The Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Privacy in the Coming Decade

The large majority of consumers believe that the term “privacy policy” describes a baseline level of information practices that protect their privacy. In short, “privacy,” like “free” before it, has taken on a normative meaning in the marketplace. When consumers see the term “privacy policy,” they believe that their personal information will be protected in specific ways; in particular, they assume that a website that advertises a privacy policy will not share their personal information. Of course, this is not the case. Privacy policies today come in all different flavors. Some companies make affirmative commitments not to share the personal information of their consumers. In other cases, however, privacy policies simply inform consumers that unless they “opt out” of sharing certain information, the company will communicate their personal information to other commercial entities.1 Given that consumers today associate the term “privacy policy” with specific practices that afford a normative level of privacy protection, the use of the term by a website that does not adhere to these baseline practices can mislead consumers to expect privacy that, in reality, does not exist. This is not to suggest that companies intend to mislead consumers, but rather that consumers today associate certain practices with “privacy policy” just as they associate certain terms and conditions with the word “free.” Because the term “privacy policy” has taken on a specific meaning in the marketplace and connotes a particular level of protection to consumers, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) should regulate the use of the term “privacy policy” to ensure that companies using the term deliver a set of protections that meet consumers’ expectations and that the term “privacy policy” does not mislead consumers during marketplace transactions. ========================================== 1 Often consumers are not provided with a means to “opt out” of information sharing

The FTC and Consumer Privacy in the Coming Decade

Large majorities of consumers believe that the term privacy policy conveys a baseline level of information practices that protect their privacy. In short, privacy, like free before it, has taken on normative meaning in the marketplace. When consumers see the term privacy policy, they believe that their privacy will be protected in specific ways. In particular, when consumers see the privacy policy they assume that a web site will not share their personal information. Of course, this is not the case. Privacy policies today come in all different flavors. Some companies make affirmative commitments not to share the personal information of their consumers. More frequently, however, privacy policies are used to inform consumers that unless they opt-out of certain information sharing, the company will communicate their personal information to other commercial entities. Given that consumers today associate the term privacy policy with specific practices that afford a normative level of privacy protection, the use of the term by a web site in the absence of adherence to these baseline practices can mislead consumers to expect privacy that, in reality, they are not afforded. This is not to suggest that companies are intending to mislead consumers, but rather that consumers today associate certain practices with privacy policy just as they associate certain terms and conditions with the word free. Because the term privacy policy has taken on a specific marketplace meaning and connotes a particular level of protection to consumers, the Federal Trade Commission should police the use of the term privacy policy to assure that companies using the term deliver a set of protections that meet consumers’ expectations, and that the term privacy policy doesn’t mislead consumers during marketplace transactions

Durvalumab for recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: Results from a single-arm, phase II study in patients with ≥25% tumour cell PD-L1 expression who have progressed on platinum-based chemotherapy

Anticossos; Immunoteràpia; Càncer de cap i collAnticuerpos; Inmunoterapia; Cáncer de cabeza y cuelloAntibodies; Immunotherapy; Head and neck cancerBackground Patients with recurrent/metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (R/M HNSCC) progressing on platinum-based chemotherapy have poor prognoses and limited therapeutic options. Programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) and its ligand 1 (PD-L1) are frequently upregulated in HNSCC. The international, multi-institutional, single-arm, phase II HAWK study ( NCT02207530 ) evaluated durvalumab monotherapy, an anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody, in PD-L1-high patients with platinum-refractory R/M HNSCC. Patients and methods Immunotherapy-naïve patients with confirmed PD-L1-high tumour cell expression (defined as patients with ≥25% of tumour cells expressing PD-L1 [TC ≥ 25%] using the VENTANA PD-L1 [SP263] Assay) received durvalumab 10 mg/kg intravenously every 2 weeks for up to 12 months. The primary end-point was objective response rate; secondary end-points included progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). Results Among evaluable patients (n = 111), objective response rate was 16.2% (95% confidence interval [CI], 9.9–24.4); 29.4% (95% CI, 15.1–47.5) for human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive patients and 10.9% (95% CI, 4.5–21.3) for HPV-negative patients. Median PFS and OS for treated patients (n = 112) was 2.1 months (95% CI, 1.9–3.7) and 7.1 months (95% CI, 4.9–9.9); PFS and OS at 12 months were 14.6% (95% CI, 8.5–22.1) and 33.6% (95% CI, 24.8–42.7). Treatment-related adverse events were 57.1% (any grade) and 8.0% (grade ≥3); none led to death. At data cut-off, 24.1% of patients remained on treatment or in follow-up. Conclusion Durvalumab demonstrated antitumour activity with acceptable safety in PD-L1-high patients with R/M HNSCC, supporting its ongoing evaluation in phase III trials in first- and second-line settings. In an ad hoc analysis, HPV-positive patients had a numerically higher response rate and survival than HPV-negative patients.This study was supported by AstraZeneca

