Modelling and Performance Analysis of Electric Car-Sharing Systems Using Petri Nets

Car sharing systems emerged as a new answer to mobility challenges in smart and sustainable cities. Despite their apparent success, design and exploitation of such systems raise crucial strategic and operational challenges. To help planners and decision makers, simulation, analysis and optimization models are unavoidable. Based on the formal modelling and analysis power of stochastic Petri nets, this paper proposes a discrete event simulation model for electric car sharing systems for performance and analysis purposes, taking into account their complex dynamic behaviour, organization and parameters including capacities of the stations, battery and energy availability, locations of charging stations and also their car maintenance activities, not negligible compared to the case of bike-sharing systems

Self-administration of medicines in secondary schools and colleges by students living with medical conditions:content analysis of school medicine policies in England

IntroductionEvery school in England is required to have a policy to support students with a medical condition under statutory guidance issued by the Department for Education. The guidance promotes self-administration of medicines where possible, supervised by an adult. Transition from paediatric to adult healthcare during adolescence should be a process of gradually transferring control and responsibility from parents and other responsible adults to the young person taking the medicine. There are several barriers that might prevent autonomy, but effective self-management of long-term conditions at school is essential for wellbeing and learning.AimTo explore secondary school/college medicine policies displayed online for content regarding the self-administration of medicines by students.MethodsThis was a group project involving six MPharm students. Each student was assigned one or two of the nine regions of England to explore, covering all regions, and they used search engines to find school websites with accessible health/medicine policies. The group employed purposive sampling within their Region to achieve a diverse sample of schools (e.g. nursery age to college; urban and suburban; public and private/fee-paying). An online data collection form was developed by the group to facilitate consistent, directed content analysis of school health/medicine policies (quantitative and qualitative). The topics reflected issues of interest from their literature review e.g. which medicines were mentioned by name in the policy, and arrangements for bringing long-term medicines to school. One topic within the form was to search for content relating to self-administration of medicines. For this abstract, within the wider study, the policies were subjected to directed content analysis to find any statements relating to self-administration.ResultsThe students analysed 50 school policies across England (3 East Midlands; 1 East of England; 8 London; 7 North East; 8 North West; 10 South East; 4 South West; 4 West Midlands; 5 Yorkshire & Humber). Eighteen of the 25 secondary school/college policies included statements about self-administration of medicines. Many (n=13) were comprehensive, stating that young people with medical conditions should assume complete responsibility under parental supervision. Others (n=4) specified partial self-administration for diabetes, asthma or severe allergies. The remaining school, however, specified that their students could not keep or carry any essential medicines, apart from salbutamol inhalers.ConclusionMost schools have adopted a positive approach to self-administration of medicines consistent with the recommendations of statutory guidance. There is, however, some variation in this approach and a minority of schools that do not promote self-medication and thus still prefer to keep medication stored away from the student. This study highlights a context not commonly studied in pharmacy practice, which is a strength, but has a limitation of a small sample that might not reflect the whole situation in England. Another limitation is possible omission of information by the student researchers, where independent validation by another person would be ideal but not practical in the scope of the short-term study. Pharmacists are well-placed to offer support to schools, and to be a resource for teachers, students and families, and this topic merits further exploration

Radium-223 treatment in mcrpc patient with polycythemia vera

There have been several studies on the clinical outcomes of Radium-223 treatment in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) who may have an increased risk of hematologic comorbidities. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the potential bone marrow adverse effects (AEs) of Radium-223 administered with specific drugs used for hematologic conditions, such as polycythemia vera (PV). We report the case of a patient with mCRPC who was administered a combined treatment of Radium-223 and hydroxyurea for PV, aiming to support clinicians in predicting eventual AEs

Midbrain Serotonin transporter (SERT) evaluation by 123I-FP-CIT: a one-year retrospective study

Annual Congress of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine October 21 – 25, 2017 Vienna, Austri

Baseline quality of life predicts overall survival in patients with mCRPC treated with 223Ra-dichloride

The prognostic value of baseline clinical parameters in predicting the survival prolonging effect of radium-223-dichloride (223Ra)-therapy in metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) patients is still an open issue. The aim of this study was investigating the impact of baseline quality of life (QoL) on overall survival (OS) in mCRPC patients treated with 223Ra. The present study also evaluated the trend of patient-reported QoL during both 223Ra-treatment and post-therapy follow-up period