Vetting Process Research Articles

Update on Kenya’s implementation of the decision in the Nubian minors’ case

This paper provides an update on the Nubian minors’ case after the decision in the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) and another, v Kenya (Nubian minors’ case) Through a communication to the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC), the Nubian minors alleged, first, the violation of their right to a name and nationality. Secondly, they claimed breach of the principle of non-discrimination by the Kenyan government which they stated had denied them equal access to education and health facilities. Lastly, the Nubian minors complained of a lengthy vetting process when applying for Kenyan identity documents which they alleged put them at risk of becoming stateless. The ACERWC found the Government of Kenya in violation of the rights; to a name and nationality, health and education and recommended that Kenya takes measures to ensure that Nubian minors acquire nationality and proof of such at birth and to implement birth registration in a non-discriminatory manner. Previous work has failed to address the extent of Kenya’s adherence to the Nubian minors’ decision post the Nubian minors’ case. This paper provides a follow up after the Nubian minors’ case by examining Kenya’s reforms to comply with the decision in the Nubian minors’ case and highlights the challenges hindering Kenya’s full compliance with the decision.

Social media and fake news:

The upsurge and growth in the uptake of social media has had a profound impact on journalism as it has traditionally been practised. Social media has permeated all aspects of human activities and brought with it negative as well as positive effects on society. It has not only affected the way we communicate, socialize and work, but also view the world. This new media has affected the way the profession of journalism is practised. It has made it possible for persons without any training in journalism – bloggers to write and post stories without any censorship. Some of the stories are sensational fabrications lacking facts and professional editorial input – they are fake news. Social media has enabled persons without any publishing knowledge to publish newspapers, magazines and books without going through the editorial vetting process. It has enabled journalism to become a free-for-all trade where anyone who is IT savvy can write and post content that will be readily consumed by an international audience. This is done in utter disregard of journalistic code of practice and is devoid of professional ethics. The end result has been a plethora of publications which are poorly written, poorly edited and utterly lacking in authenticity and artistic creativity as we have always known it. Not all is bleak however. Social media has come with a number of advantages that have impacted the way we work, behave and relate. Social Media has had a positive effect on society; be it in business, or in education, it has helped us to stay updated on current affairs and new developments, communication and health. Through social media, there has been an increase in the uptake of skills, new technology and information dissemination. It has revolutionized the work of journalism and made communication easier and faster. This paper has used library and internet research to evaluate the impact of social media on journalism and to suggest possible solutions to the problem of proliferation of fake news.

Development of lumbar spine MRI referrals vetting models using machine learning and deep learning algorithms: Comparison models vs healthcare professionals

IntroductionReferrals vetting is a necessary daily task to ensure the appropriateness of radiology referrals. Vetting requires extensive clinical knowledge and may challenge those responsible. This study aims to develop AI models to automate the vetting process and to compare their performance with healthcare professionals. Methods1020 lumbar spine MRI referrals were collected retrospectively from two Irish hospitals. Three expert MRI radiographers classified the referrals into indicated or not indicated for scanning based on iRefer guidelines. The reference label for each referral was assigned based on the majority voting. The corpus was divided into two datasets, one for the models' development with 920 referrals, and one included 100 referrals used as a held-out for the final comparison of the AI models versus national and international MRI radiographers. Three traditional models were developed: SVM, LR, RF, and two deep neural models, including CNN and Bi-LSTM. For the traditional models, four vectorisation techniques applied: BoW, bigrams, trigrams, and TF-IDF. A textual data augmentation technique was applied to investigate the influence of data augmentation on the models' performances. ResultsRF with BoW achieved the highest AUC reaching 0.99. CNN model outperformed Bi-LSTM with AUC = 0.98. With the augmented dataset, the performance significantly improved with an increase in F1 scores ranging from 1% to 7%. All models outperformed the national and international radiographers when compared on the hold-out dataset. ConclusionThe models assigned the referrals' appropriateness with higher accuracies than the national and international radiographers. Applying data augmentation significantly improved the models' performances. Implications for practiceThe outcomes suggest that the use of AI for checking referrals' eligibility could serve as a supporting tool to improve the referrals' management in radiology departments.

Proposal for Life Course Intervention Researcher Core Competencies.

