Progression - [00:36:15] Healthcare Reliability - [00:41:48] Measuring SRE Implementation Success - [00:46:25] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:48:44] _____ Vladyslav Ukis's Bio Dr. Vladyslav Ukis graduated in Computer Science from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, and later from the University of Manchester, UK. He joined Siemens Healthineers after each graduation and has been working on Software Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, Innovation Management, Private and Public Cloud Computing, Team Management, Engineering Management, Portfolio Management, Partner Management, and Digital Transformation at large. He currently works as the Head of R&D for the Siemens Healthineers teamplay digital health platform, and has shared his DevOps knowledge in his book “Establishing SRE Foundations” published in 2022. Follow Dr Vlad: LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/dr-vladyslav-ukis-5172ba32 _____ Our Sponsors Skills Matter is the global community and events platform for software professionals. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones. Head on over to skillsmatter.com to become part of the tech community that matters most to you - it's free to join and easy to keep up with the latest tech trends. Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags available by visiting techleadjournal.dev/shop. And don't forget to brag yourself once you receive any of those swags. Like this episode? Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For episode show notes, visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/117.

“I always say I want entrepreneurs in the company and I want them to act like entrepreneurs by making decisions that are good for the business.” In this episode of The Inner Chief podcast, we speak to Travel industry disruptor, André Schwämmlein, the Co-Founder and CEO of Flix, on art versus science, creating new markets, and daring to better the world.

VIDEOS: The fight for water | DW Documentary   New study shows Rhodiola rosea root might be beneficial for managing type 2 diabetes University of California at Irvine, August 15, 2022 A team of researchers led by the University of California, Irvine has discovered that treatment with an extract from the roots of the Rhodiola rosea plant might be effective for helping manage type 2 diabetes, showing promise as a safe and effective non-pharmaceutical alternative. The study, recently published online in Scientific Reports, found that in a mouse model of human type 2 diabetes, Rhodiola rosea lowered fasting blood sugar levels, improved response to insulin injections, modulated the composition of bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract and decreased several biomarkers of inflammation. The team utilized a genetically engineered mouse model that develops obesity, insulin resistance and high blood sugar, similar to advanced human type 2 diabetes, to test whether Rhodiola rosea could improve glucose homeostasis. In the study, cohorts of age-matched male and female mice were randomly assigned to one of two groups: control, which received water, or experimental, which received Rhodiola rosea extract. (NEXT) Meta-analysis concludes benefits for selenium supplementation in cognitively impaired individuals Instituto de Pesquisa Pelé Pequeno Príncipe (Brazil), August 15 2022.  A systematic review and meta-analysis published  in Nutrients found that supplementing with selenium was associated with improved levels of the mineral and the antioxidant enzyme glutathione peroxidase, as well as better cognitive function among patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or Alzheimer disease (AD).  “For the first time, our study demonstrated, through a systematic review and meta-analysis, the possible benefits of selenium supplementation on selenium levels in patients with MCI or AD, as well as on markers of oxidative stress and on cognitive test performance,” Meire Ellen Pereira and colleagues wrote. Among studies that evaluated the effects of selenium without other nutrients, selenium measured in plasma, serum, red blood cells or cerebrospinal fluid increased among participants who received the mineral while remaining essentially the same or lower in the control groups. The meta-analysis determined that supplementing with selenium increased selenium levels by an average of 4 times in plasma, 1.88 times in serum, 3.73 times in red blood cells and 2.18 times in cerebrospinal fluid.  (NEXT) Skip the elevator: A 15-minute walk can help your brain fight off Alzheimer's German Center for Neurodegenerative Disease, August 15 2022 Older people can stave off Alzheimer's disease with a daily 15-minute walk or other physical activities, according to new research. Researchers in Germany say moderate physical activity boosts all areas of the brain, especially those involved in memory. Staying active also benefits people over 70 the most. They see the biggest increase in grey matter, compared to their “couch potato” peers. “Our study results indicate that even small behavioral changes, such as walking 15 minutes a day or taking the stairs instead of the elevator, may have a substantial positive effect on the brain and potentially counteract age-related loss of brain matter and the development of neurodegenerative diseases. In particular, older adults can already profit from modest increases of low intensity physical activity.” (NEXT) Antioxidants in fruit boosts immunity and protects thymus gland  Scripps Research Institute, August 8, 2022 Eating fruit and vegetables or taking antioxidant supplements may combat one of the most harmful aspects of aging by protecting a vital immune system organ, research suggests. Scientists demonstrated how ageing sabotaged the thymus gland, weakening the immune system and putting the elderly at greater risk of infection. But the irreversible damage could be reduced by the action of antioxidants such as vitamin C. Experiments showed that antioxidants – which are abundant in many fruits and vegetables – cut down the destruction wrought by a highly reactive by-product of normal metabolism. In studies on mice, animals given vitamin C and another antioxidant used in human medicine experienced significantly less age-related deterioration of the thymus. US lead scientist Dr Howard Petrie, from the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, said: “The thymus ages more rapidly than any other tissue in the body, diminishing the ability of older individuals to respond to new immunologic challenges, including evolving pathogens and vaccines. Its function is to manufacture T-cells, essential immune system cells in the front-line of the body's defences against harmful foreign invaders and cancer. (NEXT) Modern Processed Diets Are Coding DNA and Gut Bacteria To Pass On Poor Immune Functions To Our Children Yale University and Erlangen-Nuremberg University, August 6, 2022 A team of scientists from Yale University in the U.S and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, in Germany, has said that junk food diets could be partly to blame for the sharp increase in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, including alopecia, asthma and eczema. The new stark warnings come in a review published in Nutrition Journal, which analysed the impact that the modern Western diet has on immune function and risk of ill-health related to poor immunity and inflammation."While today's modern diet may provide beneficial protection from micro- and macronutrient deficiencies, our over abundance of calories and the macronutrients that compose our diet may all lead to increased inflammation, reduced control of infection, increased rates of cancer, and increased risk for allergic and auto-inflammatory disease," warned Myles in his review. Each person harbors a unique and varied collection of bacteria that's the result of life history as well as their interactions with the environment, diet and medication use. Western diet and lifestyles consisting of fast and processed foods are leading to a lower diversity of bacteria in the gut, say researchers. Of potentially greatest concern, our poor dietary behaviours are encoded into both our DNA scaffolding and gut microbiome, and thus these harmful immune modifications are passed to our offspring during their most critical developmental window. (NEXT) The aging heart accumulates mutations—while losing the ability to repair them Children's Hospital Boston, August 12, 2022 Why does the risk of heart disease go up as we age? Known risk factors such as hypertension or high cholesterol don't explain all cases. A first-of-its-kind study from Boston Children's Hospital now shows that the cells that make up our heart muscle accumulate new genetic mutations over time—while losing the ability to repair them. The findings were published in the journal Nature Aging. The research team, led by Sangita Choudhury, Ph.D., and August Yue Huang, Ph.D., in the Division of Genetics and Genomics at Boston Children's, sequenced the entire genomes of 56 individual heart muscle cells, known as cardiomyocytes, from 12 people across the age spectrum—from infancy to 82 years—who had died from causes unrelated to heart disease.  

