Limit laws for the diameter of a set of random points from a distribution supported by a smoothly bounded set

We study the asymptotic behavior of the maximum interpoint distance of random points in a $d$-dimensional set with a unique diameter and a smooth boundary at the poles. Instead of investigating only a fixed number of $n$ points as $n$ tends to infinity, we consider the much more general setting in which the random points are the supports of appropriately defined Poisson processes. The main result covers the case of uniformly distributed points within a $d$-dimensional ellipsoid with a unique major axis. Moreover, several generalizations of the main result are established, for example a limit law for the maximum interpoint distance of random points from a Pearson type II distribution

Developing a medical software to enhance patient participation

Mental health disorder is a frequent issue among cancer patients. It is estimated that in about 30% of cancer patients, psychological issues are undetected. Psychooncology is a subdomain of psychology, which studies cancer related psychological issues and, hence, develop appropriate treatments. With the help of screening instruments like the Distress Thermometer, patients are rated according to their mental state. The result of the screening indicates, whether a patient needs psychological treatment or not. However, in most medical facilities this screening is processed using paper-based questionnaires, which complicates the treatment. This thesis aims for enhancing the screening process as well as the overall psychological treatment with a newly developed mobile application Feelback. The mentioned application uses patient participation principles by applying the latter. Patients shall feel more involved in the psychological treatment process. This results in patients that take a more active role in making decisions related to their treatment. Moreover, sophisticated gamification concepts guarantee long-term motivated users. From the medical facility’s point of view, screened patients are evaluated in an automated manner, which, in term, saves time and money. In addition, Feelback makes it easier to document psychological treatments. At the current state of development, further steps should focus on user acceptance testing, in order to verify, whether the mentioned concepts work as intended

Card-Based Cryptography Meets Formal Verification

Card-based cryptography provides simple and practicable protocols for performing secure multi-party computation with just a deck of cards. For the sake of simplicity, this is often done using cards with only two symbols, e.g., ♣ and ♡ . Within this paper, we also target the setting where all cards carry distinct symbols, catering for use-cases with commonly available standard decks and a weaker indistinguishability assumption. As of yet, the literature provides for only three protocols and no proofs for non-trivial lower bounds on the number of cards. As such complex proofs (handling very large combinatorial state spaces) tend to be involved and error-prone, we propose using formal verification for finding protocols and proving lower bounds. In this paper, we employ the technique of software bounded model checking (SBMC), which reduces the problem to a bounded state space, which is automatically searched exhaustively using a SAT solver as a backend. Our contribution is threefold: (a) we identify two protocols for converting between different bit encodings with overlapping bases, and then show them to be card-minimal. This completes the picture of tight lower bounds on the number of cards with respect to runtime behavior and shuffle properties of conversion protocols. For computing AND, we show that there is no protocol with finite runtime using four cards with distinguishable symbols and fixed output encoding, and give a four-card protocol with an expected finite runtime using only random cuts. (b) We provide a general translation of proofs for lower bounds to a bounded model checking framework for automatically finding card- and run-minimal (i.e., the protocol has a run of minimal length) protocols and to give additional confidence in lower bounds. We apply this to validate our method and, as an example, confirm our new AND protocol to have its shortest run for protocols using this number of cards. (c) We extend our method to also handle the case of decks on symbols ♣ and ♡, where we show run-minimality for two AND protocols from the literature

Card-Based Cryptography Meets Formal Verification

Card-based cryptography provides simple and practicable protocols for performing secure multi-party computation (MPC) with just a deck of cards. For the sake of simplicity, this is often done using cards with only two symbols, e.g., ♣ and ♡. Within this paper, we target the setting where all cards carry distinct symbols, catering for use-cases with commonly available standard decks and a weaker indistinguishability assumption. As of yet, the literature provides for only three protocols and no proofs for non-trivial lower bounds on the number of cards. As such complex proofs (handling very large combinatorial state spaces) tend to be involved and error-prone, we propose using formal verification for finding protocols and proving lower bounds. In this paper, we employ the technique of software bounded model checking (SBMC), which reduces the problem to a bounded state space, which is automatically searched exhaustively using a SAT solver as a backend. Our contribution is twofold: (a) We identify two protocols for converting between different bit encodings with overlapping bases, and then show them to be card-minimal. This completes the picture of tight lower bounds on the number of cards with respect to runtime behavior and shuffle properties of conversion protocols. For computing AND, we show that there is no protocol with finite runtime using four cards with distinguishable symbols and fixed output encoding, and give a four-card protocol with an expected finite runtime using only random cuts. (b) We provide a general translation of proofs for lower bounds to a bounded model checking framework for automatically finding card- and length-minimal protocols and to give additional confidence in lower bounds. We apply this to validate our method and, as an example, confirm our new AND protocol to have a shortest run for protocols using this number of cards

Konzeption und Realisierung einer mobilen Anwendung zur Erfassung des Stresslevels am Beispiel von iOS

