Can betalactam antibiotics be used to treat tuberculosis Essay

Can betalactam antibiotics be used to treat tuberculosis - Essay Example They are expected to work best when administered in the early phase of treatment, and should typically be used in conjunction with beta-lactamase inhibitors. This review addresses the feasibility of utilizing members of the beta-lactam group of antibiotics in the management of tuberculosis. The first part provides an introduction into the beta-lactam antibiotics as a group, their distinguishing features, their classification, their spectrum of activity, and their mechanism of antibacterial action. Next follows a brief overview of tuberculosis as a disease which poses a peculiar challenge with drug therapy. The literature review section features an extensive overview of current research publications addressing various angles of the question of utilizing beta-lactam antibiotics in tuberculosis treatment, including results from in vitro as well as in vivo testing, clinical trials, and comments from reviewers. Finally, an appraisal of the available information is done, drawing out answers to the questions of why the beta-lactams have not been used in tuberculosis treatment, what are the issues involved, how they may be used to treat tubercul osis, what conclusions may be drawn from the literature information available, and the place of combination therapy in facilitating the utility of the beta-lactams in tuberculosis therapy. Beta-lactam antibiotics refer to a broad class of antimicrobials which possess in their chemical structure a beta-lactam ring moeity. The beta-lactam moiety (also known as a penam or azetidin-2-one) is a heterocyclic four-membered ring containing a nitrogen atom and a carbonyl group, and is essential for their antibiotic activity (Nayler, 1971). Beta-lactam antibiotics include the penicillins, cephalosporins, carbapenems, monobactams and the beta-lactamase inhibitors, which together constitute the most widely prescribed group of antibiotics in existence. They are favoured in clinical practice over other

Interpersonal Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Interpersonal Paper - Essay Example We have been friends for seven months now. Ronnie is in his second year of study. He lives with his parents several blocks away from by place and after school we usually take a bus home together. Currently the relationship between Ronnie and I is in the integration stage. The integration stage in a relationship is the fourth stage where those involved in the relationship start to get closer than before. Our friendship is at this stage because we are getting close as friends and getting to know each other better. We spent a lot of time together both at school and during our free times playing video games. There are several communication behaviors that indicate that our friendship with Ronnie is in the integration stage. An example is the fact that every time I am through with my classes and ready to board the bus home, I have to call Ronnie to inquire where he is so that we can go home together. The second communication behavior that indicates that the relationship is in the integration stage is the way Ronnie laughs at my jokes. I seem to find Ronnie’s joke interesting and he also seem to find my jokes interesting (Devito 7). We keep laughing every time we are togethe r since Ronnie is the funny type. In some cases Ronnie sneaks into our lecture hall when the instructor has not yet arrived, hits me from the back and then escapes. This is something that he can two several times in a week and it shows that we are integrating and getting closer as friends. My experience in this relationship can be best analyzed using the social penetration theory, uncertainty reduction theory and the interpersonal deception perspective. The uncertainty reduction theory has been chosen to demonstrate my experience during the initial stages of the friendship (Alder, Rosenfeld, and Proctor 23). The social penetration theory on the other hand will clearly help show how we have come closer with Ronnie in terms of what we share and what we keep away from each other over

The Security Requirements And Challenges Of Manets Information Technology Essay

The Security Requirements And Challenges Of Manets Information Technology Essay The major security requirements of MANETs are secure linking, secure routing and secure data transmission or secure data packet forwarding. Both proactive and reactive approaches are needed. The disadvantages of the mobile design, like: limited cpu, memory and battery, may let MANETs face more security chanllegnes, which include both active and passive attacks, the problems of dynamic topology, routing protocol and mobile environment, specially the packets missing, data changed and node failures will make users lose trust of it, most of the secure routing protocols are designed with certain known attacks in mind. When an unknown attack is encountered, these protocols may collapse, but achieving higher security usually requires more computation on each mobile node. 2. Explain  ¿Ã‚ ½-TESLA and compare it with TESLA? TESLA means Time Efficient Stream Loss-tolerant Authentication,  ¿Ã‚ ½-TESLA is a micro version of TESLA, or we can consider it as an adoption of TESLA for WSNs. Althugh TESLA and  ¿Ã‚ ½-TESLA are multicast stream authenticaiton protocols, both have different ways in key discloure and authentication.  ¿Ã‚ ½-TESLA is used in authentication of message broadcasts from Base Station(BS), from nodes (through BS), and also to authenticate route update broadcasts. BS works as the key distribution center. ( Taken From Chapter 3, Course slides.) This means  ¿Ã‚ ½-TESLA allows the receivers broadcast authenticated data due to node to node key agreement. Receiver do not share a key with other receivers. But TESLA sender uses digital signature for the intial packet authenticaiton and broadcasts it over the whole WSN, the receiver knows the key disclosing schedule, when the key is disclosed, receiver will check its correctness and authenticates the buffered packets. 3. Gather information about the key Management protocols in MANETs. And explain it briefly. In MANETs, Key management is actually considered as the base for every cryptographic system, its a combination of cryptographic algorithms and on-demand dynamic routing protocols, because the networking security in many cases dependent on proper key management, the tranditional centralized approach in key management does not work out here, therefore, several methods are usually applied in the key management system in MANETs, such as: Secret Sharing Methods, Distributed CA Method, Error-code based methods and Byzantine Resilient Method. Even so, KM system still faces the many Challenges like: Dynamic topology and environment, Lack of trust, Node failures, Bounded computational and operational power, Connectivity problems and Node autonomity, etc because you dont know if any one entity is dishonest, that entity may be exposed. 4. Explain SEAD, SAR and SPAAR routing protocols in more details. SEAD is a secure table- driven routing protocol based on the existing DSDV(Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector) routing protocol. It uses a one-way-hash function and asymmetric cryptography operations. Although SEAD defends against several types of DoS ( Denial-of-Service attacks), it cannot prevent the wormhole attack.To avoid long time running routing loops and to defend against the replay attack, SEAD uses destination numbers to to ensure that the information originates from the correct node. Authentication is also used in SEAD. Each node uses a specific authentic element from its one-way hash chain in each routing update that it sends about itself. The source must be authenticated using some kind of broadcast authentication mechanism, such as: TESLA. Apart from the hash functions used, SEAD doesnt use average settling time for sending triggered updates.This disadvantage makes SEAD face the chanellege of clock synchronization in order to function properly. SAR stands for Security-Aware Ad Hoc Routing, which applied for on-demand secure routing protocols. When a packet is sent, it need be assigned a trust value and certain security attributes, like: time stamp, sequence number, authentication, integrity, SAR introduces a negociable metrics to discover secure routes that are embedded into RREQ packets. And this packet can be processed or forwarded only if the node can provide the required security. The problem of SAR is you dont know whether or not the value assigned is true and the invisible node attack can not detected and treated in SAR. SPAAR (Secure Position Aided Ad hoc Routing) is a position based system and uses the location information to increase the security and performance. All nodes in SPAAR are required to know their own locations, for eaxmple, GPS system tells you where you are. SPAAR is also designed to provide authentication, non-repudiation, confidentiality and integrity for the security environment. 5. Explain Secure Message Transmission Protocol ( SMT) in MANETs. The major job of SMT (Secure Message Transmission) protocol is to secure the data transmission or data forwarding on already discovered routes no matter whether or not these routes have malicious nodes. SMT protocol does not deal with route discovery. It only demands a secure relationship between the source and destination by allowing one node know the public key of the other node. No cryptographic operation is needed between the nodes because the communication is usually done over the node disjoint paths, every piece of message is authenticated and verified through a Message Authentication Code. The destination doesn ¿Ã‚ ½t need all the pieces of a message to understand it. It can reconstruct the message when enough pieces have been received. This implies that even if there are malicious nodes in a few paths that drop the message or if there are unavailable routes, the message can still be received. If the destination didn ¿Ã‚ ½t receive enough pieces to construct the message, the source will send out the remaining pieces over a different set of paths. Otherwise the source continues with the next message transmission. 