Advanced Surveillance Technologies: Privacy and Evidentiary Issues

Surveillance technology, which encompasses a large array of technologies used to observe individuals’ activities and communications, has advanced at a rapid pace and is becoming more widely available in the general marketplace. This trend is potentially caused by increasing fears of terrorism following the September 11 attacks as well the ability of surveillance technology manufacturers to produce the technology at lower costs. Although surveillance technology has long been used by the military and government intelligence agencies, the use of this technology by law enforcement and now private individuals in areas not of national security concern is new and raises privacy and evidentiary issues yet to be settled by U.S. courts

NBACE score descriptives and area under the curve values for the whole sample.

<p>HS: healthy subjects; MDS: mild dementia syndrome; SD: standard deviation; AUC: area under the curve; CI: Confidence Interval; WMS-III: Wechsler Memory Scale, Third Edition; WAIS-III: Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Third edition; 15-BNT: the abbreviated Boston Naming Test with 15 items; 15-OT: The 15-Objects test; SKT: Syndrom Kurtz Test; s: time in seconds;</p>#<p>Verbal learning WMS-III = 1^st+2^nd+3^rd+4^th trial scores.</p>‡<p>In a subsample of 246 HS and 271 MDS.</p

Characteristics of participants.

<p>HS: healthy subjects; MDS: mild dementia syndrome; MMSE: Mini-Mental State Examination.</p>1<p>Cohens’ d for t-tests in age and MMSE, and ²Phi for Chi square in education and gender.</p>*<p>p<0.05,</p>**<p>p<0.005.</p

Cut-off scores for 6 conditions (3 age ranges by 2 educational levels), including sensitivity (SE) and specificity (SP) values.

<p>WMS-III: Wechsler Memory Scale, Third Edition.</p

Global cut-off scores.

<p>SE: sensitivity; SP: specificity; WAIS-III: Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Third edition; 15-OT: The 15-Objects test; SKT: Syndrom Kurtz Test.</p

Sample sizes of each of the 6 conditions (3 age ranges by 2 educational levels).

<p>HS: healthy subjects; MDS: mild dementia syndrome.</p

Cut-off scores for 6 conditions (3 age ranges by 2 educational levels), including sensitivity (SE) and specificity (SP) values.

<p>WAIS-III: Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Third edition.</p

Cut-off scores in both languages (Spanish and Catalan).

<p>SE: sensitivity; SP: specificity; WMS-III: Wechsler Memory Scale, Third Edition; WAIS-III: Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Third edition; 15-BNT: the abbreviated Boston Naming Test with 15 items; 15-OT: The 15-Objects test; SKT: Syndrom Kurtz Test; s: time in seconds;</p>#<p>Verbal learning WMS-III = 1^st+2^nd+3^rd+4^th trial scores.</p

Blood Amyloid Beta Levels in Healthy, Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease Individuals: Replication of Diastolic Blood Pressure Correlations and Analysis of Critical Covariates

<div><p>Plasma amyloid beta (Aβ) levels are being investigated as potential biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease. In AB128 cross-sectional study, a number of medical relevant correlates of blood Aβ40 or Aβ42 were analyzed in 140 subjects (51 Alzheimer’s disease patients, 53 healthy controls and 36 individuals diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment). We determined the association between multiple variables with Aβ40 and Aβ42 levels measured in three different blood compartments called i) Aβ directly accessible (DA) in the plasma, ii) Aβ recovered from the plasma matrix (RP) after diluting the plasma sample in a formulated buffer, and iii) associated with the remaining cellular pellet (CP). We confirmed that diastolic blood pressure (DBP) is consistently correlated with blood DA Aβ40 levels (r=-0.19, P=0.032). These results were consistent in the three phenotypic groups studied. Importantly, the observation resisted covariation with age, gender or creatinine levels. Observed effect size and direction of Aβ40 levels/DBP correlation are in accordance with previous reports. Of note, DA Aβ40 and the RP Aβ40 were also strongly associated with creatinine levels (r=0.599, P<<0.001) and to a lesser extent to urea, age, hematocrit, uric acid and homocysteine (p<0.001). DBP and the rest of statistical significant correlates identified should be considered as potential confounder factors in studies investigating blood Aβ levels as potential AD biomarker. Remarkably, the factors affecting Aβ levels in plasma (DA, RP) and blood cell compartments (CP) seem completely different.</p> </div

Linear regression between diastolic blood pressure (DBP) volume and levels of DA Aß1-40 in Alzheimer’s disease patients (AD, red triangles), mild cognitive impairment subjects (MCI, blue circles) and healthy individuals (HC, green squares).

<p>Linear regression between diastolic blood pressure (DBP) volume and levels of DA Aß1-40 in Alzheimer’s disease patients (AD, red triangles), mild cognitive impairment subjects (MCI, blue circles) and healthy individuals (HC, green squares).</p