Abstract Objective To assess the impact of the FcγRIIA‐R/H131 polymorphism on the risk for antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), both primary and secondary to systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Methods This international meta‐analysis combined data from 9 research teams. FcγRIIA‐R/H131 genotypes were determined in 481 APS cases (206 with primary APS), 1,420 SLE controls, and 1,655 disease‐free controls. Data were combined using fixed‐effects and random‐effects models. Results Compared with disease‐free controls, the RR genotype was enriched in the entire group of APS cases (odds ratio [OR] 1.65, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] 1.28–2.14); this was driven mostly by patients with secondary APS (OR 1.95, 95% CI 1.45–2.63). The excess of RR homozygotes but not heterozygotes among APS patients suggested a recessive mode of inheritance, rather than the additive model seen for SLE susceptibility, where RR conferred greatest risk, and RH intermediate risk, for SLE. This probably reflected the additional influence of another opposing genetic effect of HH homozygosity on APS predisposition (OR 0.72 for RH versus HH , 95% CI 0.55–0.96). Among SLE patients, those with APS were more frequently HH homozygotes than heterozygotes (OR 0.56 for RH versus HH , 95% CI 0.39–0.81). HH homozygosity also tended to predominate in primary APS compared with secondary APS (OR 0.50 for RR versus HH , 95% CI 0.25–0.99 by fixed‐effects model). There was no significant between‐study heterogeneity for any of these effects. Conclusion The FcγRIIA‐R/H131 polymorphism is an important determinant of predisposition to APS, with different influences on SLE and APS susceptibility per se.
<strong> </strong>Excess death estimates have great value in public health, but they can be sensitive to analytical choices. Here we propose a multiverse analysis approach that considers all possible different time periods for defining the reference baseline and a range of 1 to 4 years for the projected time period for which excess deaths are calculated. We used data from the Human Mortality Database on 33 countries with detailed age-stratified death information on an annual basis during the period 2009-2021. The use of different time periods for reference baseline led to large variability in the absolute magnitude of the exact excess death estimates. However, the relative ranking of different countries compared to others for specific years remained largely unaltered. Averaging across all possible analyses, distinct time patterns were discerned across different countries. Countries had declines between 2009 and 2019, but the steepness of the decline varied markedly. There were also large differences across countries on whether the COVID-19 pandemic years 2020-2021 resulted in an increase of excess deaths and by how much. Consideration of longer projected time windows resulted in substantial shrinking of the excess deaths in many, but not all countries. Multiverse analysis of excess deaths over long periods of interest can offer a more unbiased approach to understand comparative mortality trends across different countries, the range of uncertainty around estimates, and the nature of observed mortality peaks.
Large scale distributed applications combine network access with multiple storage and computational elements. The distributed responsibility for resource control creates new security issues, caused by the complexity of the operating environment. In particular, policies at multiple layers and locations force conventional mechanisms such as firewalls and compartmented file storage into roles where they are clumsy and failure-prone. Our approach relies on two functional divisions. First, we split policy specification and policy enforcement, providing local autonomy within the constraints of the global security policy. Second, we create virtual security domains each with its own security policy. Every domain has an associated set of privileges and permissions restricting it to the resources it needs to use and the services it must perform. Virtual private services ensure security and privacy policies are adhered to through coordinated policy enforcement points.
A serial link transmitter fabricated in a large-scale integrated 0.4-/spl mu/m CMOS process uses multilevel signaling (4-PBM) and a three-tap pre-emphasis filter to reduce intersymbol interference (ISI) caused by channel low-pass effects. Due to the process-limited on-chip frequency, the transmitter output driver is designed as a 5:1 multiplexer to reduce the required clock frequency to one-fifth the symbol rate, or 1 GHz. At 5 Gsym/s (10 Gbis), a data eye opening with a height >350 mV and a width >100 ps is achieved at the source. After 10 m of a copper coaxial cable (PE142LL), the eye opening is reduced to 200 mV and 90 ps with pre-emphasis, and to zero without filtering, The chip dissipates 1 W with a 3.3-V supply and occupies 1.5/spl times/2.0 mm/sup 2/ of die area.
