Dynamic power load simulator

Two independent models simulate dynamic and steady-state responses of electrical and electronic equipment under power load. One is resistance/capacitance/inductance network, and the other is variable resistance analog device. Resistance, inductance, and/or capacitance are selected by iterative process; time-domain response is compared with that of real equipment to select optimal values

High-power ac/dc variable load simulator

Design of medium-power dynamic electrical load simulator has been extended to permit simulation of ac as well as dc loads and to provide for operation at higher power levels. Simulator is internally protected against reverse voltage, overvoltage, overcurrent, and overload conditions

Obstetric anesthesia for the obese and morbidly obese patient: an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of treatment

Background: The incidence of obesity has been dramatically increasing across the globe. Anesthesiologists, are increasingly faced with the care for these patients. Obesity in the pregnant woman is associated with a broad spectrum of problems, including dramatically increased risk for cesarean delivery, diabetes, hypertension and pre-eclampsia. A thorough understanding of the physiology, associated conditions and morbidity, available options for anesthesia and possible complications is therefore important for today's anesthesiologist. Methods: This is a personal review in which different aspects of obesity in the pregnant woman, that are relevant to the anesthesiologist, are discussed. An overview of maternal and fetal morbidity and physiologic changes associated with pregnancy and obesity is provided and different options for labor analgesia, the anesthetic management for cesarean delivery and potential post-partum complications are discussed in detail. Results and Conclusion: The anesthetic management of the morbidly obese parturient is associated with special hazards. The risk for difficult or failed intubation is exceedingly high. The early placement of an epidural or intrathecal catheter may overcome the need for general anesthesia, however, the high initial failure rate necessitates critical block assessment and catheter replacement when indicated

Synthetic tumor-associated glycopeptide antigens.

Glycopeptides with TN antigen (GalNAc)Ser/Thr and T-antigen structures (beta Gall-3GalNAc)Ser/Thr, described as tumor-associated antigens, were synthesized and coupled to bovine serum albumin. Alternatively, synthetic methods for the construction of beta-anomeric analogues of the TN and T-antigen glycopeptides were developed, aiming at antigenic structures having a varied stereochemistry of the linkage between the carbohydrate and the peptide moiety. As a further type of potential tumor-associated antigen, fucosyl-chitobiose asparagine glycopeptides were synthesized, deprotected, and coupled to bovine serum albumin. The chemical methods developed now make the complex sensitive glycoprotein partial structures accessible in analytically pure form and in preparative amounts

Core components for effective infection prevention and control programmes: new WHO evidence-based recommendations

Abstract Health care-associated infections (HAI) are a major public health problem with a significant impact on morbidity, mortality and quality of life. They represent also an important economic burden to health systems worldwide. However, a large proportion of HAI are preventable through effective infection prevention and control (IPC) measures. Improvements in IPC at the national and facility level are critical for the successful containment of antimicrobial resistance and the prevention of HAI, including outbreaks of highly transmissible diseases through high quality care within the context of universal health coverage. Given the limited availability of IPC evidence-based guidance and standards, the World Health Organization (WHO) decided to prioritize the development of global recommendations on the core components of effective IPC programmes both at the national and acute health care facility level, based on systematic literature reviews and expert consensus. The aim of the guideline development process was to identify the evidence and evaluate its quality, consider patient values and preferences, resource implications, and the feasibility and acceptability of the recommendations. As a result, 11 recommendations and three good practice statements are presented here, including a summary of the supporting evidence, and form the substance of a new WHO IPC guideline

Privaros: A Framework for Privacy-Compliant Delivery Drones

We present Privaros, a framework to enforce privacy policies on drones. Privaros is designed for commercial delivery drones, such as the ones that will likely be used by Amazon Prime Air. Such drones visit a number of host airspaces, each of which may have different privacy requirements. Privaros provides an information flow control framework to enforce the policies of these hosts on the guest delivery drones. The mechanisms in Privaros are built on top of ROS, a middleware popular in many drone platforms. This paper presents the design and implementation of these mechanisms, describes how policies are specified, and shows that Privaros's policy specification can be integrated with India's Digital Sky portal. Our evaluation shows that a drone running Privaros can robustly enforce various privacy policies specified by hosts, and that its core mechanisms only marginally increase communication latency and power consumption

