Local Differential Privacy for Federated Learning

Advanced adversarial attacks such as membership inference and model memorization can make federated learning (FL) vulnerable and potentially leak sensitive private data. Local differentially private (LDP) approaches are gaining more popularity due to stronger privacy notions and native support for data distribution compared to other differentially private (DP) solutions. However, DP approaches assume that the FL server (that aggregates the models) is honest (run the FL protocol honestly) or semi-honest (run the FL protocol honestly while also trying to learn as much information as possible). These assumptions make such approaches unrealistic and unreliable for real-world settings. Besides, in real-world industrial environments (e.g., healthcare), the distributed entities (e.g., hospitals) are already composed of locally running machine learning models (this setting is also referred to as the cross-silo setting). Existing approaches do not provide a scalable mechanism for privacy-preserving FL to be utilized under such settings, potentially with untrusted parties. This paper proposes a new local differentially private FL (named LDPFL) protocol for industrial settings. LDPFL can run in industrial settings with untrusted entities while enforcing stronger privacy guarantees than existing approaches. LDPFL shows high FL model performance (up to 98%) under small privacy budgets (e.g., epsilon = 0.5) in comparison to existing methods.Comment: 17 page

Structural Basis of Teneurin-Latrophilin Interaction in Repulsive Guidance of Migrating Neurons

Teneurins are ancient metazoan cell adhesion receptors that control brain development and neuronal wiring in higher animals. The extracellular C terminus binds the adhesion GPCR Latrophilin, forming a trans-cellular complex with synaptogenic functions. However, Teneurins, Latrophilins, and FLRT proteins are also expressed during murine cortical cell migration at earlier developmental stages. Here, we present crystal structures of Teneurin-Latrophilin complexes that reveal how the lectin and olfactomedin domains of Latrophilin bind across a spiraling beta-barrel domain of Teneurin, the YD shell. We couple structure-based protein engineering to biophysical analysis, cell migration assays, and in utero electroporation experiments to probe the importance of the interaction in cortical neuron migration. We show that binding of Latrophilins to Teneurins and FLRTs directs the migration of neurons using a contact repulsion-dependent mechanism. The effect is observed with cell bodies and small neurites rather than their processes. The results exemplify how a structure-encoded synaptogenic protein complex is also used for repulsive cell guidance

OptimShare: A Unified Framework for Privacy Preserving Data Sharing -- Towards the Practical Utility of Data with Privacy

Tabular data sharing serves as a common method for data exchange. However, sharing sensitive information without adequate privacy protection can compromise individual privacy. Thus, ensuring privacy-preserving data sharing is crucial. Differential privacy (DP) is regarded as the gold standard in data privacy. Despite this, current DP methods tend to generate privacy-preserving tabular datasets that often suffer from limited practical utility due to heavy perturbation and disregard for the tables' utility dynamics. Besides, there has not been much research on selective attribute release, particularly in the context of controlled partially perturbed data sharing. This has significant implications for scenarios such as cross-agency data sharing in real-world situations. We introduce OptimShare: a utility-focused, multi-criteria solution designed to perturb input datasets selectively optimized for specific real-world applications. OptimShare combines the principles of differential privacy, fuzzy logic, and probability theory to establish an integrated tool for privacy-preserving data sharing. Empirical assessments confirm that OptimShare successfully strikes a balance between better data utility and robust privacy, effectively serving various real-world problem scenarios

Cost Analysis of Emergency Department Visits by Geriatric Patients Living in Nursing Homes.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the cost analysis of emergency department (ED) visits by geriatric patients living in nursing homes. STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. METHODOLOGY: Medical records of geriatric patients living in nursing homes who were admitted to the emergency department of the Hospital, between 2011 and 2015, were retrospectively reviewed. Number of visits, reason, and cost of treatment was determined. RESULTS: In total 63 patients (21 females [33.3%], 42 males [66.6%]) with mean age of 76.3 ± 8.16 years were included. The total number of emergency department visits by those 63 patients was 243. Twenty-three (9.5%) of the total emergency department visits were due to trauma. Six patients (9.5%) were admitted to the emergency department with cardiopulmonary arrest. The mean cost of each patient was $358.30 (53.90 - 1734.10), the maximum cost was$10,095.10, and the minimum cost was $7.42. CONCLUSION: Emergency department visits and hospitalisation are common among elderly patients living in nursing homes. However, emergency department visits by this frail population put a heavy burden on the economy. Essential measures should be taken to reduce the financial burden of emergency department visits and hospitalisation of this geriatric population

Cost analysis of emergency department visits by geriatric patients living in nursing homes

