Non-pertinent Information Research Articles

Why We Disclose Personal Information Despite Cybersecurity Risks and Vulnerabilities

Is it fair to say that the disclosure of personal information, in an online setting, is voluntary or due to incentivization, cognitive risk-benefit analysis, cognitive predisposition, or based on information sensitivity, whereas our personal information is being collected, knowingly and forcibly most of the time, and unknowingly and inadvertently at other times? While the collection of personal information is necessary to organizations and online users alike, in completing online transactions, the issue is the collection of additional non-pertinent information that serves only organizations' prescriptive and predictive analytics and their business interests, and not the users'. Most study on the phenomenon have centered on voluntary or willful disclosure, and on technical collections. This article examines the phenomenon based on the concept of the obligatory passage point and found that online users disclose their personal information online mostly because the information are designated as required in an online setting, contrary to conventional beliefs.

Cognitive training in schizophrenia: PrACTice preparing action with contextual information

Patients with schizophrenia frequently complain about their difficulty to initiate new activities. In our view, a Δ major cause for difficulties in initiating activities is as deficit of goal directed/voluntary action that requires endogenous or self-triggered attention [2,3]. In the Le Vinatier hospital, Lyon, we designed a new cognitive software training program. The PrACTice program aims at improving the capacity of activating the internal representation related to a goal directed action in patients with schizophrenia [1]. Each trial begins with a goal directed action sentence displayed in the centre of a computer screen (“writing a letter”) followed by a scene containing contextual information. Participants have to imagine themselves performing the goal-directed action. Then pictures of an isolated object (e.g., a pencil) are displayed. Subjects have to answer whether the object is useful or not to achieve the goal-directed action previously presented. Four levels are available. Reaction times of accuracy response are recorded as a measure of the effort made to produce a mental representation of the action. Preliminary results: Results vary by session factor (pre and post training) and nature of target objects (useful and non-useful). Before the cognitive training, RTs to decide that an object is non useful to achieve a goal-directed action are longer than for useful objects. Inversed pattern of response is observed after the cognitive training. We discuss how this result can favour initiation of adequate behaviours. Adequate behaviour implies active mental representation of relevance action that thus facilitates inhibition of non-pertinent information.

Optical Image Compression Using a Real Fourier Plane

Hastening transmission by efficiently providing compression is our goal in this work. Image compression consists in reducing information size representing an image. Elimination of redundancies and non-pertinent information enables memory space minimization and thus fast data transmission. Optics can offer an alternative choice to overcome the limitation of numerical compression algorithms. In this paper, we propose real-time optical image compression using a real Fourier plane to save time required for compression by using the principles of coherent optics. Digital and optical simulation results are presented and analyzed. An optical compression decompression setup is demonstrated using two different SLMs (SEIKO and DisplayTech). The purpose of this method is to simplify our earlier method, improve the quality of reconstructed image, and avoid the disadvantages of numerical algorithms.

‘Off-label’ drug use: an FDA regulatory term, not a negative implication of its medical use

As physicians continue to prescribe more and more drugs, plaintiff's attorneys in the wake of tort reform are attempting to carve out or create informed consent cases based on the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) labeling requirements and the doctors' communications with their patients as it relates to those requirements. The theory of tort litigation revolves around whether the doctor disclosed to his patient the fact that he prescribed a drug in an 'off-label' manner, or for a purpose not approved by the FDA's testing process. This article argues that the doctor's decision to inform the patient of the 'off-label' status of the prescription is not relevant to the physician's standard of care for an informed consent case. First, the FDA has specifically stated that its procedures and requirements have no effect on the practice of medicine and that the FDA does not prohibit doctors from prescribing drugs in an 'off-label' manner. Second, the FDA's approval of a drug is immaterial to the effectiveness in the drug's 'off-label' use. In fact, prescribing medication in an 'off-label' manner can constitute the standard of care in many cases. Third, a doctor's duty is to practice medicine and treat his patient, not inform the patient of the FDA's non-medically related labeling. Therefore, doctors should not be branded with the additional duty of disclosing non-pertinent information, such as the FDA's medically irrelevant distinction, to their patients.

How to decide which are the most pertinent overly-represented features during gene set enrichment analysis

BackgroundThe search for enriched features has become widely used to characterize a set of genes or proteins. A key aspect of this technique is its ability to identify correlations amongst heterogeneous data such as Gene Ontology annotations, gene expression data and genome location of genes. Despite the rapid growth of available data, very little has been proposed in terms of formalization and optimization. Additionally, current methods mainly ignore the structure of the data which causes results redundancy. For example, when searching for enrichment in GO terms, genes can be annotated with multiple GO terms and should be propagated to the more general terms in the Gene Ontology. Consequently, the gene sets often overlap partially or totally, and this causes the reported enriched GO terms to be both numerous and redundant, hence, overwhelming the researcher with non-pertinent information. This situation is not unique, it arises whenever some hierarchical clustering is performed (e.g. based on the gene expression profiles), the extreme case being when genes that are neighbors on the chromosomes are considered.ResultsWe present a generic framework to efficiently identify the most pertinent over-represented features in a set of genes. We propose a formal representation of gene sets based on the theory of partially ordered sets (posets), and give a formal definition of target set pertinence. Algorithms and compact representations of target sets are provided for the generation and the evaluation of the pertinent target sets. The relevance of our method is illustrated through the search for enriched GO annotations in the proteins involved in a multiprotein complex. The results obtained demonstrate the gain in terms of pertinence (up to 64% redundancy removed), space requirements (up to 73% less storage) and efficiency (up to 98% less comparisons).ConclusionThe generic framework presented in this article provides a formal approach to adequately represent available data and efficiently search for pertinent over-represented features in a set of genes or proteins. The formalism and the pertinence definition can be directly used by most of the methods and tools currently available for feature enrichment analysis.

A new approach for optical colored image compression using the JPEG standards

Image compression consists in reducing information volume representing an image. Elimination of redundancies and non-pertinent information enables memory space minimization and thus faster data transmission. The present work aims to improve the quality of the compressed image while minimizing the time required for compression by using the principle of coherent optics. We present an optical adaptation of the method of JPEG compression technique for binary, gray-level and color images. Illustrative simulations will be given at the end to validate our architecture and to evaluate the performance on different types of images (binary, gray and color). An optical implementation setup is proposed and validated experimentally.

Reduced or increased influence of non-pertinent information in patients with schizophrenia?

We tested the ability of 18 patients with schizophrenia and 18 matched controls to filter non-pertinent information in orientation matching tasks. The non-pertinent information consisted of pictures conveying semantic information. The pertinent information consisted of oriented line-segments drawn inside pictures or was represented by the overall orientation of the picture itself. The results showed that non-pertinent information interfered with performance of control subjects in all tasks. In contrast, non-pertinent information interfered with the performance of patients with schizophrenia to the same extent as that of matched controls only when non-pertinent and pertinent information was physically mingled, but not when they were separated. Yet, patients processed non-pertinent information in all experiments, as shown by reversed interference effects when non-pertinent and pertinent information was physically separated. These results suggest a deficit at linking physically distinct visual information in patients with schizophrenia. Additionally, performance was more impaired in patients with schizophrenia than in control subjects when the amount of displayed information increased. The results suggest the coexistence, and a possible relationship between attentional deficits and impairments at linking distinct visual information in patients with schizophrenia.