Preliminary analysis of data subject right effectiveness and blockages in industry

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which became effective January 1, 2020, aims to protect California citizens' privacy rights and applies to for-profit businesses that do business in California, which meet with the act's "business" definition under its Section 1798.140. This study collects 2754 companies that operate in California and meet this definition. For each company, we identified the minimal requirements for data subjects to assert their rights. The results illustrate widespread lack of compliance with these requirements; less than twelve percent of companies met with baseline requirements. This study details the types and indicators of failures to provide data subject rights as blockages, the most common of which is that there is simply no method for contacting the organization. The second most common is a operational failure, which suggests that lack of privacy is often a result of lack of technical expertise. This study concludes with the separate threads of research in the interactions of technical expertise and privacy, with a focus on the interaction of cyber security and privacy. It also aims to identify the strategies to increase the effectiveness of CCPA to better protect California residents’ personal information through the data brokers

Environmental Effects of Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: A Special Focus on Phthalates and Bisphenol A

Several environmental chemicals are classified as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Many of them have an impact on reproductive functions and sex hormones because of their estrogenic and/or antiandrogenic properties. Phthalates and bisphenol A (BPA) are two well-known EDCs. They are abundant in the environment. Phthalates are usually classified as antiandrogens, whereas BPA is considered as estrogen-like EDC and xenoestrogen. Other than their endocrine-disrupting effects, these two chemicals are also known to have genotoxic and epigenetic effects. Besides, they are hepatotoxic and have substantial effects on other organs/systems (thyroid, kidney, neuroendocrine system, immune system, etc.). In this chapter, we will mainly focus on the toxic effects of different phthalate esters and BPA by discussing their availability in the environment, mechanism and mode of actions, their biotransformation and reproductive effects, and their effects on other systems (hepatic, renal, etc.). Besides, we discuss epidemiological studies that are conducted to reveal their effects on the reproductive and endocrine systems. This chapter provides the readers a compact piece of knowledge on these abundant substances and helps them to understand the action of these substances at the molecular and cellular levels

Vortex Shedding from a Ground Tracking Radar Antenna and its 3D Tip Flow Characteristics

Abstract: High-speed ground tracking radar systems rotating at about 60 rpm are currently being implemented as modern air traffic control systems in airports. The flow induced vibration and noise generation of the newly developed radar antennas are the two serious problems that jeopardize the successful deployment of the new ground aircraft tracking systems. This paper deals with the viscous flow details of the highly three-dimensional antenna tip section and the vortex shedding characteristics at Re=426,000. The current analysis uses a 3D computational approach for the computation of viscous flow details with the highly 3 D tip geometry. A 2D unsteady computation of the vortex shedding phenomena is also presented. This paper is a continuation of the computational study dealing with the determination of aerodynamic drag coefficients on ASDE-X (Advanced Surface Detection Equipment) antenna cross sections previously presented in Gumusel et al. [1]

User Privacy Harms and Risks in Conversational AI: A Proposed Framework

This study presents a unique framework that applies and extends Solove (2006)'s taxonomy to address privacy concerns in interactions with text-based AI chatbots. As chatbot prevalence grows, concerns about user privacy have heightened. While existing literature highlights design elements compromising privacy, a comprehensive framework is lacking. Through semi-structured interviews with 13 participants interacting with two AI chatbots, this study identifies 9 privacy harms and 9 privacy risks in text-based interactions. Using a grounded theory approach for interview and chatlog analysis, the framework examines privacy implications at various interaction stages. The aim is to offer developers, policymakers, and researchers a tool for responsible and secure implementation of conversational AI, filling the existing gap in addressing privacy issues associated with text-based AI chatbots

A Biologically Inspired Approach to Frequency Domain Feature Extraction for EEG Classification

Classification of electroencephalogram (EEG) signal is important in mental decoding for brain-computer interfaces (BCI). We introduced a feature extraction approach based on frequency domain analysis to improve the classification performance on different mental tasks using single-channel EEG. This biologically inspired method extracts the most discriminative spectral features from power spectral densities (PSDs) of the EEG signals. We applied our method on a dataset of six subjects who performed five different imagination tasks: (i) resting state, (ii) mental arithmetic, (iii) imagination of left hand movement, (iv) imagination of right hand movement, and (v) imagination of letter “A.” Pairwise and multiclass classifications were performed in single EEG channel using Linear Discriminant Analysis and Support Vector Machines. Our method produced results (mean classification accuracy of 83.06% for binary classification and 91.85% for multiclassification) that are on par with the state-of-the-art methods, using single-channel EEG with low computational cost. Among all task pairs, mental arithmetic versus letter imagination yielded the best result (mean classification accuracy of 90.29%), indicating that this task pair could be the most suitable pair for a binary class BCI. This study contributes to the development of single-channel BCI, as well as finding the best task pair for user defined applications

