measuring the cost of a pediatric vaccine administration in the uk

Abstract The administration of a vaccine dose involves a series of activities prior to and on the day of vaccine delivery. Total vaccination cost should include the cost of each activity, which is often not done or poorly reported. To calculate those costs a field study was performed in 6 United Kingdom (UK) sites (General Practitioner (GP) practices) during a 4-month period (April–June 2015). First, a workflow map of all the relevant vaccine-related activities per site was obtained through interviews. Second, time estimates for activities happening prior to the vaccination day were obtained through interviews and associated costs were calculated. A prospective, non-interventional study using Time & Motion (T&M) methodology was used to measure time for activities happening on the day of vaccination. Consumables, wastage, and guardian time were also collected. Third, the time for each task and for all tasks combined during the T&M study was analyzed using a random intercept model to account for site effect. Hundred and twenty-three T&M observations with approximately 20 per site were collected and were equally stratified by vaccination visit during the first year of a baby's life. Total cost per visit was £11.9 (site range: £8.6–£17.0) when supply cost and time for activities prior to the vaccination day were included. Time per dose administrated was 7.1 min (site range: 5.7–9.2) and the associated cost was £4.3 (site range: £3.1–£6.2). The study demonstrates an accurate reflection of the time and cost involved in a vaccine dose administration in a pediatric setting in the UK. The amount measured is consistent with the current National Health Services fee schedule

Practical Improvements of Profiled Side-Channel Attacks on a Hardware Crypto-Accelerator

Abstract. This article investigates the relevance of the theoretical frame-work on profiled side-channel attacks presented by F.-X. Standaert et al. at Eurocrypt 2009. The analyses consist in a case-study based on side-channel measurements acquired experimentally from a hardwired crypto-graphic accelerator. Therefore, with respect to previous formal analyses carried out on software measurements or on simulated data, the inves-tigations we describe are more complex, due to the underlying chip’s architecture and to the large amount of algorithmic noise. In this dif-ficult context, we show however that with an engineer’s mindset, two techniques can greatly improve both the off-line profiling and the on-line attack. First, we explore the appropriateness of different choices for the sensitive variables. We show that a skilled attacker aware of the regis-ter transfers occurring during the cryptographic operations can select the most adequate distinguisher, thus increasing its success rate. Sec-ond, we introduce a method based on the thresholding of leakage data to accelerate the profiling or the matching stages. Indeed, leveraging on an engineer’s common sense, it is possible to visually foresee the shape of some eigenvectors thereby anticipating their estimation towards their asymptotic value by authoritatively zeroing weak components containing mainly non-informational noise. This method empowers an attacker, in that it saves traces when converging towards correct values of the secret. Concretely, we demonstrate a 5 times speed-up in the on-line phase of the attack.

Efficient template attacks

This is the accepted manuscript version. The final published version is available from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-08302-5_17.Template attacks remain a powerful side-channel technique to eavesdrop on tamper-resistant hardware. They model the probability distribution of leaking signals and noise to guide a search for secret data values. In practice, several numerical obstacles can arise when implementing such attacks with multivariate normal distributions. We propose efficient methods to avoid these. We also demonstrate how to achieve significant performance improvements, both in terms of information extracted and computational cost, by pooling covariance estimates across all data values. We provide a detailed and systematic overview of many different options for implementing such attacks. Our experimental evaluation of all these methods based on measuring the supply current of a byte-load instruction executed in an unprotected 8-bit microcontroller leads to practical guidance for choosing an attack algorithm.Omar Choudary is a recipient of the Google Europe Fellowship in Mobile Security, and this research is supported in part by this Google Fellowship

Calpain cleavage and subcellular characterisation of the ferlin family.

The ferlins are a family of C2-domain containing proteins. C2 domains regulate vesicle fusion in synaptotagmins, and animal models of ferlin deficiency display pathologies related to Ca2+-dependent vesicle fusion. Dysferlin mutations cause limb-girdle muscular dystrophy due to defective membrane repair. Our group has previously shown that Ca2+-dependent proteases, calpains, cleave dysferlin following membrane injury, releasing mini-dysferlinC72, that we hypothesise mediates membrane repair. Otoferlin mutations cause non-syndromic deafness, while no pathology causing mutations have been identified in other ferlins. My project establishes that dysferlin and myoferlin, type-I ferlins, are present at the plasma membrane and endo-lysosomal pathway while otoferlin and Fer1L6, type-II ferlins, are present at the plasma membrane and recycling trans-Golgi compartments. I also show that dysferlin is cleaved to mini-dysferlinC72 following injury in all cell types by the ubiquitous calpains-1 and -2 in the alternatively spliced exon 40a, indicating dysferlin cleavage is a fundamental response to membrane injury. Exon 40a-containing dysferlin recruits to sites of membrane injury in myotubes, indicating mini-dysferlinC72 may function directly at sites of injury. Finally, I have shown that calpains also cleave otoferlin and myoferlin. Cleavage of other ferlins indicates ferlin cleavage is an evolutionarily conserved event, predating the split between type-I and type-II ferlins

Actuación en zonas antiguas de pueblos y ciudades

Actuación en zonas antiguas de pueblos y ciudade

KLEIN: A New Family of Lightweight Block Ciphers

Resource-efficient cryptographic primitives become fundamental for realizing both security and efficiency in embedded systems like RFID tags and sensor nodes. Among those primitives, lightweight block cipher plays a major role as a building block for security protocols. In this paper, we describe a new family of lightweight block ciphers named KLEIN, which is designed for resource-constrained devices such as wireless sensors and RFID tags. Compared to the related proposals, KLEIN has advantage in the software performance on legacy sensor platforms, while in the same time its hardware implementation can also be compact