Protocol for the development of the international population registry for aphasia after stroke (I-PRAISE)

Background: We require high-quality information on the current burden, the types of therapy and resources available, methods of delivery, care pathways and long-term outcomes for people with aphasia. Aim: To document and inform international delivery of post-stroke aphasia treatment, to optimise recovery and reintegration of people with aphasia. Methods & Procedures: Multi-centre, prospective, non-randomised, open study, employing blinded outcome assessment, where appropriate, including people with post-stroke aphasia, able to attend for 30 minutes during the initial language assessment, at first contact with a speech and language therapist for assessment of aphasia at participating sites. There is no study-mandated intervention. Assessments will occur at baseline (first contact with a speech and language therapist for aphasia assessment), discharge from Speech and Language Therapy (SLT), 6 and 12-months post-stroke. Our primary outcome is changed from baseline in the Amsterdam Nijmegen Everyday Language Test (ANELT/Scenario Test for participants with severe verbal impairments) at 12-months post-stroke. Secondary outcomes at 6 and 12 months include the Therapy Outcome Measure (TOMS), Subjective Index of Physical and Social Outcome (SIPSO), Aphasia Severity Rating Scale (ASRS), Western Aphasia Battery Aphasia Quotient (WAB-AQ), stroke and aphasia quality of life scale (SAQoL-39), European Quality of Life Scale (EQ-5D), lesion description, General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), resource use, and satisfaction with therapy provision and success. We will collect demography, clinical data, and therapy content. Routine neuroimaging and medication administration records will be accessed where possible; imaging will be pseudonymised and transferred to a central reading centre. Data will be collected in a central registry. We will describe demography, stroke and aphasia profiles and therapies available. International individual participant data (IPD) meta-analyses will examine treatment responder rates based on minimal detectable change & clinically important changes from baseline for primary and secondary outcomes at 6 and 12 months. Multivariable meta-analyses will examine associations between demography, therapy, medication use and outcomes, considering service characteristics. Where feasible, costs associated with treatment will be reported. Where available, we will detail brain lesion size and site, and examine correlations with SLT and language outcome at 12 months. Conclusion: International differences in care, resource utilisation and outcomes will highlight avenues for further aphasia research, promote knowledge sharing and optimise aphasia rehabilitation delivery. IPD meta-analyses will enhance and expand understanding, identifying cost-effective and promising approaches to optimise rehabilitation to benefit people with aphasia

Design and Development of a Miniaturized Embedded UHF RFID Tag for Automotive Tire Applications ABSTRACT

The utilization of UHF Radio Frequency IDentifcation (RFID) tag to monitor the tire history in automotive tire applications is presented. Three novel antenna designs are proposed and comparatively evaluated in terms of efficiency, size, read range limitations, and antenna-IC port matching. A prototype of a low-resistive high-inductive RFID tag antenna that is physically built and embedded in actual tires meets the design specifications of read range of minimum 50 cm, high-reliability in terms of the tire traveling test, and antenna-IC packaging size requirement of 7 cm x 3 cm. I

Fabrication and Assembly of a Novel High-Efficiency UHF RFID Tag on Flexible LCP Substrate

In this paper, design, fabrication, assembly and testing of a unique high read-range high-efficiency (95%) Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) antenna for the 915 MHZ UHF band are discussed. The exceptional characteristics of the RFID are investigated in terms of antenna-IC matching and radiation efficiency. The 915 MHz passive tag is a 3 ” x 3 ” omnidirectional tag and yielded a read range of 31 feet compared to a 4 ” x 4 ” leading commercial design of 26 feet tested range in lab. This tag also possesses higher read power range (-7dBm to 30 dBm) than the leading commercial design (-5dBm to 30 dBm). The proposed RFID antenna was fabricated on 50 micron thick Liquid Crystal Polymer (LCP) substrate and the read range of the proposed RFID tags was experimentally verified. A large format LCP sheet (300 mm x 300 mm) was used for antenna fabrication and the assembly of the IC was done using low temperature lead free solder alloys that are compatible with the heat distortion temperature of the LCP. I

PINT: Probabilistic In-band Network Telemetry

Commodity network devices support adding in-band telemetry measurements into data packets, enabling a wide range of applications, including network troubleshooting, congestion control, and path tracing. However, including such information on packets adds significant overhead that impacts both flow completion times and application-level performance. We introduce PINT, an in-band network telemetry framework that bounds the amount of information added to each packet. PINT encodes the requested data on multiple packets, allowing per-packet overhead limits that can be as low as one bit. We analyze PINT and prove performance bounds, including cases when multiple queries are running simultaneously. PINT is implemented in P4 and can be deployed on network devices.Using real topologies and traffic characteristics, we show that PINT concurrently enables applications such as congestion control, path tracing, and computing tail latencies, using only sixteen bits per packet, with performance comparable to the state of the art