The involvement of artificial intelligence in biomedicine promises better support for decision-making both in conventional and research medical practice. Yet two important issues emerge in relation ...to personal data handling, and the influence of AI on patient/doctor relationships. The development of AI algorithms presupposes extensive processing of big data in biobanks, for which procedures of compliance with data protection need to be ensured. This article addresses this problem in the framework of the EU legislation (GDPR) and explains the legal prerequisites pertinent to various categories of health data. Furthermore, the self-learning systems of AI may affect the fulfillment of medical duties, particularly if the attending physicians rely on unsupervised applications operating beyond their direct control. The article argues that the patient informed consent prerequisite plays a key role here, not only in conventional medical acts but also in clinical research procedures.
Sea spray aerosols (SSA) are known to have an organic coating that is mainly composed of fatty acids. In this study, the effect of pH and salt on the stability and organization of a palmitic acid ...(PA) monolayer is investigated by surface vibrational spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulations. Results indicate that alkyl chain packing becomes more disordered as the carboxylic headgroup becomes deprotonated. This is associated with packing mismatch of charged and neutral species as charged headgroups penetrate deeper into the solution phase. At pH 10.7, when the monolayer is ∼99% deprotonated, palmitate (PA
) molecules desorb and solubilize into the bulk solution where there is spectroscopic evidence for aggregate formation. Yet, addition of 100 mM NaCl to the bulk solution is found to drive PA
molecules to the aqueous surface. Free energy calculations show that PA
molecules become stabilized within the interface with increasing NaCl concentration. Formation of contact -COO
:Na
pairs alters the hydration state of PA
headgroups, thus increasing the surface propensity. As salts are highly concentrated in SSA, these results suggest that deprotonated fatty acids may be found at the air-aqueous interface of aerosol particles due to sea salt's role in surface stabilization.
Safety engineering and cyber security have complementary aims, but typically realise these using different techniques, risk assessment methods and cultural approaches. As a result, the integration of ...safety and cyber security concerns is a complex process, with potential for conflict. We present a generalized taxonomy of common conflict areas between safety and cyber security, oriented around the development and deployment lifecycle, and supplement this with a discussion of concepts and methodologies for resolution based on the shared principle of defence-in-depth.
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▶ A hydrophilic polymer, triglyme, was deposited by plasma polymerization on the surface of commercial RO membrane. ▶ The permeation experiments revealed that the modified membranes ...achieved an excellent maintenance of flux. ▶ The surface process has shown a clear improvement in membrane anti-fouling performance.
Triethylene glycol dimethyl ether (triglyme), a polyethylene glycol (PEG)-like hydrophilic polymer, was deposited by plasma polymerization to reduce RO membrane's organic fouling tendency. This method has the great advantage of achieving modification in one single step. A series of plasma deposition experiments were undertaken. The successful coating of the polymer was confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis. Water contact angle measurements and permeation experiments using a protein solution were conducted to evaluate the change of hydrophilicity and anti-fouling properties. Salt rejection tests were performed to evaluate membrane performance. A reduction in contact angles from 32° to 7° was achieved for the treated membranes, indicating enhanced hydrophilicity. The permeation experiments revealed that the modified membranes achieved an excellent maintenance of flux compared to the untreated membranes. Specifically, after 210
min of filtration, no flux decline was found for the modified membranes, while a 27% reduction of the initial flux was observed for the untreated membrane. Flux recovery after cleaning by water only was up to 99.5% for the modified membranes, while for the untreated it was only 91.0%. The surface hydrophilic modification of RO membranes by plasma polymerization has shown a clear improvement in membrane anti-fouling performance.
Isotherm experiments reveal the effects of ions on DPPA molecules. A speciation-dependent expansion of the DPPA monolayer is observed.
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•Deprotonation of DPPA monolayer expands ...monolayer.•pKas of DPPA monolayer are higher than in solution.•Na+, K+, Mg2+, Ca2+ change protonation state from that of water, reduce pKa of DPPA monolayer.•Binding affinity w/DPPA goes in order of Ca2+>Mg2+>Na+>K+. K+ has weakest affinity for DPPA.•Salt solutions must be carefully cleaned for organic contaminants for surface studies.
The impact of pH and cations on phase behavior, stability, and surface morphology for dipalmitoylphosphatidic acid (DPPA) monolayers was investigated. At pH<10, DPPA monolayers on water are predominantly populated by neutral species and display the highest packing density. Cations are found to expand and stabilize the monolayer in the following order of increasing magnitude at pH 5.6: Na+>K+∼Mg2+>Ca2+. Additionally, cation complexation is tied to the pH and protonation state of DPPA, which are the primary factors controlling the monolayer surface behavior. The binding affinity of cations to the headgroup and thus deprotonation capability of the cation, ranked in the order of Ca2+>Mg2+>Na+>K+, is found to be well explained by the law of matching water affinities. Nucleation of surface 3D lipid structures is observed from Ca2+, Mg2+, and Na+, but not from K+, consistent with the lowest binding affinity of K+. Unraveling cation and pH effects on DPPA monolayers is useful in further understanding the surface properties of complex systems such as organic-coated marine aerosols where organic films are directly influenced by the pH and ionic composition of the underlying aqueous phase.
