Mobile identification (mID) allows users to prove identity across many situations like when traveling through an airport; however, the personally identifiable information in the mID, if mishandled, poses a great threat to privacy. One solution is NeuroTechnology privacy enhancing technologies (PETs), which can be paired with the mID to authenticate users using one's unique neuro-proprioceptive signals that are safer than traditional security methods like facial recognition. Across two studies, we explore how TAM constructs impact mID download intentions (DI) and how pairing the PET with the mID impacts DI. In Study 1 (N = 465), mID-specific privacy concerns, anxiety (mID-ANX), general privacy concerns, and perceived privacy risk (mID-PPR) were strong negative predictors of DI. In Study 2 (N = 420), pairing the NeuroTechnology PET with the mID led to decreased mID-PPR and mID-ANX, and increased DI. An experimental mediation model demonstrated that pairing the NeuroTechnology PET with the mID was linked to higher DI because of decreased mID-PPR and mID-ANX leading to greater mID positive attitudes. Because privacy concerns and anxiety are barriers to technology acceptance in the TAM literature, NeuroTechnology PETs provide a solution to reduce privacy concerns and anxiety, and improve technology adoption.

In the first two years of the pandemic, COVID-19 response policies have aimed to break Corona waves through non-pharmaceutical interventions and mass vaccination. However, for long-term strategies to be effective and efficient, and to avoid massive disruption and social harms, it is crucial to introduce the role of natural immunity in our thinking about COVID-19 (or future “Disease-X”) control and prevention. We argue that any Corona or similar virus control policy must appropriately balance five key elements simultaneously: balancing the various fundamental interests of the nation, as well as the various interventions within the health sector; tailoring the prevention measures and treatments to individual needs; limiting social interaction restrictions; and balancing the role of vaccinations against the role of naturally induced immunity. Given the high infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 and its differential impact on population segments, we examine this last element in more detail and argue that an important aspect of ‘living with the virus’ will be to better understand the role of naturally induced immunity in our overall COVID-19 policy response. In our eyes, a policy approach that factors natural immunity should be considered for persons without major comorbidities and those having ‘encountered’ the antigen in the past.

The COVID‐19 pandemic forced workers to pivot to working from home (WFH), shifting from a dominantly offline to a dominantly online workplace, often conducting this shift to online work using video conference meetings. Although businesses tried to seamlessly continue business using video conferencing, research on how productivity has changed during the pandemic has been mixed. To better understand how productivity has been impacted during the pandemic, despite decades of research prior to the pandemic demonstrating the effectiveness of WFH, we conducted three quantitative and qualitative studies with workers from April 2020 to April 2021. Workers who reported video conferencing feeling like a forced interaction also reported dramatic levels of low subjective productivity through increased feelings of video conferencing anxiety (Studies 1–3). Qualitative reports of why workers felt forced to video conference identified feeling pressured by employers to use video and meetings being used as surveillance (Study 1b). However, some workers reported positive experiences while video conferencing, which was related to greater subjective productivity (Study 2). For workers who had video conference and face‐to‐face meetings, video conference meetings feeling like a forced interaction was still associated with lower subjective productivity through increased feelings of anxiety (even when controlling for face‐to‐face meetings feeling like a forced interaction;Study 3). Because WFH may last beyond COVID‐19, organizations and managers should allow workers to use audio instead of video during meetings and refrain from using video conferencing meetings to surveil their employees to ensure workers are reporting that they are remaining productive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Human Behavior & Emerging Technologies is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

BACKGROUND:Since the beginning of the pandemic, COVID-19 has been regarded as an exceptional disease. Control measures have exclusively focused on 'the virus', while failing to account for other biological and social factors that determine severe forms of the disease.AIM:We argue that although COVID-19 was initially considered a new challenge, justifying extraordinary response measures, this situation has changed - and so should our response.MAIN ARGUMENTS:We now know that COVID-19 shares many features of common infectious respiratory diseases, and can now ascertain that SARS-CoV-2 has not suddenly presented new problems. Instead, it has exposed and exacerbated existing problems in health systems and the underlying health of the population. COVID-19 is evidently not an 'extraterrestrial' disease. It is a complex zoonotic disease, and it needs to be managed as such, following long-proven principles of medicine and public health.CONCLUSION:A complex disease cannot be solved through a simple, magic-bullet cure or vaccine. The heterogeneity of population profiles susceptible to developing a severe form of COVID-19 suggests the need to adopt varying, targeted measures that are able to address risk profiles in an appropriate way. The critical role of comorbidities in disease severity calls for short-term, virus-targeted interventions to be complemented with medium-term policies aimed at reducing the burden of comorbidities, as well as mitigating the risk of transition from infection to disease. Strategies required include upstream prevention, early treatment, and consolidation of the health system.

Concerns with protecting privacy, especially of online data, has been a goal of privacy scholarship for years. Because most data are transferred online, many instruments focus on online environments. However, when privacy is invaded and data mishandled, the consequences, including the emotional ramifications, extend beyond the online space and into the offline world. Thus, we developed the CPIP, a measure of privacy concern. We were able to (1) determine the top four domains for informational privacy and (2) correlate that concern with emotional outcomes showing people with high concerns felt less calm, less at ease, and angrier, after reading prompts about the right to privacy protection. The CPIP predicts who experiences an emotional reaction to a loss of privacy and steps for Internet providers collecting data online to create a better balance for users and their privacy. This alignment (or misalignment) of attitudes and behaviors challenge the privacy paradox.

