Monthly Archives: March 2018

Business, Government, Politics, Scotland, Society

Digital Economy: Many small firms not able to cope with cyber attack

SCOTLAND

ONE in five businesses in Scotland is unprepared for dealing with a cyber-attack, raising fears that the economy is at risk unless action is taken.

A Scottish Government survey of more than 3,000 firms has revealed 19 per cent of them are “not equipped” or “poorly equipped” for dealing with an attack.

The research indicates that the private sector is at risk if hackers deploy viruses to disrupt the Scottish economy, which could also threaten the personal information of firms’ customers.

. See also Digital interfacing must be embraced by public sector

The survey comes just months after a malware attack wreaked havoc on NHS Scotland as hackers deployed a virus that sealed off vitally important files and demanded payment to unlock them.

The findings have sparked calls for more help from the Scottish Government to ensure firms are better prepared to deal with such incidents.

In 2015, the Scottish Government set a target for Scotland to become “a world leading nation in cyber resilience” by 2020. The UK Government has previously blamed Russia for major cyber attacks and the growing tensions between the two countries have increased fears of another major strike.

Separate research found a quarter of firms are struggling to grow because of the threat of a cyber-attack.

A spokesperson for the Federation of Small Business in Scotland, said: “We know there is a growing digital threat out there for Scottish firms and that is why the FSB offers services to members on this and have made the case to government north and south of the Border for extra help for small businesses.

“Like traditional crime, firms need to keep themselves safe and take sensible precautions. There have been high-profile cases where crooks have got the better of businesses and firms large and small need to protect against that threat.”

The Scottish Government surveyed 3,258 firms as part of a Digital Economy report. It asked them to what extent they felt equipped to protect against and deal with cyber-security threats.

Nine per cent said they were “not equipped at all” to deal with a cyber-attack and 10 per cent were “poorly equipped”. A further 47 per cent described themselves as “somewhat equipped”, while only 30 per cent rated themselves as “fully equipped”.

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Arts, History, Philosophy

(Philosophy) Essential Thinkers: Plato

c.427 – 347BC

Plato seeks to understand and discover the ideal form of society. This is propagated through his concept of The Republic. But this notion has had scholars divided.

STUDENT of Socrates and founder of the Academy, the first reported institution of higher education – no philosopher has had a greater or wider-ranging influence in the history of philosophy than Plato. Alfred North Whitehead once said, with much justification, that the safest characterisation of Western philosophy is that of a series of footnotes to Plato. There is no topic of philosophical concern for which one cannot find some view in the corpus of his work.

Accordingly, it can be difficult to characterise such a vast and comprehensive canon of thought. However, much of Plato’s work revolves around his conception of a realm of ideal forms. The world of experience is illusory, Plato tells us, since only that which is unchanging and eternal is real, an idea he borrowed from Parmenides. There must, then, Plato asserts, be a realm of eternal unchanging forms that are the blueprints of the ephemeral phenomena we encounter through sense experience.

. More Quantum Leaps: Plato

According to Plato, though there are many individual horses, cats and dogs, they are all made in the image of the one universal form of ‘the horse’, ‘the cat’, ‘the dog’ and so on. Likewise, just as there as many men, all men are made in the image of the universal ‘form of man’. The influence of this idea on later Christian thought, in which man is made in the image of God, is only one of many ways in which Plato had a direct influence on Christian theology.

Plato’s Theory of Forms, however, was not restricted to material objects. He also thought there were ideal forms of universal or abstract concepts, such as beauty, justice, truth and mathematical concepts such as number and class. Indeed, it is in mathematics that Plato’s influence is still felt strongly today, both Frege and Gödel endorsing Platonism in this respect.

The Theory of Forms also underlies Plato’s most contentious and best-known work, The Republic. In a quest to understand the nature and value of justice, Plato offers a vision of a utopian society led by an elite class of guardians who are trained from birth for the task of ruling. The rest of society is divided into soldiers and the common people. In the republic, the ideal citizen is one who understands how best they can use their talents to the benefit of the whole of society, and bends unerringly to that task.

There is little thought of personal freedom or individual rights in Plato’s republic, for everything is tightly controlled by the guardians for the good of the state as a whole. This has led some, notably Bertrand Russell, to accuse Plato of endorsing an elitist and totalitarian regime under the guise of communist or socialist principles. Whether Russell and others who level this criticism are right or not is itself a subject of great philosophical debate. But it is important to understand Plato’s reasons for organising society in this way.

The Republic is an attempt, in line with his theory of forms, to discover the ideal form of society. Plato thinks there must be one ideal way to organise society, of which all actual societies are mere imperfect copies, since they do not promote the good of all. Such a society, Plato believes, would be stronger than its neighbours and unconquerable by its enemies, a thought very much in Greek minds given the frequent warring between Athens, Sparta and the other Hellenistic city-states. But more importantly, such a society would be just to all its citizens, giving and taking from each that which is their due, with each working for the benefit of the whole. Whether Plato’s republic is an ideal, or even viable society, has had scholars divided ever since.

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Medical, Research, Science

Research suggests HRT can boost brain health

HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY

TAKING hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to cope with the menopause may benefit the brain and stave off memory loss, new research suggests.

A seven-year study has found women who take HRT experience fewer age-related changes to the brain.

Detailed scans suggest HRT may help preserve the structure of the prefrontal cortex, that part of the brain linked to memory and thinking.

The US researchers also found women taking the treatment had lower accumulations of amyloid plaques, toxic proteins linked to Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr Kejal Kantarci, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, said: “We found one form of menopausal hormone therapy taken soon after menopause may preserve brain structure in the portion of the brain responsible for memory and thinking skills.

“It may also reduce the development of amyloid plaques that can… lead to memory loss.”

The menopause, which commonly strikes women in their late 40s and early 50s, can cause symptoms including hot flushes, headaches and night sweats. HRT tackles these by providing oestrogen as the body stops producing it.

But the recently released research suggests that the treatment may also benefit the brain.

Experts believe this is because oestrogen can protect the connections in the brain when natural hormone production stops, this protection disappears. Replacing it artificially could restore protection.

The findings are significant because many women go without HRT after studies in the early 2000s raised fears of side effects. The new paper, published in the medical journal Neurology, reports on research involving 75 healthy women with an average age of 53 who had gone through the menopause within the previous three years.

Twenty women were given HRT pills, 22 received HRT patches and 33 received placebo pills or patches that contained no hormones. The women were kept on the treatment for four years, then tracked for a further three years after the therapy ended. They had MRI brain scans every few months.

The researchers found that in those on HRT patches, there was less shrinkage in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex – a part of the brain that assists with memory, thinking, planning and reasoning. There were also lower accumulations of amyloid plaques among these women.

Those on HRT pills did not experience as much benefit while taking the therapy, but when they stopped a difference started to appear.

There was no difference between HRT treatment and placebo in thinking and memory tests, but the scans suggest that HRT influenced the structure of the brain and, that over a longer period, a difference might be seen.

Dr Sara Imarisio, of Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “This small study found no link between HRT and memory and thinking, but women who had taken the hormone estradiol via skin patches showed some signs of better brain health.

“More studies are needed to piece together the effect of hormones on the brain and how different forms of hormone therapy might impact brain health in later life.”

. Appendage 

 

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