Privacy-Preserving Privacy Profile Proposal Protocol

Many web-based and mobile applications and services allow users to indicate their preferences regarding whether and how their personal information can be used or reused by the application itself, by the service provider, and/or by third parties. The number of possible configurations that constitute a user\u27s preference profile can be overwhelming to a typical user. This report describes a practical, privacy-preserving technique for reducing the burden users face when specifying their preferences by offering users data-driven recommendations for fully-specified preference profiles based on their inputs for just a few settings. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated by a browser-based prototype application that relies on secure multi-party computation and uses the web-compatible JIFF library as the backbone for managing communications between the client application and the recommendation service. The principal algorithms used for generating proposed preference profiles are $k$-means clustering (for privacy-preserving analysis of preference profile data across multiple users) and $k$-nearest neighbors (for selecting a proposed preference profile to recommend to the user)

An Embedded Domain-Specific Language for Logical Circuit Descriptions with Applications to Garbled Circuits

Contemporary libraries and frameworks that make it possible to incorporate secure multi-party computation protocols and capabilities into production software systems and applications must sometimes deliver underlying capabilities (such as logical circuit synthesis) to new kinds of environments (such as web browsers or serverless cloud computing platforms). In order to illustrate some of the benefits of addressing this challenge by building a solution from the ground up that leverages the features of a contemporary and widely used programming language, we present an embedded domain-specific language that allows programmers to describe and synthesize logical circuits. Notably, this approach allows programmers to employ many of the language features and any of the programming paradigms supported by the host language. We illustrate this flexibility by considering two use cases: synthesizing circuits for relational operations and synthesizing circuits corresponding to the SHA-256 cryptographic hash function

Asynchronous Delegated Private Set Intersection with Hiding of Intersection Size

Integrating private set intersection (PSI) protocols within real-world data workflows, software applications, or web services can be challenging. This can occur because data contributors and result recipients do not have the technical expertise, information technology infrastructure, or other resources to participate throughout the execution of a protocol and/or to incur all the communication costs associated with participation. Furthermore, contemporary workflows, applications, and services are often designed around RESTful APIs that might not require contributors or recipients to remain online or to maintain state. Asynchronous delegated PSI protocol variants can better match the expectations of software engineers by (1) allowing data contributors to contribute their inputs and then to depart permanently, and (2) allowing result recipients to request their result only once they are ready to do so. However, such protocols usually accomplish this by introducing an additional party that learns some information about the size of the intersection. This work presents an asynchronous delegated PSI protocol variant that does not reveal the intersection size to the additional party. It is shown that such a protocol can have, on average, linear time and space complexity

Free-Trade Ideology and Transatlantic Abolitionism: A Historiography

Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2015. Author's accepted version deposited in accordance with SHERPA RoMEO guidelines. The definitive version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1053837215000103.This essay seeks to trace the many—and often conflicting—economic ideological interpretations of the transatlantic abolitionist impulse. In particular, it explores the contested relationship between free-trade ideology and transatlantic abolitionism, and highlights the understudied influence of Victorian free-trade ideology within the American abolitionist movement. By bringing together historiographical controversies from the American and British side, the essay calls into question long-standing conceptions regarding the relationship between free trade and abolitionism, and suggests new avenues for research

Family and Neighbourhood Socioeconomic Inequalities in Childhood Trajectories of BMI and Overweight: Longitudinal Study of Australian Children

