Smart hospital emergency system via mobile-based requesting services

In recent years, the UK’s emergency call and response has shown elements of great strain as of today. The strain on emergency call systems estimated by a 9 million calls (including both landline and mobile) made in 2014 alone. Coupled with an increasing population and cuts in government funding, this has resulted in lower percentages of emergency response vehicles at hand and longer response times. In this paper, we highlight the main challenges of emergency services and overview of previous solutions. In addition, we propose a new system call Smart Hospital Emergency System (SHES). The main aim of SHES is to save lives through improving communications between patient and emergency services. Utilising the latest of technologies and algorithms within SHES is aiming to increase emergency communication throughput, while reducing emergency call systems issues and making the process of emergency response more efficient. Utilising health data held within a personal smartphone, and internal tracked data (GPU, Accelerometer, Gyroscope etc.), SHES aims to process the mentioned data efficiently, and securely, through automatic communications with emergency services, ultimately reducing communication bottlenecks. Live video-streaming through real-time video communication protocols is also a focus of SHES to improve initial communications between emergency services and patients. A prototype of this system has been developed. The system has been evaluated by a preliminary usability, reliability, and communication performance study

Modelling Inductive Charging of Battery Electric Vehicles using an Agent-Based Approach

The introduction of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) could help to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and emissions from transportation and as such increase energy security and foster sustainable use of energy resources. However a major barrier to the introduction of BEVs is their limited battery capacity and long charging durations. To address these issues of BEVs several solutions are proposed such as battery swapping and fast charging stations. However apart from these stationary modes of charging, recently a new mode of charging has been introduced which is called inductive charging. This allows charging of BEVs as they drive along roads without the need of plugs, using induction. But it is unclear, if and how such technology could be utilized best. In order to investigate the possible impact of the introduction of such inductive charging infrastructure, its potential and its optimal placement, a framework for simulating BEVs using a multi-agent transport simulation was used. This framework was extended by an inductive charging module and initial test runs were performed. In this paper we present the simulation results of these preliminary tests together with analysis which suggests that battery sizes of BEVs could be reduced even if inductive charging technology is implemented only at a small number of high traffic volume links. The paper also demonstrates that our model can effectively support policy and decision making for deploying inductive charging infrastructure

POWER RELATED COMPONENTS OF PHYSICAL FITNESS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF GOVERNMENT AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS

The physical fitness trainings, accordingly, have been split into specificaspects in order to attain endurance, coordination, flexibility, speed andstrength. Literature review clearly reveals that there is lack of data regardingphysical fitness levels in private and government school going children fromPakistan. The present study was conducted with an aim to compare the powerrelated components (Standing broad jump, Push Ups, Sit Ups, and Hand Grip)of physical fitness of government and private schools’ children. Crosssectional study design was used, the study was conducted on male children(n=304, 152 each from private and government schools) locatedwithin/outskirts of the main city of Sargodha, Pakistan. Total ten schools (5private and 5 government) were earmarked and registered in the study.Convenience sampling technique was used. Children between the ages of 9-11years, Children in primary level of education and children which are theresidents of Sargodha were included in the study. There were statisticallysignificant differences between Standing broad jump, Push Ups, Sit Ups, HandGrip of Private and Government schools’ students. Finally, it was concludedthat the power-related components of physical fitness of government schoolchildren is better than the private schools’ children except hand grip tes

Arabidopsis thaliana DNA gyrase: expression, characterisation and in vivo insight

