Confidentiality challenges in releasing longitudinally linked data

Longitudinally linked household data allows researchers to analyse trends over time as well as on a cross-sectional level. Such analysis requires households to be linked across waves, but this increases the possibility of disclosure risks. We focus on an inter-wave disclosure risk specific to such data sets where intruders can make use of intimate knowledge gained about the household in one wave to learn new sensitive information about the household in future waves. We consider a specific way this risk could occur when households split in one wave, so an individual has left the household, and illustrate this risk using the Wealth and Assets survey. We also show that simply removing the links between waves may be insufficient to adequately protect confidentiality. To mitigate this risk we investigate two statistical disclosure control methods, perturbation and synthesis, that alter sensitive information on these households in the current wave. In this way no new sensitive information will be disclosed to these individuals, while utility should be largely preserved provided the SDC measures are applied appropriately. © 2020, University of Skovde. All rights reserved

Creativity and commerce: Michael Klinger and new film history

The crisis in film studies and history concerning their legitimacy and objectives has provoked a reinvigoration of scholarly energy in historical enquiry. 'New film history' attempts to address the concerns of historians and film scholars by working self-reflexively with an expanded range of sources and a wider conception of 'film' as a dynamic set of processes rather than a series of texts. The practice of new film history is here exemplified through a detailed case study of the independent British producer Michael Klinger (active 1961-87) with a specific focus on his unsuccessful attempt to produce a war film, Green Beach, based on a memoir of the Dieppe raid (August 1942). This case study demonstrates the importance of analysing the producer's role in understanding the complexities of film-making, the continual struggle to balance the competing demands of creativity and commerce. In addition, its subject matter - an undercover raid and a Jewish hero - disturbed the dominant myths concerning the Second World War, creating what turned out to be intractable ideological as well as financial problems. The paper concludes that the concerns of film historians need to engage with broader cultural and social histories. © 2010 Taylor & Francis

Characterization of the human gene for a newly discovered carbonic anhydrase, CA VII, and its localization to chromosome 16

Six carbonic anhydrase (CA) isozymes (CA I-VI) in mammals and other amniotes have been described. We have isolated an additional CA gene from a human genomic library and designated its putative product carbonic anhydrase VII (CA VII). The gene is approximately 10 kb long and contains seven exons and six introns found at positions identical to those determined for the previously described CA I, CA II, and CA III genes. The finding of a 17-bp GT-rich segment in a position 28 bp downstream of the poly(A)+ signal and the high correspondence of the 5' and 3' splice sites of the six introns with consensus junction sequences are consistent with the gene being functional. The 5' flanking regions of the CA VII gene do not contain the TATA and CAAT promoter elements usually found within 100 bp upstream of transcription initiation, but do contain a TTTAA sequence 102 nucleotides upstream of the initiation codon. The 5' region of the gene (-243 to +551) is GC-rich and contains 80 CpG dinucleotides and four possible Sp1 (GGGCGG or CCGCCC) binding sites. Northern analysis has identified the salivary gland as a major site of expression. The derived amino acid sequence of the CA VII gene is 263 amino acids long and has 50, 56, and 49% identity with human CA I, CA II, and CA III, respectively. No differences were found at any of the 39 positions that have remained invariant in all mammalian CA isozymes sequenced to date. Based on analysis of interspecific somatic cell hybrids, the human CA VII gene, CA7, was assigned to chromosome 16, with localization to the long arm at the q21-23 region by in situ hybridization. This is in contrast to the location of the CA I, CA II, and CA III gene cluster on human chromosome 8 and that of the human CA VI gene on chromosome 1.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/29017/1/0000047.pd

Phylogenetic ctDNA analysis depicts early-stage lung cancer evolution.

