Security After 9/11: Strategy Choices and Budget Tradeoffs

The White House issued a National Security Strategy document in 2002 that stated the nation's new foreign policy and national security policy goals. Are the choices it identifies the right choices, and how best should resources be allocated to reach those or alternative goals? This briefing book includes data and analysis of these topics by analysts from several research organizations, intended to help expand and deepen public debate on these issues

Promoting ubiquity and interoperability among health information systems using an soa based architecture

Health information systems are of extreme importance and they became an intrinsic part of the healthcare sector. However, in today’s molds and with the advent of the Internet and mobile devices, a paradigm shift, from the current isolated systems to interoperable distributed systems, that take advantage of ubiquitous computing, is needed. In critical situations, such as decision making in healthcare, it is necessary to have access to all of the patient’s information; for the information must be reliable and must be accessed in an easy and fast way. The present work proposes an architecture that aims to answer the needs of interoperability between heterogeneous health information systems and the need for ubiquity of medical information. A prototype was developed that tries to provide interoperability through a service-oriented architecture using web services. A mobile component was also developed to enable ubiquitous access to medical information. This work is based on the authors’ knowledge about the Portuguese National Health Service

A SOA based architecture to promote ubiquity and interoperability among health information systems

In critical situations, such as decision making in healthcare, is necessary to have access to all of the patient’s information, the information must be reliable, and must be accessed in an easy and fast way. These requirements make medical information systems of extreme importance. However in today’s molds and with the advent of the Internet and mobile devices, a paradigm shift, from the current isolated systems to interoperable distributed systems, that take advantage of ubiquitous computing, is needed. The present work proposes an architecture that aims to answer the needs of interoperability between heterogeneous systems and the need of ubiquity of medical information systems. A prototype was developed that tries to provide interoperability through a service-oriented architecture using web services. A mobile component was also developed to enable ubiquitous access to medical information. This work was based on the author’s knowledge about the Portuguese National Health Service

Real time mobile system for support in firefighting environments

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de ComputadoresThis dissertation addresses work being performed within the context of the Fire Forest Finder system, fulfilling the requests for a multi-information application intended for a vehicle mounted mobile device. The main objective of this dissertation is to provide a solution running on a PDA device that provides support in Fire Fighting environments. The user has access to: multi-information data of the theater of operations, an automotive navigation system (TomTom Navigator™) and a text messaging capability. The hardware present on this system is a DLoG X7™ industrial graded PDA that possesses the right sturdiness for this task. The software developed consists of three distinct interfaces: an appropriately customized TomTom Navigator™ interface for the end-users of this system and two additional applications were created to allow a proper visualization of the available information and also have an interface with text messaging input/output capabilities; It is important to refer that the GSM protocol, text messaging service in particular was the chosen communication mean due to the fact that this network has, at the time this dissertation was finished, the better and most reliable coverage of remote areas, such as the forests for which this system is intended to. In terms of experimental validation a series of performance, intuitiveness and usability tests were performed and analyzed in detail with the purpose of demonstrating the validity of the ideas presented. The thesis is completed by the depiction of the achieved results with the subsequent discussion and identification of open points as a result of the work done

Request for proposals for industry review

The purpose of this Request for Proposals (RFP) is to select a Proposer to perform the Project services described in this RFP. SCDOT desires that this Project be constructed in a very efficient and timely manner. This proposal is for a design-build project for an emergency bridge project for Anderson and York Counties

Prescription Drug Abuse and Provider-Patient Communication: A Qualitative Analysis of the Perspectives of Prescribers and Patients

Prescription drug abuse is a public health problem of epidemic proportions in the United States. Provider-patient communication underpins many initiatives aimed at preventing and reducing the public health burden of prescription drug abuse. The characteristics of and factors contributing to this interpersonal process, however, have not been fully explored. The purpose of this research was to examine: 1) the overall problem of prescription drug abuse and provider-patient communication about prescription drug abuse from the patient perspective; and 2) provider-patient communication about prescription drug abuse from the prescriber perspective. In 2014-2015, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 patients from primary care and addiction medicine and 10 prescribers from multiple health professions and medical fields in Central and South Central Appalachia. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Thematic analysis, facilitated by qualitative data analysis software, was used to generate themes. Patients perceived prescription drug abuse as a problem, both in terms of its prevalence and contribution to negative consequences. Patients connected abuse to accessibility, identifying routes of access, routine practices, and rationales involved in the acquisition and distribution of prescription drugs for abuse. With regard to provider-patient communication, patients reported different levels of engagement in prescription drug abuse-related communication with healthcare providers—active, passive, and no/limited. Prescribers likewise reported different patterns of prescription drug abuse-related communication with patients—informative, counteractive, and supportive. Collectively, patients and prescribers described a range of factors—personal and environmental—that positively and negatively influence provider-patient communication and, by association, prescriber delivery and patient receipt of healthcare related to prescription drug abuse. When comparing the perspectives of patients and prescribers, multiple similarities in their prescription drug abuse-related communication perceptions and behaviors were identified. The findings of this research have implications for: 1) clinical practice to mitigate prescription drug abuse and improve patient prescription drug abuse-related communication behaviors; 2) patient- and prescriber-targeted interventions to improve provider-patient communication about prescription drug abuse; and 3) future research to continue to advance understanding of provider-patient communication about prescription drug abuse

Closed loop medication administration using mobile nursing information system

Through this long journey of PhD study including a research on ‘Closed Loop Medication Administration Using Mobile Nursing Information System’ and the thesis writing, I obtained a lot of knowledge and experience about research method and writing. I really very appreciate the help of all my supervisors

Improving Loss Estimation for Woodframe Buildings. Volume 2: Appendices

This report documents Tasks 4.1 and 4.5 of the CUREE-Caltech Woodframe Project. It presents a theoretical and empirical methodology for creating probabilistic relationships between seismic shaking severity and physical damage and loss for buildings in general, and for woodframe buildings in particular. The methodology, called assembly-based vulnerability (ABV), is illustrated for 19 specific woodframe buildings of varying ages, sizes, configuration, quality of construction, and retrofit and redesign conditions. The study employs variations on four basic floorplans, called index buildings. These include a small house and a large house, a townhouse and an apartment building. The resulting seismic vulnerability functions give the probability distribution of repair cost as a function of instrumental ground-motion severity. These vulnerability functions are useful by themselves, and are also transformed to seismic fragility functions compatible with the HAZUS software. The methods and data employed here use well-accepted structural engineering techniques, laboratory test data and computer programs produced by Element 1 of the CUREE-Caltech Woodframe Project, other recently published research, and standard construction cost-estimating methods. While based on such well established principles, this report represents a substantially new contribution to the field of earthquake loss estimation. Its methodology is notable in that it calculates detailed structural response using nonlinear time-history structural analysis as opposed to the simplifying assumptions required by nonlinear pushover methods. It models physical damage at the level of individual building assemblies such as individual windows, segments of wall, etc., for which detailed laboratory testing is available, as opposed to two or three broad component categories that cannot be directly tested. And it explicitly models uncertainty in ground motion, structural response, component damageability, and contractor costs. Consequently, a very detailed, verifiable, probabilistic picture of physical performance and repair cost is produced, capable of informing a variety of decisions regarding seismic retrofit, code development, code enforcement, performance-based design for above-code applications, and insurance practices