The use of genes for performance enhancement: doping or therapy?

Recent biotechnological advances have permitted the manipulation of genetic sequences to treat several diseases in a process called gene therapy. However, the advance of gene therapy has opened the door to the possibility of using genetic manipulation (GM) to enhance athletic performance. In such ‘gene doping’, exogenous genetic sequences are inserted into a specific tissue, altering cellular gene activity or leading to the expression of a protein product. The exogenous genes most likely to be utilized for gene doping include erythropoietin (EPO), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), insulin-like growth factor type 1 (IGF-1), myostatin antagonists, and endorphin. However, many other genes could also be used, such as those involved in glucose metabolic pathways. Because gene doping would be very difficult to detect, it is inherently very attractive for those involved in sports who are prepared to cheat. Moreover, the field of gene therapy is constantly and rapidly progressing, and this is likely to generate many new possibilities for gene doping. Thus, as part of the general fight against all forms of doping, it will be necessary to develop and continually improve means of detecting exogenous gene sequences (or their products) in athletes. Nevertheless, some bioethicists have argued for a liberal approach to gene doping

Insecurity of position-based quantum cryptography protocols against entanglement attacks

Recently, position-based quantum cryptography has been claimed to be unconditionally secure. In contrary, here we show that the existing proposals for position-based quantum cryptography are, in fact, insecure if entanglement is shared among two adversaries. Specifically, we demonstrate how the adversaries can incorporate ideas of quantum teleportation and quantum secret sharing to compromise the security with certainty. The common flaw to all current protocols is that the Pauli operators always map a codeword to a codeword (up to an irrelevant overall phase). We propose a modified scheme lacking this property in which the same cheating strategy used to undermine the previous protocols can succeed with a rate at most 85%. We conjecture that the modified protocol is unconditionally secure and prove this to be true when the shared quantum resource between the adversaries is a two- or three- level system

On Modes of Economic Governance

I consider transactions involving asymmetric prisoners’ dilemmas between pairs of players selected chosen from two large populations. Games are played repeatedly, but information about cheating is not adequate to sustain cooperation, and there is no official legal system of contract enforcement. I examine how profit-maximizing private intermediation can supply the information and enforcement. I obtain conditions under which private governance can improve upon no governance, and examine why it fails to achieve social optimality.

Celebration Schedule 2015 (Friday)

Full presentation schedule for Celebration, Friday, May 1, 201

Dissecting disgust : an investigation of the validity of the Three Domain Disgust Scale

Research on the emotion disgust, and particularly individual differences in disgust sensitivity, has exploded in the past 15 years. However, most of this research has been based on outdated theory and poorly designed instruments. Tybur et al., (2009) suggested that past theoretical perspectives on disgust should best be updated in light of an evolutionary perspective, and measurement of disgust sensitivity should be developed based on an evolutionarily informed theory. After suggesting that disgust should be categorized along domains related to pathogens, sexuality, and morality, they introduced the Three Domain Disgust Scale, a new measure of individual differences in disgust sensitivity. The current set of investigation aimed to advance knowledge of the validity of the Three Domain Disgust Scale. A first study demonstrated that the pathogen, sexual, and moral factors of the Three Domain Disgust Scale relates to Five Factor Model dimensions in a manner consistent with the theory under which the Three Domain Disgust Scale was developed. A second study demonstrated that only sensitivity to sexual disgust relates to political conservativism, but sensitivity to moral disgust relates to disgust reported toward ideologically conflicting ideas and figures within the political realm. A third study demonstrated that the Three Domain Disgust Scale measures three dimensions in both men and women, though the degree to which individual scale items measure these factors varies somewhat between the sexes. Results of these studies are discussed, as is the current state of knowledge of the validity of the Three Domain Disgust Scale, and potentially fruitful future research directio

CONTACTLESS PAYMENTS FRAUD DETECTION METHODS AND IS SOCIETY PREPARED TO RESIST: A CASE STUDY

The ability to use contactless payment technologies, non-cash payments and credit card payments is becoming almost an essential requirement for consumers and merchants in today's economic conditions. Different market sectors are rapidly adapting to these technologies and looking for the most convenient, secure, and fastest possible solutions that combine intelligent data processing, security, and business management functions. Millions of debit and credit card holders care about secure payments, the businesses that receive these payments are secure in terms of security, and the operators that process such incoming and outgoing payments are interested in innovative solutions that set them apart from the competition. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when e-commerce was growing exponentially, the global market for fraud detection and prevention, currently stands at USD 20.9 billion, and is expected to grow, until 2025 will rise to USD 38.2 billion by the end of the year; holds the market at 12.8 % annually. The US remains the dominant region in this market segment, but European countries are also increasingly investing in fraud prevention and detection solutions, which are growing in demand in Europe due to an increase in cybercrime as well as advanced bots and cyber-attack.