Background:Socioeconomic inequalities in longitudinal patterning of childhood overweight could cause marked differentials in total burden by adulthood. This study aims to determine timing and strength of the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and children's body mass index (BMI) in the pre- and primary school years, and to examine socioeconomic differences in overweight trajectories across childhood.Methods:Participants were 4949 children from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. BMI was measured at four biennial waves starting at age 4-5 years in 2004. Developmental trajectories of childhood overweight were identified with latent class analyses. Composite variables of family and neighbourhood SES were used.Results:Socioeconomic differences in mean BMI z-scores already present at age 4-5 more than doubled by age 10-11 years, reflecting decreasing mean BMI among advantaged rather than increasing means among disadvantaged children. Latent class analysis identified children with 'stable normal weight' (68%), and with 'persistent' (15%), 'late-onset' (14%), and 'resolving' overweight (3%). Risks of persistent and late-onset childhood overweight were highest among low SES families (e.g. most disadvantaged quintile: ORpersistent= 2.51, 95%CI: 1.83-3.43), and only partly explained by birth weight and parental overweight. Relationships with neighbourhood SES were weaker and attenuated fully on adjustment for family SES. No socioeconomic gradient was observed for resolving overweight.Conclusions:Childhood has become the critical period when socioeconomic inequalities in overweight emerge and strengthen. Although targeting disadvantaged children with early overweight must be a top priority, the presence of childhood overweight even among less-disadvantaged families suggests only whole-society approaches will eliminate overweight-associated morbidity

Intrinsic genetic characteristics determine tumor-modifying capacity of fibroblasts: matrix metalloproteinase-3 5A/5A genotype enhances breast cancer cell invasion

Background Stromal fibroblasts can contribute to tumor invasion through the release of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). Population studies have suggested that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in MMP genes influence levels of expression and may be associated with breast cancer risk and with disease progression. This study directly examined the impact of MMP SNP genotype on the ability of host fibroblasts to promote tumor cell invasion. Methods Primary breast fibroblasts were isolated from patients with (n = 13) or without (n = 19) breast cancer, and their ability to promote breast cancer cell invasion was measured in in vitro invasion assays. Fibroblast invasion-promoting capacity (IPC) was analyzed in relation to donor type (tumor or non-tumor patient), MMP-1, MMP-3, and MMP-9 SNP genotype and MMP activity using independent samples t test and analysis of variance. All statistical tests were two-sided. Results Tumor-derived fibroblasts promoted higher levels of invasion than normal fibroblasts (p = 0.041). When IPC was related to genotype, higher levels of IPC were generated by tumor fibroblasts with the high-expressing MMP-3 5A/5A genotype compared with the 5A/6A and 6A/6A genotypes (p = 0.05 and 0.07, respectively), and this was associated with enhanced MMP-3 release. The functional importance of MMP-3 was demonstrated by enhanced invasion in the presence of recombinant MMP-3, whereas reduction occurred in the presence of a specific MMP-3 inhibitor. An inverse relationship was demonstrated between fibroblast IPC and the high-expressing MMP-1 genotype (p = 0.031), but no relationship was seen with MMP-9 SNP status. In contrast, normal fibroblasts showed no variation in IPC in relation to MMP genotype, with MMP-3 5A/5A fibroblasts exhibiting significantly lower levels of IPC than their tumor-derived counterparts (p = 0.04). Conclusion This study has shown that tumor-derived fibroblasts exhibit higher levels of IPC than normal fibroblasts and that the MMP-3 5A/5A genotype contributes to this through enhanced MMP-3 release. Despite a high-expressing genotype, normal fibroblasts do not exhibit higher IPC or enhanced MMP release. This suggests that more complex changes occur in tumor-derived fibroblasts, enabling full expression of the MMP SNP genotype and these possibly are epigenetic in nature. The results do suggest that, in women with breast cancer, a high-expressing MMP-3 genotype may promote tumor progression more effectively

Observing Exoplanets with the James Webb Space Telescope

The census of exoplanets has revealed an enormous variety of planets or- biting stars of all ages and spectral types: planets in orbits of less than a day to frigid worlds in orbits over 100 AU; planets with masses 10 times that of Jupiter to planets with masses less than that of Earth; searingly hot planets to temperate planets in the Habitable Zone. The challenge of the coming decade is to move from demography to physical characterization. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is poised to open a revolutionary new phase in our understanding of exoplanets with transit spectroscopy of relatively short period planets and coronagraphic imaging of ones with wide separations from their host stars. This article discusses the wide variety of exoplanet opportunities enabled by JWSTs sensitivity and stability, its high angular resolution, and its suite of powerful instruments. These capabilities will advance our understanding of planet formation, brown dwarfs, and the atmospheres of young to mature planets