Hacking HIPAA: Best Practices for Avoiding Oversight in the Sale of Your Identifiable Medical Information

In light of the confusion invited by applying the label de-identified to information that can be used to identify patients, it is paramount that regulators, compliance professionals, patient advocates and the general public understand the significant differences between the standards applied by HIPAA and those applied by permissive de-identification guidelines. This Article discusses those differences in detail. The discussion proceeds in four Parts. Part II (HIPAA’s Heartbeat: Why HIPAA Protects Identifiable Patient Information) examines Congress’s motivations for defining individually identifiable health information broadly, which included to stop the harms patients endured prior to 1996 arising from the commercial sale of their medical records. Part III (Taking the I Out of Identifiable Information: HIPAA’s Requirements for De-Identified Health Information) discusses HIPAA’s requirements for de-identification that were never intended to create a loophole for identifiable patient information to escape HIPAA’s protections. Part IV (Anatomy of a Hack: Methods for Labeling Identifiable information De-Identified ) examines the goals, methods, and results of permissive de-identification guidelines and compares them to HIPAA’s requirements. Part V (Protecting Un-Protected Health Information) evaluates the suitability of permissive de-identification guidelines, concluding that the vulnerabilities inherent in their current articulation render them ineffective as a data protection standard. It also discusses ways in which compliance professionals, regulators, and advocates can foster accountability and transparency in the utilization of health information that can be used to identify patients

An Analysis of Harmonic Airloads Acting on Helicopter Rotor Blades

Rotary wing aircrafts in any flight conditions suffer from excessive vibration which makes the passengers feel uncomfortable and causes fatigue failure in the structure. The main sources of vibration are the rotor harmonic airloads which originate primarily from the rapid variation of flow around the blade due to the vortex wake. In this thesis, a mathematical model is developed for rotor blades to compute the harmonic airloads at rotor blades for two flight conditions vertical takeoff and landing, and forward flight. The sectional lift, drag, and pitching moment are computed at a radial blade station for both flight conditions. The lift at a particular radial station is computed considering trailing and shed vortices and summing over each blade. The results for airloads are obtained after considering zeroth, first, and second harmonics. The calculated results for airloads are compared to the experimental flight-test data

Some Aspects on the Falyum-Egypt Earthquake of October 12, 1992

A moderate size earthquake shocked the southern west part of Cairo by 35km at 15:15 P.M. local time on October 12, 1992 causing wide spread devastation leading to loss of many lives and structure damages along the surrounding big cities. The paper describes the behavior of two identical residential buildings constructed on two different site soil conditions. The lesson learnt from the performance differences are highlighted, and some geotechnical and structural aspects are recorded

A critical review on the performance of pile-supported rail embankments under cyclic loading: Numerical modeling approach

Searching for economical and practical solutions to increase any transport substructures protection and stability is critical for ensuring the long-term viability and adequate load-bearing capacity. Piles are increasingly being used as an economical and environmentally sustainable solution to enhance the strength of soft subgrade soils on which embankments are raised. As per the available literature, there are two main strategies used to explain railway embankments performance: experimental approaches and numerical simulations on a broad scale. The purpose of this study is to examine the state-of-the-art literature on numerical modeling methods adopted to assess the performance of pile-supported rail embankments subjected to cyclic loading. The paper addresses the main results from various numerical methods to explain the appropriate mechanisms associated with the load deformation response. It also presents the key issues and drawbacks of these numerical methods concerning rail embankment development while outlining the specific shortcomings and research gaps relevant to enhanced future design and analysis. (c) 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

An adaptive distributed Intrusion detection system architecture using multi agents

Intrusion detection systems are used for monitoring the network data, analyze them and find the intrusions if any. The major issues with these systems are the time taken for analysis, transfer of bulk data from one part of the network to another, high false positives and adaptability to the future threats. These issues are addressed here by devising a framework for intrusion detection. Here, various types of co-operating agents are distributed in the network for monitoring, analyzing, detecting and reporting. Analysis and detection agents are the mobile agents which are the primary detection modules for detecting intrusions. Their mobility eliminates the transfer of bulk data for processing. An algorithm named territory is proposed to avoid interference of one analysis agent with another one. A communication layout of the analysis and detection module with other modules is depicted. The inter-agent communication reduces the false positives significantly. It also facilitates the identification of distributed types of attacks. The co-ordinator agents log various events and summarize the activities in its network. It also communicates with co-ordinator agents of other networks. The system is highly scalable by increasing the number of various agents if needed. Centralized processing is avoided here to evade single point of failure. We created a prototype and the experiments done gave very promising results showing the effectiveness of the system

Detection of Uranium Contamination in Acacia Cell Sap by Capillary Zone Electrophoresis (CZE) Technique

