Grant Access Research Articles

Permissioned blockchain network for proactive access control to electronic health records

BackgroundAs digital healthcare services handle increasingly more sensitive health data, robust access control methods are required. Especially in emergency conditions, where the patient’s health situation is in peril, different healthcare providers associated with critical cases may need to be granted permission to acquire access to Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of patients. The research objective of this work is to develop a proactive access control method that can grant emergency clinicians access to sensitive health data, guaranteeing the integrity and security of the data, and generating trust without the need for a trusted third party.MethodsA contextual and blockchain-based mechanism is proposed that allows access to sensitive EHRs by applying prognostic procedures where information based on context, is utilized to identify critical situations and grant access to medical data. Specifically, to enable proactivity, Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) Neural Networks (NNs) are applied that utilize patient’s recent health history to prognose the next two-hour health metrics values. Fuzzy logic is used to evaluate the severity of the patient’s health state. These techniques are incorporated in a private and permissioned Hyperledger-Fabric blockchain network, capable of securing patient’s sensitive information in the blockchain network.ResultsThe developed access control method provides secure access for emergency clinicians to sensitive information and simultaneously safeguards the patient’s well-being. Integrating this predictive mechanism within the blockchain network proved to be a robust tool to enhance the performance of the access control mechanism. Furthermore, the blockchain network of this work can record the history of who and when had access to a specific patient’s sensitive EHRs, guaranteeing the integrity and security of the data, as well as recording the latency of this mechanism, where three different access control cases are evaluated. This access control mechanism is to be enforced in a real-life scenario in hospitals.ConclusionsThe proposed mechanism informs proactively the emergency team of professional clinicians about patients’ critical situations by combining fuzzy and predictive machine learning techniques incorporated in the private and permissioned blockchain network, and it exploits the distributed data of the blockchain architecture, guaranteeing the integrity and security of the data, and thus, enhancing the users’ trust to the access control mechanism.

Penerapan Teknologi Blockchain Dalam Perspektif Akuntansi, Apakah Tepat Guna?

Today's technological advancements have made work more efficient. One of the breakthroughs in accounting technology is blockchain. This innovative system involves a distributed ledger that uses hashes to grant access to all users. For data accuracy, each user verifies the information before it is stored and shared with blockchain-connected users. This research aims to provide an understanding and overview to consider the application of blockchain technology in accounting based on developments that occur in blockchain. It is expected that this research can provide knowledge for practitioners and academics regarding the application of blockchain in an accounting perspective. This research uses a qualitative approach with a literature review method that utilizes secondary data. Researchers use innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to explain the developments that occur in blockchain. Data sources are obtained from journal articles, books, proceedings, websites and other relevant sources. As a result, the application of blockchain has the potential to change the current accounting paradigm and have a major impact on the accounting profession. A decentralized system helps transparency and accountability of information data. The use of smart contract systems and supporting triple entry systems increases the reliability of information on financial statements, reduces accounting fraud. Innovation in blockchain technology is also appropriate if its application is in accordance with the needs of the organization, so it is important for companies to prioritize needs and know the obstacles in their application.

Design and implementation of a decentralized document management system

Digital document management systems (DMSs) can enhance organizational efficiency, security, and compliance, fostering collaboration and reducing operational costs, and are widely used for convenience and productivity. However, DMSs are vulnerable to security issues, such as unauthorized access, document forgery, and malicious insider activities. Traditional DMSs grant access permissions to individual users, which increases the risk of document leakage or manipulation when these permissions are misused. This article aims to design and implement a decentralized document management system (DDMS) that enhances the security and integrity of digital documents by decentralizing access permissions and using blockchain technology. The proposed DDMS encrypts digital documents using a symmetric key and then the key is divided and distributed among multiple users through Shamir’s secret sharing scheme. The encrypted documents are stored using the InterPlanetary file system (IPFS), ensuring integrity through content-based addressing. And blockchain-based smart contracts manage access permissions and document retrieval, ensuring access is only granted when a predefined number of participants agree. We implement our system using the Ethereum blockchain and IPFS and evaluated its performance against other types of DMSs. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed DDMS significantly enhances security and integrity compared to three types of DMSs. While the system introduces a reasonable performance overhead, particularly with larger documents, it effectively prevents unauthorized access and tampering. For instance, the proposed system incurs approximately 12 s (1.2%) overhead when handling an 8GB document compared to the P2 system, but ensures tamper-proof access control and document integrity. As a result, the proposed DDMS addresses the critical security vulnerabilities found in conventional DMSs by decentralizing document access and leveraging blockchain and decentralized storage. This approach offers a robust solution for secure, tamper-resistant document management, making it suitable for organizations requiring high levels of confidentiality and document integrity.