Recently, there has been considerable interest in providing "trusted computing platforms" using hardware~---~TCPA and Palladium being the most publicly visible examples. In this paper we discuss our experience with building such a platform using a traditional time-sharing operating system executing on XOM~---~a processor architecture that provides copy protection and tamper-resistance functions. In XOM, only the processor is trusted; main memory and the operating system are not trusted.Our operating system (XOMOS) manages hardware resources for applications that don't trust it. This requires a division of responsibilities between the operating system and hardware that is unlike previous systems. We describe techniques for providing traditional operating systems services in this context.Since an implementation of a XOM processor does not exist, we use SimOS to simulate the hardware. We modify IRIX 6.5, a commercially available operating system to create xomos. We are then able to analyze the performance and implementation overheads of running an untrusted operating system on trusted hardware.
The current analysis aimed to evaluate the profiles of scientists who reach top citation impact in a very short time once they start publishing. Precocious citation impact was defined as rising to become a top-cited scientist within t ≤ 8 years after the first publication year. Ultra-precocious citation impact was defined similarly for t ≤ 5 years. Top-cited authors included those in the top-2% of a previously validated composite citation indicator across 174 subfields of science or in the top-100,000 authors of that composite citation indicator across all science based on Scopus. Annual data between 2017 and 2023 show a strong increase over time, with 469 precocious and 66 ultra-precocious citation impact author profiles in 2023. In-depth assessment of validated ultra-precocious scientists in 2023, showed significantly higher frequency of less developed country affiliation; clustering in 4 high-risk subfields; high self-citations for their field; being top-cited only when self-citations were included; high citations to citing papers ratio for their field; extreme publishing behavior; extreme citation orchestration metric c/h 2 ; and high percentage of citations given to first-authored papers compared with all top-cited authors (p < 0.005 for all signals). The 17 ultra-precocious citation impact authors in the 2017–2020 top-cited lists who had retractions showed on average 4.1 of these 8 signal indicators at the time they entered the top-cited list. In conclusion, while some authors with precocious citation impact may be stellar scientists, others probably herald massive manipulative or fraudulent behaviors infiltrating the scientific literature.
Objective To evaluate whether the COVID-19 experts who appear most frequently in media have high citation impact for their research overall, and for their COVID-19 peer-reviewed publications in particular and to examine the representation of women among such experts. Design Cross-linking of data sets of most highly visible COVID-19 media experts with citation data on the impact of their published work (career-long publication record and COVID-19-specific work). Setting Cable news appearance in prime-time programming or overall media appearances. Participants Most highly visible COVID-19 media experts in the USA, Switzerland, Greece and Denmark. Interventions None. Outcome measures Citation data from Scopus along with discipline-specific ranks of overall career-long and COVID-19-specific impact based on a previously validated composite citation indicator. Results We assessed 76 COVID-19 experts who were highly visible in US prime-time cable news, and 50, 12 and 2 highly visible experts in media in Denmark, Greece and Switzerland, respectively. Of those, 23/76, 10/50, 2/12 and 0/2 were among the top 2% of overall citation impact among scientists in the same discipline worldwide. Moreover, 37/76, 15/50, 7/12 and 2/2 had published anything on COVID-19 that was indexed in Scopus as of 30 August 2021. Only 18/76, 6/50, 2/12 and 0/2 of the highly visible COVID-19 media experts were women. 55 scientists in the USA, 5 in Denmark, 64 in Greece and 56 in Switzerland had a higher citation impact for their COVID-19 work than any of the evaluated highly visible media COVID-19 experts in the respective country; 10/55, 2/5, 22/64 and 14/56 of them were women. Conclusions Despite notable exceptions, there is a worrisome disconnect between COVID-19 claimed media expertise and scholarship. Highly cited women COVID-19 experts are rarely included among highly visible media experts.