The  study was carried out to detect uranium level in the cell sap of acacia plant cells, for this purpose callus cultures of Acacia albida was used as well as plants. Cell saps from both callus and plant leaf were taken using Micro capillary syringe and detected using Capillary zone electrophoresis technique. It was shown that using citrate buffer of 3.0pH help in detecting uranium accumulated in the cells. Prospective calculation for the level of uranium uptake showed that 1.64mM is the level of uranium in the leaf cells that had been grown on soil with addition of 500 mg.kg-1 uranyl nitrate for 3 months, while for callus which grown on MS medium with addition of 500 mg/l uranyl nitrate for the same time (3 months), uptake of uranium reached 0.8 mM. The comparison between TXRF analysis of uranium accumulated in plant tissues and CZE efficiency in detecting uranium level in cell sap of both leaves and callus cells, it was shown that both techniques prove that A.albida plants can accumulate uranium with a level double as that taken by callus cells. Keywords : Capillary Zone Electrophoresis, Acacia albida, Uraniu

Observations on the age and growth of Varicorhinus damascinus (Val.) in Tigris river at Salahuldin province – Iraq

Age and growth of Varicorhinus damascinus (Val.) in Tigris river at Salahuldin province have been investigated. Monthly samples were taken during the period from September 1999 to August 2000, using small-meshed gill nets. The age data showed that there were six age groups and the dominant age groups were (III – IV) for both sexes. The results of the present study revealed that the increment in length of V. damascinus at the sites of study showed a tendency to decrease with the increase in age, after the third year of life in both sexes. The length-weight relationship of males and females were calculated and demonstrated in a straight line logarithmic formula, as follows: Log W = 1.5404 + 2.6885 log L for males r = 0.95 (P > 0.05) Log W = 1.6723 + 2.7877 log L for females r = 0.77 (P > 0.05) The values of the regression coefficient (b) indicated that the growth of both sexes of V. damascinus was allometric.

Clinico-pathological Diagnosis of Facioscapulohumeral Dystrophy in a 22-year-old Male

Background: Facioscapulohumeral dystrophy (FSHD) is a rare hereditary disease with a prevalence of 2.03–6.8 per 100,000 individuals. FSHD is the third most common type of muscular dystrophy after the Duchene muscular dystrophy and myotonic dystrophy. To the best of our knowledge, the current case report is the first to report probable FSHD case mainly diagnosed using clinico-pathological evidence from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Case Report: A 22-year-old right-handed male college student presented with progressive proximal muscular weakness associated with wasting. The weakness started from the bilateral facial muscles and progressively involved proximal upper and lower limbs muscles associated with scapular winging, waddling gait, and bilateral foot drops. His bulbar, sensory, autonomic, and cognitive systems were spared. Muscles EMG showed myopathic patterns and normal serum CK. Muscle biopsy from affected muscles showed variation in fiber size with groups of angular fibers, preserved fibers, and hypertrophic fibers with marked fibrosis and adipose tissue replacement with no apparent inflammation and necrosis which is consistent with pathological features of muscular dystrophy. Considering the clinical semiology, physical findings, EMG findings, and pathological findings diagnosis of FSHD of scapuloperoneal variant was made. The patient was managed with analgesics, nutritional advice, and ankle prosthesis for foot drops. Currently, the patient is in a similar condition with modest improvement in his musculoskeletal pain complaints. Conclusion: This case highlights the fact that a careful clinical evaluation with thorough utilization of diagnostic investigations available at our disposal may support the diagnosis of FSHD in resource-limited areas where the necessary genetic tests were not available. Keywords: facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, dystrophy, clinico-pathology, sub-Saharan Afric

Transcriptomic Changes Associated with ERBB2 Overexpression in Colorectal Cancer Implicate a Potential Role of the Wnt Signaling Pathway in Tumorigenesis

Colorectal cancer (CRC) remains the third most common cause of cancer mortality worldwide. Precision medicine using OMICs guided by transcriptomic profiling has improved disease diagnosis and prognosis by identifying many CRC targets. One such target that has been actively pursued is an erbb2 receptor tyrosine kinase 2 (ERBB2) (Human Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor 2 (HER2)), which is overexpressed in around 3–5% of patients with CRC worldwide. Despite targeted therapies against HER2 showing significant improvement in disease outcomes in multiple clinical trials, to date, no HER2-based treatment has been clinically approved for CRC. In this study we performed whole transcriptome ribonucleic acid (RNA) sequencing on 11 HER2+ and 3 HER2− CRC patients with advanced stages II, III and IV of the disease. In addition, transcriptomic profiling was carried out on CRC cell lines (HCT116 and HT29) and normal colon cell lines (CCD841 and CCD33), ectopically overexpressing ERBB2. Our analysis revealed transcriptomic changes involving many genes in both CRC cell lines overexpressing ERBB2 and in HER2+ patients, compared to normal colon cell lines and HER2− patients, respectively. Gene Set Enrichment Analysis indicated a role for HER2 in regulating CRC pathogenesis, with Wnt/β-catenin signaling being mediated via a HER2-dependent regulatory pathway impacting expression of the homeobox gene NK2 homeobox 5 (NKX2-5). Results from this study thus identified putative targets that are co-expressed with HER2 in CRC warranting further investigation into their role in CRC pathogenesis