Proposal for Life Course Intervention Researcher Core Competencies.

Vetting asteroseismic Δν measurements using neural networks

ABSTRACT Precise asteroseismic parameters can be used to quickly estimate radius and mass distributions for large samples of stars. A number of automated methods are available to calculate the frequency of maximum acoustic power (νmax) and the frequency separation between overtone modes (Δν) from the power spectra of red giants. However, filtering through the results requires manual vetting, elaborate averaging across multiple methods or sharp cuts in certain parameters to ensure robust samples of stars free of outliers. Given the importance of ensemble studies for Galactic archaeology and the surge in data availability, faster methods for obtaining reliable asteroseismic parameters are desirable. We present a neural network classifier that vets Δν by combining multiple features from the visual Δν vetting process. Our classifier is able to analyse large numbers of stars, determining whether their measured Δν are reliable and thus delivering clean samples of oscillating stars with minimal effort. Our classifier is independent of the method used to obtain νmax and Δν, and therefore can be applied as a final step to any such method. Tests of our classifier’s performance on manually vetted Δν measurements reach an accuracy of 95 per cent. We apply the method to giants observed by the K2 Galactic Archaeology Program and find that our results retain stars with astrophysical oscillation parameters consistent with the parameter distributions already defined by well-characterized Kepler red giants.

An investigation of lumbar spine magnetic resonance referrals in two Irish university teaching centres: Radiology clinical judgement versus iRefer guideline compliance

IntroductionWith the annual increase in medical imaging demand, the appropriateness of the lumbar spine magnetic resonance imaging LSMRI referrals is worldwide gaining attention. This study aims to determine the appropriateness of LSMRI referrals and compare radiology clinical decisions to iRefer compliance based solely on referral text content. MethodsReferral text was extracted from 1021 LSMRI referrals. Two review panels were recruited: three expert radiologists and three MRI radiographers. Radiologists classified cases as indicated or not indicated for scanning based on their clinical judgement. The radiographers classified based solely on iRefer guidelines. Majority voting for each case was applied to both review panels and reviewer agreement was tested using Kappa analysis. Logistic regression models were developed to identify medical disciplines associated with high rates of indicated referrals. Results21.7% and 11.9% of the cases were found not indicated for MRI for radiologists and radiographers, respectively. Radiology review identified 18% of the GPs referrals as not indicated and 17% in the radiographers’ review. Panel agreement was fair: Kappa values of 0.23 and0.26 for the radiologists and radiographers respectively. Neurosurgery was associated with the highest rate of indicated referrals across both review panels: oncology referrals raised the highest number of open comments. ConclusionThe study identified a lower number of not indicated referrals compared to previous research. Findings indicate the importance of both guidelines compliance and clinical judgement to optimise practice. Implications for practiceFindings in this study found that even when strict instructions were given to the MR radiographers to vet referrals using the iRefer guidelines, ambiguity within the guidelines resulted in variations in decision-making. This suggests that detailed protocols are required to support radiographers in the vetting process to ensure a standardised approach.

The Effects of Constitutional Changes on the Judiciary System in Albania: The Process of Vetting

The adoption of laws in Albania is often achieved through consensus among legislators, declaring it as the best solution for a certain political or legal situation, which resulted ineffective in many cases. The focus of law improvements was concentrated on control/Vetting, that is, the exclusion from the judicial system of individuals who do not meet one of the three constitutional criteria (wealth, moral integrity, and professionalism). Vetting, control per se, is not a reform of justice, but only one of its constitutive phases. The Albanian Constitution changes aim to restructure the justice institutions to achieve the standards requested for the Albanian EU integration. The paper goes through the different constitutional reforms, focusing on the judicial system changes especially on the recent results of the vetting process in Albania. The questions like: How is the Vetting process affecting judicial standards, how are the new Albanian justice institutions reacting, what is the public opinion on this progress and the benefits of society, are essential to understand how this process was conducted in Albania, its problems and difficulties. The results are explained through underlining different studies, media interventions, and recent political and public statements of involved institutions.
 
