Participant's Private Research Articles

FedEHR: A Federated Learning Approach towards the Prediction of Heart Diseases in IoT-Based Electronic Health Records.

In contemporary healthcare, the prediction and identification of cardiac diseases is crucial. By leveraging the capabilities of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled devices and Electronic Health Records (EHRs), the healthcare sector can largely benefit to improve patient outcomes by increasing the accuracy of disease prediction. However, protecting data privacy is essential to promote participation and adhere to rules. The suggested methodology combines EHRs with IoT-generated health data to predict heart disease. For its capacity to manage high-dimensional data and choose pertinent features, a soft-margin L1-regularised Support Vector Machine (sSVM) classifier is used. The large-scale sSVM problem is successfully solved using the cluster primal-dual splitting algorithm, which improves computational complexity and scalability. The integration of federated learning provides a cooperative predictive analytics methodology that upholds data privacy. The use of a federated learning framework in this study, with a focus on peer-to-peer applications, is crucial for enabling collaborative predictive modeling while protecting the confidentiality of each participant's private medical information.

A privacy‐preserving density peak clustering algorithm in cloud computing

SummaryAiming at preventing the privacy disclosure of sensitive information, issues related to privacy protection in cloud computing have attracted the interest of researchers. To protect the privacy of users during clustering in a cloud computing environment, we present a privacy‐preserving density peak clustering (PPDPC) algorithm that neither discloses personal privacy information nor leaks the cluster centers. Our scheme contains two steps of density peak clustering: First, a cloud service provider calculates the cluster centers without knowing each participant's private data and without disclosing any cluster center information to the other participants, and second, participant allocation is secure and every participant is prevented from identifying the other members of the same cluster. Security analysis and comparison experiments show that the proposed PPDPC algorithm not only obtains good accuracy with respect to density peak clustering but also resists collusion attacks even if the cloud service provider is collaborating with all except one participant. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results confirm the security and accuracy of our method.

Outsourcing Manufacturing: Secure Price‐Masking Mechanisms for Purchasing Component Parts

This paper develops and tests a privacy‐preserving business process that supports the selection of a contract manufacturer by an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), and the determination of whether the OEM or the chosen contract manufacturer will procure each of the components to be used in the manufacture of the OEM's branded product. Our “secure price‐masking (SPM)” technology contributes to procurement theory and practice in four significant ways: First, it preserves the privacy of every party's individual component prices. Second, SPM assures that the contract manufacturers will bid their own private purchase cost (i.e., not add a margin to their cost). Third, SPM is not invertible; i.e., none of the participants can “solve” for the private inputs of any other participant based on its own inputs and the outputs provided to it by SPM. Fourth, the posterior distribution of any other participant's private inputs is practically indistinguishable from its prior distribution. We also describe the results of a proof‐of‐concept implementation.

Dynamic general secret sharing based on bilinear pairing

An efficient multi-secret sharing scheme with a generalized access structure based on bilinear pairing was proposed. Each participant's private key was used as his secret share. No security channel existed between the dealer and the participants. The shadows of the participants did not need to reselect when the system accepted a new participant or fired an old participant, which was easier to implement. The analysis shows that this scheme is correct, can prevent the participant's cheating attacks, and the sub-secrets of participants can be shared.

Conflict of Interest in Peer-Reviewed Medical Journals: The World Association of Medical Editorsʼ Position on a Challenging Problem

Conflict of interest in medical publishing exists when a participant's private interests compete with his or her responsibilities to the scientific community, readers and society. While conflict of interest is common, it reaches the level of concern when 'a reasonable observer might wonder if the individual's behavior or judgment was motivated by his or her competing interests'.[1] Having a competing interest does not, in itself, imply wrongdoing. However, it can undermine the credibility of research results and damage public trust in medical journals. In recent years, the extent of conflict of interest in medical journal articles has been increasingly recognized. Medical journals and the popular media have published numerous examples of competing interests that seemed to have biased published reports.[2–4] Organizations have expressed concern for the effects of conflicts of interest on research,[5] publication[1,6,7] teaching[8] and continuing medical and nursing education.[9] The World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) is one of the institutions engaged in this discussion. WAME was established in 1995[10,11] to facilitate worldwide cooperation and communication among editors of peer-reviewed journals, improve editorial standards and promote professionalism in medical editing.[12] Membership in WAME is open to all editors of peer-reviewed biomedical journals worldwide; small journals in resource-poor countries are well represented. As of December 2009, WAME had 1595 individual members representing 965 journals in 92 countries. WAME has broad participation as there are no dues and WAME activities are largely carried out through the member list serve and the member password protected website. In March 2009, WAME released an updated policy statement, ‘Conflict of Interest in Peer-Reviewed Medical Journals’.[1] It details the issues WAME believes journals should address when establishing their own policies for conflict of interest. The editors of this journal thought that the issues were important enough to share with its readers. A summary of the statement is presented in Table 1 and the full statement[1] can be found on WAME's website.[12] Table 1 Summary of Key Elements for Peer-Reviewed Medical Journal's Conflict of Interest Policies

