Smartphone as an Edge for Context-Aware Real-Time Processing for Personal e-Health

The medical domain is facing an ongoing challenge of how patients can share their health information and timeline with healthcare providers. This involves secure sharing, diverse data types, and formats reported by healthcare-related devices. A multilayer framework can address these challenges in the context of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). This framework utilizes smartphone sensors, external services, and medical devices that measure vital signs and communicate such real-time data with smartphones. The smartphone serves as an “edge device” to visualize, analyze, store, and report context- aware data to the cloud layer. Focusing on medical device connectivity, mobile security, data collection, and interoperability for frictionless data processing allows for building context-aware personal medical records (PMRs). These PMRs are then securely transmitted through a communication protocol, Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), to be then utilized by authorized medical staff and healthcare institutions. MQTT is a lightweight, intuitive, and easy-to-use messaging protocol suitable for IoMT systems. Consequently, these PMRs are to be further processed in a cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS). Through AWS and its services, architecting a customized data pipeline from the mobile user to the cloud allows displaying of useful analytics to healthcare stakeholders, secure storage, and SMS notifications. Our results demonstrate that this framework preserves the patient’s health-related timeline and shares this information with professionals. Through a serverless Business intelligence interactive dashboard generated from AWS QuickSight, further querying and data filtering techniques are applied to the PMRs which identify key metrics and trends

Joining of Dissimilar Materials

Material manufacturers and engineering structure designers are currently focusing new ways to exploit the benefits of light-weight, hybrid materials with improved properties at a low cost. The ability to join dissimilar materials is enabling the design engineers to develop light-weight and efficient automobiles, aircraft and space vehicles. The objective of this PhD research study was to produce alternative and efficient joining solutions for automotive and aerospace applications. The joining of dissimilar material was experimented to obtain light-weight Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) sandwich composites, Al-foam sandwich (AFS) composites, hybrid dynamic FRP epoxy/polyurethane composites and the joining of Ti6Al4V alloy with and without surface modification to Ceramic Matrix Composite (CMC) and itself. The joining of Al-foam and Al-honeycomb to FRP skins was performed. The experimental results show that higher flexural properties can be achieved by replacing Al-honeycomb with low-cost Al-foam as a core material in the sandwich structures. Compared to FRP-honeycomb sandwich panels, FRP-Al foam sandwich panels display ~25 % and ~65 % higher flexural strength in a long and short span three-point bending tests respectively. AFS composites with complete metallic character, to withstand high-temperature application conditions, were produced by soldering/brazing techniques using Zn-based and Al-based joining alloys. A post-brazing thermal treatment was designed to recover the mechanical properties of AFS composites, lost during the soldering/brazing process. The microstructural analysis of the Al-skin/Al-foam interface revealed that the diffusion of joining materials into the joining substrates (Al-sheet and Al-foam) was achieved. Around 80% higher bending load before failure was observed when the AFS specimens produced with Zn-based joining alloys were subjected to flexural load compared to those produced with Al-based joining alloys. Hybrid dynamic Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) composites with enhanced impact properties were produced by exploiting the reversible cross-linking functionalities of dynamic epoxy and dynamic PU resin systems. By joining dynamic CFRP-epoxy and dynamic CFR-PU laminates, hybrid dynamic composite in three different configurations and a non-hybrid composite were obtained. The four dynamic composites were characterised for structural, thermal, flexural and impact properties. The damage initiation upon impact was observed at around 95% higher energy level in the hybrid configuration (CFRP-4), compared to the non-hybrid configuration. The hybrid configuration CFRP-3 responded with around 55% higher perforation threshold energy compared the non-hybrid configuration. Preliminary work on Adhesive joining of the Ti6Al4V alloy to itself was performed to analyse the effect micro-machining on adhesion and the effect of shape/design of micro-slots on an adhesive joint strength. Three types of micro-slots: V, semi-circle and U-shaped micro-slots were produced on Ti6Al4V sheet surface by using an in-house developed Micro-Electro-Discharge Machining (Micro-EDM) setup. Ti6Al4V alloy specimens with and without micro-machined surfaces were bonded together using a commercial epoxy adhesive. The Single Lap Offset (SLO) shear test results revealed that the micro-slot oriented perpendicular to the applied load displayed ~23 % higher joining strength compared to when the micro-slots were oriented parallel to the applied load. U-shaped micro-slots configuration displayed ~30 % improvement in the joint shear strength compared to the specimens with un-modified surfaces. The fractured surfaces analysis revealed mix (adhesive-cohesive) with cohesive dominated failure in bonded specimens with micro-machined surfaces compared to the as-received where pure adhesive failure was observed. The joining of CMCs (C/SiC and SiC/SiC) to Ti6Al4V alloy was experimented using active brazing alloy (Cusil-ABA) and Zr-based brazing alloy (TiB590) in a pressure-less argon atmosphere. The CMC-Ti6Al4V joint strength was further improved by modifying the surface of Ti6Al4V alloy using an in-house built Micro-EDM setup. Around 40% higher joining strength was recorded when the Zr-based brazing alloy was used as a joining material compared to the conventional active brazing alloy, Cusil-ABA. Improvement in the joining strength was noticed when the Ti6Al4V surface was modified prior to joining

The Role of Magnetic Resonance Venography in Headache Due to Suspected Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis in the Presence of Normal T1 and T2 Dural Sinus Signal

OBJECTIVES Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) is an important but uncommon aetiology of stroke.  The presentation of CVST is extremely variable clinically, moreover its onset can be either acute or subacute, and less frequently, chronic. Headache is the most common symptom of CVST.  The headache is typically diffuse and progressing in severity over days to weeks.  MRI and MRV have very high sensitivity and specificity and have become the modality of choice to confirm the diagnosis of CVST.  The aim of this study was to weigh the benefits of added MRV in patients with headache, after a negative MRI for CVST.  METHODOLOGY The total number of patients included was 207, with chief complaints of headache and suspicion of CVST. The MRV sequence used was dynamic coronal by using the time-of-flight technique. The diagnosis of CVST was made by the loss of normal signal void both on T1WI and T2WI as well as on non-visualization on MRV.RESULTSOut of these 207 patients, CVST was present in 52 patients.  Superior sagittal sinus was involved in 8 cases, right transverse sinus in 2 cases, left transverse sinus in 7 cases, left sigmoid sinus in 3 cases, and multiple sinuses in 32 cases. 34 cases out of 52 had infarction which was mostly haemorrhagic i.e. 27.  A total of 97 cases (46%) had aplastic/hypoplastic transverse segments which were mostly the left one (87, 42%) and 10 cases (4.8 %) on the right side. In none of the patients, CVST was picked by MRV alone after a negative T1 and T2 MRI. CONCLUSION In patients presenting with headache and suspected CVST additional MRV is only required if the routine MR sequences are not able to pick up the thrombus and the suspicion of CVST is very high

Joining of C/SiC for aerospace applications

To join C/SiC to C/SiC with a new, pressure-less composite joining material and technique, for high performance application

Significance of Targeting RNA Polymerase I in Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma

Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (IHCC) is a much-overlooked cancer with a mortality rate that has increased throughout recent years, as stated by the American Cancer Society [1]. In the United States alone, there are an estimated 8,000 adults being diagnosed with IHCC every year, with a five-year survival rate of 9% [2]. Chemotherapy options for the treatment of IHCC include systemic chemotherapy such as gemcitabine, capecitabine, and oxaliplatin. These medications carry a wide array of adverse factors that may warrant discontinuation due to the detriment to the well-being of the patient. Additionally, a broad field of therapy that may also be used, even throughout many other types of cancers, is aimed to arm the immune system, such as targeted therapy as well as immunotherapy. Even with the consideration of these options, we cannot say that our issue has been solved. If the cancer is diagnosed at an early stage and treated adequately, the five-year survival rate is still at 24% [2], which will still result in the mortality of majority of the individuals with IHCC. Therefore, the discovery of new potential molecular targets is required which could be used in rationale designing of the prevention and treatment strategies against advanced IHCC. The ribosome biogenesis process is dysregulated in most cancer cells because of the high demand of protein synthesis. However, the role of ribosome biogenesis components was the least studied in cancer settings. From our extensive research in various systems, we found that POLR1A (RPA194), a catalytic subunit of RNA polymerase I, is significantly overexpressed (

Comparative evaluation of in vitro antioxidant potential of Punica granatum L. leaves extracts

