Blinding Techniques in Randomized Controlled Trials of Laser Therapy: An Overview and Possible Solution

Low-level laser therapy has evidence accumulating about its effectiveness in a variety of medical conditions. We reviewed 51 double blind randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of laser treatment. Analysis revealed 58% of trials showed benefit of laser over placebo. However, less than 5% of the trials had addressed beam disguise or allocation concealment in the laser machines used. Many of the trials used blinding methods that rely on staff cooperation and are therefore open to interference or bias. This indicates significant deficiencies in laser trial methodology. We report the development and preliminary testing of a novel laser machine that can blind both patient and operator to treatment allocation without staff participation. The new laser machine combines sealed preset and non-bypassable randomization codes, decoy lights and sound, and a conical perspex tip to overcome laser diode glow detection

Detector-Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution

Recently, a quantum key distribution (QKD) scheme based on entanglement swapping, called measurement-device-independent QKD (mdiQKD), was proposed to bypass all detector side-channel attacks. While mdiQKD is conceptually elegant and offers a supreme level of security, the experimental complexity is challenging for practical systems. For instance, it requires interference between two widely separated independent single-photon sources, and the rates are dependent on detecting two photons - one from each source. Here we experimentally demonstrate a QKD scheme that removes the need for a two-photon system and instead uses the idea of a two-qubit single-photon (TQSP) to significantly simplify the implementation and improve the efficiency of mdiQKD in several aspects.Comment: 5 pages + 3 figure

Using blind analysis for software engineering experiments

Context: In recent years there has been growing concern about conflicting experimental results in empirical software engineering. This has been paralleled by awareness of how bias can impact research results. Objective: To explore the practicalities of blind analysis of experimental results to reduce bias. Method : We apply blind analysis to a real software engineering experiment that compares three feature weighting approaches with a na ̈ıve benchmark (sample mean) to the Finnish software effort data set. We use this experiment as an example to explore blind analysis as a method to reduce researcher bias. Results: Our experience shows that blinding can be a relatively straightforward procedure. We also highlight various statistical analysis decisions which ought not be guided by the hunt for statistical significance and show that results can be inverted merely through a seemingly inconsequential statistical nicety (i.e., the degree of trimming). Conclusion: Whilst there are minor challenges and some limits to the degree of blinding possible, blind analysis is a very practical and easy to implement method that supports more objective analysis of experimental results. Therefore we argue that blind analysis should be the norm for analysing software engineering experiments

CIDPro: Custom Instructions for Dynamic Program Diversification

Timing side-channel attacks pose a major threat to embedded systems due to their ease of accessibility. We propose CIDPro, a framework that relies on dynamic program diversification to mitigate timing side-channel leakage. The proposed framework integrates the widely used LLVM compiler infrastructure and the increasingly popular RISC-V FPGA soft-processor. The compiler automatically generates custom instructions in the security critical segments of the program, and the instructions execute on the RISC-V custom co-processor to produce diversified timing characteristics on each execution instance. CIDPro has been implemented on the Zynq7000 XC7Z020 FPGA device to study the performance overhead and security tradeoffs. Experimental results show that our solution can achieve 80% and 86% timing side-channel capacity reduction for two benchmarks with an acceptable performance overhead compared to existing solutions. In addition, the proposed method incurs only a negligible hardware area overhead of 1% slices of the entire RISC-V system

Diagnostic Validity of the Physical Examination Maneuvers for Hip Pathology: A Systematic Review

