Thermodynamic assessment of MCl–YCl3 (M=Na,K, Rb,Cs) systems

Thermodynamic properties and phase diagrams of the MCl–YCl₃ (M=Na, K, Rb, Cs) systems were reassessed by using the CALPHAD method with the latest phase diagram data. A two-sublattice ionic solution model (M⁺)_P(Cl⁻, ${\mathrm{YCL}}_6^{3-}$, YCl₃)_Q reflecting the ionic behavior of the components was adopted to describe the liquid phase in the systems. A new set of optimized model parameters was found, and the calculated phase diagrams and enthalpies of mixing have good agreement with experimental data. The calculated liquidus near to YCl₃ side agrees much better with experimental data compared with previous work. In consideration of high and low temperature modifications as well as stability of intermediate compounds, Gibbs energies of formation of these compounds evaluated in the present work are more reasonable.     

PRIVACY LEAKAGE IN HEALTH SOCIAL NETWORKS

Members of health social networks may be susceptible to privacy leaks by the amount of information they leave behind. The threat to privacy increases when members of these networks reuse their pseudonyms in other social networks. The risk of re‐identifying users from such networks requires quantitative estimates to evaluate its magnitude. The estimates will enable managers and members of health social communities to take corrective measures. We introduce a new re‐identification attack, the social network attack, that takes advantage of the fact that users reuse their pseudonyms. To demonstrate the attack, we establish links between MedHelp and Twitter (two popular social networks) based on matching pseudonyms. We used Bayesian networks to model the re‐identification risk and used stylometric techniques to identify the strength of the links. On the basis of our model 7‐11. 8% of the MedHelp members in the sample population who reused their pseudonyms in Twitter were re‐identifiable compared with 1% who did not. The risk estimates were measured at the 5% risk threshold. Our model was able to re‐identify users with a sensitivity of 41% and specificity of 96%. The potential for re‐identification increases as more data is accumulated from these profiles, which makes the threat of re‐identification more serious.     

配料系统中核子秤的实物标定法

针对使用单位对核子秤实物标定方法的认识与掌握不够，而导致核子秤不能正常使用的问题，文中详细介绍了配料系统中应用核子秤进行实物标定的条件及几种方法。     

陈家冲垃圾填埋场地下水环境健康风险评价

垃圾填埋是目前国内处理城市生活垃圾的主要方式,由垃圾渗滤液引发地下水环境污染已成为当前主要的水环境问题之一。选择武汉市陈家冲垃圾填埋场为研究对象,通过对该区周边地下水布孔取样和监测,分析了垃圾填埋场对其周围地下水环境的影响。结果表明:研究区地下水的主要污染因子为Pb、Cd和Fe,且各污染物的浓度与采样深度、井距呈负相关关系。垃圾填埋场产生污染的影响范围主要在距离800m以内、深度小于5.5m的地下水。为进一步了解该区地下水对人体健康危害的风险程度,对研究区地下水进行了水环境健康风险评价,结果显示:研究区各采样井地下水的总风险值在2.71×10~(-4)/a~7.12×10~(-3)/a,均超过国际辐射防护委员会(ICRP)推荐的最大可接受值5.0×10~(-5)/a,主要风险因子为基因毒物质Cd和Cr(VI)以及躯体毒物质硝态氮;其中,Cd和硝态氮所致的健康风险值超标率100%,而Cr(VI)的健康风险值超标率为50%,对暴露人群存在健康危害风险。此外,对男性和女性健康风险值的研究显示,研究区地下水环境中污染物的男性健康危害风险值普遍高于女性。     

Validity and inter-observer reliability of subjective hand-arm vibration assessments

Exposure to mechanical vibrations at work (e.g., due to handling powered tools) is a potential occupational risk as it may cause upper extremity complaints. However, reliable and valid assessment methods for vibration exposure at work are lacking. Measuring hand-arm vibration objectively is often difficult and expensive, while often used information provided by manufacturers lacks detail. Therefore, a subjective hand-arm vibration assessment method was tested on validity and inter-observer reliability.     

Gquest: Modeling patient questionnaires and administering them through a mobile platform application

Background

The use of surveys is becoming popular in the health care industry for acquiring information useful to the accomplishment of several studies. Besides their exploitation on a large scale for conducting epidemiological studies, surveys are being increasingly carried out on a narrower perspective through the administration of questionnaires aimed at assessing the quality of life perceived by patients or their clinical status during mid- or long-term treatments. This is useful for managing resources or optimizing and individualizing treatments.

Objectives

This paper describes Gquest, a platform for modeling, generating and administering questionnaires through mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets. Gquest was motivated by the need of administering questionnaires during home treatments, albeit its applicability is rather general. The main requirement was to have a very simple, clean and easy to use platform able to support (a) physicians in the design and delivery of questionnaires and (b) outpatients in sending self-recorded outcomes to the clinical staff.

