Austin Community College

Security professionals are now part of the risk analysis and business team. Businesses and organizations must protect the valuable information they use in conducting their core functions. Loss or compromise of that information can damage the organization up to and including bankruptcy. A survey and projections report by a cybersecurity firm estimated that 75% of companies based in the US are prone to cyber-attacks. Also, the revenue loss by vulnerable companies due to cyber-attacks may exceed 452 billion dollars in 2024. Most businesspeople are not well versed in cybersecurity and protecting information, but they understand profits, loss, return on investment, loss prevention, and the math behind them. Often, security is seen as a loss center, making it difficult for security personnel to justify taking measures to safeguard information or information-carrying equipment and networks. Encryption is one example of such vital but ethereal costs. Convincing the business side of operations to implement security requires speaking their language. This paper suggests a way to present encryption in a provably cost-effective manner related to return on investment. Simultaneously, an outline of a strategically adaptive approach to security is introduced.

Black men in the United States face disproportionately high rates of firearm violence, leading to death and disability more often than males of other racial/ethnic groups. Managing life after such injuries involves significant challenges in daily activities, employment, and pain management. Despite the critical impacts of firearm-related disabilities on Black men, their experiences remain largely unexplored by disability scholars, public health researchers, and practitioners. This oversight is alarming, as Black men with firearm-acquired disabilities encounter considerable structural barriers to achieving health and social objectives. Our team focuses on: (a) the experiences of Black men with firearm-acquired disabilities, (b) the lack of literature on their lived realities, and (c) new pathways for disability and public health research. Recognizing and addressing the invisibility of violently injured Black men in research is crucial for advancing equity, social justice, and representation across society. We argue that disability justice is a vital starting point for acknowledging the social experiences of gunshot wound survivors. More research is needed to understand the experiences of these young Black men who have been largely ignored in public health and disability narratives. It is essential for clinicians and policymakers to grasp how this neglect affects conventional views on health, accessibility, and well-being, underscoring the need for a more inclusive and equitable approach.

This article uses Austin Community College (ACC) as a case study to illustrate how community colleges can build institutional capacity to provide dual enrollment. First, the manuscript synthesizes background literature on the growth of dual enrollment and implications for community colleges. Then, drawing on interviews from relevant stakeholders and institutional data, the authors describe how ACC reorganized internally to streamline dual enrollment structures and processes. In turn the college was able to strengthen partnerships with the school districts, manage growing enrollments, improve the student experience, and prioritize equity.

The apocalyptic vision of God commanding his prophet to serve the leaders of Judah the cup of his divine wrath in Jeremiah 25.15–17 and 27–28 has sparked heated theological debate. Multiple interpretations have been proposed based on intra-biblical analyses. This imagery, however, has never been compared to extra-biblical material. For example, a 7th-century BCE Assyrian incantation prayer for the patient’s social reintegration attributes his vomiting and staggering to a poisoned drink and diagnoses his curse as the result of his gods’ wrath. The depiction of the cup of God’s wrath in Jeremiah 25 may have drawn upon the Mesopotamian anti-witchcraft tradition to portray Yahweh as an exorcist who counter-curses his people. By compelling the leaders and the people of Judah to consume the same poisonous elixir, presented symbolically as the poisonous speech they had recklessly spread throughout the land, Yahweh causes his people to disgorge their internal toxicity.

Watermarking is a method of identifying and controlling ownership of distributed media. It is also extended to documents with suggestions about how steganography can be applied to documents that are reproduced via xeroxing and electronic means. In this paper, we show how polymorphic random number generators can continuously morph watermark locations so that they are untraceable to the human eye or ear and cannot be replaced without being detected. As part of the paper, we introduce a new method for randomization based on wave action and common waveforms found in electrical engineering, applying that technique to the placement of watermarking data. These techniques are then applied to securing data and the ownership of documents.

