Dynamic Profile Based Access Control in Health Care Systems

The growing concerns for patient privacy, maintaining recordkeeping integrity and ensuring confidentiality have all significantly increased in health care. There is more attention than ever before given to health care systems that store very sensitive personal information for millions of individuals. As it is, information security professionals in the health care industry must carefully balance the fine line that exists between providing medical staff the critical access to health records they need to care for patients while at the same time protecting against malicious acts or unintentional misuse originating from people having inappropriate access to data. The following proposed conceptual model would provide the health care industry a solution to this problem by allowing medical professionals access to only the pertinent data needed to perform a given task without compromising patient care. Additionally, the privacy and confidentiality of patient records are greatly enhanced by this model, which in turn increases regulatory compliance and industry innovation. This proposed concept model is also a perfect blend of role-based access control and process based access control mechanisms. Numerous hours of research and testing of this proposed concept model have revealed significant promise of success by clearly limiting access of information to only authorized individuals. The enormous depth of knowledge that it takes for an IT professional to fully understand the intricacies of healthcare systems is often overlooked. However, in order to truly secure these types of systems, developers in particular need to achieve greater sophistication with the software code that operates within these systems especially when it comes to access controls. At the same time, funding for the healthcare industry is often a wavering challenge so this proposed conceptual model also seeks to leverage existing role models without the expensive overhead of a costly and extravagant third-party solution. It goes without saying that patients being admitted into a hospital are often in serious health situations and that presents a unique information security challenge because in no way should technology interfere in the welfare of an individual. Consequently, implementing access controls must not contradict with the necessary treatment from medical professionals. This proposed concept model will enable the necessary staff to see all data, but only when provided with a reason and this reason will be forwarded to the patient, making it hard to unnecessary information. Furthermore, the proposed conceptual model is smart enough to know what information is relevant and what is not

The Impacts of Recreational Marijuana Legalization on Colorado Policy Analysis on Amendment 64

This report is a policy analysis on the impacts of Colorado’s Amendment 64. Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug in the U.S, and a Schedule 1 Drug under the federal government. Despite this, twenty-nine states and territories in the U.S. have legalized it for medicinal purposes; (Hanson NCSL, 2017) four of which legalized it for recreational purposes. (Hall & Lynskey, 2016) Medical Marijuana has been legal in Colorado since 2009; however, Amendment 64 was passed in 2012 which legalized the possession, retail sale, and purchase of marijuana to Colorado state residents 21 and over. Commercialization in retail stores began January 1, 2014. (Blumenauer & Polis, 2014) Recreational marijuana legalization has remained a controversial topic. Proponents argue that it would improve public health, benefit economy, and reduce crime and criminal justice expenditure. Opponents argue that it would harm public health, increase crime, and promote marijuana and other drug use. (Dills, Goffard, & Miron, 2016) Colorado was the first to legalize recreational marijuana use, and this study assesses the impacts of Amendment 64 on marijuana use, risk perception, public health, crime, and economy. The analysis reveals that Amendment 64 did not significantly impact marijuana use, risk perception, or crime from prior to legalization. Legalization did lead to an increase in health care visits, hospital admissions, poison center calls, and marijuana related traffic fatalities and DUI’s. However, Colorado modified policies to alleviate these adverse public health impacts. (Ghosh, et al., 2017) Impacts on the economy included increased jobs and state tax revenue. (Reed, 2016

Mixed metal removal and recovery by hollow fiber membrane-based extractive adsorber

The feasibility and efficiency of simultaneous removal of multiple cations as well as anionic heavy metals from wastewater into a mixed extractant kept stagnant on the shell side of a 2-fiber-set hollow fiber membrane extractor operated as a fixed bed adsorber was explored. The novel extracting solvent was a mixture of an acidic or chelating extracting agent for one or more cations and a basic extracting agent, e.g., trioctylamine (TOA) for extracting anions; both were dissolved in the same diluent kerosene for simultaneous and synergistic extraction of cations and anions. In the stripping part of the fixed bed operation, alkaline stripping solution was passed through one set of fibers to strip anions while acidic stripping solution was passed through the second fiber set to recover and concentrate cations. For removal and individual recovery of Cu(II), Cr(VI) and Zn(II), one module of this research will replace five modules needed for individual removal and recovery of these heavy metals. Batch experiments conducted for Cu(II) and Cr(VI) system using a mixed extractant containing LIX 84 and TOA in kerosene showed that Cu(II) and Cr(VI) can be efficiently removed simultaneously. Fixed bed studies showed that Cu(II) and Cr(VI) concentrations can be reduced to less than I ppm from a feed containing about 200 ppm Cu(II) and 100 ppm Cr(V1). Batch and fixed bed experiments conducted for Cu(lI), Zn(lI) and Cr(VI) system using a mixed extractant containing LIX 84, di-2-ethylhexyl phosphoric acid (D2EHPA) and TOA in kerosene showed that, Cu(II), Zn(II) and Cr(VI) can be efficiently removed simultaneously