A comparative evaluation of tannins, flavonoid, phenol quantification and antioxidant potential of aqueous, methanol, n-hexane, acetone and chloroform extracts of Punica granatum leaves were determined. Quantification of phenolic was carried out by the technique of Folin-Ciocalteau, using rutin as standard flavonoids were evaluated through the technique of colorimetry, tannin was measured by the difference of total phenolics and free phenolics assay procedure. Antioxidant activities were evaluated by four standards antioxidant techniques including Superoxide dismutase (SOD)-like activity, Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) scavenging activity,1, 1’-diphynyl- 2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) activity and Nitric oxide (NO) scavenging activity method using ascorbic acid as standard. The antioxidant activities showed that methanol extract at 500μg/mL calculated maximum DPPH inhibition activity was 78±1%, H2O2 scavenging activity was 90±0%, SOD-like activity was 88±0% and NO scavenging activity was 90±0%. The outcomes indicated the major antioxidant actions were carried out by the extract of methanol; the entire potential was increased in the directive of methanol> chloroform> acetone>aqueous>n-hexane extracts. The results indicate that Punica granatum leaves extracts to have potent antioxidant activities that would have beneficial effects on human health and methanol extracts are superior with better antioxidant potential. The leaves extracts of Punica granatum could be of enormousattention in the enhancement of top value-added secondary products and the appliance of functional and green substitutes in thecosmetics, food and pharma industries

Incremental composition process for the construction of component-based management

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are composed of software and hardware components. Many such systems (e.g., IoT based systems) are created by composing existing systems together. Some of these systems are of critical nature, e.g., emergency or disaster management systems. In general, component-based development (CBD) is a useful approach for constructing systems by composing pre-built and tested components. However, for critical systems, a development method must provide ways to verify the partial system at different stages of the construction process. In this paper, for system architectures, we propose two styles: rigid architecture and flexible architecture. A system architecture composed of independent components by coordinating exogenous connectors is in flexible architecture style category. For CBD of critical systems, we select EX-MAN from flexible architecture style category. Moreover, we define incremental composition mechanism for this model to construct critical systems from a set of system requirements. Incremental composition is defined to offer preservation of system behaviour and correctness of partial architecture at each incremental step. To evaluate our proposed approach, a case study of weather monitoring system (part of a disaster management) system was built using our EX-MAN tool

Incast mitigation in a data center storage cluster through a dynamic fair-share buffer policy

Incast is a phenomenon when multiple devices interact with only one device at a given time. Multiple storage senders overflow either the switch buffer or the single-receiver memory. This pattern causes all concurrent-senders to stop and wait for buffer/memory availability, and leads to a packet loss and retransmission—resulting in a huge latency. We present a software-defined technique tackling the many-to-one communication pattern—Incast—in a data center storage cluster. Our proposed method decouples the default TCP windowing mechanism from all storage servers, and delegates it to the software-defined storage controller. The proposed method removes the TCP saw-tooth behavior, provides a global flow awareness, and implements the dynamic fair-share buffer policy for end-to-end I/O path. It considers all I/O stages (applications, device drivers, NICs, switches/routers, file systems, I/O schedulers, main memory, and physical disks) while achieving the maximum I/O throughput. The policy, which is part of the proposed method, allocates fair-share bandwidth utilization for all storage servers. Priority queues are incorporated to handle the most important data flows. In addition, the proposed method provides better manageability and maintainability compared with traditional storage networks, where data plane and control plane reside in the same device

Sewing Needle as Foreign Body in Urethra of an Adolescent Boy: Case Report

Self-insertion of a foreign body in the urethra is an uncommon presentation clinically. The cases usually arise due to fulfillment of sexual desire, for recreation, play, or exploration, or the foreign body insertion may take place accidentally. We present a case of an adolescent boy with a foreign body urethra presenting to the emergency room with urinary retention, pain, and dysuria. Attending urologist suspected urethral stricture and ordered ultrasonography to investigate which turned out to be a sewing needle in his urethra. The patient was then enquired about the foreign body. He tried to self-dilate his urethra as he was experiencing lower urinary tract symptoms. The sewing needle was removed by endoscopy and he was administered with antibiotics and painkillers. The urethral foreign bodies may present with pain, dysuria, or urinary incontinence and these foreign bodies are mostly seen in the male population in the adolescent age group