Quantitative cytoarchitectural phenotyping of deparaffinized human brain tissues.

Advanced 3D imaging techniques and image segmentation and classification methods can profoundly transform biomedical research by offering deep insights into the cytoarchitecture of the human brain in relation to pathological conditions. Here, we propose a comprehensive pipeline for performing 3D imaging and automated quantitative cellular phenotyping on Formalin-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded (FFPE) human brain specimens, a valuable yet underutilized resource. We exploited the versatility of our method by applying it to different human specimens from both adult and pediatric, normal and abnormal brain regions. Quantitative data on neuronal volume, ellipticity, local density, and spatial clustering level were obtained from a machine learning-based analysis of the 3D cytoarchitectural organization of cells identified by different molecular markers in two subjects with malformations of cortical development (MCD). This approach will grant access to a wide range of physiological and pathological paraffin-embedded clinical specimens, allowing for volumetric imaging and quantitative analysis of human brain samples at cellular resolution. Possible genotype-phenotype correlations can be unveiled, providing new insights into the pathogenesis of various brain diseases and enlarging treatment opportunities.

Human rights education as a human right – A logical analysis based on Kanger’s theory of rights

This article provides a theoretical foundation to argue for an effective and meaningful realization of human rights education in school curricula and beyond. Despite emerging research on a content-related basis and large-scale initiatives, the practical realization of human rights education is mostly still a desideratum. By analyzing relevant documents by the United Nations (UN), particularly the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNGA, 1948), this paper shows that human rights education is a human right itself. Upon joining the UN, member states pledged to provide human rights education to all citizens. However, the question what it means to ensure the right to human rights education is complex because the concept of ‘right’ is ambiguous. Thus, this manuscript logically analyzes the right to human rights education by means of Kanger’s theory of rights that encompasses a classification of all possible types of right. The analysis shows that the right to human rights education consists of two complex types of right that contain both a claim right as well as service rights. The author concludes that in order to meet the obligations of the UN Charta, UN member states are required (1) to provide mandatory human rights education in compulsory education and (2) to grant access to human rights education to all citizens.

Some policies matter more: party salience and interest group access to political parties in Western democracies

ABSTRACT Political parties and interest groups play important roles in incorporating societal interests into democratic decision-making. Recent studies have analysed the causes of interactions between individual political parties and interest groups and of interest groups’ choices to seek access to one or more parties. Meanwhile, we know less about why some parties grant access to a range of interest groups while others focus on a few. This article theorises about party strategies and suggests that party salience – that is parties’ emphasis on different policy areas – affects the range of interest groups to which they grant access. I combine interest group survey data from six European democracies with data from party manifestos and use regression analyses to test this hypothesis. I find that parties provide access to multiple interest groups representing various interests in legislative politics and, above all, in policy areas that are salient to them. Thus, parties are more likely to be aware of diverse interests’ perspectives on policies in areas they prioritise. The results have important implications for our understanding of the consequences of party–interest group interactions in democracies.

Novel model to authenticate role-based medical users for blockchain-based IoMT devices.