Policy research institutes in the United States play an important role in the creation of evidence for evidence‐based policymaking. This is the case with respect to their advocacy for the gathering and broad dissemination of “Big Data” and in the publication of policy analysis in the academic literature using these data. But they play a much more significant role, via non‐refereed working papers, in predicting the possible behavioral and distributional consequences of currently proposed policies being considered by the executive and legislative branches of government. Historically, however, policy research institutes, both inside and outside the Beltway, have also played a less understood role. This role is the nurturing of those mostly academic‐based economists who, as members of the Council of Economic Advisers, eventually end up advising presidents of the United States and their staff on the state of economic knowledge regarding the economic problems these policymakers are called to solve via evidence‐based policymaking.

With the ever increasing demand of higher security standards for data encryption, algorithms need to be scalable and efficient while maintaining a high key space to prevent brute force attacks. Although the current encryption standards are decent for the current era of computing power, many will be rendered useless as quantum computing becomes more relevant. Even now, the current encryption standard of AES-256 with CBC is vulnerable to attacks such as the key recovery attack. This paper covers the basic foundations of polymorphic encryptions, the mathematical principles behind them, and a novel post-quantum polymorphic encryption algorithm.

Learning outcomes are an essential element in curriculum development because they describe what students should be able to do by the end of a course or program, and they provide a roadmap for designing assessments. This paper describes the development of competency-based learning outcomes for a one-semester undergraduate introductory human physiology course. Key elements in the development process included decisions about terminology, eponyms, use of the word "normal" and similar considerations for inclusivity. The outcomes are keyed to related physiology core concepts and to process skills that can be taught along with the content. The learning outcomes have been published under a Creative Commons license by the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society (HAPS) and are available free of charge on the HAPS website.

Modes have long been used to help ciphers remain secure under cryptanalysis. The goal of modes is to randomize the cipher so that for any two identical input blocks the cipher text output is likely to be different. This apparent morphing of the mapping between input and output is generally thought to make decryption more difficult. However, this may not be true. Side channel attacks against some modes have proven that they carry sufficient information to be able to return the original message without having to also break the cipher. Of the identified and approved modes, one quarter have been broken (return the key for the cipher) and this paper presents a verifiable break for another mode. Further, a concept for breaking a fourth mode is also presented. If more modes are broken, then the concept of modes may be proved ineffective, and abandoning modes may be indicated.

As community college students often come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, report greater financial challenges, and experience higher cohort default rates on student loans compared to peers attending four-year institutions, it is important to understand how community college students develop a sense of financial wellness. Moreover, research has also found that community college students, many of them students of Color, rely heavily on family to persist toward graduation. As a result, this study analyzes qualitative data from 14 community college students who reported on whether they viewed their family as financial education resources and what specific lessons they learned from their family to improve their financial wellness. Results suggest many community college students may not have family with extensive experience in and knowledge of financial sectors (e.g., banking, finance, investment) and education concepts (e.g., savings accounts, building credit, budgeting), and therefore, have little financial education to impart. In addition, many community college students’ financial education was limited to knowledge of saving, with students rarely reporting their family imparting any education about many other finance concepts. Finally, community college students witnessed reverse role modeling when it came to money management from their parents, often teaching these students what not to do with their finances. Implications for community college research, policy, and practice are addressed.

The objective of this study is to assess women's vulnerability to becoming involved with the legal system as it relates to their exposure, sensitivity, and resiliency to specific experiences associated with incarceration before, during, and after their confinement using the vulnerability framework. We sampled 12 women who self‐identified as Latina mothers from local jail annexes, probation department offices, and substance use treatment centers in South Central Texas. We conducted a qualitative, secondary analysis. Three overarching themes emerged: (1) “[The abuse] just kept happening;” (2) “[Incarceration] was an excessive interference;” and (3) “I wasn't there back then [for my children], but now I can be [there for them] in some way.” We also identified subthemes. More research and culturally tailored programming are needed to bridge services across legal system sites (jails, prisons, probation) that interact with this population of women to provide supportive services. Public Contribution We would like to recognize community stakeholders who work in the local jail, probation, and medication treatment centers who helped with the distribution of fliers and participant recruitment along with the women who shared their experiences following incarceration for the original study's data used in this secondary analysis.

