Applications of medical wireless LAN systems (MedLAN)

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Journal of Medical Marketing. The definitive publisher-authenticated version "Konstantinos A. Banitsas, R.S.H. Istepanian, Sapal Tachakra. Applications of medical Wireless LAN systems (MedLAN). Journal of Medical Marketing, Volume 2, Number 2, 1 January 2002 , pp. 136-142(7)" is available online at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/pal/jomm/2002/00000002/00000002/art00008.In this paper the Wireless LAN (WLAN) networking principals are presented along with some of the implementation scenarios dedicated for Accidents and Emergencies wards. Preliminary simulation results of the MedLAN concept are also presented together with ongoing and future work in this area

Chaste: a test-driven approach to software development for biological modelling

Chaste (‘Cancer, heart and soft-tissue environment’) is a software library and a set of test suites for computational simulations in the domain of biology. Current functionality has arisen from modelling in the fields of cancer, cardiac physiology and soft-tissue mechanics. It is released under the LGPL 2.1 licence.\ud \ud Chaste has been developed using agile programming methods. The project began in 2005 when it was reasoned that the modelling of a variety of physiological phenomena required both a generic mathematical modelling framework, and a generic computational/simulation framework. The Chaste project evolved from the Integrative Biology (IB) e-Science Project, an inter-institutional project aimed at developing a suitable IT infrastructure to support physiome-level computational modelling, with a primary focus on cardiac and cancer modelling

Fuzzy-logic-based control, filtering, and fault detection for networked systems: A Survey

This paper is concerned with the overview of the recent progress in fuzzy-logic-based filtering, control, and fault detection problems. First, the network technologies are introduced, the networked control systems are categorized from the aspects of fieldbuses and industrial Ethernets, the necessity of utilizing the fuzzy logic is justified, and the network-induced phenomena are discussed. Then, the fuzzy logic control strategies are reviewed in great detail. Special attention is given to the thorough examination on the latest results for fuzzy PID control, fuzzy adaptive control, and fuzzy tracking control problems. Furthermore, recent advances on the fuzzy-logic-based filtering and fault detection problems are reviewed. Finally, conclusions are given and some possible future research directions are pointed out, for example, topics on two-dimensional networked systems, wireless networked control systems, Quality-of-Service (QoS) of networked systems, and fuzzy access control in open networked systems.This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61329301, 61374039, 61473163, and 61374127, the Hujiang Foundation of China under Grants C14002 andD15009, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of the UK, the Royal Society of the UK, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany

GARTEUR Helicopter Cooperative Research

This paper starts with an overview about the general structure of the Group for Aeronautical Research and Technology in EURope (GARTEUR). The focus is on the activities related to rotorcraft which are managed in the GARTEUR Helicopter Group of Responsables (HC GoR). The research activities are carried out in so-called Action Groups. Out of the 5 Action Groups which ended within the last four years results generated in the Helicopter Action Groups HC(AG14) “Methods for Refinement of Structural Dynamic Finite Element Models”, HC(AG15) “Improvement of SPH methods for application to helicopter ditching” and HC(AG16) “Rigid Body and Aeroelastic Rotorcraft-Pilot Coupling” are briefly summarized

Towards quantification of condition monitoring benefit for wind turbine generators

Condition monitoring systems are increasingly installed in wind turbine generators with the goal of providing component-specific information to the wind farm operator and hence increase equipment availability through maintenance and operating actions based on this information. In some cases, however, the economic benefits of such systems are unclear. A quantitative measure of these benefits may therefore be of value to utilities and O&M groups involved in planning and operating wind farm installations. The development of a probabilistic model based on discrete-time Markov Chain solved via Monte Carlo methods to meet these requirements is illustrated. Potential value is demonstrated through case study simulations

Autonomic care platform for optimizing query performance

Background: As the amount of information in electronic health care systems increases, data operations get more complicated and time-consuming. Intensive Care platforms require a timely processing of data retrievals to guarantee the continuous display of recent data of patients. Physicians and nurses rely on this data for their decision making. Manual optimization of query executions has become difficult to handle due to the increased amount of queries across multiple sources. Hence, a more automated management is necessary to increase the performance of database queries. The autonomic computing paradigm promises an approach in which the system adapts itself and acts as self-managing entity, thereby limiting human interventions and taking actions. Despite the usage of autonomic control loops in network and software systems, this approach has not been applied so far for health information systems. Methods: We extend the COSARA architecture, an infection surveillance and antibiotic management service platform for the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), with self-managed components to increase the performance of data retrievals. We used real-life ICU COSARA queries to analyse slow performance and measure the impact of optimizations. Each day more than 2 million COSARA queries are executed. Three control loops, which monitor the executions and take action, have been proposed: reactive, deliberative and reflective control loops. We focus on improvements of the execution time of microbiology queries directly related to the visual displays of patients' data on the bedside screens. Results: The results show that autonomic control loops are beneficial for the optimizations in the data executions in the ICU. The application of reactive control loop results in a reduction of 8.61% of the average execution time of microbiology results. The combined application of the reactive and deliberative control loop results in an average query time reduction of 10.92% and the combination of reactive, deliberative and reflective control loops provides a reduction of 13.04%. Conclusions: We found that by controlled reduction of queries' executions the performance for the end-user can be improved. The implementation of autonomic control loops in an existing health platform, COSARA, has a positive effect on the timely data visualization for the physician and nurse