New threats to health data privacy

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Along with the rapid digitalization of health data (e.g. Electronic Health Records), there is an increasing concern on maintaining data privacy while garnering the benefits, especially when the data are required to be published for secondary use. Most of the current research on protecting health data privacy is centered around data de-identification and data anonymization, which removes the identifiable information from the published health data to prevent an adversary from reasoning about the privacy of the patients. However, published health data is not the only source that the adversaries can count on: with a large amount of information that people voluntarily share on the Web, sophisticated attacks that join disparate information pieces from multiple sources against health data privacy become practical. Limited efforts have been devoted to studying these attacks yet.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We study how patient privacy could be compromised with the help of today’s information technologies. In particular, we show that private healthcare information could be collected by aggregating and associating disparate pieces of information from multiple online data sources including online social networks, public records and search engine results. We demonstrate a real-world case study to show user identity and privacy are highly vulnerable to the attribution, inference and aggregation attacks. We also show that people are highly identifiable to adversaries even with inaccurate information pieces about the target, with real data analysis.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We claim that too much information has been made available electronic and available online that people are very vulnerable without effective privacy protection.</p

Topological Defect Lines in Two Dimensional Fermionic CFTs

We consider topological defect lines (TDLs) in two-dimensional fermionic conformal field theories (CFTs). Besides inheriting all the properties of TDLs in bosonic CFTs, TDLs in fermionic CFTs could host fermionic defect operators at their endpoints and junctions. Furthermore, there is a new type of TDLs, called q-type TDLs, that have no analog in bosonic CFTs. Their distinguishing feature is an extra one-dimensional Majorana fermion living on the worldline of the TDLs. The properties of TDLs in fermionic CFTs are captured in the mathematical language of the super fusion category. We propose a classification of the rank-2 super fusion categories and explicitly construct all the nontrivial ones. We derive the corresponding spin selection rules that constrain the spectrum of the defect operators. Finally, we discuss a constraint on the renormalization group flow that preserves a q-type TDL.Comment: 38+20 page

Study on behavior incentive mechanism of energy conservation and emission reduction for China freshwater live fish supply chain

Purpose: The purpose of this paper investigates the subject behavior of Energy conservation and emission reduction (ECER) based on structured classification of the organization types of FLF supply chain, and explores reasonable behavior incentive mechanism for ECER of FLF supply chain in China. Design/methodology/approach: This paper classifies the organization subjects of FLF supply chain, and different characteristics of organization subjects are compared in detail. ECER behavior incentive mechanism modeling of FLF supply chain is explored by taking advantage of principal-agent model in view of asymmetry information. Incentives issue of different operating subjects is discussed as enlightenment of the model. Findings: Three types of the organization subjects of FLF supply chain in China have been identified as: loose organization, semi-compact organization and compact organization. Subjects of different types have different abilities to conduct ECER work. Government needs to propose differentiation polices of incentive compensation for different operating subjects, widen the gap of differentiated subsidies/rewards for different investment levels on ECER conducted by different operating subjects of FLF supply chain. Research limitations/implications: It will take long-term unremitting efforts to achieve the target of ECER work for FLF supply chain in China, the dynamic issues and simulation modeling on behavior incentive mechanism of ECER should be developed in future research. Practical implications: Clear understanding of structured classification of the organization subject types of FLF supply chain and the behavior incentive mechanism for ECER, will help government to improve the ECER work in an efficient and effective way. Originality/value: Research to behavior incentive mechanism of ECER has important theoretical value and practical significance. This paper contributes to distinguish three types of operating subjects of FLF supply chain in China, put forward the behavior incentive mechanism of ECER to support the government to improve the ECER work scientifically.Peer Reviewe

Study on behavior incentive mechanism of energy conservation and emission reduction for China freshwater live fish supply chain

Purpose: The purpose of this paper investigates the subject behavior of Energy conservation and emission reduction (ECER) based on structured classification of the organization types of FLF supply chain, and explores reasonable behavior incentive mechanism for ECER of FLF supply chain in China. Design/methodology/approach: This paper classifies the organization subjects of FLF supply chain, and different characteristics of organization subjects are compared in detail. ECER behavior incentive mechanism modeling of FLF supply chain is explored by taking advantage of principal-agent model in view of asymmetry information. Incentives issue of different operating subjects is discussed as enlightenment of the model. Findings: Three types of the organization subjects of FLF supply chain in China have been identified as: loose organization, semi-compact organization and compact organization. Subjects of different types have different abilities to conduct ECER work. Government needs to propose differentiation polices of incentive compensation for different operating subjects, widen the gap of differentiated subsidies/rewards for different investment levels on ECER conducted by different operating subjects of FLF supply chain. Research limitations/implications: It will take long-term unremitting efforts to achieve the target of ECER work for FLF supply chain in China, the dynamic issues and simulation modeling on behavior incentive mechanism of ECER should be developed in future research. Practical implications: Clear understanding of structured classification of the organization subject types of FLF supply chain and the behavior incentive mechanism for ECER, will help government to improve the ECER work in an efficient and effective way. Originality/value: Research to behavior incentive mechanism of ECER has important theoretical value and practical significance. This paper contributes to distinguish three types of operating subjects of FLF supply chain in China, put forward the behavior incentive mechanism of ECER to support the government to improve the ECER work scientifically.Peer Reviewe