6. Give numberical examples for EL Gamal-TC (4,6) and RSA-TC(4,6). An investigate whether Elliptic Curve Crypto(ECC) could be used for TC? Elliptic Curve Crypto(ECC) could be used for TC, I got this idea from the article ECC Based Threshold Cryptography for Secure Data Forwarding and Secure Key Exchange in MANET written by Levent Ertaul and Weimin Lu, 2005, The two authors say in this way: We combine Elliptic Curve Cryptography and Threshold Cryptosystem to securely deliver messages in n shares. As long as the destination receives at least k shares, it can recover the original message. We explore seven ECC mechanisms, El-Gamal, Massey-Omura, Diffie-Hellman, Menezes-Vanstone, Koyama-Maurer -Okamoto-Vanstone, Ertaul, and Demytko. For secure data forwarding, we consider both splitting plaintext before encryption, and splitting ciphertext after encryption. Also we suggest to exchange keys between a pair of mobile nodes using Elliptic Curve Cryptography Diffie-Hellman. We did performance comparison of ECC and RSA to show ECC is more efficient than RSA. 7. Hacking technique and counter Measures Please find the usage and the required counter measures to avoid effects of the below commands. This commands fall into a catergory called Discovering Wireless Networks. a. INSSIDER Actually inSSIDer is a replacement for NetStumbler, it is a free Wi-Fi network scanner for Windows Vista and windows XP, it can inspect your WLAN and surrounding networks to troubleshoot competing access points, it works with internal Wi-Fi radio, Wi-Fi network information, such as: SSID, MAC, Access point vendor, data rate, signal strength, security, etc. Graph signal strength over time, is also can show how Wifi networks overlap and provides an open source code service since the Apache License, Version 2.0, it also can support GPS and export to Netstumbler(*.ns1) files, because of the open source service, the intruders may take advantages of it to attack your personal information. The best way to avoid inssider command is to give it no permission to access WLAN. I consider IEEE802.1x and IEEE802.11i protocols should be applied, and the specific mechanisms, like: WEP, TKIP, CCMP, MIC, Counter-MOde-CBC-MAC Mode, WPA and WPA2 should be got involved. b. Visit following web site: http://renderlab.net/projects/WPA-tables And give me the brief desription of this site. After visiting this website, a Church of Wifi WPA-PSK Rainbow Tables displays, this page is to give a little more insight into the methodology and logic behind concieving and building the CoWF WPA-PSK Rainbow Tables, actually they are lookup tables. From my point of view, this website tries to show you the result of the project that is done at renderlab, this project is testing how much possibilities the password will be cracked. On WPA-tables, WPA-PSK was vulnerable to brute force attack, cryptographists use the tools like Aircrack and coWPAtty to take advantage of this weakness and provided a way to test keys against dictionaries. They found that in fact the cracking process is very slow . Each passphrase is hashed 4096 times with SHA-1 and 256 bits of the output is the resulting hash. This is then compared to the hash generated in the initial key exchange. A lot of computing power is required for this. If the SSID and the SSID length is seeded into the passphrase hash, the passphrase of password will be hashed differently on a network with the SSID of linksys than it will on a network with the SSID of default. For the War driving, attacking a series of access points to connect to a server behind it, each ones security was stronger than the previous. They also found the application of the Time-Memory trade-off is particularly useful in password cracking and cryptography. How to prevent it from attack? They think its impossible to create a lookup table for all possible keys. Because the seeding of the algorithm with the SSID and SSID length, they have to compute all possible keys against all possible SSIDs, the limlited storage space doesnt allow them to do calculation. Instead they quickly check WPA-PSK networks against known english words and known passwords quickly, while still leaving the option open for brute forcing the rest of the keyspace. Selecting the most effecient dictionary and SSIDs computed became the focus.Size was also a concern. Even if they want to break the password, they still do not want the key size beyond the storage capacity of most users. They list some common passwords from Websters dictionary and compute them by sorting all passphrases in the range 8 bits and 64 bits, both max and min passphrases are taken off. The result shows 52% of SSID are at Wigle database of 5 million access points and on the top 1000 lists. This means at least 2.7 million access points are known. This renderlab project found a way to speed up WPA-PSK cracking, but it does not mean that it has been broken. Those experts also use coWPAtty and other similar tools to test the other dumb passphrases. The test result shows the minimum number of characters for a WPA-PSK passphrase is 8 and the maximum is 63. In reality, very few users actually use more than about 20 characters, in most cases, people choose known words and phrases, likely to be in a dictionary. So, to get decent protection from WPA-PSK, you should use a very long, very random, alphanumeric string longer than 20 characters, or to protect yourself further, particularly against the WPA-PSK hashtables, you should use a SSID not on the top 1000 list because this will force the attacker to compute thier own list, rather than use one of the CoWF tables.

