Privacy Preserving Attribute-Focused Anonymization Scheme for Healthcare Data Publishing

Advancements in Industry 4.0 brought tremendous improvements in the healthcare sector, such as better quality of treatment, enhanced communication, remote monitoring, and reduced cost. Sharing healthcare data with healthcare providers is crucial for harnessing the benefits of such improvements. In general, healthcare data holds sensitive information about individuals. Hence, sharing such data is challenging because of various security and privacy issues. According to privacy regulations and ethical requirements, it is essential to preserve the privacy of patients before sharing data for medical research. State-of-the-art literature on privacy preserving studies either uses cryptographic approaches to protect the privacy or uses anonymizing techniques regardless of the type of attributes, this results in poor protection and data utility. In this paper, we propose an attribute-focused privacy preserving data publishing scheme. The proposed scheme is two-fold, comprising a fixed-interval approach to protect numerical attributes and an improved l -diverse slicing approach to protect the categorical and sensitive attributes. In the fixed-interval approach, the original values of the healthcare data are replaced with an equivalent computed value. The improved l -diverse slicing approach partitions the data both horizontally and vertically to avoid privacy leaks. Extensive experiments with real-world datasets are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme. The classification models built on anonymized dataset yields approximately 13% better accuracy than benchmarked algorithms. Experimental analyses show that the average information loss which is measured by normalized certainty penalty (NCP) is reduced by 12% compared to similar approaches. The attribute focused scheme not only provides data utility but also prevents the data from membership disclosures, attribute disclosures, and identity disclosures

Guía de procedimientos técnicos y legales a considerar en la modificación, disolución y liquidación de las sociedades anónimas, de la ciudad de San Miguel, año 2015

Actualmente, la división jurídica de las sociedades mercantiles salvadoreñas, se dividen en sociedades de personas y sociedades de capital, dentro de las cuales ambas pueden optar por el régimen de capital variable. En lo que concierne al desarrollo del presente trabajo, estará delimitado al estudio de las Sociedades de Capital, específicamente las Sociedades Anónimas, por el grado de importancia económica y por la proliferación de este tipo de organizaciones a nivel mundial, y en nuestro país. Abordando para ello la descripción de los procedimientos legales y técnicos a considerar en las modificaciones que pueden sufrir las sociedades anónimas en su vida económica, de las cuales se ven enmarcadas las que afectan los estatutos sociales, tales como aquellos derivados por aumentos o disminuciones de Capital Social, y aquellas modificaciones que afectan las estructuras o formas de operar de una sociedad tales como lo es la Transformación, fusión y Escisión, esta última abordada desde un punto vista teórico, debido a que en la legislación mercantil salvadoreña no se encuentra regulada, sumándose a ello los procedimientos técnicos y legales aplicables en la disolución y liquidación de Sociedades Anónimas. Considerando el tipo de estudio de nuestra investigación la metodología es: Cualicuantitativa, de tipo descriptiva, la variable a investigar es el conocimiento que los contadores públicos, de las sociedades anónimas poseen, acerca de la Modificación, disolución y Liquidación de las sociedades anónimas en la Ciudad de San Miguel, año 2015. Conclusión: A través de la investigación realizada se puede concluir que los contadores Públicos de las sociedades anónimas de la Ciudad de San Miguel, no cuentan con un nivel de conocimiento claro y definido para el cumplimento de las obligaciones mercantiles y tributarias, en los casos de modificación, disolución y liquidación de Sociedades Anónimas. No se cuenta con una guía que describa los procedimientos que se deben de seguir para la modificación, disolución y liquidación de una sociedad anónima en nuestro país en su mayoría los empresarios solo cumplen con los pasos más comunes por falta de informació

Perceived Discrimination, Coping Styles, and Internalizing Symptoms Among a Community Sample of Hispanic and Somali Adolescents