The IoT (Internet of Things) has played a promising role in e-healthcare applications during the last decade. Medical sensors record a variety of data and transmit them over the IoT network to facilitate remote patient monitoring. When a patient visits a hospital he may need to connect or disconnect medical devices from the medical healthcare system frequently. Also, multiple entities (e.g., doctors, medical staff, etc.) need access to patient data and require distinct sets of patient data. As a result of the dynamic nature of medical devices, medical users require frequent access to data, which raises complex security concerns. Granting access to a whole set of data creates privacy issues. Also, each of these medical user need to grant access rights to a specific set of medical data, which is quite a tedious task. In order to provide role-based access to medical users, this study proposes a blockchain-based framework for authenticating multiple entities based on the trust domain to reduce the administrative burden. This study is further validated by simulation on the infura blockchain using solidity and Python. The results demonstrate that role-based authorization and multi-entities authentication have been implemented and the owner of medical data can control access rights at any time and grant medical users easy access to a set of data in a healthcare system. The system has minimal latency compared to existing blockchain systems that lack multi-entity authentication and role-based authorization.

Exploring Parents’ Everyday Experiences With Digital Media: Barriers and Opportunities for Digital Inclusion

This article presents qualitative research findings on parents’ digital media practices. Through 32 in-depth interviews with parents of 0–6-year-olds in French-speaking Belgium, the study addresses digital inclusion by exploring the diverse ways parents experience and benefit (or not) from digital media. Our research uncovers the dual nature of digital media use in parenting, presenting both advantageous and problematic outcomes across four dialectical dimensions. Our work sheds light on how digital media can (a) offer informational support or constitute an informational challenge, (b) provide emotional assistance or cause emotional struggles, (c) grant access to social support or contribute to social pressures, and (d) serve as a tool for the daily organisation or complicate daily life. Our article also investigates the factors associated with either positive or negative outcomes. We show the role of personal, situational, social, and normative factors. To conclude, we identify strategies for childcare and parenting support professionals to promote digital inclusion among parents by addressing barriers to positive experiences and outcomes related to the use of digital media. By integrating the outcomes of parents’ experiences with digital media into discussions of digital inclusion, this article contributes to a comprehensive approach to promoting digital equity beyond questions of access and skills. It calls for user-centric strategies that consider the diverse experiences and concrete outcomes associated with digital media use and emphasises the importance of supporting parents and families regarding these tools.

The Impact of Administrative Burdens in Ghana’s LEAP Cash Transfer Programme: Insights for Enhancing Well-being

This article reports experiences and challenges connected with Ghana’s Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme and its implications for grant access and impacts on recipients’ well-being. Engaging with the administrative burden’s framework, we find that inadequate information; transport, timing and financial barriers to accessing payments; irregularity of payments; electronic payment difficulties; gift giving to programme administrators; and lack of access to complementary services are the key administrative challenges watering down the LEAP impacts on recipients’ well-being. We recommend establishing an appropriate information delivery system, feedback and monitoring mechanisms, providing other productivity-enhancing services to complement the LEAP grant, strengthening the local implementation structures and payment procedures and reducing travel costs and waiting time for service delivery.

Structural Inequalities in Namibia and South Africa: A Critical Social Work Perspective

Namibia and South Africa share land and maritime borders and the interrelated structural challenges of poverty and socio-economic inequalities amidst progressive economic growth that are rooted in their apartheid past and contemporary economic development trajectories. Such inequalities are defined along racial, class, gender and other social locations that either grant privilege, power and access to socio-economic opportunities or result in marginalisation, oppression and resource deprivation. The rationale for this article is linked to the historic call for social work to intensify efforts in promoting social and economic equality. Despite Namibia and South Africa’s geographical proximity and their intertwined histories, there is a dearth of social work studies that offer a comparative critical social work perspective on structural inequalities in these former apartheid strongholds. While social work should actively engage in contesting the structural contradictions of poverty and inequalities amidst abundant resources, the reality is often that of the uncritical acceptance of existing socio-political inequalities, such that the profession’s enunciated commitment to social justice becomes perimetric. Thus, the article argues for the inclusion of critical social work approaches in social work education and practice against a backdrop of ideological divides, political trends and contextual factors that limit social workers’ critical and structural level engagement.

