Attentional networks and visuospatial working memory capacity in social anxiety.

PubMed

Moriya, Jun

2018-02-01

Social anxiety is associated with attentional bias and working memory for emotional stimuli; however, the ways in which social anxiety affects cognitive functions involving non-emotional stimuli remains unclear. The present study focused on the role of attentional networks (i.e. alerting, orienting, and executive control networks) and visuospatial working memory capacity (WMC) for non-emotional stimuli in the context of social anxiety. One hundred and seventeen undergraduates completed questionnaires on social anxiety. They then performed an attentional network test and a change detection task to measure visuospatial WMC. Orienting network and visuospatial WMC were positively correlated with social anxiety. A multiple regression analysis showed significant positive associations of alerting, orienting, and visuospatial WMC with social anxiety. Alerting, orienting networks, and high visuospatial WMC for non-emotional stimuli may predict degree of social anxiety.

Method and apparatus for extraction of low-frequency artifacts from brain waves for alertness detection

DOEpatents

Clapp, Ned E.; Hively, Lee M.

1997-01-01

Methods and apparatus automatically detect alertness in humans by monitoring and analyzing brain wave signals. Steps include: acquiring the brain wave (EEG or MEG) data from the subject, digitizing the data, separating artifact data from raw data, and comparing trends in f-data to alertness indicators, providing notification of inadequate alertness.

[Detection of Brucella with an automatic hemoculture system: Bact/Alert].

PubMed

Casas, J; Partal, Y; Llosá, J; Leiva, J; Navarro, J M; de la Rosa, M

1994-12-01

The ability of in vitro and in vivo detection of Brucella spp. with the Bact/Alert system was studied. Three strains of Brucella melitensis and two of Brucella abortus were used. Different dilutions of the five strains were performed in trypticase soy broth (TSB), achieving concentrations of 1 cfu/ml, 5 cfu/ml, 10 cfu/ml and 100 cfu/ml. Ten ml of each dilution and strain were inoculated into 5 aerobic bottles Bact/Alert and 5 biphasic Hemóline bottles. Furthermore, over a 9 month period, 8,216 bottles of Bact/Alert bottles from hospitalized patients and from the emergency department were processed in the authors' laboratory. The mean detection time for Brucella growth was from 2 to 3 days with the Bact/Alert system, and 14 days in the biphasic bottles. Former bottles processed in the authors' laboratory, 11 aerobic bottles belonged to 5 patients in whom brucelosis was confirmed by bloodculture. The Bact/Alert system detected Brucella melitensis in only on bottle at 2.9 days of incubation. In 7 bottles Bact/Alert detected B. melitensis by a blind pass of these bottles at 10 to 20 days of incubation. These results suggest that the Bact/Alert system does not totally solve the diagnosis of brucellosis. Blind passes of the bloodcultures are required.

Method and apparatus for extraction of low-frequency artifacts from brain waves for alertness detection

DOEpatents

Clapp, N.E.; Hively, L.M.

1997-05-06

Methods and apparatus automatically detect alertness in humans by monitoring and analyzing brain wave signals. Steps include: acquiring the brain wave (EEG or MEG) data from the subject, digitizing the data, separating artifact data from raw data, and comparing trends in f-data to alertness indicators, providing notification of inadequate alertness. 4 figs.

Closing the Loop in ICU Decision Support: Physiologic Event Detection, Alerts, and Documentation

PubMed Central

Norris, Patrick R.; Dawant, Benoit M.

2002-01-01

Automated physiologic event detection and alerting is a challenging task in the ICU. Ideally care providers should be alerted only when events are clinically significant and there is opportunity for corrective action. However, the concepts of clinical significance and opportunity are difficult to define in automated systems, and effectiveness of alerting algorithms is difficult to measure. This paper describes recent efforts on the Simon project to capture information from ICU care providers about patient state and therapy in response to alerts, in order to assess the value of event definitions and progressively refine alerting algorithms. Event definitions for intracranial pressure and cerebral perfusion pressure were studied by implementing a reliable system to automatically deliver alerts to clinical users’ alphanumeric pagers, and to capture associated documentation about patient state and therapy when the alerts occurred. During a 6-month test period in the trauma ICU at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, 530 alerts were detected in 2280 hours of data spanning 14 patients. Clinical users electronically documented 81% of these alerts as they occurred. Retrospectively classifying documentation based on therapeutic actions taken, or reasons why actions were not taken, provided useful information about ways to potentially improve event definitions and enhance system utility.

Evaluation of the 3D BacT/ALERT automated culture system for the detection of microbial contamination of platelet concentrates.

PubMed

McDonald, C P; Rogers, A; Cox, M; Smith, R; Roy, A; Robbins, S; Hartley, S; Barbara, J A J; Rothenberg, S; Stutzman, L; Widders, G

2002-10-01

Bacterial transmission remains the major component of morbidity and mortality associated with transfusion-transmitted infections. Platelet concentrates are the most common cause of bacterial transmission. The BacT/ALERT 3D automated blood culture system has the potential to screen platelet concentrates for the presence of bacteria. Evaluation of this system was performed by spiking day 2 apheresis platelet units with individual bacterial isolates at final concentrations of 10 and 100 colony-forming units (cfu) mL-1. Fifteen organisms were used which had been cited in platelet transmission and monitoring studies. BacT/ALERT times to detection were compared with thioglycollate broth cultures, and the performance of five types of BacT/ALERT culture bottles was evaluated. Sampling was performed immediately after the inoculation of the units, and 10 replicates were performed per organism concentration for each of the five types of BacT/ALERT bottles. The mean times for the detection of these 15 organisms by BacT/ALERT, with the exception of Propionibacterium acnes, ranged from 9.1 to 48.1 h (all 10 replicates were positive). In comparison, the time range found using thioglycollate was 12.0-32.3 h (all 10 replicates were positive). P. acnes' BacT/ALERT mean detection times ranged from 89.0 to 177.6 h compared with 75.6-86.4 h for the thioglycollate broth. BacT/ALERT, with the exception of P. acnes, which has dubious clinical significance, gave equivalent or shorter detection times when compared with the thioglycollate broth system. The BacT/ALERT system detected a range of organisms at levels of 10 and 100 cfu mL-1. This study validates the BacT/ALERT microbial detection system for screening platelets. Currently, the system is the only practically viable option available for routinely screening platelet concentrates to prevent bacterial transmission.

Evaluation of a National Call Center and a Local Alerts System for Detection of New Cases of Ebola Virus Disease - Guinea, 2014-2015

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-03-11

Control and Prevention Evaluation of a National Call Center and a Local Alerts System for Detection of New Cases of Ebola Virus Disease — Guinea, 2014...principally through the use of a telephone alert system. Community members and health facilities report deaths and suspected Ebola cases to local alert ...sensitivity of the national call center with the local alerts system, the CDC country team performed probabilistic record linkage of the combined

NAS-Wide Fast-Time Simulation Study for Evaluating Performance of UAS Detect-and-Avoid Alerting and Guidance Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lee, Seung Man; Park, Chunki; Cone, Andrew Clayton; Thipphavong, David P.; Santiago, Confesor

2016-01-01

This presentation contains the analysis results of NAS-wide fast-time simulations with UAS and VFR traffic for a single day for evaluating the performance of Detect-and-Avoid (DAA) alerting and guidance systems. This purpose of this study was to help refine and validate MOPS alerting and guidance requirements. In this study, we generated plots of all performance metrics that are specified by RTCA SC-228 Minimum Operational Performance Standards (MOPS): 1) to evaluate the sensitivity of alerting parameters on the performance metrics of each DAA alert type: Preventive, Corrective, and Warning alerts and 2) to evaluate the effect of sensor uncertainty on DAA alerting and guidance performance.

Comparative Analysis of ACAS-Xu and DAIDALUS Detect-and-Avoid Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Davies, Jason T.; Wu, Minghong G.

2018-01-01

The Detect and Avoid (DAA) capability of a recent version (Run 3) of the Airborne Collision Avoidance System-Xu (ACAS-Xu) is measured against that of the Detect and AvoID Alerting Logic for Unmanned Systems (DAIDALUS), a reference algorithm for the Phase 1 Minimum Operational Performance Standards (MOPS) for DAA. This comparative analysis of the two systems' alerting and horizontal guidance outcomes is conducted through the lens of the Detect and Avoid mission using flight data of scripted encounters from a recent flight test. Results indicate comparable timelines and outcomes between ACAS-Xu's Remain Well Clear alert and guidance and DAIDALUS's corrective alert and guidance, although ACAS-Xu's guidance appears to be more conservative. ACAS-Xu's Collision Avoidance alert and guidance occurs later than DAIDALUS's warning alert and guidance, and overlaps with DAIDALUS's timeline of maneuver to remain Well Clear. Interesting discrepancies between ACAS-Xu's directive guidance and DAIDALUS's "Regain Well Clear" guidance occur in some scenarios.

Closing the loop in ICU decision support: physiologic event detection, alerts, and documentation.

PubMed Central

Norris, P. R.; Dawant, B. M.

2001-01-01

Automated physiologic event detection and alerting is a challenging task in the ICU. Ideally care providers should be alerted only when events are clinically significant and there is opportunity for corrective action. However, the concepts of clinical significance and opportunity are difficult to define in automated systems, and effectiveness of alerting algorithms is difficult to measure. This paper describes recent efforts on the Simon project to capture information from ICU care providers about patient state and therapy in response to alerts, in order to assess the value of event definitions and progressively refine alerting algorithms. Event definitions for intracranial pressure and cerebral perfusion pressure were studied by implementing a reliable system to automatically deliver alerts to clinical users alphanumeric pagers, and to capture associated documentation about patient state and therapy when the alerts occurred. During a 6-month test period in the trauma ICU at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, 530 alerts were detected in 2280 hours of data spanning 14 patients. Clinical users electronically documented 81% of these alerts as they occurred. Retrospectively classifying documentation based on therapeutic actions taken, or reasons why actions were not taken, provided useful information about ways to potentially improve event definitions and enhance system utility. PMID:11825238

The Three-item ALERT-B Questionnaire Provides a Validated Screening Tool to Detect Chronic Gastrointestinal Symptoms after Pelvic Radiotherapy in Cancer Survivors.

PubMed

Taylor, S; Byrne, A; Adams, R; Turner, J; Hanna, L; Staffurth, J; Farnell, D; Sivell, S; Nelson, A; Green, J

2016-10-01

Although pelvic radiotherapy is an effective treatment for various malignancies, around half of patients develop significant gastrointestinal problems. These symptoms often remain undetected, despite the existence of effective treatments. This study developed and refined a simple screening tool to detect common gastrointestinal symptoms in outpatient clinics. These symptoms have a significant effect on quality of life. This tool will increase detection rates and so enable access to specialist gastroenterologists, which will in turn lead to improved symptom control and quality of life after treatment. A literature review and expert consensus meeting identified four items for the ALERT-B (Assessment of Late Effects of RadioTherapy - Bowel) screening tool. ALERT-B was face tested for its usability and acceptability using cognitive interviews with 12 patients experiencing late gastrointestinal symptoms after pelvic radiotherapy. Thematic analysis and probe category were used to analyse interview transcripts. Interview data were presented to a group of experts to agree on the final content and format of the tool. ALERT-B was assessed for reliability and tested for validity against the Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale in a clinical study (EAGLE). Overall, the tool was found to be acceptable in terms of wording, response format and completion time. Participant-reported experiences, including lifestyle modifications and the psychological effect of the symptoms, led to further modifications of the tool. The refined tool includes three questions covering rectal bleeding, incontinence, nocturnal bowel movements and impact on quality of life, including mood, relationships and socialising. ALERT-B was successfully validated against the Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale in the EAGLE study with the tool shown broadly to be internally consistent (Cronbach's α = 0.61 and all item-subscale correlation [Spearman] coefficients are > 0.6). The ALERT-B screening tool can be used in clinical practice to improve post-treatment supportive care by triggering the clinical assessment of patients suitable for referral to a gastroenterologist. Copyright © 2016 The Royal College of Radiologists. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Status of Sundstrand research

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bateman, Don

1991-01-01

Wind shear detection status is presented in the form of view-graphs. The following subject areas are covered: second generation detection (Q-bias, gamma bias, temperature biases, maneuvering flight modulation, and altitude modulation); third generation wind shear detection (use wind shear computation to augment flight path and terrain alerts, modulation of alert thresholds based on wind/terrain data base, incorporate wind shear/terrain alert enhancements from predictive sensor data); and future research and development.

Reliability of Trained Dogs to Alert to Hypoglycemia in Patients With Type 1 Diabetes

PubMed Central

Los, Evan A.; Ramsey, Katrina L.; Guttmann-Bauman, Ines; Ahmann, Andrew J.

2016-01-01

Background: We examined the reliability of trained dogs to alert to hypoglycemia in individuals with type 1 diabetes. Methods: Patients with type 1 diabetes who currently used diabetes alert dogs participated in this exploratory study. Subjects reported satisfaction, perceived dog glucose sensing ability and reasons for obtaining a trained dog. Reliability of dog alerts was assessed using capillary blood glucose (CBG) and blinded continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) as comparators in 8 subjects (age 4-48). Hypoglycemia was defined as CBG or CGM <70 mg/dL. Results: Dog users were very satisfied (8.9/10 on a Likert-type scale) and largely confident (7.9/10) in their dog’s ability to detect hypoglycemia. Detection of hypoglycemia was the primary reason for obtaining a trained dog. During hypoglycemia, spontaneous dog alerts occurred at a rate 3.2 (2.0-5.2, 95% CI) times higher than during euglycemia (70-179 mg/dL). Dogs provided timely alerts in 36% (sensitivity) of all hypoglycemia events (n = 45). Due to inappropriate alerts, the PPV of a dog alert for hypoglycemia was 12%. When there was concurrence of a hypoglycemic event between the dog alert and CGM (n = 30), CGM would have alerted prior to the dog in 73% of events (median 22-minute difference). Conclusions: This is the first study evaluating reliability of trained dogs to alert to hypoglycemia under real-life conditions. Trained dogs often alert a human companion to otherwise unknown hypoglycemia; however due to high false-positive rate, a dog alert alone is unlikely to be helpful in differentiating hypo-/hyper-/euglycemia. CGM often detects hypoglycemia before a trained dog by a clinically significant margin. PMID:27573791

Reliability of Trained Dogs to Alert to Hypoglycemia in Patients With Type 1 Diabetes.

PubMed

Los, Evan A; Ramsey, Katrina L; Guttmann-Bauman, Ines; Ahmann, Andrew J

2017-05-01

We examined the reliability of trained dogs to alert to hypoglycemia in individuals with type 1 diabetes. Patients with type 1 diabetes who currently used diabetes alert dogs participated in this exploratory study. Subjects reported satisfaction, perceived dog glucose sensing ability and reasons for obtaining a trained dog. Reliability of dog alerts was assessed using capillary blood glucose (CBG) and blinded continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) as comparators in 8 subjects (age 4-48). Hypoglycemia was defined as CBG or CGM <70 mg/dL. Dog users were very satisfied (8.9/10 on a Likert-type scale) and largely confident (7.9/10) in their dog's ability to detect hypoglycemia. Detection of hypoglycemia was the primary reason for obtaining a trained dog. During hypoglycemia, spontaneous dog alerts occurred at a rate 3.2 (2.0-5.2, 95% CI) times higher than during euglycemia (70-179 mg/dL). Dogs provided timely alerts in 36% (sensitivity) of all hypoglycemia events (n = 45). Due to inappropriate alerts, the PPV of a dog alert for hypoglycemia was 12%. When there was concurrence of a hypoglycemic event between the dog alert and CGM (n = 30), CGM would have alerted prior to the dog in 73% of events (median 22-minute difference). This is the first study evaluating reliability of trained dogs to alert to hypoglycemia under real-life conditions. Trained dogs often alert a human companion to otherwise unknown hypoglycemia; however due to high false-positive rate, a dog alert alone is unlikely to be helpful in differentiating hypo-/hyper-/euglycemia. CGM often detects hypoglycemia before a trained dog by a clinically significant margin.

Predictive Information: Status or Alert Information?

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Trujillo, Anna C.; Bruneau, Daniel; Press, Hayes N.

2008-01-01

Previous research investigating the efficacy of predictive information for detecting and diagnosing aircraft system failures found that subjects like to have predictive information concerning when a parameter would reach an alert range. This research focused on where the predictive information should be located, whether the information should be more closely associated with the parameter information or with the alert information. Each subject saw 3 forms of predictive information: (1) none, (2) a predictive alert message, and (3) predictive information on the status display. Generally, subjects performed better and preferred to have predictive information available although the difference between status and alert predictive information was minimal. Overall, for detection and recalling what happened, status predictive information is best; however for diagnosis, alert predictive information holds a slight edge.

Changes in decibel scale wavelength properties of EEG with alertness levels while performing sustained attention tasks.

PubMed

Arjunan, Sridhar P; Kumar, Dinesh K; Jung, Tzyy-Ping

2009-01-01

Loss of alertness can have dire consequences for people controlling motorized equipment or for people in professions such as defense. Electroencephalogram (EEG) is known to be related to alertness of the person, but due to high level of noise and low signal strength, the use of EEG for such applications has been considered to be unreliable. This study reports the fractal analysis of EEG and identifies the use of maximum fractal length (MFL) as a feature that is inversely correlated with the alertness of the subject. The results show that MFL (of only single channel of EEG) indicates the loss of alertness of the individual with mean (inverse) correlation coefficient = 0.82.

Human Factors Evaluation of Conflict Detection Tool for Terminal Area

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Verma, Savita Arora; Tang, Huabin; Ballinger, Deborah; Chinn, Fay Cherie; Kozon, Thomas E.

2013-01-01

A conflict detection and resolution tool, Terminal-area Tactical Separation-Assured Flight Environment (T-TSAFE), is being developed to improve the timeliness and accuracy of alerts and reduce the false alert rate observed with the currently deployed technology. The legacy system in use today, Conflict Alert, relies primarily on a dead reckoning algorithm, whereas T-TSAFE uses intent information to augment dead reckoning. In previous experiments, T-TSAFE was found to reduce the rate of false alerts and increase time between the alert to the controller and a loss of separation over the legacy system. In the present study, T-TSAFE was tested under two meteorological conditions, 1) all aircraft operated under instrument flight regimen, and 2) some aircraft operated under mixed operating conditions. The tool was used to visually alert controllers to predicted Losses of separation throughout the terminal airspace, and show compression errors, on final approach. The performance of T-TSAFE on final approach was compared with Automated Terminal Proximity Alert (ATPA), a tool recently deployed by the FAA. Results show that controllers did not report differences in workload or situational awareness between the T-TSAFE and ATPA cones but did prefer T-TSAFE features over ATPA functionality. T-TSAFE will provide one tool that shows alerts in the data blocks and compression errors via cones on the final approach, implementing all tactical conflict detection and alerting via one tool in TRACON airspace.

The Performance of the Four Anaerobic Blood Culture Bottles BacT/ALERT-FN, -FN Plus, BACTEC-Plus and -Lytic in Detection of Anaerobic Bacteria and Identification by Direct MALDI-TOF MS

PubMed Central

Almuhayawi, Mohammed; Altun, Osman; Abdulmajeed, Adam Dilshad; Ullberg, Måns; Özenci, Volkan

2015-01-01

Detection and identification of anaerobic bacteria in blood cultures (BC) is a well-recognized challenge in clinical microbiology. We studied 100 clinical anaerobic BC isolates to evaluate the performance of BacT/ALERT-FN, -FN Plus (BioMérieux), BACTEC-Plus and -Lytic (Becton Dickinson BioSciences) BC bottles in detection and time to detection (TTD) of anaerobic bacteria. BACTEC Lytic had higher detection rate (94/100, 94%) than BacT/ALERT FN Plus (80/100, 80%) (p<0.01) in the studied material. There was no significant difference in detection of anaerobic bacteria among the remaining bottle types. The 67 anaerobic bacteria that signalled positive in all four bottle types were analyzed to compare the time to detection (TTD) and isolates were directly identified by MALDI-TOF MS. There was a significant difference in TTD among the four bottle types (p<0.0001). The shortest median TTD was 18 h in BACTEC Lytic followed by BacT/ALERT FN (23.5 h), BACTEC Plus (27 h) and finally BacT/ALERT FN Plus (38 h) bottles. In contrast, MALDI-TOF MS performed similarly in all bottle types with accurate identification in 51/67 (76%) BacT/ALERT FN, 51/67 (76%) BacT/ALERT FN Plus, 53/67 (79%) BACTEC Plus and 50/67 (75%) BACTEC Lytic bottles. In conclusion, BACTEC Lytic bottles have significantly better detection rates and shorter TTD compared to the three other bottle types. The anaerobic BC bottles are equally suitable for direct MALDI-TOF MS for rapid and reliable identification of common anaerobic bacteria. Further clinical studies are warranted to investigate the performance of anaerobic BC bottles in detection of anaerobic bacteria and identification by direct MALDI-TOF MS. PMID:26554930

The Performance of the Four Anaerobic Blood Culture Bottles BacT/ALERT-FN, -FN Plus, BACTEC-Plus and -Lytic in Detection of Anaerobic Bacteria and Identification by Direct MALDI-TOF MS.

PubMed

Almuhayawi, Mohammed; Altun, Osman; Abdulmajeed, Adam Dilshad; Ullberg, Måns; Özenci, Volkan

2015-01-01

Detection and identification of anaerobic bacteria in blood cultures (BC) is a well-recognized challenge in clinical microbiology. We studied 100 clinical anaerobic BC isolates to evaluate the performance of BacT/ALERT-FN, -FN Plus (BioMérieux), BACTEC-Plus and -Lytic (Becton Dickinson BioSciences) BC bottles in detection and time to detection (TTD) of anaerobic bacteria. BACTEC Lytic had higher detection rate (94/100, 94%) than BacT/ALERT FN Plus (80/100, 80%) (p<0.01) in the studied material. There was no significant difference in detection of anaerobic bacteria among the remaining bottle types. The 67 anaerobic bacteria that signalled positive in all four bottle types were analyzed to compare the time to detection (TTD) and isolates were directly identified by MALDI-TOF MS. There was a significant difference in TTD among the four bottle types (p<0.0001). The shortest median TTD was 18 h in BACTEC Lytic followed by BacT/ALERT FN (23.5 h), BACTEC Plus (27 h) and finally BacT/ALERT FN Plus (38 h) bottles. In contrast, MALDI-TOF MS performed similarly in all bottle types with accurate identification in 51/67 (76%) BacT/ALERT FN, 51/67 (76%) BacT/ALERT FN Plus, 53/67 (79%) BACTEC Plus and 50/67 (75%) BACTEC Lytic bottles. In conclusion, BACTEC Lytic bottles have significantly better detection rates and shorter TTD compared to the three other bottle types. The anaerobic BC bottles are equally suitable for direct MALDI-TOF MS for rapid and reliable identification of common anaerobic bacteria. Further clinical studies are warranted to investigate the performance of anaerobic BC bottles in detection of anaerobic bacteria and identification by direct MALDI-TOF MS.

Disrupted Structural and Functional Networks and Their Correlation with Alertness in Right Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: A Graph Theory Study.

PubMed

Jiang, Wenyu; Li, Jianping; Chen, Xuemei; Ye, Wei; Zheng, Jinou

2017-01-01

Previous studies have shown that temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) involves abnormal structural or functional connectivity in specific brain areas. However, limited comprehensive studies have been conducted on TLE associated changes in the topological organization of structural and functional networks. Additionally, epilepsy is associated with impairment in alertness, a fundamental component of attention. In this study, structural networks were constructed using diffusion tensor imaging tractography, and functional networks were obtained from resting-state functional MRI temporal series correlations in 20 right temporal lobe epilepsy (rTLE) patients and 19 healthy controls. Global network properties were computed by graph theoretical analysis, and correlations were assessed between global network properties and alertness. The results from these analyses showed that rTLE patients exhibit abnormal small-world attributes in structural and functional networks. Structural networks shifted toward more regular attributes, but functional networks trended toward more random attributes. After controlling for the influence of the disease duration, negative correlations were found between alertness, small-worldness, and the cluster coefficient. However, alertness did not correlate with either the characteristic path length or global efficiency in rTLE patients. Our findings show that disruptions of the topological construction of brain structural and functional networks as well as small-world property bias are associated with deficits in alertness in rTLE patients. These data suggest that reorganization of brain networks develops as a mechanism to compensate for altered structural and functional brain function during disease progression.