DNA gyrase is a type II topoisomerase distinguished by its ability to introduce negative supercoils into double-stranded DNA in a reaction linked to ATP hydrolysis. The essentiality of gyrase in bacteria has permitted its exploitation as an antibacterial target. The unanticipated discovery of gyrase within the nuclear genomes of eukaryotes including Arabidopsis and Plasmodia, was made near to two decades ago. Despite this, our understanding of gyrase within these species remains limited. The work here aimed to heterologously generate eukaryotic gyrases in order to biochemically characterise and better understand their mechanism of actions, gain an insight into their in vivo functions and explore their potential for inhibition. The specific inhibition of gyrase within these species would facilitate the generation of novel herbicidal and antimalarial drugs. In vivo knockdown experiments of A. thaliana gyrase have confirmed the embryo-lethality of GyrA. Arabidopsis plants able to propagate with a knockdown of GyrB1 are dwarfed, chlorotic, have reduced numbers and lengths of lateral roots and altered thylakoid ultrastructure. An increase of GyrB1 transcript mediates a stress response within Arabidopsis. The functional cooperation to achieve supercoiling of a reconstituted gyrase comprising A. thaliana GyrA and E. coli GyrB has been shown. The catalysis of A. thaliana enzyme (GyrA and GyrB2) is differentially mediated by potassium glutamate levels. The A. thaliana DNA gyrase has been determined to be 45-fold more efficient for ATP-independent DNA relaxation than E. coli gyrase. A novel sensitive DNA decatenation substrate, ‘bis-cat’, comprising two singly-linked supercoiled plasmids of disparate sizes has been generated and compared to the current marketed decatenation substrate. The novel substrate determined A. thaliana gyrase to be 35-fold more effective for DNA decatenation than the E. coli enzyme. The herbicidal and bactericidal specificities of novel fluoroquinolone compounds have also been compared

Parallel Bayesian Optimization of Agent-based Transportation Simulation

MATSim (Multi-Agent Transport Simulation Toolkit) is an open source large-scale agent-based transportation planning project applied to various areas like road transport, public transport, freight transport, regional evacuation, etc. BEAM (Behavior, Energy, Autonomy, and Mobility) framework extends MATSim to enable powerful and scalable analysis of urban transportation systems. The agents from the BEAM simulation exhibit 'mode choice' behavior based on multinomial logit model. In our study, we consider eight mode choices viz. bike, car, walk, ride hail, driving to transit, walking to transit, ride hail to transit, and ride hail pooling. The 'alternative specific constants' for each mode choice are critical hyperparameters in a configuration file related to a particular scenario under experimentation. We use the 'Urbansim-10k' BEAM scenario (with 10,000 population size) for all our experiments. Since these hyperparameters affect the simulation in complex ways, manual calibration methods are time consuming. We present a parallel Bayesian optimization method with early stopping rule to achieve fast convergence for the given multi-in-multi-out problem to its optimal configurations. Our model is based on an open source HpBandSter package. This approach combines hierarchy of several 1D Kernel Density Estimators (KDE) with a cheap evaluator (Hyperband, a single multidimensional KDE). Our model has also incorporated extrapolation based early stopping rule. With our model, we could achieve a 25% L1 norm for a large-scale BEAM simulation in fully autonomous manner. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first of its kind applied to large-scale multi-agent transportation simulations. This work can be useful for surrogate modeling of scenarios with very large populations.Comment: LOD'2022 (Nature Springer Computer Science Proceedings - LNCS

A comparative study to assess the safety and efficacy of etoricoxib versus aceclofenac in osteoarthritis

Background: Osteoarthritis (OA) is most common form of arthritis; also referred as degenerative joint disease or “wear and tear” arthritis. Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibitors are effective for pain and inflammation in OA and gained importance over conventional non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents (NSAIDs), as causes significantly less toxicity, particularly, in gastrointestinal tract. The objective of the present research was to study the short-term comparative clinical efficacy of aceclofenac and etoricoxib in patients with osteoarthritis and to compare the safety profile of the two drugs i.e. aceclofenac and etoricoxib.Methods: The present study was a prospective, open label, parallel, intention to treat 80 patients out of 102 screened for osteoarthritis in the Department of Orthopaedics, Guru Nanak Dev Hospital attached to the Government Medical College, Amritsar. Patients were randomly divided in two groups with 40 patients each. Group A patients received Tab etoricoxib 60mg once daily and Group B patients received Tab. Aceclofenac 100mg twice daily. Patients were followed up after three weeks and at six weeks for clinical efficacy and safety.Results: Both the groups found to have significant improvement in signs and symptoms of osteoarthritis. However, aceclofenac was superior to etoricoxib in terms of change in visual analogue scale score, osteoarthritic severity index, patients’ and physicians’ global assessment while, etoricoxib was superior in terms of WOMAC osteoarthritic index and safety parameters in terms of ADR.Conclusions: Etoricoxib was better than conventional NSAIDs for the symptomatic management of osteoarthritis in terms of safety profile and clinical efficacy

