Towards a classifier for digital sensitivity review

The sensitivity review of government records is essential before they can be released to the official government archives, to prevent sensitive information (such as personal information, or that which is prejudicial to international relations) from being released. As records are typically reviewed and released after a period of decades, sensitivity review practices are still based on paper records. The transition to digital records brings new challenges, e.g. increased volume of digital records, making current practices impractical to use. In this paper, we describe our current work towards developing a sensitivity review classifier that can identify and prioritise potentially sensitive digital records for review. Using a test collection built from government records with real sensitivities identified by government assessors, we show that considering the entities present in each record can markedly improve upon a text classification baseline

Our Digital Legacy: an Archival Perspective

Our digital memories are threatened by archival hubris, technical misdirection, and simplistic application of rules to protect privacy rights. The obsession with the technical challenge of digital preservation has blinded much of the archival community to the challenges, created by the digital transition, to the other core principles of archival science - namely, appraisal (what to keep), sensitivity review (identifying material that cannot yet be disclosed for ethical or legal reasons) and access. The essay will draw on the considerations of appraisal and sensitivity review to project a vision of some aspects of access to the Digital Archive. This essay will argue that only by careful scrutiny of these three challenges and the introduction of appropriate practices and procedures will it be possible to prevent the precautionary closure of digital memories for long periods or, worse still, their destruction. We must ensure that our digital memories can be captured, kept, recalled and remain faithful to the events and circumstances that created them

Towards the Development of a Test Corpus of Digital Objects for the Evaluation of File Format Identification Tools and Signatures

The digital preservation community currently utilises a number of tools and automated processes to identify and validate digital objects. The identification of digital objects is a vital first step in their long-term preservation, but the results returned by tools used for this purpose are lacking in transparency, and are not easily tested or verified. This paper suggests that a test corpus of digital objects is one way of providing this verification and validation, ultimately improving trust in the tools, and providing further stimulus to their development. Issues to be considered are outlined, and attention is drawn to particular examples of existing digital corpora which could conceivably provide a useable framework or starting point for our own communities needs. This paper does not seek to answer all questions in this area, but merely attempts to set out areas for consideration in any next step that is taken

Edificio de oficinas

Este edificio, que servirá de sede a la casa «Castrol», es un imponente y a la vez grácil edificio y se levanta entre la calle Balcombe, la plaza Gloucester y la avenida Marylebone. Está constituido por un amplio cuerpo bajo que ocupa la totalidad del solar y que se eleva en dos y tres plantas, con limpia y escueta portada de acceso de cuidadas pero simplicísimas líneas

Evaluation of pre-analytical factors affecting plasma DNA analysis.

Pre-analytical factors can significantly affect circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) analysis. However, there are few robust methods to rapidly assess sample quality and the impact of pre-analytical processing. To address this gap and to evaluate effects of DNA extraction methods and blood collection tubes on cfDNA yield and fragment size, we developed a multiplexed droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) assay with 5 short and 4 long amplicons targeting single copy genomic loci. Using this assay, we compared 7 cfDNA extraction kits and found cfDNA yield and fragment size vary significantly. We also compared 3 blood collection protocols using plasma samples from 23 healthy volunteers (EDTA tubes processed within 1 hour and Cell-free DNA Blood Collection Tubes processed within 24 and 72 hours) and found no significant differences in cfDNA yield, fragment size and background noise between these protocols. In 219 clinical samples, cfDNA fragments were shorter in plasma samples processed immediately after venipuncture compared to archived samples, suggesting contribution of background DNA by lysed peripheral blood cells. In summary, we have described a multiplexed ddPCR assay to assess quality of cfDNA samples prior to downstream molecular analyses and we have evaluated potential sources of pre-analytical variation in cfDNA studies

User experiments with the Eurovision cross-language image retrieval system

In this paper we present Eurovision, a text-based system for cross-language (CL) image retrieval. The system is evaluated by multilingual users for two search tasks with the system configured in English and five other languages. To our knowledge this is the first published set of user experiments for CL image retrieval. We show that: (1) it is possible to create a usable multilingual search engine using little knowledge of any language other than English, (2) categorizing images assists the user's search, and (3) there are differences in the way users search between the proposed search tasks. Based on the two search tasks and user feedback, we describe important aspects of any CL image retrieval system

FHL1 activates myostatin signalling in skeletal muscle and promotes atrophy

Myostatin is a TGFβ family ligand that reduces muscle mass. In cancer cells, TGFβ signalling is increased by the protein FHL1. Consequently, FHL1 may promote signalling by myostatin. We therefore tested the ability of FHL1 to regulate myostatin function. FHL1 increased the myostatin activity on a SMAD reporter and increased myostatin dependent myotube wasting. In mice, independent expression of myostatin reduced fibre diameter whereas FHL1 increased fibre diameter, both consistent with previously identified effects of these proteins. However, co‐expression of FHL1 and myostatin reduced fibre diameter to a greater extent than myostatin alone. Together, these data suggest that the expression of FHL1 may exacerbate muscle wasting under the appropriate conditions