Videos: 1.Tucker Carlson Tonight – Friday, June 17 (12:30) 2. America's wars: The invented reason and the real reason (2:12) 3. William Mandel Denounces HUAC: “This Collection of Judases” 4. NATO is a paper army (7:01) 5. What It's Like Living in California Now (8:37)    Pistachios may lower vascular response to stress in type 2 diabetes Penn State University, June 17, 2022 Among people with type 2 diabetes, eating pistachios may reduce the body's response to the stresses of everyday life, according to Penn State researchers. “In adults with diabetes, two servings of pistachios per day lowered vascular constriction during stress and improved neural control of the heart,” said Sheila G. West, professor of biobehavioral health and nutritional sciences. “Although nuts are high in fat, they contain good fats, fiber, potassium and antioxidants. Given the high risk of heart disease in people with diabetes, nuts are an important component of a heart healthy diet in this population.” West and her colleagues investigated the effects of pistachios on responses to standardized stress tasks in patients with well-controlled Type 2 diabetes who were otherwise healthy. They used a randomized, crossover study design in which all meals were provided. Each of the diets contained the same number of calories. After two weeks on the typical American diet — containing 36 percent fat and 12 percent saturated fats — participants were randomized to one of two test diets. During the four-week test diets, participants ate only food supplied by the study. The researchers reported the results of this study in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Heart Association. “We found that systolic blood pressure during sleep was particularly affected by pistachios,” she said. “Average sleep blood pressure was reduced by about 4 points and this would be expected to lower workload on the heart.” The researchers found that the pistachio diet lowered vascular constriction during stress. When arteries are dilated, the load on the heart is reduced. The physical challenge involved immersing one hand into icy water for two minutes. Study finds curcumin, the main polyphenol in turmeric, as effective as Prozac in treating depression Government Medical College (India), June 6, 2022 A recent study published in Phytotherapy Research shows that curcumin, the main polyphenol in turmeric, is as at least as effective as fluoxetine (Prozac) in treating depression. Not only can it help ease symptoms of depression, but it does so safely, without the potential to cause suicidal thoughts, weight gain and even changes in blood pressure and heart rate that can lead to shock and death — some of the many side effects which have been linked to Prozac.  The study, conducted by researchers from the Department of Pharmacology at the Government Medical College in Bhavnagar, India, assessed groups of people who took curcumin capsules and Prozac, either individually or combined.  Twenty people took 500 mg curcumin capsules twice daily, 20 took 20 mg of Prozac daily, and the remaining 20 people took a combination of the two.  The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, a questionnaire designed to gauge the severity of a person's depression level, was given to assess any changes in mood among the individuals who participated in this study. The findings showed that curcumin worked just as well as Prozac, acting as the “first clinical evidence that curcumin may be used as an effective and safe modality for treatment in patients with MDD without concurrent suicidal ideation or other psychotic disorders.” (1, 3) MDD stands for “Major Depressive Disorder.” Monkeys that eat omega-3 rich diet show more developed brain networks University of Oregon, June 13, 2022   Study gives new insight into similarity of complex brain networks in monkeys, humans Monkeys that ate a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids had brains with highly connected and well organized neural networks — in some ways akin to the neural networks in healthy humans — while monkeys that ate a diet deficient in the fatty acids had much more limited brain networking, according to an Oregon Health & Science University study. The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, provides further evidence for the importance of omega-3 fatty acids in healthy brain development. It also represents the first time scientists have been able to use functional brain imaging in live animals to see the large-scale interaction of multiple brain networks in a monkey. These patterns are remarkably similar to the networks found in humans using the same imaging techniques. The study measured a kind of omega-3 fatty acid called docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, which is a primary component of the human brain and important in development of the brain and vision.  The study found that the monkeys that had the high-DHA diet had strong connectivity of early visual pathways in their brains. It also found that monkeys with the high-DHA diet showed greater connections within various brain networks similar to the human brain — including networks for higher-level processing and cognition ‘Mini-strokes' lead to PTSD and other psychiatric disorder University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany  June 15, 2022  Transient ischemic attacks are commonly referred to as “mini-strokes,” but this does not make them any less serious than major strokes. In fact, a recent study has found that around 30% of patients who have transient ischemic attacks go on to develop the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Transient ischemic attacks (TIAs) occur when the flow of blood to the brain is disrupted temporarily, often by blood clots or other debris. They differ from major strokes in that the flow of blood is only blocked for a relatively short time – usually no more than 5 minutes.  Despite only disrupting blood flow temporarily, TIAs serve as warning signs for future major strokes. They indicate that there is a partially blocked artery or a clot source in the heart. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that between 10-15% of people with TIA will experience a major stroke within 3 months.  “We found 1 in 3 TIA patients develop PTSD,” says study author Kathrin Utz from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. “PTSD, which is perhaps better known as a problem found in survivors of war zones and natural disasters, can develop when a person experiences a frightening event that poses a serious threat.” The researchers found that about 30% of the TIA patients reported symptoms of PTSD and 14% showed signs of a significantly reduced mental quality of life. Around 6.5% of the participants also had a reduced physical quality of life.  TIA patients who showed signs of PTSD were also more likely to show signs of depression, anxiety and a lower overall quality of life than those who did not.  Exercise linked to brain cell growth and improved memory University of Jyvaskyla (Finland), June 14, 2022 New research out of the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland has shown that exercise helps with preserving brain cells and preventing loss of memory, cognitive issues and general memory problems. In the Finnish study, aerobic activity in particular was found to support healthier brain cells and prevent memory problems better than other exercise types studied, including weight lifting and high-intensity interval training (HIIT). While weight lifting and HIIT have better fat burning properties, moderate aerobic exercise seems to cultivate healthier brain cells and protect against loss of memory. For the study, University of Jyvaskyla researchers put groups of rats on three different workout programs to determine their effects on memory and overall brain health. Weight lifting, running and high-intensity interval training were the three types studied. The training regimens created were made to model approximately what the typical human might do in a workout program. The running group used a treadmill much as humans do, and the weight lifting group climbed a ladder with little weights attached to their tails. The HIIT group alternated short durations of sprinting and jogging. By study's end, while all of the rats showed general fitness gains, the weight lifting group and the HIIT group showed no signs of neurogenesis, or new brain cell growth. By contrast, the running group demonstrated growth in brain cells as well as a reduction in the loss of memory and memory problems. Organic food consumers have a 21% lower risk of pre-eclampsia Norwegian Institute of Public Health, June 15, 2022  Pregnant women may be able to lower their risk of a potentially deadly complication known as pre-eclampsia by more than 20 percent simply by eating more organic vegetables, according to a study conducted by researchers from the National Institute for Consumer Research and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, and published in BMJ Open. “The result is intriguing and supports that diet during pregnancy can influence the risk of pre-eclampsia,” researcher Hanne Torjusen, PhD, said. Pre-eclampsia is a complication of late pregnancy characterized by high blood pressure and protein in the urine. The cause of the condition is not known, although it has been linked to a variety of risk factors including some of the same risk factors as cardiovascular disease. Mild cases may resolve without problems, but severe cases may progress into a life-threatening condition that can only be alleviated through premature delivery of the baby. The new study is the first to show a connection between organic food consumption and lower pre-eclampsia risk.

