BPMN Security Extensions for Healthcare Process

The modelling of healthcare process is inherently complicated due to its multi-disciplinary character. Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) has been considered and applied to model and demonstrate the flexibility and variability of the activities that involved in healthcare process. However, with the growing usage of digital information and IoT technology in the healthcare system, the issue of information security and privacy becomes the main concern in term of both store and management of electronic health record (EHR). Therefore, it is very important to capture the security requirements at conceptual level in order to identify the security needs in the first place. BPMN is lacking of the ability to model and present security concepts such as confidentiality, integrity, and availability in a suitable way. This will increase the vulnerability of the system and make the future development of security for the system more difficult. In this paper we provide a solution to model the security concepts in BPMN by extending it with new designed security elements, which can be integrated with the BPMN diagram smoothly. Index Terms — Security Requirement, BPMN, Healthcare, Internet of Things

Realtime Vehicle Route Optimisation via DQN for Sustainable and Resilient Urban Transportation Network

Traffic congestion has become one of the most serious contemporary city issues for urban transportation network as it leads to unnecessary high energy consumption, air pollution and extra travelling time. During this decade, many optimization algorithms have been designed to achieve the optimal usage of existing roadway capacity in cities to leverage the problem. However, it is still a challenging task for the vehicles to interact with the complex city environment in a real time manner. In this thesis, we propose a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) method to build a real-time intelligent vehicle navigation system for sustainable and resilient urban transportation network. We designed two rewards methods travel time based and vehicle emissions impact (VEI) based which aim to reduce the travel time for emergency vehicle (resilience), and reduce vehicle emissions for general vehicle (sustainability). In the experiment, several realistic traffic scenarios are simulated by SUMO to test the proposed navigation method. The experimental results have demonstrated the efficient convergence of the vehicle navigation agents and their effectiveness to make optimal decisions under the volatile traffic conditions. Travel time based reward schema perform better in reducing travel time however VEI based show better result in reducing vehicle emissions. Furthermore, the results also show that the proposed method has huge potential to provide a better navigation solution comparing with the benchmark routing optimisation algorithms

A Survey on Urban Traffic Optimisation for Sustainable and Resilient Transportation Network

Nowadays, sustainability and resilience have become a major consideration that cannot be neglected in urban development. People are starting to consider utilizing the urban infrastructure environment to maintain and improve the functionality and availability of the urban system when unexpected events take place. Traffic congestion is always a major issue in urban planning, especially when the vehicles in the roadway keep growing and the local authorities are lack of solutions to manage or distribute the traffics in the city. It has huge impact on urban sustainability and resilience such as overload of the city’s infrastructure, and air pollution, etc. This paper presents a survey on the challenges of developing sustainable and resilient transportation networks and the current urban traffic optimisation methods, as a possible solution to address such challenges. It aims to describe and define the state of the art on the research on sustainable and resilient transportation networks in urban development and a taxonomy of different traffic optimisation methods used for avoiding traffic congestion and improve urban traffic management

Study of Group Route Optimization for IoT enabled Urban Transportation Network

Traffic congestion is always a major issue in urban planning, especially when the vehicles in the roadway keep growing and the local authorities are lack of solutions to manage or distribute the traffics in the city. Although there are several factors that may cause traffic congestion, inefficiency in traffic management is always the main issue. Additionally, the most traditional methods of resolving traffic congestion or rerouting algorithm are mainly designed for individuals’ benefits, by simply planning a driver’s route based on minimum travel time or shortest path accordingly. There is lack of consideration in group benefit or urban development. However, with the development of technologies in Internet of Things (IoT), vehicle to vehicle (V2V) or Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) communications, group based routing becomes achievable. Instead of optimizing the routing path for individual drivers, this paper studies how to develop a new method to provide new routing method based on vehicles’ similarities in a specific urban’s transportation environmen

Hear-Communicate-Remember: Feasibility of delivering an integrated intervention for family caregivers of people with dementia and hearing impairment via telehealth

PURPOSE: To evaluate the feasibility of Hear-Communicate-Remember, a training programme developed for family caregivers of people with dementia and hearing impairment that integrated hearing, communication and memory strategies, which was intended to be delivered via telehealth. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Participants included six dyads consisting of adults with dementia and hearing impairment and their family caregivers. Data collection involved a combination of semi-structured interviews, self-report questionnaires and field notes. RESULTS: Analysis of the qualitative interviews revealed four themes: appropriateness of intervention resources, considerations for the delivery of intervention via telehealth, knowledge and application of intervention strategies, and impact of the intervention on day-to-day life. Results from the satisfaction survey indicated that caregiver participants were mostly satisfied with all aspects of the intervention except the use of some technological components. The field notes described challenges with implementation via telehealth. CONCLUSIONS: Future research involving a cohort comparison study with a larger cohort of dyads is needed to establish treatment efficacy