Purpose: Perceived discrimination, perceptions of receiving differential treatment due to negative attitudes, and stereotypes about one\u27s racial/ethnic group can increase vulnerability to depression and anxiety. Although ethnic minority youth now represent over half of the U.S. youth population, few studies have investigated potential protective factors in the relationship between perceived discrimination and mental health across diverse ethnic minority immigrant youth from different cultural backgrounds. Methods: We examined the association between perceived discrimination and past week symptoms of depression and anxiety and whether patterns of problem and emotion-focused coping moderate these relationships among Somali and Hispanic immigrant youth (N = 353) in an urban midwestern setting (mean age = 15; 53% male, 39% first generation, 75% low income). Path analysis models examined the main effects of perceived discrimination for depression and anxiety and whether problem and emotion-focused coping moderated these associations. Results: Path analysis models suggest that perceived discrimination was positively associated with past week symptoms of depression (β = .37, standard error = .06) and anxiety (β = .16, standard error = .06) across ethnicity. However, adolescents who reported high levels of discrimination and who used predominantly problem-focused coping strategies experienced fewer internalizing problems than youth who relied predominantly on emotion-focused coping strategies. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that strengthening youths’ problem-focused coping strategies in the face of discriminatory stress is a promising health promotion and risk prevention approach

Super-resolution reconstruction of brain magnetic resonance images via lightweight autoencoder

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is useful to provide detailed anatomical information such as images of tissues and organs within the body that are vital for quantitative image analysis. However, typically the MR images acquired lacks adequate resolution because of the constraints such as patients’ comfort and long sampling duration. Processing the low resolution MRI may lead to an incorrect diagnosis. Therefore, there is a need for super resolution techniques to obtain high resolution MRI images. Single image super resolution (SR) is one of the popular techniques to enhance image quality. Reconstruction based SR technique is a category of single image SR that can reconstruct the low resolution MRI images to high resolution images. Inspired by the advanced deep learning based SR techniques, in this paper we propose an autoencoder based MRI image super resolution technique that performs reconstruction of the high resolution MRI images from low resolution MRI images. Experimental results on synthetic and real brain MRI images show that our autoencoder based SR technique surpasses other state-of-the-art techniques in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity (SSIM), Information Fidelity Criterion (IFC), and computational time

Variables sociodemográficas y su relación con los diagnósticos psiquiátricos, de los diferentes centros de salud mental, del Instituto Salvadoreño del Seguro Social, 2018 – 2020

La caracterización epidemiológica de los diagnósticos psiquiátricos del Instituto Salvadoreño del Seguro Social (ISSS) es relevante, debido a que, el análisis y comprensión de los grupos que mayormente consultan por estas afecciones con las variables sociodemográficas que están presentes en las diferentes bases de datos de los centros de salud mental, permitirán a los tomadores de decisiones crear políticas y programas para mejorar la salud mental de la población; lo cual da cumplimiento a lo que establece la OMS que determina necesario integrar en la salud mental todas las esferas de la salud y la política social para garantizar la calidad de los servicios. Métodos: El tipo de estudio fue descriptivo – transversal, la población fueron los registros de consultas de los 13 centros de salud mental del ISSS entre los años 2018 y 2020 en su totalidad, el procesamiento y análisis de la información se realizó por medio del programa Microsoft Excel versiones 2016 y 365. Además, se aplicaron los principios bioéticos de la privacidad, confidencialidad, beneficencia y justicia. Resultados: Los beneficiarios y pensionados son los asegurados que consultan con mayor frecuencia por una situación psiquiátrica, siendo más sobresalientes los diagnósticos con códigos CIE-10 desde el F30 hasta el F49 con 7,414 en los beneficiarios y 4,963 en los pensionados de las consultas acumuladas. Conclusiones: El sexo que consulta con mayor frecuencia son las mujeres con un 70% de las consultas psiquiátricas y las edades más prevalentes de los asegurados son de la cuarta década de la vida en adelante. Además, se obtuvo que los beneficiarios y los pensionados sean los asegurados que consultan con mayor frecuencia por una situación psiquiátrica

Importance of Reward and Prefrontal Circuitry in Hunger and Satiety: Prader-Willi Syndrome vs. Simple Obesity

Background: The majority of research on obesity has focused primarily on clinical features (eating behavior, adiposity measures), or peripheral appetite-regulatory peptides (leptin, ghrelin). However, recent functional neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that some reward circuitry regions which are associated with appetite-regulatory hormones are also involved in the development and maintenance of obesity. Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), characterized by hyperphagia and hyperghrelinemia reflecting multi-system dysfunction in inhibitory and satiety mechanisms, serves as an extreme model of genetic obesity. Simple (non-PWS) obesity (OB) represents an obesity control state. Objective: This study investigated subcortical food motivation circuitry and prefrontal inhibitory circuitry functioning in response to food stimuli before and after eating in individuals with PWS compared with OB. We hypothesized that groups would differ in limbic regions (i.e., hypothalamus, amygdala) and prefrontal regions associated with cognitive control [i.e., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)] after eating. Design and Participants: Fourteen individuals with PWS, 14 BMI- and age-matched individuals with OB, and 15 age-matched healthy-weight controls (HWC) viewed food and non-food images while undergoing functional MRI before (pre-meal) and after (post-meal) eating. Using SPM8, group contrasts were tested for hypothesized regions: hypothalamus, nucleus accumbens (NAc), amygdala, hippocampus, OFC, medial PFC, and DLPFC. Results: Compared with OB and HWC, PWS demonstrated higher activity in reward/limbic regions (NAc, amygdala) and lower activity in hypothalamus and hippocampus, in response to food (vs. non-food) images pre-meal. Post-meal, PWS exhibited higher subcortical activation (hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus) compared to OB and HWC. OB showed significantly higher activity versus PWS and HWC in cortical regions (DLPFC, OFC) associated with inhibitory control. Conclusion: In PWS compared with obesity per se, results suggest hyperactivations in subcortical reward circuitry and hypoactivations in cortical inhibitory regions after eating, which provides evidence of neural substrates associated with variable abnormal food motivation phenotypes in PWS and simple obesity

Dynamics of the nasopharyngeal microbiome of apparently healthy calves and those with clinical symptoms of bovine respiratory disease from disease diagnosis to recovery

IntroductionBovine respiratory disease (BRD) is a multifactorial disease complex in which bacteria in the upper respiratory tract play an important role in disease development. Previous studies have related the presence of four BRD-pathobionts (Mycoplasma bovis, Histophilus somni, Pasteurella multocida, and Mannheimia haemolytica) in the upper respiratory tract to BRD incidence and mortalities in the dairy and beef cattle industry, but these studies typically only use one time point to compare the abundance of BRD-pathobionts between apparently healthy and BRD-affected cattle. The objective of this study was to characterize the longitudinal development of the nasopharyngeal (NP) microbiome from apparently healthy calves, and in calves with clinical signs of BRD, the microbiota dynamics from disease diagnosis to recovery.MethodsDeep nasopharyngeal swabs were taken from all calves immediately after transport (day 0). If a calf was diagnosed with BRD (n = 10), it was sampled, treated with florfenicol or tulathromycin, and sampled again 1, 5, and 10 days after antibiotic administration. Otherwise, healthy calves (n = 20) were sampled again on days 7 and 14. Bacterial community analysis was performed through 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing.ResultsThe NP microbiome of the healthy animals remained consistent throughout the study, regardless of time. The NP microbiota beta diversity and community composition was affected by tulathromycin or florfenicol administration. Even though BRD-pathobionts were identified by 16S rRNA gene sequencing in BRD-affected animals, no difference was observed in their relative abundance between the BRD-affected and apparently healthy animals. The abundance of BRD-pathobionts was not predictive of disease development while the relative abundance of BRD pathobionts was unique to each BRD-affected calf. Interestingly, at the end of the study period, the genera Mycoplasma was the most abundant genus in the healthy group, while Lactobacillus was the most abundant genus in the animals that recovered from BRD.DiscussionThis study highlights that injected antibiotics seem to improve the NP microbiome composition (higher abundance of Lactobacillus and lower abundance of Mycoplasma), and that the relative abundance of BRD-pathobionts differs between individual calves but is not strongly predictive of BRD clinical signs, indicating that additional factors are likely important in the clinical progression of BRD