Rita M. Gross Feminism and Religion Essay -- Rita Gross Feminist Pape

In her book Feminism and Religion, Rita M. Gross provides readers with an introduction to the need for, and benefits of, androgynous scholarship in the field of religious studies. Gross strives to make readers aware of the dangers of androcentric, Eurocentric scholarship. Moreover, she advances the claim that, â€Å"properly pursued, the field of religious studies involves study of all major religions found in human history† and an equal representation of both men’s and women’s religious experiences (Gross 1-4). Because androcentrism has permeated both religion and scholarship for the greater part of history, Gross strives to correct and augment this perspective with illuminating examples of what she deems â€Å"proper† religious scholarship – scholarship that includes the experiences of women. Ultimately, Gross believes that â€Å"feminist scholarship requires the study of the actual lives and thoughts of women† (Gross 81) and that â₠¬Å"the diversity within feminist theology and spirituality is its strength† (Gross 49). The anthology Her Voice, Her Faith: Women Speak on World Religions (Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young, Editors) is a glowing example of the type of religious scholarship Gross, and others like her, fought so tenaciously to bring into being. In the introduction to Her Voice, Her Faith, Young expresses a desire akin to Gross’: When both the male and female voice become of equal strength†¦ we may begin to see for the first time three-dimensional religious worlds — fully of the two genders (and multiple cultures) but also of the human dimension that transcends their particulars†¦ This goal, of stereophonic sound, I hope, will inform the religious voices of the future (Sharma 9). Sharma and Young deftly assembled the... ...of the â€Å"stereophonic sound† Young, Gross and other feminists yearn to hear, â€Å"informing the religious voices of the future† (Sharma 9). Bibliography Gross, Rita M. Feminism and Religion. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. Heschel, Susannah. â€Å"Judaism.† Her Voice, Her Faith: Women Speak on World Religions. Ed. Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young. Boulder: Westview Press, 2003. 145-167. Narayanan, Vasudha. â€Å"Hinduism.† Her Voice, Her Faith: Women Speak on World Religions. Ed. Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young. Boulder: Westview Press, 2003. 11-57. Sharma, Arvind and Katherine K. Young, Ed. Her Voice, Her Faith: Women Speak on World Religions. Boulder: Westview Press, 2003. Wong, Eva. â€Å"Taoism.† Her Voice, Her Faith: Women Speak on World Religions. Ed. Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young. Boulder: Westview Press, 2003. 119-143.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker Summary, Main Idea, Conflict, Point of View, Setting and Tone

â€Å"The Color Purple† by Alice Walker is a series a letters by and to the main character, Celie. The book begins with fourteen year old Celie writing to God about her father raping her and taking away her children. After Celie's mother dies, Celie focuses on protecting her sister, Nettie, from her father's sexual advances and encourages her to run away. A widower called â€Å"Mr. __† wants to marry Nettie, but their father rejects him. Eventually Celie marries Mr. __, who later is called Albert, and her living conditions do not improve at all.Celie becomes infatuated with Shug Avery, a blues singer who is her husband's mistress. Years later, Celie helps nurse Shug back to health. Eventually, they fall in love with each other. Meanwhile, Nettie has become a missionary in Africa and has written many letters to Celie, all of which Albert has hidden from her. Celie acquires the letters and discovers that her own two children are alive and living with a missionary couple w ith whom Nettie works. She also discovers that her father is actually her stepfather and not a blood relative. Nettie's letters help Celie grow stronger and more self-assured.That confidence soon turns to fury and discontent with God over the abuse she has endured throughout her life. Celie begins writing to Nettie instead of God, when she starts becoming â€Å"blasphemous† (192). Eventually, Celie leaves Albert and moves to Memphis with Shug. There, Celie starts a business making pants. After inheriting the house from her mother and real father, Celie returns home. She visits Albert, who is a very changed man, and they develop a relationship of respect. Nettie, still in Africa, marries the now-widowed Reverend who had adopted her sister's children.At the novel's end, the two sisters are reunited. The main idea of the novel suggests that the struggle of finding one’s voice, self-discovery and relationship with God is a complicated journey that