Applications for RFID in pharmaceutical industry

Security and safety are two important features desired in pharmaceutical supply chain and achieving the same is a challenging task. The need to secure and authenticate pharmaceutical products has increased tremendously with the emerging counterfeit product market. The motivation to introduce counterfeit pharmaceutical products in the supply chain could be to gain rapid economic benefits or affecting the reputation of strong brand in the pharmaceutical industry. RFID technology can be used to deter counterfeiting attempts. It can also be used in various other domains in the pharmaceutical industry. The main aim of this paper is to outline all the applications of RFID in the pharmaceutical industry. After explaining the main applications, we discuss how information hiding techniques could be used with RFID to offer efficient expiry date management, pharmaceutical tamper detection, and fraud detection and prevention

Applications of wireless sensor networks in pharmaceutical industry

Advances in wireless sensor networking have opened up new opportunities in healthcare systems. The future will see the integration of the abundance of existing specialized medical technology with pervasive, wireless networks. Radio frequency identification (RFID) and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) are the two key elements of Pervasive computing and are considered as interrelated technologies. Although RFID has been used in various areas but it lacks intelligence that is its ability to process information and respond to real world events. People are using large scale WSN to monitor real-time environment status. RFID technology, if combined with other sensors, may enable a range of other applications that can exponentially increase visibility and monitoring. Combined with RFID a general sensor can be upgraded to intelligent wireless sensor (Smart node), having sensing, computation, communication into a single small device Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) With dazzling wireless technology now available, it's tempting for manufacturers to snatch up any wireless sensor that comes along as a means of optimizing processes and plant performance. This is especially true within the pharmaceutical industry, where vendors are plying industrial-strength wireless sensors for temperature, humidity and pressure, as well as sensitive process-monitoring wireless devices to support PAT applications. In this paper we surveyed the existing wireless sensor and RFID based technologies that target the healthcare application

Recovering and restoring tampered RFID data using steganographic principles

Security is one major issue with RFID technology. Mainstream research in RFID security addresses the following security properties i.e. anonymity, confidentiality and authenticity, however it does not cater for integrity. In this paper we consider the fourth security property i.e. integrity. We try to solve the issue of data recovery after RFID data has been tampered. To address this issue, we present a novel steganographic solution, which embeds a secret pattern in the serial number partition of the RFID tag. This secret pattern is the data that we assume would most likely be the candidate for tampering, for example the manufacturer?s and products details stored on the RFID tag. The main motivation for an attacker to tamper this data would be economic benefits like low logistics cost, or quicker custom clearance, and this can only be achieved by changing product details or manufacturer details on the RFID tag. The novelty of this scheme lies in the fact that we have applied steganographic principles to RFID tags; in comparison, most of the existing steganographic solutions are limited to images, or audio, or video applications. We term this scheme ResTamp because it is restores tampered data. This paper provides a detailed theoretical foundation for the ResTamp algorithm

A Middleware for Mobile and Ubiquitous Learning Ecosystems Based on a Reconfigurable Plug-and-Play Architecture: Application to Mashups

This paper describes a middleware intended to support the development of mashup applications in mobile and ubiquitous learning environments. It is based on a framework that integrates different contextual information (e.g. geographic location, profile, history) and services from e-learning platforms or other learning tools. The integration of the services into the middleware is carried out through a reconfigurable plug and play architecture based on Web Services. It provides a better and more flexible management of the involved services in the system

Modeling input validation in UML

Security is an integral part of most software systems but it is not considered as an explicit part in the development process yet. Input validation is the most critical part ofsoftware security that is not covered in the design phase of software development life-cycle resulting in many security vulnerabilities. Our objective is to extend UML to new integrated jramework for model driven security engineering leading to ideal way to design more secure software. Input validation in UML has not been addressed previously, hence we incorporate input validation into UML diagrams such as use case, class, sequence and activity. This approach has some advantages such as preventing jrom common input tampering attacks, having both security and convenience in software at high level of abstraction and ability of solving the problem ofweak security backgroundfor developers

Processing of low level signals in mixed signal environment - a hardware design for better performance

The low level signals faces many problems during their processing and digitization. The main affecting factor is the added noise during its propagation in mixed signal environment which makes very difficult to extract exact information from the signal. Additionally hardware requirement increases when we want to process these kinds of signals. In this paper, we proposed a customized hardware for this purpose. This hardware caters the problems of noise, signal integrity issues and crosstalk which directly effectsembedded circuit efficiency. The board has all the options to cater the situation where the requiredsignal is buried in the noise or having very low level amplitude. Noise elimination and crosstalk isavoided in this hardware which include high speed Field Programmable gate Array (FPGA)

Yield Advantages and Economic Returns from Pigeonpea/cotton Strip Intercropping Rotations on a Vertisol in the Indian Semi-Arid Tropics