The worldwide antibiotic crisis has led to a renewed interest in phage therapy. Since time immemorial phages control bacterial populations on Earth. Potent lytic phages against bacterial pathogens can be isolated from the environment or selected from a collection in a matter of days. In addition, phages have the capacity to rapidly overcome bacterial resistances, which will inevitably emerge. To maximally exploit these advantage phages have over conventional drugs such as antibiotics, it is important that sustainable phage products are not submitted to the conventional long medicinal product development and licensing pathway. There is a need for an adapted framework, including realistic production and quality and safety requirements, that allows a timely supplying of phage therapy products for 'personalized therapy' or for public health or medical emergencies. This paper enumerates all phage therapy product related quality and safety risks known to the authors, as well as the tests that can be performed to minimize these risks, only to the extent needed to protect the patients and to allow and advance responsible phage therapy and research.

The seriously and globally increasing bacterial multi-drug resistance calls out

Antibiotic resistance has become a major public health problem and the antibiotics pipeline is running dry. Bacteriophages (phages) may offer an 'innovative' means of infection treatment, which can be combined or alternated with antibiotic therapy and may enhance our abilities to treat bacterial infections successfully. Today, in the Queen Astrid Military Hospital, phage therapy is increasingly considered as part of a salvage therapy for patients in therapeutic dead end, particularly those with multidrug resistant infections. We describe the application of a well-defined and quality controlled phage cocktail, active against Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus, on colonized burn wounds within a modest clinical trial (nine patients, 10 applications), which was approved by a leading Belgian Medical Ethical Committee. No adverse events, clinical abnormalities or changes in laboratory test results that could be related to the application of phages were observed. Unfortunately, this very prudent 'clinical trial' did not allow for an adequate evaluation of the efficacy of the phage cocktail. Nevertheless, this first 'baby step' revealed several pitfalls and lessons for future experimental phage therapy and helped overcome the psychological hurdles that existed to the use of viruses in the treatment of patients in our burn unit.

With this analysis we would like to raise some issues that emerge as a result of recent evolutions in the burgeoning field of human cells, tissues, and cellular and tissue-based product (HCT/P) transplantation, and this in the light of the current EU regulatory framework. This paper is intended as an open letter addressed to the EU policy makers, who will be charged with the review and revision of the current legislation. We propose some urgent corrections or additions to cope with the rapid advances in biomedical science, an extensive commercialization of HCT/Ps, and the growing expectation of the general public regarding the ethical use of altruistically donated cells and tissues. Without a sound wake-up call, the diverging interests of this newly established 'healthcare' industry and the wellbeing of humanity will likely lead to totally unacceptable situations, like some of which we are reporting here.

The worldwide emergence of ‘superbugs’ and a dry antibiotic pipeline threaten modern society with a return to the preantibiotic era. Phages – the viruses of bacteria – could help fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Phage therapy was first attempted in 1919 by Felix d’Herelle and was commercially developed in the 1930s before being replaced by antibiotics in most of the western world. The current antibiotic crisis fueled a worldwide renaissance of phage therapy. The inherent potential of phages as natural biological bacterium controllers can only be put to use if the potential of the coevolutionary aspect of the couplet phage–bacterium is fully acknowledged and understood, including potential negative consequences. We must learn from past mistakes and set up credible studies to gather the urgently required data with regard to the efficacy of phage therapy and the evolutionary consequences of its (unlimited) use. Unfortunately, our current pharmaceutical economic model, implying costly and time-consuming medicinal product development and marketing, and requiring strong intellectual property protection, is not compatible with traditional sustainable phage therapy. A specific framework with realistic production and documentation requirements, which allows a timely (rapid) supply of safe, tailor-made, natural bacteriophages to patients, should be developed. Ultimately, economic models should be radically reshaped to cater for more sustainable approaches such as phage therapy. This is one of the biggest challenges faced by modern medicine and society as a whole.

For practitioners at hospitals seeking to use natural (not genetically modified, as appearing in nature) bacteriophages for treatment of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections (bacteriophage therapy), Europe's current regulatory framework for medicinal products hinders more than it facilitates. Although many experts consider bacteriophage therapy to be a promising complementary (or alternative) treatment to antibiotic therapy, no bacteriophage-specific framework for documentation exists to date. Decades worth of historical clinical data on bacteriophage therapy (from Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, and the former Soviet republics, particularly Georgia and Russia, as well as from today's 27 EU member states and the US) have not been taken into account by European regulators because these data have not been validated under current Western regulatory standards. Consequently, applicants carrying out standard clinical trials on bacteriophages in Europe are obliged to initiate clinical work from scratch. This paper argues for a reduced documentation threshold for Phase 1 clinical trials of bacteriophages and maintains that bacteriophages should not be categorized as classical medicinal products for at least two reasons: (1) such a categorization is scientifically inappropriate for this specific therapy and (2) such a categorization limits the marketing authorization process to industry, the only stakeholder with sufficient financial resources to prepare a complete dossier for the competent authorities. This paper reflects on the current regulatory framework for medicines in Europe and assesses possible regulatory pathways for the (re-)introduction of bacteriophage therapy in a way that maintains its effectiveness and safety as well as its inherent characteristics of sustainability and in situ self-amplification and limitation.

There is a distinct difference between tissue and organ donation, although it is usually not well perceived by the public. Solid organs (e.g. kidney, liver and heart) can be taken only from donors who are brain-dead and on life support or immediately after irreversible cardio-respiratory arrest. Organs have to be transported quickly from donor to recipient and are not, or only slightly, processed. Their procurement is generally controlled by surgeons in transplant hospitals and allocation is usually coordinated by national or regional organizations. In contrast, human cells and tissues (e.g. bone, skin and heart valves) may come from live organ donors but more usually come from deceased donors in hospitals, morgues or even funeral homes. These cells and tissues are often transformed and stored, sometimes for years, in “tissue establishments” from which they can be distributed across the world. Tissue brokers, processors and distributors steer the allocation of the resulting human cells, tissues, cellular and tissue-based products.