Patient and Surrogate Views of Community Consultation for Emergency Research

ObjectivePretrial community consultation (CC) is required for emergency research conducted under an exception from informed consent (EFIC) in the United States. CC remains controversial and challenging, and minimal data exist regarding the views of individuals enrolled in EFIC trials on this process. It is important to know whether participants perceive CC to be meaningful and, if so, whom they believe should be consulted.MethodsWe conducted a secondary analysis of data from two studies interviewing patients and surrogates of two recent EFIC trials (PEER‐RAMPART and PEER‐ProTECT). These interviews included similar open‐ and closed‐ended questions regarding participants’ views of the importance of CC, the rationale for their responses, and their views regarding which populations should be included in consultation efforts. A template analytic strategy was used for qualitative analysis of textual data, and descriptive statistics were tabulated to characterize demographic data and instances of major themes.ResultsNinety percent of participants perceived CC to be valuable. Participants’ reasons for finding CC valuable clustered in two categories: 1) as a method of informing the public about the trial to be conducted and 2) as a way of obtaining input and feedback from the community. Participants cited the medical community (43%) and individuals with a connection to the study condition (41%) as the most important groups to involve in consultation efforts; only 5% suggested consulting the general public in the area where the research will be conducted.ConclusionParticipants in EFIC trials and their decision makers generally valued CC as a method of informing and seeking input from the community. Participants felt that the most appropriate groups to consult were the medical community and individuals with connections to the condition under study. Consultation efforts focused on these two groups, rather than the general public, may be more efficient and more meaningful to individuals involved in EFIC trials. These findings also reinforce the importance of the distinction between public disclosure and CC.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139974/1/acem13265-sup-0001-DataSupplementS1.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139974/2/acem13265_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139974/3/acem13265.pd

Computing on Authenticated Data for Adjustable Predicates

The notion of P-homomorphic signatures, introduced by Ahn et al. (TCC 2012), generalizes various approaches for public computations on authenticated data. For a given predicate P anyone can derive a signature for a message m\u27 from the signatures of a set of messages M, as long as P(M,m\u27)=1. This definition hence comprises notions and constructions for concrete predicates P such as homomorphic signatures and redactable signatures. In our work we address the question of how to combine Pi-homomorphic schemes for different predicates P1,P2,... to create a richer and more flexible class of supported predicates. One approach is to statically combine schemes for predicates into new schemes for logical formulas over the predicates, such as a scheme for AND (P1 AND P2). The other approach for more flexibility is to derive schemes which allow the signer to dynamically decide which predicate to use when signing a message, instead of supporting only a single, fixed predicate. We present two main results. One is to show that one can indeed devise solutions for the static combination for AND, and for dynamically adjustable solutions for choosing the predicate on the fly. Moreover, our constructions are practical and add only a negligible overhead. The other main result is an impossibility result for static combinations. Namely, we prove that, in contrast to the case of AND, many other formulas like the logical OR (P1 OR P2) and the NOT (NOT P) do not admit generic combinations through so-called canonical constructions. This implies that one cannot rely on general constructions in these cases, but must use other methods instead, like finding new predicate-specific solutions from scratch

Metagenomic Profile of the Bacterial Communities Associated with Ixodes ricinus Ticks

Assessment of the microbial diversity residing in arthropod vectors of medical importance is crucial for monitoring endemic infections, for surveillance of newly emerging zoonotic pathogens, and for unraveling the associated bacteria within its host. The tick Ixodes ricinus is recognized as the primary European vector of disease-causing bacteria in humans. Despite I. ricinus being of great public health relevance, its microbial communities remain largely unexplored to date. Here we evaluate the pathogen-load and the microbiome in single adult I. ricinus by using 454- and Illumina-based metagenomic approaches. Genomic DNA-derived sequences were taxonomically profiled using a computational approach based on the BWA algorithm, allowing for the identification of known tick-borne pathogens at the strain level and the putative tick core microbiome. Additionally, we assessed and compared the bacterial taxonomic profile in nymphal and adult I. ricinus pools collected from two distinct geographic regions in Northern Italy by means of V6-16S rRNA amplicon pyrosequencing and community based ecological analysis. A total of 108 genera belonging to representatives of all bacterial phyla were detected and a rapid qualitative assessment for pathogenic bacteria, such as Borrelia, Rickettsia and Candidatus Neoehrlichia, and for other bacteria with mutualistic relationship or undetermined function, such as Wolbachia and Rickettsiella, was possible. Interestingly, the ecological analysis revealed that the bacterial community structure differed between the examined geographic regions and tick life stages. This finding suggests that the environmental context (abiotic and biotic factors) and host-selection behaviors affect their microbiome