Reinforcement Learning for Vehicle Route Optimization in SUMO

Urban traffic control becomes a major topic for urban development lately as the growing number of vehicles in the transportation network. Recent advances in reinforcement learning methodologies have shown highly potential results in solving complex traffic control problem with multi-dimensional states and actions. It offers an opportunity to build a sustainable and resilient urban transport network for a variety of objects, such as minimizing the fuel consumption or improving the safety of roadway. Inspired by this promising idea, this paper presents an experience how to apply reinforcement learning method to optimize the route of a single vehicle in a network. This experience uses an open-source simulator SUMO to simulate the traffic. It shows promising result in finding the best route and avoiding the congestion path

Assessment of arterial stiffness, oxidative stress and inflammation in acute kidney injury

Background: It is well know that arterial stiffness, oxidative stress and inflammation are features of chronic kidney disease. The arterial changes have a multitude of potential interconnected causes including endothelial dysfunction, oxidative stress, inflammation, atherosclerosis and vascular calcification. There is evidence that arterial stiffness becomes progressively worse as CKD progresses. The contribution of the biochemical changes of uremic toxicity to arterial stiffness is less clear. The aim of this study is to elucidate the vascular changes in acute kidney injury. We hypothesise that arterial stiffness will be increased during acute kidney injury and this will return to normal after kidney function recovers

Differential CARM1 expression in prostate and colorectal cancers

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Coactivator-associated arginine methyltransferase 1 (CARM1) functions as a transcriptional coactivator of androgen receptor (AR)-mediated signaling. Correspondingly, overexpression of CARM1 has been associated with the development of prostate cancer (PCa) and its progression to androgen-independent PCa. In our preliminary study, however, the promoting effects of CARM1, with regard to androgen-stimulated AR target gene expression were minimal. These results suggested that the AR target gene expression associated with CARM1 may result primarily from non-hormone dependent activity. The goal of this study was to confirm the pattern of expression of CARM1 in human tumors and determine the mechanism of action in CARM1 overexpressed tumors.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Tissue microarray was used to determine the pattern of expression of CARM1 in human cancers by immunohistochemistry. CARM1 expression was also evaluated in prostate and colorectal surgical specimens and the clinical records of all cases were reviewed. In addition, a reporter transcription assay using the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) promoter was used to identify the signaling pathways involved in non-hormone-mediated signal activation associated with CARM1.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The tissue microarray showed that CARM1 was particularly overexpressed in the colorectal cancers while CARM1 expression was not prevalent in the prostate and breast cancers. Further studies using surgical specimens demonstrated that CARM1 was highly overexpressed in 75% of colorectal cancers (49 out of 65) but not in the androgen-independent PCa. In addition, CARM1's coactivating effect on the entire PSA promoter was very limited in both androgen-dependent and androgen-independent PCa cells. These results suggest that there are other factors associated with CARM1 expression in PSA regulation. Indeed, CARM1 significantly regulated both p53 and NF-κB target gene transcription.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results of this study suggest that, in addition to its role in activation of steroid receptors, CARM1 functions as a transcriptional modulator by altering the activity of many transcriptional factors, especially with regard to androgen independent PCa and colorectal cancers.</p

Splenectomy for solitary splenic metastasis of ovarian cancer

BACKGROUND: Splenic metastases occur in rare cases with a few case reports of patients in the literature. Generally, splenic metastases mean late dissemination of a disease. Solitary splenic metastases from solid tumors are extremely unusual. CASE PRESENTATION: We report a case of a patient with ovarian mucinous cystadenocarcinoma who underwent splenectomy for isolated parenchymal metastasis. CONCLUSION: Ovarian epithelial tumors comprised most of isolated splenic metastases from gynecologic tumor. When isolated splenic recurrence is suspected on image studies and serum tumor markers, intraabdominal gross findings should be examined to exclude peritoneal carcinomatosis. If only spleen was under suspicion of recurrence of ovarian cancer, splenectomy may play a therapeutic role

Cigarettes and alcohol in relation to colorectal cancer: the Singapore Chinese Health Study

The relations were examined between colorectal cancer and cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption within the Singapore Chinese Health Study, a population-based, prospective cohort of 63 257 middle-aged and older Chinese men and women enrolled between 1993 and 1998, from whom baseline data on cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption were collected through in-person interviews. By 31 December 2004, 845 cohort participants had developed colorectal cancer (516 colon cancer, 329 rectal cancer). Compared with nondrinkers, subjects who drank seven or more alcoholic drinks per week had a statistically significant, 72% increase in risk of colorectal cancer hazard ratio (HR)=1.72; 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.33–2.22). Cigarette smoking was associated with an increased risk of rectal cancer only. Compared with nonsmokers, HRs (95% CIs) for rectal cancer were 1.43 (1.10–1.87) for light smokers and 2.64 (1.77–3.96) for heavy smokers. Our data indicate that cigarette smoking and alcohol use interact in the Chinese population in an additive manner in affecting risk of rectal cancer, thus suggesting that these two exposures may share a common etiologic pathway in rectal carcinogenesis