"Learning by Teaching" (Lernen durch Lehren - LdL) is a widespread teaching-method in Germany, developed by Jean-Pol Martin. Jean-Pol Martin was born in 1943 in Paris and went to Germany in 1968. He studied German and French in order to become a teacher at a German grammar school, and also became an instructor in teacher education at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (Bavaria) in 1980. He earned his undergraduate degree at Paris Nanterre University in 1969, then studied German and Romance languages at University of Erlangen–Nuremberg from 1969 to 1975, then worked as a trainee teacher in French language from 1975 to 1977 at Albrecht Dürer Gymnasium in Nürnberg. He then taught French and German at the Gymnasium Höchstadt/Aisch from 1977 to 1980. In 1980 he started working at Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, training French teachers. Simultaneously he studied language acquisition and pedagogy at Justus Liebig University Giessen, and earned his Ph.D. there in 1985. His thesis on "Didactics of the French Language and Literature" was accepted in 1985. In 1994, after his Habilitation, he was appointed Privatdozent at Catholic University of Eichstätt and in 2000 he was appointed Professor. He established the learning by teaching method (German: Lernen durch Lehren) for students to learn by teaching their peers. The method became widely used in Germany in secondary education, and in the 1990s it was further formalized and began to be used in universities as well, and has spread to other disciplines and other countries. Find him at https://jeanpol.wordpress.com/ & https://www.facebook.com/groups/360963547673468 #TEFL #TESOL #ELT

In this special episode of Without Borders in collaboration with the csuite podcast we talk about influence and technology trends in Europe with a panel of experts including  three key European influencers identified in our Tyto Tech 500 Power List: Sophie Proust (CTO of Atos), Dr. Andreas K. Maier (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg), and Jonathan Symcox (Editor of BusinessCloud).   What does it take to have influence in today's world? What trends will continue to shape the European tech landscape? What can we conclude about the representation of women in tech from this report? These and other questions are answered in this episode in which we look at the point of view from these three highly influential individuals featured in the Tyto Tech 500, our annual report on the tech sector, from our 3 focus countries: the UK, Germany and France.   Sophie Proust, our France business leader representative, has been the Chief Technology Officer of Atos since early 2019. Dr. Andreas Maier, our academic representative from the German Influencer list, is a researcher, professor and Head of the Pattern Recognition lab at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Jonathan Symcox is a journalist and our UK list representative. As an editor, he leads tech publications BusinessCloud and TechBlast UK.  Sophie, Andreas and Jonathan are joined by our own Zoë Clark, Head of Media and Influence at Tyto.  As well as presenting their point of view with these relevant questions, our selected country experts share how COVID has changed their outlook on tech or has impacted their work, from a business, journalist or academic perspective. Sophie, Andreas and Jonathan also share their predictions on future technology that will change the tech landscape in France, Germany and the UK respectively.   The interview was hosted by Graham Barreth of the csuite podcast.  Interested in the 2021 edition of the Tech 500? Here you can see the top 50 influencers in each country and download the full report: https://tytopr.com/tyto-tech-500-power-list-2021/   

Produced in partnership with the European PR Agency Tyto, we discuss their latest edition of the Tyto Tech 500 Power List, a publication that identifies the most influential figures in technology in the UK, France and Germany. Host Graham Barrett was joined by three of the influencers on this year's list: Sophie Proust, Chief Technology officer at ATOS, Andreas Maier, Professor, Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen-Nuremberg, and Jonathan Symcox, Editor at TechBlast and BusinessCloud, plus Zoe Clark, Senior Partner and Head of Media Influence at Tyto.

30-60 mins of weekly muscle strengthening activity linked to 10-20% lower death risk   Tohoku University School of Medicine (Japan), March 1, 2022   Between 30 and 60 minutes of muscle strengthening activity every week is linked to a 10-20% lower risk of death from all causes, and from cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer, in particular, finds a pooled data analysis of the available evidence, published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The findings are independent of aerobic exercise. But the analysis points to a J-shaped curve for most outcomes, with no conclusive evidence that more than an hour a week of muscle strengthening activity reduces the risk further still. Examples of these activities include lifting weights; working with resistance bands; push-ups, sit-ups, and squats; and heavy gardening, such as digging and shoveling.   (NEXT)   Study finds lower oxidative stress in children who live and study near green spaces   Barcelona Institute for Global Health, March 1, 2022   A study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), has analyzed, for the first time, the relationship between exposure to different green spaces and oxidative stress in children. The study concluded that greater exposure to vegetation is associated with lower levels of oxidative stress and that this association is observed regardless of the children's physical activity.   (NEXT)   Depression is more than a mental disorder—it affects the whole body   University of Granada (Spain), March 1, 2022   An international team of researchers has scientifically proven for the first time that depression is more than a mental disorder—it causes important alterations of the oxidative stress, so it should be considered a systemic disease, since it affects the whole organism. The results of this work, published in the renowned Journal of Clinical Psychiatry magazine, could explain the significant association that depression has with cardiovascular diseases and cancer, and why people suffering from depression die younger.   (NEXT)   Milk may exacerbate MS symptoms   University of Bonn (Germany), March 1, 2022   Multiple sclerosis sufferers often complain of more severe disease symptoms after consuming dairy products. Researchers at the Universities of Bonn and Erlangen-Nuremberg have now found a possible cause for this. According to the study, a protein in cow's milk can trigger inflammation that targets the "insulating layer" around nerve cells. The study was able to demonstrate this link in mice, but also found evidence of a similar mechanism in humans. The researchers therefore recommend that certain groups of sufferers avoid dairy products. The study has now been published in the journal PNAS.   (NEXT)   Study Reveals Anthocyanins in Strawberries Improve Insulin Resistance   Illinois Institute of Technology, March 1, 2022   A new study published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Nutrition found that anthocyanin-rich strawberries may improve insulin sensitivity.  Insulin resistance (IR) is a hallmark of metabolic syndrome and a risk factor for heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Researchers observed the effect of anthocyanins on the postprandial insulin response of 21 obese adults with insulin resistance. Subjects were served a typical 'Western-style' meal high in carbohydrates and fat plus a beverage that contained freeze-dried whole strawberry powder. The beverages were controlled for fiber, and the amount of strawberry powder ranged from 0 grams to 40 grams (equivalent to 3 cups of fresh strawberries). When subjects drank the most concentrated beverage, they didn't produce as much insulin as when they drank the least concentrated versions. In other words, they didn't need as much insulin to metabolize their meal after drinking the anthocyanin-rich strawberry shake. While the exact mechanisms are unclear, strawberry anthocyanins may alter insulin signaling at a cellular level.   (OTHER NEWS)   The Consequences of Humiliating Russia   Russia's actions in Ukraine are to a great extent the culmination of the numerous humiliations that the West has inflicted on Russia over the past 30 years Michael Brenner, CONSORTIUM NEWS. February 28, 2022   The Mafia is not known for its creative use of language beyond terms like “hitman,” “go to the mattresses,” “living with the fishes” and suchlike. There are, though, a few pithy sayings that carry enduring wisdom. One concerns honor and revenge: “If you are going to humiliate someone publicly in a really crass manner, make sure that he doesn't survive to take his inevitable revenge.” Violate it at your peril. That enduring truth has been demonstrated by Russia's actions in the Ukraine which, to a great extent, are the culmination of the numerous humiliations that the West, under American instigation, has inflicted on Russia's rulers and the country as a whole over the past 30 years. They have been treated as a sinner sentenced to accept the role of a penitent who, clad in sackcloth, marked with ashes, is expected to appear among the nations with head bowed forever. No right to have its own interests, its own security concerns or even its own opinions. Few in the West questioned the viability of such a prescription for a country of 160 million, territorially the biggest in the world, possessing vast resources of critical value to other industrial nations, technologically sophisticated and custodian of 3,000 + nuclear weapons. No mafia don would have been that obtuse. But our rulers are cut from a different cloth even if their strut and conceit often matches that of the capos. The West nostalgically celebrates the Yeltsin years as the Golden Age of Russian Democracy – an age when life expectancy dropped sharply, when alcoholism rose and mental health declined, when the tanking economy threw millions into poverty, when the oligarchs strutted their stuff, when the presidential chauffeur was the most influential man in the country, and when everyone was free to shoot his mouth off since nobody else heard him in the din of their own voices. Vladimir Putin, of course, was made of sterner stuff. He put an end to the buffoonery, successfully took on the Herculean task of reconstituting Russia as a viable state, and presented himself as ruler of an equal sovereign in cultivating relations with his neighbors.  In addition, he insisted that the civil rights and culture of Russians stranded in the Near Abroad be respected. Still, he gave no sign by word or deed that he contemplated using coercive means to restore the integration of Russian and Ukraine that had existed for more than 300 years. True, he opposed Western attempts to sever the ties between the two by incorporating Ukraine into their collective institutions – most notably the NATO declaration of 2008 stating that Ukraine (along with Georgia) were in the alliance's antechamber being readied for entrance. Putin's restraint contrasted with the audacity of Washington and its European subordinates who instigated the Maidan coup toppling the democratically elected president and promoting an American puppet in his place.  In effect, the United States has been Ukraine's overseer ever since – a sort of absentee landlord. This attitude has progressively lowered the bar on accusation and insult directed at Russia and Putin personally. For Hillary Clinton he was “a new Hitler” as far back as 2016, for Joe Biden he was a “killer,” for Congress members a Satan using a bag of diabolical instruments to corrupt and destroy American democracy. For all of them, a tyrant turning Russia back to the political Dark Ages after the glowing democratic spring of the Yeltsin years, an assassin – albeit an inept one whose targeted victims somehow survived in unnatural numbers, for the Pentagon a growing menace who moved rapidly up the enemies list – displacing Islamic terrorism by 2017 and vying with China for the top spot ever since. The obsession with Putin the Evil spread as Washington pushed its allies hard to join in the denunciation.  The grossness of their personal attacks on Putin matched the ever-expanding scope of the accusations. In recent years, no election could be held in Europe without the leveling of charges that the Kremlin was “interfering” by some unspecified means or other – and at Putin's personal direction. The absence of evidence was irrelevant. Russia became the pinata there to be smashed whenever one felt the urge or saw a domestic political advantage. Michael Brenner is a professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.