Biomimetische Herstellung organisch- anorganischer Komposit Materialien

This work deals with mimicking structural features found in nacre to fabricate composite materials as a tough ceramic material and to explore the mechanical properties. It is part of the work package D9 ôBiomimetic Ceramicsö of the Collaborative Research Centre 599 ôSustainable bioresorbable and permanent implants of metallic and ceramic materialsö of the DFG. Structural pattern found in nacre at micro level, so called ôbrick and mortarö assembly is formed in the presence of a mixture of proteins rich in acidic amino acids with aragonite. To mimic this hierarchical pattern, an appropriate inorganic material and an adhesive polymeric partner are the prerequisite. Specific polymers are required that can be used as crystallization controlling agents in order to synthesize inorganic platelets. For this purpose different phosphonic acid functional polymers and copolymers were synthesized. Properties of the basic polymer chains were altered by copolymerization with different monomers to get desired properties. The reactivity parameters of the copolymerizing units were also established. Furthermore a mussel adhesive protein mimic was also synthesized with dopamine functionality. These polymers were tested at Leibniz University Hannover for the controlled crystallization of hydroxyapatite, with a close resemblance to natural bone material and zirconium hydrogenphosphate hydrate, a biocompatible material which layered morphology. Nanoparticles or platelets, respectively, of these inorganic materials were obtained. Layered composites of zirconium hydrogenphosphate hydrate (ZrP) platelets and chitosan were prepared by layer-by-layer assembly. The growth and structural features of the composite films were studied along with their mechanical properties with reference to the number of dipping cycles, concentration and pH. Another composite was fabricated mimicking mussel proteins as organic component. A composite was prepared by LbL assembly using alumina platelets and hydroxyethyl starch modified with dopamine. Resulting composites have shown morphological similarities as found in nacre micro structure. For composites structure-property-relationships were identified. The thickness of the composites was measured with profilometer while structural details were elucidated with SEM. The mechanical properties of the fabricated composites were investigated with nanoindentation in cooperation with Max-Planck Institute for Metals Research Stuttgart.Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Nachbildung der strukturellen Charakteristika von Perlmutt, um auf diese Art harte Keramiken herzustellen und deren mechanische Eigenschaften zu untersuchen. Sie wurde im Rahmen des Projektes D9 „Biomimetische Keramiken“ des Sonderforschungsbereiches 599 „Zukunftsfähige bioresorbierbare und permanente Implantate aus metallischen und keramischen Werkstoffen“ der DFG durchgeführt. In der Natur entsteht die Struktur von Perlmutt, die mit einem Gefüge aus Ziegeln und Mörtel verglichen werden kann, aus Aragonit in Gegenwart eines Proteingemisches. Die Voraussetzung zur Nachahmung dieser hierarchischen Strukturen sind somit ein anorganisches Material mit entsprechender Geometrie und ein als Matrix dienendes haftfähiges Polymer. Zur Synthese der anorganischen Plättchen werden spezielle Polymere benötigt, die die Kristallisation kontrollieren. Daher wurden zunächst verschiedene Polymere mit dazu geeigneten Phosphonsäuregruppen synthetisiert. Die Eigenschaften der Polymerkette können hierbei durch die Copolymerisation mit unterschiedlichen Comonomeren verändert werden. Weiterhin wurde ein Copolymer mit der adhärierenden Dopamin-Einheit aus Muschel-Proteinen synthetisiert. Die hergestellten Polymere wurden an der Leibniz Universität Hannover zur kontrollierten Kristallisation von Hydroxylapatit, das dem natürlichen Knochen ähnelt, und Zirkonium (hydrogenphosphat)hydrat, einem biokompatiblem Material mit schichtartiger Morphologie, eingesetzt. In Abhängigkeit des eingesetzten kristallisationskontrollierenden Polymers wurden aus den anorganischen Materialien Nanopartikel oder Plättchen erhalten. Anschließend wurden aus den Zirkonium (hydrogenphosphat)hydrat-Plättchen und Chitosan schichtweise aufgebaute Komposite mit Hilfe des Layer-by-Layer Verfahrens hergestellt. Das Wachstum und die Struktur sowie die mechanischen Eigenschaften wurden in Abhängigkeit von der Anzahl der Dip-Zyklen, Konzentration und pH-Wert untersucht. Des Weiteren wurde ein Komposit mit dem nachgeahmten Muschel-Protein als organische Komponente erzeugt, indem mit Dopamin modifzierte Hydroxyethylstärke und Aluminiumoxid-Plättchen im Layer-by-Layer-Verfahren zusammengefügt wurden. Dieses zeigt morphologische Ähnlichkeiten zu der Mikrostruktur von Perlmutt. Die Schichtdicken der Komposite wurden mit einem Profilometer bestimmt und die strukturellen Details konnten an Hand von REM-Aufnahmen aufgeklärt werden. In Kooperation mit dem Max Planck Institut für Metallforschung in Stuttgart wurden die mechanischen Eigenschaften der Komposite mit Hilfe von Nanoindentation charakterisiert. Für die Komposite wurden Abhängigkeiten zwischen der Struktur und den Eigenschaften festgestellt

