99 research outputs found
Towards Self-Awareness Privacy Protection for Internet of Things Data Collection
The Internet of Things (IoT) is now an emerging global Internet-based information architecture used to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. IoT-related applications are aiming to bring technology to people anytime and anywhere, with any device. However, the use of IoT raises a privacy concern because data will be collected automatically from the network devices and objects which are embedded with IoT technologies. In the current applications, data collector is a dominant player who enforces the secure protocol that cannot be verified by the data owners. In view of this, some of the respondents might refuse to contribute their personal data or submit inaccurate data. In this paper, we study a self-awareness data collection protocol to raise the confidence of the respondents when submitting their personal data to the data collector. Our self-awareness protocol requires each respondent to help others in preserving his privacy. The communication (respondents and data collector) and collaboration (among respondents) in our solution will be performed automatically
The impact of topical mupirocin on peritoneal dialysis infection rates in Singapore general hospital.
Background.
Peritonitis and exit-site infections (ESI) are major causes of technique failure and morbidity in peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients. Topical mupirocin on the exit-site has been shown to reduce such complications and prolong life in PD. Since the year 2000, such an approach has been adopted for our new incident PD population. We now report the results of this new protocol. We also studied the effect of co-morbidity on peritonitis occurrence.
Methods.
A total of 740 incident PD patients were studied. Patients were divided into two groups based on year of entry into PD (Group 1 from January 1998–December 1999 without topical mupirocin and Group 2 from January 2000–March 2004 with topical mupirocin). Variables studied included gender, age, diabetic status, ischaemic heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, cerebrovascular disease and serum albumin.
Results.
Topical mupirocin at the exit-site has led to a significant reduction in peritonitis rate (0.443 vs 0.339 episodes/patient-year; P<0.0005) and ESI (0.168 vs 0.156 episodes/patient-year; P<0.005) attributed primarily to the significant reduction in Staphylococcus aureus infections. There was an unexpected finding of lower Pseudomonas aeruginosa peritonitis in the mupirocin group (P<0.005). Stepwise multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that only mupirocin application and serum albumin were significant predictors of peritonitis.
Conclusions.
Our study, although limited by its retrospective nature, demonstrated that topical mupirocin was associated with a significant reduction in ESI and peritonitis with unexpected findings of lower Pseudomonas peritonitis. Serum albumin prior to the initiation of PD was a strong predictor of subsequent peritonitis. Mupirocin, with its low toxicity, ease of application and demonstrable beneficial effect in reducing ESI and peritonitis is now used on all incident PD patients
FedDCT: Federated Learning of Large Convolutional Neural Networks on Resource Constrained Devices using Divide and Co-Training
We introduce FedDCT, a novel distributed learning paradigm that enables the
usage of large, high-performance CNNs on resource-limited edge devices. As
opposed to traditional FL approaches, which require each client to train the
full-size neural network independently during each training round, the proposed
FedDCT allows a cluster of several clients to collaboratively train a large
deep learning model by dividing it into an ensemble of several small sub-models
and train them on multiple devices in parallel while maintaining privacy. In
this co-training process, clients from the same cluster can also learn from
each other, further improving their ensemble performance. In the aggregation
stage, the server takes a weighted average of all the ensemble models trained
by all the clusters. FedDCT reduces the memory requirements and allows low-end
devices to participate in FL. We empirically conduct extensive experiments on
standardized datasets, including CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and two real-world
medical datasets HAM10000 and VAIPE. Experimental results show that FedDCT
outperforms a set of current SOTA FL methods with interesting convergence
behaviors. Furthermore, compared to other existing approaches, FedDCT achieves
higher accuracy and substantially reduces the number of communication rounds
(with times fewer memory requirements) to achieve the desired accuracy on
the testing dataset without incurring any extra training cost on the server
side.Comment: Under review by the IEEE Transactions on Network and Service
Managemen
Towards Efficient Communication and Secure Federated Recommendation System via Low-rank Training
Federated Recommendation (FedRec) systems have emerged as a solution to
safeguard users' data in response to growing regulatory concerns. However, one
of the major challenges in these systems lies in the communication costs that
arise from the need to transmit neural network models between user devices and
a central server. Prior approaches to these challenges often lead to issues
such as computational overheads, model specificity constraints, and
compatibility issues with secure aggregation protocols. In response, we propose
a novel framework, called Correlated Low-rank Structure (CoLR), which leverages
the concept of adjusting lightweight trainable parameters while keeping most
parameters frozen. Our approach substantially reduces communication overheads
without introducing additional computational burdens. Critically, our framework
remains fully compatible with secure aggregation protocols, including the
robust use of Homomorphic Encryption. The approach resulted in a reduction of
up to 93.75% in payload size, with only an approximate 8% decrease in
recommendation performance across datasets. Code for reproducing our
