Dysbiosis and species over representation in the exit site skin microbiota of hemodialysis patients carrying tunneled cuffed central venous catheter.

Objectives: Hemodialysis patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) are susceptible to infections and dysbiosis. Catheter-related infections are typically caused by opportunistic skin pathogens. This study aims to compare the skin microbiota changes around the exit site of tunneled cuffed catheters (peri-catheter group) and the contralateral site (control group).

Valuing Personal Data with Privacy Consideration.

A key challenge in information privacy research is how to value personal data with privacy consideration. In this study, we propose an experimental auction approach for valuing personal data. We use the generalized second-price auction to assess the monetary values of individuals' identity, demographic, and private information.

Predictive Analytics with Strategically Missing Data.

We study strategically missing data problems in predictive analytics with regression. In many real-world situations, such as financial reporting, college admission, job application, and marketing advertisement, data providers often conceal certain information on purpose in order to gain a favorable outcome. It is important for the decision-maker to have a mechanism to deal with such strategic behaviors.

One-Step Dip-Coating-Fabricated Core-Shell Silk Fibroin Rice Paper Fibrous Scaffolds for 3D Tumor Spheroid Formation.

Bioscaffolds are important substrates for supporting three-dimensional (3D) cell cultures. Silk fibroin (SF) is an attractive biomaterial in tissue engineering because of its good biocompatibility and mechanical properties. Electrospinning is one of the most often used approaches to fabricate SF fibrous scaffolds; yet, this technique still faces many challenges, such as low yield, residual organic solvents, limited extensibility of fibers, and a lack of spatial control over pore size.

Protecting Privacy When Sharing and Releasing Data with Multiple Records per Person.

This study concerns the risks of privacy disclosure when sharing and releasing a dataset in which each individual may be associated with multiple records. Existing data privacy approaches and policies typically assume that each individual in a shared dataset corresponds to a single record, leading to an underestimation of the disclosure risks in multiple records per person scenarios. We propose two novel measures of privacy disclosure to arrive at a more appropriate assessment of disclosure risks.

Differential Privacy for the Vast Majority.

Differential privacy has become one of the widely used mechanisms for protecting sensitive information in databases and information systems. Although differential privacy provides a clear measure of privacy guarantee, it implicitly assumes that each individual corresponds to a single record in the result of a database query. This assumption may not hold in many database query applications.

Anonymizing 1:M microdata with high utility.

Preserving privacy and utility during data publishing and data mining is essential for individuals, data providers and researchers. However, studies in this area typically assume that one individual has only one record in a dataset, which is unrealistic in many applications. Having multiple records for an individual leads to new privacy leakages.

Anonymizing and Sharing Medical Text Records.

Health information technology has increased accessibility of health and medical data and benefited medical research and healthcare management. However, there are rising concerns about patient privacy in sharing medical and healthcare data. A large amount of these data are in free text form.

Preserving Patient Privacy When Sharing Same-Disease Data.

Medical and health data are often collected for studying a specific disease. For such same-disease microdata, a privacy disclosure occurs as long as an individual is known to be in the microdata. Individuals in same-disease microdata are thus subject to higher disclosure risk than those in microdata with different diseases.

Unveiling consumer's privacy paradox behaviour in an economic exchange.

Privacy paradox is of great interest to IS researchers and firms gathering personal information. It has been studied from social, behavioural, and economic perspectives independently. However, prior research has not examined the degrees of influence these perspectives contribute to the privacy paradox problem.

Genome-wide Association Mapping of Quantitative Trait Loci (QTLs) for Contents of Eight Elements in Brown Rice (Oryza sativa L.).

An association mapping of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) regulating the concentrations of eight elements in brown rice (Oryza sativa L.) was performed using USDA mini-core subset cultivated in two different environments. In addition, correlation between the grain elemental concentrations was also studied.

Digression and Value Concatenation to Enable Privacy-Preserving Regression.

Regression techniques can be used not only for legitimate data analysis, but also to infer private information about individuals. In this paper, we demonstrate that regression trees, a popular data-analysis and data-mining technique, can be used to effectively reveal individuals' sensitive data. This problem, which we call a "regression attack," has not been addressed in the data privacy literature, and existing privacy-preserving techniques are not appropriate in coping with this problem.

Pricing and disseminating customer data with privacy awareness.

Organizations today regularly share their customer data with their partners to gain competitive advantages. They are also often requested or even required by a third party to provide customer data that are deemed sensitive. In these circumstances, organizations are obligated to protect the privacy of the individuals involved while still benefiting from sharing data or meeting the requirement for releasing data.

Anxiolytic-like effect of mirtazapine mediates its effect in the median raphe nucleus.