Our guest for today is Christian Staudigel, co-founder and managing director of Headmade Materials. The company, headquartered near Würzburg, in Germany, invented and is now launching the new and interesting Cold Metal Fusion platform for metal 3D printing. Christian studied Mechanical Engineering at the DHBW Stuttgart and Advanced Materials and Processes at the Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen-Nuremberg. He also completed the Executive MBA program at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg. Together with co-founder and managing director Christian Fischer, they invented Cold Metal Fusion technology during their work at the SKZ – The Plastics Center research institute. One way to think of Cold Metal Fusion is as a hybrid technology that combines the strengths of binder jetting, plastics powder bed fusion and MIM processes. In fact, the founders started with injection molding and found a way to build a bridge in between MIM and SLS laser sintering. In doing so, they understood the potential of the existing installed base of thousands of running SLS printers available worldwide and that these systems could be converted into metal printers. They have since expanded the initial idea to launch an entire platform to enable industrial manufacturing, working in stealth mode with key players in the AM field behind. Now they have come of stealth and into the open. Headmade Materials just became part of the AM Ventures Fund, and today we have the opportunity to speak with Christian Staudigel to learn more about how the technology works, their business models and their expectations for future growth in high volume metal AM production.

Today we are featuring a delightful discussion between American Poet Dr. Norbert Krapf and German Poet Dr. Helmut Haberkamm concerning dialect poetry. Krapf is a Fulbright Fellow in American Poetry at the Universities of Freiburg and Erlangen-Nuremberg, where he met our second guest Helmut Haberkamm. Dr. Haberkamm writes extensively in the Franconian dialectic. The conversation touches on subjects from James Whitcomb Riley to Bob Dylan with lots in between. www.krapfpoetry.net Our Natural Moment poem for the month is Reverence by Pheonix Cole.

We celebrate Women's History Month with an episode about women and politics. In the second episode of LadyFiction Stefanie Schaefer discusses First Ladies and “First Lady Fiction” with her guest Dr. Katharina Gerund from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. In January 2021, the arrival of new First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, an educator who has said she will keep working during her time in the White House, garnered renewed debate about marriage, politics, and modern womanhood. In this episode of LadyFiction, we turn to Curtis Sittenfeld's bestselling novel American Wife (2008), a fictional autobiography of Laura Bush, First Lady from 2001-2009.

Antony Mueller is the founder of The Continental Economics Institute. He is also an adjunct scholar at the Mises Institute and honorary member of Mises, Brazil. He was born in Germany and graduated with a Ph.D., summa cum laude, in Economics from the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg in Germany. Antony is now the Professor of Economics at Federal University of Sergipe in Brazil. He is also the author of Beyond the State and Politics, which is coming out in a new revision and is working on Macro Economics for Business and Finance. Antony mainly discusses his recent article for the Mises Institute called "No Privacy, No Property: The World in 2030 According to the WEF." The aims of this think tank are a threat to basic human liberties and has a heavy top-down economic control policy. Tied to this strategy is the rhetoric of global climate control, which will be used to control food consumption and where you live. In the end, this group, which is gaining footholds of power, would love to see the end of private property, privacy, and the reduction in goods consumption. You will live hand to fist from the graces of the powers that be. Philip Sharp discusses in the essay segment an interesting tidbit from the past during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 80’s. The deployed Soviet personnel sold off government equipment and looked forward to using Afghan bazaars to get goods they could not get back home. Of course, the connection is that the USSR is a prototype for the agenda the World Economic Forum would like to implement.

 Antony P. Mueller is a professor of economics at the Federal University UFS in Brazil where he is also a researcher at the Center of Applied Economics, and Senior Fellow of the American Institute for Economic Research. Antony Mueller earned his doctorate in economics summa cum laude from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. He was a Fulbright Scholar in the United States and a visiting professor at the Universidad Francisco Marroquin (UFM) in Guatemala as well as a member of the German academic exchange program DAAD. Antony Mueller has recently published the book “Beyond the State and Politics. Capitalism for the New Millennium”. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/iantrottier/support

Professor Georg Schett from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Join Prof Peter Nash as he interviews authors of recent notable papers in rheumatology. In this edition, Professor Georg Schett discusses SARS-CoV-2 seroconversion in patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases receiving cytokine inhibitors.

Prof Schett from University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Join Prof Peter Nash as he interviews authors of recent notable papers in rheumatology. In this edition, Prof Schett discusses how JAK inhibitors can increase bone formation by stimulating osteoblasts.