Design indicators for better accommodation environments in hospitals: inpatients’ perceptions

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Intelligent Buildings International, 2012, [© Taylor & Francis], available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17508975.2012.701186Several studies have found an association between the physical environment and human health and wellbeing that resulted in the postulation of the idea of evidence-based and patient-centred design of healthcare facilities. The key challenge is that most of the underpinning research for the evidence base is context specific, the use of which in building design is complex, mainly because of the difficulties associated with the disaggregation of findings from the context. On the other hand, integrating patients’ perspectives requires an understanding of the relative importance of design indicators, which the existing evidence base lacks to a large extent. This research was aimed at overcoming these limitations by investigating users’ perception of the importance of key design indicators in enhancing their accommodation environments in hospitals. A 19-item structured questionnaire was used to gather inpatients' views on a 5-point scale, in two Chinese hospitals. A principal component analysis (PCA) resulted in five constructed dimensions with appropriate reliability and validity (Cronbach’s alpha=0.888). The item, design for cleanliness, was ranked as most important, closely followed by environmental and safety design indicators. The item, entertainment facilities, was ranked lowest. The indicator, pleasant exterior view had the second lowest mean score, followed by the item, ability to customise the space. Age, accommodation type and previous experience of hospitalisation accounted for statistically significant differences in perceptions of importance of various constructed design dimensions

Ubiquitous sensing for security in smart homes

In recent years, smart home systems have become increasingly popular. With this increased popularity has come a newfound prevalence of IoT devices with varied sensor functionality in peoples' homes. These types of IoT devices are widely considered to be insecure and many problem-specific solutions have been proposed. However, we argue that the widespread presence of diverse sensors in and of itself can—and should—be used to strengthen the security of smart home environments. In this thesis, we show that the ubiquity of sensors in modern smart homes can improve the overall security of smart home systems, and that it can enable new security functions. To this end, we introduce two security systems based on ubiquitous sensors already available in modern smart homes. The first is a drone detection system that relies only on radio signal strength information that can be provided by most wireless consumer devices. The second is an event verification system for event-driven smart homes that uses physical event signatures from a multitude of sensors to verify the occurrence of physical events in smart home environments. We then analyze how such systems are affected by two advanced types of attackers: an opportunistic attacker who can wait for and predict attack opportunities, and an attacker who can compromise sensor data to create these opportunities themselves. Finally, we demonstrate that contextual information widely available in smart homes can be employed for context-aware sensor selection due to improved situational awareness. Extrapolating from the insights gained within this thesis, we argue that ubiquitous sensing has significant potential to provide stronger security properties in smart home systems, as it allows for the combination of fine-grained sensor data with high-level event information. Crucially, this added security can be achieved with existing smart home devices—without impacting their original functions.</p

CableAuth dataset

We collected inertial sensor data on (i) a smart ring that was attached to the handle of an electric vehicle charging cable (representing an IMU embedded into the handle) and (ii) a smartwatch worn by the user on the same arm that he used to handle the charging cable. The data contains the unhook gestures and the plug-in gestures as users (n=20) unhooked a charging cable from a replica charging station and plugged it in to a replica vehicle, as would be done to charge an electric vehicle at a charging station. Both the charging station and vehicle fixtures were fitted with magnetic contact switches connected to Raspberry Pis which collected the timestamps whenever the charging cable was inserted into them; this list of timestamps is provided as a CSV file to retrieve the gesture data from the user files. Note that the 'Cable unstowed from charger' labelled timestamps are for the unhook gestures and the 'Car plugged in' labelled timestamps are for the plug-in gesture; the other labelled timestamps are for the returning of the cable back to the charging station