Background: There is a number of physical examination maneuvers used to diagnose hip pathology but the diagnostic validity of these maneuvers is unclear. We conducted a systematic review to evaluate current knowledge regarding the diagnostic validity of the physical examination maneuvers for hip pathology. Methods: We conducted a literature search of the electronic databases MEDLINE, CINAHL, EMBASE, Cochrane, and SPORTDiscus. The methodological quality of each eligible study was assessed and classified according to Sackett and Haynes’ phases of diagnostic research, whereby Phase I and II studies represent proof of concept and Phase III studies are applicable to a clinical setting. Results: Eight studies were classified as phase III diagnostic studies, four of which were methodologically rigorous. In diagnosing labral tears of the hip, neither the impingement test (sensitivity=0.51-0.78, specificity=0.10-0.89) nor FABER test (sensitivity=0.60, specificity=0.75) demonstrated evidence to support the use of these tests clinically. In diagnosing gluteal tendon pathology the Trendelenburg test demonstrated some evidence for use in a clinical setting (sensitivity=0.23-0.73, specificity=0.77-0.94). Conclusion: The diagnostic validity of clinical tests to diagnose the presence or absence of hip pathology remains uncertain. The majority of studies supporting validity of these tests lacked methodological rigor, and thus cannot provide evidence to support the use of a test in clinical practice

CULTURED HUMAN BRAIN TUMOR CELLS DO NOT RESPOND TO JOHREI TREATMENT

Patients faced with grim diagnoses, such as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), an incurable brain tumor for which standard therapy is debilitating, are increasingly using alternative healing practices that purportedly involve the manipulation of some form of healing energy. To evaluate the possibility that such practices can affect biological targets, adherents of one alternative healing practice, Johrei, were invited to treat GBM cells in culture. Such in vitro models effectively eliminate the factor of psychological cueing. We conducted 40 experiments involving Johrei treatment and 28 control experiments in which a person with no training as a healer substituted for the practitioners. Each experiment incorporated strict randomization and blinding techniques. Johrei treatments were delivered from an average distance of 30 cm. We used timelapse microscopy to investigate the rates of cell death and proliferation before, during, and after treatment. We found no significant differences between Johrei and control experiments for either tumor cell death or proliferation

On Insecure Uses of BGN for Privacy Preserving Data Aggregation Protocols

The notion of aggregator oblivious (AO) security for privacy preserving data aggregation was formalized with a specific construction of AO-secure blinding technique over a cyclic group by Shi et al. Some of proposals of data aggregation protocols use the blinding technique of Shi et al. for BGN cryptosystem, an additive homomorphic encryption. Previously, there have been some security analysis on some of BGN based data aggregation protocols in the context of integrity or authenticity of data. Even with such security analysis, the BGN cryptosystem has been a popular building block of privacy preserving data aggregation protocol. In this paper, we study the privacy issues in the blinding technique of Shi et al. used for BGN cryptosystem. We show that the blinding techniques for the BGN cryptosystem used in several protocols are not privacy preserving against the recipient, the decryptor. Our analysis is based on the fact that the BGN cryptosystem uses a pairing e:GxG-->G_T and the existence of the pairing makes the DDH problem on G easy to solve. We also suggest how to prevent such privacy leakage in the blinding technique of Shi et al. used for BGN cryptosystem.Comment: 11 page

SHE based Non Interactive Privacy Preserving Biometric Authentication Protocols

Being unique and immutable for each person, biometric signals are widely used in access control systems. While biometric recognition appeases concerns about password's theft or loss, at the same time it raises concerns about individual privacy. Central servers store several enrolled biometrics, hence security against theft must be provided during biometric transmission and against those who have access to the database. If a server's database is compromised, other systems using the same biometric templates could also be compromised as well. One solution is to encrypt the stored templates. Nonetheless, when using traditional cryptosystem, data must be decrypted before executing the protocol, leaving the database vulnerable. To overcame this problem and protect both the server and the client, biometrics should be processed while encrypted. This is possible by using secure two-party computation protocols, mainly based on Garbled Circuits (GC) and additive Homomorphic Encryption (HE). Both GC and HE based solutions are efficient yet interactive, meaning that the client takes part in the computation. Instead in this paper we propose a non-interactive protocol for privacy preserving biometric authentication based on a Somewhat Homomorphic Encryption (SHE) scheme, modified to handle integer values, and also suggest a blinding method to protect the system from spoofing attacks. Although our solution is not as efficient as the ones based on GC or HE, the protocol needs no interaction, moving the computation entirely on the server side and leaving only inputs encryption and outputs decryption to the client