"The teachers are confused as well": A Multiple-Stakeholder Ethics Discussion on Large Language Models in Computing Education

Large Language Models (LLMs) are advancing quickly and impacting people's lives for better or worse. In higher education, concerns have emerged such as students' misuse of LLMs and degraded education outcomes. To unpack the ethical concerns of LLMs for higher education, we conducted a case study consisting of stakeholder interviews (n=20) in higher education computer science. We found that students use several distinct mental models to interact with LLMs - LLMs serve as a tool for (a) writing, (b) coding, and (c) information retrieval, which differ somewhat in ethical considerations. Students and teachers brought up ethical issues that directly impact them, such as inaccurate LLM responses, hallucinations, biases, privacy leakage, and academic integrity issues. Participants emphasized the necessity of guidance and rules for the use of LLMs in higher education, including teaching digital literacy, rethinking education, and having cautious and contextual policies. We reflect on the ethical challenges and propose solutions

Synthesis, biological evaluation, and SAR studies of 14β-phenylacetyl substituted 17-cyclopropylmethyl-7, 8-dihydronoroxymorphinones derivatives : Ligands with mixed NOP and opioid receptor profile

© 2018 Kumar, Polgar, Cami-Kobeci, Thomas, Khroyan, Toll and Husbands.A series of 14β-acyl substituted 17-cyclopropylmethyl-7,8-dihydronoroxymorphinone compounds has been synthesized and evaluated for affinity and efficacy for mu (MOP), kappa (KOP), and delta (DOP) opioid receptors and nociceptin/orphanin FQ peptide (NOP) receptors. The majority of the new ligands displayed high binding affinities for the three opioid receptors, and moderate affinity for NOP receptors. The affinities for NOP receptors are of particular interest as most classical opioid ligands do not bind to NOP receptors. The predominant activity in the [35S]GTPγS assay was partial agonism at each receptor. The results are consistent with our prediction that an appropriate 14β side chain would access a binding site within the NOP receptor and result in substantially higher affinity than displayed by the parent compound naltrexone. Molecular modeling studies, utilizing the recently reported structure of the NOP receptor, are also consistent with this interpretation.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Antioksidansi i spojevi selenija inhibiraju toksično djelovanje 3,5-dimetilaminofenola na epitelne bubrežne stanice u ljudi

Exposure to alkyl anilines may lead to bladder cancer, which is the second most frequent cancer of the urogenital tract. 3,5-dimethylaniline is highly used in industry. Studies on its primary metabolite 3,5-dimethylaminophenol (3,5-DMAP) showed that this compound causes oxidative stress, changes antioxidant enzyme activities, and leads to death of different mammalian cells. However, there is no in vitro study to show the direct effects of 3,5-DMAP on human bladder and urothelial cells. Selenocompounds are suggested to decrease oxidative stress caused by some chemicals, and selenium supplementation was shown to reduce the risk of bladder cancer. The main aim of this study was to investigate whether selenocompounds organic selenomethionine (SM, 10 μmol/L) or inorganic sodium selenite (SS, 30 nmol/L) could reduce oxidative stress, DNA damage, and apoptosis in UROtsa cells exposed to 3,5-DMAP. 3,5-DMAP caused a dose-dependent increase in intracellular generation of reactive oxygen species, and its dose of 50 μmol/L caused lipid peroxidation, protein oxidation, and changes in antioxidant enzyme activities in different cellular fractions. The comet assay also showed single-strand DNA breaks induced by the 3,5-DMAP dose of 50 μmol/L, but no changes in double-strand DNA breaks. Apoptosis was also triggered. Both selenocompounds provided partial protection against the cellular toxicity of 3,5-DMAP. Low selenium status along with exposure to alkyl anilines can be a major factor in the development of bladder cancer. More mechanistic studies are needed to specify the role of selenium in bladder cancer.Izloženost alkilnim anilinima može uzrokovati rak mokraćnoga mjehura, koji je drugi po redu po učestalosti raka mokraćnospolnog sustava. 3,5-dimetilanilin često se rabi u industrijskoj proizvodnji, a istraživanja njegova primarnog metabolita, 3,5-dimetilaminofenola (3,5-DMAP), pokazuju da on uzrokuje oksidacijski stres i promjene u aktivnosti antioksidacijskih enzima te u konačnici dovodi do smrti raznih stanica u sisavaca. Dosad, međutim, nije provedeno nijedno istraživanje njegovih izravnih učinaka na epitelne stanice mokraćnoga mjehura i bubrega u ljudi. Za spojeve selenija smatra se da smanjuju oksidacijski stres različitih kemikalija te da dopuna prehrane selenijem smanjuje rizik od raka mokraćnoga mjehura. Primarni je cilj ovoga istraživanja bio utvrditi može li organski spoj selenija selenometionin (SM, 10 μmol/L), odnosno anorganski spoj natrijev selenit (SS, 30 nmol/L], smanjiti oksidacijski stres, oštećenje DNA i apoptozu u UROtsa stanicama izloženima 3,5-dimetilaminofenolu. Jednosatna izloženost stanica 3,5-DMAP-u dovela je do povećanja razina reaktivnih kisikovih spojeva (ROS), lipidne peroksidacije, oksidacije bjelančevina te do promjena u aktivnosti antioksidacijskih enzima u staničnoj citoplazmi i jezgri, ovisno o primijenjenoj dozi. Osim toga, komet-testom su utvrđeni jednolančani, ali ne i dvolančani lomovi DNA. Također, 3,5-DMAP uzrokovao je apoptozu stanica. Oba su spoja selenija pružila djelomičnu zaštitu od njegova toksičnoga djelovanja. Nedostatak selenija pri izloženosti alkilnim anilinskim spojevima stoga može odigrati značajnu ulogu u nastanku raka mokraćnog mjehura. Potrebna su daljnja istraživanja mehanizama djelovanja selenija u njegovu sprječavanju

