What information and the extent of information research participants need in informed consent forms: a multi-country survey

Background: The use of lengthy, detailed, and complex informed consent forms (ICFs) is of paramount concern in biomedical research as it may not truly promote the rights and interests of research participants. The extent of information in ICFs has been the subject of debates for decades; however, no clear guidance is given. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine the perspectives of research participants about the type and extent of information they need when they are invited to participate in biomedical research. Methods: This multi-center, cross-sectional, descriptive survey was conducted at 54 study sites in seven Asia-Pacific countries. A modified Likert-scale questionnaire was used to determine the importance of each element in the ICF among research participants of a biomedical study, with an anchored rating scale from 1 (not important) to 5 (very important). Results: Of the 2484 questionnaires distributed, 2113 (85.1%) were returned. The majority of respondents considered most elements required in the ICF to be \u27moderately important\u27 to \u27very important\u27 for their decision making (mean score, ranging from 3.58 to 4.47). Major foreseeable risk, direct benefit, and common adverse effects of the intervention were considered to be of most concerned elements in the ICF (mean score = 4.47, 4.47, and 4.45, respectively). Conclusions: Research participants would like to be informed of the ICF elements required by ethical guidelines and regulations; however, the importance of each element varied, e.g., risk and benefit associated with research participants were considered to be more important than the general nature or technical details of research. Using a participant-oriented approach by providing more details of the participant-interested elements while avoiding unnecessarily lengthy details of other less important elements would enhance the quality of the ICF

Galactosylated cellulosic sponge for multi-well drug safety testing

10.1016/j.biomaterials.2011.05.087Biomaterials32296982-6994BIMA

Regio- and stereospecific synthesis of C-3 functionalized proline derivatives by palladium catalyzed ddirected C(sp3)–H Arylation

Functionalization of C(sp3)−H bonds at the unactivated 3-position of proline derivatives has been achieved using aryl iodides and palladium catalysis. This directly affords cis-2,3-disubstituted pyrrolidines as single stereoisomers. 3- Arylation occurs in high yield under solvent-free conditions with aminoquinoline and methoxyaminoquinoline directing groups. The latter was readily removed to give primary amide derivatives with physicochemical properties appropriate for use as fragments in drug discovery

Enhanced independent spectral histogram representations in face recognition

A spectral histogram descriptor computes a set of marginal distributions based on the filter bank’s responses, and further encodes them into the images. The encoding process for local image structure takes place during the filtering stage, whereas the encoding process of global image feature is conducted during the histogram stage. One drawback of spectral histogram descriptors is their performances will be greatly deteriorated when the filter bank’s responses are not stochastically independent. To tackle this problem, a computational technique named Enhanced Independent Spectral Histogram Feature (EISHF) is proposed. EISHF is composed of four working modules: (1) unsupervised independent filter bank responses computation, (2) binary hashing, (3) XOR bitwise operation and feature encoding, and lastly, (4) block-wise histogramming. To ensure the performance of ordinary spectral histogram descriptors, an XOR operation has been delicately adopted to increase the independency of the filter responses. Tested on three public face databases, the experimental results have substantiated the performance of EISHF in handling different kinds of facial expressions, illuminations, time spans as well as facial makeup effects