Andrew Patrick

Carlos 57

I have always thought that we underestimate the effects of too little sleep. People need sleep, especially young people, and the effects of sleep deprivation are subtle. Here is a study reporting reduced traffic accidents in teenagers who are able to get more sleep due to later school start times.

Around here, many schools have early start times, as early as 8am, to reduce bus costs. Having some schools start early and others later allows the same bus and driver to do two runs, and this saves money. It has always bothered me that we are making decisions about our children’s education to accommodate bus scheduling.

More Sleep, Fewer Student Car Accidents

And in the two years after the school hours change, the average crash rates for 17- and 19-year-old drivers in the county went down 16 percent. In the rest of the state, they increased almost 8 percent.

Orange flower 3, originally uploaded by ASPatrick.

I am starting to experiment with Flickr and decided to post some of my recent photos there and here. This one comes from the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh where we had the SOUPS 2008 conference dinner.

When it comes to security, the old saying is that users are the weakest link in the security chain. Some people were starting to question this, however, with the prevalence of software vulnerabilities. More and more infections, it seemed, were being caused by exploits of common programs, such as web browser, and not because of something that the users did. Well, this data suggests that infections by software vulnerabilities are rare. Far more common are infections where people are duped to download something from the Internet or by opening email attachments.

We really have to understand and modify user behavior to improve the security situation.

The headline below is misleading — it is not the visiting of web sites that is the problem, it is the accepting of downloads being offered during that visit.

Malware most often spread by visiting malicious Web sites

From Jan. 1 to Nov. 25, the top 100 attack programs infected 53% of their victims by duping them into downloading something from the Internet. An additional 12% of the infections tracked globally were caused by users opening e-mail attachments.

Just 5% of the infections were related to an exploit of a software vulnerability, said Trend’s analysis.

Here is some really interesting research from James Fowler (UC San Diego) and Nicholas Christakis (Harvard) on happiness and social networks. The question was whether one’s network of friends and relatives has a major affect on their happiness. Does having happy friends and relatives tend to make a person happy? And, conversly, does having unhappy people around you make you unhappy. The answer is a clear “yes.”

Consider the figure included here which shows one social network of people and their ties (connections). Nodes colored yellow represent happy people, while nodes color blue represent unhappy people (green nodes are intermediate). It is clear that happy and unhappy people cluster together.

Not only are the results interesting, but the methodology of social network analysis is also noteworthy. I like how the authors used simulation techniques to measure whether the patterns observed in the networks differed significantly from what would have occured by chance alone. They also did a good job of trying to separate out multiple influences, such as the types of relationships, the effects of physical and social distance, etc.

Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study

Clusters of happy and unhappy people are visible in the network, and the relationship between people’s happiness extends up to three degrees of separation (for example, to the friends of one’s friends’ friends). People who are surrounded by many happy people and those who are central in the network are more likely to become happy in the future. Longitudinal statistical models suggest that clusters of happiness result from the spread of happiness and not just a tendency for people to associate with similar individuals. A friend who lives within a mile (about 1.6 km) and who becomes happy increases the probability that a person is happy by 25% (95% confidence interval 1% to 57%). Similar effects are seen in coresident spouses (8%, 0.2% to 16%), siblings who live within a mile (14%, 1% to 28%), and next door neighbours (34%, 7% to 70%). Effects are not seen between coworkers. The effect decays with time and with geographical separation.

Citation:Fowler, J.H., & Christaki, N.A. (2008). Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: Longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study. BMJ (British Medical Journal) 2008;337:a2338

Photo by Nick Atkins Photography

Scientific American reports that India is using “truth serum” to interrogate people associated with the recent terrorist attacks. Truth serum has a long history, and there is no evidence that it is effective, or results in getting the truth.

What is truth serum?

The idea of a “truth serum” has never been widely accepted. Although there have been waves of enthusiasm for the idea of a drug that can extract information reliably, there has been even more skepticism. Ever since the 1920s, many judges, psychiatrists, and scientists have rejected the idea that there is a drug that can get memories out intact. They have claimed, instead, that it makes people feel like talking, but it also puts them in a state of extreme suggestibility: people will pick up on cues about what questioners want to hear and repeat that back. This is one of the reasons that statements made under the influence of these drugs have never, as far as I know, been accepted in an American court.

Ontario has proposed a ban on hand-held cell phones (and other devices) while driving. Ontario will be joining other provinces in adding such a ban, but it makes no sense.

The research clearly shows that it is the cognitive distraction caused by talking on the phone that causes problems, not the physical use of the phone. So, getting people to switch to hands-free mode or headsets does nothing to address the problem.