The risk of wound-related complications, including surgical site infections (SSIs), in patients undergoing surgery for metastatic spine disease (MSD) is high. Consequently, patients requiring wound ...revision surgery face delay in resuming oncological care and incur additional hospitalization. Recent reports suggest that negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) applied on a closed wound at the time of surgery significantly reduces postoperative wound complications in degenerative spine disease and trauma setting. Here, we report a single institution experience with incisional NPWT in patients undergoing surgery for MSD.
We compared rates of wound complications requiring surgical revision in a surgical cohort of patients with or without NPWT from 2015 to 2020. Adult patients with radiographic evidence of MSD with mechanical instability and/or accelerated neurological decline were included in the study. NPWT was applied on a closed wound in the operating room and continued for 5 days or until discharge, whichever occurred first.
A total of 42 patients were included: 28 with NPWT and 14 without. Patient demographics including underlying comorbidities were largely similar. NPWT patients had higher rates of prior radiation to the surgical site (36% vs. 0%, P = 0.017) and longer fusion constructs (6.7 vs. 3.9 levels, P < 0.001). Three patients (21%) from the control group and none from the NPWT group contracted SSI requiring wound washout (P = 0.032).
Our data suggest that SSI and wound dehiscence are significantly reduced with the addition of incisional NPWT in this vulnerable population.
Nowadays domestic smart security devices, such as smart locks, smart doorbells, and security cameras, are becoming increasingly popular with users, due to their ease of use, convenience, and ...declining prices. Unlike conventional non-smart security devices, such as alarms and locks, performance standards for smart security devices, such as the British TS 621, are not easily understandable by end users due to the technical language employed. Users also have very few sources of unbiased information regarding product performance in real world conditions and protection against attacks from cyber attacker-burglars and, as a result, tend to take manufacturer claims at face value. This means that, as this work proves, users may be exposed to threats, such as theft, impersonation (should an attacker steal their credentials), and even physical injury, if the device fails and is used to prevent access to hazardous environments. As such, this paper deploys several attacks using popular wireless attack vectors (i.e., 433 MHz radio, Bluetooth, and RFID) against domestic smart security devices to assess the protection offered against a cyber attacker-burglar. Our results suggest that users are open to considerable cyber physical attacks, irrespective if they use lesser known (i.e., no name) or branded smart security devices, due to the poor security offered by these devices.
This paper examines a push-pull merge system with external demand. Multiple reliable non-identical suppliers feed a buffer that is located immediately upstream a distribution centre (DC) with ...parallel identical reliable machines. The DC performs another operation on the items stored in the preceding buffer and the finished products are stored in another buffer (the finished products buffer) immediately downstream the DC. Customers arrive to the system according to a Poisson process with given intensity λ and remove a finished product from the buffer of finished products. The size of a customer demand is equal to one. Both suppliers and the identical machines at DC have exponential service rates. The considered system is modelled as a continuous-time Markov process with discrete states. An algorithm that generates the transition matrix for any value of the parameters of the system is developed and all possible transition equations are derived and solved analytically. Once the transition matrix is known the performance measures of the model under consideration can be easily evaluated.
Of the major cations in seawater (Na+, Mg2+, Ca2+, K+), Ca2+ is found to be the most enriched in fine sea spray aerosols (SSA). In this work, we investigate the binding of Ca2+ to the carboxylic acid ...headgroup of palmitic acid (PA), a marine-abundant fatty acid, and the impact such binding has on the stability of PA monolayers in both equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems. A range of Ca2+ conditions from 10 μM to 300 mM was utilized to represent the relative concentration of Ca2+ in high and low relative humidity aerosol environments. The CO2- stretching modes of PA detected by surface-sensitive infrared reflection-absorption spectroscopy (IRRAS) reveal ionic binding motifs of the Ca2+ ion to the carboxylate group with varying degrees of hydration. Surface tensiometry was used to determine the thermodynamic equilibrium spreading pressure (ESP) of PA on the various aqueous CaCl2 subphases. Up to concentrations of 1 mM Ca2+, each system reached equilibrium, and Ca2+:PA surface complexation gave rise to a lower energy state revealed by elevated surface pressures relative to water. We show that PA films are not thermodynamically stable at marine aerosol-relevant Ca2+ concentrations (Ca2+ ≥ 10 mM). IRRAS and vibrational sum frequency generation (VSFG) spectroscopy were used to investigate the surface presence of PA on high concentration Ca2+ aqueous subphases. Non-equilibrium relaxation (NER) experiments were also conducted and monitored by Brewster angle microscopy (BAM) to determine the effect of the Ca2+ ions on PA stability. At high surface pressures, the relaxation mechanisms of PA varied among the systems and were dependent on Ca2+ concentration.
The U.S. infrastructure has been issued a grade of D+ from the American Society of Civil Engineers because of the low funding for new construction, maintenance, and repair. It is now reaching the end ...of its useful life and cost estimates have reached as high as $3.6-trillion. The public infrastructure investment is at 2.4% of GDP, which is half of what it was 50-years ago. The U.S. has explored new ways to finance its infrastructure because of funding uncertainty. Investments such as, pensions, foreign investments, and sovereign wealth funds, manage trillions in assets and are forecasted to grow. This paper presents an overview in infrastructure funding and identifies possible approaches in addressing long-term financial needs with foreign capital partnership.
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