 Received: 19 August 2021 / Accepted: 1 November 2021 / Published: 3 January 2022

The legalisation of cannabis: A security-vetting dilemma

During 1996, the South African Intelligence Community issued the Minimum Information Security Standards (MISS), which inter alia address the protection of classified information. The MISS provide the principles, standards and procedures to be followed by all South African government agencies for the protection of official resources.3 This includes the granting of different types and levels of security clearances by the South African government to provide employees and contractors access to classified information. The decision to grant a person access to classified information is based on such individual’s security competence. This is an indication of the person’s ability – based on his or her conduct – to prevent classified material from being disclosed to unauthorised persons, which may potentially prejudice or endanger the security or interests of the employing institution or the state. An applicant for a security clearance may be a prospective employee applying for a post from outside the organisation or an insider who is already in the organisation, often referred to as outsider and insider threats.4 The process of determining a person’s security competence is referred to as security vetting for new employees, and re-vetting for existing employees who have gone through the vetting process in the past.5 In this article, the use of the term ‘vetting’ includes re-vetting.

The effects of the new judicial map on family disputes resolution

The family is one of the most important institutions of our society, which has been given a special protection in national and international acts. In 2004, the Family Code entered into force, providing a set of legal norms for the regulation of relations between spouses, cohabitants, parents and children. In addition to these norms, there were also provided provisions which regulate the resolution of other disputes within family relations. Due to social, political, cultural and technological changes, affected as well by Albania’s long transition since 1990, the core of the family has been challenged, affecting the increase of disputes and the number of cases presented to the courts. On the other side, the vetting process in Albania has led to a backload of cases, most of which are civil procedures. Recently, the High Judicial Council has taken the initiative to create a new judicial map, which will lead to the reorganization of the judicial system and the reduction of the number of district courts and courts of appeal. This reorganization and reduction of courts will also affect the resolution of family disputes, especially of those who are vulnerable, in economic difficulties, minors, individuals with disabilities, limiting de facto the right to access the court. In order to provide a complete picture of the effects that the new court mapping may have on resolving family disputes, this paper will analyze the Albanian legal framework, related case law and the challenges that have been encountered so far. It will focus as well on the doctrinal debate, giving concrete recommendations for the revision of the draft report on the new judicial map.

An Existential Question [President’s Message

The November 2021 IEEE Technical Activities Board meeting presentations articulated several warning signs and promising calls to action. A new, radical proposal to change the way IEEE elevates its Members to Fellow status may finally address the inclusion and equity issues that we discuss but have yet to address. The proposal is still in its infancy and was drafted by a committee chaired by our very own Jose Moura. It recognizes and documents what many of us have known anecdotally: the success rate of Fellow nominations coming from industry, government, and regions outside North America and Europe is abysmally low, despite the quality of the nominees. It also recognizes the sourcing challenge: a small number of nominations from outside academia and North America and Europe to start with. The proposed vetting process continues to involve the different technical communities within IEEE as it should, but adds a few extra provisions in the training, selection, and oversight of the peer-review committees, which have real potential to achieve fairness. I urge you to keep an eye on this developing initiative and contribute to its success by actively participating in its refinement and finalization.

Technical Issues Encountered During Ethics Review: Quality Assurance in the Research Process

Technical Issues Encountered During Ethics Review: Quality Assurance in the Research Process

The Next Era of Biomedical Research

The Next Era of Biomedical Research

Demystifying the Vetting Process of Voice-controlled Skills on Markets

Smart speakers, such as Google Home and Amazon Echo, have become popular. They execute user voice commands via their built-in functionalities together with various third-party voice-controlled applications, called skills. Malicious skills have brought significant threats to users in terms of security and privacy. As a countermeasure, only skills passing the strict vetting process can be released onto markets. However, malicious skills have been reported to exist on markets, indicating that the vetting process can be bypassed. This paper aims to demystify the vetting process of skills on main markets to discover weaknesses and protect markets better. To probe the vetting process, we carefully design numerous skills, perform the Turing test, a test for machine intelligence, to determine whether humans or machines perform vetting, and leverage natural language processing techniques to analyze their behaviors. Based on our comprehensive experiments, we gain a good understanding of the vetting process (e.g., machine or human testers and skill exploration strategies) and discover some weaknesses. In this paper, we design three types of attacks to verify our results and prove an attacker can embed sensitive behaviors in skills and bypass the strict vetting process. Accordingly, we also propose countermeasures to these attacks and weaknesses.

