Human Factors Analysis,Design, and Evaluation of Engage,a Consumer Health IT Application for Geriatric Heart Failure Self-Care

ABSTRACT

Human factors and ergonomics (HFE) and related approaches can be used to enhance research and development of consumer-facing health information technology (IT) systems, including technologies supporting the needs of people with chronic disease. A multiphase HFE study of health IT supporting self-care of chronic heart failure by older adults is described. The study was based on HFE frameworks of “patient work” and incorporated the three broad phases of user-centered design: study or analysis, design, and evaluation. In the study phase, data from observations, interviews, surveys, and other methods were analyzed to identify gaps in and requirements for supporting heart failure self-care. The design phase applied findings from the study phase throughout an iterative process, culminating in the design of the Engage application, a product intended for continuous use over 30 days to stimulate self-care engagement, behavior, and knowledge. During the evaluation phase, a variety of usability issues through expert heuristic evaluation and laboratory-based usability testing were identified. The implications of our findings regarding heart failure self-care in older adults and the methodological challenges of rapid translational field research and development in this domain are discussed.     

Contact line characteristics of liquid–gas interfaces over grooved surfaces

Surface wetting is an important phenomenon in many industrial processes including micro- and nanofluidics. The wetting characteristics depend on the surface tension forces at the three-phase contact line and can be altered by introducing patterned groove structures. This study investigates the effect of the grooves on the transition in the wetting behavior between the Cassie to Wenzel regimes. The experiments demonstrate that the wettability on a patterned surface depends on the spacing factor (S = channel depth/channel width). The spacing factor influences the contact angle, contact angle hysteresis, and the transition characteristics between the Cassie and Wenzel states. It was noted that under certain conditions (S > 1) the droplet behaved as a Cassie droplet, while exhibiting Wenzel wetting the rest of the time on the silicon microchannels tested. This criterion was used to design the groove structures on the sidewall of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell gas channel to remove the water effectively. The water coming from the land region into the gas channel is pulled by the grooves to the top wall where the airflow aided in its removal. Also, the contact angles measured on the surfaces were compared with the classical models that use wetted area, and the contact line model that uses the three-phase contact line length. It was found in our experiments that the contact line model predicts the contact angle on the patterned groove surfaces more accurately than the classical models.     

Ozonation of tannery effluent for removal of cod and color

Ozonation of leather dye effluent for removal of color and COD reduction covering wide range in operating parameters forms the scope of the present work. The influence of parameters such as influent pH, ozone flow rate and initial effluent concentration on ozonation efficiency has been critically examined. It has been observed from the present investigation that a maximum of COD removal efficiency of 92% has been achieved under optimum operating conditions. Further the biodegradability index of the tannery effluent has increased from an initial value of 0.18 to 0.49 during ozonation indicating favorable adaptation of ozonation as a primer to the biochemical technique to enhance the efficiency of biochemical treatment.     

DFMO Improves Survival and Increases Immune Cell Infiltration in Association with MYC Downregulation in the Pancreatic Tumor Microenvironment

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has an extremely poor five-year survival rate of less than 10%. Immune suppression along with chemoresistance are obstacles for PDAC therapeutic treatment. Innate immune cells, such as tumor-associated macrophages, are recruited to the inflammatory environment of PDAC and adversely suppress cytotoxic T lymphocytes. KRAS and MYC are important oncogenes associated with immune suppression and pose a challenge to successful therapies. Here, we targeted KRAS, through inhibition of downstream c-RAF with GW5074, and MYC expression via difluoromethylornithine (DFMO). DFMO alone and with GW5074 reduced in vitro PDAC cell viability. Both DFMO and GW5074 showed efficacy in reducing in vivo PDAC growth in an immunocompromised model. Results in immunocompetent syngeneic tumor-bearing mice showed that DFMO and combination treatment markedly decreased tumor size, but only DFMO increased survival in mice. To further investigate, immunohistochemical staining showed DFMO diminished MYC expression and increased tumor infiltration of macrophages, CD86⁺ cells, CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T lymphocytes. GW5074 was not as effective in modulating the tumor infiltration of total CD3⁺ lymphocytes or tumor progression and maintained MYC expression. Collectively, this study highlights that in contrast to GW5074, the inhibition of MYC through DFMO may be an effective treatment modality to modulate PDAC immunosuppression.     

Implementation and Investigation of an Optimal Full Adder Design for Low Power and Reduced Delay Conditions

Wireless Personal Communications - Full adder is one of the important components in electronics, used for various fundamental processing algorithms such as addition and multiplication. The...     

Biogenic PHA nanoparticle synthesis and characterization from Bacillus subtilis NCDC0671 using orange peel medium

The present research work was initiated to synthesize biogenic polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) nanoparticles from Bacillus subtilis NCDC0671 using orange peel medium. Sequential and systematic optimization of bioprocess variables was performed using “one-factor-at-a-time” approach for maximizing PHA yield. Maximum PHA yield was achieved under optimized conditions of temperature (37°C), pH (7), carbon source (sucrose), and nitrogen source (beef extract) on 72?h of fermentation using B. subtilis NCDC0671. PHA nanoparticles were synthesized using triple emulsion method and conjugated with drug levofloxacin. Dialysis method was used to evaluate the in vitro drug releasing efficacy of PHA–levofloxacin nanoparticles.     

Modelling LSUTE: PKE Schemes for Safeguarding Electronic Healthcare Records Over Cloud Communication Environment

Wireless Personal Communications - Presently offering safety to the information stored in a cloud environment is a crucial and demanding process. For fulfilling various confidentiality safeguarding...     

Analytical Modeling of Surrounding Gate Junctionless MOSFET Using Finite Differentiation Method

Silicon - In this paper, a novel two-dimensional analytical model for threshold voltage on Dual Material Surrounding Gate Junctionless MOSFET is proposed. The analytical study is aimed at...     

Photocatalytic hydrogen production

This review focuses on the efficiency of different nanomaterials used in photocatalytic hydrogen production. Some 200 articles were reviewed for photocatalytic hydrogen production (liquid and gas phase) in a random review of photocatalysts for both water and H₂S splitting. The photocatalytic reactors used for both liquid- and gas-phase hydrogen production are also discussed. Among the photocatalysts used, nanosized photocatalyts have a much greater surface area and thus give a better hydrogen yield than microsized photocatalysts.     

Convolution neural network and deep-belief network (DBN) based automatic detection and diagnosis of Glaucoma

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Diagnosis of Glaucoma eye disease is a challenging task for CADx (computer-aided diagnostics) systems. An automatic CADx framework is developed for diagnosing...