Non-flushing of IV administration sets: an under-recognised under-dosing risk

Background: intravenous (IV) drugs are administered widely and under-dosing can result in therapy failure. The aim of this study was to quantify frequency, volume and dose of drug discarded within administration sets in the clinical setting. Methods: residual volume for 24 different administration sets was measured under controlled conditions in a laboratory. Clinical assessment of current practice regarding post-infusion flushing occurred in 6 departments of one teaching hospital in the UK over 7 days. Details of drug last infused, (concentration, diluent and volume) and type and brand of administration set were collected. Results: 74% of administration sets were not flushed. Non-flushing exceeded 90% and 61% for gravity and pump infusions respectively (p<0.001) in all areas excluding oncology. Oncology was the only area where flushing was standard practice for all infusions (p<0.001). Mean residual volume of the administration sets was 13.1 ml and 16.7 ml for gravity and pump sets respectively. Antibiotics were commonly infused and up to 21% of antibiotic dose was frequently discarded. Conclusions: the findings suggest disposal of substantial volumes of drugs occurs frequently in general hospital areas. Without clear national and local policies this unrecognised under-dosing will continue

Unsupervised anomaly detection for unlabelled wireless sensor networks data

With the advances in sensor technology, sensor nodes, the tiny yet powerful device are used to collect data from the various domain. As the sensor nodes communicate continuously from the target areas to base station, hundreds of thousands of data are collected to be used for the decision making. Unfortunately, the big amount of unlabeled data collected and stored at the base station. In most cases, data are not reliable due to several reasons. Therefore, this paper will use the unsupervised one-class SVM (OCSVM) to build the anomaly detection schemes for better decision making. Unsupervised OCSVM is preferable to be used in WSNs domain due to the one class of data training is used to build normal reference model. Furthermore, the dimension reduction is used to minimize the resources usage due to resource constraint incurred in WSNs domain. Therefore one of the OCSVM variants namely Centered Hyper-ellipsoidal Support Vector Machine (CESVM) is used as classifier while Candid-Covariance Free Incremental Principal Component Analysis (CCIPCA) algorithm is served as dimension reduction for proposed anomaly detection scheme. Environmental dataset collected from available WSNs data is used to evaluate the performance measures of the proposed scheme. As the results, the proposed scheme shows comparable results for all datasets in term of detection rate, detection accuracy and false alarm rate as compared with other related methods

Encryption of Color Images with a New Framework: Implementation Using the Elzaki Transformation

The significance of image encryption has risen due to the widespread use of images as a key means of sharing data across different applications. Encryption methods are crucial in defending the confidentiality and integrity of valuable image data. This work proposes a novel method of image encryption technique based on the Elzaki transformation and substitution process, which is made possible by the extension of the Maclaurin series coefficients. The image is encrypted using an infinite series of hyperbolic functions and the Elzaki transform; the inverse Elzaki transform is then used to decrypt the image. Using modular arithmetic, the coefficients that result from the transformation are keyed

Distributed CESVM-DR anomaly detection for wireless sensor network

Nowadays, the advancement of the sensor technology, has introduced the smart living community where the sensor is communicating with each other or to other entities. This has introduced the new term called internet-of-things (IoT). The data collected from sensor nodes will be analyzed at the endpoint called based station or sink for decision making. Unfortunately, accurate data is not usually accurate and reliable which will affect the decision making at the base station. There are many reasons constituted to the inaccurate and unreliable data like the malicious attack, harsh environment as well as the sensor node failure itself. In a worse case scenario, the node failure will also lead to the dysfunctional of the entire network. Therefore, in this paper, an unsupervised one-class SVM (OCSVM) is used to build the anomaly detection schemes in recourse constraint Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Distributed network topology will be used to minimize the data communication in the network which can prolong the network lifetime. Meanwhile, the dimension reduction has been providing the lightweight of the anomaly detection schemes. In this paper Distributed Centered Hyperellipsoidal Support Vector Machine (DCESVM-DR) anomaly detection schemes is proposed to provide the efficiency and effectiveness of the anomaly detection schemes

Optimal switching of a nanomagnet assisted by microwaves

We develop an efficient and general method for optimizing the microwave field that achieves magnetization switching with a smaller static field. This method is based on optimal control and renders an exact solution for the 3D microwave field that triggers the switching of a nanomagnet with a given anisotropy and in an oblique static field. Applying this technique to the particular case of uniaxial anisotropy, we show that the optimal microwave field, that achieves switching with minimal absorbed energy, is modulated both in frequency and in magnitude. Its role is to drive the magnetization from the metastable equilibrium position towards the saddle point and then damping induces the relaxation to the stable equilibrium position. For the pumping to be efficient, the microwave field frequency must match at the early stage of the switching process the proper precession frequency of the magnetization, which depends on the magnitude and direction of the static field. We investigate the effect of the static field (in amplitude and direction) and of damping on the characteristics of the microwave field. We have computed the switching curves in the presence of the optimal microwave field. The results are in qualitative agreement with micro-SQUID experiments on isolated nanoclusters. The strong dependence of the microwave field and that of the switching curve on the damping parameter may be useful in probing damping in various nanoclusters.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

Dose-dependent von Willebrand Factor inhibition by aptamer BB-031 correlates with thrombolysis in a microfluidic model of arterial occlusion

Von Willebrand Factor (VWF) plays a critical role in thrombus formation, stabilization, and propagation. Previous studies have demonstrated that targeted inhibition of VWF induces thrombolysis when administered in vivo in animal models of ischemic stroke. The study objective was to quantify dose-dependent inhibition of VWF-platelet function and its relationship with thrombolysis using BB-031, an aptamer that binds VWF and inhibits its function. VWF:Ac, VWF:RCo, T-TAS, and ristocetin-induced impedance aggregometry were used to assess BB-031-mediated inhibition of VWF. Reductions in original thrombus surface area and new deposition during administration of treatment were measured in a microfluidic model of arterial thrombolysis. Rotational thromboelastometry was used to assess changes in hemostasis. BB-031 induced maximal inhibition at the highest dose (3384 nM) in VWF:Ac, and demonstrated dose-dependent responses in all other assays. BB-031, but not vehicle, induced recanalization in the microfluidic model. Maximal lytic efficacy in the microfluidic model was seen at 1692 nM and not 3384 nM BB-031 when assessed by surface area. Minor changes in ROTEM parameters were seen at 3384 nM BB-031. Targeted VWF inhibition by BB-031 results in clinically measurable impairment of VWF function, and specifically VWF-GPIb function as measured by VWF:Ac. BB-031 also induced thrombolysis as measured in a microfluidic model of occlusion and reperfusion. Moderate correlation between inhibition and lysis was observed. Additional studies are required to further examine off-target effects of BB-031 at high doses, however, these are expected to be above the range of clinical targeted dosing