Methods

Gquest has two basic components. The first one is a model devised for representing questionnaires which is extremely flexible. It allows the generation of questions and answers of different types, supports adaptivity in the dialog with the user and enforces simple consistency rules for checking his input. The second component is an application able to run instances of those questionnaires. It downloads questionnaires over the air in terms of XML files from a server and stores them locally into the mobile repository. Questionnaires become then available to the user, who in our case is a patient or one of his relatives. The user can select which one to fill-in, according to his needs and/or the specific treatment protocol. The selected questionnaire may be filled-in all at once or be completed in subsequent steps over time since any input provided is persisted on a local database. Finally, when a questionnaire is closed all the answers are transparently synchronized to a server for further evaluation or statistical purposes.

Results

The platform has been exploited and tested in two medical domains where questionnaires have very different purposes; a quality of life pilot survey involving patients with atrial fibrillation within the EU-funded project MobiGuide, and an investigation of the users’ needs during the requirements elicitation phase of a telemedicine project for the safe discharge of fragile patients.

Conclusions

Gquest proved to be a suitable tool for dealing with a wide variety of question types and has been positively accepted by the patients enrolled in the pilot study.     

A low-cost real time virtual system for postural stability assessment at home

Background and objective

The degeneration of the balance control system in the elderly and in many pathologies requires measuring the equilibrium conditions very often. In clinical practice, equilibrium control is commonly evaluated by using a force platform (stabilometric platform) in a clinical environment.In this paper, we demonstrate how a simple movement analysis system, based on a 3D video camera and a 3D real time model reconstruction of the human body, can be used to collect information usually recorded by a physical stabilometric platform.

Methods

The algorithm used to reconstruct the human body model as a set of spheres is described and discussed. Moreover, experimental measurements and comparisons with data collected by a physical stabilometric platform are also reported. The measurements were collected on a set of 6 healthy subjects to whom a change in equilibrium condition was stimulated by performing an equilibrium task.

Results

The experimental results showed that more than 95% of data collected by the proposed method were not significantly different from those collected by the classic platform, thus confirming the usefulness of the proposed system.

Conclusions

The proposed virtual balance assessment system can be implemented at low cost (about 500$) and, for this reason, can be considered a home use medical device. On the contrary, astabilometric platform has a cost of about 10,000$ and requires periodical calibration. The proposed system does not require periodical calibration, as is necessary for stabilometric force platforms, and it is easy to use. In future, the proposed system with little integration can be used, besides being an emulator of a stabilometric platform, also to recognize and track, in real time, head, legs, arms and trunk, that is to collect information actually obtained by sophisticated optoelectronic systems.     

Event-driven,pattern-based methodology for cost-effective development of standardized personal health devices

Experiences applying standards in personal health devices (PHDs) show an inherent trade-off between interoperability and costs (in terms of processing load and development time). Therefore, reducing hardware and software costs as well as time-to-market is crucial for standards adoption. The ISO/IEEE11073 PHD family of standards (also referred to as X73PHD) provides interoperable communication between PHDs and aggregators. Nevertheless, the responsibility of achieving inexpensive implementations of X73PHD in limited resource microcontrollers falls directly on the developer. Hence, the authors previously presented a methodology based on patterns to implement X73-compliant PHDs into devices with low-voltage low-power constraints. That version was based on multitasking, which required additional features and resources. This paper therefore presents an event-driven evolution of the patterns-based methodology for cost-effective development of standardized PHDs. The results of comparing between the two versions showed that the mean values of decrease in memory consumption and cycles of latency are 11.59% and 45.95%, respectively. In addition, several enhancements in terms of cost-effectiveness and development time can be derived from the new version of the methodology. Therefore, the new approach could help in producing cost-effective X73-compliant PHDs, which in turn could foster the adoption of standards.     

异丙醇气相法合成MIBK/DIBK生产线方案的技术经济评价

介绍了异丙醇气相法联产甲基异丁基酮 /二异丁基酮的工艺流程 ,对企业上生产规模进行了经济比较分析 ,提供了理论数据 ,指明了其发展前景。     

Particle filtering for sensor fault diagnosis and identification in nonlinear plants

We propose a novel method for sensor monitoring and fault-tolerant estimation in systems described by general stochastic nonlinear and/or non-Gaussian state-space models. Faults are defined as abruptly occurring calibration errors, causing the sensor readings to be biased or scaled. Actuators and the process itself are assumed to be fault free. The main novelty of the work is an adaptive particle filter, whose configuration changes in order to diagnose sensor faults and to compensate for their effects. The presence, type and magnitude of sensor faults are determined through hypothesis testing and maximum likelihood estimation, based on the difference between the measurements and the particle filter estimates. The validity of the proposed approach was demonstrated through simulations on a drum-boiler model, although its effectiveness is not conditioned on any particular feature of the considered example.