Robust Eigen-Filter Design for Ultrasound Flow Imaging Using a Multivariate Clustering

Blood flow visualization is a challenging task in the presence of tissue motion. Unsuppressed tissue clutter produces flashing artefacts in ultrasound flow imaging which hampers blood flow detection by dominating part of the blood flow signal in certain challenging clinical imaging applications, ranging from cardiac imaging (maximal tissue vibrations) to microvascular flow imaging (very low blood flow speeds). Conventional clutter filtering techniques perform poorly since blood and tissue clutter echoes share similar spectral characteristics. Eigen-based filtering was recently introduced and has shown good clutter rejection performance; however, flow detection performance in eigen filtering suffers if tissue and flow signal subspaces overlap after eigen components are projected to a single signal feature space for clutter rank selection. To address this issue, a novel multivariate clustering based singular value decomposition (SVD) filter design is developed. The proposed multivariate clustering based filter robustly detects and removes non-blood eigen components by leveraging on three key spatiotemporal statistics: singular value magnitude, spatial correlation and the mean Doppler frequency of singular vectors. A better clutter suppression framework is necessary for high-frame-rate (HFR) ultrasound imaging since it is more susceptible to tissue motion due to poorer spatial resolution (tissue clutter bleeds into flow pixels easily). Hence, to test the clutter rejection performance of the proposed filter, HFR plane wave data was acquired from an in vitro flow phantom testbed and in vivo from a subject’s common carotid artery and jugular vein region induced with extrinsic tissue motion (voluntary probe motion). The proposed method was able to adaptively detect and preserve blood eigen components and enabled fully automatic identification of eigen components corresponding to tissue clutter, blood and noise that removes dependency on the operator for optimal rank selection. The flow detection efficacy of the proposed multivariate clustering based SVD filter was statistically evaluated and compared with current clutter rank estimation methods using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. Results for both in vitro and in vivo experiments showed that the multivariate clustering based SVD filter yielded the highest area under the ROC curve at both peak systole (0.98 for in vitro; 0.95 for in vivo) and end diastole (0.96 for in vitro; 0.93 for in vivo) in comparison with other clutter rank estimation methods, signifying its improved flow detection capability. The impact of this work is on the automated as well as adaptive (in contrast to a fixed cut-off) selection of eigen components which can potentially allow to overcome the flow detection challenges associated with fast tissue motion in cardiovascular imaging and slow flow in microvascular imaging which is critical for cancer diagnoses

Healthcare System and Medical Malpractice Law in Pakistan

Medical profession is a noble profession and requires extraordinary care and caution. The complaints of negligence and medical malpractice is not uncommon, however. Law of Torts is invoked for civil remedy for medical malpractice cases in Pakistan. Medical practitioners can be tried under charges of criminal liability too but courts are very reluctant to treat doctors under Pakistan Penal Code and want to contest such cases under civil liability. Following Indian precedent, Pakistan has given the jurisdiction to Consumer Courts too to try such cases. However, it is detestable to include medical services within the scope of consumer laws. Moreover, there is disparity regarding compensation. Thus, it is argued that a separate law should be devised for medical malpractice keeping in view the need and current practices of legal and healthcare systems