A Protocol for the Secure Linking of Registries for HPV Surveillance

In order to monitor the effectiveness of HPV vaccination in Canada the linkage of multiple data registries may be required. These registries may not always be managed by the same organization and, furthermore, privacy legislation or practices may restrict any data linkages of records that can actually be done among registries. The objective of this study was to develop a secure protocol for linking data from different registries and to allow on-going monitoring of HPV vaccine effectiveness.A secure linking protocol, using commutative hash functions and secure multi-party computation techniques was developed. This protocol allows for the exact matching of records among registries and the computation of statistics on the linked data while meeting five practical requirements to ensure patient confidentiality and privacy. The statistics considered were: odds ratio and its confidence interval, chi-square test, and relative risk and its confidence interval. Additional statistics on contingency tables, such as other measures of association, can be added using the same principles presented. The computation time performance of this protocol was evaluated.The protocol has acceptable computation time and scales linearly with the size of the data set and the size of the contingency table. The worse case computation time for up to 100,000 patients returned by each query and a 16 cell contingency table is less than 4 hours for basic statistics, and the best case is under 3 hours.A computationally practical protocol for the secure linking of data from multiple registries has been demonstrated in the context of HPV vaccine initiative impact assessment. The basic protocol can be generalized to the surveillance of other conditions, diseases, or vaccination programs

Virtual and remote labs in higher education distance learning of physical and engineering sciences

Physical Sciences in general constitute a core of knowledge essential to any modern science or engineering curriculum. The use of laboratories is necessary for better understanding of natural laws, but also for the development of critical thinking and experimentation. However, researchers have marked that practical exercise in laboratories presents some restrictions. Distance education can be an important solution to this problem in the context of Higher Education, both for conventional Universities as well as for Institutions of Open and Distant Education. Modern computer technology and communications offer new opportunities to develop virtual and/or remote laboratories. We performed an investigation concerning published papers in scientific journals as well as papers published in proceedings of international conferences. We selected to present representative applications that present some particular interesting aspects. The accent was given in those that stress points of planning and designing the educational materials and equipment both from a technical point of view but also from a pedagogic point and which include also reports from the application of the discussed laboratories. © 2013 IEEE

Vibrational and topological properties of selected NiO surfaces

We present a study of the vibrational properties of the (100) and (110) surfaces of nickel oxide. We performed molecular dynamics simulations over a wide temperature range and we calculated the phonon local density of states (LDOS) of the anionic and cationic sublattices as a function of the distance of the atomic planes from the surface. We discuss the differences observed at T = 300 K in the phonon LDOS compared to the bulk as well as the differences observed among the two surfaces due to their specific atomic structure. As far as the temperature behavior of the phonon LDOS is concerned for the (100) surface we have preservation of its main characteristics up to high temperatures while for the (110) a modification of the phonon LDOS is observed above T = 1000 K. The difference in behavior of the two surfaces is related to the stability of the (100) surface and the modification of the atomic structure of the surface planes of the (110) surface above T = 1000 K. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Texts of art, science and culture: An interdisciplinary course in engineering curriculum

In the present paper we describe a new elective interdisciplinary course introduced to the curriculum of the Department of Mechanical Engineering of University of Thessaly, Greece. The course tries to bridge the gap between hard and soft sciences as it provides the students with the appropriate tools for reading and critically understanding as well as composing various form of texts in the broader sense of the term. We present the syllabus and motivation of the course as proposed by the authors as well as the teaching methodology, the educational material and the assessment of its outcome both from the side of the educators as well as of the students. © 2013 IEEE

Vibrational properties of a Sigma 5(310) 001 NiO grain boundary: a local analysis by molecular dynamics simulation

Using molecular dynamics and a rigid ion potential we studied the vibrational properties of a Sigma5(310)[001] tilt grain boundary in NiO. We calculated the local density of states and the mean square displacement (MSD) of the cation and ion sublattice for a wide temperature range. We examined their behaviour in the directions parallel and normal to the boundary as a function from the grain boundary plane. We found that the local phonon density of states of the sites of the boundary are altered with comparison to the bulk presenting in general a shift towards lower frequencies in the direction normal to the boundary and toward higher frequencies in the direction parallel to the grain boundary. This anisotropy, which is conformed by the results of the MSDs, is maintained up to high temperatures. We have also observed that the increase of temperature leads to the gradual loosening of the binding of atoms. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

On a topological closeness of perturbed Julia sets

In the present work we expand our previous work in [1] by introducing the Julia Deviation Distance and the Julia Deviation Plot in order to study the stability of the Julia sets of noise-perturbed Mandelbrot maps. We observe a power-law behaviour of the Julia Deviation Distance of the Julia sets of a family of additive dynamic noise Mandelbrot maps from the Julia set of the Mandelbrot map as a function of the noise level. Additionally, using the above tools, we support the invariance of the Julia set of a noise-perturbed Mandelbrot map under different noise realizations. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Bubble detection in Greek Stock Market: A DS-LPPLS model approach

Upfront bubble detection is one of the holy grails in Financial Markets. In the present paper, in order to archive this goal, we consider two different methods based on the Log Periodic Power Law. We implement this early detection algorithms in the Greek Stock Market, which is a relatively “shallow” and underdeveloped market. We have examined a period from 1997 until the end of 2019, an epoch before the rise of COVID-19 virus. Using this methodology, we managed to detect with a relatively good accuracy the formation and the critical time for both positive and negative financial bubbles that occurred during the examination period. © 2021 Elsevier B.V

Detection of low-dimensional chaos in wind time series

In the present work we investigated the existence of low-dimensional deterministic chaos in wind time series. The time series were obtained from the New Anchialos (Greece) Air Base Measurement station. In a first place we used the raw data without any noise filtering. Characteristic times were extracted using power spectrum and average mutual information function. The estimation of invariant measures, such as the correlation dimension and Lyapunov exponents indicate the possible existence of a low-dimensional attractor. After noise removal with the use of the local projective method the analysis indicates in a more clear way the existence of a low-dimensional attractor. In addition, the null hypothesis was tested for the dynamical characteristics of the wind time series by using the surrogate data test and the corresponding results provide significant evidence for the existence of low-dimensional chaotic dynamics underlying the wind time series. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved