The Design of a Sterile Product Laboratory Module as Preparation for an Institutional IPPE Course

Objectives: To develop a pharmaceutics laboratory module on compounded sterile products for the second year pharmacy students as preparation for an institutional pharmacy experiential course. Method: A 5-week lab module was designed and implemented as part of the Pharmaceutics Lab Course to provide training in the basic skills of sterile product compounding. The module included techniques in the handling of sterile products, aseptic techniques, medium risk products, and hazardous products. A practical exam was given at the end of this module to ensure student competency. Upon completion of the lab module, students enrolled in a required 4-week institutional pharmacy experiential course (IPPE-2), where students were required to compound a minimum of 10 sterile products. Students were then asked to participate in a survey assessing the effectiveness and relevance of the lab module as preparation for their IPPE-2. Results: The sterile product lab module was offered in the spring semester with 75 students enrolled. All students passed the sterile product lab module and continued onto the IPPE-2 course during the following summer. The student survey indicated that the students felt well prepared for the IPPE-2 and that the preceptors were satisfied with their prior training in sterile compounding. The average scores ranged from 4.8 - 6.5 (scale of 1-7) for the various products addressed in the lab module. Implications: The 5-week sterile product lab module progressively prepares the students with the basic skills and knowledge in compounding sterile products. This preparedness allows the students to transition smoothly into the subsequent institutional pharmacy experiential course. Copyright © 2011 American Association of Colleges of Pharmac

Cyber Network Resilience against Self-Propagating Malware Attacks

Self-propagating malware (SPM) has led to huge financial losses, major data breaches, and widespread service disruptions in recent years. In this paper, we explore the problem of developing cyber resilient systems capable of mitigating the spread of SPM attacks. We begin with an in-depth study of a well-known self-propagating malware, WannaCry, and present a compartmental model called SIIDR that accurately captures the behavior observed in real-world attack traces. Next, we investigate ten cyber defense techniques, including existing edge and node hardening strategies, as well as newly developed methods based on reconfiguring network communication (NodeSplit) and isolating communities. We evaluate all defense strategies in detail using six real-world communication graphs collected from a large retail network and compare their performance across a wide range of attacks and network topologies. We show that several of these defenses are able to efficiently reduce the spread of SPM attacks modeled with SIIDR. For instance, given a strong attack that infects 97% of nodes when no defense is employed, strategically securing a small number of nodes (0.08%) reduces the infection footprint in one of the networks down to 1%.Comment: 20 page

Surf, Turf, and Above the Earth: Unmet Needs for Coastal Air Quality Science in the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL)

Abstract Coastal areas are some of the most densely populated and economically important regions in the world. As such, protecting the health of the human population and ecosystems at the coastal interface and understanding the impacts of environmental stressors such as air pollutants provides wide‐ranging benefits. Air quality (AQ) processes within coastal regions have been studied using ground and space‐based platforms, with intensive field campaigns focused on addressing key science questions that are typically partitioned into either direct atmospheric effects (e.g., anthropogenic emissions creating air pollution) or indirect processes and feedback loops (e.g., terrestrial/marine biogenic processes modifying atmospheric properties). The atmospheric planetary boundary layer (PBL) and its depth (or height) connect land, air, and the water surface via many pathways, especially with transport and exchange processes tied to the complexities of the coastal interface. We still cannot accurately characterize—through field, aircraft, or space‐based observations—the spatial and temporal PBL variability and processes within the PBL that couple together coastal dynamics and air quality. Several upcoming geostationary and polar‐orbiting satellite missions are likely to make significant progress in characterizing these air/land/water interactions over the next decade. Here, we present a framework of the current understanding of the PBL's role in coastal regions, primarily regarding air quality and atmospheric deposition, to motivate future concerted efforts from ground‐ and space‐based platforms to achieve a holistic understanding of the coastal interface