3,196 research outputs found
Sharing more than friendship - nasal colonization with coagulase-positive staphylococci (CPS) and co-habitation aspects of dogs and their owners
Background Since the relationship between dogs and their owners has changed,
and dogs moved from being working dogs to family members in post-industrial
countries, we hypothesized that zoonotic transmission of opportunistic
pathogens like coagulase positive staphylococci (CPS) is likely between dogs
and their owners. Methodology/Principal Findings CPS- nasal carriage,
different aspects of human-to-dog relationship as well as potential
interspecies transmission risk factors were investigated by offering nasal
swabs and a questionnaire to dog owners (108) and their dogs (108) at a dog
show in 2009. S. aureus was found in swabs of 20 (18.5%) humans and two dogs
(1.8%), and spa types which correspond to well known human S. aureus lineages
dominated (e.g. CC45, CC30 and CC22). Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) of the
two canine strains revealed ST72 and ST2065 (single locus variant of ST34).
Fifteen dogs (13.9%) and six owners (5.6%) harboured S. pseudintermedius,
including one mecA-positive human isolate (MRSP). Pulsed field gel
electrophoresis (PFGE) revealed that one dog/owner pair harboured
indistinguishable S. pseudintermedius- isolates of ST33. Ten (48%) of the 21
S. pseudintermedius-isolates showed resistance towards more than one
antimicrobial class. 88.9% of the dog owners reported to allow at least one
dog into the house, 68.5% allow the dog(s) to rest on the sofa, 39.8% allow
their dogs to come onto the bed, 93.5% let them lick their hands and 52.8% let
them lick their face. Bivariate analysis of putative risk factors revealed
that dog owners who keep more than two dogs have a significantly higher chance
of being colonized with S. pseudintermedius than those who keep 1–2 dogs
(p<0.05). Conclusions/Recommendations In conclusion, CPS transmission between
dog owners and their dogs is possible. Further investigation regarding
interspecies transmission and the diverse adaptive pathways influencing the
epidemiology of CPS (including MRSA and MRSP) in different hosts is needed
Sharing More than Friendship — Nasal Colonization with Coagulase-Positive Staphylococci (CPS) and Co-Habitation Aspects of Dogs and Their Owners
BACKGROUND: Since the relationship between dogs and their owners has changed, and dogs moved from being working dogs to family members in post-industrial countries, we hypothesized that zoonotic transmission of opportunistic pathogens like coagulase positive staphylococci (CPS) is likely between dogs and their owners. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: CPS- nasal carriage, different aspects of human-to-dog relationship as well as potential interspecies transmission risk factors were investigated by offering nasal swabs and a questionnaire to dog owners (108) and their dogs (108) at a dog show in 2009. S. aureus was found in swabs of 20 (18.5%) humans and two dogs (1.8%), and spa types which correspond to well known human S. aureus lineages dominated (e.g. CC45, CC30 and CC22). Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) of the two canine strains revealed ST72 and ST2065 (single locus variant of ST34). Fifteen dogs (13.9%) and six owners (5.6%) harboured S. pseudintermedius, including one mecA-positive human isolate (MRSP). Pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) revealed that one dog/owner pair harboured indistinguishable S. pseudintermedius- isolates of ST33. Ten (48%) of the 21 S. pseudintermedius-isolates showed resistance towards more than one antimicrobial class. 88.9% of the dog owners reported to allow at least one dog into the house, 68.5% allow the dog(s) to rest on the sofa, 39.8% allow their dogs to come onto the bed, 93.5% let them lick their hands and 52.8% let them lick their face. Bivariate analysis of putative risk factors revealed that dog owners who keep more than two dogs have a significantly higher chance of being colonized with S. pseudintermedius than those who keep 1-2 dogs (p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS: In conclusion, CPS transmission between dog owners and their dogs is possible. Further investigation regarding interspecies transmission and the diverse adaptive pathways influencing the epidemiology of CPS (including MRSA and MRSP) in different hosts is needed
Distributed Performance Measurement and Usability Assessment of the Tor Anonymization Network
While the Internet increasingly permeates everyday life of individuals around
the world, it becomes crucial to prevent unauthorized collection and abuse of
personalized information. Internet anonymization software such as Tor is an
important instrument to protect online privacy. However, due to the
performance overhead caused by Tor, many Internet users refrain from using it.
This causes a negative impact on the overall privacy provided by Tor, since it
depends on the size of the user community and availability of shared
resources. Detailed measurements about the performance of Tor are crucial for
solving this issue. This paper presents comparative experiments on Tor latency
and throughput for surfing to 500 popular websites from several locations
around the world during the period of 28 days. Furthermore, we compare these
measurements to critical latency thresholds gathered from web usability
research, including our own user studies. Our results indicate that without
massive future optimizations of Tor performance, it is unlikely that a larger
part of Internet users would adopt it for everyday usage. This leads to fewer
resources available to the Tor community than theoretically possible, and
increases the exposure of privacy-concerned individuals. Furthermore, this
could lead to an adoption barrier of similar privacy-enhancing technologies
for a Future Internet. View Full-Tex
Control What You Include! Server-Side Protection against Third Party Web Tracking
Third party tracking is the practice by which third parties recognize users
accross different websites as they browse the web. Recent studies show that 90%
of websites contain third party content that is tracking its users across the
web. Website developers often need to include third party content in order to
provide basic functionality. However, when a developer includes a third party
content, she cannot know whether the third party contains tracking mechanisms.
If a website developer wants to protect her users from being tracked, the only
solution is to exclude any third-party content, thus trading functionality for
privacy. We describe and implement a privacy-preserving web architecture that
gives website developers a control over third party tracking: developers are
able to include functionally useful third party content, the same time ensuring
that the end users are not tracked by the third parties
Technical Privacy Metrics: a Systematic Survey
The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed versionThe goal of privacy metrics is to measure the degree of privacy enjoyed by users in a system and the amount of protection offered by privacy-enhancing technologies. In this way, privacy metrics contribute to improving user privacy in the digital world. The diversity and complexity of privacy metrics in the literature makes an informed choice of metrics challenging. As a result, instead of using existing metrics, new metrics are proposed frequently, and privacy studies are often incomparable. In this survey we alleviate these problems by structuring the landscape of privacy metrics. To this end, we explain and discuss a selection of over eighty privacy metrics and introduce categorizations based on the aspect of privacy they measure, their required inputs, and the type of data that needs protection. In addition, we present a method on how to choose privacy metrics based on nine questions that help identify the right privacy metrics for a given scenario, and highlight topics where additional work on privacy metrics is needed. Our survey spans multiple privacy domains and can be understood as a general framework for privacy measurement
PrivacyScore: Improving Privacy and Security via Crowd-Sourced Benchmarks of Websites
Website owners make conscious and unconscious decisions that affect their
users, potentially exposing them to privacy and security risks in the process.
In this paper we introduce PrivacyScore, an automated website scanning portal
that allows anyone to benchmark security and privacy features of multiple
websites. In contrast to existing projects, the checks implemented in
PrivacyScore cover a wider range of potential privacy and security issues.
Furthermore, users can control the ranking and analysis methodology. Therefore,
PrivacyScore can also be used by data protection authorities to perform
regularly scheduled compliance checks. In the long term we hope that the
transparency resulting from the published benchmarks creates an incentive for
website owners to improve their sites. The public availability of a first
version of PrivacyScore was announced at the ENISA Annual Privacy Forum in June
2017.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures. A german version of this paper discussing the
legal aspects of this system is available at arXiv:1705.0888
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