experiments can be found at https://github.com/NNHieu/CoLR-FedRec.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, 4 table
Relative contribution of risk factors for early-onset myopia in young Asian children
10.1167/iovs.15-16577Clinical and Epidemiologic Research56138101-8107GUSTO (Growing up towards Healthy Outcomes
Integration of an On-Axis General Sun-Tracking Formula in the Algorithm of an Open-Loop Sun-Tracking System
A novel on-axis general sun-tracking formula has been integrated in the algorithm of an open-loop sun-tracking system in order to track the sun accurately and cost effectively. Sun-tracking errors due to installation defects of the 25 m2 prototype solar concentrator have been analyzed from recorded solar images with the use of a CCD camera. With the recorded data, misaligned angles from ideal azimuth-elevation axes have been determined and corrected by a straightforward changing of the parameters' values in the general formula of the tracking algorithm to improve the tracking accuracy to 2.99 mrad, which falls below the encoder resolution limit of 4.13 mrad
Associations of childcare arrangements with adiposity measures in a multi-ethnic Asian cohort : The gusto study
Publisher Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Childcare arrangements shape behavioural patterns that influence the risk of childhood obesity. However, little is known of its influence on childhood obesity in Singapore. We aim to examine the associations between childcare arrangements at the age of 5 years and childhood adiposity at age 6 years. Children from the GUSTO study were grouped into three childcare arrangements at age 5: Full-time centre-based childcare (FC), partial centre-based with parental care (PCP), and partial centre-based with non-parents (grandparents and domestic helpers) as caregivers (PCN). Diet, physical activity and sedentary behaviour information were collected at age 5, while anthropometric measurements were collected at age 6. Associations were analysed using multivariable regression models. Among 540 children, those in PCN had higher BMI z-scores (β: 0.34; 95% CI: 0.01, 0.66), greater sum of skinfold thicknesses (mm) (β: 3.75; 95% CI: 0.53, 6.97) and were 3.55 times (95% CI: 1.78, 7.05) more likely to be overweight/obese than those in FC. Adiposity measures in PCP children did not differ from those in FC. PCN children were reported to have more screen time and greater fast-food intake. Children in PCN tended to have higher adiposity measures. Greater engagement of non-parental caregivers should be considered in interventions targeting child obesity.Peer reviewe
House dust mite sensitization, eczema, and wheeze increase risk of shellfish sensitization
Non peer reviewe
Population-based plasma lipidomics reveals developmental changes in metabolism and signatures of obesity risk : a mother-offspring cohort study
Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s).Background: Lipids play a vital role in health and disease, but changes to their circulating levels and the link with obesity remain poorly characterized in expecting mothers and their offspring in early childhood. Methods: LC-MS/MS-based quantitation of 480 lipid species was performed on 2491 plasma samples collected at 4 time points in the mother-offspring Asian cohort GUSTO (Growing Up in Singapore Towards healthy Outcomes). These 4 time points constituted samples collected from mothers at 26–28 weeks of gestation (n=752) and 4–5 years postpartum (n=650), and their offspring at birth (n=751) and 6 years of age (n=338). Linear regression models were used to identify the pregnancy and developmental age-specific variations in the plasma lipidomic profiles, and their association with obesity risk. An independent birth cohort (n=1935), the Barwon Infant Study (BIS), comprising mother-offspring dyads of Caucasian origin was used for validation. Results: Levels of 36% of the profiled lipids were significantly higher (absolute fold change > 1.5 and Padj < 0.05) in antenatal maternal circulation as compared to the postnatal phase, with phosphatidylethanolamine levels changing the most. Compared to antenatal maternal lipids, cord blood showed lower concentrations of most lipid species (79%) except lysophospholipids and acylcarnitines. Changes in lipid concentrations from birth to 6 years of age were much higher in magnitude (log2FC=−2.10 to 6.25) than the changes observed between a 6-year-old child and an adult (postnatal mother) (log2FC=−0.68 to 1.18). Associations of cord blood lipidomic profiles with birth weight displayed distinct trends compared to the lipidomic profiles associated with child BMI at 6 years. Comparison of the results between the child and adult BMI identified similarities in association with consistent trends (R2=0.75). However, large number of lipids were associated with BMI in adults (67%) compared to the children (29%). Pre-pregnancy BMI was specifically associated with decrease in the levels of phospholipids, sphingomyelin, and several triacylglycerol species in pregnancy. Conclusions: In summary, our study provides a detailed landscape of the in utero lipid environment provided by the gestating mother to the growing fetus, and the magnitude of changes in plasma lipidomic profiles from birth to early childhood. We identified the effects of adiposity on the circulating lipid levels in pregnant and non-pregnant women as well as offspring at birth and at 6 years of age. Additionally, the pediatric vs maternal overlap of the circulating lipid phenotype of obesity risk provides intergenerational insights and early opportunities to track and intervene the onset of metabolic adversities. Clinical trial registration: This birth cohort is a prospective observational study, which was registered on 1 July 2010 under the identifier NCT01174875.Peer reviewe
Association of maternal Vitamin D status with glucose tolerance and caesarean section in a multi-ethnic Asian cohort: the growing up in Singapore towards healthy outcomes study
10.1371/journal.pone.0142239PLoS ONE10111-16GUSTO (Growing up towards Healthy Outcomes
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