[Comment] Redefine statistical significance

The lack of reproducibility of scientific studies has caused growing concern over the credibility of claims of new discoveries based on “statistically significant” findings. There has been much progress toward documenting and addressing several causes of this lack of reproducibility (e.g., multiple testing, P-hacking, publication bias, and under-powered studies). However, we believe that a leading cause of non-reproducibility has not yet been adequately addressed: Statistical standards of evidence for claiming discoveries in many fields of science are simply too low. Associating “statistically significant” findings with P < 0.05 results in a high rate of false positives even in the absence of other experimental, procedural and reporting problems. For fields where the threshold for defining statistical significance is P<0.05, we propose a change to P<0.005. This simple step would immediately improve the reproducibility of scientific research in many fields. Results that would currently be called “significant” but do not meet the new threshold should instead be called “suggestive.” While statisticians have known the relative weakness of using P≈0.05 as a threshold for discovery and the proposal to lower it to 0.005 is not new (1, 2), a critical mass of researchers now endorse this change. We restrict our recommendation to claims of discovery of new effects. We do not address the appropriate threshold for confirmatory or contradictory replications of existing claims. We also do not advocate changes to discovery thresholds in fields that have already adopted more stringent standards (e.g., genomics and high-energy physics research; see Potential Objections below). We also restrict our recommendation to studies that conduct null hypothesis significance tests. We have diverse views about how best to improve reproducibility, and many of us believe that other ways of summarizing the data, such as Bayes factors or other posterior summaries based on clearly articulated model assumptions, are preferable to P-values. However, changing the P-value threshold is simple and might quickly achieve broad acceptance

Sanitizable Signcryption: Sanitization over Encrypted Data (Full Version)

We initiate the study of a new functional signcryption primitive, by exploring sanitizable signatures over encrypted data. While previous solutions for sanitizable signatures require the sanitizer to know, in clear, the original message-signature pair in order to generate the new signature, we investigate the case where it should be hidden from the sanitizer and how this can be achieved with encryption. We call this primitive sanitizable signcryption, and argue that there are two options concerning what the sanitizer learns about the sanitized output: in semi-oblivious sanitizable signcryption schemes the sanitizer may get to know the sanitized message-signature pair, while fully oblivious sanitizable signcryption schemes even protect the output data. Depending on the application, either notion may be preferable. We give feasibility results for both settings by showing that semi-oblivious sanitizable signcryption schemes can be constructed by wraping a regular sanitizable signature scheme into a multi-input functional encryption scheme, such that functional decryption corresponds to the sanitization process. Remarkably, the multi-input functional encryption scheme cannot easily be transferred to a fully oblivious sanitizable signcryption version, so we give a restricted solution based on fully homomorphic encryption for this case. We stress that we see our contribution in directing the attention the question of sanitizable signcryption and show that solutions can be constructed in principle; it yet remains to &#64257;nd truly practical instantiations

The psychology of poverty: Evidence from 43 countries

Abstract Does poverty have psychological consequences? Beginning with Easterlin (1974), a growing literature has investigated the association between income levels and psychological outcomes. However, this literature remains focused on happiness and life satisfaction, while little evidence exists about the link between income and other psychological outcomes. Using World Value Survey data from 114,378 respondents in 43 countries, I show here that income is associated with a host of additional psychological variables. Specifically, low incomes predict lower intrinsic motivation and trust, less prosocial attitudes, and more feelings of meaninglessness. These relationships hold for both poor compared to rich people in the same country, and for poor compared to rich countries. Income inequality is an additional predictor of psychological outcomes across countries, and is associated with loneliness, short-sightedness, risk-taking, and low trust; in contrast, GDP growth is not significantly associated with psychological outcomes. All results are robust to controls for individual-level socioeconomic and country-level geopolitical characteristics. Together, these results suggest that income and income inequality are related to a broad array of psychological outcomes. JEL Codes: D03, D87, I30, O12C93, D03, D87, O1

The implications of desk arrangement on social interaction in a third grade classroom

Numerous studies have illustrated that participation in occupations—defined as meaningful life activities—is essential to wellness (AOTA, 2014). Social interaction is an important area of occupational participation for children in their roles as students (AOTA, 2014). Classroom design can impact student social participation; however, there is a lack of current research focused on effects of classroom design on social interaction for all students. Rather, research has examined factors affecting social participation of certain subgroups of students in the classroom, such as those with chronic illness or deafness (Martinez, Carter & Legato, 2011; Martins & Gaudiot, 2012). While literature provides information about various subpopulations, in this paper we emphasize that social participation based on classroom design can facilitate or inhibit overall occupational participation for all children in the role of student

Unpicking PLAID: A Cryptographic Analysis of an ISO-standards-track Authentication Protocol

The Protocol for Lightweight Authentication of Identity (PLAID) aims at secure and private authentication between a smart card and a terminal. Originally developed by a unit of the Australian Department of Human Services for physical and logical access control, PLAID has now been standardized as an Australian standard AS-5185-2010 and is currently in the fast track standardization process for ISO/IEC 25185-1.2. We present a cryptographic evaluation of PLAID. As well as reporting a number of undesirable cryptographic features of the protocol, we show that the privacy properties of PLAID are significantly weaker than claimed: using a variety of techniques we can fingerprint and then later identify cards. These techniques involve a novel application of standard statistical and data analysis techniques in cryptography. We also discuss countermeasures to our attacks