Fabrication of small aspheric moulds using single point inclined axis grinding

Single point inclined axis grinding techniques, including the wheel setting, wheel-workpiece interference, error source determination and compensation approaches, were studied to fabricate small aspheric moulds of high profile accuracy. The interference of a cylindrical grinding wheel with the workpiece was analysed and the criteria for selection of wheel geometry for avoiding the interference was proposed. The grinding process was performed with compensation focused on two major error sources, wheel setting error and wheel wear. The grinding results showed that the compensation approach was efficient and the developed grinding process was capable to generate small aspheric concave surfaces on tungsten carbide material with a profile error of smaller than 200. nm in PV value after two to three compensation cycles

Emodin Induced SREBP1-Dependent and SREBP1-Independent Apoptosis in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cells

Reynoutria multiflora (Thunb.) Moldenke (He Shou Wu) has been used for about 20 centuries as a Chinese medicinal herb for its activities of anticancer, anti-hyperlipidemia, and anti-aging. Previously, we found that He Shou Wu ethanol extract could induce apoptosis in hepatocellular carcinoma cells, and we also screened its active components. In this study, we investigated whether lowering lipid metabolism of emodin, a main active component in He Shou Wu, was associated with inhibitory effects in hepatocellular carcinoma cells. The correlation of apoptosis induction and lipid metabolism was investigated. The intrinsic apoptotic cell death, lipid production, and their signaling pathways were investigated in emodin-treated human hepatocellular carcinoma cells Bel-7402. The data showed that emodin triggered apoptosis in Bel-7402 cells. The mitochondrial membrane potential (ΔΨm) was reduced in emodin-treated Bel-7402 cells. We also found that emodin activated the expression of intrinsic apoptosis signaling pathway-related proteins, cleaved-caspase 9 and 3, Apaf 1, cytochrome c (CYTC), apoptosis-inducing factor, endonuclease G, Bax, and Bcl-2. Furthermore, the level of triglycerides and desaturation of fatty acids was reduced in Bel-7402 cells when exposed to emodin. Furthermore, the expression level of messenger RNA (mRNA) and protein of sterol regulatory element binding protein 1 (SREBP1) as well as its downstream signaling pathway and the synthesis and the desaturation of fatty acid metabolism-associated proteins (adenosine triphosphate citrate lyase, acetyl-CoA carboxylase alpha, fatty acid synthase (FASN), and stearoyl-CoA desaturase D) were also decreased. Notably, knock-out of SREBP1 in Bel-7402 cells was also found to induce less intrinsic apoptosis than did emodin. In conclusion, these results indicated that emodin could induce apoptosis in an SREBP1-dependent and SREBP1-independent manner in hepatocellular carcinoma cells

A stable variational formulation for non-ordinary state-based peridynamics

The paper builds a stable variational formulation for the non-ordinary state-based peridynamics (NOSB-PD). Firstly, a new force state vector is reformulated by introducing the first Piola-Kirchhoff stress in continuum mechanics. The consistency of the new governing equation of the proposed pridynamic model and classical continuum mechanics is proved. Secondly, a stable variational formulation of non-ordinary state based peridynamics is developed to unify the boundary conditions in peridynamcis and continuum mechanics. The zero mode oscillations of non-ordinary state based peridynamics is also eliminated by penalty method in numerical implementation. Numerical examples are illustrated to validate the proposed method. Numerical solutions obtained by the proposed method also indicate that the proposed method can well capture the general nonlinear behavior of solid materials

A highly robust and optimized sequence-based approach for genetic polymorphism discovery and genotyping in large plant populations

KEY MESSAGE: This optimized approach provides both a computational tool and a library construction protocol, which can maximize the number of genomic sequence reads that uniformly cover a plant genome and minimize the number of sequence reads representing chloroplast DNA and rRNA genes. One can implement the developed computational tool to feasibly design their own RAD-seq experiment to achieve expected coverage of sequence variant markers for large plant populations using information of the genome sequence and ideally, though not necessarily, information of the sequence polymorphism distribution in the genome. ABSTRACT: Advent of the next generation sequencing techniques motivates recent interest in developing sequence-based identification and genotyping of genome-wide genetic variants in large populations, with RAD-seq being a typical example. Without taking proper account for the fact that chloroplast and rRNA genes may occupy up to 60 % of the resulting sequence reads, the current RAD-seq design could be very inefficient for plant and crop species. We presented here a generic computational tool to optimize RAD-seq design in any plant species and experimentally tested the optimized design by implementing it to screen for and genotype sequence variants in four plant populations of diploid and autotetraploid Arabidopsis and potato Solanum tuberosum. Sequence data from the optimized RAD-seq experiments shows that the undesirable chloroplast and rRNA contributed sequence reads can be controlled at 3–10 %. Additionally, the optimized RAD-seq method enables pre-design of the required uniformity and density in coverage of the high quality sequence polymorphic markers over the genome of interest and genotyping of large plant or crop populations at a competitive cost in comparison to other mainstream rivals in the literature. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00122-016-2736-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users