Why is the dark web not banned, blocked and illegal?Alexander Mattick, Student of Computer Science at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (2018-present)Continue Reading

Why is the dark web not banned, blocked and illegal? Alexander Mattick, Student of Computer Science at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (2018-present) Continue Reading

Laura Baxter- For over 25 years, Laura Baxter, the American Opera Singer and Performance Expert have studied the effects of the voice and body on non-verbal communication and leadership. Through her seminars, university courses and keynote speeches, she shares her research and experience not only with actors and singers but also with business and political leaders worldwide. She helps her clients to excel both on and off the stage! Ms. Baxter uses her stage experience to help business and political leaders to overcome stress and to excel in difficult situations. She also gives keynote speeches on the international stage, in which she combines musical theater and business themes into an entertaining, inspiring and informative event for everyone. In 2011 Ms. Baxter won the German Speakersʼ Association (GSA) Newcomer Casting Award with her Keynote Speech “The Power of Presence!” Ms. Baxter is also considered to be one of Speakersʼ Excellenceʼs Top 100 Trainers in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In addition to her performance career, Laura Baxter was on the vocal faculty at the renown Duke University and has been on the faculty at the Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, since 1999, and she co-authored the book Die besten Ideen für mehr Humor (“The Best Ideas for more Humor”, GABAL Verlag Top Speakers Edition, 2013).   Listen to another #12minconvo 

