On protection in federated social computing systems

Nowadays, a user may belong to multiple social computing systems (SCSs) in order to benefit from a variety of services that each SCS may provide. To facilitate the sharing of contents across the system boundary, some SCSs provide a mechanism by which a user may “connect ” his accounts on two SCSs. The effect is that contents from one SCS can now be shared to another SCS. Although such a connection feature delivers clear usability advantages for users, it also generates a host of privacy challenges. A notable challenge is that the access control policy of the SCS from which the content originates may not be honoured by the SCS to which the content migrates, because the latter fails to faithfully replicate the protection model of the former. In this paper we formulate a protection model for a fed-eration of SCSs that support content sharing via account connection. A core feature of the model is that sharable con-tents are protected by access control policies that transcend system boundary — they are enforced even after contents are migrated from one SCS to another. To ensure faith-ful interpretation of access control policies, their evaluation involves querying the protection states of various SCSs, us-ing Secure Multiparty Computation (SMC). An important contribution of this work is that we carefully formulate the conditions under which policy evaluation using SMC does not lead to the leakage of information about the protection states of the SCSs. We also study the computational prob-lem of statically checking if an access control policy can be evaluated without information leakage. Lastly, we identify useful policy idioms

Relational abstraction in community-based secure collaboration

Users of an online community are willing to share resources because they can expect rea-sonable behaviour from other members of the community. Such expectations are known as social contracts. In this work, we study the specification and enforcement of social contracts in a computer mediated collaboration environment. Specifically, we examine social contracts that contain both relationship- and history-based elements. A series of policy languages, all based on modal and temporal logics, with increasing expressiveness, have been proposed to express social contracts. Reference monitors are designed to correctly and efficiently enforce the specified policies. A technique called “relational abstraction ” is employed to reduce the reference monitor into a purely relationship-based protection system, that is, what is commonly known as a social network system.

Safer in the Clouds (Extended Abstract)

We outline the design of a framework for modelling cloud computing systems.The approach is based on a declarative programming model which takes the form of a lambda-calculus enriched with suitable mechanisms to express and enforce application-level security policies governing usages of resources available in the clouds. We will focus on the server side of cloud systems, by adopting a pro-active approach, where explicit security policies regulate server's behaviour.Comment: In Proceedings ICE 2010, arXiv:1010.530

The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer consensus statement on immunotherapy for the treatment of prostate carcinoma.

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed malignancy and second leading cause of cancer death among men in the United States. In recent years, several new agents, including cancer immunotherapies, have been approved or are currently being investigated in late-stage clinical trials for the management of advanced prostate cancer. Therefore, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) convened a multidisciplinary panel, including physicians, nurses, and patient advocates, to develop consensus recommendations for the clinical application of immunotherapy for prostate cancer patients. To do so, a systematic literature search was performed to identify high-impact papers from 2006 until 2014 and was further supplemented with literature provided by the panel. Results from the consensus panel voting and discussion as well as the literature review were used to rate supporting evidence and generate recommendations for the use of immunotherapy in prostate cancer patients. Sipuleucel-T, an autologous dendritic cell vaccine, is the first and currently only immunotherapeutic agent approved for the clinical management of metastatic castrate resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). The consensus panel utilized this model to discuss immunotherapy in the treatment of prostate cancer, issues related to patient selection, monitoring of patients during and post treatment, and sequence/combination with other anti-cancer treatments. Potential immunotherapies emerging from late-stage clinical trials are also discussed. As immunotherapy evolves as a therapeutic option for the treatment of prostate cancer, these recommendations will be updated accordingly

Selection criteria for patients with chronic ankle instability in controlled research: a position statement of the International Ankle Consortium

While research on chronic ankle instability (CAI) and awareness of its impact on society and health care systems has grown substantially in the last 2 decades, the inconsistency in participant or patient selection criteria across studies presents a potential obstacle to addressing the problem properly. This major gap within the literature limits the ability to generalize this evidence to the target patient population. Therefore, there is a need to provide standards for patient or participant selection criteria in research focused on CAI with justifications using the best available evidence. The International Ankle Consortium provides this position paper to present and discuss an endorsed set of selection criteria for patients with CAI based on the best available evidence to be used in future research and study designs. These recommendations will enhance the validity of research conducted in this clinical population with the end goal of bringing the research evidence to the clinician and patient