Provably secure data selective sharing scheme with cloud-based decentralized trust management systems

AbstractThe smart collection and sharing of data is an important part of cloud-based systems, since huge amounts of data are being created all the time. This feature allows users to distribute data to particular recipients, while also allowing data proprietors to selectively grant access to their data to users. Ensuring data security and privacy is a formidable task when selective data is acquired and exchanged. One potential issue that emerges is the risk that data may be transmitted by cloud servers to unauthorized users or individuals who have no interest in the particular data or user interests. The prior research lacks comprehensive solutions for balancing security, privacy, and usability in secure data selective sharing schemes inside Cloud-Based decentralized trust management systems. Motivating factors for settling this gap contain growing concerns concerning data privacy, the necessity for scalable and interoperable frameworks, and the increasing dependency on cloud services for data storage and sharing, which necessitates robust and user-friendly mechanisms for secure data management. An effective and obviously secure data selective sharing and acquisition mechanism for cloud-based systems is proposed in this work. We specifically start by important a common problematic related to the selective collection and distribution of data in cloud-based systems. To address these issues, this study proposes a Cloud-based Decentralized Trust Management System (DTMS)-connected Efficient, Provably Secure Data Selection Sharing Scheme (EPSDSS). The EPSDSS approach employs attribute-based encryption (ABE) and proxy re-encryption (PRE) to provide fine-grained access control over shared data. A decentralized trust management system provides participant dependability and accountability while mitigating the dangers of centralized trust models. The EPSDSS-PRE paradigm would allow data owners to regulate granular access while allowing users to customize data collection without disclosing their preferences. In our strategy, the EPSDSS recognizes shared data and generates short fingerprints for information that can elude detection before cloud storage. DTMS also computes user trustworthiness and improves user behaviour administration. Our research demonstrates that it’s able to deliver trustworthy and safe data sharing features in cloud-based environments, making it a viable option for enterprises seeking to protect sensitive data while maximizing collaboration and utilization of resources.

The Right to Transparency in Public Governance: Freedom of Information and the Use of Artificial Intelligence by Public Agencies

What information should and can be transparent for artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms? This article examines the socio-technical and legal perspectives of transparency in relation to algorithmic decision-making in public administration. We show how transparency in AI can be understood in light of the various technologies and the challenges one may encounter. Despite some first steps in that direction, there exists so far no mature standard for documenting AI models. From a legal perspective, this article examined the applicable freedom of information (FOI) regimes across different jurisdictions, with a particular focus on Denmark and other Scandinavian countries. Despite notable differences, our findings show that the FOI regimes generally only grant access to existing documents, and that access can be denied on the basis of the wide proprietary interests and internal documents exemptions. This is why we ultimately conclude that the European data-protection framework and the proposed EU AI Act — with their far-reaching duties to document the functioning of AI systems — provide promising new avenues for research and insights into transparency in AI.

Failure of the Law to Grant Access to Legal Abortion in Chile.

In 2017, Chile decriminalized abortion on three grounds: (i) if the pregnant person's life is at risk, (ii) fetal nonviability, and (iii) rape or incest. This multicase study explores the experiences of pregnant people legally entitled to but denied access to legal abortion in Chile. Through a snowball sampling approach, we recruited adult Chilean residents who sought, were eligible for, and were denied a legal abortion after September 2017. We conducted semistructured interviews with participants to explore their experiences in seeking and being denied legal abortions. We recorded and transcribed the interviews, then coded and analyzed the transcriptions to identify common themes. We identified four women who met the eligibility criteria. The interviews revealed five common themes in their experiences: (i) disparate levels of social support in accessing abortion, (ii) abundant access barriers, (iii) forced pregnancy, (iv) abortion stigma, and (v) a failure of the law to provide access to abortion. Although the 2017 law expanded legal access to abortion in Chile, significant barriers remain. Compounded with social stigma, and the socioeconomic disparities in abortion access, pregnant people continue to face insurmountable obstacles in obtaining legal abortions, even when their lives are at risk and the pregnancy is not viable. The state must prioritize equity of access to legal abortions. Future studies should continue to explore the challenges people face accessing legal abortion care to inform strategies to ensure people are able to obtain the quality care that they are legally entitled to.