Dr. Zinaida Benenson is a researcher at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, where she heads the "Human Factors in Security and Privacy" group. She and her colleagues conducted a fascinating study into why people click on what appears to be obvious email spam. In the second part of our interview, Benenson offers very practical advice on dealing with employee phishing and also discusses some of the consequences of IoT hacking. Transcript [Inside Out Security] Zinaida Benenson is a senior researcher at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Her research focuses on the human factors connections in privacy and security, and she also explores IoT security, two topics which we are also very interested in at the Inside Out Security blog. Zinaida recently completed research into phishing. If you were at last year's Black Hat Conference, you heard her discuss these results in a session called How To Make People Click On Dangerous Links Despite Their Security Awareness. So, welcome Zinaida. [Zinaida Benenson] Okay. So my group is called Human Factors In Security And Privacy. But also, as you said, we are also doing technical research on the internet of things. And mostly when we are talking about human factors, we think about how people make decisions when they are confronted with security or privacy problems, and how can we help them in making those decisions better.   [IOS] What brought you to my attention was the phishing study you presented at Black Hat, I think that was last year. And it was just so disturbing, after reading some of your conclusions and some of the results. But before we talk about them, can you describe that specific experiment you ran phishing college students using both email and Facebook? The Experiment [ZB] So in a nutshell, we sent, to over 1,000 university students, an email or a personal Facebook message from non-existing persons with popular German names. And these messages referred to a party last week and contained a link to supposed pictures from the party. In reality, this link led to an “access denied” page, but the links were individual. So we could see who clicked, and how many times they clicked. And later, we sent to them a questionnaire where we asked for reasons of their clicking or not clicking.   [IOS] Right. So basically, they were told that they would be in an experiment but they weren't told that they would be phished. [ZB] Yes. So recruiting people for, you know, cyber security experiments is always tricky because you can't tell them the real goal of the experiment — otherwise, they would be extra vigilant. But on the other hand, you can't just send to them something without recruiting them. So this is an ethical problem. It's usually solved by recruiting people for something similar. So in our case, it was a survey for... about the internet habits.   [IOS]  And after the experiment, you did tell them what the purpose was? [ZB] Yes, yes. So this is called a debriefing and this also a special part of ethical requirements. So we sent to them an email where we described the experiment and also some preliminary results, and also described why it could be dangerous to click on a link in an email or a Facebook message.   [IOS] Getting back to the actual phish content, the phish messaging content, in the paper I saw, you showed the actual template you used. And it looked — I mean, as we all get lots of spam – to my eyes and I think a lot of people's eyes, it just looked like really obvious spam. Yet, you achieved like very respectable click rates, and I think for Facebook, you got a very high rate – almost, was it 40% – of people clicking what looked like junk mail! [ZB] We had a bare IP address in the link, which should have alerted some people. I think it actually alerted some who didn't click.. But, yes, depending on the formulation of the message, we had 20% to over 50% of email users clicking. And independently on the formulation of the message, we had around 40% of users clicking.  So in all cases, it's enough, for example, to get a company infected with malware! 50% Clicked on Emails [IOS] That is surprising! But then you also learned by surveying them, the reasons they were clicking. And I was wondering if you can share some of those, some of the results you found? [ZB] So the reasons. The most important or most frequently stated reason for clicking was curiosity. People were amused that the message was not addressed to them, but they were interested in the pictures. And the next most frequently stated reason was that the message actually was plausible because people actually went to a party last week, and there were people there that they did not know. And so they decided that it's quite plausible to receive such a message.   [IOS] However, it was kind of a very generic looking message. So it's a little hard to believe, to me, that they thought it somehow related to them! [ZB] We should always consider the targeting audience.  And this was students, and students communicate informally. Quite often, people have friends and even don't know their last names. And of course, I wouldn't send … if I was sending such a phishing email to, say employees of a company, or to general population, I wouldn't formulate it like this. So our targeting actually worked quite well.   [IOS] So it was almost intentional that it looked...it was intentional that it looked informal and something that a college student might send to another one. "Hey, I saw you at a party."  Now, I forget, was the name of the person receiving the email mentioned in the content or not? It just said, "Hey"? [ZB] We had actually two waves of the experiment. In the first wave, we mentioned people's names and we got over 50% of email recipients' click. And this was very surprising for us because we actually expected that on Facebook, people would click more just because people share pictures on Facebook, and it's easier to find a person on Facebook, or they know, okay, there is a student, it is a student and say, her first name is Sabrina or whatever. And so we were absolutely surprised to learn that over 50% of email recipients clicked in the first wave of the experiment! And we thought, "Okay, why could this be?" And we decided that maybe it was because we addressed people by their first names. So it was like, "Hey, Anna." And so we decided to have the second wave of the experiment where we did not address people by their first names, but just said, "Hey." And so we got the same, or almost the same, clicking rate on Facebook. But a much lower clicking rate on email.   [IOS] And I think you had an explanation for that, if you had a theory about why that may be, why the rates were similar [for Facebook]? [ZB] Yeah. So on Facebook, it seems that it doesn't matter if people are addressed by name. Because as I said, the names of people on Facebook are very salient. So when you are looking up somebody, you can see their names. But if somebody knows my email address and knows my name, it might seem to some people …. more plausible. But this is just ... we actually didn't have any people explaining this in the messages. Also, we got a couple of people saying on email that, "Yeah, well, we didn't click that. Oh, well it didn't address me by name, so it looked like spam to me." So actually … names in emails seem to be important, even if at our university, email addresses consist of first name, point, second name, at university domain.   [IOS] I thought you also suggested that because Facebook is a community, that there's sort of a higher level of trust in Facebook than in just getting an email. Or am I misreading that? [ZB] Well, it might be. It might be like this. But we did not check for this. And actually, there are different research. So some other people did some research on how well people trust Facebook and Facebook members. And yeah, people defer quite a lot, and I think that people use Facebook, not because they particularly trust it, but because it's very convenient and very helpful for them. Curiosity and Good Moods [IOS] Okay. And so what do you make of this curiosity as a first reason for clicking? [ZB] Well, first of all, we were surprised how honestly people answered. And saying, "Oh, I was curious about pictures of unknown people and an unknown party." It's a negative personality trait, yeah? So it was very good that we had an anonymous questionnaire. Maybe it made people, you know, answering more honestly. And I think that curiosity is, in this case, it was kind of negative, a negative personality trait. But actually, if you think about it, it's a very positive personality trait. Because curiosity and interest motivate us to, for example, to study and to get a good job, and to be good in our job. And they are also directly connected to creativity and interaction.   [IOS] But on the other hand, curiosity can have some bad results. I think you also mentioned that even for those who were security aware, it didn't really make a difference. [ZB] Well, we asked people if they know — in the questionnaire —we asked them before we revealed the experiment, and asked them whether they clicked or not.  We asked them a couple of questions that are related to security awareness like, "Can one be infected by a virus if one clicks on an attachment in an email, or on a link?" And when we tried to correlate, statistically correlate, the answers to this question, to this link clicking question, with people's report on whether they clicked or not, we didn't find any correlation. So this result is preliminary, yeah. We can't say with certainty, but it seems like awareness doesn't help a lot. And again, I have a hypothesis about this, but no proof so far. [IOS] And what is that? What is your theory? [ZB] My theory is that people can't be vigilant all the time. And psychological research actually showed that interaction, creativity, and good mood are connected to increased gullibility. And on the other hand, the same line of research showed that vigilance, and suspicion, and an analytical approach to solving problems is connected to bad mood and increased effort. So if we apply this, it means that being constantly vigilant is connected to being in a bad mood, which we don't want! And which is also not good for atmosphere, for example, in a firm. And with increased effort, which means that we are just tiring. And when we...at some time, we have to relax. And if the message arrives at this time, it's quite plausible for everybody, and I mean really for everybody including me, you, and every security expert in the world, to click on something!   [IOS] It also has some sort of implications for hackers, I suppose. If they know that a company just went IPO …  or everyone got raises in the group, then you start phishing them and sort of leverage off their good moods! Be Prepared: Secondary Defenses [IOS] What would you suggest to an IT Security Group using this research in terms of improving security in the company? [ZB] Well, I would suggest firstly to, you know, to make sure that they understand the users and the humans on the whole, yeah? We security people tend to consider users as you know, as nuisance, like, ‘Okay they're always doing the wrong things.’ Actually, we as security experts should protect people! And if the employees in the company were not there, then we wouldn't have our job, yeah? So what is important is to let humans be humans … And with all their positive but also negative characteristics and something like curiosity, for example, can be both. And to turn to technical defense I would say. Because to infect a company, one click is enough, yeah? And one should just assume that it will happen because of all these things I was saying even if people are security aware. The question is, what happens after the click? And there are not many examples of, you know, companies telling how they mitigate such things. So the only one I was able to find was the [inaudiable] security incident in 2011. I don't know if you remember. They were hacked and had to change, actually to exchange all the security tokens. And they, at least they published at least a part of what happened. And yeah, that was a very tiny phishing wave that maybe reached around 10 employees and only one of them clicked. So they got infected, but they noticed, they say that they noticed it quite quickly because of other security measures. I would say that that's what one should actually expect and that's what is the best outcome one can hope for. Yes, if one notices in time.   [IOS] I agree that IT should be aware that this will happen and that the hackers and some will get in and you should have some secondary defenses. But I was also wondering, does it also suggest that perhaps some people should not have access to email? I mean … does this lead to a test  … .and if some employees are just, you know, a little too curious, you just think, "You know what, maybe we take the email away from you for a while?" [ZB] Well you know, you can. I mean a company can try this if they can sustain the business consequences of this, yeah? So if people don't have emails then maybe some business processes will become less efficient and also employees might become disgruntled which is also not good. I would suggest that ... I think that it's not going to work! And at least it's not a good trade off. It might work but it's not a good trade off because, you know, all this for...If you implement a security measure that, that impairs business processes, it makes people dissatisfied! Then you have to count in the consequences. [IOS] I agree that IT should be aware that this will happen and that the hackers will get in and you should have some secondary defenses. But I was also wondering, does it also suggest that perhaps some people should not have access to email? I mean ... does this lead to a test where   if some employees are just, you know, a little too curious you just say, ‘You know what? Maybe we take the e-mail away from you for a while.’ [ZB] Well, you know, you can. I mean, a company can try this if they can, you know, if they can sustain the business costs and consequences of this, yeah? So if people don't have emails then maybe some business processes will become less efficient and yeah, and also employees might become disgruntled which is also not good. I would suggest that, I think that it's not going to work! And at least it's not a good trade off. It might work, but it's not a good trade off because, you know, all this for...if you implement security measure that impairs our business processes and makes people dissatisfied, then you have to count in the consequences.   [IOS] I'm agreeing with you that the best defense I think is awareness really and then taking other steps. I wanted to ask you one or two more questions. One of them is about what they call whale phishing or spear phishing perhaps is another way to say it, which is just going after not just any employee, but usually high-level executives. And at least from some anecdotes I've heard, executives are also prone to clicking on spam just like anybody else, but your research also suggests that some of the more context you provide, the more likely you'll get these executives to click. [ZB] Okay, so if you get more context of course you can make the email more plausible, and of course if you are targeting a particular person, there is a lot of possibilities to get information about them, and especially if it's somebody well-known like an executive of a company. And I think that there are also some personality traits of executives that might make them more likely to click.  Because, you know, they didn't get their positions by being especially cautious and not taking risk and saying all safety first! I think that executives maybe even more risk-taking than, you know, average employee and more sure of themselves, and this might get a problem even more difficult. So it also may be even to not like being told by anybody about any kind of their behavior. IoT and Inferred Preferences [IOS] I have one more question since it's so interesting that you also do research on IoT privacy and security. Over in the EU, we know that the new General Data Protection Regulation, which I guess is going to take place in another year, actually  has a very broad definition of what sensitive data is. I'm wondering if you can just talk about some of the implications of this? [ZB] Well, of course IoT data is everything's that is collected in our environment about us can be used to infer our preferences with quite a good precision. So… for example we had an experiment where we were able just from room climate data, so from temperature enter the age of humidity to determine if a person is, you know, staying or sitting. And this kind of data of course can be used to target messages even more precisely So for example if you can infer a person's mood and if you suppose if you buy from the psychological research that people in good moods are more likely to click, you might try to target people in better mood, yeah? Through the IOT data available to you or through IOT data available to you through the company that you hacked. Yeah …  point is, you know, that targeting already works very well. Yeah, you just need to know the name of the person and maybe the company this person is dealing with!   [IOS] Zinaida this was a very fascinating conversation and really has a lot of implications for how IT security goes about their job. So I'd like to thank you for joining us on this podcast! [ZB] You're welcome. Thank you for inviting me!