Loss of the ciliary protein Chibby1 in mice leads to exocrine pancreatic degeneration and pancreatitis

Primary cilia protrude from the apical surface of many cell types and act as a sensory organelle that regulates diverse biological processes ranging from chemo- and mechanosensation to signaling. Ciliary dysfunction is associated with a wide array of genetic disorders, known as ciliopathies. Polycystic lesions are commonly found in the kidney, liver, and pancreas of ciliopathy patients and mouse models. However, the pathogenesis of the pancreatic phenotype remains poorly understood. Chibby1 (Cby1), a small conserved coiled-coil protein, localizes to the ciliary base and plays a crucial role in ciliogenesis. Here, we report that Cby1-knockout (KO) mice develop severe exocrine pancreatic atrophy with dilated ducts during early postnatal development. A significant reduction in the number and length of cilia was observed in Cby1-KO pancreta. In the adult Cby1-KO pancreas, inflammatory cell infiltration and fibrosis were noticeable. Intriguingly, Cby1-KO acinar cells showed an accumulation of zymogen granules (ZGs) with altered polarity. Moreover, isolated acini from Cby1-KO pancreas exhibited defective ZG secretion in vitro. Collectively, our results suggest that, upon loss of Cby1, concomitant with ciliary defects, acinar cells accumulate ZGs due to defective exocytosis, leading to cell death and progressive exocrine pancreatic degeneration after birth

WireWall – Laboratory and field measurements of wave overtopping

In the UK £150bn of assets and 4 million people are at risk from coastal flooding, whilst the construction of sea wall defence schemes typically cost £10,000 per linear meter. With reductions in public funding and 3200 km of coastal defences, cost savings are required that do not cause a reduction in flood resistance. Increasingly there is a requirement to design new coastal flood defences with site specific tolerable hazard thresholds, with regard to wave overtopping during storms of varying severity. The traditional and preferred method for establishing these thresholds has always been physical modelling, but it is recognized that these can cost many 10s thousands of Euros. This is not always feasible, and coastal asset managers have long been looking for affordable methods that can be used to assess overtopping in the field. Recent advances in technology mean existing wave height sensors can now measure at the high frequencies (a few 100 Hz) required to obtain overtopping data, making this the ideal time to initiate a step-change in coastal hazard monitoring capabilities. By converting the existing wave measurement technology into an overtopping monitoring system "WireWall", we can measure the excursions of overtopping volumes and velocities in the lee of a structure. These then can be readily integrated to obtain wave-by-wave volumes and overtopping discharges (l/s/m). At Crosby in the north west of England, the 900 m sea wall will reach the end of its design life in the next 5 years. Deployments of WireWall at this site will provide site-specific data and calibrated overtopping that will feed into the design of a new sea wall. Before deployment in the field, an extensive set of tests were carried out in a 2D wave flume. Starting with known wave conditions from a buoy near the Crosby sea wall, and values from a joint probability wave and water level study, a representation of the sea wall has been tested. Extensive testing was performed to calibrate the WireWall rig. Using traditional methods of assessing wave overtopping in the flume, the WireWall measurements could be directly calibrated against the known volumes collected in the overtopping tanks. At the time of writing, analysis of the laboratory and the flume wave overtopping data is ongoing. The paper describes how WireWall works, describes the laboratory measurements, the field deployments and presents and compares the analysis from the two systems. A successful deployment of the calibrated WireWall rig at Crosby was during the winter of 2018/2019, where waves can be seen overtopping the sea wall is shown in Fig. 1