can take a lifetime. Thro ughout the Novel, the main character, Celie goes through a complete transformation. At the beginning Celie is timid, submissive and passive. Celie does or says nothing to fight back against her stepfather’s abuse. Later in life, when her husband abuses her, she reacts in a similarly passive manner. She works all day and night while he does nothing.Celie can also be described as voiceless. So much so, that she can’t bring herself to pray out loud, so she writes to God instead. Celie’s letters to God are her only outlet and means of self-expression. As a young girl, Celie is constantly subjected to abuse and told she is ugly. The only way to ensure her survival is by making herself silent and invisible. As the novel progresses, Celie morphs into a strong, independent, outspoken woman. She leaves her abusive husband, confronts her abusive father and comes to terms with her relationship with God and herself.She begins to wear and make pants, and eventually starts he r own business. The main conflict of the novel is and internal conflict between Celie’s thoughts and beliefs and the â€Å"God-fearing† teachings of life and gender-based roles she lived by. This conflict is resolved towards the end of the story, when she returns home, alone, but happy and content with her life. Celie gained the ability to synthesize her thoughts and feeling into a voice that is fully her own. She forged her own life as an independent business woman despite a male-dominated and racially prejudiced society.She fought her way through life, and questioned everything she had been taught. Celie and Shug's deep conversations and reading her sister’s stories about African religion and belief help Celie evolve her views on God. For example, she was taught God to be an old, white, bearded male, everything she is not. She learns to believe God is one who encompasses everything on Earth, creates thing for us to enjoy and lives within her. â€Å"The Color Purple† is written in the first person narrative. The reader enters Celie’s mind and hears Celie's voice in a diary or letter format.Even when reading Nettie’s letters, it is through Celie’s eyes. First person narrator is when we enter the mind of one speaker or narrator who tells about things that he or she has seen, done, spoke, heard, thought and also learned about in other ways. The first example of this narrative, â€Å"You better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill you mammy† (1). This statement was obviously only spoken between the narrator and her abuser. â€Å"I am fourteen years old. I have always been a good girl† (1), is a second example of the novel’s point of view.This type of narrative brings the reader close to the quality and rhythm of life that Celie experiences. It allows the reader to intimately get to know Celie. Through Celie’s dialect and poor grammar, the reader becomes personally engaged in C elie’s experiences and struggles. Almost like reading the unedited thoughts that go through a person’s mind. Though The Color Purple is a historical novel, it never refers to any factual events. Because of this, we presumably follow Celie through thirty or forty years of her life, from the age of fourteen up until her hair is gray.The setting of the novel is primarily rural Georgia in the early twentieth century. As a poor black woman in the rural south, Celie’s bad treatment is largely ignored which was the norm in this time period. Celie leaves Georgia to live in Memphis with Shug. There, Celie lives a life of luxury and empowerment. Living a poor, downtrodden life in the South, Celie had never stopped to consider her African heritage until Nettie sends letters describing the West African village she’s living in. Nettie describes her first experiences in Africa as â€Å"magical. Celie returns to Georgia, taking with her what she has learned from Memphi s and Africa. Celie now has her own house. A big beautiful house specially built by an architect from Atlanta, with tiles transported from New York, in which she can live life as she chooses. Celie lives most of her life very isolated and ignorant, until she starts to learn more about herself and the world from people who enter into her life from very different settings than her own. There are many language devices exhibited in Walker’s novel.The color purple for example, is symbolized to represent all the good things in the world that God creates for men and women to enjoy. Celie associates the color with royalty and longs for a purple dress. Shug says that she believes that it â€Å"pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. † (196). As Celie does learn to love life, she decorates her bedroom in her own home as all purple and red. Secondly, the use of a deep Southern dialect is highly essential in understanding the novel. The author’s