An evolutionary innovation for mating facilitates ecological niche expansion and buffers species against climate change

One of the drivers of life's diversification has been the emergence of "evolutionary innovations": The evolution of traits that grant access to underused ecological niches. Since ecological interactions can occur separately from mating, mating-related traits have not traditionally been considered factors in niche evolution. However, in order to persist in their environment, animals need to successfully mate just as much as they need to survive. Innovations that facilitate mating activity may therefore be an overlooked determinant of species' ecological limits. Here, we show that species' historical niches and responses to contemporary climate change are shaped by an innovation involved in mating-a waxy, ultra-violet-reflective pruinescence produced by male dragonflies. Physiological experiments in two species demonstrate that pruinescence reduces heating and water loss. Phylogenetic analyses show that pruinescence is gained after taxa begin adopting a thermohydrically stressful mating behavior. Further comparative analyses reveal that pruinose species are more likely to breed in exposed, open-canopy microhabitats. Biogeographic analyses uncover that pruinose species occupy warmer and drier regions in North America. Citizen-science observations of Pachydiplax longipennis suggest that the extent of pruinescence can be optimized to match the local conditions. Finally, temporal analyses indicate that pruinose species have been buffered against contemporary climate change. Overall, these historical and contemporary patterns show that successful mating can shape species' niche limits in the same way as growth and survival.

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard: How Language and Societal Influences Shape Power and Discourses

The current paper aims to analyze the case of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s claims of domestic abuse, in the context of Foucault’s concepts of a socially constructed society, power, subject positions and discourses. Foucauldian Discourse Analysis goes against the westernized concept of structures such as gender, sexuality morality and norm, as it disregards the notion that these concepts are immutable and mainly biological, and suggests that society is fluid, placing the wider sociocultural and historical context of a society as the basic foundations of creating discourses, placing individual concepts and groups in hierarchies, with knowledge and power granting access to higher places in the societal hierarchy and therefore facilitating the production of discourses. In light of that, the introduction includes three qualitative studies that depict the fluidity of gender concepts regarding domestic abuse, and analyzing in the analysis section the power dynamics, subject positions and discourses created regarding the two actors, based on theoretical background around FDA analysis and social constructionism, qualitative studies, as well as recordings of the live trial in 2022 and two articles out of the four that were chosen, analyzing themes of gender differences, court environment and the media. The use of 6 analytic tools were used in order to identify the discourses, as well as explain the social constructionist perspective around gender and language. Keywords: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, FDA, Gender, Discourse, Social constructionism

TINJAUAN HAK AKSES PEREKAM MEDIS DAN INFORMASI KESEHATAN TERHADAP DATA REKAM MEDIS ELEKTRONIK DI RUMAH SAKIT MEDIKA DRAMAGA BOGOR

Medical record access rights are the use and utilization of medical records that may only be carried out by parties who have permission for medical record data in the security and protection of electronic medical record data service facility leaders grant access rights to health workers in health care facilities the purpose of this study was to determine access rights for medical recorders and health information to electronic medical record data at the medika dramaga bogor hospital. This research method uses a qualitative descriptive method with data collection techniques in the form of observation and interviews. The sample in this study were 10 medical recorders and health information.The results of the study that standard operating procedures related to access rights are available but not yet valid and signed by the leadership of the medika dramaga bogor hospital, then regarding the implementation of pmik access rights to electronic medical record data already referring to permenkes number 24 of 2022 and PMIK problems or obstacle in accessing electronic medical record data is the exchange of information between officers regarding user id and passwords which has an impact on patient data security in the event of abuse of access rights.
 
 Keywords: access rights, medical recorders and health information, electronic medical record data

Wash-in leptogenesis after the evaporation of primordial black holes

Wash-in leptogenesis is a powerful mechanism to generate the baryon asymmetry of the Universe that treats right-handed-neutrino interactions on the same footing as electroweak sphaleron processes: as mere spectator processes acting on the background of chemical potentials in the Standard Model plasma. Successful wash-in leptogenesis requires this chemical background to be CP-violating, which can be achieved by violating any of the more than ten global charges that are conserved in the Standard Model at very high temperatures. In this paper, we demonstrate that the primordial charge asymmetries required for wash-in leptogenesis can be readily produced by evaporating primordial black holes (PBHs). Our argument is based on the fact that the Hawking radiation emitted by PBHs contains more or less any state in the particle spectrum. Therefore, if heavy states with CP-violating decays are present in the ultraviolet, PBH evaporation will unavoidably lead to the production of these states. We illustrate this scenario by means of a simple toy model where PBH evaporation leads to the production of heavy particles that we call asymmetrons and whose decay results in a primordial charge asymmetry for right-handed electrons, which in turn sets the initial conditions for wash-in leptogenesis. We focus on the parameter region where the decay of the initial thermal asymmetron abundance occurs long before PBH evaporation and only results in a negligible primordial charge asymmetry. PBH evaporation at later times then serves as a mechanism to resurrect the asymmetron abundance and ensure the successful generation of the baryon asymmetry after all. We conclude that PBHs can act as asymmetry-producing machines that grant access to whatever CP-violating physics may be present in the ultraviolet, rekindling it at lower energies where it can be reprocessed into a baryon asymmetry by right-handed neutrinos.

Enabling secure health information sharing among healthcare organizations by public blockchain

The facilitation of sharing and exchanging patients’ health records is a paramount opportunity in e-health, enabling healthcare providers to garner a comprehensive and clear perspective of patients’ medical histories without necessitating direct inquiries. Besides this great advantage, it introduces substantial issues on security and privacy, mainly related to unauthorized access to e-health records when different healthcare service providers maintain records. In this paper, we deal with this problem and propose using the blockchain technology (1) to obfuscate the linkage between patients’ identities and their e-health records and (2) to grant access to e-health records exclusively to entities authorized by patients themselves. Key outcomes include using a digital identity based on the Electronic Identification, Authentication, and Trust Services Regulation (eIDAS) to control access to these records, and a concrete implementation by adopting the Ethereum blockchain. Our solution relies on using a public blockchain, which is an improvement for the state of the art, in which only private or consortium blockchains have been proposed. The resulting solution has been analyzed, and the effectiveness and affordability of the proposal have been shown.

Data mobilisation in the LWS Herbarium: success and prospects.

Digitisation of hosted specimens is a crucial task for all herbaria worldwide and is one of the main streams for today. By digitising their collections and publishing the datasets, the herbaria grant access to essential data to a wide research audience and, as a result, involve their collections in scientific work more actively. Digitisation also allows virtual preservation of the collections, which is especially important in conditions of hostilities, when the entire collection can be destroyed or damaged in one moment. This paper describes two datasets recently published in GBIF in the framework of the LWS herbarium digitisation initiative. It also contains some considerations about further digitisation priorities and plans in the LWS Herbarium in the context of complicated war conditions and limited facilities. In total, 2,419 occurrence records from Ukraine mobilised from LWS Herbarium were published. These datasets are planned to be dynamic with the addition of new records along with progress of digitisation work at LWS. At least 6,000 more records are planned to be published through these datasets in 2024.

Revolutionizing Home Security: A Comprehensive Overview of an Advanced RFID Door Lock System for Keyless Access and Smart Home Protection

The abstract presents a cutting-edge RFID door lock system that does away with traditional physical keys to improve home security. The system uses state-of-the-art components, such as an RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) reader and an Arduino microcontroller, to provide a safe, keyless access option for homes. This technology provides homes with more protection and convenience, which is a comfort in a world where theft and unwanted access are ongoing issues. Conventional keys are not the best option for home security because they can be stolen, lost, or duplicated. By using customized RFID cards or key fobs, the RFID door lock system, on the other hand, streamlines the entry procedure while significantly lowering the possibility of unwanted access. An RFID reader module, an Arduino microcontroller, and an electronic locking mechanism are the three most crucial parts of the system. Once the authenticity of the card has been confirmed by the RFID reader, the Arduino microcontroller will utilize the obtained data to initiate the lock. Additionally, the system can be improved with features like smartphone applications for remote access control, which let homeowners monitor and grant access from a distance. This RFID door lock system has many advantages for homeowners, including strong security features, user-friendliness, and the capacity to monitor access events. These features provide homeowners with convenience and peace of mind. RFID-based security systems are an important development in the rapidly developing field of smart home technology.