The early detection of relapse following primary surgery for non-small-cell lung cancer and the characterization of emerging subclones, which seed metastatic sites, might offer new therapeutic approaches for limiting tumour recurrence. The ability to track the evolutionary dynamics of early-stage lung cancer non-invasively in circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) has not yet been demonstrated. Here we use a tumour-specific phylogenetic approach to profile the ctDNA of the first 100 TRACERx (Tracking Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Evolution Through Therapy (Rx)) study participants, including one patient who was also recruited to the PEACE (Posthumous Evaluation of Advanced Cancer Environment) post-mortem study. We identify independent predictors of ctDNA release and analyse the tumour-volume detection limit. Through blinded profiling of postoperative plasma, we observe evidence of adjuvant chemotherapy resistance and identify patients who are very likely to experience recurrence of their lung cancer. Finally, we show that phylogenetic ctDNA profiling tracks the subclonal nature of lung cancer relapse and metastasis, providing a new approach for ctDNA-driven therapeutic studies

The genetic architecture of the human cerebral cortex

The cerebral cortex underlies our complex cognitive capabilities, yet little is known about the specific genetic loci that influence human cortical structure. To identify genetic variants that affect cortical structure, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of brain magnetic resonance imaging data from 51,665 individuals. We analyzed the surface area and average thickness of the whole cortex and 34 regions with known functional specializations. We identified 199 significant loci and found significant enrichment for loci influencing total surface area within regulatory elements that are active during prenatal cortical development, supporting the radial unit hypothesis. Loci that affect regional surface area cluster near genes in Wnt signaling pathways, which influence progenitor expansion and areal identity. Variation in cortical structure is genetically correlated with cognitive function, Parkinson's disease, insomnia, depression, neuroticism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Tendencias de la cultura y cambio organizacional: estudio de caso

La imagen corporativa en relación con el medio se evidencia en el informe de Deloitte (2018) sobre tendencias del capital humano, en donde se reportan alrededor de 11.000 cuestionarios aplicados a gerentes de 140 países y 150 líderes de empresas colombianas, el planteamiento realizado sugiere que el capital social cobra tanto importancia como el físico y el financiero. Estos aspectos están relacionados con la identidad corporativa y cómo se relaciona a su vez con la cultura y la gestión del en la organización. La cultura y la gestión del cambio han cobrado mucho interés para las personas que guían las organizaciones, los estudios realizados por Deloitte en 2017 se focalizaron en la relación de la cultura y el compromiso como elementos importantes del empleado; los resultados del estudio dejan en evidencia cómo la habilidad de las organizaciones para afrontar inconvenientes de compromiso y cultura tenían una reducción del 14% con respecto al año anterior, estos datos permiten entender la complejidad del ambiente en el ámbito laboral y dan cuenta de la importancia de desarrollar conocimiento válido que oriente a académicos y empresarios para que puedan abordar de una manera adecuada estos aspectos.1a edició

Brain multiplexes reveal morphological connectional biomarkers fingerprinting late brain dementia states

Accurate diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) before conversion to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is invaluable for patient treatment. Many works showed that MCI and AD affect functional and structural connections between brain regions as well as the shape of cortical regions. However, ‘shape connections’ between brain regions are rarely investigated -e.g., how morphological attributes such as cortical thickness and sulcal depth of a specific brain region change in relation to morphological attributes in other regions. To fill this gap, we unprecedentedly design morphological brain multiplexes for late MCI/AD classification. Specifically, we use structural T1-w MRI to define morphological brain networks, each quantifying similarity in morphology between different cortical regions for a specific cortical attribute. Then, we define a brain multiplex where each intra-layer represents the morphological connectivity network of a specific cortical attribute, and each inter-layer encodes the similarity between two consecutive intra-layers. A significant performance gain is achieved when using the multiplex architecture in comparison to other conventional network analysis architectures. We also leverage this architecture to discover morphological connectional biomarkers fingerprinting the difference between late MCI and AD stages, which included the right entorhinal cortex and right caudal middle frontal gyrus

Multimodal and Multiscale Deep Neural Networks for the Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease using structural MR and FDG-PET images

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease where biomarkers for disease based on pathophysiology may be able to provide objective measures for disease diagnosis and staging. Neuroimaging scans acquired from MRI and metabolism images obtained by FDG-PET provide in-vivo measurements of structure and function (glucose metabolism) in a living brain. It is hypothesized that combining multiple different image modalities providing complementary information could help improve early diagnosis of AD. In this paper, we propose a novel deep-learning-based framework to discriminate individuals with AD utilizing a multimodal and multiscale deep neural network. Our method delivers 82.4% accuracy in identifying the individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) who will convert to AD at 3 years prior to conversion (86.4% combined accuracy for conversion within 1–3 years), a 94.23% sensitivity in classifying individuals with clinical diagnosis of probable AD, and a 86.3% specificity in classifying non-demented controls improving upon results in published literature