The main objective of this study was to analyze drought-induced agricultural livelihood vulnerability through a comprehensive assessment of agro-meteorological, biophysical, and socioeconomic variables in North Wollo. The study area has four main livelihood zones, namely, Abay Tekeze watershed (ATW), North Wollo east plain (NWEP), North Wollo highland belg (NWHB), and Northeast woina-dega mixed cereal (NEWMC). A total of 274 sample households were selected from all the livelihood zones by considering wealth rankings. A Survey questionnaire, supplemented with focus group discussions and key informant interviews, was used to collect the data. Principal component analysis was applied to determine the indicators and assign weights. Consequently, from 66 indicators 32 were prioritized to measure the exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity of the system. Both the livelihood vulnerability framework (LVI) and vulnerability sourcebook approach (LVIVSBA) were applied to assess livelihood vulnerability. The results revealed that the entire study area was characterized by higher exposure (0.653) and higher sensitivity (0.632) scores to drought impacts, while it exhibited a lower adaptive capacity (0.37). In both approaches, NWHB obtained the highest vulnerability score (0.681/0.715) followed by NWEP (0.634/0.619), whilst ATW revealed the lowest (0.583/0.555) in LVI and LVIVSBA, respectively. Similarly, the poor (0.671/0.670), medium (0.589/0.593), and better-off (0.554/0.537) were relatively ordered from the highest to the lowest. In conclusion, differential livelihood vulnerability does exist across the livelihood zones and wealth groups. The major sub-components which worsen household’s vulnerability were access to irrigation, food self-sufficiency problem, scarcity of livestock fodder, poor access to basic infrastructure, lower livelihood diversification, inadequate economic resources, low educational status, lack of training and support. Hence, the study calls for decision-makers and development partners to develop context-specific planning and interventions that strengthen the farmers’ adaptive capacity and minimize their exposure and sensitivity to the issue.

Objective: There are approximately 231,000 women detained daily within the nation's jail and prison systems with women of color making up nearly half of those experiencing incarceration. The purpose of this scoping review was to synthesize the literature on the reproductive autonomy of Black women influenced by incarceration, using the three tenets of reproductive justice. Methods: We searched PubMed, CINAHL, SocINDEX, and PsycINFO for research related to reproductive justice written in English and published in the United States from 1980 to 2022. A review of 440 article titles and abstracts yielded 32 articles for full-text review; nine articles met inclusion. Results: Eight addressed Tenet 1; five mentioned Tenet 2; none addressed Tenet 3. Recognition of the influence of incarceration on the reproductive autonomy of Black women is limited. Conclusion: The findings from this review suggest a need to address (a) reproductive choice, (b) support goals, and (c) support of justice-involved Black women.

The purpose of this study was to better understand the perceptions and experiences of students in a learning community that incorporated culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) into its curriculum. The field site of this instrumental case study was a community college learning community situated in a Hispanic Serving Institution in Texas. Data from interviews, focus groups, classroom observations, learning community events, and campus observations were collected and analyzed. Findings revealed a specific set of foci by students. While students discussed culturally relevant assignments, they did not highlight curricular elements usually associated with CSP. Instead, students emphasized familial aspects of the learning community, perceptions of validation by instructors, and aspects of instructors’ feedback. This study uncovers student participants’ perspectives regarding instruction, learning communities, and their college experiences.

This essay offers an original interpretation and defense of the doctrine of flux, as it is presented in Plato’s Theaetetus. The methodology of the paper’s analysis is in the style of rational reconstruction, and it is highly analytic in scope, in the sense that I will focus on the text itself, and only on certain parts of it too, while ignoring the rest of Plato’s extensive corpus, and without worrying about whether, how, and to what extent the interpretation of the view coheres well with the other elements of the secret doctrine view discussed in the dialogue, as well. In the first part of the essay, I’ll offer my interpretation of the doctrine. Then, in the second part of the essay, I’ll examine two potential criticisms of the doctrine, including Socrates’s infamous linguistic paradox, and show how my interpretation of Heraclitean flux metaphysics is able to circumvent both.