Die hier vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit einer mobilen Anwendung, die mittels Self-Assessment unter Crowdsensing das Stresslevel einer Person aufzeichnet und analysiert. Self-Assessment (dt. Selbsteinschätzung) bezeichnet in der Psychologie ein Prinzip, bei dem Patienten sich, im medizinischen Sinne, selbst einschätzen. Dieses Prinzip findet in der Psychologie eine Vielzahl an Anwendungen. Besonders im Smartphonebereich gibt es durch die Einfachheit der Mensch-Maschine Schnittstelle, sowie der flächendeckenden Verbreitung von Smartphones, ausgezeichnete Möglichkeiten, aussagekräftige Daten mittels Self-Assessment zu generieren. Crowdsensing (dt. ansprechen von Sensoren einer größeren Personengruppe) ist eine Technik, bei der Sensoren von beispielsweise Smartphones verwendet werden, um Daten zu analysieren, Verhalten von Nutzern zu erlernen oder gemeinsame Interessen herauszufinden. Beide Techniken (Self-Assessment und Crowdsensing) werden in einer App zur Ermittlung des Stresslevels verwendet, um Daten für die Forschung zu generieren. Dabei wurden besonders bei der Konzeption psychologische Aspekte berücksichtigt, damit die erhobenen Daten aussagekräftig sind

Point-of-care ultrasound diagnosis of pediatric cholecystitis in the ED

Abstract Objective: The diagnosis of cholecystitis or biliary tract disease in children and adolescents is an uncommon occurrence in the emergency department and other acute care settings. Misdiagnosis and delays in diagnosing children with cholecystitis or biliary tract disease of up to months and years have been reported in the literature. We discuss the technique and potential utility of point-of-care ultrasound evaluation in a series of pediatric patients with suspected cholecystitis or biliary tract disease. Methods: We present a nonconsecutive case series of pediatric and adolescent patients with abdominal pain diagnosed with cholecystitis or biliary tract disease using point-of-care ultrasound. The published sonographic criteria is 3 mm or less for the upper limits of normal gallbladder wall thickness and is 3 mm or less for normal common bile duct diameter (measured from inner wall to inner wall) in children. Measurements above these limits were considered abnormal, in addition to the sonographic presence of gallstones, pericholecystic fluid, and a sonographic Murphy's sign. Results: Point-of care ultrasound screening detected 13 female pediatric patients with cholecystitis or biliary tract disease when the authors were on duty over a 5-year period. Diagnoses were confirmed by radiology imaging or at surgery and surgical pathology. Conclusions: Point-of-care ultrasound to detect pediatric cholecystitis or biliary tract disease may help avoid misdiagnosis or delays in diagnosis in children with abdominal pain

Translation: The relative native

Translation by Julia Sauma and Martin Holbraad of: Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (2002) "O Nativo Relativo." Mana, vol. 8, no. 1, p. 113-14

Women’s beliefs about medicines and adherence to pharmacotherapy in pregnancy: Opportunities for community pharmacists?

Background During pregnancy women might weigh benefits of treatment against potential risks to the unborn child. However, non-adherence to necessary treatment can adversely affect both mother and child. To optimize pregnant women’s beliefs and medication adherence, community pharmacists are ideally positioned to play an important role in primary care. Objective This narrative review aimed to summarize the evidence on 1) pregnant women’s beliefs, 2) medication adherence in pregnancy, and 3) community pharmacists’ counselling during pregnancy. Method Three search strategies were used in Medline and Embase to find original studies evaluating women’s beliefs, medication adherence and community pharmacists’ counselling during pregnancy. All original descriptive and analytic epidemiological studies performed in Europe, North America and Australia, written in English and published from 2000 onwards were included. Results We included 14 studies reporting on women’s beliefs, 11 studies on medication adherence and 9 on community pharmacists’ counselling during pregnancy. Women are more reluctant to use medicines during pregnancy and tend to overestimate the teratogenic risk of medicines. Risk perception varies with type of medicine, level of health literacy, education level and occupation. Furthermore, low medication adherence during pregnancy is common. Finally, limited evidence showed current community pharmacists’ counselling is insufficient. Barriers hindering pharmacists are insufficient knowledge and limited access to reliable information. Conclusion Concerns about medication use and non-adherence are widespread among pregnant women. Community pharmacists’ counselling during pregnancy is insufficient. Further education, training and research are required to support community pharmacists in fulfilling all the opportunities they have when counselling pregnant women

QCD and strongly coupled gauge theories : challenges and perspectives

We highlight the progress, current status, and open challenges of QCD-driven physics, in theory and in experiment. We discuss how the strong interaction is intimately connected to a broad sweep of physical problems, in settings ranging from astrophysics and cosmology to strongly coupled, complex systems in particle and condensed-matter physics, as well as to searches for physics beyond the Standard Model. We also discuss how success in describing the strong interaction impacts other fields, and, in turn, how such subjects can impact studies of the strong interaction. In the course of the work we offer a perspective on the many research streams which flow into and out of QCD, as well as a vision for future developments.Peer reviewe