Morphological and Clinical Aspects of Aberrant Subclavian Artery: Single Center Multidedector Computed Tomography Based Study

Aim: Aberrant subclavian artery (ASA) anomalies are the most common aortic arch malformations. Incidence of these malformations increases with widespread use of computed tomography (CT). Our aim in this study was to investigate the relationship between ASA malformations, gender, age and reasons for admission, and arcus aorta (AA), ASA diameters and AA/ASA diameter ratios.Materials and Methods: A total 74 patients with ASA were evaluated by thorax CT retrospectively. Patients were divided into aberrant right (ARSA) and left (ALSA) subclavian artery groups. Age, gender, reasons for application, ASA and AA diameters and AA/ASA ratios were evaluated between the groups. Correlations of ASA and AA diameters with age were also evaluated.Results: 70 of the patients (94.5%) had ARSA, 4 of the patients (5.4%) had ALSA. There was no statistical relationship between gender (p=0.394), age (p=0.443) and reasons for application (p=0.322) between groups. There was no statistical relationship between ASA diameter (p=0.127), AA diameter (p=0.728) and AA/ASA ratio (p=0.339) between groups. There was weak positive correlation with age and diameter of AA (r=0.379, p=0.001), but not with ASA diameter (p=0.059). Moderate positive correlation (r=0.573, p<0.001) was detected between diameters of AA and ASA.Conclusion: ASA malformations are the most common incidentally detected malformations with increased use of CT. These malformations are not related to age, gender and reasons for application

Effect of ketorolac and diclofenac on the impairment of endothelium-dependent relaxation induced by reactive oxygen species in rabbit abdominal aorta

Background: Reactive oxygen species (ROS) induce lipid peroxidation and tissue damage in endothelium. We studied the influences of ketorolac and diclofenac on ROS effects using the endothelium of rabbit abdominal aorta. Methods: Isolated rabbit aortic rings were suspended in an organ bath filled with Krebs-Henseleit (K-H) solution bubbled with 5% CO2 and 95% O2 at 37.5??C. After being stimulated to contract with phenylephrine (PE, 10-6 M), changes in arterial tension were recorded following the cumulative administration of acetylcholine (ACh, 3 ?? 10-8 to 10-6 M). The percentages of ACh-induced relaxation of aortic rings before and after exposure to ROS, generated by electrolysis of K-H solution, were used as the control and experimental values, respectively. The aortic rings were pretreated with ketorolac or diclofenac at the same concentrations (10-5 M to 3 ?? 10-4 M), and the effects of these agents were compared with the effects of ROS scavengers: catalase, mannitol, sodium salicylate and deferoxamine and the catalase inhibitor, 3-amino-1,2,4-triazole (3AT). Results: Both ketorolac and diclofenac maintained endothlium-dependent relaxation induced by ACh in a dose-related manner inspite of ROS attack (P &lt; 0.05 vs. control value). The 3AT pretreated ketorolac (3 ?? 10-3 M) group was decreased more significantly than un-pretreated ketorolac (P &lt; 0.05). Conclusions: These findings suggest that ketorlac and diclofenac preserve the endothelium-dependent vasorelaxation against the attack of ROS, in a concentration-related manner. One of the endothelial protection mechanisms of ketorolac may be hydrogen peroxide scavenging. Copyright ?? Korean Society of Anesthesiologists, 2010