Efficiency-Effectiveness Trade-offs in Recommendation Systems

Throughout the years, numerous recommendation algorithms have been developed to address the information filtering problem by leveraging users’ tastes through implicit or explicit feedback. In this paper, we present the work undertaken as part of a PhD thesis focused on exploring new evaluation dimensions centred around the efficiency-effectiveness trade-offs present in state-of-the-art recommendation systems. Firstly, we highlight the lack of efficiency-oriented studies and we formulate the research problem. Then, we propose a mapping of the design space and a classification of the recommendation algorithms/models with respect to salient attributes and characteristics. At the same time, we explain why and how assessing the recommendations on an accuracy versus training cost curve would advance the current knowledge in the area of evaluation, as well as open new research avenues for exploring parameter configurations within well-known algorithms. Finally, we make the case for a comprehensive methodology that incorporates predictive efficiency-effectiveness models, which illustrate the performance and behaviour of the recommendation systems under different recommendation tasks, while satisfying user-defined quality of service constraints and goals

Americans, Marketers, and the Internet: 1999-2012

This is a collection of the reports on the Annenberg national surveys that explored Americans\u27 knowledge and opinions about the new digital-marketing world that was becoming part of their lives. So far we’ve released seven reports on the subject, in 1999, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2009, 2010, and 2012. The reports raised or deepened a range of provocative topics that have become part of public, policy, and industry discourse. In addition to these reports, I’ve included three journal articles — from I/S, New Media & Society and the Journal of Consumer Affairs — that synthesize some of the findings and place them into policy frameworks. The journals have kindly allowed reproduction for this purpose

The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Bayesian Limits on Gravitational Waves from Individual Supermassive Black Hole Binaries

Evidence for a low-frequency stochastic gravitational wave background has recently been reported based on analyses of pulsar timing array data. The most likely source of such a background is a population of supermassive black hole binaries, the loudest of which may be individually detected in these datasets. Here we present the search for individual supermassive black hole binaries in the NANOGrav 15-year dataset. We introduce several new techniques, which enhance the efficiency and modeling accuracy of the analysis. The search uncovered weak evidence for two candidate signals, one with a gravitational-wave frequency of $\sim$4 nHz, and another at $\sim$170 nHz. The significance of the low-frequency candidate was greatly diminished when Hellings-Downs correlations were included in the background model. The high-frequency candidate was discounted due to the lack of a plausible host galaxy, the unlikely astrophysical prior odds of finding such a source, and since most of its support comes from a single pulsar with a commensurate binary period. Finding no compelling evidence for signals from individual binary systems, we place upper limits on the strain amplitude of gravitational waves emitted by such systems.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters as part of Focus on NANOGrav's 15-year Data Set and the Gravitational Wave Background. For questions or comments, please email [email protected]

Pharmaceutical pollution of the world's rivers

Environmental exposure to active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) can have negative effects on the health of ecosystems and humans. While numerous studies have monitored APIs in rivers, these employ different analytical methods, measure different APIs, and have ignored many of the countries of the world. This makes it difficult to quantify the scale of the problem from a global perspective. Furthermore, comparison of the existing data, generated for different studies/regions/continents, is challenging due to the vast differences between the analytical methodologies employed. Here, we present a global-scale study of API pollution in 258 of the world's rivers, representing the environmental influence of 471.4 million people across 137 geographic regions. Samples were obtained from 1,052 locations in 104 countries (representing all continents and 36 countries not previously studied for API contamination) and analyzed for 61 APIs. Highest cumulative API concentrations were observed in sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and South America. The most contaminated sites were in low- to middle-income countries and were associated with areas with poor wastewater and waste management infrastructure and pharmaceutical manufacturing. The most frequently detected APIs were carbamazepine, metformin, and caffeine (a compound also arising from lifestyle use), which were detected at over half of the sites monitored. Concentrations of at least one API at 25.7% of the sampling sites were greater than concentrations considered safe for aquatic organisms, or which are of concern in terms of selection for antimicrobial resistance. Therefore, pharmaceutical pollution poses a global threat to environmental and human health, as well as to delivery of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals