Attitude of Iranian physicians and nurses toward a clinical decision support system for pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis

This research project sought to design and implement a computerized clinical decision support system (CDSS) that was able to identify patients who were at risk of pulmonary embolism (PE) and deep vein thrombosis (DVT), as well as produce reminders for prophylactic action for these diseases. The main purpose of the CDSS was to attempt to reduce the morbidity and mortality caused by embolism and thrombosis in patients admitted to hospitals. After implementation of this system in one of the large educational hospitals of Iran, a standard questionnaire was used, and interviews were conducted with physicians and nurses to evaluate the performance of the designed system for reducing the incidence of pulmonary embolism and thrombosis. From physicians and nurses’ point of view, a system which assists the medical staff in making better decisions regarding patient care, and also reminds pulmonary embolism and thrombosis preventive procedures with timely warnings, can influence patient care quality improvement and lead to the improved performance of the medical staff in preventing the incidence of pulmonary embolism and thrombosis.     

Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers: next-generation arrays for acoustic imaging?

Piezoelectric materials have dominated the ultrasonic transducer technology. Recently, capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) have emerged as an alternative technology offering advantages such as wide bandwidth, ease of fabricating large arrays, and potential for integration with electronics. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the viability of CMUTs for ultrasound imaging. We present the first pulse-echo phased array B-scan sector images using a 128-element, one-dimensional (1-D) linear CMUT array. We fabricated 64- and 128-element 1-D CMUT arrays with 100% yield and uniform element response across the arrays. These arrays have been operated in immersion with no failure or degradation in performance over the time. For imaging experiments, we built a resolution test phantom roughly mimicking the attenuation properties of soft tissue. We used a PC-based experimental system, including custom-designed electronic circuits to acquire the complete set of 128 x 128 RF A-scans from all transmit-receive element combinations. We obtained the pulse-echo frequency response by analyzing the echo signals from wire targets. These echo signals presented an 80% fractional bandwidth around 3 MHz, including the effect of attenuation in the propagating medium. We reconstructed the B-scan images with a sector angle of 90 degrees and an image depth of 210 mm through offline processing by using RF beamforming and synthetic phased array approaches. The measured 6-dB lateral and axial resolutions at 135 mm depth were 0.0144 radians and 0.3 mm, respectively. The electronic noise floor of the image was more than 50 dB below the maximum mainlobe magnitude. We also performed preliminary investigations on the effects of crosstalk among array elements on the image quality. In the near field, some artifacts were observable extending out from the array to a depth of 2 cm. A tail also was observed in the point spread function (PSF) in the axial direction, indicating the existence of crosstalk. The relative amplitude of this tail with respect to the mainlobe was less than -20 dB.     

Analysis of transport phenomena within PEM fuel cells – An analytical solution

Transport phenomena within PEM fuel cells are investigated and a comprehensive analytical solution is presented. The methodology couples the transport within the fuel cell supply channels and the substrate which is composed of five different layers. The layers are all treated as macroscopically homogeneous porous media with uniform morphological properties such as porosity and permeability. The locally volume-averaged equations are employed to solve for transport through the porous layers. The problem encompasses complex interfacial transport phenomena involving several porous–porous as well as porous–fluid interfaces. Chemical reactions within the catalyst layers are also included. The method of matched asymptotic expansions is employed to solve for the flow field and species concentration distributions. Throughout the analysis, the choice of the gauge parameters involved in the perturbation solutions for velocity and concentration is found to be inherently tied to the physics of the problem and therefore an important physical metric. The analytical solution is found to be in excellent agreement with prior computational simulations. The analytical results are used to investigate several aspects of transport phenomena and their substantial role in PEM fuel cell operation. The solution presented in this work provides the first comprehensive analytical solution representing fuel cell transport phenomena.     

Operation of quantum-dot semiconductor optical amplifiers under nonuniform current injection

The influence of nonuniform current injection along the active region, on the linear operation of a quantum-dot semiconductor optical amplifier (QD-SOA) is investigated. For this purpose, we have utilized some functions to generate various nonuniform current injection profiles. These profiles have been considered in our numerical calculations, where the rate equation model is employed to construct different characteristics of the QD-SOA. We have found that the gain, as well as the crosstalk, of a QD-SOA is closely associated to the variance of the carrier density along the cavity. Simulation results show that nonuniform current injection can be used as a technique for gain enhancement as well as crosstalk suppression.     

Highly sensitive detection of HER2 extracellular domain in the serum of breast cancer patients by piezoelectric microcantilevers

Rapid and sensitive detection of serum tumor biomarkers are needed to monitor cancer patients for disease progression. Highly sensitive piezoelectric microcantilever sensors (PEMS) offer an attractive tool for biomarker detection; however, their utility in the complex environment encountered in serum has yet to be determined. As a proof of concept, we have functionalized PEMS with antibodies that specifically bind to HER2, a biomarker (antigen) that is commonly overexpressed in the blood of breast cancer patients. The function and sensitivity of these anti-HER2 PEMS biosensors was initially assessed using recombinant HER2 spiked into human serum. Their ability to detect native HER2 present in the serum of breast cancer patients was then determined. We have found that the anti-HER2 PEMS were able to accurately detect both recombinant and naturally occurring HER2 at clinically relevant levels (>2 ng/mL). This indicates that PEMS-based biosensors provide a potentially effective tool for biomarker detection.     

Rapid microfluidic thermal cycler for polymerase chain reaction nucleic acid amplification

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is widely used in biochemical analysis to amplify DNA and RNA in vitro. The PCR process is highly temperature sensitive, and thermal management has an important role in PCR operation in reaching the required temperature set points at each step of the process. The goal of this research is to achieve a thermal technique to rapidly increase the heating/cooling thermal cycling speed while maintaining a uniform temperature distribution throughout the substrate containing the aqueous nucleic acid sample. In this work, an innovative microfluidic PCR thermal cycler, which utilizes a properly arranged configuration filled with a porous medium, is investigated. Various effective parameters that are relevant in optimizing this flexible heat exchanger are investigated such as heat exchanger geometry, flow rate, conductive plate, the porous matrix material, and utilization of thermal grease. An optimized case is established based on the effects of the cited parameters on the temperature distribution and the required power for circulating the fluid in the heat exchanger. The results indicate that the heating/cooling temperature ramp of the proposed PCR heat exchanger is considerably higher (150.82 °C/s) than those in the literature. In addition, the proposed PCR offers a very uniform temperature in the substrate while utilizing a low power.     

Security anomaly detection in software‐defined networking based on a prediction technique

Nowadays, software‐defined networking (SDN) is regarded as the best solution for the centralized handling and monitoring of large networks. However, it should be noted that SDN architecture suffers from the same security issues, which are the case with common networks. As a case in point, one of the shortcomings of SDNs is related to its high vulnerability to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and other similar ones. Indeed, anomaly detection systems have been considered to deal with these attacks. The challenges are related to designing these systems including gathering data, extracting effective features, and selecting the best model for anomaly detection. In this paper, a novel combined approach is proposed; this method uses NetFlow protocol for gathering information and generating dataset, information gain ratio (IGR), in order to select the effective and relevant features and ensemble learning scheme (Stacking) for developing a structure with desirable performance and efficiency for detecting anomaly in SDN environment. The results obtained from the experiments revealed that the proposed method performs better than other methods in terms of enhancing accuracy (AC) and detection rate (DR) and reducing classification error (CE) and false alarm rate (FAR). The AC, DR, CE, and FAR of the proposed model were measured as 99.92%, 99.83%, 0.08%, and 0.03%, respectively. Furthermore, the proposed method prevents the occurrence of excessive overload on the controller and OpenFlow.