Про деякі зв'язки та узагальнення пронормальних підгруп

Отримано нові результати щодо зв'язків та узагальнень пронормальних підгруп. Зокрема, розглянуто групи, кожна циклічна підгрупа яких є самоспряжено-переставною. Наведено повний опис таких груп в деяких дуже широких класах груп, які містять в собі всі скінченні групи.Получены новые результаты относительно связей и обобщений пронормальных подгрупп. В частности, рассмотрены группы, каждая циклическая подгруппа которых является самосопряженно-переставляемой. Приведено полное описание таких групп в некоторых очень широких классах групп, которые содержат в себе все конечные группы.New results concerning the connections and generalizations of pronormal subgroups are presented. In particular, we studied groups, in which every cyclic subgroup is self-conjugate-permutable. We obtained the full description of such groups in some very wide classes of groups which contain all finite groups

Ambient intelligence & personalization : people's perspectives on information privacy

Current developments towards Ambient Intelligence and related technological visions of the future are founded on continuous collection of information about individuals and their activities. This collection of information, its potentially persistent storage, dissemination and use raise privacy concerns. In the debate surrounding privacy and Ambient Intelligence, this thesis takes a user centered perspective examining the attitudes, preferences and behaviors of people regarding disclosure of information. Furthermore, it uses these insights to guide the design of interfaces for managing one’s related privacy needs. The work presented in this thesis comprises three study domains. First, privacy concerns and disclosure behavior in relation to a music recommender system were investigated. It was anticipated that people would weigh the costs and benefits of their disclosure decisions and act accordingly. Also, it was expected that personality traits would be considered more personal or private than music preferences, resulting in lower willingness to disclose such information. However, it turned out that despite the fact that personality traits indeed were considered more personal than music preferences, disclosure levels were similar. This study also demonstrated the methodological difficulties of studying privacy. Despite the efforts to provide a true music recommendations service, participants felt protected somehow by the context of the research. This study showed that it is not sufficient to just consider privacy disclosure as a trade-off pertaining to the personal value of information but that other factors regarding the context of disclosure play an important role, e.g., recipient, assumed use of information, level of anonymity, or study context. The second domain investigated legal principles or guidelines as a basis to inform users regarding privacy consequences in four related studies. Two pilot studies showed that comprehension of privacy guidelines is poor. Another study on the differences in interpretation between video- and text-based scenarios showed poor understanding of the compliance with privacy guidelines as well. Text-based scenarios describing privacy guidelines were better understood than video-based scenarios. Furthermore, it turned out that comprehension can be improved when video-based scenarios are provided before the text. Also, the relative importance of each guideline was evaluated. Participants were offered pairs of privacy guidelines in a health care context, and were asked to indicate their most preferred guideline. Participants particularly valued to have access to their own personal data (Insight), followed by having information about the other parties that have access to their information (Openness). The last domain concerned interface solutions for managing privacy preferences of users. In this study participants compared three interfaces based on three different conceptual models regarding the way personal information is managed. The first conceptual model of Self-Representation takes a social psychology perspective focusing on how individuals manage the presentation of their ‘self’ through selective disclosure of information. The second conceptual model of Information-Use enables users to specify which types of information may not be disclosed for specific purposes of use. The third conceptual model of Split-Dimension enables users to specify approved levels of information disclosure split across three separate dimensions: recipient, purpose of use, and type of information. Overall, the interface based on Self-Representation was judged best with regard to the five attributes: trust, risk, usefulness, ease of use and intention to use. The interface based on Split-Dimension seemed slightly easier to use than the interface based on Information-Use, but apart from that these two interfaces were perceived to be similar. There were large differences regarding the perception of the three interfaces across participants. Based on these differences four clusters of participants were distinguished. Three clusters appreciated the conceptual model based on Self-Representation, but they differed in the extent to which the other two conceptual models were appreciated. There was one rest cluster which did not have a clear preference for any of the interfaces. Also, in this study a model was evaluated in order to determine the relative importance of trust, risk, usefulness, and ease of use on intention to use. Risk did not have a significant relation with intention to use, whereas usefulness had the highest impact on intention to use. Trust and ease of use both had small influences on intention to use. Apparently even in the context of privacy interfaces trust, usefulness, and ease of use are more important than perceived privacy risks. Based on the work presented in this thesis it can be concluded that any system that is meant to provide users control over their personal information in a personalized context should give users insight into their own personal data. Furthermore, it should inform users about which persons and parties have access to their information. Users should be protected not to disclose information that is anyway regarded as personal, since they may not realize this at the moment of initial use of the system. Systems for setting personal preferences for disclosure of information should allow people a great deal of control. However, it should be easy to achieve this level of control, by the existence of default settings that are preferably protective of the users’ personal information

Antibiotic prescribing on admission to patients with pneumonia and prior outpatient antibiotic treatment: a cohort study on clinical outcome