use of non-standard dialect allows the reader a feel for the story’s cultural and geographical location. â€Å"Now that my eyes opening, I feels like a fool. Next to any scrub of a brush in my yard, Mr. __’s evil sort of shrink†¦Shug say, you have to get man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a’tall† (197). This gives each letter confessional feel to it. Irony is exhibited when Sofia is imprisoned for â€Å"sassing the mayor’s wife† (84) after she asked Sofia to be her maid. Eventually she is released from prison only to become the one thing she absolutely refused to become, the mayor’s maid.The overall tone of Alice Walker’s novel is serious and honest. The author conveys an honest portrayal of the utter hardship and tragedy. The author allows the reader to take a serious look at life through letters to God. The conflict between Celie and her religious and political views aids in establishin g the novel’s tone. It is an internal conflict and because it deals with being honest with oneself, the tone is honest as well. The tone also coincides with the central idea in which the struggle of finding one’s voice, self-discovery and relationship with God is a complicated and serious journey.

Ethical Challenges Essay

Almost any field of profession has its corresponding hardships that an individual involved in it has to face. Nevertheless, there are occupations that pose a more challenging situation due to the fact that it deals with the life or personal affairs of other people. This kind of adage is greatly applicable to the area of psychology most specifically counseling. The counselors are responsible in aiding people who are having difficulties in various areas of their lives, may it be in terms of their personal growth, relationships with other people, and many others (Hawkins et. al, n. d. ). Being the case, counselors have their own set of ethical dilemmas in doing their responsibilities especially in terms of separating their personal and professional relationships with their clients as well as giving sound judgments in times of crucial situations. These aforementioned roles could be exemplified in this case of a counselor that works in a rural setting. Counseling in this type of area entails that almost all people know each other and that they usually go and socialize to the same places. As such, being a counselor it could not be prevented that I have to socialize with my clients to some community events. This could mean ethical dilemmas such as: confidentiality, privacy and the overall boundary between a counselor and his or her client. This is why I should establish a firm distinction between my personal and professional life. I should see to it that whenever I mingle with my clients at community events I would not discuss any of the sessions that we had especially the situation of my other patients. Moreover, it is better that I do not get to attach with any of my clients to prevent any biases in their cases but I will still make sure that I establish good relationship with them. Another case involves a counselor that works in a local high school. One of her clients called her at a very distraught state and informed her that she was pregnant before and she committed abortion. She has not told anyone about it aside from the counselor. If I were the counselor, I will tell my client that it would be better that we talk the problem over face-to-face rather than in the phone. I could fetch her, as she is not in a proper state to travel. Then, we could talk at the clinic regarding her problem. I will also make sure that utmost confidentiality is observed since this is a very serious and delicate matter. I would leave the decision to her as to when she would inform her family and her boyfriend about that particular incident. However, I would also make sure that I inform her about the limitations to confidentiality (Hawkins et. al, n. d. ). In doing so, I could aide in deciding for the appropriate thing to do. The ethically appropriate action is to aide her through counseling and other means to guide her in making the right choices but I will never meddle with her decision or impose anything upon her. The role of the counselor is to help and guide the patient to make her burden easier but never to take control of the situation. In these two cases, it is clearly observable that counselors face ethical challenges in their profession. They even encounter more incidents like these because their responsibilities deal with other people’s life especially with regards to their emotional state. As such it is important that counselors adhere to ethical standards in order to help them in making sound and appropriate decisions. Reference Cornier, & Hackney. (2008). Hawkins, A. , Cormier, S. , & Bernard, J. (n. d. ). Common Challenges for Beginning Counselors.