Recognition of elder abuse by home care workers and older people in Romania

Background: No previous studies have considered elder abuse in Eastern Europe. We aimed to determine the proportion of home care workers and older people receiving care in a Romanian home care service who correctly identified elder abuse in a vignette, and who had detected elder abuse at work.Methods: In 2009, care workers and clients of a non-government home care organization serving four areas in Romania completed the Caregiver Scenario Questionnaire to measure ability to identify abuse. We asked the professionals whether they had detected a case of abuse.Results: 35 (100%) professionals and 79 (65.8%) older people took part. Four (11.4%) professionals had encountered a case of elder abuse, two (5.7%) in the last year. No staff and only one older person correctly identified all four abusive strategies in a vignette. Staff with more professional caregiving experience recognized fewer abusive strategies (r = -0.46, p = 0.007).Conclusion: Rates of identification were worryingly low among all professionals, and this was more marked if they had worked longer, suggesting their experiences may have reduced their ability to detect it. Mandatory abuse training for care professionals, and strategies to support reporters of suspected abuse, could help improve the management of elder abuse in all countries

TRIP: A method for novel transcript reconstruction from paired-end RNA-seq reads

Preliminary experimental results on synthetic datasets generated with various sequencing parameters and distribution assumptions show that TRIP has increased transcriptome reconstruction accuracy compared to previous methods that ignore fragment length distribution information

Digital image watermarking: its formal model, fundamental properties and possible attacks

While formal definitions and security proofs are well established in some fields like cryptography and steganography, they are not as evident in digital watermarking research. A systematic development of watermarking schemes is desirable, but at present their development is usually informal, ad hoc, and omits the complete realization of application scenarios. This practice not only hinders the choice and use of a suitable scheme for a watermarking application, but also leads to debate about the state-of-the-art for different watermarking applications. With a view to the systematic development of watermarking schemes, we present a formal generic model for digital image watermarking. Considering possible inputs, outputs, and component functions, the initial construction of a basic watermarking model is developed further to incorporate the use of keys. On the basis of our proposed model, fundamental watermarking properties are defined and their importance exemplified for different image applications. We also define a set of possible attacks using our model showing different winning scenarios depending on the adversary capabilities. It is envisaged that with a proper consideration of watermarking properties and adversary actions in different image applications, use of the proposed model would allow a unified treatment of all practically meaningful variants of watermarking schemes

Generalized PVO‐based dynamic block reversible data hiding for secure transmission using firefly algorithm

In this paper, we proposed a novel generalized pixel value ordering–based reversible data hiding using firefly algorithm (GPVOFA). The sequence of minimum and maximum number pixels value has been used to embed the secret data while prediction and modification are held on minimum, and the maximum number of pixel blocks is used to embed the secret data into multiple bits. The host image is divided into the size of noncoinciding dynamic blocks on the basis of firefly quadtree partition, whereas rough blocks are divided into a larger size; moreover, providing more embedding capacity used small flat blocks size and optimal location in the block to write the information. Our proposed method becomes able to embed large data into a host image with low distortion. The rich experimental results are better, as compared with related preceding arts

Prevalence and correlates of well-being in a cross-sectional survey of older people in Romania attending community day facilities

Background and objectives: Compared with other European countries, older people in Romania experience high rates of poverty and disability. In this, the first study to investigate wellbeing in older Romanian people attending public and third sector day facilities, we tested our hypotheses, based on a successful aging model, that greater wellbeing would be associated with a healthier lifestyle (lower levels of alcohol consumption and smoking), better physical health, mental health, social support (less loneliness) and absence of abuse. // Methods: Older people (65+) without significant cognitive impairment, recruited from three Bucharest social care centers, completed structured questionnaires. Our primary outcome was the 5-item World Health Organization Well-Being Index (WHO-5). // Results: 100/140 (71%) eligible potential participants approached participated; mean WHO-5 score was 67.7 (standard deviation = 20.7); 25 (25%) scored <50, indicating low wellbeing. In our final model, lower depression (β = −0.40, t = −3.8, p < 0.001) and loneliness scores (β = −0.22, t = −2.1, p = 0.034) predicted higher wellbeing. More physical health problems and hospitalisations were associated with lower wellbeing on univariate analyses, but not in the final model. Screening positive for abuse (23 (23%) of participants), activities of daily living, alcohol and smoking status did not predict wellbeing. // Conclusions: Despite experiencing high rates of loneliness, depression, anxiety and abuse, this population of older, Romanian people receiving social support, reported wellbeing levels comparable to European working populations. Loneliness was a more important predictor of lower wellbeing than any other factors studied. Tailored interventions to reduce loneliness in Romanian older people receiving community social support would be a rational next step