An Identity (ID)-Based and Self-Certified Secret Sharing Scheme

In order to resolve the secure distribution problem in the existing secret sharing schemes,based on Girault's key exchange protocol,a new secret sharing scheme is proposed,which adopts the ID-based public key cryptography technology.And then,security and performance analysis is made on this scheme.Each participant's private key is used as his secret shadow,which are not selected and redistributed by the secret dealer any longer.The private key of each participant is chosen by the participant himself,and even the trusted third party cannot gain his private key.At the same time,anyone can verify every participant's public key,and judge whether it is valid in the form of off-line.Analysis shows that the proposed ID-based secret sharing scheme is more secure and effective than others,and it can be more applicable.

Conflict of interest in peer-reviewed medical journals: The world association of medical editors position on a challenging problem.

Conflict of interest in medical publishing exists when a participant's private interests compete with his or her responsibilities to the scientific community, readers and society. While conflict of interest is common, it reaches the level of concern when 'a reasonable observer might wonder if the individual's behavior or judgment was motivated by his or her competing interests'.[1] Having a competing interest does not, in itself, imply wrongdoing. However, it can undermine the credibility of research results and damage public trust in medical journals. In recent years, the extent of conflict of interest in medical journal articles has been increasingly recognized. Medical journals and the popular media have published numerous examples of competing interests that seemed to have biased published reports.[2–4] Organizations have expressed concern for the effects of conflicts of interest on research,[5] publication[1,6,7] teaching[8] and continuing medical and nursing education.[9] The World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) is one of the institutions engaged in this discussion. WAME was established in 1995[10,11] to facilitate worldwide cooperation and communication among editors of peer-reviewed journals, improve editorial standards and promote professionalism in medical editing.[12] Membership in WAME is open to all editors of peer-reviewed biomedical journals worldwide; small journals in resource-poor countries are well represented. As of December 2009, WAME had 1595 individual members representing 965 journals in 92 countries. WAME has broad participation as there are no dues and WAME activities are largely carried out through the member list serve and the member password protected website. In March 2009, WAME released an updated policy statement, ‘Conflict of Interest in Peer-Reviewed Medical Journals’.[1] It details the issues WAME believes journals should address when establishing their own policies for conflict of interest. The editors of this journal thought that the issues were important enough to share with its readers. A summary of the statement is presented in Table 1 and the full statement[1] can be found on WAME's website.[12] Table 1 Summary of Key Elements for Peer-Reviewed Medical Journal's Conflict of Interest Policies

An Identity (ID)-Based Threshold Multi-Secret Sharing Scheme

为了避免现有秘密共享方案中的秘密份额分发机制的不足,结合基于身份(ID)的公钥密码技术,提出了利用参与者私钥作为其主份额的秘密份额分发方法.首先,对Zheng提出的签密方案进行了安全分析,发现其不具备前向保密性,并针对该安全问题,提出了一个改进的签密方案.同时,在所提出的改进方案的基础上,结合基于ID的公钥密码系统,提出了一个新的门限多重秘密共享方案.该方案有效地解决了秘密份额的安全分发问题,不需要秘密分发者和参与者之间事先进行任何信息交互,能够在分发秘密的同时分发秘密份额.该方案还具有前向保密性,即使秘密分发者的私钥被泄漏,也不会影响之前所共享秘密的安全性.因此,所提出的基于身份的秘密共享方案具有更高的安全性和有效性,能够更好地满足应用需求.;In order to avoid the flaw of the secret shadow distribution method in the existing secret sharing schemes, a secret shadow distribution method is proposed with the ID-based public key technology integrated, which uses the participant's private key as his master shadow. Firstly, security analyses are made on Zheng's signcryption scheme, which shows his scheme does not offer forward secrecy. Then, an improvement is made on Zheng's signcryption scheme and a new scheme is proposed. Based on the proposed signcryption scheme and the ID-based public key cryptosystem, a new threshold multi-secret sharing scheme is proposed. The problem of the secret shadow distribution is well resolved, and no information exchange is needed between the secret dealer and each participant in advance. The secret shadow distribution can be processed during the secret distribution. At the same time, the proposed scheme offers forward secrecy. That is to say, even if the private key of the secret dealer is exposed, the security of the shared secrets will not be threatened. Therefore, the proposed ID-based secret sharing scheme is more secure and effective than others, and it can be more applicable.