PAS: A Wireless-Enabled, Cell-Phone-Incorporated Personal Assistant System for Independent and Assisted Living

Advances in networking, sensors, medical devices and smart phones have made it feasible to monitor and pro-vide medical and other assistance to people either in their homes or outside. Aging populations will benefit from re-duced costs and improved healthcare through assisted living based on these technologies. However, these systems chal-lenge current state-of-the-art techniques for usability, relia-bility, and security. In this paper we present the PAS open architecture for assisted living, which allows independently developed third party components to collaborate. Further-more, we incorporate cell phones in PAS as the local intel-ligence in order to enhance the robustness and ubiquity. We discuss key technological issues in assisted living systems, such as software architecture layout, power preserving, se-curity and privacy; and results from our pilot study in a real assisted living facility are presented.

Pegylated Interferon and Ribavirin Dosing Strategies to Enhance Sustained Virologic Response

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) affects about 170 million people worldwide and is the most common chronic blood borne infection in the United States. Since the advent of blood screening protocols in the early 1990s, injection drug use has become the leading cause of infection. Hepatitis C can have both hepatic and nonhepatic manifestations of infection. Hepatic manifestations include hepatic fibrosis, cirrhosis, liver cancer, and liver failure. The standard treatment for chronic HCV is combination therapy with pegylated interferon-α and ribavirin. Although pegylated interferon and ribavirin has been used against HCV for close to a decade, advances in therapy have centered on doses and treatment durations. There has been increasing interest in applying on-treatment response or viral kinetics to predict antiviral response rates and shape therapeutic intervention. Protease inhibitors are a promising adjuvant to combination therapy, but their efficacy and safety are still under investigation

Indirect Costs and Workplace Productivity Loss Associated with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2015Background Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) is the 7th most common type of cancer in the United States (U.S.) based on incidence.1 Despite this, there is an absence of published literature on the indirect costs and workplace productivity loss associated with NHL. Objective The objective of this study was to examine the indirect costs and workplace productivity loss (defined as an aggregate measure of absenteeism, short-term disability (STD), and long-term disability (LTD) days) associated with NHL from a societal perspective in the commercially insured U.S. population. Methods The MarketScan® Commercial Claims and Encounters (CCAE) and Health and Productivity Management (HPM) Databases (2007-2013) were used for this study. The NHL cohort consisted of patients aged 18-64 years on the date of first diagnosis of NHL (index date), continuously enrolled for ≥6 months before and ≥12 months after the index date, with no diagnoses of other cancers prior to the index date, with non-missing data on absenteeism, STD, and LTD for ≥12 months after the index date, with ≥2 additional diagnoses of NHL on different days in the 60-day post-index period, and with no diagnoses of Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the 12-month post-index period. Afterwards, controls without NHL and satisfying all except the last two inclusion/exclusion criteria were matched 3:1 based on index year, 5-year age group, and region. Multiple regression analyses adjusting for covariates were then used to estimate the differences in mean days of workplace productivity loss and associated indirect costs for NHL patients versus controls. Results In comparison to controls, NHL patients incurred significantly more workplace productivity loss (31.99 days; 95% CI: 25.24 days, 38.73 days; p < 0.001) in the 12-month post-index period when adjusting for covariates. Consequently, NHL patients incurred significantly more indirect costs ($6,302.34; 95$4,973.40, $7,631.28; p < 0.001) compared to controls when adjusting for the same covariates. Conclusions NHL can have a significant impact on workplace productivity loss, which translates to higher indirect costs to society. As the first study to address major gaps in evidence regarding NHL, these findings contribute substantially to understanding the disease’s burden of illness

Transfusion of blood stored for longer periods of time does not alter the reactive hyperemia index in healthy volunteers

Introduction The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of transfusing human packed red blood cells (PRBC) after prolonged storage, as compared to short storage. Retrospective data suggest that transfusion of PRBC stored for over 2 weeks is associated with increased mortality and morbidity. During storage, PRBC progressively release hemoglobin, which avidly binds nitric oxide (NO). We hypothesized that the NO-mediated hyperemic response following ischemia would be reduced after transfusion of PRBC stored for 40 days. Methods We conducted a cross-over randomized interventional study, enrolling 10 healthy adults. Nine volunteers completed the study; one volunteer could not complete the protocol because of anemia. Each volunteer received 1 unit of 40-day and 1 unit of 3-day stored autologous leukoreduced PRBC, on different study days according to a randomization scheme. Blood withdrawal and reactive hyperemia index (RHI) measurements were performed before and 10 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, and 4 hours after transfusion. Results The change of RHI after transfusion of 40-day stored PRBC did not differ as compared to 3-day stored PRBC (P = 0.67). Plasma hemoglobin and bilirubin levels were higher after transfusion of 40-day than after 3-day stored PRBC (P = 0.02 and 0.001, respectively). Plasma levels of potassium, LDH, haptoglobin, cytokines, as well as blood pressure, did not differ between the two transfusions and remained within the normal range. Plasma nitrite concentrations increased after transfusion of 40-day stored PRBC, but not after transfusion of 3-day stored PRBC (P = 0.01). Conclusion Transfusion of 1 unit of autologous PRBC stored for longer periods of time is associated with increased hemolysis, an unchanged RHI and increased levels of plasma nitrite in healthy volunteers

How Does Social Behavior Affect Your Password?

A password is an important method of identity authentication, so there are endless research attempts on passwords, but most of them are based on different languages and technologies. As far as we know, no one has studied the influence of one's social behavior (e.g., religious belief) on passwords. Based on this, we first study the influence of religion on the generation of user passwords. Taking Christianity as an example, we find that the passwords of Christians have very strong similarities by analyzing the popular passwords, password structure, letter distribution and length distribution. Furthermore, we find that they contain many words that stem from the Bible, such as Jesus, the Sun, and so on. In order to explore the influence of religious beliefs on password generation, we also select two ordinary social password datasets of non-Christians, and find that they have different characteristics. Finally, we use the classic PCFG attack method to test the anti-attack ability of the Christian password datasets and the ordinary password datasets. Interestingly, we come to the conclusion that the ability of Christian password datasets to resist attacks has a strong similarity, while ordinary password datasets do not have this feature. In particular, by adding Christian information to the rule generated by the ordinary password datasets, we show that it can effectively improve the cracking rate of password attacks

Chinese-Teacher Conceptions of Assessment (Cantonese)

This survey aims to question school teachers in Chinese contexts about assessment. The questionnaire is developed by a team of researchers of Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The team included Dr Gavin Brown, Dr Sammy KF Hui, and Dr Flora MF Yu. The project was funded by the HKIEd