Contains fulltext : 154344.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)OBJECTIVE: Most pneumonia treatment guidelines recommend that prior outpatient antibiotic treatment should be considered when planning inpatient antibiotic regimen. Our purpose was to study in patients admitted for community-acquired pneumonia the mode of continuing antibiotic treatment at the outpatient to inpatient transition and the subsequent clinical course. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. SETTING: Dutch PHARMO Record Linkage System. PARTICIPANTS: 7323 patients aged >18 years and hospitalised with pneumonia in the Netherlands between 2004 and 2010. MAIN STUDY PARAMETER: We identified all prescribed antibiotics prior to, during and after hospitalisation. In case of prior outpatient treatment, the continuation of antibiotic treatment on admission was categorised as: no atypical coverage > no atypical coverage; atypical coverage > atypical coverage; no atypical coverage > atypical coverage; and atypical coverage > no atypical coverage. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Length of hospital stay, in-hospital mortality and readmission within 30 days. Results : Twenty-two per cent of the patients had received prior outpatient treatment, of which 408 (25%) patients were switched on admission to antibiotics with atypical coverage. There were no differences in length of hospital stay, in-hospital mortality or readmission rate between the four categories of patients with prior outpatient treatment. The adjusted HR for adding atypical coverage versus no atypical coverage was 0.91 (95% CI 0.55 to 1.51) for time to discharge. For in-hospital mortality and readmission within 30 days, the adjusted ORs were 1.09 (95% CI 0.85 to 1.34) and 0.59 (95% CI 0.30 to 1.18), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: This study found no association between mode of continuing antibiotic treatment at the outpatient to inpatient transition and relevant clinical outcomes. In particular, adding atypical coverage in patients without prior atypical coverage did not influence the outcome

Design strategies for human relations in services

This paper investigates the degree of control that designers might have over human relations in services. For this purpose, a number of speculative service designs were devised to address work-related stress. We focus on three of the generated designs, where design interventions have made changes to the material circumstance in which contacts among users and providers take place. The paper looks into the capacity of design to promote discussion and social support, and its capacity to make objects act as ‘quasi-others’ in social encounters. Through the case studies we show how different levels of designerly control can be exercised in practice

Antibiotic use and reduced effectiveness of second-line immunotherapy for lung cancer: all the time or just at the start of treatment?

Contains fulltext : 229841.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access

On the relative importance of privacy guidelines for ambient health care

We present an empirical study regarding the relative importance of complying with privacy related guidelines in the context of a Health Monitoring System. Participants were confronted with text scenarios describing privacy related aspects of a health monitoring service for daily use at home. Participants assessed the relative importance to them of simplified variants of the OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development) guidelines for the protection of personal data. The guidelines that relate to Insight and Openness were most valued. The guidelines relating to Modification and Data Quality were valued least by most participants in this context. Methodological challenges were encountered on the way, which reveal the complexity of conducting empirical investigations of privacy aspects of human-computer interaction

18F-FDG PET as a predictor of pulmonary function in sarcoidosis

Item does not contain fulltextPURPOSE: Fluor-18 fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) PET is able to demonstrate sarcoidosis activity. Ongoing pulmonary sarcoidosis activity can be reflected by a decline in pulmonary function tests (PFT). To assess whether diffuse metabolic activity of the lung parenchyma imaged by 18F-FDG PET predicts future pulmonary deterioration, 18F-FDG PET was compared with PFT. METHODS: In this retrospective cohort study, 43 newly diagnosed, sarcoidosis patients were analyzed. Based on 18F-FDG PET, patients were diagnosed with diffuse parenchymal disease activity, without or with immunosuppressive treatment, started after 18F-FDG PET was performed. As a control, sarcoidosis patients with mediastinal/hilar disease activity but without metabolic activity in the lung parenchyma were analyzed, all without treatment. Vital capacity (VC), forced expiratory volume (FEV1) and diffusion capacity of the lung for carbon monoxide (DLCO) were analyzed per group at baseline, i.e., at the time 18F-FDG PET was performed, and after one year follow-up. RESULTS: At follow-up, a significant decrease in DLCO was found in untreated patients with diffuse parenchymal activity. No change in VC or FEV1 could be observed. Treated patients with parenchymal activity showed a significant increase in VC, FEV1 and DLCO, while patients without parenchymal activity did not show any change in PFT. CONCLUSIONS: In sarcoidosis, diffuse parenchymal disease imaged by 18F-FDG PET, predicts a future deterioration of DLCO when untreated. Treatment however, improves VC, FEV1 and DLCO significantly suggesting that 18F-FDG PET represents the pulmonary improvement that can be achieved. The absence of metabolic activity in the lung parenchyma justifies a wait-and-see policy

Understanding compliance to privacy guidelines using text-and video-based scenarios

Privacy is a major concern for the design and user acceptance of pervasive technology. Investigating privacy poses several methodological challenges. A popular approach involves surveying reactions of people to scenarios that highlight privacy issues. This paper examines the validity of this approach. It reports an experiment that compared people's ability to correctly judge compliance to privacy principles when scenarios are presented in video versus textual form. It was found that such privacy-related concepts are hard to understand, leading to a large number of erroneous judgments regardless of medium and that interpretation varied across media. Comprehension in such studies can be improved, if a text scenario is preceded by a video-based version