Piponpen (Cajatrus cajcln (L.)M illsy.) is an it~rportnrltc otrrpor~ettto fsez~~rcurl opyin~sy stettls of the setni-rzrid troyics (SAT). 111 a 4-1/['11f~ie ld study (1990 to 7994), a nrcdirrnr ~ilirntiotp~ig c.ortpca, crrltiz~orl CPL 87119 ii~uss trip-irztercropyed rc~itlrh ybrid cotton, c~iltir~aNrH H 44 it1 fizlp replac~nrent serirps of four strip widths (1.5, 3, 4.5, and 6-in strip) urzder thrcr lnnd-cottfiguratiot~ systems [flat, ridge arldfiirrow fI(F at 0.75-m), and broadbed and firrroiir (BBF at 1.5-/)I)/o n u Vertisol under rainfed cottditiotts at ICRlSAT Asia Center (IAC), lJotanAerri, Jnliia. A strip plot design ulas ~iscizfi ~ithl anil configrrrrrtion treatnrrnts allocnterl to uerticnl plots rltld crol~pitrs~ys tetns to horizontul plots with three replications. Each croy strip ulos rotated ujith at1 rlssociated intr~rcroy in a 2-year rotr~tiorc~y cle. Land co~lfiyuratiorlt rlJattiletlts retiloitled tcnchnrrge~id lrrirlg t l ~ ~ f oy~earrrs. ltrdiuidual crop yields rain or see~cfo t tor^ ar~ds tem dry nrntter) zcjcrt7 si'ynificantly. itt.f llrenced by the croypin~sy stertr but not by latld confiyuratiotr or treattrrertt interactions. Seed cotton yields ruere lti~hert h ~ npi ~eonpel~~r aitly ieliis. lJi~eottpead ry stiw yields zucre higher tltntl cotton stern yields during nllfuur yerlrs. Sol[>p i8eortpc.o gmin yield uariedfrort~0 ,49 to 2.57 t lra", u~hrrrnss ole seed cotton yield varied from 1.45 to 2.04 t IIU-'C. rop yields drcreosed as strip size zur~sr educed, zuitlr (yreater yield redtictiotts in cotton than in pi(ycottyea. Sole pigeonpea yroduced tttore total dry tnntter (TDM) (6.51 t ha-') than sole cotton (4.95 t ha.'). Cropping systenl TDM production increased as pi~eonpeas trip size ruas itzcreased. Land rquiz~alottr atio fLER) and nrorletnry zlal~itle quivalent mtio (MVER) indicated that strip it~tercroppingz ilas al7uays superior to sole croppittg. A strip itttercroppin~c onrbitzation of 4.5-it1 pigeonpea and 1.5-ttr cottcln Xavc the rtlaxirn~rnlm eart LER rlallrc (1.4) and MVER value (1.19). Averaged ozjerfotir years, sole. cottort had the rt~axirttrirrg~r oss (Rs. 19,87 thousatzds ha-') and net monetary returns (Rs. 14.25 thousartds ha.'), uttd sole pigeonpea hall the lowest gross (Rs. 12.41 thousands ha") and net monetary returns (Rs. 7.24 tltcuisands ha-'). All strip intercroppitlg systems iclrre more profitable than sole pigeonpeuroith nlaxinlunt net retlrrr~s (Rs, 9.97 thousands ha.') obtained from a strip intercropping conrbitzatiott of 1.5-111p igeonpea utld 4.5-m of cotton. Benefit:cost ratio varied widely among cropping systettrs at111 brtiuern years. However, sole cotton gave the maxitnum benefit:cost ratio of2.57,followed by sole yipjonyen with 11 value of2.18. Results of combined yield analysts of each rotatron cycle, lndrcated the sole prgeortprJ

Immunohistochemical and Molecular Detection of pH1N1 in NecropsiedPulmonary Tissues of Fatal Cases with Indeterminate Conventional Testing

The rapid emergence of a novel influenza A/H1N1 virus designated pH1N1 2009 caused one of the fastest pandemics of the twentieth century. The rapid development of an accurate detection test for this pandemic virus using reverse transcription-real time polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) helped in timely diagnosis. In India this pandemic peaked between August to October 2009. The r-RT PCR for pH1N1 2009 was the main diagnostic test used on throat/nasopharyngeal swabs in all cases. While in majority of the cases this test provided reliable confirmation of the virus, it gave negative or indeterminate results in a subset of cases meeting the standard case definition for the pandemic infection and negative for seasonal flu. In the present study we examined 4 such fatal cases where microscopic pathology of the lung was consistent with viral bronchopneumonia for the presence of pH1N1 2009 using r-RT PCR on nucleic acid extracted from the paraffin sections that showed presence of viral antigens by immunohistochemistry. In all 4 cases pH1N1 sequences could be identified. These findings therefore emphasize the important role of microscopic pathology techniques in conjunction with molecular tools in the diagnostic confirmation of novel agents during a public health emergency

Seasonal Variation of Calving in Murrah Buffalo in Bihar

The present study was carried out to estimate the seasonal variation of calving in Murrah buffaloes. The study was conducted in North West alluvial plain of Bihar (Chappra, Siwan and Samastipur), of India on 773 Murrah buffaloes, and these buffaloes were inseminated during June 2010 to December 2014 at BAIF's field Artificial Insemination centres which provide door-step artificial insemination service at village's level. The result indicated that the calving of Murrah buffaloes occurred throughout the year. In Chhapra maximum calving observed in August, i.e. 17% while 14% in October. September and November 13% each. Based on season majority of calving observed between July to January. In Samastipur maximum calving observed in August 16% while in September 14 % followed by November 13% and October month 11%. Based on season majority of calving observed between July to January months. In Samastipur maximum calving observed in August 16% while in September 14% followed by November 13% and October 11%. Based on season majority of calving found between July to January months. It could be concluded that Murrah buffaloes tend to calve more in the days with shorter photoperiod as compared to days with more extended photoperiod