Mirtazapine, a noradrenergic and specific serotonergic antidepressant (NaSSA), blocks the α2-adrenergic autoreceptors and heteroreceptors, which are responsible for controlling noradrenaline and 5-hydroxy-tryptamine (5-HT) release. Though preclinical and clinical studies have shown that mirtazapine exerts an anxiolytic action, its precise brain target sites remain unclear. In the present study, we investigated the brain area(s) in which mirtazapine exerts its anxiolytic-like effects on the expression of contextual conditioned freezing in rats.

Class Restricted Clustering and Micro-Perturbation for Data Privacy.

The extensive use of information technologies by organizations to collect and share personal data has raised strong privacy concerns. To respond to the public's demand for data privacy, a class of clustering-based data masking techniques is increasingly being used for privacy-preserving data sharing and analytics. Traditional clustering-based approaches for masking numeric attributes, while addressing re-identification risks, typically do not consider the disclosure risk of categorical confidential attributes.

Developing Privacy Solutions for Sharing and Analyzing Healthcare Data.

The extensive use of electronic health data has increased privacy concerns. While most healthcare organizations are conscientious in protecting their data in their databases, very few organizations take enough precautions to protect data that is shared with third party organizations. Recently the regulatory environment has tightened the laws to enforce privacy protection.

[Clinical observation of visual quality after implantation of toric intraocular lens].

Objective: To observe the visual quality after implantation of Acrysof toric intraocular lens (IOL) in cataract patients.

Methods: Eighty eyes (60 patients) had implantation of Acrysof toric IOL in our hospital between Oct. 2009 and Sep.

[Data mining for SSRs in ESTs and development of EST-SSR marker in oilseed rape].

Totally 2803 SSRs distributed in 2443 ESTs were mined out and accounted for 13.58% of 17987 non-redundant ESTs from oilseeed rape, with the average distance of distribution about 4.26 kb.

5-HT1A receptor agonist affects fear conditioning through stimulations of the postsynaptic 5-HT1A receptors in the hippocampus and amygdala.

Evidence from preclinical and clinical studies has shown that 5-HT(1A) receptor agonists have anxiolytic actions. The anxiolytic actions of 5-HT(1A) receptor agonists have been tested by our previous studies using fear conditioning. However, little is known about the brain regions of anxiolytic actions of 5-HT(1A) receptor agonists in this paradigm.

Effect of a dopamine D1/5 receptor antagonist on haloperidol-induced inhibition of the acquisition of conditioned fear.

This study examined the effects of combined treatment with the typical antipsychotic drug haloperidol and dopamine D1/5 receptor antagonist SCH 23390 on the acquisition of contextual conditioned fear (re-exposure to an environment paired previously with inescapable electric footshocks), compared with those of various antipsychotic adjuvants, which may increase the effects of antipsychotic drugs. Rats were treated subcutaneously with haloperidol (3 mg/kg) combined with SCH 23390 (0.03 mg/kg) and were given fear conditioning by 5 min footshocks in shock chambers 30 min after the injection.

Effect of MS-153 on the acquisition and expression of conditioned fear in rats.

Pavlovian fear conditioning is one of the most extensively studied and reliable behavioral paradigms used to investigate the mechanisms involved in fear and anxiety. Increased glutamatergic neurotransmission may play an important role in mediating fear conditioning. The present study assessed whether (R)-(-)-5-methyl-1-nicotinoyl-2-pyrazoline (MS-153), a novel cerebroprotective agent that inhibits the release of glutamate and enhances glutamate uptake, affects the acquisition and expression of conditioned fear.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor reduces conditioned fear through its effect in the amygdala.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are first-line treatment for most anxiety disorders, but their mechanism of anxiolytic action has not been clarified. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are anxiolytic in conditioned fear stress (re-exposure to an environment paired previously with inescapable electric footshocks). To clarify the brain regions where selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors act, we examined the effect of microinjection of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, citalopram, into the amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex and mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus on freezing behavior, an index of fear, induced by conditioned fear stress.

[Biological basis of anxiety disorders and serotonergic anxiolytics].

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have wide indications for the treatment of anxiety disorders, including panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and social anxiety disorder in addition to depression. Until recently, no animal model has been available for screening the anxiolytic effect of SSRIs and studying its mechanism of action. We have investigated the relationship between serotonin neurotransmission and anxiety using conditioned fear stress (CFS), an animal model of anxiety.

Effect of mediodorsal thalamic nucleus lesion on contextual fear conditioning in rats.

Much evidence from animal and clinical studies has shown that the mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus (MD) is related to various types of memory, such as visual recognition, object-reward association, spatial working, and reference memory; however, few studies have investigated its role in emotion-related learning and memory processes. This study compared the effect of pre- and posttraining bilateral lesions of the mediodorsal thalamic nucleus with those of the amygdala on contextual conditioned fear. Both pre- and posttraining amygdala lesions almost eliminated conditioned freezing, and significantly blocked postshock freezing when behavioral tests were performed immediately after footshocks, reconfirming previous studies that the amygdala is implicated in the learning of Pavlovian conditioning.