Zinaida Benenson is a researcher at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, where she heads the "Human Factors in Security and Privacy" group. She and her colleagues conducted a fascinating study into why people click on what appears to be obvious email spam. In the first part of our interview with Benenson, we discusses how she collected her results, and why curiosity seems to override security concerns when dealing with phish mail. Transcript [Inside Out Security] Zinaida Benenson is a senior researcher at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Her research focuses on the human factors connections in privacy and security, and she also explores IoT security, two topics which we are also very interested in at the Inside Out Security blog. Zinaida recently completed research into phishing. If you were at last year's Black Hat Conference, you heard her discuss these results in a session called How To Make People Click On Dangerous Links Despite Their Security Awareness. So, welcome Zinaida. [Zinaida Benenson] Okay. So my group is called Human Factors In Security And Privacy. But also, as you said, we are also doing technical research on the internet of things. And mostly when we are talking about human factors, we think about how people make decisions when they are confronted with security or privacy problems, and how can we help them in making those decisions better.   [IOS] What brought you to my attention was the phishing study you presented at Black Hat, I think that was last year. And it was just so disturbing, after reading some of your conclusions and some of the results. But before we talk about them, can you describe that specific experiment you ran phishing college students using both email and Facebook? The Experiment [ZB] So in a nutshell, we sent, to over 1,000 university students, an email or a personal Facebook message from non-existing persons with popular German names. And these messages referred to a party last week and contained a link to supposed pictures from the party. In reality, this link led to an “access denied” page, but the links were individual. So we could see who clicked, and how many times they clicked. And later, we sent to them a questionnaire where we asked for reasons of their clicking or not clicking.   [IOS] Right. So basically, they were told that they would be in an experiment but they weren't told that they would be phished. [ZB] Yes. So recruiting people for, you know, cyber security experiments is always tricky because you can't tell them the real goal of the experiment — otherwise, they would be extra vigilant. But on the other hand, you can't just send to them something without recruiting them. So this is an ethical problem. It's usually solved by recruiting people for something similar. So in our case, it was a survey for... about the internet habits.   [IOS]  And after the experiment, you did tell them what the purpose was? [ZB] Yes, yes. So this is called a debriefing and this also a special part of ethical requirements. So we sent to them an email where we described the experiment and also some preliminary results, and also described why it could be dangerous to click on a link in an email or a Facebook message.   [IOS] Getting back to the actual phish content, the phish messaging content, in the paper I saw, you showed the actual template you used. And it looked — I mean, as we all get lots of spam – to my eyes and I think a lot of people's eyes, it just looked like really obvious spam. Yet, you achieved like very respectable click rates, and I think for Facebook, you got a very high rate – almost, was it 40% – of people clicking what looked like junk mail! [ZB] We had a bare IP address in the link, which should have alerted some people. I think it actually alerted some who didn't click.. But, yes, depending on the formulation of the message, we had 20% to over 50% of email users clicking. And independently on the formulation of the message, we had around 40% of users clicking.  So in all cases, it's enough, for example, to get a company infected with malware! 50% Clicked on Emails [IOS] That is surprising! But then you also learned by surveying them, the reasons they were clicking. And I was wondering if you can share some of those, some of the results you found? [ZB] So the reasons. The most important or most frequently stated reason for clicking was curiosity. People were amused that the message was not addressed to them, but they were interested in the pictures. And the next most frequently stated reason was that the message actually was plausible because people actually went to a party last week, and there were people there that they did not know. And so they decided that it's quite plausible to receive such a message.   [IOS] However, it was kind of a very generic looking message. So it's a little hard to believe, to me, that they thought it somehow related to them! [ZB] We should always consider the targeting audience.  And this was students, and students communicate informally. Quite often, people have friends and even don't know their last names. And of course, I wouldn't send … if I was sending such a phishing email to, say employees of a company, or to general population, I wouldn't formulate it like this. So our targeting actually worked quite well.   [IOS] So it was almost intentional that it looked...it was intentional that it looked informal and something that a college student might send to another one. "Hey, I saw you at a party."  Now, I forget, was the name of the person receiving the email mentioned in the content or not? It just said, "Hey"? [ZB] We had actually two waves of the experiment. In the first wave, we mentioned people's names and we got over 50% of email recipients' click. And this was very surprising for us because we actually expected that on Facebook, people would click more just because people share pictures on Facebook, and it's easier to find a person on Facebook, or they know, okay, there is a student, it is a student and say, her first name is Sabrina or whatever. And so we were absolutely surprised to learn that over 50% of email recipients clicked in the first wave of the experiment! And we thought, "Okay, why could this be?" And we decided that maybe it was because we addressed people by their first names. So it was like, "Hey, Anna." And so we decided to have the second wave of the experiment where we did not address people by their first names, but just said, "Hey." And so we got the same, or almost the same, clicking rate on Facebook. But a much lower clicking rate on email.   [IOS] And I think you had an explanation for that, if you had a theory about why that may be, why the rates were similar [for Facebook]? [ZB] Yeah. So on Facebook, it seems that it doesn't matter if people are addressed by name. Because as I said, the names of people on Facebook are very salient. So when you are looking up somebody, you can see their names. But if somebody knows my email address and knows my name, it might seem to some people …. more plausible. But this is just ... we actually didn't have any people explaining this in the messages. Also, we got a couple of people saying on email that, "Yeah, well, we didn't click that. Oh, well it didn't address me by name, so it looked like spam to me." So actually … names in emails seem to be important, even if at our university, email addresses consist of first name, point, second name, at university domain.   [IOS] I thought you also suggested that because Facebook is a community, that there's sort of a higher level of trust in Facebook than in just getting an email. Or am I misreading that? [ZB] Well, it might be. It might be like this. But we did not check for this. And actually, there are different research. So some other people did some research on how well people trust Facebook and Facebook members. And yeah, people defer quite a lot, and I think that people use Facebook, not because they particularly trust it, but because it's very convenient and very helpful for them. Curiosity and Good Moods [IOS] Okay. And so what do you make of this curiosity as a first reason for clicking? [ZB] Well, first of all, we were surprised how honestly people answered. And saying, "Oh, I was curious about pictures of unknown people and an unknown party." It's a negative personality trait, yeah? So it was very good that we had an anonymous questionnaire. Maybe it made people, you know, answering more honestly. And I think that curiosity is, in this case, it was kind of negative, a negative personality trait. But actually, if you think about it, it's a very positive personality trait. Because curiosity and interest motivate us to, for example, to study and to get a good job, and to be good in our job. And they are also directly connected to creativity and interaction.   [IOS] But on the other hand, curiosity can have some bad results. I think you also mentioned that even for those who were security aware, it didn't really make a difference. [ZB] Well, we asked people if they know — in the questionnaire —we asked them before we revealed the experiment, and asked them whether they clicked or not.  We asked them a couple of questions that are related to security awareness like, "Can one be infected by a virus if one clicks on an attachment in an email, or on a link?" And when we tried to correlate, statistically correlate, the answers to this question, to this link clicking question, with people's report on whether they clicked or not, we didn't find any correlation. So this result is preliminary, yeah. We can't say with certainty, but it seems like awareness doesn't help a lot. And again, I have a hypothesis about this, but no proof so far. [IOS] And what is that? What is your theory? [ZB] My theory is that people can't be vigilant all the time. And psychological research actually showed that interaction, creativity, and good mood are connected to increased gullibility. And on the other hand, the same line of research showed that vigilance, and suspicion, and an analytical approach to solving problems is connected to bad mood and increased effort. So if we apply this, it means that being constantly vigilant is connected to being in a bad mood, which we don't want! And which is also not good for atmosphere, for example, in a firm. And with increased effort, which means that we are just tiring. And when we...at some time, we have to relax. And if the message arrives at this time, it's quite plausible for everybody, and I mean really for everybody including me, you, and every security expert in the world, to click on something!   [IOS] It also has some sort of implications for hackers, I suppose. If they know that a company just went IPO …  or everyone got raises in the group, then you start phishing them and sort of leverage off their good moods! Be Prepared: Secondary Defenses [IOS] What would you suggest to an IT Security Group using this research in terms of improving security in the company? [ZB] Well, I would suggest firstly to, you know, to make sure that they understand the users and the humans on the whole, yeah? We security people tend to consider users as you know, as nuisance, like, ‘Okay they're always doing the wrong things.’ Actually, we as security experts should protect people! And if the employees in the company were not there, then we wouldn't have our job, yeah? So what is important is to let humans be humans … And with all their positive but also negative characteristics and something like curiosity, for example, can be both. And to turn to technical defense I would say. Because to infect a company, one click is enough, yeah? And one should just assume that it will happen because of all these things I was saying even if people are security aware. The question is, what happens after the click? And there are not many examples of, you know, companies telling how they mitigate such things. So the only one I was able to find was the [inaudiable] security incident in 2011. I don't know if you remember. They were hacked and had to change, actually to exchange all the security tokens. And they, at least they published at least a part of what happened. And yeah, that was a very tiny phishing wave that maybe reached around 10 employees and only one of them clicked. So they got infected, but they noticed, they say that they noticed it quite quickly because of other security measures. I would say that that's what one should actually expect and that's what is the best outcome one can hope for. Yes, if one notices in time.   [IOS] I agree that IT should be aware that this will happen and that the hackers and some will get in and you should have some secondary defenses. But I was also wondering, does it also suggest that perhaps some people should not have access to email? I mean … does this lead to a test  … .and if some employees are just, you know, a little too curious, you just think, "You know what, maybe we take the email away from you for a while?" [ZB] Well you know, you can. I mean a company can try this if they can sustain the business consequences of this, yeah? So if people don't have emails then maybe some business processes will become less efficient and also employees might become disgruntled which is also not good. I would suggest that ... I think that it's not going to work! And at least it's not a good trade off. It might work but it's not a good trade off because, you know, all this for...If you implement a security measure that, that impairs business processes, it makes people dissatisfied! Then you have to count in the consequences. [IOS] I agree that IT should be aware that this will happen and that the hackers will get in and you should have some secondary defenses. But I was also wondering, does it also suggest that perhaps some people should not have access to email? I mean ... does this lead to a test where   if some employees are just, you know, a little too curious you just say, ‘You know what? Maybe we take the e-mail away from you for a while.’ [ZB] Well, you know, you can. I mean, a company can try this if they can, you know, if they can sustain the business costs and consequences of this, yeah? So if people don't have emails then maybe some business processes will become less efficient and yeah, and also employees might become disgruntled which is also not good. I would suggest that, I think that it's not going to work! And at least it's not a good trade off. It might work, but it's not a good trade off because, you know, all this for...if you implement security measure that impairs our business processes and makes people dissatisfied, then you have to count in the consequences.   [IOS] I'm agreeing with you that the best defense I think is awareness really and then taking other steps. I wanted to ask you one or two more questions. One of them is about what they call whale phishing or spear phishing perhaps is another way to say it, which is just going after not just any employee, but usually high-level executives. And at least from some anecdotes I've heard, executives are also prone to clicking on spam just like anybody else, but your research also suggests that some of the more context you provide, the more likely you'll get these executives to click. [ZB] Okay, so if you get more context of course you can make the email more plausible, and of course if you are targeting a particular person, there is a lot of possibilities to get information about them, and especially if it's somebody well-known like an executive of a company. And I think that there are also some personality traits of executives that might make them more likely to click.  Because, you know, they didn't get their positions by being especially cautious and not taking risk and saying all safety first! I think that executives maybe even more risk-taking than, you know, average employee and more sure of themselves, and this might get a problem even more difficult. So it also may be even to not like being told by anybody about any kind of their behavior. IoT and Inferred Preferences [IOS] I have one more question since it's so interesting that you also do research on IoT privacy and security. Over in the EU, we know that the new General Data Protection Regulation, which I guess is going to take place in another year, actually  has a very broad definition of what sensitive data is. I'm wondering if you can just talk about some of the implications of this? [ZB] Well, of course IoT data is everything's that is collected in our environment about us can be used to infer our preferences with quite a good precision. So… for example we had an experiment where we were able just from room climate data, so from temperature enter the age of humidity to determine if a person is, you know, staying or sitting. And this kind of data of course can be used to target messages even more precisely So for example if you can infer a person's mood and if you suppose if you buy from the psychological research that people in good moods are more likely to click, you might try to target people in better mood, yeah? Through the IOT data available to you or through IOT data available to you through the company that you hacked. Yeah …  point is, you know, that targeting already works very well. Yeah, you just need to know the name of the person and maybe the company this person is dealing with!   [IOS] Zinaida this was a very fascinating conversation and really has a lot of implications for how IT security goes about their job. So I'd like to thank you for joining us on this podcast! [ZB] You're welcome. Thank you for inviting me!

