Inquiring Minds

Flying the Unfriendly Skies

How did America’s airports become so congested, and what can be done to alleviate the backups? Mason researchers believe they have a solution, and if the powers that be are listening, passengers may be able to say “buh-bye” to what has become terminal chaos.

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New Software Identifies Network Vulnerabilities

Hear the word “cauldron” and it probably conjures up images of bubbling elixirs and Halloween parties. But it will soon be synonymous with computer network security. That’s because researchers at Mason’s Center for Secure Information Systems have developed new software meant to reduce the damage caused by cyber attacks and computer hackers.

How does it work? CAULDRON analyzes all of the vulnerable spots in a given network, showing all possible attack paths. Users can then proactively take steps to correct the areas that need improvement to strengthen cyber security. CAULDRON also happens to be a big time-saver for organizations that, in the past, have had to rely on labor-intensive, complex, and sometimes ineffective ways to troubleshoot network security. Now they only need to run the automated software.

And big players are taking notice of CAULDRON’s importance—such as the Federal Aviation Administration. Explains Sushil Jajodia, university professor and director of the center, “They recently installed CAULDRON in their Cyber Security Incident Response Center, and it is helping them prioritize security problems, reveal unseen attack paths, and protect across large numbers of attack paths.”

The software can help not only sectors such as defense and aviation, but also areas such as banking or education.

Pregnant Women Are Targets of Discrimination

Despite federal legislation, pregnant women may still face judgment and obstacles to getting jobs. Such were the findings of  two studies by Mason’s Eden King, Rice University’s Michelle Hebl, and their collaborators. The research results, which explored different interpersonal reactions that pregnant women face, were published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. 

In one study, 81 adults evaluated a pregnant or  nonpregnant applicant for traditionally male or female jobs. Those who provided evaluations for jobs traditionally held by men were more judgmental toward the pregnant women than when evaluating the same applicant for positions traditionally held by women.

In another study, research assistants entered 110 retail stores and followed a script in which they either applied for a job or browsed for a gift, sometimes wearing a prosthesis that made them appear pregnant. The study found that the women who appeared pregnant and asked about job opportunities faced significantly more hostility than when the same women did not appear pregnant and inquired about jobs.

The study also showed that pregnant women who stayed within more traditional bounds—shopping—experienced overtly patronizing behavior.

“This research highlights the challenges facing working mothers and suggests that current policies might not be as effective as hoped,” says King.

Children Perform Tasks Better When They Talk to Themselves

In a recent study published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Adam Winsler, professor of psychology at Mason, showed that five-year-olds do better on motor tasks when they talk to themselves out loud either spontaneously or when told to do so by an adult.

The study also showed that children with behavioral problems, such as attention deficit hyper-activity disorder, tend to talk to themselves more often than other children.

“Given that kids with behavior concerns need more direction and control from adults, teachers may unnecessarily ask children to be quiet in classrooms out of fear that such speech coming from difficult-to-manage kids will lead to problem behavior,” says Winsler. “Yet nondisruptive private speech would actually help these children as they develop.”

In another study, published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disabilities, Winsler looked at private speech in children with autism and found that high-functioning children with autism talk to themselves often and in the same ways that children without autism do. Talking aloud also improved their performance on tasks. Winsler says that although children with autism have problems with their external social speech, this study shows that their private speech is not impaired.

New Blood Flow Simulation System to Diagnose Brain Aneurysms

Researchers at Mason’s Center for Computational Fluid Dynamics unveiled a first-of-its-kind patient-specific blood flow simulation system that uses software components developed at Mason. The cutting-edge technology has the potential to improve the diagnosis and treatment of brain aneurysms—saclike bulges in the blood vessels—which affect millions of Americans each year.

Did You Know...

Robert Hazen

Robert Hazen, Robinson Professor of Earth Sciences, had a new mineral called “hazenite,” a phosphate biomineral found in Mono Lake, California, named in his honor.

A multidisciplinary team comprising Mason computational scientists, Inova Fairfax Hospital neuroradiologists, and Philips Medical System engineers collaborated on the system, in which an X-ray scanner takes pictures of the patient’s brain arteries during an intra-arterial injection of an opaque dye. The images are then transferred to a workstation that creates a three-dimensional image of the blood vessels.

“Using these images, physicians can construct patient-specific computational models of the blood flow in the aneurysms and visualize the pressure differences, blood speed, and wall shear stress (frictional forces on the aneurysm wall that are believed to influence the biology and structure of the arterial wall),” says Juan R. Cebral, associate professor in Mason’s Department of Computational and Data Sciences and principal investigator of the project. The system can also be used to predict blood flow alterations produced by various interventions, such as bypass surgery and the deployment of stents or coils in the blood vessels.