Here is another recent report on cell phone distraction cause by hands-free devices.

Mobiles distract drivers more than chatty passengers

Mobile phone calls distract drivers far more than even the chattiest passenger, causing drivers to follow too closely and miss exits, US researchers reported on Monday.

Using a handsfree device does not make things better and the researchers believe they know why – passengers act as a second set of eyes, shutting up or sometimes even helping when they see the driver needs to make a manoeuvre.

…

They have demonstrated that chatting on a mobile phone can slow the reaction times of young adult drivers to levels seen among senior citizens, and shown that drivers using mobile telephones are as impaired as drivers who are legally drunk.

Identity theft gangs are growing in sophistication, and the amount of money involved is increasing rapidly. This story from NetworkWorld describes a very sophisticated gang of ID thieves. It seems that these bad guys were using information from a variety of sources, both online and off, as well as traditional fraud tactics (e.g., social engineering). And the targets were home equity lines of credit, which often have very high values.

Feds nab more members of alleged identity theft gang

Federal authorities say they have taken another step toward busting a multinational identity theft ring that is alleged to have used stolen personal data to withdraw millions of dollars from home equity line-of-credit accounts at dozens of financial institutions in the U.S., including some of the country’s largest banks.

Four individuals were arrested last week in connection with the alleged scheme, which has resulted in more than $2.5 million being stolen from the affected financial institutions, according to law enforcement officials. Another $4 million worth of attempted withdrawals by the gang were unsuccessful, the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey said in announcing the arrests last Wednesday

The Privacy Commissioner’s office has announced their latest funding program. This program will fund privacy-related research and public education/outreach activities. Eligible organizations include not-for-profit organizations and education institutions. The maximum amount of funding per project is $50K. The deadline for applications is Jan. 30, 2009.

Contributions Program 2009-2010 – Program Summary – Privacy Commissioner of Canada

This year the Office is interested in receiving research proposals focusing on four priority areas: 1) national security, 2) identity integrity and protection, 3) information technology, and 4) genetic privacy.

We were talking the other day about attitudes towards privacy and how some people, mostly young ones, don’t worry much about their personal information. In the days of Facebook and Twitter, many people are quite willing to share lots of personal information in certain contexts. They also consider that information to be temporary and transient, as their favorite applications and groups change.

What many people underestimate, I think, is the ability to cross-link information from a variety of sources. By combining information about communication patterns, movements, purchases, etc., a complete profile can be assembled. This can have profound implications for individuals and groups, and the uses can both be beneficial and harmful.

Article from the New York Times, suggested by Slashdot.

You’re Leaving a Digital Trail. What About Privacy?

… a vast sea of digital information being recorded by an ever thicker web of sensors, from phones to GPS units to the tags in office ID badges, that capture our movements and interactions. Coupled with information already gathered from sources like Web surfing and credit cards, the data is the basis for an emerging field called collective intelligence.

Propelled by new technologies and the Internet’s steady incursion into every nook and cranny of life, collective intelligence offers powerful capabilities, from improving the efficiency of advertising to giving community groups new ways to organize.

But even its practitioners acknowledge that, if misused, collective intelligence tools could create an Orwellian future on a level Big Brother could only dream of.

Collective intelligence could make it possible for insurance companies, for example, to use behavioral data to covertly identify people suffering from a particular disease and deny them insurance coverage. Similarly, the government or law enforcement agencies could identify members of a protest group by tracking social networks revealed by the new technology. “There are so many uses for this technology — from marketing to war fighting — that I can’t imagine it not pervading our lives in just the next few years,” says Steve Steinberg, a computer scientist who works for an investment firm in New York.

Trust is a fundamental human characteristic. It is necessary for people to function in social groups, and it forms the foundation for many of our organizations and relationships. We have developed a keen sense of trust, and we teach our children when to trust and when not to trust. This article describes how this trust sense has a biological basis, a basis that can sometimes go wrong.

Super-Trusters

When tested, Ms. X is impulsive, socially fearless, and terrible at “reading” people. More to the point, she does not change her behavior as she interacts with different people: friends and strangers, old and young, kindly or malicious, all are treated as intimates. Unfortunately, this means that Ms. X is often a target for predation. She has lost significant amounts of money to those she trusted that she should not have.

Ms. X has a rare genetic disorder that has damaged a single structure in her brain. If you were to meet her, she would appear at first as “normal” as any one of us. Yet, she cannot do what most of do quickly and effortlessly: assess the moral character of those we meet.