Objective: To determine the cost analysis of emergency department (ED) visits by geriatric patients living in nursing homes. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Methodology: Medical records of geriatric patients living in nursing homes who were admitted to the emergency department of the Hospital, between 2011 and 2015, were retrospectively reviewed. Number of visits, reason, and cost of treatment was determined. Results: In total 63 patients (21 females [33.3%], 42 males [66.6%]) with mean age of 76.3 ±8.16 years were included. The total number of emergency department visits by those 63 patients was 243. Twenty-three (9.5%) of the total emergency department visits were due to trauma. Six patients (9.5%) were admitted to the emergency department with cardiopulmonary arrest. The mean cost of each patient was $358.30 (53.90 - 1734.10), the maximum cost was$10,095.10, and the minimum cost was w7.42. Conclusion: Emergency department visits and hospitalisation are common among elderly patients living in nursing homes. However, emergency department visits by this frail population put a heavy burden on the economy. Essential measures should be taken to reduce the financial burden of emergency department visits and hospitalisation of this geriatric population. © 2019 Journal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan. All rights reserved

Cost analysis of emergency department visits by geriatric patients living in nursing homes

Objective: To determine the cost analysis of emergency department (ED) visits by geriatric patients living in nursing homes. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Methodology: Medical records of geriatric patients living in nursing homes who were admitted to the emergency department of the Hospital, between 2011 and 2015, were retrospectively reviewed. Number of visits, reason, and cost of treatment was determined. Results: In total 63 patients (21 females [33.3%], 42 males [66.6%]) with mean age of 76.3 ±8.16 years were included. The total number of emergency department visits by those 63 patients was 243. Twenty-three (9.5%) of the total emergency department visits were due to trauma. Six patients (9.5%) were admitted to the emergency department with cardiopulmonary arrest. The mean cost of each patient was $358.30 (53.90 - 1734.10), the maximum cost was$10,095.10, and the minimum cost was w7.42. Conclusion: Emergency department visits and hospitalisation are common among elderly patients living in nursing homes. However, emergency department visits by this frail population put a heavy burden on the economy. Essential measures should be taken to reduce the financial burden of emergency department visits and hospitalisation of this geriatric population. © 2019 Journal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan. All rights reserved

Novel nonorthogonal multi-access method for multi-user MIMO with antenna number modulation

Multiple Input Multiple Output with Antenna Number Modulation and Adaptive Antenna Selection (MIMO-ANM-AAS) has recently been proposed as an effective transmission method that can make the selection of antennas to be both data and channel dependent simultaneously, which can result in having a much more improved performance in terms of reliability compared to index/spatial modulation-based schemes. However, one of the main undesirable features of MIMO-ANM-AAS, which is also the case with spatial modulation, is the fact that not all the available antennas are utilized for data transmission as some of these antennas are made inactive. To overcome this problem and utilize all available antennas, Multi-User MIMO-ANM-AAS is proposed in this paper as a novel non-orthogonal multi-access data transmission method that targets serving multiple users by dedicating the antennas used for implementing ANM to serve a far user, whereas the remaining antennas are used to send data for a near user. The fundamental idea behind the proposed scheme is to serve a far user, who is located in a distant location from the transmitter, by the antennas that are defined and utilized by the ANM modulation, while the remaining antennas are deployed to transmit a lower power data stream that is intended to be sent to a near user, who is located in a close proximity from the transmitter. By implementing this method, the near user can simply be served by allocating low transmission power to the antennas that are not used by ANM, whereas the far user is served by the antennas involved in the ANM modulation. By using such a transmission scheme, two users can be served simultaneously by a single MIMO-ANM architecture, and the obtained system reliability of the transmitted data stream for far user can be enhanced, while the capabilities of the antennas not used by ANM are not wasted, but instead utilized to serve an additional user, thus resulting in improving the overall spectral efficiency of the system. In this paper, the concepts of MU-MIMO-ANM-AAS are established on the basis of conventional MIMO using binary phase shift keying (BPSK) symbol modulation over a Rayleigh fading channel. The validity of the system is proven by exhibiting both theoretical analysis and computer simulations' results. Considering the acquired results, it can be said that the proposed MU-MIMO-ANM-AAS is an effective scheme that can satisfy the requirements of multi-user cases for future wireless systems demanding higher reliability and, better spectral efficiency.This research was partly funded by TUBITAK under Grant/Award Number 119E392

The risks of obesity in surgery Operasyonda obezitenin oluşturduḡu riskler

Obesity is known as one of the most important health problems around the world. A small portion of the patients die because of a direct result of morbid obesity, but a great deal of degenerative diseases are shortening the life span. The risk of surgical mortality for an obese patient is about two thirds more than a patient in normal weight. It was reported that problems with delayed gastric discharge, delayed wound healing, infections of the injury, sternal dehiscence, atrial fibrillation and respiratory system problems are increasing in obese patients. After all, it is claimed that body size and hospital mortality do not have a relation. The basal energy and protein requirements of the obese patients should be calculated accurately and should not be restricted. It is important to start the nutritional support as soon as possible and to provide glycemie control. It is important to decide oral or enteral nutrition as the first method while starting the nutritional support and if necessary to apply parenteral nutrition