Maximizing information for evaluation of incident management systems with an emphasis on secondary accidents

DissertationIncident management is the process of mitigating the effects of traffic incidents via quick and effective response, thus reducing the congestion and the potential for secondary accidents. The evaluation of incident management system (IMS) is challenging and data intensive since incident occurrence and location cannot be predicted. But secondary accidents which occur due to the primary incident offer a window into how effective the incident management system is working. Lower the number of secondary incidents indicates an effective IMS. This research shows by maximizing the incident information i.e. traffic volumes, travel times, roadway capacity, incident progression curves; one can accurately understand the impact of incidents and the number of secondary incidents. This research will help government agencies in fine tuning their IMS policies and components by their returned value

Steady State 1D Modeling of PEM Fuel Cell and Characterization of Gas Diffusion Layer

In this work, a steady-state, one-dimensional model was developed for the cathode side of the PEM fuel cell. The model results compared well with available literature results. The effects of operating temperature, cathode gas pressure, cathode gas porosity, and membrane thickness were studied. Carbon materials used for the gas diffusion layer (GDL) were characterized. The materials were: untreated and Teflon-treated carbon paper and untreated and Teflon-treated carbon cloth. Physisorption data were analyzed using the BET and the BJH methods to determine surface area and pore size distribution. Capillary flow porometry measurements provided the bubble point, mean flow, and smallest pore diameters and pore size distribution. Gas permeability measurements were performed. Mercury/non-mercury intrusion porosimetry measurements were performed to obtain pore size distribution and cumulative pore volume. The microstructure structure of the materials was examined using Scanning Electron Microscopy. The elemental composition of the samples was measured using Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy

A Coplanar Waveguide Fed Rectangular Reconfigurable Patch Antenna with Switchable Strips for Polarization Diversity

A compact single feed rectangular patch antenna with reconfigurable circular polarization has been proposed in this paper. The basic antenna structure is a rectangular patch of dimensions 10 mm x 15 mm printed on a thin FR4 substrate of thickness 3 mm. Two rectangular strips are connected through switches at sideways of the main patch to get polarization diversity. The polarization of the proposed antenna can be reconfigured between left hand circular polarization (LHCP) and right hand circular polarization (RHCP) by the current path, which is changed by operating the switches in ON and OFF modes. The antenna is designed and simulated using IE3D MoM based electromagnetic simulator. The simulated results show good return loss, radiation pattern, axial ratio and acceptable gain at the operating frequency. The antenna has around 15 % effective impedance bandwidth over 4.0 GHz - 4.8 GHz frequency band at a maximum gain of 3.0 dBi with polarization diversity.Defence Science Journal, Vol. 64, No. 1, January 2014, DOI:10.14429/dsj.64.480

Downlink massive full dimension-multiple input multiple output downlink beamforming analysis at 3.5 GHz using coordinated ON-OFF switching

The long-term evolution and advancement (LTE-A) of the 5G wireless network depends critically on energy consumption. Many existing solutions focus on limiting power constraints and consequently system coverage. So, improving the antenna array elements of the base station (BS) can solve this issue. In this paper, introduce a coordinated ON-OFF switching method in the massive full dimensional multiple input multiple output (massive-FD-MIMO) system. It enhances the radiation pattern of the antenna array element by adjusting the angular power spectra at the BS. By the way, it allows to select the minimum number of antennas for effective beamforming toward specific user equipment’s (UEs). In this context, part of antenna element should be active mode and remining should be sleep mode at the time of signal beamforming. The multipath spatial profiles are decided the beamforming frequency band with minimize energy consumption. As part of the method, we used a conjugated beamforming with power optimization scheme to determine the individual antenna potential and fading channel condition, power optimization is performed. This method quality of service, reliability, energy consumption and data rate can all be evaluated by experimenting with different-sized antenna arrays such as 16×16, 32×32, 64×64 and 128×128

Secondary Accident Data Fusion for Assessing Long-Term Performance of Transportation Systems

Secondary accident statistics can be useful for studying the impact of traffic incident management strategies. An easy-to-implement methodology is presented for classifying secondary accidents using data fusion of a police accident database with intranet incident reports. A current method for classifying secondary accidents uses a static threshold that represents the spatial and temporal region of influence of the primary accidents, such as two miles and one hour. An accident is considered secondary if it occurs upstream from the primary accident and is within the duration and queue of the primary accident. However, using the static threshold may result in both false positives and negatives because accident queues are constantly varying. The methodology presented in this report seeks to improve upon this existing method by making the threshold dynamic. An incident progression curve is used to mark the end of the queue throughout the entire incident. Four steps in the development of incident progression curves are described. Step one is the processing of intranet incident reports. Step two is the filling in of incomplete incident reports. Step three is the nonlinear regression of incident progression curves. Step four is the merging of individual incident progression curves into one master curve. To illustrate this methodology, 5,514 accidents from Missouri freeways were analyzed. The results show that secondary accidents identified by dynamic versus static thresholds can differ by more than 30%