Measuring implementation of medication optimization services: Development and validation of an implementation outcomes questionnaire.

Implementation outcomes serve as progress and success indicators of the implementation process. They are also key antecedents to achieving the more traditional clinical outcomes typically associated with a service. Despite their importance, there are few implementation outcomes measures with appropriate psychometric properties, none of which have yet been adapted for medication optimization services. This study aims to develop and validate the Implementation Outcomes Questionnaire (IOQ) to assess implementation of medication optimization services, starting with Comprehensive Medication Management (CMM). The resulting IOQ is a 40-item self-report instrument for six implementation outcomes, including adoption, acceptability, feasibility, appropriateness, penetration, and sustainability. A three-phase approach was used to develop and validate the IOQ. Development of the instrument, Phase I, was informed by a targeted search of existing implementation outcomes measures in other fields, a review of suitableoptions options by an expert panel, and item adaptation. To assess content validity, Phase II, an internal vetting process was conducted using an adapted version of Rubio and colleagues' methodology. Evidence of reliability and construct validity, Phase III, was obtained through a pilot test with 167 pharmacists within 78 different care settings. Overall, the results supported the reliability and validity (both content and construct) of the IOQ, with further psychometric testing needed for adoption. The items' relevance, clarity, and alignment with each implementation concept were high, except for Penetration. As a result, the Penetration items were refined for further use. Best-fit models were identified for each outcome based on the MCFA analyses, thereby providing insights into the factor structures and interpretation for each measure. Cronbach' alphas indicated good internal consistency. This questionnaire is the first of its kind tailored to medication optimization services, starting with CMM. Access to this survey should facilitate measurement of implementation outcomes, thereby increasing the likelihood of achieving the desired clinical outcomes.

INVESTIGATING PRIVACY LEAKS IN IOS APPLICATIONS

Abstract: The concern for protecting personal data has been raised many years ago and has been kept on sight ever since. People have to trust their devices and the applications they use so smartphone company survive on the market. Apple treats the security side very seriously and tries to reduce any malicious behaviour as early as possible. This is the main reason they introduced the vetting process to filter out the applications that seem suspicious and only publish legit applications on the App Store. Although the theory looks just fine, there have been multiple applications removed from the App Store because of malicious behaviours that couldn’t be found during the vetting process. In this paper we focus on finding personal data leaks through already published applications in the App Store.

Albania Between the Crisis of the Parliamentary Dialectic and the Dominant Role of the Government

The last years of Albanian parliamentary life were marked by a profound crisis. The parliament, not only had the task of managing a constitutional reform that brought the entire judicial system to its knees, transforming the vetting process into a reform with uncertain results, but also the political crisis, or rather the political-institutional stalemate for leaving the mandates of opposition parliamentarians.The failure to reach the quorum provided by the Constitution of the Republic of Albania, it raises considerable controversy over the legitimacy of the supreme authority and therefore on the legitimacy of institutions that depend on parliamentary votes, such as the election of constitutional judges. At the same time, when the "united opposition" left parliament, the new opposition was trying to keep up with parliamentary dialectics. Moreover, in recent years of parliamentary "identity crisis", the majority have resembled a "group of soldiers" under the command of the Prime Minister. Clearly, Parliament has weakened, lost its value, leading to a strengthening of the executive power, more precisely a strengthening of the figure of the head of government. Without a doubt, the crisis of Parliament translates into an inability of the people's representatives to solve the problems that are present in civil society. Consequently, the crisis of Parliament means a "silent people", a "mute people".The purpose of this document is the constitutional-philosophical analysis of historical memory of the role of Parliament in Albania from the Declaration of Independence to the present day. Perhaps historical memory is the key to reading the present and to better understand the crisis that Albanian Parliament has been going through in recent years.
 