Development of an Alert System to Detect Drug Interactions with Herbal Supplements using Medical Record Data.

PubMed

Archer, Melissa; Proulx, Joshua; Shane-McWhorter, Laura; Bray, Bruce E; Zeng-Treitler, Qing

2014-01-01

While potential medication-to-medication interaction alerting engines exist in many clinical applications, few systems exist to automatically alert on potential medication to herbal supplement interactions. We have developed a preliminary knowledge base and rules alerting engine that detects 259 potential interactions between 9 supplements, 62 cardiac medications, and 19 drug classes. The rules engine takes into consideration 12 patient risk factors and 30 interaction warning signs to help determine which of three different alert levels to categorize each potential interaction. A formative evaluation was conducted with two clinicians to set initial thresholds for each alert level. Additional work is planned add more supplement interactions, risk factors, and warning signs as well as to continue to set and adjust the inputs and thresholds for each potential interaction.

Correlated colour temperature of morning light influences alertness and body temperature.

PubMed

Te Kulve, Marije; Schlangen, Luc; Schellen, Lisje; Souman, Jan L; van Marken Lichtenbelt, Wouter

2018-03-01

Though several studies have reported human alertness to be affected by the intensity and spectral composition of ambient light, the mechanism behind this effect is still largely unclear, especially for daytime exposure. Alerting effects of nocturnal light exposure are correlated with melatonin suppression, but melatonin levels are generally low during the day. The aim of this study was to explore the alerting effect of light in the morning for different correlated colour temperature (CCT) values, as well as its interaction with ambient temperature. Body temperature and perceived comfort were included in the study as possible mediating factors. In a randomized crossover design, 16 healthy females participated in two sessions, once under 2700K and once under 6500K light (both 55lx). Each session consisted of a baseline, a cool, a neutral and a warm thermal environment. Alertness as measured in a reaction time task was lower for the 6500K exposure, while subjective sleepiness was not affected by CCT. Also, core body temperature was higher under 6500K. Skin temperature parameters and perceived comfort were positively correlated with subjective sleepiness. Reaction time correlated with heat loss, but this association did not explain why the reaction time was improved for 2700K. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Tracking wakefulness as it fades: Micro-measures of alertness.

PubMed

Jagannathan, Sridhar R; Ezquerro-Nassar, Alejandro; Jachs, Barbara; Pustovaya, Olga V; Bareham, Corinne A; Bekinschtein, Tristan A

2018-08-01

A major problem in psychology and physiology experiments is drowsiness: around a third of participants show decreased wakefulness despite being instructed to stay alert. In some non-visual experiments participants keep their eyes closed throughout the task, thus promoting the occurrence of such periods of varying alertness. These wakefulness changes contribute to systematic noise in data and measures of interest. To account for this omnipresent problem in data acquisition we defined criteria and code to allow researchers to detect and control for varying alertness in electroencephalography (EEG) experiments under eyes-closed settings. We first revise a visual-scoring method developed for detection and characterization of the sleep-onset process, and adapt the same for detection of alertness levels. Furthermore, we show the major issues preventing the practical use of this method, and overcome these issues by developing an automated method (micro-measures algorithm) based on frequency and sleep graphoelements, which are capable of detecting micro variations in alertness. The validity of the micro-measures algorithm was verified by training and testing using a dataset where participants are known to fall asleep. In addition, we tested generalisability by independent validation on another dataset. The methods developed constitute a unique tool to assess micro variations in levels of alertness and control trial-by-trial retrospectively or prospectively in every experiment performed with EEG in cognitive neuroscience under eyes-closed settings. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Engineering Software for Interoperability through Use of Enterprise Architecture Techniques

DTIC Science & Technology

2003-03-01

Response Home/ Business Security . To detect flood conditions (i.e. excess water levels) within the monitored area and alert authorities, as necessary...Response; Fire Detection & Response; and Flood Detection & Response. Functional Area Description Intruder Detection & Response Home/ Business ... Security . To monitor and detect unauthorized entry into the secured area and sound alarms/alert authorities, as necessary. Fire Detection

The Explosive Universe with Gaia

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wyrzykowski, Łukasz; Hodgkin, Simon T.; Blagorodnova, Nadejda; Belokurov, Vasily

2014-01-01

The Gaia mission will observe the entire sky for 5 years providing ultra-precise astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic measurements for a billion stars in the Galaxy. Hence, naturally, Gaia becomes an all-sky multi-epoch photometric survey, which will monitor and detect variability with millimag precision as well as new transient sources such as supernovae, novae, microlensing events, tidal disruption events, asteroids, among others. Gaia data-flow allows for quick detections of anomalies within 24-48h after the observation. Such near-real-time survey will be able to detect about 6000 supernovae brighter than 19 mag up to redshifts of Z 0.15. The on-board low-resolution (R 100) spectrograph will allow for early and robust classification of transients and minimise the false-alert rate, even providing the estimates on redshift for supernovae. Gaia will also offer a unique possibility for detecting astrometric shifts in microlensing events, which, combined with Gaia's and ground-based photometry, will provide unique mass measurements of lenses, constrains on the dark matter content in the Milky Way and possible detections of free floating black holes. Alerts from Gaia will be publicly available soon after the detection is verified and tested. First alerts are expected early in 2014 and those will be used for ground-based verification. All facilities are invited to join the verification and the follow-up effort. Alerts will be published on a web page, via Skyalert.org and via emailing list. Each alert will contain coordinates, Gaia light curve and low-resolution spectra, classification and cross-matching results. More information on the Gaia Science Alerts can be found here: http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/ioa/wikis/gsawgwiki/ The full version of the poster is available here: http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/ioa/wikis/gsawgwiki/images/1/13/GaiaAlertsPosterIAUS298.pdf

Handler beliefs affect scent detection dog outcomes.

PubMed

Lit, Lisa; Schweitzer, Julie B; Oberbauer, Anita M

2011-05-01

Our aim was to evaluate how human beliefs affect working dog outcomes in an applied environment. We asked whether beliefs of scent detection dog handlers affect team performance and evaluated relative importance of human versus dog influences on handlers' beliefs. Eighteen drug and/or explosive detection dog/handler teams each completed two sets of four brief search scenarios (conditions). Handlers were falsely told that two conditions contained a paper marking scent location (human influence). Two conditions contained decoy scents (food/toy) to encourage dog interest in a false location (dog influence). Conditions were (1) control; (2) paper marker; (3) decoy scent; and (4) paper marker at decoy scent. No conditions contained drug or explosive scent; any alerting response was incorrect. A repeated measures analysis of variance was used with search condition as the independent variable and number of alerts as the dependent variable. Additional nonparametric tests compared human and dog influence. There were 225 incorrect responses, with no differences in mean responses across conditions. Response patterns differed by condition. There were more correct (no alert responses) searches in conditions without markers. Within marked conditions, handlers reported that dogs alerted more at marked locations than other locations. Handlers' beliefs that scent was present potentiated handler identification of detection dog alerts. Human more than dog influences affected alert locations. This confirms that handler beliefs affect outcomes of scent detection dog deployments.

Influence of infectious disease seasonality on the performance of the outbreak detection algorithm in the China Infectious Disease Automated-alert and Response System

PubMed Central

Wang, Ruiping; Jiang, Yonggen; Guo, Xiaoqin; Wu, Yiling; Zhao, Genming

2017-01-01

Objective The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention developed the China Infectious Disease Automated-alert and Response System (CIDARS) in 2008. The CIDARS can detect outbreak signals in a timely manner but generates many false-positive signals, especially for diseases with seasonality. We assessed the influence of seasonality on infectious disease outbreak detection performance. Methods Chickenpox surveillance data in Songjiang District, Shanghai were used. The optimized early alert thresholds for chickenpox were selected according to three algorithm evaluation indexes: sensitivity (Se), false alarm rate (FAR), and time to detection (TTD). Performance of selected proper thresholds was assessed by data external to the study period. Results The optimized early alert threshold for chickenpox during the epidemic season was the percentile P65, which demonstrated an Se of 93.33%, FAR of 0%, and TTD of 0 days. The optimized early alert threshold in the nonepidemic season was P50, demonstrating an Se of 100%, FAR of 18.94%, and TTD was 2.5 days. The performance evaluation demonstrated that the use of an optimized threshold adjusted for seasonality could reduce the FAR and shorten the TTD. Conclusions Selection of optimized early alert thresholds based on local infectious disease seasonality could improve the performance of the CIDARS. PMID:28728470

Terminal - Tactical Separation Assured Flight Environment (T-TSafe)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Verma, Savita Arora; Tang, Huabin; Ballinger, Debbi

2011-01-01

The Tactical Separation Assured Flight Environment (TSAFE) has been previously tested as a conflict detection and resolution tool in the en-route phase of flight. Fast time simulations of a terminal version of this tool called Terminal TSAFE (T-TSAFE) have shown promise over the current conflict detection tools. It has shown to have fewer false alerts (as low as 2 per hour) and better prediction to conflict time than Conflict Alert. The tool will be tested in the simulated terminal area of Los Angeles International Airport, in a Human-in-the-loop experiment to identify controller procedures and information requirements. The simulation will include comparisons of T-TSAFE with NASA's version of Conflict Alert. Also, some other variables such as altitude entry by the controller, which improve T-TSAFE's predictions for conflict detection, will be tested. T-TSAFE integrates features of current conflict detection tools such as Automated Terminal Proximity Alert used to alleviate compression errors in the final approach phase. Based on fast-time simulation analysis, the anticipated benefits of T-TSAFE over Conflict Alert include reduced false/missed alerts and increased time to predicted loss of separation. Other metrics that will be used to evaluate the tool's impact on the controller include controller intervention, workload, and situation awareness.

Influence of infectious disease seasonality on the performance of the outbreak detection algorithm in the China Infectious Disease Automated-alert and Response System.

PubMed

Wang, Ruiping; Jiang, Yonggen; Guo, Xiaoqin; Wu, Yiling; Zhao, Genming

2018-01-01

Objective The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention developed the China Infectious Disease Automated-alert and Response System (CIDARS) in 2008. The CIDARS can detect outbreak signals in a timely manner but generates many false-positive signals, especially for diseases with seasonality. We assessed the influence of seasonality on infectious disease outbreak detection performance. Methods Chickenpox surveillance data in Songjiang District, Shanghai were used. The optimized early alert thresholds for chickenpox were selected according to three algorithm evaluation indexes: sensitivity (Se), false alarm rate (FAR), and time to detection (TTD). Performance of selected proper thresholds was assessed by data external to the study period. Results The optimized early alert threshold for chickenpox during the epidemic season was the percentile P65, which demonstrated an Se of 93.33%, FAR of 0%, and TTD of 0 days. The optimized early alert threshold in the nonepidemic season was P50, demonstrating an Se of 100%, FAR of 18.94%, and TTD was 2.5 days. The performance evaluation demonstrated that the use of an optimized threshold adjusted for seasonality could reduce the FAR and shorten the TTD. Conclusions Selection of optimized early alert thresholds based on local infectious disease seasonality could improve the performance of the CIDARS.

RED Alert – Early warning or detection of global re-emerging infectious disease (RED)

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Deshpande, Alina

This is the PDF of a presentation for a webinar given by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) on the early warning or detection of global re-emerging infectious disease (RED). First, there is an overview of LANL biosurveillance tools. Then, information is given about RED Alert. Next, a demonstration is given of a component prototype. RED Alert is an analysis tool that can provide early warning or detection of the re-emergence of an infectious disease at the global level, but through a local lens.

Alarms based on real-time sensor glucose values alert patients to hypo- and hyperglycemia: the guardian continuous monitoring system.

PubMed

Bode, Bruce; Gross, Kenneth; Rikalo, Nancy; Schwartz, Sherwyn; Wahl, Timothy; Page, Casey; Gross, Todd; Mastrototaro, John

2004-04-01

The purposes of this study were to demonstrate the accuracy and effectiveness of the Guardian Continuous Monitoring System (Medtronic MiniMed, Northridge, California) and to demonstrate that the application of real-time alarms to continuous monitoring alerts users to hypo and hyperglycemia and reduces excursions in people with diabetes. A total of 71 subjects with type 1 diabetes, mean hemoglobin A1c of 7.6 +/- 1.1%, age 44.0 +/- 11.4 years, and duration of diabetes 23.6 +/- 10.6 years were enrolled in this two-period, randomized, multicenter study. Subjects were randomized into either an Alert group or a Control group. The accuracy of the Guardian was evaluated by treating the study data as a single-sample correlational design. Effectiveness of the Guardian alerts was evaluated by comparing the Alert group with the Control group. The mean (median) absolute relative error between home blood glucose meter readings and sensor values was 21.3% (17.3%), and the Guardian, on average, read 12.8 mg/dL below the concurrent home blood glucose meter readings. The hypoglycemia alert was able to distinguished glucose values < or =70 mg/dL with 67% sensitivity, 90% specificity, and 47% false alerts. The hyperglycemia alert showed a similar ability to detect sensor values > or =250 mg/dL with 63% sensitivity, 97% specificity, and 19% false alerts. The Alert group demonstrated a median decrease in the duration of hypoglycemic excursions (-27.8 min) that was significantly greater than the median decrease in the duration of hypoglycemic excursions in the Control group (-4.5 min) (P = 0.03). A marginally significant increase in the frequency of hyperglycemic excursions (P = 0.07) between Period 1 and Period 2 was accompanied by a decrease of 9.6 min in the duration of hyperglycemic excursions in the Alert group. Glucose measurements differ between blood samples taken from the finger and interstitial fluid, especially when levels are changing rapidly; however, these results demonstrate that the Guardian is reasonably accurate while performing continuous glucose monitoring. The subjects' responses to hypoglycemia alerts resulted in a significant reduction in the duration of hypoglycemic excursions; however, overtreating hypoglycemia may have resulted in a marginally significant increase in the frequency of hyperglycemic excursions.

Using statistical anomaly detection models to find clinical decision support malfunctions.

PubMed

Ray, Soumi; McEvoy, Dustin S; Aaron, Skye; Hickman, Thu-Trang; Wright, Adam

2018-05-11

Malfunctions in Clinical Decision Support (CDS) systems occur due to a multitude of reasons, and often go unnoticed, leading to potentially poor outcomes. Our goal was to identify malfunctions within CDS systems. We evaluated 6 anomaly detection models: (1) Poisson Changepoint Model, (2) Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) Model, (3) Hierarchical Divisive Changepoint (HDC) Model, (4) Bayesian Changepoint Model, (5) Seasonal Hybrid Extreme Studentized Deviate (SHESD) Model, and (6) E-Divisive with Median (EDM) Model and characterized their ability to find known anomalies. We analyzed 4 CDS alerts with known malfunctions from the Longitudinal Medical Record (LMR) and Epic® (Epic Systems Corporation, Madison, WI, USA) at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA. The 4 rules recommend lead testing in children, aspirin therapy in patients with coronary artery disease, pneumococcal vaccination in immunocompromised adults and thyroid testing in patients taking amiodarone. Poisson changepoint, ARIMA, HDC, Bayesian changepoint and the SHESD model were able to detect anomalies in an alert for lead screening in children and in an alert for pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in immunocompromised adults. EDM was able to detect anomalies in an alert for monitoring thyroid function in patients on amiodarone. Malfunctions/anomalies occur frequently in CDS alert systems. It is important to be able to detect such anomalies promptly. Anomaly detection models are useful tools to aid such detections.

Outlier Detection for Patient Monitoring and Alerting

PubMed Central

Hauskrecht, Milos; Batal, Iyad; Valko, Michal; Visweswaran, Shyam; Cooper, Gregory F.; Clermont, Gilles

2012-01-01

We develop and evaluate a data-driven approach for detecting unusual (anomalous) patient-management decisions using past patient cases stored in electronic health records (EHRs). Our hypothesis is that a patient-management decision that is unusual with respect to past patient care may be due to an error and that it is worthwhile to generate an alert if such a decision is encountered. We evaluate this hypothesis using data obtained from EHRs of 4,486 post-cardiac surgical patients and a subset of 222 alerts generated from the data. We base the evaluation on the opinions of a panel of experts. The results of the study support our hypothesis that the outlier-based alerting can lead to promising true alert rates. We observed true alert rates that ranged from 25% to 66% for a variety of patient-management actions, with 66% corresponding to the strongest outliers. PMID:22944172

Tactical Conflict Detection in Terminal Airspace

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Tang, Huabin; Robinson, John E.; Denery, Dallas G.

2010-01-01

Air traffic systems have long relied on automated short-term conflict prediction algorithms to warn controllers of impending conflicts (losses of separation). The complexity of terminal airspace has proven difficult for such systems as it often leads to excessive false alerts. Thus, the legacy system, called Conflict Alert, which provides short-term alerts in both en-route and terminal airspace currently, is often inhibited or degraded in areas where frequent false alerts occur, even though the alerts are provided only when an aircraft is in dangerous proximity of other aircraft. This research investigates how a minimal level of flight intent information may be used to improve short-term conflict detection in terminal airspace such that it can be used by the controller to maintain legal aircraft separation. The flight intent information includes a site-specific nominal arrival route and inferred altitude clearances in addition to the flight plan that includes the RNAV (Area Navigation) departure route. A new tactical conflict detection algorithm is proposed, which uses a single analytic trajectory, determined by the flight intent and the current state information of the aircraft, and includes a complex set of current, dynamic separation standards for terminal airspace to define losses of separation. The new algorithm is compared with an algorithm that imitates a known en-route algorithm and another that imitates Conflict Alert by analysis of false-alert rate and alert lead time with recent real-world data of arrival and departure operations and a large set of operational error cases from Dallas/Fort Worth TRACON (Terminal Radar Approach Control). The new algorithm yielded a false-alert rate of two per hour and an average alert lead time of 38 seconds.

Working Memory and Parent-Rated Components of Attention in Middle Childhood: A Behavioral Genetic Study

PubMed Central

Deater-Deckard, Kirby; Cutting, Laurie; Thompson, Lee A.; Petrill, Stephen A.

2012-01-01

The purpose of the current study was to investigate potential genetic and environmental correlations between working memory and three behavioral aspects of the attention network (i.e., executive, alerting, and orienting) using a twin design. Data were from 90 monozygotic (39% male) and 112 same-sex dizygotic (41% male) twins. Individual differences in working memory performance (digit span) and parent-rated measures of executive, alerting, and orienting attention included modest to moderate genetic variance, modest shared environmental variance, and modest to moderate nonshared environmental variance. As hypothesized, working memory performance was correlated with executive and alerting attention, but not orienting attention. The correlation between working memory, executive attention, and alerting attention was completely accounted for by overlapping genetic covariance, suggesting a common genetic mechanism or mechanisms underlying the links between working memory and certain parent-rated indicators of attentive behavior. PMID:21948215

Experimental evaluation of candidate graphical microburst alert displays

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wanke, Craig; Hansman, R. John

1992-01-01

The topics addressed are: (1) experimental evaluation of candidate graphical microburst displays; (2) microburst detection and alerting; (3) previous part-task simulator experiment-comparison of presentation modes; (4) presentation mode comparison-results; (5) advantages of graphical mode of presentation; (6) graphical microburst alert experiment-objectives; and graphical microburst alert experiment-overview; and (7) candidate display design.

Twitter Seismology: Earthquake Monitoring and Response in a Social World

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bowden, D. C.; Earle, P. S.; Guy, M.; Smoczyk, G.

2011-12-01

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is investigating how the social networking site Twitter, a popular service for sending and receiving short, public, text messages, can augment USGS earthquake response products and the delivery of hazard information. The potential uses of Twitter for earthquake response include broadcasting earthquake alerts, rapidly detecting widely felt events, qualitatively assessing earthquake damage effects, communicating with the public, and participating in post-event collaboration. Several seismic networks and agencies are currently distributing Twitter earthquake alerts including the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (@LastQuake), Natural Resources Canada (@CANADAquakes), and the Indonesian meteorological agency (@infogempabmg); the USGS will soon distribute alerts via the @USGSted and @USGSbigquakes Twitter accounts. Beyond broadcasting alerts, the USGS is investigating how to use tweets that originate near the epicenter to detect and characterize shaking events. This is possible because people begin tweeting immediately after feeling an earthquake, and their short narratives and exclamations are available for analysis within 10's of seconds of the origin time. Using five months of tweets that contain the word "earthquake" and its equivalent in other languages, we generate a tweet-frequency time series. The time series clearly shows large peaks correlated with the origin times of widely felt events. To identify possible earthquakes, we use a simple Short-Term-Average / Long-Term-Average algorithm similar to that commonly used to detect seismic phases. As with most auto-detection algorithms, the parameters can be tuned to catch more or less events at the cost of more or less false triggers. When tuned to a moderate sensitivity, the detector found 48 globally-distributed, confirmed seismic events with only 2 false triggers. A space-shuttle landing and "The Great California ShakeOut" caused the false triggers. This number of detections is very small compared to the 5,175 earthquakes in the USGS PDE global earthquake catalog for the same five month time period, and no accurate location or magnitude can be assigned based on Tweet data alone. However, Twitter earthquake detections are not without merit. The detections are generally caused by widely felt events that are of more immediate interest than those with no human impact. The detections are also fast; about 80% occurred within 2 minutes of the origin time. This is considerably faster than seismographic detections in poorly instrumented regions of the world. The tweets triggering the detections also provided (very) short first-impression narratives from people who experienced the shaking. The USGS will continue investigating how to use Twitter and other forms of social media to augment is current suite of seismographically derived products.

Applications for detection of acute kidney injury using electronic medical records and clinical information systems: workgroup statements from the 15(th) ADQI Consensus Conference.

PubMed

James, Matthew T; Hobson, Charles E; Darmon, Michael; Mohan, Sumit; Hudson, Darren; Goldstein, Stuart L; Ronco, Claudio; Kellum, John A; Bagshaw, Sean M

2016-01-01

Electronic medical records and clinical information systems are increasingly used in hospitals and can be leveraged to improve recognition and care for acute kidney injury. This Acute Dialysis Quality Initiative (ADQI) workgroup was convened to develop consensus around principles for the design of automated AKI detection systems to produce real-time AKI alerts using electronic systems. AKI alerts were recognized by the workgroup as an opportunity to prompt earlier clinical evaluation, further testing and ultimately intervention, rather than as a diagnostic label. Workgroup members agreed with designing AKI alert systems to align with the existing KDIGO classification system, but recommended future work to further refine the appropriateness of AKI alerts and to link these alerts to actionable recommendations for AKI care. The consensus statements developed in this review can be used as a roadmap for development of future electronic applications for automated detection and reporting of AKI.

Potential drug related problems detected by electronic expert support system in patients with multi-dose drug dispensing.

PubMed

Tora, Hammar; Bo, Hovstadius; Bodil, Lidström; Göran, Petersson; Birgit, Eiermann

2014-10-01

Background Drug related problems (DRPs) are frequent and cause suffering for patients and substantial costs for society. Multi-dose drug dispensing (MDDD) is a service by which patients receive their medication packed in bags with one unit for each dose occasion. The clinical decision support system (CDSS) electronic expert support (EES) analyses patients' prescriptions in the Swedish national e-prescription repository and provides alerts if potential DRPs are detected, i.e. drug-drug interactions, duplicate therapy, drug-disease contraindications, high dose, gender warnings, geriatric, and paediatric alerts. Objective To analyse potential DRPs in patients with MDDD, detected by means of EES. Setting A register study of all electronically stored prescriptions for patients with MDDD in Sweden (n = 180,059) March 5-June 5, 2013. Method Drug use and potential DRPs detected in the study population during the 3 month study period by EES were analysed. The potential DRPs were analysed in relation to patients' age, gender, number of drugs, and type of medication. Main outcome measure Prevalence of potential DRPs measured as EES alerts. Results The study population was on average 75.8 years of age (± 17.5, range 1-110) and had 10.0 different medications (± 4.7, range 1-53). EES alerted for potential DRPs in 76 % of the population with a mean of 2.2 alerts per patient (± 2.4, range 0-27). The older patients received a lower number of alerts compared to younger patients despite having a higher number of drugs. The most frequent alert categories were drug-drug interactions (37 % of all alerts), duplicate therapy (30 %), and geriatric warnings for high dose or inappropriate drugs (23 %). Psycholeptics, psychoanaleptics, antithrombotic agents, anti-epileptics, renin-angiotensin system agents, and analgesics represented 71 % of all drugs involved in alerts. Conclusions EES detected potential DRPs in the majority of patients with MDDD. The number of potential DRPs was associated with the number of drugs, age, gender, and type of medication. A CDSS such as EES might be a useful tool for physicians and pharmacists to assist in the important task of monitoring patients with MDDD for potential DRPs.

Microcontroller based driver alertness detection systems to detect drowsiness

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Adenin, Hasibah; Zahari, Rahimi; Lim, Tiong Hoo

2018-04-01

The advancement of embedded system for detecting and preventing drowsiness in a vehicle is a major challenge for road traffic accident systems. To prevent drowsiness while driving, it is necessary to have an alert system that can detect a decline in driver concentration and send a signal to the driver. Studies have shown that traffc accidents usually occur when the driver is distracted while driving. In this paper, we have reviewed a number of detection systems to monitor the concentration of a car driver and propose a portable Driver Alertness Detection System (DADS) to determine the level of concentration of the driver based on pixelated coloration detection technique using facial recognition. A portable camera will be placed at the front visor to capture facial expression and the eye activities. We evaluate DADS using 26 participants and have achieved 100% detection rate with good lighting condition and a low detection rate at night.

PleurAlert: an augmented chest drainage system with electronic sensing, automated alerts and internet connectivity.

PubMed

Leeson, Cory E; Weaver, Robert A; Bissell, Taylor; Hoyer, Rachel; McClain, Corinne; Nelson, Douglas A; Samosky, Joseph T

2012-01-01

We have enhanced a common medical device, the chest tube drainage container, with electronic sensing of fluid volume, automated detection of critical alarm conditions and the ability to automatically send alert text messages to a nurse's cell phone. The PleurAlert system provides a simple touch-screen interface and can graphically display chest tube output over time. Our design augments a device whose basic function dates back 50 years by adding technology to automate and optimize a monitoring process that can be time consuming and inconvenient for nurses. The system may also enhance detection of emergency conditions and speed response time.

Detection and Alert of muscle fatigue considering a Surface Electromyography Chaotic Model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Herrera, V.; Romero, J. F.; Amestegui, M.

2011-03-01

This work propose a detection and alert algorithm for muscle fatigue in paraplegic patients undergoing electro-therapy sessions. The procedure is based on a mathematical chaotic model emulating physiological signals and Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT). The chaotic model developed is based on a logistic map that provides suitable data accomplishing some physiological signal class patterns. The CWT was applied to signals generated by the model and the resulting vector was obtained through Total Wavelet Entropy (TWE). In this sense, the presented work propose a viable and practical alert and detection algorithm for muscle fatigue.

Validation of a personal fluid loss monitor.

PubMed

Wickwire, J; Bishop, P A; Green, J M; Richardson, M T; Lomax, R G; Casaru, C; Jones, E; Curtner-Smith, M

2008-02-01

Dehydration raises heat injury risk and reduces performance [ , , ]. The purpose was to validate the Hydra-Alert Jr (Acumen). The Hydra-Alert was tested in two exercise/clothing conditions. Participants wore it while wearing exercise clothing and exercising at a self-selected intensity (n = 8). Others wore the Hydra-Alert while wearing a ballistic-vest and performing an industrial-protocol (n = 8). For each condition, the Hydra-Alert was tested on two occasions (T1 and T2). The Hydra-Alert was tested against nude weight loss for both conditions. The Hydra-Alert had low test-retest reliability for both conditions (average absolute value of the error between Hydra-Alert outputs of T1 and T2 = 0.08 +/- 0.08 percentage points). With exercise-clothing, the Hydra-Alert evidenced low-moderate correlations between percent nude weight loss and Hydra-Alert output at 20 min (r = 0.59-T1, p = 0.13; r = 0.12-T2, p = 0.78), at 40 min (r = 0.93-T1, p = 0.001; r = 0.63-T2, p = 0.10), and at approximately 2 % weight loss (r = 0.21-T1 and T2, p = 0.61 and 0.62, respectively). The correlation at 40 min during T1 fell during T2 suggesting the Hydra-Alert was inconsistent. When wearing a ballistic-vest, the Hydra-Alert had poor validity (T1: r = - 0.29 [p = 0.48] for weight loss vs. monitor; T2: r = 0.11 [p = 0.80]). At the higher levels of dehydration ( approximately 2 %), the Hydra-Alert error was so high as to render its readings of little value. In some cases, the Hydra-Alert could lead to a false level of security if dehydrated. Therefore, the Hydra-Alert is of little use for those who want to measure their fluid loss while exercising in the heat.

Intrusion Detection System Visualization of Network Alerts

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-07-01

Intrusion Detection System Visualization of Network Alerts Dolores M. Zage and Wayne M. Zage Ball State University Final Report July 2010...contracts. Staff Wayne Zage, Director of the S2ERC and Professor, Department of Computer Science, Ball State University Dolores Zage, Research

Integrated Land- and Underwater-Based Sensors for a Subduction Zone Earthquake Early Warning System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pirenne, B.; Rosenberger, A.; Rogers, G. C.; Henton, J.; Lu, Y.; Moore, T.

2016-12-01

Ocean Networks Canada (ONC — oceannetworks.ca/ ) operates cabled ocean observatories off the coast of British Columbia (BC) to support research and operational oceanography. Recently, ONC has been funded by the Province of BC to deliver an earthquake early warning (EEW) system that integrates offshore and land-based sensors to deliver alerts of incoming ground shaking from the Cascadia Subduction Zone. ONC's cabled seismic network has the unique advantage of being located offshore on either side of the surface expression of the subduction zone. The proximity of ONC's sensors to the fault can result in faster, more effective warnings, which translates into more lives saved, injuries avoided and more ability for mitigative actions to take place.ONC delivers near real-time data from various instrument types simultaneously, providing distinct advantages to seismic monitoring and earthquake early warning. The EEW system consists of a network of sensors, located on the ocean floor and on land, that detect and analyze the initial p-wave of an earthquake as well as the crustal deformation on land during the earthquake sequence. Once the p-wave is detected and characterized, software systems correlate the data streams of the various sensors and deliver alerts to clients through a Common Alerting Protocol-compliant data package. This presentation will focus on the development of the earthquake early warning capacity at ONC. It will describe the seismic sensors and their distribution, the p-wave detection algorithms selected and the overall architecture of the system. It will further overview the plan to achieve operational readiness at project completion.

Alerts Analysis and Visualization in Network-based Intrusion Detection Systems

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Yang, Dr. Li

2010-08-01

The alerts produced by network-based intrusion detection systems, e.g. Snort, can be difficult for network administrators to efficiently review and respond to due to the enormous number of alerts generated in a short time frame. This work describes how the visualization of raw IDS alert data assists network administrators in understanding the current state of a network and quickens the process of reviewing and responding to intrusion attempts. The project presented in this work consists of three primary components. The first component provides a visual mapping of the network topology that allows the end-user to easily browse clustered alerts. Themore » second component is based on the flocking behavior of birds such that birds tend to follow other birds with similar behaviors. This component allows the end-user to see the clustering process and provides an efficient means for reviewing alert data. The third component discovers and visualizes patterns of multistage attacks by profiling the attacker s behaviors.« less

Improved Conflict Detection for Reducing Operational Errors in Air Traffic Control

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Paielli, Russell A.; Erzberger, Hainz

2003-01-01

An operational error is an incident in which an air traffic controller allows the separation between two aircraft to fall below the minimum separation standard. The rates of such errors in the US have increased significantly over the past few years. This paper proposes new detection methods that can help correct this trend by improving on the performance of Conflict Alert, the existing software in the Host Computer System that is intended to detect and warn controllers of imminent conflicts. In addition to the usual trajectory based on the flight plan, a "dead-reckoning" trajectory (current velocity projection) is also generated for each aircraft and checked for conflicts. Filters for reducing common types of false alerts were implemented. The new detection methods were tested in three different ways. First, a simple flightpath command language was developed t o generate precisely controlled encounters for the purpose of testing the detection software. Second, written reports and tracking data were obtained for actual operational errors that occurred in the field, and these were "replayed" to test the new detection algorithms. Finally, the detection methods were used to shadow live traffic, and performance was analysed, particularly with regard to the false-alert rate. The results indicate that the new detection methods can provide timely warnings of imminent conflicts more consistently than Conflict Alert.

Development and implementation of sepsis alert systems

PubMed Central

Harrison, Andrew M.; Gajic, Ognjen; Pickering, Brian W.; Herasevich, Vitaly

2016-01-01

Synopsis/Summary Development and implementation of sepsis alert systems is challenging, particularly outside the monitored intensive care unit (ICU) setting. Important barriers to wider use of sepsis alerts include evolving clinical definitions of sepsis, information overload & alert fatigue, due to suboptimal alert performance. Outside the ICU, additional barriers include differences in health care delivery models, charting behaviors, and availability of electronic data. Currently available evidence does not support routine use of sepsis alert systems in clinical practice. However, continuous improvement in both the afferent (data availability and accuracy of detection algorithms) and efferent (evidence-based decision support and smoother integration into clinical workflow) limbs of sepsis alert systems will help translate theoretical advantages into measurable patient benefit. PMID:27229639

Automated Health Alerts Using In-Home Sensor Data for Embedded Health Assessment

PubMed Central

Guevara, Rainer Dane; Rantz, Marilyn

2015-01-01

We present an example of unobtrusive, continuous monitoring in the home for the purpose of assessing early health changes. Sensors embedded in the environment capture behavior and activity patterns. Changes in patterns are detected as potential signs of changing health. We first present results of a preliminary study investigating 22 features extracted from in-home sensor data. A 1-D alert algorithm was then implemented to generate health alerts to clinicians in a senior housing facility. Clinicians analyze each alert and provide a rating on the clinical relevance. These ratings are then used as ground truth for training and testing classifiers. Here, we present the methodology for four classification approaches that fuse multisensor data. Results are shown using embedded sensor data and health alert ratings collected on 21 seniors over nine months. The best results show similar performance for two techniques, where one approach uses only domain knowledge and the second uses supervised learning for training. Finally, we propose a health change detection model based on these results and clinical expertise. The system of in-home sensors and algorithms for automated health alerts provides a method for detecting health problems very early so that early treatment is possible. This method of passive in-home sensing alleviates compliance issues. PMID:27170900

Optimizing the response to surveillance alerts in automated surveillance systems.

PubMed

Izadi, Masoumeh; Buckeridge, David L

2011-02-28

Although much research effort has been directed toward refining algorithms for disease outbreak alerting, considerably less attention has been given to the response to alerts generated from statistical detection algorithms. Given the inherent inaccuracy in alerting, it is imperative to develop methods that help public health personnel identify optimal policies in response to alerts. This study evaluates the application of dynamic decision making models to the problem of responding to outbreak detection methods, using anthrax surveillance as an example. Adaptive optimization through approximate dynamic programming is used to generate a policy for decision making following outbreak detection. We investigate the degree to which the model can tolerate noise theoretically, in order to keep near optimal behavior. We also evaluate the policy from our model empirically and compare it with current approaches in routine public health practice for investigating alerts. Timeliness of outbreak confirmation and total costs associated with the decisions made are used as performance measures. Using our approach, on average, 80 per cent of outbreaks were confirmed prior to the fifth day of post-attack with considerably less cost compared to response strategies currently in use. Experimental results are also provided to illustrate the robustness of the adaptive optimization approach and to show the realization of the derived error bounds in practice. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Pilot evaluation of a method to assess prescribers' information processing of medication alerts.

PubMed

Russ, Alissa L; Melton, Brittany L; Daggy, Joanne K; Saleem, Jason J

2017-02-01

Prescribers commonly receive alerts during medication ordering. Prescribers work in a complex, time-pressured environment; to enhance the effectiveness of safety alerts, the effort needed to cognitively process these alerts should be minimized. Methods to evaluate the extent to which computerized alerts support prescribers' information processing are lacking. To develop a methodological protocol to assess the extent to which alerts support prescribers' information processing at-a-glance; specifically, the incorporation of information into their working memory. We hypothesized that the method would be feasible and that we would be able to detect a significant difference in prescribers' information processing with a revised alert display that incorporates warning design guidelines compared to the original alert display. A counterbalanced, within-subject study was conducted with 20 prescribers in a human-computer interaction laboratory. We tested a single alert that was displayed in two different ways. Prescribers were informed that an alert would appear for 10s. After the alert was shown, a white screen was displayed, and prescribers were asked to verbally describe what they saw; indicate how many total warnings; and describe anything else they remembered about the alert. We measured information processing via the accuracy of prescribers' free recall and their ability to identify that three warning messages were present. Two analysts independently evaluated participants' responses against a comprehensive catalog of alert elements and then discussed discrepancies until reaching consensus. This feasibility study demonstrated that the method seemed to be effective for evaluating prescribers' information processing of medication alert displays. With this method, we were able to detect significant differences in prescribers' recall of alert information. The proportion of total data elements that prescribers were able to accurately recall was significantly greater for the revised versus original alert display (p=0.006). With the revised display, more prescribers accurately reported that three warnings were shown (p=0.002). The methodological protocol was feasible for evaluating the alert display and yielded important findings on prescribers' information processing. Study methods supplement traditional usability evaluation methods and may be useful for evaluating information processing of other healthcare technologies. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Circadian rhythms in human performance and mood under constant conditions

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Monk, T. H.; Buysse, D. J.; Reynolds, C. F. 3rd; Berga, S. L.; Jarrett, D. B.; Begley, A. E.; Kupfer, D. J.

1997-01-01

This study explored the relationship between circadian performance rhythms and rhythms in rectal temperature, plasma cortisol, plasma melatonin, subjective alertness and well-being. Seventeen healthy young adults were studied under 36 h of 'unmasking' conditions (constant wakeful bedrest, temporal isolation, homogenized 'meals') during which rectal temperatures were measured every minute, and plasma cortisol and plasma melatonin measured every 20 min. Hourly subjective ratings of global vigour (alertness) and affect (well-being) were obtained followed by one of two performance batteries. On odd-numbered hours performance (speed and accuracy) of serial search, verbal reasoning and manual dexterity tasks was assessed. On even-numbered hours, performance (% hits, response speed) was measured at a 25-30 min visual vigilance task. Performance of all tasks (except search accuracy) showed a significant time of day variation usually with a nocturnal trough close to the trough in rectal temperature. Performance rhythms appeared not to reliably differ with working memory load. Within subjects, predominantly positive correlations emerged between good performance and higher temperatures and better subjective alertness; predominantly negative correlations between good performance and higher plasma levels of cortisol and melatonin. Temperature and cortisol rhythms correlated with slightly more performance measures (5/7) than did melatonin rhythms (4/7). Global vigour correlated about as well with performance (5/7) as did temperature, and considerably better than global affect (1/7). In conclusion: (1) between-task heterogeneity in circadian performance rhythms appeared to be absent when the sleep/wake cycle was suspended; (2) temperature (positively), cortisol and melatonin (negatively) appeared equally good as circadian correlates of performance, and (3) subjective alertness correlated with performance rhythms as well as (but not better than) body temperature, suggesting that performance rhythms were not directly mediated by rhythms in subjective alertness.

Detecting alerts, notifying the physician, and offering action items: a comprehensive alerting system.

PubMed Central

Kuperman, G. J.; Teich, J. M.; Bates, D. W.; Hiltz, F. L.; Hurley, J. M.; Lee, R. Y.; Paterno, M. D.

1996-01-01

We developed and evaluated a system to automatically identify serious clinical conditions in inpatients. The system notifies the patient's covering physician via his pager that an alert is present and offers potential therapies for the patient's condition (action items) at the time he views the alert information. Over a 6 month period, physicians responded to 1214 (70.2%) of 1730 alerts for which they were paged; they responded to 1002 (82.5% of the 1214) in less than 15 minutes. They said they would take action in 71.5% of the alerts, and they placed an order directly from the alert display screen in 39.4%. Further study is needed to determine if this alerting system improves processes or outcomes of care. PMID:8947756

Bacterial contamination of platelet components not detected by BacT/ALERT®.

PubMed

Abela, M A; Fenning, S; Maguire, K A; Morris, K G

2018-02-01

To investigate the possible causes for false negative results in BacT/ALERT ® 3D Signature System despite bacterial contamination of platelet units. The Northern Ireland Blood Transfusion Service (NIBTS) routinely extends platelet component shelf life to 7 days. Components are sampled and screened for bacterial contamination using an automated microbial detection system, the BacT/ALERT ® 3D Signature System. We report on three platelet components with confirmed bacterial contamination, which represent false negative BacT/ALERT ® results and near-miss serious adverse events. NIBTS protocols for risk reduction of bacterial contamination of platelet components are described. The methodology for bacterial detection using BacT/ALERT ® is outlined. Laboratory tests, relevant patient details and relevant follow-up information are analysed. In all three cases, Staphylococcus aureus was isolated from the platelet residue and confirmed on terminal sub-culture using BacT/ALERT ® . In two cases, S. aureus with similar genetic makeup was isolated from the donors. Risk reduction measures for bacterial contamination of platelet components are not always effective. Automated bacterial culture detection does not eliminate the risk of bacterial contamination. Visual inspection of platelet components prior to release, issue and administration remains an important last line of defence. © 2017 British Blood Transfusion Society.

Thermodynamic Alerter for Microbursts (TAMP)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Eccles, Peter J.

1991-01-01

The following subject areas are covered: microburst detection, location and measurement; thermal alerter for microbursts prototypes (TAMP); sensor-transmitters (Senstrans) design; TAMP installation; and DAPAD software.

Alert generation and cockpit presentation for an integrated microburst alerting system

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wanke, Craig; Hansman, R. John, Jr.

1991-01-01

Alert generation and cockpit presentation issues for low level wind shear (microburst) alerts are investigated. Alert generation issues center on the development of a hazard criterion which allows integration of both ground based and airborne wind shear detection systems to form an accurate picture of the aviation hazard posed by a particular wind shear situation. A methodology for the testing of a hazard criteria through flight simulation has been developed, and has been used to examine the effectiveness and feasibility of several possible criteria. Also, an experiment to evaluate candidate graphical cockpit displays for microburst alerts using a piloted simulator has been designed.

Intrusion-aware alert validation algorithm for cooperative distributed intrusion detection schemes of wireless sensor networks.

PubMed

Shaikh, Riaz Ahmed; Jameel, Hassan; d'Auriol, Brian J; Lee, Heejo; Lee, Sungyoung; Song, Young-Jae

2009-01-01

Existing anomaly and intrusion detection schemes of wireless sensor networks have mainly focused on the detection of intrusions. Once the intrusion is detected, an alerts or claims will be generated. However, any unidentified malicious nodes in the network could send faulty anomaly and intrusion claims about the legitimate nodes to the other nodes. Verifying the validity of such claims is a critical and challenging issue that is not considered in the existing cooperative-based distributed anomaly and intrusion detection schemes of wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we propose a validation algorithm that addresses this problem. This algorithm utilizes the concept of intrusion-aware reliability that helps to provide adequate reliability at a modest communication cost. In this paper, we also provide a security resiliency analysis of the proposed intrusion-aware alert validation algorithm.

Intrusion-Aware Alert Validation Algorithm for Cooperative Distributed Intrusion Detection Schemes of Wireless Sensor Networks

PubMed Central

Shaikh, Riaz Ahmed; Jameel, Hassan; d’Auriol, Brian J.; Lee, Heejo; Lee, Sungyoung; Song, Young-Jae

2009-01-01

Existing anomaly and intrusion detection schemes of wireless sensor networks have mainly focused on the detection of intrusions. Once the intrusion is detected, an alerts or claims will be generated. However, any unidentified malicious nodes in the network could send faulty anomaly and intrusion claims about the legitimate nodes to the other nodes. Verifying the validity of such claims is a critical and challenging issue that is not considered in the existing cooperative-based distributed anomaly and intrusion detection schemes of wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we propose a validation algorithm that addresses this problem. This algorithm utilizes the concept of intrusion-aware reliability that helps to provide adequate reliability at a modest communication cost. In this paper, we also provide a security resiliency analysis of the proposed intrusion-aware alert validation algorithm. PMID:22454568

Validation of sleep-2-Peak: A smartphone application that can detect fatigue-related changes in reaction times during sleep deprivation.

PubMed

Brunet, Jean-François; Dagenais, Dominique; Therrien, Marc; Gartenberg, Daniel; Forest, Geneviève

2017-08-01

Despite its high sensitivity and validity in the context of sleep loss, the Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) could be improved. The aim of the present study was to validate a new smartphone PVT-type application called sleep-2-Peak (s2P) by determining its ability to assess fatigue-related changes in alertness in a context of extended wakefulness. Short 3-min versions of s2P and of the classic PVT were administered at every even hour during a 35-h total sleep deprivation protocol. In addition, subjective measures of sleepiness were collected. The outcomes on these tests were then compared using Pearson product-moment correlations, t tests, and repeated measures within-groups analyses of variance. The results showed that both tests significantly correlated on all outcome variables, that both significantly distinguished between the alert and sleepy states in the same individual, and that both varied similarly through the sleep deprivation protocol as sleep loss accumulated. All outcome variables on both tests also correlated significantly with the subjective measures of sleepiness. These results suggest that a 3-min version of s2P is a valid tool for differentiating alert from sleepy states and is as sensitive as the PVT for tracking fatigue-related changes during extended wakefulness and sleep loss. Unlike the PVT, s2P does not provide feedback to subjects on each trial. We discuss how this feature of s2P raises the possibility that the performance results measured by s2P could be less impacted by motivational confounds, giving this tool added value in particular clinical and/or research settings.

Visual Alert System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1985-01-01

A visual alert system resulted from circuitry developed by Applied Cybernetics Systems for Langley as part of a space related telemetry system. James Campman, Applied Cybernetics president, left the company and founded Grace Industries, Inc. to manufacture security devices based on the Langley technology. His visual alert system combines visual and audible alerts for hearing impaired people. The company also manufactures an arson detection device called the electronic nose, and is currently researching additional applications of the NASA technology.

Dose-response relationship for light intensity and ocular and electroencephalographic correlates of human alertness

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Cajochen, C.; Zeitzer, J. M.; Czeisler, C. A.; Dijk, D. J.

2000-01-01

Light can elicit both circadian and acute physiological responses in humans. In a dose response protocol men and women were exposed to illuminances ranging from 3 to 9100 lux for 6.5 h during the early biological night after they had been exposed to <3 lux for several hours. Light exerted an acute alerting response as assessed by a reduction in the incidence of slow-eye movements, a reduction of EEG activity in the theta-alpha frequencies (power density in the 5-9 Hz range) as well as a reduction in self-reported sleepiness. This alerting response was positively correlated with the degree of melatonin suppression by light. In accordance with the dose response function for circadian resetting and melatonin suppression, the responses of all three indices of alertness to variations in illuminance were consistent with a logistic dose response curve. Half of the maximum alerting response to bright light of 9100 lux was obtained with room light of approximately 100 lux. This sensitivity to light indicates that variations in illuminance within the range of typical, ambient, room light (90-180 lux) can have a significant impact on subjective alertness and its electrophysiologic concomitants in humans during the early biological night.

Advanced alerting features: displaying new relevant data and retracting alerts.

PubMed Central

Kuperman, G. J.; Hiltz, F. L.; Teich, J. M.

1997-01-01

We added two advanced features to our automated alerting system. The first feature identifies and displays, at the time an alert is reviewed, relevant data filed between the login time of a specimen leading to an alerting result and the time the alert is reviewed. Relevant data is defined as data of the same kind as generated the alert. The other feature retracts alerts when the alerting value is edited and no longer satisfies the alerting criteria. We evaluated the two features for a 14-week period (new relevant data) and a 6-week period (retraction). Of a total of 1104 alerts in the 14-week evaluation, 286 (25.9%) had new relevant data displayed at alert review time. Of the 286, 75.2% were due to additions of comments to the original piece of alerting data; 24.1% were due to new or pending laboratory results of the same type that generated the alert. Two alerts (out of 490) were retracted in a 6 week period. We conclude that in our system, new clinically relevant data is often added between the time of specimen login and the time that an alerting result from that specimen is reviewed. Retractions occur rarely but are important to detect and communicate. PMID:9357625

Aircraft Alerting Systems Criteria Study. Volume II. Human Factors Guidelines for Aircraft Alerting Systems

DTIC Science & Technology

1977-05-01

Effect of Mixing Flashing and Steady Irrelevant Lights, Ergonomics, Vol. 6 (3), 1963, pp. 27-294. Creelman , C. D., Detection of Signals of Uncertain...Frequency, Acoustical Sok. America-J, Vol. 32 (7), July 1960, pp. 805-10. Creelman , C. D., Detection, Discrimination, and Loudness of Short Tones

Nowcasting and assessing thunderstorm risk on the Lombardy region (Italy)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bonelli, P.; Marcacci, P.; Bertolotti, E.; Collino, E.; Stella, G.

2011-06-01

The problem of severe thunderstorm risk in the Lombardy region (Italy) is serious. In fact during the warm season many thunderstorms (TS) occur in high density populated area located between the river Po and the Alps. In the year 2003, about 90 TS caused damage to people, houses, cars, agriculture and electrical lines. About 30 municipalities undergo damage by tornadoes. The 2003 summer was not particularly anomalous with respect to others for TS activity. In this region storms are well detected by some C-band radars and the Meteosat satellites, but the study of the correlation between these variables and the TS severity needs the collection of many met-data at the ground. Unfortunately the lack of a fine mesh met-station network forces the use of local press news or subjective reports to identify the impact of TS. Since 2006 ERSE has been collaborating with the Lombardy Region - Civil Protection Service/Office - in developing and testing a system to detect and nowcast severe thunderstorms, STAF (Storm Track Alert and Forecast). STAF is a nowcasting tool based on Radar and MSG (Meteosat Second Generation) data that selects only severe TS, tracks them and produces alert messages to users. In order to evaluate the severity of a TS, a crucial issue for STAF is the correlation between variables detected by the remote-sensing instruments and the effects at the ground. The paper describes a method to classify the severity of a TS by computing an index named "probability of damage" (PD). The index has been carried out by means of a storm archive, where radar and satellite data are stored together with damages reports from newspapers, all collected in 2003 summer. The index has been verified during the 2009 summer, when STAF was applied in a field test involving a group of Civil Protection observers and users. The results of this test are reported in the paper. The test has been also an occasion for verifying the effectiveness of information provided by STAF to selected people locally responsible for public alert and rescue in the case of a severe weather event.

Weather-based prediction of Plasmodium falciparum malaria in epidemic-prone regions of Ethiopia II. Weather-based prediction systems perform comparably to early detection systems in identifying times for interventions.

PubMed

Teklehaimanot, Hailay D; Schwartz, Joel; Teklehaimanot, Awash; Lipsitch, Marc

2004-11-19

Timely and accurate information about the onset of malaria epidemics is essential for effective control activities in epidemic-prone regions. Early warning methods that provide earlier alerts (usually by the use of weather variables) may permit control measures to interrupt transmission earlier in the epidemic, perhaps at the expense of some level of accuracy. Expected case numbers were modeled using a Poisson regression with lagged weather factors in a 4th-degree polynomial distributed lag model. For each week, the numbers of malaria cases were predicted using coefficients obtained using all years except that for which the prediction was being made. The effectiveness of alerts generated by the prediction system was compared against that of alerts based on observed cases. The usefulness of the prediction system was evaluated in cold and hot districts. The system predicts the overall pattern of cases well, yet underestimates the height of the largest peaks. Relative to alerts triggered by observed cases, the alerts triggered by the predicted number of cases performed slightly worse, within 5% of the detection system. The prediction-based alerts were able to prevent 10-25% more cases at a given sensitivity in cold districts than in hot ones. The prediction of malaria cases using lagged weather performed well in identifying periods of increased malaria cases. Weather-derived predictions identified epidemics with reasonable accuracy and better timeliness than early detection systems; therefore, the prediction of malarial epidemics using weather is a plausible alternative to early detection systems.

[Automated detection of estrus and mastitis in dairy cows].

PubMed

de Mol, R M

2001-02-15

The development and test of detection models for oestrus and mastitis in dairy cows is described in a PhD thesis that was defended in Wageningen on June 5, 2000. These models were based on sensors for milk yield, milk temperature, electrical conductivity of milk, and cow activity and concentrate intake, and on combined processing of the sensor data. The models alert farmers to cows that need attention, because of possible oestrus or mastitis. A first detection model for cows, milked twice a day, was based on time series models for the sensor variables. A time series model describes the dependence between successive observations. The parameters of the time series models were fitted on-line for each cow after each milking by means of a Kalman filter, a mathematical method to estimate the state of a system on-line. The Kalman filter gives the best estimate of the current state of a system based on all preceding observations. This model was tested for 2 years on two experimental farms, and under field conditions on four farms over several years. A second detection model, for cow milked in an automatic milking system (AMS), was based on a generalization of the first model. Two data sets (one small, one large) were used for testing. The results for oestrus detection were good for both models. The results for mastitis detection were varying (in some cases good, in other cases moderate). Fuzzy logic was used to classify mastitis and oestrus alerts with both detection models, to reduce the number of false positive alerts. Fuzzy logic makes approximate reasoning possible, where statements can be partly true or false. Input for the fuzzy logic model were alerts from the detection models and additional information. The number of false positive alerts decreased considerably, while the number of detected cases remained at the same level. These models make automated detection possible in practice.

The CommonGround Visual Paradigm for Biosurveillance

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Livnat, Yarden; Jurrus, Elizabeth R.; Gundlapalli, Adi V.

2013-06-14

Biosurveillance is a critical area in the intelligence community for real-time detection of disease outbreaks. Identifying epidemics enables analysts to detect and monitor disease outbreaks that might be spread from natural causes or from possible biological warfare attacks. Containing these events and disseminating alerts requires the ability to rapidly find, classify and track harmful biological signatures. In this paper, we describe a novel visual paradigm to conduct biosurveillance using an Infectious Disease Weather Map. Our system provides a visual common ground in which users can view, explore and discover emerging concepts and correlations such as symptoms, syndromes, pathogens, and geographicmore » locations.« less

Implementation of a computer-assisted monitoring system for the detection of adverse drug reactions in gastroenterology.

PubMed

Dormann, H; Criegee-Rieck, M; Neubert, A; Egger, T; Levy, M; Hahn, E G; Brune, K

2004-02-01

To investigate the effectiveness of a computer monitoring system that detects adverse drug reactions (ADRs) by laboratory signals in gastroenterology. A prospective, 6-month, pharmaco-epidemiological survey was carried out on a gastroenterological ward at the University Hospital Erlangen-Nuremberg. Two methods were used to identify ADRs. (i) All charts were reviewed daily by physicians and clinical pharmacists. (ii) A computer monitoring system generated a daily list of automatic laboratory signals and alerts of ADRs, including patient data and dates of events. One hundred and nine ADRs were detected in 474 admissions (377 patients). The computer monitoring system generated 4454 automatic laboratory signals from 39 819 laboratory parameters tested, and issued 2328 alerts, 914 (39%) of which were associated with ADRs; 574 (25%) were associated with ADR-positive admissions. Of all the alerts generated, signals of hepatotoxicity (1255), followed by coagulation disorders (407) and haematological toxicity (207), were prevalent. Correspondingly, the prevailing ADRs were concerned with the metabolic and hepato-gastrointestinal system (61). The sensitivity was 91%: 69 of 76 ADR-positive patients were indicated by an alert. The specificity of alerts was increased from 23% to 76% after implementation of an automatic laboratory signal trend monitoring algorithm. This study shows that a computer monitoring system is a useful tool for the systematic and automated detection of ADRs in gastroenterological patients.

Drowsiness/alertness algorithm development and validation using synchronized EEG and cognitive performance to individualize a generalized model

PubMed Central

Johnson, Robin R.; Popovic, Djordje P.; Olmstead, Richard E.; Stikic, Maja; Levendowski, Daniel J.; Berka, Chris

2011-01-01

A great deal of research over the last century has focused on drowsiness/alertness detection, as fatigue-related physical and cognitive impairments pose a serious risk to public health and safety. Available drowsiness/alertness detection solutions are unsatisfactory for a number of reasons: 1) lack of generalizability, 2) failure to address individual variability in generalized models, and/or 3) they lack a portable, un-tethered application. The current study aimed to address these issues, and determine if an individualized electroencephalography (EEG) based algorithm could be defined to track performance decrements associated with sleep loss, as this is the first step in developing a field deployable drowsiness/alertness detection system. The results indicated that an EEG-based algorithm, individualized using a series of brief "identification" tasks, was able to effectively track performance decrements associated with sleep deprivation. Future development will address the need for the algorithm to predict performance decrements due to sleep loss, and provide field applicability. PMID:21419826

Drowsiness/alertness algorithm development and validation using synchronized EEG and cognitive performance to individualize a generalized model.

PubMed

Johnson, Robin R; Popovic, Djordje P; Olmstead, Richard E; Stikic, Maja; Levendowski, Daniel J; Berka, Chris

2011-05-01

A great deal of research over the last century has focused on drowsiness/alertness detection, as fatigue-related physical and cognitive impairments pose a serious risk to public health and safety. Available drowsiness/alertness detection solutions are unsatisfactory for a number of reasons: (1) lack of generalizability, (2) failure to address individual variability in generalized models, and/or (3) lack of a portable, un-tethered application. The current study aimed to address these issues, and determine if an individualized electroencephalography (EEG) based algorithm could be defined to track performance decrements associated with sleep loss, as this is the first step in developing a field deployable drowsiness/alertness detection system. The results indicated that an EEG-based algorithm, individualized using a series of brief "identification" tasks, was able to effectively track performance decrements associated with sleep deprivation. Future development will address the need for the algorithm to predict performance decrements due to sleep loss, and provide field applicability. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Vehicle surge detection and pathway discrimination by pedestrians who are blind: Effect of adding an alert sound to hybrid electric vehicles on performance.

PubMed

Kim, Dae Shik; Emerson, Robert Wall; Naghshineh, Koorosh; Pliskow, Jay; Myers, Kyle

2012-05-01

This study examined the effect of adding an artificially generated alert sound to a quiet vehicle on its detectability and localizability with 15 visually impaired adults. When starting from a stationary position, the hybrid electric vehicle with an alert sound was significantly more quickly and reliably detected than either the identical vehicle without such added sound or the comparable internal combustion engine vehicle. However, no significant difference was found between the vehicles in respect to how accurately the participants could discriminate the path of a given vehicle (straight vs. right turn). These results suggest that adding an artificial sound to a hybrid electric vehicle may help reduce delay in street crossing initiation by a blind pedestrian, but the benefit of such alert sound may not be obvious in determining whether the vehicle in his near parallel lane proceeds straight through the intersection or turns right in front of him.

Vehicle surge detection and pathway discrimination by pedestrians who are blind: Effect of adding an alert sound to hybrid electric vehicles on performance

PubMed Central

Kim, Dae Shik; Emerson, Robert Wall; Naghshineh, Koorosh; Pliskow, Jay; Myers, Kyle

2012-01-01

This study examined the effect of adding an artificially generated alert sound to a quiet vehicle on its detectability and localizability with 15 visually impaired adults. When starting from a stationary position, the hybrid electric vehicle with an alert sound was significantly more quickly and reliably detected than either the identical vehicle without such added sound or the comparable internal combustion engine vehicle. However, no significant difference was found between the vehicles in respect to how accurately the participants could discriminate the path of a given vehicle (straight vs. right turn). These results suggest that adding an artificial sound to a hybrid electric vehicle may help reduce delay in street crossing initiation by a blind pedestrian, but the benefit of such alert sound may not be obvious in determining whether the vehicle in his near parallel lane proceeds straight through the intersection or turns right in front of him. PMID:22707841

Analysis of Alerting System Failures in Commercial Aviation Accidents

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mumaw, Randall J.

2017-01-01

The role of an alerting system is to make the system operator (e.g., pilot) aware of an impending hazard or unsafe state so the hazard can be avoided or managed successfully. A review of 46 commercial aviation accidents (between 1998 and 2014) revealed that, in the vast majority of events, either the hazard was not alerted or relevant hazard alerting occurred but failed to aid the flight crew sufficiently. For this set of events, alerting system failures were placed in one of five phases: Detection, Understanding, Action Selection, Prioritization, and Execution. This study also reviewed the evolution of alerting system schemes in commercial aviation, which revealed naive assumptions about pilot reliability in monitoring flight path parameters; specifically, pilot monitoring was assumed to be more effective than it actually is. Examples are provided of the types of alerting system failures that have occurred, and recommendations are provided for alerting system improvements.

Real-time prediction of the occurrence of GLE events

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Núñez, Marlon; Reyes-Santiago, Pedro J.; Malandraki, Olga E.

2017-07-01

A tool for predicting the occurrence of Ground Level Enhancement (GLE) events using the UMASEP scheme is presented. This real-time tool, called HESPERIA UMASEP-500, is based on the detection of the magnetic connection, along which protons arrive in the near-Earth environment, by estimating the lag correlation between the time derivatives of 1 min soft X-ray flux (SXR) and 1 min near-Earth proton fluxes observed by the GOES satellites. Unlike current GLE warning systems, this tool can predict GLE events before the detection by any neutron monitor (NM) station. The prediction performance measured for the period from 1986 to 2016 is presented for two consecutive periods, because of their notable difference in performance. For the 2000-2016 period, this prediction tool obtained a probability of detection (POD) of 53.8% (7 of 13 GLE events), a false alarm ratio (FAR) of 30.0%, and average warning times (AWT) of 8 min with respect to the first NM station's alert and 15 min to the GLE Alert Plus's warning. We have tested the model by replacing the GOES proton data with SOHO/EPHIN proton data, and the results are similar in terms of POD, FAR, and AWT for the same period. The paper also presents a comparison with a GLE warning system.

Validation of Test Performance and Clinical Time Zero for an Electronic Health Record Embedded Severe Sepsis Alert

PubMed Central

Downing, N. Lance; Shepard, John; Chu, Weihan; Tam, Julia; Wessels, Alexander; Li, Ron; Dietrich, Brian; Rudy, Michael; Castaneda, Leon; Shieh, Lisa

2016-01-01

Summary Bachground Increasing use of EHRs has generated interest in the potential of computerized clinical decision support to improve treatment of sepsis. Electronic sepsis alerts have had mixed results due to poor test characteristics, the inability to detect sepsis in a timely fashion and the use of outside software limiting widespread adoption. We describe the development, evaluation and validation of an accurate and timely severe sepsis alert with the potential to impact sepsis management. Objective To develop, evaluate, and validate an accurate and timely severe sepsis alert embedded in a commercial EHR. Methods The sepsis alert was developed by identifying the most common severe sepsis criteria among a cohort of patients with ICD 9 codes indicating a diagnosis of sepsis. This alert requires criteria in three categories: indicators of a systemic inflammatory response, evidence of suspected infection from physician orders, and markers of organ dysfunction. Chart review was used to evaluate test performance and the ability to detect clinical time zero, the point in time when a patient develops severe sepsis. Results Two physicians reviewed 100 positive cases and 75 negative cases. Based on this review, sensitivity was 74.5%, specificity was 86.0%, the positive predictive value was 50.3%, and the negative predictive value was 94.7%. The most common source of end-organ dysfunction was MAP less than 70 mm/Hg (59%). The alert was triggered at clinical time zero in 41% of cases and within three hours in 53.6% of cases. 96% of alerts triggered before a manual nurse screen. Conclusion We are the first to report the time between a sepsis alert and physician chart-review clinical time zero. Incorporating physician orders in the alert criteria improves specificity while maintaining sensitivity, which is important to reduce alert fatigue. By leveraging standard EHR functionality, this alert could be implemented by other healthcare systems. PMID:27437061

Validation of Test Performance and Clinical Time Zero for an Electronic Health Record Embedded Severe Sepsis Alert.

PubMed

Rolnick, Joshua; Downing, N Lance; Shepard, John; Chu, Weihan; Tam, Julia; Wessels, Alexander; Li, Ron; Dietrich, Brian; Rudy, Michael; Castaneda, Leon; Shieh, Lisa

2016-01-01

Increasing use of EHRs has generated interest in the potential of computerized clinical decision support to improve treatment of sepsis. Electronic sepsis alerts have had mixed results due to poor test characteristics, the inability to detect sepsis in a timely fashion and the use of outside software limiting widespread adoption. We describe the development, evaluation and validation of an accurate and timely severe sepsis alert with the potential to impact sepsis management. To develop, evaluate, and validate an accurate and timely severe sepsis alert embedded in a commercial EHR. The sepsis alert was developed by identifying the most common severe sepsis criteria among a cohort of patients with ICD 9 codes indicating a diagnosis of sepsis. This alert requires criteria in three categories: indicators of a systemic inflammatory response, evidence of suspected infection from physician orders, and markers of organ dysfunction. Chart review was used to evaluate test performance and the ability to detect clinical time zero, the point in time when a patient develops severe sepsis. Two physicians reviewed 100 positive cases and 75 negative cases. Based on this review, sensitivity was 74.5%, specificity was 86.0%, the positive predictive value was 50.3%, and the negative predictive value was 94.7%. The most common source of end-organ dysfunction was MAP less than 70 mm/Hg (59%). The alert was triggered at clinical time zero in 41% of cases and within three hours in 53.6% of cases. 96% of alerts triggered before a manual nurse screen. We are the first to report the time between a sepsis alert and physician chart-review clinical time zero. Incorporating physician orders in the alert criteria improves specificity while maintaining sensitivity, which is important to reduce alert fatigue. By leveraging standard EHR functionality, this alert could be implemented by other healthcare systems.

Delta 13C in CO2 at Alert, NWT, Canada (June 1991 - December 2001)

DOE Data Explorer

Allison, C. E. [Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Aspendale, Victoria, Australia; Francey, R. J. [Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Aspendale, Victoria, Australia; Krummel, P. B. [Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Aspendale, Victoria, Australia

2003-04-01

Measurements have been made on air collected in flasks at Alert, Canada, through the CSIRO GASLAB worldwide network. Flasks are filled with air at Alert and returned to the CSIRO GASLAB for analysis; typical sample storage times for flasks collected at Alert range from a few weeks to a few months. No significant effect on the stable carbon isotopic composition, δ13C, has been detected as a consequence of the sample storage time.

Airport Traffic Conflict Detection and Resolution Algorithm Evaluation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jones, Denise R.; Chartrand, Ryan C.; Wilson, Sara R.; Commo, Sean A.; Ballard, Kathryn M.; Otero, Sharon D.; Barker, Glover D.

2016-01-01

Two conflict detection and resolution (CD&R) algorithms for the terminal maneuvering area (TMA) were evaluated in a fast-time batch simulation study at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Research Center. One CD&R algorithm, developed at NASA, was designed to enhance surface situation awareness and provide cockpit alerts of potential conflicts during runway, taxi, and low altitude air-to-air operations. The second algorithm, Enhanced Traffic Situation Awareness on the Airport Surface with Indications and Alerts (SURF IA), was designed to increase flight crew awareness of the runway environment and facilitate an appropriate and timely response to potential conflict situations. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the performance of the aircraft-based CD&R algorithms during various runway, taxiway, and low altitude scenarios, multiple levels of CD&R system equipage, and various levels of horizontal position accuracy. Algorithm performance was assessed through various metrics including the collision rate, nuisance and missed alert rate, and alert toggling rate. The data suggests that, in general, alert toggling, nuisance and missed alerts, and unnecessary maneuvering occurred more frequently as the position accuracy was reduced. Collision avoidance was more effective when all of the aircraft were equipped with CD&R and maneuvered to avoid a collision after an alert was issued. In order to reduce the number of unwanted (nuisance) alerts when taxiing across a runway, a buffer is needed between the hold line and the alerting zone so alerts are not generated when an aircraft is behind the hold line. All of the results support RTCA horizontal position accuracy requirements for performing a CD&R function to reduce the likelihood and severity of runway incursions and collisions.

Auditory alert systems with enhanced detectability

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Begault, Durand R. (Inventor)

2008-01-01

Methods and systems for distinguishing an auditory alert signal from a background of one or more non-alert signals. In a first embodiment, a prefix signal, associated with an existing alert signal, is provided that has a signal component in each of three or more selected frequency ranges, with each signal component in each of three or more selected level at least 3-10 dB above an estimated background (non-alert) level in that frequency range. The alert signal may be chirped within one or more frequency bands. In another embodiment, an alert signal moves, continuously or discontinuously, from one location to another over a short time interval, introducing a perceived spatial modulation or jitter. In another embodiment, a weighted sum of background signals adjacent to each ear is formed, and the weighted sum is delivered to each ear as a uniform background; a distinguishable alert signal is presented on top of this weighted sum signal at one ear, or distinguishable first and second alert signals are presented at two ears of a subject.

Mexican Seismic Alert System's SAS-I algorithm review considering strong earthquakes felt in Mexico City since 1985

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cuellar Martinez, A.; Espinosa Aranda, J.; Suarez, G.; Ibarrola Alvarez, G.; Ramos Perez, S.; Camarillo Barranco, L.

2013-05-01

The Seismic Alert System of Mexico (SASMEX) uses three algorithms for alert activation that involve the distance between the seismic sensing field station (FS) and the city to be alerted; and the forecast for earthquake early warning activation in the cities integrated to the system, for example in Mexico City, the earthquakes occurred with the highest accelerations, were originated in the Pacific Ocean coast, whose distance this seismic region and the city, favors the use of algorithm called Algorithm SAS-I. This algorithm, without significant changes since its beginning in 1991, employs the data that generate one or more FS during P wave detection until S wave detection plus a period equal to the time employed to detect these phases; that is the double S-P time, called 2*(S-P). In this interval, the algorithm performs an integration process of quadratic samples from FS which uses a triaxial accelerometer to get two parameters: amplitude and growth rate measured until 2*(S-P) time. The parameters in SAS-I are used in a Magnitude classifier model, which was made from Guerrero Coast earthquakes time series, with reference to Mb magnitude mainly. This algorithm activates a Public or Preventive Alert if the model predicts whether Strong or Moderate earthquake. The SAS-I algorithm has been operating for over 23 years in the subduction zone of the Pacific Coast of Mexico, initially in Guerrero and followed by Oaxaca; and since March 2012 in the seismic region of Pacific covering the coasts among Jalisco, Colima, Michoacan, Guerrero and Oaxaca, where this algorithm has issued 16 Public Alert and 62 Preventive Alerts to the Mexico City where its soil conditions increase damages by earthquake such as the occurred in September 1985. This work shows the review of the SAS-I algorithm and possible alerts that it could generate from major earthquakes recordings detected by FS or seismometers near the earthquakes, coming from Pacific Ocean Coast whose have been felt in Mexico City, in order to observe the performance SAS-I algorithm.

Development and preliminary evidence for the validity of an instrument assessing implementation of human-factors principles in medication-related decision-support systems—I-MeDeSA

PubMed Central

Zachariah, Marianne; Seidling, Hanna M; Neri, Pamela M; Cresswell, Kathrin M; Duke, Jon; Bloomrosen, Meryl; Volk, Lynn A; Bates, David W

2011-01-01

Background Medication-related decision support can reduce the frequency of preventable adverse drug events. However, the design of current medication alerts often results in alert fatigue and high over-ride rates, thus reducing any potential benefits. Methods The authors previously reviewed human-factors principles for relevance to medication-related decision support alerts. In this study, instrument items were developed for assessing the appropriate implementation of these human-factors principles in drug–drug interaction (DDI) alerts. User feedback regarding nine electronic medical records was considered during the development process. Content validity, construct validity through correlation analysis, and inter-rater reliability were assessed. Results The final version of the instrument included 26 items associated with nine human-factors principles. Content validation on three systems resulted in the addition of one principle (Corrective Actions) to the instrument and the elimination of eight items. Additionally, the wording of eight items was altered. Correlation analysis suggests a direct relationship between system age and performance of DDI alerts (p=0.0016). Inter-rater reliability indicated substantial agreement between raters (κ=0.764). Conclusion The authors developed and gathered preliminary evidence for the validity of an instrument that measures the appropriate use of human-factors principles in the design and display of DDI alerts. Designers of DDI alerts may use the instrument to improve usability and increase user acceptance of medication alerts, and organizations selecting an electronic medical record may find the instrument helpful in meeting their clinicians' usability needs. PMID:21946241

Automated health alerts from Kinect-based in-home gait measurements.

PubMed

Stone, Erik E; Skubic, Marjorie; Back, Jessica

2014-01-01

A method for automatically generating alerts to clinicians in response to changes in in-home gait parameters is investigated. Kinect-based gait measurement systems were installed in apartments in a senior living facility. The systems continuously monitored the walking speed, stride time, and stride length of apartment residents. A framework for modeling uncertainty in the residents' gait parameter estimates, which is critical for robust change detection, is developed; along with an algorithm for detecting changes that may be clinically relevant. Three retrospective case studies, of individuals who had their gait monitored for periods ranging from 12 to 29 months, are presented to illustrate use of the alert method. Evidence suggests that clinicians could be alerted to health changes at an early stage, while they are still small and interventions may be most successful. Additional potential uses are also discussed.

The Second SWIFT Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) Gamma-Ray Burst Catalog

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sakamoto, T.; Barthelmy, S. D.; Baumgartner, W. H.; Cummings, J. R.; Fenimore, E. E.; Gehrels, N.; Krimm, H. A.; Markwardt, C. B.; Palmer, D. M.; Parsons, A. M.;

Validation of the CME Geomagnetic Forecast Alerts Under the COMESEP Alert System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dumbović, Mateja; Srivastava, Nandita; Rao, Yamini K.; Vršnak, Bojan; Devos, Andy; Rodriguez, Luciano

2017-08-01

Under the European Union 7th Framework Programme (EU FP7) project Coronal Mass Ejections and Solar Energetic Particles (COMESEP, http://comesep.aeronomy.be), an automated space weather alert system has been developed to forecast solar energetic particles (SEP) and coronal mass ejection (CME) risk levels at Earth. The COMESEP alert system uses the automated detection tool called Computer Aided CME Tracking (CACTus) to detect potentially threatening CMEs, a drag-based model (DBM) to predict their arrival, and a CME geoeffectiveness tool (CGFT) to predict their geomagnetic impact. Whenever CACTus detects a halo or partial halo CME and issues an alert, the DBM calculates its arrival time at Earth and the CGFT calculates its geomagnetic risk level. The geomagnetic risk level is calculated based on an estimation of the CME arrival probability and its likely geoeffectiveness, as well as an estimate of the geomagnetic storm duration. We present the evaluation of the CME risk level forecast with the COMESEP alert system based on a study of geoeffective CMEs observed during 2014. The validation of the forecast tool is made by comparing the forecasts with observations. In addition, we test the success rate of the automatic forecasts (without human intervention) against the forecasts with human intervention using advanced versions of the DBM and CGFT (independent tools available at the Hvar Observatory website, http://oh.geof.unizg.hr). The results indicate that the success rate of the forecast in its current form is unacceptably low for a realistic operation system. Human intervention improves the forecast, but the false-alarm rate remains unacceptably high. We discuss these results and their implications for possible improvement of the COMESEP alert system.

Comparison of 'time to detection' values between BacT/ALERT VIRTUO and BacT/ALERT 3D instruments for clinical blood culture samples.

PubMed

Congestrì, Francesco; Pedna, Maria Federica; Fantini, Michela; Samuelli, Michela; Schiavone, Pasqua; Torri, Arianna; Bertini, Stefania; Sambri, Vittorio

2017-09-01

The early detection of bacteraemia and fungemia is of paramount importance to guide antimicrobial therapy in septic patients. In this study the 'time to detection' (TTD) value for the new blood culture system BacT/ALERT VIRTUO (VIRTUO) was evaluated in 1462 positive clinical bottles and compared with the TTD for 1601 positive clinical bottles incubated in the BacT/ALERT 3D system (BTA-3D). The most representative microorganisms isolated from bottles incubated in both blood culture systems were divided into eight categories (in order of frequency): coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS), Escherichia coli, Enterobacteriaceae (other than E. coli), Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus spp, viridans group streptococci, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Candida spp. The comparison of TTD values for the two blood culture systems strongly indicated that growth of the first five groups listed above was detected earlier with VIRTUO than with BTA-3D (p < 0.05). The new VIRTUO blood culture system can reduce the TTD for more than 75% of isolated microorganisms. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Improving Recognition of Pediatric Severe Sepsis in the Emergency Department: Contributions of a Vital Sign-Based Electronic Alert and Bedside Clinician Identification.

PubMed

Balamuth, Fran; Alpern, Elizabeth R; Abbadessa, Mary Kate; Hayes, Katie; Schast, Aileen; Lavelle, Jane; Fitzgerald, Julie C; Weiss, Scott L; Zorc, Joseph J

2017-12-01

Recognition of pediatric sepsis is a key clinical challenge. We evaluate the performance of a sepsis recognition process including an electronic sepsis alert and bedside assessment in a pediatric emergency department (ED). This was a cohort study with quality improvement intervention in a pediatric ED. Exposure was a positive electronic sepsis alert, defined as elevated pulse rate or hypotension, concern for infection, and at least one of the following: abnormal capillary refill, abnormal mental status, or high-risk condition. A positive electronic sepsis alert prompted team assessment or huddle to determine need for sepsis protocol. Clinicians could initiate team assessment or huddle according to clinical concern without positive electronic sepsis alert. Severe sepsis outcome defined as activation of the sepsis protocol in the ED or development of severe sepsis requiring ICU admission within 24 hours. There were 182,509 ED visits during the study period, with 86,037 before electronic sepsis alert implementation and 96,472 afterward, and 1,112 (1.2%) positive electronic sepsis alerts. Overall, 326 patients (0.3%) were treated for severe sepsis within 24 hours. Test characteristics of the electronic sepsis alert alone to detect severe sepsis were sensitivity 86.2% (95% confidence interval [CI] 82.0% to 89.5%), specificity 99.1% (95% CI 99.0% to 99.2%), positive predictive value 25.4% (95% CI 22.8% to 28.0%), and negative predictive value 100% (95% CI 99.9% to 100%). Inclusion of the clinician screen identified 43 additional electronic sepsis alert-negative children, with severe sepsis sensitivity 99.4% (95% CI 97.8% to 99.8%) and specificity 99.1% (95% CI 99.1% to 99.2%). Electronic sepsis alert implementation increased ED sepsis detection from 83% to 96%. Electronic sepsis alert for severe sepsis demonstrated good sensitivity and high specificity. Addition of clinician identification of electronic sepsis alert-negative patients further improved sensitivity. Implementation of the electronic sepsis alert was associated with improved recognition of severe sepsis. Copyright © 2017 American College of Emergency Physicians. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

VTAC: virtual terrain assisted impact assessment for cyber attacks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Argauer, Brian J.; Yang, Shanchieh J.

2008-03-01

Overwhelming intrusion alerts have made timely response to network security breaches a difficult task. Correlating alerts to produce a higher level view of intrusion state of a network, thus, becomes an essential element in network defense. This work proposes to analyze correlated or grouped alerts and determine their 'impact' to services and users of the network. A network is modeled as 'virtual terrain' where cyber attacks maneuver. Overlaying correlated attack tracks on virtual terrain exhibits the vulnerabilities exploited by each track and the relationships between them and different network entities. The proposed impact assessment algorithm utilizes the graph-based virtual terrain model and combines assessments of damages caused by the attacks. The combined impact scores allow to identify severely damaged network services and affected users. Several scenarios are examined to demonstrate the uses of the proposed Virtual Terrain Assisted Impact Assessment for Cyber Attacks (VTAC).

The NAS Alert System: A look at the first eight years

USGS Publications Warehouse

Fuller, Pamela L.; Neilson, Matt; Huge, Dane H.

2013-01-01

The U.S. Geological Survey's Nonindigenous Aquatic Species (NAS) database program (http://nas.er.usgs.gov) tracks the distribution of introduced aquatic organisms across the United States. Awareness of, and timely response to, novel species introductions by those involved in nonindigenous aquatic species management and research requires a framework for rapid dissemination of occurrence data as it is incorporated into the NAS database. In May 2004, the NAS program developed an alert system to notify registered users of new introductions as part of a national early detection/rapid response system. This article summarizes information on system users and dispatched alerts from the system's inception through the end of 2011. The NAS alert system has registered over 1,700 users, with approximately 800 current subscribers. A total of 1,189 alerts had been transmitted through 2011. More alerts were sent for Florida (134 alerts) than for any other state. Fishes comprise the largest taxonomic group of alerts (440), with mollusks, plants, and crustaceans each containing over 100 alerts. Most alerts were for organisms that were intentionally released (414 alerts), with shipping, escape from captivity, and hitchhiking also representing major vectors. To explore the archive of sent alerts and to register, the search and signup page for the alert system can be found online at http://nas.er.usgs.gov/AlertSystem/default.aspx.

DAIDALUS: Detect and Avoid Alerting Logic for Unmanned Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Munoz, Cesar; Narkawicz, Anthony; Hagen, George; Upchurch, Jason; Dutle, Aaron; Consiglio, Maria; Chamberlain, James

2015-01-01

This paper presents DAIDALUS (Detect and Avoid Alerting Logic for Unmanned Systems), a reference implementation of a detect and avoid concept intended to support the integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems into civil airspace. DAIDALUS consists of self-separation and alerting algorithms that provide situational awareness to UAS remote pilots. These algorithms have been formally specified in a mathematical notation and verified for correctness in an interactive theorem prover. The software implementation has been verified against the formal models and validated against multiple stressing cases jointly developed by the US Air Force Research Laboratory, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and NASA. The DAIDALUS reference implementation is currently under consideration for inclusion in the appendices to the Minimum Operational Performance Standards for Unmanned Aircraft Systems presently being developed by RTCA Special Committee 228.

An evaluation of microbial profile in halitosis with tongue coating using PCR (polymerase chain reaction)- a clinical and microbiological study.

PubMed

Kamaraj R, Dinesh; Bhushan, Kala S; K L, Vandana

2014-01-01

Medline search using key words halitosis, tongue coating, polymerase chain reaction, microbial profile did not reveal any study. Hence, the purpose of the present investigation was to assess the malodor using the organoleptic method and tanita device; to quantify odoriferous microorganisms using Polymerase Chain Reaction technique in chronic periodontitis patients. The study included 30 chronic periodontitis patients. Halitosis was detected using organoleptic assessment & tanita breath alert. Microbial analysis of Pg, Tf & Fn was done using PCR. Plaque index (PI), gingival index (GI), gingival bleeding index (GBI) were recorded. The maximum score of 3 for tongue coating was found in 60% of selected subjects. The tanita breath alert measured VSC level of score 2 in 60% of selected subjects while organoleptic score of 4 was found in 50% of subjects. The maximum mean value of 31.1±36.5 was found to be of F. nucleatum (Fn) followed by P. gingivalis (Pg) (13±13.3) & T. forsythia (Tf) (7.16±8.68) in tongue samples of selected patients. A weak positive correlation was found between VSC levels (tanita score & organoleptic score) and clinical parameters. The halitosis assessment by measuring VSC levels using organoleptic method and tanita breath alert are clinically feasible. Maximum tongue coating was found in 60% of patients. Fn was found comparatively more than the Pg & Tf. A weak positive correlation was found between VSC levels and clinical parameters such as PI, GI & GBI. Thus,the dentist/ periodontist should emphasise on tongue cleaning measures that would reduce the odoriferous microbial load.

Factors influencing alert acceptance: a novel approach for predicting the success of clinical decision support

PubMed Central

Seidling, Hanna M; Phansalkar, Shobha; Seger, Diane L; Paterno, Marilyn D; Shaykevich, Shimon; Haefeli, Walter E

2011-01-01

Background Clinical decision support systems can prevent knowledge-based prescription errors and improve patient outcomes. The clinical effectiveness of these systems, however, is substantially limited by poor user acceptance of presented warnings. To enhance alert acceptance it may be useful to quantify the impact of potential modulators of acceptance. Methods We built a logistic regression model to predict alert acceptance of drug–drug interaction (DDI) alerts in three different settings. Ten variables from the clinical and human factors literature were evaluated as potential modulators of provider alert acceptance. ORs were calculated for the impact of knowledge quality, alert display, textual information, prioritization, setting, patient age, dose-dependent toxicity, alert frequency, alert level, and required acknowledgment on acceptance of the DDI alert. Results 50 788 DDI alerts were analyzed. Providers accepted only 1.4% of non-interruptive alerts. For interruptive alerts, user acceptance positively correlated with frequency of the alert (OR 1.30, 95% CI 1.23 to 1.38), quality of display (4.75, 3.87 to 5.84), and alert level (1.74, 1.63 to 1.86). Alert acceptance was higher in inpatients (2.63, 2.32 to 2.97) and for drugs with dose-dependent toxicity (1.13, 1.07 to 1.21). The textual information influenced the mode of reaction and providers were more likely to modify the prescription if the message contained detailed advice on how to manage the DDI. Conclusion We evaluated potential modulators of alert acceptance by assessing content and human factors issues, and quantified the impact of a number of specific factors which influence alert acceptance. This information may help improve clinical decision support systems design. PMID:21571746

Rapid MODIS-based detection of tree cover loss

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wheeler, David; Guzder-Williams, Brook; Petersen, Rachael; Thau, David

2018-07-01

This paper reports on recent improvements made to the FORMA (Hammer et al., 2014a) data product. The resulting system, FORMA250, is a 250-m alerting system updated daily. FORMA250 alerts are available through Global Forest Watch. These alerts can empower law enforcement officials, government agencies responsible for protecting forests, nongovernmental organizations, companies committed to sustainable forest management practices and supply chains, indigenous groups and forest-dependent communities. In addition, the alerts provide useful information for researchers who study temporal and spatial patterns of forest clearing.

VES263: an intermediate mass YSO candidate as a new eruptive variable

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Giannini, T.; Antoniucci, S.; Lorenzetti, D.; Harutyunyan, A.; Licchelli, D.; Munari, U.

2018-05-01

In the framework of our EXor monitoring programme dubbed EXORCISM (EXOR OptiCal and Infrared Systematic Monitoring - Antoniucci et al. 2013 PPVI, Lorenzetti et al. 2007 ApJ 665, 1182; Lorenzetti et al. 2009 ApJ 693, 1056), we observed the object VES263 signalled by a recent GAIA alert (http://gsaweb.ast.cam.ac.uk/alerts/alert/Gaia18azl) as "an emission line star undergoing repeat outbursts" having detected an alerting magnitude of 11.66 wrt a historic magnitude of 12.16.

Event-based internet biosurveillance: relation to epidemiological observation

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background The World Health Organization (WHO) collects and publishes surveillance data and statistics for select diseases, but traditional methods of gathering such data are time and labor intensive. Event-based biosurveillance, which utilizes a variety of Internet sources, complements traditional surveillance. In this study we assess the reliability of Internet biosurveillance and evaluate disease-specific alert criteria against epidemiological data. Methods We reviewed and compared WHO epidemiological data and Argus biosurveillance system data for pandemic (H1N1) 2009 (April 2009 – January 2010) from 8 regions and 122 countries to: identify reliable alert criteria among 15 Argus-defined categories; determine the degree of data correlation for disease progression; and assess timeliness of Internet information. Results Argus generated a total of 1,580 unique alerts; 5 alert categories generated statistically significant (p < 0.05) correlations with WHO case count data; the sum of these 5 categories was highly correlated with WHO case data (r = 0.81, p < 0.0001), with expected differences observed among the 8 regions. Argus reported first confirmed cases on the same day as WHO for 21 of the first 64 countries reporting cases, and 1 to 16 days (average 1.5 days) ahead of WHO for 42 of those countries. Conclusion Confirmed pandemic (H1N1) 2009 cases collected by Argus and WHO methods returned consistent results and confirmed the reliability and timeliness of Internet information. Disease-specific alert criteria provide situational awareness and may serve as proxy indicators to event progression and escalation in lieu of traditional surveillance data; alerts may identify early-warning indicators to another pandemic, preparing the public health community for disease events. PMID:22709988

Contributors to Frequent Telehealth Alerts Including False Alerts for Patients with Heart Failure: A Mixed Methods Exploration

PubMed Central

Radhakrishna, K.; Bowles, K.; Zettek-Sumner, A.

2013-01-01

Summary Background Telehealth data overload through high alert generation is a significant barrier to sustained adoption of telehealth for managing HF patients. Objective To explore the factors contributing to frequent telehealth alerts including false alerts for Medicare heart failure (HF) patients admitted to a home health agency. Materials and Methods A mixed methods design that combined quantitative correlation analysis of patient characteristic data with number of telehealth alerts and qualitative analysis of telehealth and visiting nurses’ notes on follow-up actions to patients’ telehealth alerts was employed. All the quantitative and qualitative data was collected through retrospective review of electronic records of the home heath agency. Results Subjects in the study had a mean age of 83 (SD = 7.6); 56% were female. Patient co-morbidities (p<0.05) of renal disorders, anxiety, and cardiac arrhythmias emerged as predictors of telehealth alerts through quantitative analysis (n = 168) using multiple regression. Inappropriate telehealth measurement technique by patients (54%) and home healthcare system inefficiencies (37%) contributed to most telehealth false alerts in the purposive qualitative sub-sample (n = 35) of patients with high telehealth alerts. Conclusion Encouraging patient engagement with the telehealth process, fostering a collaborative approach among all the clinicians involved with the telehealth intervention, tailoring telehealth alert thresholds to patient characteristics along with establishing patient-centered telehealth outcome goals may allow meaningful generation of telehealth alerts. Reducing avoidable telehealth alerts could vastly improve the efficiency and sustainability of telehealth programs for HF management. PMID:24454576

Brewer spectrophotometer measurements in the Canadian Arctic

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kerr, J. B.; Evans, W. F. J.

1988-01-01

In the winters of 1987 and 1988 measurements were conducted with the Brewer Spectrophotometer at Alert (82.5 N) and Resolute (74.5 N). The measurements were conducted as part of our Canadian Program to search for an Arctic Ozone Hole (CANOZE). Ozone measurements were conducted in the months of December, January and February using the moon as a light source. The total ozone measurements will be compared with ozonesonde profiles, from ECC sondes, flown once per week from Alert and Resolute. A modified Brewer Spectrophotometer was used in a special study to search for chlorine dioxide at Alert in March 1987. Ground based observations at Saskatoon in February and at Alert in March 1987 failed to detect any measureable chlorine dioxide. Interference from another absorbing gas, which we speculate may be nitrous acid, prevented the measurements at the low levels of chlorine dioxide detected in the Southern Hemisphere by Solomon et al.

Time to Detection with BacT/Alert FA Plus Compared to BacT/Alert FA Blood Culture Media.

PubMed

Nutman, A; Fisher Even-Tsur, S; Shapiro, G; Braun, T; Schwartz, D; Carmeli, Y

2016-09-01

Rapid identification of the causative pathogen in patients with bacteremia allows adjustment of antibiotic therapy and improves patient outcomes. We compared in vitro and real-life time to detection (TTD) of two blood culture media, BacT/Alert FA (FA) and BacT/Alert FA Plus (FA Plus), for the nine most common species of bacterial pathogens recovered from blood samples. Experimental data from simulated cultures was compared with microbiology records of TTD for both culture media with growth of the species of interest in clinical blood cultures. In the experimental conditions, median TTD was 3.8 hours (23.9 %) shorter using FA Plus media. The magnitude of reduction differed between species. Similarly, in real life data, FA Plus had shorter TTD than FA media; however, the difference between culture media was smaller, and median TTD was only 1 hour (8.5 %) less. We found shorter TTD with BacT/Alert FA Plus culture media, both experimentally and in real-life conditions and unrelated to antibiotic neutralization, highlighting the importance of appropriate blood culture media selection.

Engine monitoring display study

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hornsby, Mary E.

1992-01-01

The current study is part of a larger NASA effort to develop displays for an engine-monitoring system to enable the crew to monitor engine parameter trends more effectively. The objective was to evaluate the operational utility of adding three types of information to the basic Boeing Engine Indicating and Crew Alerting System (EICAS) display formats: alphanumeric alerting messages for engine parameters whose values exceed caution or warning limits; alphanumeric messages to monitor engine parameters that deviate from expected values; and a graphic depiction of the range of expected values for current conditions. Ten training and line pilots each flew 15 simulated flight scenarios with five variants of the basic EICAS format; these variants included different combinations of the added information. The pilots detected engine problems more quickly when engine alerting messages were included in the display; adding a graphic depiction of the range of expected values did not affect detection speed. The pilots rated both types of alphanumeric messages (alert and monitor parameter) as more useful and easier to interpret than the graphic depiction. Integrating engine parameter messages into the EICAS alerting system appears to be both useful and preferred.

Evaluation of health alerts from an early illness warning system in independent living.

PubMed

Rantz, Marilyn J; Scott, Susan D; Miller, Steven J; Skubic, Marjorie; Phillips, Lorraine; Alexander, Greg; Koopman, Richelle J; Musterman, Katy; Back, Jessica

2013-06-01

Passive sensor networks were deployed in independent living apartments to monitor older adults in their home environments to detect signs of impending illness and alert clinicians so they can intervene and prevent or delay significant changes in health or functional status. A retrospective qualitative deductive content analysis was undertaken to refine health alerts to improve clinical relevance to clinicians as they use alerts in their normal workflow of routine care delivery to older adults. Clinicians completed written free-text boxes to describe actions taken (or not) as a result of each alert; they also rated the clinical significance (relevance) of each health alert on a scale of 1 to 5. Two samples of the clinician's written responses to the health alerts were analyzed after alert algorithms had been adjusted based on results of a pilot study using health alerts to enhance clinical decision-making. In the first sample, a total of 663 comments were generated by seven clinicians in response to 385 unique alerts; there are more comments than alerts because more than one clinician rated the same alert. The second sample had a total of 142 comments produced by three clinicians in response to 88 distinct alerts. The overall clinical relevance of the alerts, as judged by the content of the qualitative comments by clinicians for each alert, improved from 33.3% of the alerts in the first sample classified as clinically relevant to 43.2% in the second. The goal is to produce clinically relevant alerts that clinicians find useful in daily practice. The evaluation methods used are described to assist others as they consider building and iteratively refining health alerts to enhance clinical decision making.

Comparison of warfarin therapy clinical outcomes following implementation of an automated mobile phone-based critical laboratory value text alert system.

PubMed

Lin, Shu-Wen; Kang, Wen-Yi; Lin, Dong-Tsamn; Lee, James; Wu, Fe-Lin; Chen, Chuen-Liang; Tseng, Yufeng J

2014-01-01

Computerized alert and reminder systems have been widely accepted and applied to various patient care settings, with increasing numbers of clinical laboratories communicating critical laboratory test values to professionals via either manual notification or automated alerting systems/computerized reminders. Warfarin, an oral anticoagulant, exhibits narrow therapeutic range between treatment response and adverse events. It requires close monitoring of prothrombin time (PT)/international normalized ratio (INR) to ensure patient safety. This study was aimed to evaluate clinical outcomes of patients on warfarin therapy following implementation of a Personal Handy-phone System-based (PHS) alert system capable of generating and delivering text messages to communicate critical PT/INR laboratory results to practitioners' mobile phones in a large tertiary teaching hospital. A retrospective analysis was performed comparing patient clinical outcomes and physician prescribing behavior following conversion from a manual laboratory result alert system to an automated system. Clinical outcomes and practitioner responses to both alert systems were compared. Complications to warfarin therapy, warfarin utilization, and PT/INR results were evaluated for both systems, as well as clinician time to read alert messages, time to warfarin therapy modification, and monitoring frequency. No significant differences were detected in major hemorrhage and thromboembolism, warfarin prescribing patterns, PT/INR results, warfarin therapy modification, or monitoring frequency following implementation of the PHS text alert system. In both study periods, approximately 80% of critical results led to warfarin discontinuation or dose reduction. Senior physicians' follow-up response time to critical results was significantly decreased in the PHS alert study period (46.3% responded within 1 day) compared to the manual notification study period (24.7%; P = 0.015). No difference in follow-up response time was detected for junior physicians. Implementation of an automated PHS-based text alert system did not adversely impact clinical or safety outcomes of patients on warfarin therapy. Approximately 80% immediate recognition of text alerts was achieved. The potential benefits of an automated PHS alert for senior physicians were demonstrated.

Wearable PPG sensor based alertness scoring system.

PubMed

Dey, Jishnu; Bhowmik, Tanmoy; Sahoo, Saswata; Tiwari, Vijay Narayan

2017-07-01

Quantifying mental alertness in today's world is important as it enables the person to adopt lifestyle changes for better work efficiency. Miniaturized sensors in wearable devices have facilitated detection/monitoring of mental alertness. Photoplethysmography (PPG) sensors through Heart Rate Variability (HRV) offer one such opportunity by providing information about one's daily alertness levels without requiring any manual interference from the user. In this paper, a smartwatch based alertness estimation system is proposed. Data collected from PPG sensor of smartwatch is processed and fed to machine learning based model to get a continuous alertness score. Utility functions are designed based on statistical analysis to give a quality score on different stages of alertness such as awake, long sleep and short duration power nap. An intelligent data collection approach is proposed in collaboration with the motion sensor in the smartwatch to reduce battery drainage. Overall, our proposed wearable based system provides a detailed analysis of alertness over a period in a systematic and optimized manner. We were able to achieve an accuracy of 80.1% for sleep/awake classification along with alertness score. This opens up the possibility for quantifying alertness levels using a single PPG sensor for better management of health related activities including sleep.

Validation of the CME Geomagnetic forecast alerts under COMESEP alert system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dumbovic, Mateja; Srivastava, Nandita; Khodia, Yamini; Vršnak, Bojan; Devos, Andy; Rodriguez, Luciano

2017-04-01

An automated space weather alert system has been developed under the EU FP7 project COMESEP (COronal Mass Ejections and Solar Energetic Particles: http://comesep.aeronomy.be) to forecast solar energetic particles (SEP) and coronal mass ejection (CME) risk levels at Earth. COMESEP alert system uses automated detection tool CACTus to detect potentially threatening CMEs, drag-based model (DBM) to predict their arrival and CME geo-effectiveness tool (CGFT) to predict their geomagnetic impact. Whenever CACTus detects a halo or partial halo CME and issues an alert, DBM calculates its arrival time at Earth and CGFT calculates its geomagnetic risk level. Geomagnetic risk level is calculated based on an estimation of the CME arrival probability and its likely geo-effectiveness, as well as an estimate of the geomagnetic-storm duration. We present the evaluation of the CME risk level forecast with COMESEP alert system based on a study of geo-effective CMEs observed during 2014. The validation of the forecast tool is done by comparing the forecasts with observations. In addition, we test the success rate of the automatic forecasts (without human intervention) against the forecasts with human intervention using advanced versions of DBM and CGFT (self standing tools available at Hvar Observatory website: http://oh.geof.unizg.hr). The results implicate that the success rate of the forecast is higher with human intervention and using more advanced tools. This work has received funding from the European Commission FP7 Project COMESEP (263252). We acknowledge the support of Croatian Science Foundation under the project 6212 „Solar and Stellar Variability".

Assessing the temporal aspects of attention and its correlates in aging and chronic stroke patients.

PubMed

Shalev, Nir; Humphreys, Glyn; Demeyere, Nele

2016-11-01

Temporal dynamics of attention have been in the spotlight of research since the earliest days of cognitive psychology. Typically, researchers describe two different aspects of the temporal fluctuations of attention: one is in intervals of milliseconds (phasic alertness), and the other over minutes or even hours (tonic alertness or sustained attention). In order to evaluate individual capacities for sustained attention and phasic alertness, most studies rely on variations of the Continuous Performance Task (CPT). Indices of sustained attention and phasic alertness are typically based on reaction times to targets; phasic alertness is related to the change in reaction times following a cue, and sustained attention is related to variability of reaction times during the task. In the following study, we attempted to establish a new approach for studying sustained attention and phasic alertness, not reliant solely on reaction time measures. We developed a new variation of the CPT with conjunctive feature targets and forward and backward masking to induce a higher variability in accuracy. This allowed us to assess an individual's ability to maintain the same level of sensitivity to targets (d-prime) across a ten minute period on the task as an index for sustained attention. We also assessed reaction times as a function of previous trial type, and suggest previous trial RT benefit might be a marker for an individual's phasic alertness. We demonstrated the use of this task with healthy aging controls and stroke survivors. As a demonstration of external validity of the novel paradigm, we present a correlation between how individual performance drops over time and individual reports of distractibility in everyday life on the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire. In addition, we found significant differences between the patient and control groups in our proposed marker of phasic alertness. We discuss the implications of our study for current assessment tools, as well as general differences in phasic alertness between clinical and neurologically unimpaired groups. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Monitoring alert and drowsy states by modeling EEG source nonstationarity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hsu, Sheng-Hsiou; Jung, Tzyy-Ping

2017-10-01

Objective. As a human brain performs various cognitive functions within ever-changing environments, states of the brain characterized by recorded brain activities such as electroencephalogram (EEG) are inevitably nonstationary. The challenges of analyzing the nonstationary EEG signals include finding neurocognitive sources that underlie different brain states and using EEG data to quantitatively assess the state changes. Approach. This study hypothesizes that brain activities under different states, e.g. levels of alertness, can be modeled as distinct compositions of statistically independent sources using independent component analysis (ICA). This study presents a framework to quantitatively assess the EEG source nonstationarity and estimate levels of alertness. The framework was tested against EEG data collected from 10 subjects performing a sustained-attention task in a driving simulator. Main results. Empirical results illustrate that EEG signals under alert versus drowsy states, indexed by reaction speeds to driving challenges, can be characterized by distinct ICA models. By quantifying the goodness-of-fit of each ICA model to the EEG data using the model deviation index (MDI), we found that MDIs were significantly correlated with the reaction speeds (r  =  -0.390 with alertness models and r  =  0.449 with drowsiness models) and the opposite correlations indicated that the two models accounted for sources in the alert and drowsy states, respectively. Based on the observed source nonstationarity, this study also proposes an online framework using a subject-specific ICA model trained with an initial (alert) state to track the level of alertness. For classification of alert against drowsy states, the proposed online framework achieved an averaged area-under-curve of 0.745 and compared favorably with a classic power-based approach. Significance. This ICA-based framework provides a new way to study changes of brain states and can be applied to monitoring cognitive or mental states of human operators in attention-critical settings or in passive brain-computer interfaces.

Runway Safety Monitor Algorithm for Single and Crossing Runway Incursion Detection and Alerting

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Green, David F., Jr.

2006-01-01

The Runway Safety Monitor (RSM) is an aircraft based algorithm for runway incursion detection and alerting that was developed in support of NASA's Runway Incursion Prevention System (RIPS) research conducted under the NASA Aviation Safety and Security Program's Synthetic Vision System project. The RSM algorithm provides warnings of runway incursions in sufficient time for pilots to take evasive action and avoid accidents during landings, takeoffs or when taxiing on the runway. The report documents the RSM software and describes in detail how RSM performs runway incursion detection and alerting functions for NASA RIPS. The report also describes the RIPS flight tests conducted at the Reno/Tahoe International Airport (RNO) and the Wallops Flight Facility (WAL) during July and August of 2004, and the RSM performance results and lessons learned from those flight tests.

Automated detection of optical counterparts to GRBs with RAPTOR

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Wozniak, P. R.; Vestrand, W. T.; Evans, S.

2006-05-19

The RAPTOR system (RAPid Telescopes for Optical Response) is an array of several distributed robotic telescopes that automatically respond to GCN localization alerts. Raptor-S is a 0.4-m telescope with 24 arc min. field of view employing a 1k x 1k Marconi CCD detector, and has already detected prompt optical emission from several GRBs within the first minute of the explosion. We present a real-time data analysis and alert system for automated identification of optical transients in Raptor-S GRB response data down to the sensitivity limit of {approx} 19 mag. Our custom data processing pipeline is designed to minimize the timemore » required to reliably identify transients and extract actionable information. The system utilizes a networked PostgreSQL database server for catalog access and distributes email alerts with successful detections.« less

Impact of e-alert for detection of acute kidney injury on processes of care and outcomes: protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis.

PubMed

Lachance, Philippe; Villeneuve, Pierre-Marc; Wilson, Francis P; Selby, Nicholas M; Featherstone, Robin; Rewa, Oleksa; Bagshaw, Sean M

2016-05-05

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common complication in hospitalised patients. It imposes significant risk for major morbidity and mortality. Moreover, patients suffering an episode of AKI consume considerable health resources. Recently, a number of studies have evaluated the implementation of automated electronic alerts (e-alerts) configured from electronic medical records (EMR) and clinical information systems (CIS) to warn healthcare providers of early or impending AKI in hospitalised patients. The impact of e-alerts on care processes, patient outcomes and health resource use, however, remains uncertain. We will perform a systematic review to describe and appraise e-alerts for AKI, and evaluate their impact on processes of care, clinical outcomes and health services use. In consultation with a research librarian, a search strategy will be developed and electronic databases (ie, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, Cochrane Library and Inspec via Engineering Village) searched. Selected grey literature sources will also be searched. Search themes will focus on e-alerts and AKI. Citation screening, selection, quality assessment and data abstraction will be performed in duplicate. The primary analysis will be narrative; however, where feasible, pooled analysis will be performed. Each e-alert will be described according to trigger, type of alert, target recipient and degree of intrusiveness. Pooled effect estimates will be described, where applicable. Our systematic review will synthesise the literature on the value of e-alerts to detect AKI, and their impact on processes, patient-centred outcomes and resource use, and also identify key knowledge gaps and barriers to implementation. This is a fundamental step in a broader research programme aimed to understand the ideal structure of e-alerts, target population and methods for implementation, to derive benefit. Research ethics approval is not required for this review. CRD42016033033. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/

Warning Alert HITL Experiment Results

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Monk, Kevin J.; Ferm, Lisa; Roberts, Zach

2018-01-01

Minimum Operational Performance Standards (MOPS) are being developed to support the integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in the National Airspace (NAS). Input from subject matter experts and multiple research studies have informed display requirements for Detect-and-Avoid (DAA) systems aimed at supporting timely and appropriate pilot responses to collision hazards. Phase 1 DAA MOPS alerting is designed to inform pilots if an avoidance maneuver is necessary; the two highest alert levels - caution and warning - indicate how soon pilot action is required and whether there is adequate time to coordinate with the air traffic controller (ATC). Additional empirical support is needed to clarify the extent to which warning-level alerting impacts DAA task performance. The present study explores the differential effects of the auditory and visual cues provided by the DAA Warning alert, and performance implications compared to caution-only alerting are discussed.

A New Paradigm of Technology-Enabled ‘Vital Signs’ for Early Detection of Health Change for Older Adults.

PubMed

Rantz, Marilyn J; Skubic, Marjorie; Popescu, Mihail; Galambos, Colleen; Koopman, Richelle J; Alexander, Gregory L; Phillips, Lorraine J; Musterman, Katy; Back, Jessica; Miller, Steven J

2015-01-01

Environmentally embedded (nonwearable) sensor technology is in continuous use in elder housing to monitor a new set of ‘vital signs' that continuously measure the functional status of older adults, detect potential changes in health or functional status, and alert healthcare providers for early recognition and treatment of those changes. Older adult participants' respiration, pulse, and restlessness are monitored as they sleep. Gait speed, stride length, and stride time are calculated daily, and automatically assess for increasing fall risk. Activity levels are summarized and graphically displayed for easy interpretation. Falls are detected when they occur and alerts are sent immediately to healthcare providers, so time to rescue may be reduced. Automated health alerts are sent to healthcare staff, based on continuously running algorithms applied to the sensor data, days and weeks before typical signs or symptoms are detected by the person, family members, or healthcare providers. Discovering these new functional status ‘vital signs', developing automated methods for interpreting them, and alerting others when changes occur have the potential to transform chronic illness management and facilitate aging in place through the end of life. Key findings of research in progress at the University of Missouri are discussed in this viewpoint article, as well as obstacles to widespread adoption.

Cockpit display of hazardous weather information

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hansman, R. John, Jr.; Wanke, Craig

1991-01-01

Information transfer and display issues associated with the dissemination of hazardous weather warnings are studied in the context of wind shear alerts. Operational and developmental wind shear detection systems are briefly reviewed. The July 11, 1988 microburst events observed as part of the Denver Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) operational evaluation are analyzed in terms of information transfer and the effectiveness of the microburst alerts. Information transfer, message content and display issues associated with microburst alerts generated from ground based sources (Doppler Radar, Low Level Wind Shear Alert System, and Pilot Reports) are evaluated by means fo pilot opinion surveys and part task simulator studies.

Correlation of the Hippocampal theta rhythm to changes in hypothalamic temperature

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Saleh, M. A.; Horowitz, J. M.; Hsieh, A. C. L.

1974-01-01

Warming and cooling the preoptic anterior hypothalamic area in awake, loosely restrained rabbits was found to evoke theta rhythm. This is consistent with previous studies indicating that theta rhythm is a nonspecific response evoked by stimulation of several sensory modalities. Several studies have correlated theta rhythm with alertness. A neural pathway involving the hypothalamus, the hippocampus, the septal area, and the reticular formation is proposed. Thus, a role of this pathway may be to alert the animal to changes in its body temperature.

Is there a link between the hospital-acquired injurious fall rates in US acute care hospitals and these institutions' implementation levels of computerized systems?

PubMed

Tzeng, Huey-Ming; Hu, Hsou Mei; Yin, Chang-Yi

2011-12-01

Medicare no longer reimburses acute care hospitals for the costs of additional care required due to hospital-acquired injuries. Consequently, this study explored the effective computerized systems to inform practice for better interventions to reduce fall risk. It provided a correlation between type of computerized system and hospital-acquired injurious fall rates at acute care hospitals in California, Florida, and New York. It used multiple publicly available data sets, with the hospital as the unit of analysis. Descriptive and Pearson correlation analyses were used. The analysis included 462 hospitals. Significant correlations could be categorized into two groups: (1) meaningful computerized systems that were associated with lower injurious fall rates: the decision support systems for drug allergy alerts, drug-drug interaction alerts, and drug-laboratory interaction alerts; and (2) computerized systems that were associated with higher injurious fall rates: the decision support system for drug-drug interaction alerts and the computerized provider order entry system for radiology tests. Future research may include additional states, multiple years of data, and patient-level data to validate this study's findings. This effort may further inform policy makers and the public about effective clinical computerized systems provided to clinicians to improve their practice decisions and care outcomes.

Analysis of UAS DAA Alerting in Fast-Time Simulations without DAA Mitigation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Thipphavong, David P.; Santiago, Confesor; Isaacson, Douglas R.; Lee, Seung Man; Park, Chunki; Refai, Mohamad Said; Snow, James

2015-01-01

Realization of the expected proliferation of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) operations in the National Airspace System (NAS) depends on the development and validation of performance standards for UAS Detect and Avoid (DAA) Systems. The RTCA Special Committee 228 is charged with leading the development of draft Minimum Operational Performance Standards (MOPS) for UAS DAA Systems. NASA, as a participating member of RTCA SC-228 is committed to supporting the development and validation of draft requirements for DAA alerting system performance. A recent study conducted using NASA's ACES (Airspace Concept Evaluation System) simulation capability begins to address questions surrounding the development of draft MOPS for DAA alerting systems. ACES simulations were conducted to study the performance of alerting systems proposed by the SC-228 DAA Alerting sub-group. Analysis included but was not limited to: 1) correct alert (and timeliness), 2) false alert (and severity and duration), 3) missed alert, and 4) probability of an alert type at the time of loss of well clear. The performance of DAA alerting systems when using intent vs. dead-reckoning for UAS ownship trajectories was also compared. The results will be used by SC-228 to inform decisions about the surveillance standards of UAS DAA systems and future requirements development and validation efforts.

ElarmS Earthquake Early Warning System 2016 Performance and New Research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chung, A. I.; Allen, R. M.; Hellweg, M.; Henson, I. H.; Neuhauser, D. S.

2016-12-01

The ElarmS earthquake early warning system has been detecting earthquakes throughout California since 2007. It is one of the algorithms that contributes to the West Coast ShakeAlert, a prototype earthquake early warning system being developed for the US West Coast. ElarmS is also running in the Pacific Northwest, and in Israel, Chile, Turkey, and Peru in test mode. We summarize the performance of the ElarmS system over the past year and review some of the more problematic events that the system has encountered. During the first half of 2016 (2016-01-01 through 2016-07-21), ElarmS successfully alerted on all events with ANSS catalog magnitudes M>3 in the Los Angeles area. The mean alert time for these 9 events was just 4.84 seconds. In the San Francisco Bay Area, ElarmS detected 26 events with ANSS catalog magnitudes M>3. The alert times for these events is 9.12 seconds. The alert times are longer in the Bay Area than in the Los Angeles area due to the sparser network of stations in the Bay Area. 7 Bay Area events were not detected by ElarmS. These events occurred in areas where there is less dense station coverage. In addition, ElarmS sent alerts for 13 of the 16 moderately-sized (ANSS catalog magnitudes M>4) events that occurred throughout the state of California. One of those missed events was a M4.5 that occurred far offshore in the northernmost part of the state. The other two missed events occurred inland in regions with sparse station coverage. Over the past year, we have worked towards the implementation of a new filterbank teleseismic filter algorithm, which we will discuss. Other than teleseismic events, a significant cause of false alerts and severely mislocated events is spurious triggers being associated with triggers from a real earthquake. Here, we address new approaches to filtering out problematic triggers.

Behavior of Cackling Canada Geese during brood rearing

USGS Publications Warehouse

Fowler, Ada C.; Ely, Craig R.

1997-01-01

We studied behavior of Cackling Canada Goose (Branta canadensis minima, cacklers) broods between 1992 and 1996 on the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge in western Alaska. An increase in time spent foraging by goslings during our study was weakly correlated with an increase in the size of the local breeding population. Amount of time spent feeding by adults and goslings increased throughout the brood rearing period. Overall, goslings spent more time feeding than either adult females or males, and adult males spent the most time alert. Time alert varied among brood rearing areas and increased with brood size, but there was no variation in time spent alert among years. Increases in feeding or alert behaviors were at a cost to time spent in all other behaviors. We suggest that there is not a simple trade-off between feeding and alert behavior in cacklers, but instead that time spent feeding and alert are optimized against all other behaviors. We suggest that forage quality and availability determines the amount of time spent feeding, whereas the threat of predation or disturbance determines the amount of time spent alert.

Radar-based alert system to operate a sewerage network: relevance and operational effectiveness after several years of use.

PubMed

Faure, D; Payrastre, O; Auchet, P

2005-01-01

Since January 2000, the sewerage network of a very urbanised catchment area in the Greater Nancy Urban Community has been operated according to the alarms generated in real time by a storm alert system using weather radar data. This alert system is based on an automatic identification of intense rain cells in the radar images. This paper presents the characteristics of this alert system and synthesises the main results of two complementary studies realised in 2002 in order to estimate the relevance and the operational effectiveness of the alert system. The first study consisted in an off-line analysis of almost 50,000 intense rain cells detected in four years of historical radar data. The second study was an analysis of the experience feedback after two years of operational use of this alert system. The results of these studies are discussed in function of the initial operational objectives.

Centralized Alert-Processing and Asset Planning for Sensorwebs

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Castano, Rebecca; Chien, Steve A.; Rabideau, Gregg R.; Tang, Benyang

2010-01-01

A software program provides a Sensorweb architecture for alert-processing, event detection, asset allocation and planning, and visualization. It automatically tasks and re-tasks various types of assets such as satellites and robotic vehicles in response to alerts (fire, weather) extracted from various data sources, including low-level Webcam data. JPL has adapted cons iderable Sensorweb infrastructure that had been previously applied to NASA Earth Science applications. This NASA Earth Science Sensorweb has been in operational use since 2003, and has proven reliability of the Sensorweb technologies for robust event detection and autonomous response using space and ground assets. Unique features of the software include flexibility to a range of detection and tasking methods including those that require aggregation of data over spatial and temporal ranges, generality of the response structure to represent and implement a range of response campaigns, and the ability to respond rapidly.

An Evaluation of Microbial Profile in Halitosis with Tongue Coating Using PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction)- A Clinical and Microbiological Study

PubMed Central

Kamaraj R., Dinesh; Bhushan, Kala S.; K.L., Vandana

2014-01-01

Background: Medline search using key words halitosis, tongue coating, polymerase chain reaction, microbial profile did not reveal any study. Hence, the purpose of the present investigation was to assess the malodor using the organoleptic method and tanita device; to quantify odoriferous microorganisms using Polymerase Chain Reaction technique in chronic periodontitis patients. Materials and Methods: The study included 30 chronic periodontitis patients. Halitosis was detected using organoleptic assessment & tanita breath alert. Microbial analysis of Pg, Tf & Fn was done using PCR. Plaque index (PI), gingival index (GI), gingival bleeding index (GBI) were recorded. Result: The maximum score of 3 for tongue coating was found in 60% of selected subjects. The tanita breath alert measured VSC level of score 2 in 60% of selected subjects while organoleptic score of 4 was found in 50% of subjects. The maximum mean value of 31.1±36.5 was found to be of F. nucleatum (Fn) followed by P. gingivalis (Pg) (13±13.3) & T. forsythia (Tf) (7.16±8.68) in tongue samples of selected patients. A weak positive correlation was found between VSC levels (tanita score & organoleptic score) and clinical parameters. Conclusion: The halitosis assessment by measuring VSC levels using organoleptic method and tanita breath alert are clinically feasible. Maximum tongue coating was found in 60% of patients. Fn was found comparatively more than the Pg & Tf. A weak positive correlation was found between VSC levels and clinical parameters such as PI, GI & GBI. Thus,the dentist/ periodontist should emphasise on tongue cleaning measures that would reduce the odoriferous microbial load. PMID:24596791

Detecting agitation and aggression in people with dementia using sensors-A systematic review.

PubMed

Khan, Shehroz S; Ye, Bing; Taati, Babak; Mihailidis, Alex

2018-06-01

Agitation and aggression are among the most challenging symptoms of dementia. Agitated persons with dementia can harm themselves, their caregivers, or other patients in a care facility. Automatic detection of agitation would be useful to alert caregivers so that appropriate interventions can be performed. The building blocks in the automatic detection of agitation and aggression are appropriate sensing platforms and generalized predictive models. In this article, we perform a systematic review of studies that use different types of sensors to detect agitation and aggression in persons with dementia. We conclude that actigraphy shows some evidence of correlation with incidences of agitation and aggression; however, multimodal sensing has not been fully evaluated for this purpose. Based on this systematic review, we provide guidelines and recommendations for future research directions in this field. Copyright © 2018 the Alzheimer's Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Evaluation of BacT/Alert 3D Liquid Culture System for Recovery of Mycobacteria from Clinical Specimens Using Sodium Dodecyl (Lauryl) Sulfate-NaOH Decontamination

PubMed Central

Carricajo, A.; Fonsale, N.; Vautrin, A. C.; Aubert, G.

2001-01-01

A total of 52 mycobacterial isolates were recovered from 1,197 clinical specimens decontaminated by a sodium dodecyl (lauryl) sulfate (SDS)-NaOH protocol. Of these, 94% were recovered with the BacT/Alert 3D system (Organon Teknika, Durham, N.C.) and 79% were recovered on Löwenstein-Jensen (LJ) medium. Mean times to detection of organisms of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (n = 47) were 22.8 days with LJ medium and 16.2 days with the system. The BacT/Alert 3D system is a rapid and efficient detection system which can be used with an SDS-NaOH decontamination procedure. PMID:11574623

Time-to-detection of bacteria and yeast with the BACTEC FX versus BacT/Alert Virtuo blood culture systems.

PubMed

Somily, Ali Mohammed; Habib, Hanan Ahmed; Torchyan, Armen Albert; Sayyed, Samina B; Absar, Muhammed; Al-Aqeel, Rima; Binkhamis, A Khalifa

2018-01-01

Bloodstream infections are associated with high rates of morbidity and mortality. Rapid detection of bloodstream infections is important in achieving better patient outcomes. Compare the time-to-detection (TTD) of the new BacT/Alert Virtuo and the BACTEC FX automated blood culture systems. Prospective simulated comparison of two instruments using seeded samples. Medical microbiology laboratory. Blood culture bottles were seeded in triplicate with each of the standard ATCC strains of aerobes, anaerobes and yeast. TTD was calculated as the length of time from the beginning of culture incubation to the detection of bacterial growth. TTD for the various tested organisms on the two microbial detection systems. The 99 bottles of seeded blood cultures incubated in each of the blood culture systems included 21 anaerobic, 39 aerobic and 39 pediatric bottles. The BacT/Alert Virtuo system exhibited significantly shorter TTD for 72.7 % of the tested organisms compared to BACTEC FX system with a median difference in mean TTD of 2.1 hours (interquartile range: 1.5-3.5 hours). The BACTEC FX system was faster in 15.2% (5/33) of microorganisms, with a median difference in mean TTD of 25.9 hours (IQR: 9.1-29.2 hours). TTD was significantly shorter for most of the microorganisms tested on the new BacT/Alert Virtuo system compared to the BACTEC FX system. Use of simulated cultures to assess TTD may not precisely represent clinical blood cultures. None.

Computerized pharmacy surveillance and alert system for drug-related problems.

PubMed

Ferrández, O; Urbina, O; Grau, S; Mateu-de-Antonio, J; Marin-Casino, M; Portabella, J; Mojal, S; Riu, M; Salas, E

2017-04-01

Because of the impact of drug-related problems (DRPs) on morbidity and mortality, there is a need for computerized strategies to increase drug safety. The detection and identification of the causes of potential DRPs can be facilitated by the incorporation of a pharmacy warning system (PWS) in the computerized prescriber order entry (CPOE) and its application in the routine validation of inpatient drug therapy. A limited number of studies have evaluated a clinical decision support system to monitor drug treatment. Most of these applications have utilized a small range of drugs with alerts and/or types of alert. The objective of this study was to describe the implementation of a PWS integrated in the electronic medical record (EMR). The PWS was developed in 2003-2004. Pharmacological information to generate drug alerts was entered on demographic data, drug dosage, laboratory tests related to the prescribed drug and drug combinations (interactions, duplications and necessary combinations). The PWS was applied in the prescription reviews conducted in patients admitted to the hospital in 2012. Information on 83% of the drugs included in the pharmacopeia was introduced into the PWS, allowing detection of 2808 potential DRPs, representing 79·1% of all potential DRPs detected during the study period. Twenty per cent of PWS DRPs were clinically relevant, requiring pharmacist intervention. The PWS detected most potential DRPs, thus increasing inpatient safety. The detection ability of the PWS was higher than that reported for other tools described in the literature. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Collision Avoidance for Airport Traffic Simulation Evaluation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jones, Denise R.; Prinzel, Lawrence J., III; Shelton, Kevin J.; Bailey, Randall E.; Otero, Sharon D.; Barker, Glover D.

2010-01-01

A Collision Avoidance for Airport Traffic (CAAT) concept for the airport Terminal Maneuvering Area (TMA) was evaluated in a simulation study at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Research Center. CAAT is being designed to enhance surface situation awareness and provide cockpit alerts of potential conflicts during runway, taxi, and low altitude air-to-air operations. The purpose of the study was to evaluate pilot reaction to conflict events in the TMA near the airport, different alert timings for various scenarios, alerting display concepts, and directive alerting concepts. This paper gives an overview of the conflict detection and resolution (CD&R) concept, simulation study, and test results

Polimedication: applicability of a computer tool to reduce polypharmacy in nursing homes.

PubMed

García-Caballero, Tomás M; Lojo, Juan; Menéndez, Carlos; Fernández-Álvarez, Roberto; Mateos, Raimundo; Garcia-Caballero, Alejandro

2018-05-11

ABSTRACTBackground:The risks of polypharmacy can be far greater than the benefits, especially in the elderly. Comorbidity makes polypharmacy very prevalent in this population; thus, increasing the occurrence of adverse effects. To solve this problem, the most common strategy is to use lists of potentially inappropriate medications. However, this strategy is time consuming. In order to minimize the expenditure of time, our group devised a pilot computer tool (Polimedication) that automatically processes lists of medication providing the corresponding Screening Tool of Older Persons' potentially inappropriate Prescriptions alerts and facilitating standardized reports. The drug lists for 115 residents in Santa Marta Nursing Home (Fundación San Rosendo, Ourense, Spain) were processed. The program detected 10.04 alerts/patient, of which 74.29% were not repeated. After reviewing these alerts, 12.12% of the total (1.30 alerts/patient) were considered relevant. The largest number of alerts (41.48%) involved neuroleptic drugs. Finally, the patient's family physician or psychiatrist accepted the alert and made medication changes in 62.86% of the relevant alerts. The largest number of changes (38.64%) also involved neuroleptic drugs. The mean time spent in the generation and review of the warnings was 6.26 minute/patient. Total changes represented a saving of 32.77 € per resident/year in medication. The application of Polimedication tool detected a high proportion of potentially inappropriate prescriptions in institutionalized elderly patients. The use of the computerized tool achieved significant savings in pharmaceutical expenditure, as well as a reduction in the time taken for medication review.

Role of data aggregation in biosurveillance detection strategies with applications from ESSENCE.

PubMed

Burkom, Howard S; Elbert, Y; Feldman, A; Lin, J

2004-09-24

Syndromic surveillance systems are used to monitor daily electronic data streams for anomalous counts of features of varying specificity. The monitored quantities might be counts of clinical diagnoses, sales of over-the-counter influenza remedies, school absenteeism among a given age group, and so forth. Basic data-aggregation decisions for these systems include determining which records to count and how to group them in space and time. This paper discusses the application of spatial and temporal data-aggregation strategies for multiple data streams to alerting algorithms appropriate to the surveillance region and public health threat of interest. Such a strategy was applied and evaluated for a complex, authentic, multisource, multiregion environment, including >2 years of data records from a system-evaluation exercise for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA). Multivariate and multiple univariate statistical process control methods were adapted and applied to the DARPA data collection. Comparative parametric analyses based on temporal aggregation were used to optimize the performance of these algorithms for timely detection of a set of outbreaks identified in the data by a team of epidemiologists. The sensitivity and timeliness of the most promising detection methods were tested at empirically calculated thresholds corresponding to multiple practical false-alert rates. Even at the strictest false-alert rate, all but one of the outbreaks were detected by the best method, and the best methods achieved a 1-day median time before alert over the set of test outbreaks. These results indicate that a biosurveillance system can provide a substantial alerting-timeliness advantage over traditional public health monitoring for certain outbreaks. Comparative analyses of individual algorithm results indicate further achievable improvement in sensitivity and specificity.

Detection of U Sco in X-rays

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schlegel, Eric M.; Schaefer, Brad; Pagnotta, Ashley; Page, Kim; Osborne, Julian; Drake, Jeremy; Orio, Marina; Takei, Dai; Kuulkers, Erik; Ness, Jan-Uwe

2010-02-01

Eric M. Schlegel (UT-San Antonio); Brad Schaefer and Ashley Pagnotta (LSU); Kim Page and Julian Osborne (Leicester); Jeremy Drake (SAO); Marina Orio (Wisconsin), Dai Takei (Rikkyo Univ.), and Erik Kuulkers and Jan-Uwe Ness (ESA/ESAC), representing a large collaboration, report that U Sco has been detected in the X-ray band using the Swift satellite following the optical outburst discovery at V=8.05 on 2010 January 28.4743 (www.aavso.org/publications/alerts/alert415.shtml).

Performance of two blood culture systems to detect anaerobic bacteria. Is there any difference?

PubMed

Mueller-Premru, Manica; Jeverica, Samo; Papst, Lea; Nagy, Elisabeth

2017-06-01

We studied the performance characteristics of two blood culture (BC) bottles/systems, (i) BacT/ALERT-FN Plus/3D (bioMérieux, Marcy l'Étoile, France) and (ii) BACTEC-Lytic/9000 (Becton Dickinson, Sparks, USA) for detection of growth and time-to-positivity (TTP) against a balanced and diverse collection of anaerobic bacterial strains (n = 48) that included reference strains (n = 19) and clinical isolates (n = 29) of 32 species (15 Gram-negative and 17 Gram-positive). Standard suspension of bacteria was inoculated to each bottle in duplicates and incubated in the corresponding system. Overall, 62.5% (n = 30) of strains were detected by both BC bottle types. Comparing the two, 70.8% (n = 34) and 79.2% (n = 38) of strains were detected by BacT/ALERT-FN Plus and BACTEC-Lytic bottles, respectively (p = 0.38). Among Gram-negative anaerobes (n = 25) the detection rate was 76.0% (n = 19) vs. 92.0% (n = 23) (p = 0.22), respectively. Among Gram-positive anaerobes (n = 23) the detection rate was 65.2% (n = 15) in both bottles (p = 1). The average TTP per bottle was calculated only for the strains detected by both systems (n = 30) and was 40.85 h and 28.08 h for BacT/ALERT-FN Plus and BACTEC-Lytic, respectively (p < 0.001). The mean difference was 12.76 h (95% CI: 6.21-19-31 h). Six anaerobic strains were not detected by any system, including Gram-negative Porphyromonas gingivalis, and five Gram-positive strains: Finegoldia magna, Peptostreptococcus anaerobius, Propionibacterium acnes, Clostridium novyi and Clostridium clostridioforme. Furthermore, Eggerthella lenta and Prevotella bivia were detected only by BacT/ALERT-FN Plus, while Prevotella disiens and Prevotella intermedia were detected only by BACTEC-Lytic bottles. There were no major differences in detection rate among clinical and reference strains. Anaerobic bacteria represent a minority of BC isolates, however, far from ideal detection rate was observed in this study for both tested bottle/system combinations. Nevertheless, in those cases where both gave positive signal, BACTEC-Lytic was superior to BacT/ALERT FN Plus with 12.76 h shorter mean TTP. Improvements of media in blood culture bottles available for detection of anaerobes are warranted. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Effects of dietary tryptophan and phenylalanine-tyrosine depletion on phasic alertness in healthy adults - A pilot study.

PubMed

Hildebrand, Patricia; Königschulte, Werner; Gaber, Tilman Jakob; Bubenzer-Busch, Sarah; Helmbold, Katrin; Biskup, Caroline Sarah; Langen, Karl-Josef; Fink, Gereon Rudolf; Zepf, Florian Daniel

2015-01-01

The synthesis of the neurotransmitters serotonin (5-HT) and dopamine (DA) in the brain can be directly altered by dietary manipulation of their relevant precursor amino acids (AA). There is evidence that altered serotonergic and dopaminergic neurotransmission are both associated with impaired attentional control. Specifically, phasic alertness is one specific aspect of attention that has been linked to changes in 5-HT and DA availability in different neurocircuitries related to attentional processes. The present study investigated the impact of short-term reductions in central nervous system 5-HT and DA synthesis, which was achieved by dietary depletion of the relevant precursor AA, on phasic alertness in healthy adult volunteers; body weight-adapted dietary tryptophan and phenylalanine-tyrosine depletion (PTD) techniques were used. The study employed a double-blind between-subject design. Fifty healthy male and female subjects were allocated to three groups in a randomized and counterbalanced manner and received three different dietary challenge conditions: acute tryptophan depletion (ATD, for the depletion of 5-HT; N=16), PTD (for the depletion of DA; N=17), and a balanced AA load (BAL; N=17), which served as a control condition. Three hours after challenge intake (ATD/PTD/BAL), phasic alertness was assessed using a standardized test battery for attentional performance (TAP). Blood samples for AA level analyses were obtained at baseline and 360 min after the challenge intake. Overall, there were no significant differences in phasic alertness for the different challenge conditions. Regarding PTD administration, a positive correlation between the reaction times and the DA-related depletion magnitude was detected via the lower plasma tyrosine levels and the slow reaction times of the first run of the task. In contrast, higher tryptophan concentrations were associated with slower reaction times in the fourth run of the task in the same challenge group. The present study is the first to demonstrate preliminary data that support an association between decreased central nervous system DA synthesis, which was achieved by dietary depletion strategies, and slower reaction times in specific runs of a task designed to assess phasic alertness in healthy adult volunteers; these findings are consistent with previous evidence that links phasic alertness with dopaminergic neurotransmission. A lack of significant differences between the three groups could be due to compensatory mechanisms and the limited sample size, as well as the dietary challenge procedures administered to healthy participants and the strict exclusion criteria used. The potential underlying neurochemical processes related to phasic alertness should be the subject of further investigations.

Flight crew interface aspects of forward-looking airborne windshear detection systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Anderson, Charles D.; Carbaugh, David C.

1993-01-01

The goal of this research effort was to conduct analyses and research which could provide guidelines for design of the crew interface of an integrated windshear system. Addressed were HF issues, crew/system requirements, candidate display formats, alerting criteria, and crew procedures. A survey identified five flight management issues as top priority: missed alert acceptability; avoidance distance needed; false alert acceptability; nuisance rate acceptability; and crew procedures. Results of a simulation study indicated that the warning time for a look-ahead alert needs to be between 11 and 36 seconds (target of 23 seconds) before the reactive system triggers in order to be effective. Pilots considered the standard go-around maneuver most appropriate for look-ahead alerts, and the escape maneuvers used did not require lateral turns. Prototype display formats were reviewed or developed for alerting the crew; providing guidance to avoid or escape windshear; and status displays to provide windshear situational awareness. The three alerting levels now in use were considered appropriate, with a fourth (time-critical) level as a possible addition, although many reviewers felt only two levels of alerting were needed. Another survey gathered expert opinion on what crew procedures and alerting criteria should be used for look-ahead, or integrated, windshear systems, with a wide diversity of opinion in these areas.

Initial Evaluation of a Conflict Detection Tool in the Terminal Area

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Verma Savita Arora; Tang, Huabin; Ballinger, Deborah S.; Kozon, Thomas E.; Farrahi, Amir Hossein

2012-01-01

Despite the recent economic recession and its adverse impact on air travel, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) continues to forecast an increase in air traffic demand that may see traffic double or triple by the year 2025. Increases in air traffic will burden the air traffic management system, and higher levels of safety and efficiency will be required. The air traffic controllers primary task is to ensure separation between aircraft in their airspace and keep the skies safe. As air traffic is forecasted to increase in volume and complexity [1], there is an increased likelihood of conflicts between aircraft, which adds risk and inefficiency to air traffic management and increases controller workload. To attenuate these factors, recent ATM research has shown that air and ground-based automation tools could reduce controller workload, especially if the automation is focused on conflict detection and resolution. Conflict Alert is a short time horizon conflict detection tool deployed in the Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON), which has limited utility due to the high number of false alerts generated and its use of dead reckoning to predict loss of separation between aircraft. Terminal Tactical Separation Assurance Flight Environment (T-TSAFE) is a short time horizon conflict detection tool that uses both flight intent and dead reckoning to detect conflicts. Results of a fast time simulation experiment indicated that TTSAFE provided a more effective alert lead-time and generated less false alerts than Conflict Alert [2]. TSAFE was previously tested in a Human-In-The-Loop (HITL) simulation study that focused on the en route phase of flight [3]. The current study tested the T-TSAFE tool in an HITL simulation study, focusing on the terminal environment with current day operations. The study identified procedures, roles, responsibilities, information requirements and usability, with the help of TRACON controllers who participated in the experiment. Metrics such as lead alert time, alert response time, workload, situation awareness and other measures were statistically analyzed. These metrics were examined from an overall perspective and comparisons between conditions (altitude resolutions via keyboard entry vs. ADS-B entry) and controller positions (two final approach sectors and two feeder sectors) were also examined. Results of these analyses and controller feedback provided evidence of T-TSAFE s potential promise as a useful air traffic controller tool. Heuristic analysis also provided information on ways in which the T-TSAFE tool can be improved. Details of analyses results will be presented in the full paper.

The Swift Burst Alert Telescope Detected Seyfert 1 Galaxies: X-Ray Broadband Properties and Warm Absorbers

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Winter, Lisa M.; Veilleux, Sylvain; McKernan, Barry; Kallman, T.

2012-01-01

We present results from an analysis of the broadband, 0.3-195 keV, X-ray spectra of 48 Seyfert 1-1.5 sources detected in the very hard X-rays with the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT). This sample is selected in an all-sky survey conducted in the 14-195 keV band. Therefore, our sources are largely unbiased toward both obscuration and host galaxy properties. Our detailed and uniform model fits to Suzaku/BAT and XMM-Newton/BAT spectra include the neutral absorption, direct power-law, reflected emission, soft excess, warm absorption, and narrow Fe I K[alpha] emission properties for the entire sample. We significantly detect O VII and O VIII edges in 52% of our sample. The strength of these detections is strongly correlated with the neutral column density measured in the spectrum. Among the strongest detections, X-ray grating and UV observations, where available, indicate outflowing material. The ionized column densities of sources with O VII and O VIII detections are clustered in a narrow range with Nwarm [approx] 1021 cm-2, while sources without strong detections have column densities of ionized gas an order of magnitude lower. Therefore, we note that sources without strong detections likely have warm ionized outflows present but at low column densities that are not easily probed with current X-ray observations. Sources with strong complex absorption have a strong soft excess, which may or may not be due to difficulties in modeling the complex spectra of these sources. Still, the detection of a flat [Gamma] [approx] 1 and a strong soft excess may allow us to infer the presence of strong absorption in low signal-to-noise active galactic nucleus spectra. Additionally, we include a useful correction from the Swift BAT luminosity to bolometric luminosity, based on a comparison of our spectral fitting results with published spectral energy distribution fits from 33 of our sources.

Bio-ALIRT biosurveillance detection algorithm evaluation.

PubMed

Siegrist, David; Pavlin, J

2004-09-24

Early detection of disease outbreaks by a medical biosurveillance system relies on two major components: 1) the contribution of early and reliable data sources and 2) the sensitivity, specificity, and timeliness of biosurveillance detection algorithms. This paper describes an effort to assess leading detection algorithms by arranging a common challenge problem and providing a common data set. The objectives of this study were to determine whether automated detection algorithms can reliably and quickly identify the onset of natural disease outbreaks that are surrogates for possible terrorist pathogen releases, and do so at acceptable false-alert rates (e.g., once every 2-6 weeks). Historic de-identified data were obtained from five metropolitan areas over 23 months; these data included International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) codes related to respiratory and gastrointestinal illness syndromes. An outbreak detection group identified and labeled two natural disease outbreaks in these data and provided them to analysts for training of detection algorithms. All outbreaks in the remaining test data were identified but not revealed to the detection groups until after their analyses. The algorithms established a probability of outbreak for each day's counts. The probability of outbreak was assessed as an "actual" alert for different false-alert rates. The best algorithms were able to detect all of the outbreaks at false-alert rates of one every 2-6 weeks. They were often able to detect for the same day human investigators had identified as the true start of the outbreak. Because minimal data exists for an actual biologic attack, determining how quickly an algorithm might detect such an attack is difficult. However, application of these algorithms in combination with other data-analysis methods to historic outbreak data indicates that biosurveillance techniques for analyzing syndrome counts can rapidly detect seasonal respiratory and gastrointestinal illness outbreaks. Further research is needed to assess the value of electronic data sources for predictive detection. In addition, simulations need to be developed and implemented to better characterize the size and type of biologic attack that can be detected by current methods by challenging them under different projected operational conditions.

Classification of AT2018bym as a Type I Superluminous Supernova

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Blanchard, P.; Gomez, S.; Berger, E.; Nicholl, M.; Kattner, S.; Weiner, B.

2018-06-01

AT2018bym = ATLAS18ohj = MLS180520:184313+451228 = ZTF18aapgrxo was announced to the TNS by ATLAS (Tonry et al. 2011; ATel #8680) with a detection on 10 May 2018 UT and was detected even earlier by CRTS (Drake et al. 2009) on 5 May 2018 UT. We selected this event for spectroscopic follow up based on its ZTF data (Bellm & Kulkarni 2017; ATel #11266) as available through the ZTF Alert Archive (https://ztf.uw.edu/alerts/public/).

Pattern recognition applied to infrared images for early alerts in fog

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Boucher, Vincent; Marchetti, Mario; Dumoulin, Jean; Cord, Aurélien

2014-09-01

Fog conditions are the cause of severe car accidents in western countries because of the poor induced visibility. Its forecast and intensity are still very difficult to predict by weather services. Infrared cameras allow to detect and to identify objects in fog while visibility is too low for eye detection. Over the past years, the implementation of cost effective infrared cameras on some vehicles has enabled such detection. On the other hand pattern recognition algorithms based on Canny filters and Hough transformation are a common tool applied to images. Based on these facts, a joint research program between IFSTTAR and Cerema has been developed to study the benefit of infrared images obtained in a fog tunnel during its natural dissipation. Pattern recognition algorithms have been applied, specifically on road signs which shape is usually associated to a specific meaning (circular for a speed limit, triangle for an alert, …). It has been shown that road signs were detected early enough in images, with respect to images in the visible spectrum, to trigger useful alerts for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems.

