EnnCore: End-to-End Conceptual Guarding of Neural Architectures

The EnnCore project addresses the fundamental security problem of guaranteeing safety, transparency, and robustness in neural-based architectures. Specifically, EnnCore aims at enabling system designers to specify essential conceptual/behavioral properties of neural-based systems, verify them, and thus safeguard the system against unpredictable behavior and attacks. In this respect, EnnCore will pioneer the dialogue between contemporary explainable neural models and full-stack neural software verification. This paper describes existing studies' limitations, our research objectives, current achievements, and future trends towards this goal. In particular, we describe the development and evaluation of new methods, algorithms, and tools to achieve fully-verifiable intelligent systems, which are explainable, whose correct behavior is guaranteed, and robust against attacks. We also describe how EnnCore will be validated on two diverse and high-impact application scenarios: securing an AI system for (i) cancer diagnosis and (ii) energy demand response

Social exclusion of older persons: a scoping review and conceptual framework

As a concept, social exclusion has considerable potential to explain and respond to disadvantage in later life. However, in the context of ageing populations, the construct remains ambiguous. A disjointed evidence-base, spread across disparate disciplines, compounds the challenge of developing a coherent understanding of exclusion in older age. This article addresses this research deficit by presenting the findings of a two-stage scoping review encompassing seven separate reviews of the international literature pertaining to old-age social exclusion. Stage one involved a review of conceptual frameworks on old-age exclusion, identifying conceptual understandings and key domains of later-life exclusion. Stage two involved scoping reviews on each domain (six in all). Stage one identified six conceptual frameworks on old-age exclusion and six common domains across these frameworks: neighbourhood and community; services, amenities and mobility; social relations; material and financial resources; socio-cultural aspects; and civic participation. International literature concentrated on the first four domains, but indicated a general lack of research knowledge and of theoretical development. Drawing on all seven scoping reviews and a knowledge synthesis, the article presents a new definition and conceptual framework relating to old-age exclusion

Perceptions of Health-Related Community Reentry Challenges among Incarcerated Drug Users in Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine.

Facing competing demands with limited resources following release from prison, people who inject drugs (PWID) may neglect health needs, with grave implications including relapse, overdose, and non-continuous care. We examined the relative importance of health-related tasks after release compared to tasks of everyday life among a total sample of 577 drug users incarcerated in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Kyrgyzstan. A proxy measure of whether participants identified a task as applicable (easy or hard) versus not applicable was used to determine the importance of each task. Correlates of the importance of health-related reentry tasks were analyzed using logistic regression, with a parsimonious model being derived using Bayesian lasso method. Despite all participants having substance use disorders and high prevalence of comorbidities, participants in all three countries prioritized finding a source of income, reconnecting with family, and staying out of prison over receiving treatment for substance use disorders, general health conditions, and initiating methadone treatment. Participants with poorer general health were more likely to prioritize treatment for substance use disorders. While prior drug injection and opioid agonist treatment (OAT) correlated with any interest in methadone in all countries, only in Ukraine did a small number of participants prioritize getting methadone as the most important post-release task. While community-based OAT is available in all three countries and prison-based OAT only in Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyz prisoners were less likely to choose help staying off drugs and getting methadone. Overall, prisoners consider methadone treatment inapplicable to their pre-release planning. Future studies that involve patient decision-making and scale-up of OAT within prison settings are needed to better improve individual and public health

Aging across worlds: examining intergenerational relationships among older adults in two cities in transition

The successful aging model marked by an emphasis on the self has dominated the gerontological tradition in a majority of the western industrialized countries. However, this narrative of active, socially engaged and consumer centric aging is not a contextually homogenized process as experienced by older adults elsewhere, where a “meaningful decline” defines older adults’ renegotiation with familial relationships, expectations, religion and death. Borrowing social-psychological and gerontological perspectives the current study examined the co-existence of these two contrary models-disengagement and successful aging- in two cities that are in transition Ahmedabad (Gujarat, India) and Saskatoon (Saskatchewan, Canada). Drawing from in-depth interviews this study examined intergenerational relationships and expectations around filial ties, emotional bonds, network ties, cultural ideologies and their contribution in forging the aging identity in these two contexts among older Indians in Ahmedabad and those in the transnational setting. Findings suggest that despite the Asian traditional values and expectations surrounding caregiving and support from adult children older Indians in Saskatoon have reconfigured their expectations and are re-negotiating between the two cultural worlds by embracing the successful aging model. In contrast, a structured dependency in terms of economic support and psychological needs is preserved, legitimized and nurtured in the older adult-adult children relationship in Ahmedabad where older parents contribute to household and grandparenting duties while expecting caregiving, support and respect in exchange. By adopting a comparative perspective, the study demonstrates how everyday life of older adults is constructed, lived and produced and role of cultural forces shaping the experience of growing old.by Jagriti Gangopadhya