 Received: 4 March 2021 / Accepted: 6 May 2021 / Published: 8 July 2021

REAPing the benefits: development and use of a structured evaluation framework to codify learning resources for Global Health professionals

BackgroundThe learning opportunities for global health professionals have expanded rapidly in recent years. The diverse array of learners and wide range in course quality underscore the need for an improved course vetting process to better match learners with appropriate learning opportunities.MethodsWe developed a framework to assess overall course quality by determining performance across four defined domains Relevance, Engagement, Access, and Pedagogy (REAP). We applied this framework across a learning catalogue developed for participants enrolled in the Sustaining Technical and Analytic Resources (STAR) project, a global health leadership training program.ResultsThe STAR learning activities database included a total of 382 courses, workshops, and web-based resources which fulfilled 531 competencies across three levels: core, content, and skill. Relevance: The majority of activities were at an understanding or practicing level across all competency domains (486/531, 91.5%). Engagement: Many activities lacked any peer engagement (202/531, 38.0%) and had limited to no faculty engagement (260/531, 49.0%). Access: The plurality of courses across competencies were offered on demand (227/531, 42.7%) and were highly flexible in pace (240/531, 45.2%). Pedagogy: Of the activities that included an assessment, most matched activity learning objectives (217/531, 40.9%).ConclusionsThrough applying REAP to the STAR project learning catalogue, we found many online activities lacked meaningful engagement with faculty and peers. Further development of structured online activities providing learners with flexibility in access, a range of levels of advancement for content, and opportunities to engage and apply learning are needed for the field of global health.

The consideration of rights in the Israeli Counter-Terrorism Law

Abstract What can we realistically expect from pre-enactment rights engagement, particularly in sensitive areas like counterterrorism, which pit “our” security against “their” rights? This article seeks to contribute to the ongoing scholarly effort to explore this question, through an in-depth case study of the Israeli Counter-Terrorism Law, adopted by the Knesset in 2016. The case study reveals a complex picture. On the one hand, the unrushed and depoliticized nature of deliberations on the Counter-Terrorism Law contributed to a parliamentary process that, while not challenging the government’s core policy agenda, did force it to justify and refine the specific, worthy purposes of particular provisions, to agree to some narrow-tailoring, and to improve certain procedural safeguards. These parliamentary processes were facilitated primarily by the institution of the Knesset committee legal advisor, whose non-partisan, independent status and wide-ranging advisory functions position them to facilitate informed rights-based deliberations in the absence of a formalized vetting process. At the same time, the case study reveals significant constraints on the potential for deliberative rights engagement, which are particularly salient in the field of counterterrorism, including the information gap—the fact that the government possesses a near monopoly on the factual expertise and information necessary to effectively evaluate counterterrorism policy, and the problem of voice—the fact that those whose rights are most likely to be curtailed by counterterrorism measures are underrepresented in the process. Relatedly, it demonstrates the importance of including in the process actors who are institutionally motivated to be skeptical of government discretion and who take seriously the risk of erroneous or abusive use of power.

Safe, Sound, and Private: Promoting Data Protection for Students

In an effort to slow the spread of the highly infectious disease coronavirus (COVID-19), school districts around the world closed school buildings, thrusting educators into emergency remote teaching. Although many vendors were quick to release tutorial guides and free trials for their online learning resources, the growing concern over student data protection intensified. A lack of transparency or disregard for privacy in the privacy policies of many apps and websites used by students may allow third parties to generate detailed profiles of students to be used for behavioral advertising, which could cause unforeseen consequences. This article highlights existing federal laws that aim to protect student data, explains the importance of vetting apps and websites used by students, offers guidance to assist schools with the vetting process, and concludes with resources to teach about digital citizenship, including lessons in which students learn how to protect their own data.

The Effects of Mediterranean Diet on the Human Gut Microbiota; a Brief Discussion of Evidence in Humans

The Mediterranean diet (MD) is considered one of the healthiest dietary patterns due to its rich provision of phytochemicals, antioxidants, vitamins, fiber, polyunsaturated, omega-3, and short-chain fatty acids through a variety of foods. The supply of such nutrients and bioactive components can support gut health and reduce systemic inflammation, with accumulating evidence from several human studies demonstrating the utility of the Mediterranean diet in the prevention of chronic and metabolic diseases. Further studies are needed to explore the role of the Mediterranean diet protecting against such diseases and the related mechanisms, including the interplay between components of the MD and gut microbiota. This brief systematic review specifically explores the recent evidence in humans investigating the link between MD and the human microbiota. Herein, over 50 articles were revised and referenced, after a careful vetting process, to produce this manuscript. Articles were ultimately selected based upon the detail and novelty of their content and contribution to the field.