O intelectual americano H. L. Mencken foi preciso ao afirmar que os políticos “saberão que, em uma democracia, os votos são conseguidos não ao se falar coisas sensatas, mas sim ao se falar besteiras; e todos eles dedicar-se-ão a essa faina com vigoroso entusiasmo”. E é assim que, ao “impressionar e encantar os intelectualmente destituídos”, são eleitos e conquistam poder – com as consequências de praxe. Mas, afinal, o que fazer para acabar com o poder dos políticos, dos lobistas e dos grupos de interesse? Esse é o tema deste Podcast do Instituto Mises Brasil com Antony Mueller, doutor pela Universidade de Erlangen-Nuremberg, Alemanha (FAU) e professor de economia na Universidade Federal de Sergipe. Nesta conversa, Mueller apresenta como solução prática para lidar com o problema a aplicação da Demarquia, sistema criado por F. Hayek, como alternativa à democracia, que é um obstáculo às liberdades e sempre degenera em cleptocracia. *** A música da vinheta de abertura é a “Abertura Solene 1812”, do compositor russo Piotr Ilitch Tchaikovsky, executada pelo guitarrista Eric Calderone. *** Todos os Podcasts podem ser baixados e ouvidos pelo site, pela iTunes Store e pelo YouTube. E se você gostou deste e/ou dos podcasts anteriores, visite o nosso espaço na iTunes Store, faça a avaliação e deixe um comentário.

Recent studies have identified mucosal healing as a key prognostic parameter in the management of inflammatory bowel diseases. In this podcast Mairi McLean, education editor for Gut, talks to Marcus Neurath from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and Simon Travis from John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, about their systematic review of the clinical studies on mucosal healing. They discuss the effects of anti-inflammatory or immunosuppressive drugs, and the implications of mucosal healing for subsequent clinical management in patients with IBD.See also:Mucosal healing in inflammatory bowel diseases: a systematic review (http://tinyurl.com/bk7tglj)