Performance of Two Resin-Containing Blood Culture Media in Detection of Bloodstream Infections and in Direct Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization–Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) Broth Assays for Isolate Identification: Clinical Comparison of the BacT/Alert Plus and Bactec Plus Systems

PubMed Central

Fiori, Barbara; D'Inzeo, Tiziana; Di Florio, Viviana; De Maio, Flavio; De Angelis, Giulia; Giaquinto, Alessia; Campana, Lara; Tanzarella, Eloisa; Tumbarello, Mario; Antonelli, Massimo; Spanu, Teresa

2014-01-01

We compared the clinical performances of the BacT/Alert Plus (bioMérieux) and Bactec Plus (Becton Dickinson) aerobic and anaerobic blood culture (BC) media with adsorbent polymeric beads. Patients ≥16 years old with suspected bloodstream infections (BSIs) were enrolled in intensive care units and infectious disease wards. A single 40-ml blood sample was collected from each and used to inoculate (10 ml/bottle) one set of BacT/Alert Plus cultures and one set of Bactec Plus cultures, each set consisting of one aerobic and one anaerobic bottle. Cultures were incubated ≤5 days in the BacT/Alert 3D and Bactec FX instruments, respectively. A total of 128 unique BSI episodes were identified based on the recovery of clinically significant growth in 212 aerobic cultures (106 BacT/Alert and 106 Bactec) and 151 anaerobic cultures (82 BacT/Alert and 69 Bactec). The BacT/Alert aerobic medium had higher recovery rates for Gram-positive cocci (P = 0.024), whereas the Bactec aerobic medium was superior for recovery of Gram-negative bacilli (P = 0.006). BacT/Alert anaerobic medium recovery rates exceeded those of the Bactec anaerobic medium for total organisms (P = 0.003), Gram-positive cocci (P = 0.013), and Escherichia coli (P = 0.030). In terms of capacity for diagnosing the 128 septic episodes, the BacT/Alert and Bactec sets were comparable, although the former sets diagnosed more BSIs caused by Gram-positive cocci (P = 0.008). They also allowed earlier identification of coagulase-negative staphylococcal growth (mean, 2.8 h; P = 0.003) and growth in samples from patients not on antimicrobial therapy that yielded positive results (mean, 1.3 h; P < 0.001). Similarly high percentages of microorganisms in BacT/Alert and Bactec cultures (93.8% and 93.3%, respectively) were identified by direct matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization–time of flight mass spectrometry assay of BC broths. The BacT/Alert Plus media line appears to be a reliable, timesaving tool for routine detection of BSIs in the population we studied, although further studies are needed to evaluate their performance in other settings. PMID:25031441

Dynamic malware containment under an epidemic model with alert

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Tianrui; Yang, Lu-Xing; Yang, Xiaofan; Wu, Yingbo; Tang, Yuan Yan

2017-03-01

Alerting at the early stage of malware invasion turns out to be an important complement to malware detection and elimination. This paper addresses the issue of how to dynamically contain the prevalence of malware at a lower cost, provided alerting is feasible. A controlled epidemic model with alert is established, and an optimal control problem based on the epidemic model is formulated. The optimality system for the optimal control problem is derived. The structure of an optimal control for the proposed optimal control problem is characterized under some conditions. Numerical examples show that the cost-efficiency of an optimal control strategy can be enhanced by adjusting the upper and lower bounds on admissible controls.

Diversion Alert: 1-Year Evaluation Across Northern New England, 2013–2014

PubMed Central

Desrosiers, Clare

2016-01-01

This report describes Diversion Alert, a unique online tool aimed at reducing misuse and diversion of prescription drugs, and reports the results of a 1-year evaluation of Diversion Alert’s impact in Maine. We used a quasi-experimental research design to compare survey data in Maine with those of neighboring states (New Hampshire and Vermont, 2013 and 2014). Compared with their counterparts in New Hampshire and Vermont who did not use Diversion Alert, prescribers and pharmacists in Maine who used Diversion Alert increased their communication with patients and other providers involved in their patients’ care, became aware of patients arrested for prescription drugs possession or diversion, used best practices associated with prevention or detection of addiction and diversion more frequently, and attributed positive changes in their prescribing practices to Diversion Alert. In combination with other state and federal programs, Diversion Alert may be an effective tool to help prevent the misuse of opioid medications. PMID:27880633

Brain State Effects on Layer 4 of the Awake Visual Cortex

PubMed Central

Zhuang, Jun; Bereshpolova, Yulia; Stoelzel, Carl R.; Huff, Joseph M.; Hei, Xiaojuan; Alonso, Jose-Manuel

2014-01-01

Awake mammals can switch between alert and nonalert brain states hundreds of times per day. Here, we study the effects of alertness on two cell classes in layer 4 of primary visual cortex of awake rabbits: presumptive excitatory “simple” cells and presumptive fast-spike inhibitory neurons (suspected inhibitory interneurons). We show that in both cell classes, alertness increases the strength and greatly enhances the reliability of visual responses. In simple cells, alertness also increases the temporal frequency bandwidth, but preserves contrast sensitivity, orientation tuning, and selectivity for direction and spatial frequency. Finally, alertness selectively suppresses the simple cell responses to high-contrast stimuli and stimuli moving orthogonal to the preferred direction, effectively enhancing mid-contrast borders. Using a population coding model, we show that these effects of alertness in simple cells—enhanced reliability, higher gain, and increased suppression in orthogonal orientation—could play a major role at increasing the speed of cortical feature detection. PMID:24623767

Great expectations: top-down attention modulates the costs of clutter and eccentricity.

PubMed

Steelman, Kelly S; McCarley, Jason S; Wickens, Christopher D

2013-12-01

An experiment and modeling effort examined interactions between bottom-up and top-down attentional control in visual alert detection. Participants performed a manual tracking task while monitoring peripheral display channels for alerts of varying salience, eccentricity, and spatial expectancy. Spatial expectancy modulated the influence of salience and eccentricity; alerts in low-probability locations engendered higher miss rates, longer detection times, and larger costs of visual clutter and eccentricity, indicating that top-down attentional control offset the costs of poor bottom-up stimulus quality. Data were compared to the predictions of a computational model of scanning and noticing that incorporates bottom-up and top-down sources of attentional control. The model accounted well for the overall pattern of miss rates and response times, predicting each of the observed main effects and interactions. Empirical results suggest that designers should expect the costs of poor bottom-up visibility to be greater for low expectancy signals, and that the placement of alerts within a display should be determined based on the combination of alert expectancy and response priority. Model fits suggest that the current model can serve as a useful tool for exploring a design space as a precursor to empirical data collection and for generating hypotheses for future experiments. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

The agile alert system for gamma-ray transients

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bulgarelli, A.; Trifoglio, M.; Gianotti, F.

2014-01-20

In recent years, a new generation of space missions has offered great opportunities for discovery in high-energy astrophysics. In this article we focus on the scientific operations of the Gamma-Ray Imaging Detector (GRID) on board the AGILE space mission. AGILE-GRID, sensitive in the energy range of 30 MeV-30 GeV, has detected many γ-ray transients of both galactic and extragalactic origin. This work presents the AGILE innovative approach to fast γ-ray transient detection, which is a challenging task and a crucial part of the AGILE scientific program. The goals are to describe (1) the AGILE Gamma-Ray Alert System, (2) a newmore » algorithm for blind search identification of transients within a short processing time, (3) the AGILE procedure for γ-ray transient alert management, and (4) the likelihood of ratio tests that are necessary to evaluate the post-trial statistical significance of the results. Special algorithms and an optimized sequence of tasks are necessary to reach our goal. Data are automatically analyzed at every orbital downlink by an alert pipeline operating on different timescales. As proper flux thresholds are exceeded, alerts are automatically generated and sent as SMS messages to cellular telephones, via e-mail, and via push notifications from an application for smartphones and tablets. These alerts are crosschecked with the results of two pipelines, and a manual analysis is performed. Being a small scientific-class mission, AGILE is characterized by optimization of both scientific analysis and ground-segment resources. The system is capable of generating alerts within two to three hours of a data downlink, an unprecedented reaction time in γ-ray astrophysics.« less

The AGILE Alert System for Gamma-Ray Transients

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bulgarelli, A.; Trifoglio, M.; Gianotti, F.; Tavani, M.; Parmiggiani, N.; Fioretti, V.; Chen, A. W.; Vercellone, S.; Pittori, C.; Verrecchia, F.; Lucarelli, F.; Santolamazza, P.; Fanari, G.; Giommi, P.; Beneventano, D.; Argan, A.; Trois, A.; Scalise, E.; Longo, F.; Pellizzoni, A.; Pucella, G.; Colafrancesco, S.; Conforti, V.; Tempesta, P.; Cerone, M.; Sabatini, P.; Annoni, G.; Valentini, G.; Salotti, L.

2014-01-01

In recent years, a new generation of space missions has offered great opportunities for discovery in high-energy astrophysics. In this article we focus on the scientific operations of the Gamma-Ray Imaging Detector (GRID) on board the AGILE space mission. AGILE-GRID, sensitive in the energy range of 30 MeV-30 GeV, has detected many γ-ray transients of both galactic and extragalactic origin. This work presents the AGILE innovative approach to fast γ-ray transient detection, which is a challenging task and a crucial part of the AGILE scientific program. The goals are to describe (1) the AGILE Gamma-Ray Alert System, (2) a new algorithm for blind search identification of transients within a short processing time, (3) the AGILE procedure for γ-ray transient alert management, and (4) the likelihood of ratio tests that are necessary to evaluate the post-trial statistical significance of the results. Special algorithms and an optimized sequence of tasks are necessary to reach our goal. Data are automatically analyzed at every orbital downlink by an alert pipeline operating on different timescales. As proper flux thresholds are exceeded, alerts are automatically generated and sent as SMS messages to cellular telephones, via e-mail, and via push notifications from an application for smartphones and tablets. These alerts are crosschecked with the results of two pipelines, and a manual analysis is performed. Being a small scientific-class mission, AGILE is characterized by optimization of both scientific analysis and ground-segment resources. The system is capable of generating alerts within two to three hours of a data downlink, an unprecedented reaction time in γ-ray astrophysics.

Towards eradication of inappropriate therapies for ICD lead failure by combining comprehensive remote monitoring and lead noise alerts.

PubMed

Ploux, Sylvain; Swerdlow, Charles D; Strik, Marc; Welte, Nicolas; Klotz, Nicolas; Ritter, Philippe; Haïssaguerre, Michel; Bordachar, Pierre

2018-06-02

Recognition of implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) lead malfunction before occurrence of life threatening complications is crucial. We aimed to assess the effectiveness of remote monitoring associated or not with a lead noise alert for early detection of ICD lead failure. From October 2013 to April 2017, a median of 1,224 (578-1,958) ICD patients were remotely monitored with comprehensive analysis of all transmitted materials. ICD lead failure and subsequent device interventions were prospectively collected in patients with (RMLN) and without (RM) a lead noise alert (Abbott Secure Sense™ or Medtronic Lead Integrity Alert™) in their remote monitoring system. During a follow-up of 4,457 patient years, 64 lead failures were diagnosed. Sixty-one (95%) of the diagnoses were made before any clinical complication occurred. Inappropriate shocks were delivered in only one patient of each group (3%), with an annual rate of 0.04%. All high voltage conductor failures were identified remotely by a dedicated impedance alert in 10 patients. Pace-sense component failures were correctly identified by a dedicated alert in 77% (17 of 22) of the RMLN group versus 25% (8 of 32) of the RM group (P = 0.002). The absence of a lead noise alert was associated with a 16-fold increase in the likelihood of initiating either a shock or ATP (OR: 16.0, 95% CI 1.8-143.3; P = 0.01). ICD remote monitoring with systematic review of all transmitted data is associated with a very low rate of inappropriate shocks related to lead failure. Dedicated noise alerts further reduce inappropriate detection of ventricular arrhythmias. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Variability of Diabetes Alert Dog Accuracy in a Real-World Setting

PubMed Central

Gonder-Frederick, Linda A.; Grabman, Jesse H.; Shepard, Jaclyn A.; Tripathi, Anand V.; Ducar, Dallas M.; McElgunn, Zachary R.

2017-01-01

Background: Diabetes alert dogs (DADs) are growing in popularity as an alternative method of glucose monitoring for individuals with type 1 diabetes (T1D). Only a few empirical studies have assessed DAD accuracy, with inconsistent results. The present study examined DAD accuracy and variability in performance in real-world conditions using a convenience sample of owner-report diaries. Method: Eighteen DAD owners (44.4% female; 77.8% youth) with T1D completed diaries of DAD alerts during the first year after placement. Diary entries included daily BG readings and DAD alerts. For each DAD, percentage hits (alert with BG ≤ 5.0 or ≥ 11.1 mmol/L; ≤90 or ≥200 mg/dl), percentage misses (no alert with BG out of range), and percentage false alarms (alert with BG in range) were computed. Sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (PLR), and true positive rates were also calculated. Results: Overall comparison of DAD Hits to Misses yielded significantly more Hits for both low and high BG. Total sensitivity was 57.0%, with increased sensitivity to low BG (59.2%) compared to high BG (56.1%). Total specificity was 49.3% and PLR = 1.12. However, high variability in accuracy was observed across DADs, with low BG sensitivity ranging from 33% to 100%. Number of DADs achieving ≥ 60%, 65% and 70% true positive rates was 71%, 50% and 44%, respectively. Conclusions: DADs may be able to detect out-of-range BG, but variability across DADs is evident. Larger trials are needed to further assess DAD accuracy and to identify factors influencing the complexity of DAD accuracy in BG detection. PMID:28627305

Implementation of an Alert and Response System in Haiti during the Early Stage of the Response to the Cholera Epidemic

PubMed Central

Santa-Olalla, Patricia; Gayer, Michelle; Magloire, Roc; Barrais, Robert; Valenciano, Marta; Aramburu, Carmen; Poncelet, Jean Luc; Gustavo Alonso, Juan Carlos; Van Alphen, Dana; Heuschen, Florence; Andraghetti, Roberta; Lee, Robert; Drury, Patrick; Aldighieri, Sylvain

2013-01-01

The start of the cholera epidemic in Haiti quickly highlighted the necessity of the implementation of an Alert and Response (A&R) System to complement the existing national surveillance system. The national system had been able to detect and confirm the outbreak etiology but required external support to monitor the spread of cholera and coordinate response, because much of the information produced was insufficiently timely for real-time monitoring and directing of a rapid, targeted response. The A&R System was designed by the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization in collaboration with the Haiti Ministry of Health, and it was based on a network of partners, including any institution, structure, or individual that could identify, verify, and respond to alerts. The defined objectives were to (1) save lives through early detection and treatment of cases and (2) control the spread through early intervention at the community level. The operational structure could be broken down into three principle categories: (1) alert (early warning), (2) verification and assessment of the information, and (3) efficient and timely response in coordination with partners to avoid duplication. Information generated by the A&R System was analyzed and interpreted, and the qualitative information was critical in qualifying the epidemic and defining vulnerable areas, particularly because the national surveillance system reported incomplete data for more than one department. The A&R System detected a number of alerts unrelated to cholera and facilitated rapid access to that information. The sensitivity of the system and its ability to react quickly was shown in May of 2011, when an abnormal increase in alerts coming from several communes in the Sud-Est Department in epidemiological weeks (EWs) 17 and 18 were noted and disseminated network-wide and response activities were implemented. The national cholera surveillance system did not register the increase until EWs 21 and 22, and the information did not become available until EWs 23 and 24, when the peak of cases had already been reached. Although many of the partners reporting alerts during the peak of the cholera epidemic have since left Haiti, the A&R System has continued to function as an Early Warning (EWARN) System, and it continues to be developed with recent activities, such as the distribution of cell phones to enhance alert communication. PMID:24106196

Implementation of an alert and response system in Haiti during the early stage of the response to the cholera epidemic.

PubMed

Santa-Olalla, Patricia; Gayer, Michelle; Magloire, Roc; Barrais, Robert; Valenciano, Marta; Aramburu, Carmen; Poncelet, Jean Luc; Gustavo Alonso, Juan Carlos; Van Alphen, Dana; Heuschen, Florence; Andraghetti, Roberta; Lee, Robert; Drury, Patrick; Aldighieri, Sylvain

2013-10-01

The start of the cholera epidemic in Haiti quickly highlighted the necessity of the implementation of an Alert and Response (A&R) System to complement the existing national surveillance system. The national system had been able to detect and confirm the outbreak etiology but required external support to monitor the spread of cholera and coordinate response, because much of the information produced was insufficiently timely for real-time monitoring and directing of a rapid, targeted response. The A&R System was designed by the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization in collaboration with the Haiti Ministry of Health, and it was based on a network of partners, including any institution, structure, or individual that could identify, verify, and respond to alerts. The defined objectives were to (1) save lives through early detection and treatment of cases and (2) control the spread through early intervention at the community level. The operational structure could be broken down into three principle categories: (1) alert (early warning), (2) verification and assessment of the information, and (3) efficient and timely response in coordination with partners to avoid duplication. Information generated by the A&R System was analyzed and interpreted, and the qualitative information was critical in qualifying the epidemic and defining vulnerable areas, particularly because the national surveillance system reported incomplete data for more than one department. The A&R System detected a number of alerts unrelated to cholera and facilitated rapid access to that information. The sensitivity of the system and its ability to react quickly was shown in May of 2011, when an abnormal increase in alerts coming from several communes in the Sud-Est Department in epidemiological weeks (EWs) 17 and 18 were noted and disseminated network-wide and response activities were implemented. The national cholera surveillance system did not register the increase until EWs 21 and 22, and the information did not become available until EWs 23 and 24, when the peak of cases had already been reached. Although many of the partners reporting alerts during the peak of the cholera epidemic have since left Haiti, the A&R System has continued to function as an Early Warning (EWARN) System, and it continues to be developed with recent activities, such as the distribution of cell phones to enhance alert communication.

Runway Safety Monitor Algorithm for Runway Incursion Detection and Alerting

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Green, David F., Jr.; Jones, Denise R. (Technical Monitor)

2002-01-01

The Runway Safety Monitor (RSM) is an algorithm for runway incursion detection and alerting that was developed in support of NASA's Runway Incursion Prevention System (RIPS) research conducted under the NASA Aviation Safety Program's Synthetic Vision System element. The RSM algorithm provides pilots with enhanced situational awareness and warnings of runway incursions in sufficient time to take evasive action and avoid accidents during landings, takeoffs, or taxiing on the runway. The RSM currently runs as a component of the NASA Integrated Display System, an experimental avionics software system for terminal area and surface operations. However, the RSM algorithm can be implemented as a separate program to run on any aircraft with traffic data link capability. The report documents the RSM software and describes in detail how RSM performs runway incursion detection and alerting functions for NASA RIPS. The report also describes the RIPS flight tests conducted at the Dallas-Ft Worth International Airport (DFW) during September and October of 2000, and the RSM performance results and lessons learned from those flight tests.

Analysis of clinical decision support system malfunctions: a case series and survey

PubMed Central

Wright, Adam; Hickman, Thu-Trang T; McEvoy, Dustin; Aaron, Skye; Ai, Angela; Andersen, Jan Marie; Hussain, Salman; Ramoni, Rachel; Fiskio, Julie; Sittig, Dean F; Bates, David W

2016-01-01

Objective To illustrate ways in which clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) malfunction and identify patterns of such malfunctions. Materials and Methods We identified and investigated several CDSS malfunctions at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and present them as a case series. We also conducted a preliminary survey of Chief Medical Information Officers to assess the frequency of such malfunctions. Results We identified four CDSS malfunctions at Brigham and Women’s Hospital: (1) an alert for monitoring thyroid function in patients receiving amiodarone stopped working when an internal identifier for amiodarone was changed in another system; (2) an alert for lead screening for children stopped working when the rule was inadvertently edited; (3) a software upgrade of the electronic health record software caused numerous spurious alerts to fire; and (4) a malfunction in an external drug classification system caused an alert to inappropriately suggest antiplatelet drugs, such as aspirin, for patients already taking one. We found that 93% of the Chief Medical Information Officers who responded to our survey had experienced at least one CDSS malfunction, and two-thirds experienced malfunctions at least annually. Discussion CDSS malfunctions are widespread and often persist for long periods. The failure of alerts to fire is particularly difficult to detect. A range of causes, including changes in codes and fields, software upgrades, inadvertent disabling or editing of rules, and malfunctions of external systems commonly contribute to CDSS malfunctions, and current approaches for preventing and detecting such malfunctions are inadequate. Conclusion CDSS malfunctions occur commonly and often go undetected. Better methods are needed to prevent and detect these malfunctions. PMID:27026616

Improved management of acute kidney injury in primary care using e-alerts and an educational outreach programme.

PubMed

Tollitt, James; Flanagan, Emma; McCorkindale, Sheila; Glynn-Atkins, Sam; Emmett, Lauren; Darby, Denise; Ritchie, James; Bennett, Brandon; Sinha, Smeeta; Poulikakos, Dimitrios

2018-04-28

Acute kidney injury (AKI) detected in primary care is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. AKI electronic alerts (e-alerts) and educational programmes have recently been implemented but their contribution to improve AKI care is unknown. This project aimed to improve response to AKI detected in primary care and used a factorial design to evaluate the impact of the UK National Health Service (NHS) AKI e-alert and AKI educational outreach sessions on time to response to primary care AKI stages 2 and 3 between April and August 2016. A total of 46 primary care practices were randomized into four groups. A 2 × 2 factorial design exposed each group to different combinations of two interventions. The primary outcome was 'time to repeat test' or hospitalization following AKI e-alert for stages 2 and 3. Yates algorithm was used to evaluate the impact of each intervention. Time to response and mortality pre- and post-intervention were analysed using Mann-Whitney U test and chi-square test respectively. The factorial design included two interventions: an AKI educational outreach programme and the NHS AKI e-alerts. 1807 (0.8%) primary care blood tests demonstrated AKI 1-3 (78.3% stage 1, 14.8% stage 2, 6.9% stage 3). There were 391 stage 2 and 3 events from 251 patients. E-alerts demonstrated a reduction in mean response time (-29 hours). Educational outreach had a smaller effect (-3 hours). Median response time to AKI 2 and 3 pre- and post-interventions was 27 hours versus 16 hours respectively (P = 0.037). Stage 2 and 3 event-related 30-day all-cause mortality decreased following the interventions (15.6% versus 3.9% P = 0.036). AKI e-alerts in primary care hasten response to AKI 2 and 3 and reduce all-cause mortality. Educational outreach sessions further improve response time.

Collaborative knowledge acquisition for the design of context-aware alert systems.

PubMed

Joffe, Erel; Havakuk, Ofer; Herskovic, Jorge R; Patel, Vimla L; Bernstam, Elmer Victor

2012-01-01

To present a framework for combining implicit knowledge acquisition from multiple experts with machine learning and to evaluate this framework in the context of anemia alerts. Five internal medicine residents reviewed 18 anemia alerts, while 'talking aloud'. They identified features that were reviewed by two or more physicians to determine appropriate alert level, etiology and treatment recommendation. Based on these features, data were extracted from 100 randomly-selected anemia cases for a training set and an additional 82 cases for a test set. Two staff internists assigned an alert level, etiology and treatment recommendation before and after reviewing the entire electronic medical record. The training set of 118 cases (100 plus 18) and the test set of 82 cases were explored using RIDOR and JRip algorithms. The feature set was sufficient to assess 93% of anemia cases (intraclass correlation for alert level before and after review of the records by internists 1 and 2 were 0.92 and 0.95, respectively). High-precision classifiers were constructed to identify low-level alerts (precision p=0.87, recall R=0.4), iron deficiency (p=1.0, R=0.73), and anemia associated with kidney disease (p=0.87, R=0.77). It was possible to identify low-level alerts and several conditions commonly associated with chronic anemia. This approach may reduce the number of clinically unimportant alerts. The study was limited to anemia alerts. Furthermore, clinicians were aware of the study hypotheses potentially biasing their evaluation. Implicit knowledge acquisition, collaborative filtering and machine learning were combined automatically to induce clinically meaningful and precise decision rules.

A Comparative Analysis of the Snort and Suricata Intrusion-Detection Systems

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-09-01

Category: Test Rules Test #6: Simple LFI Attack 43 Snort True Positive: Snort generated an alert based on the ‘/etc/ passwd ’ string passed...through an HTTP command. Suricata True Positive: Suricata generated an alert based on the ‘/etc/ passwd ’ string passed through an HTTP command

Alert-QSAR. Implications for Electrophilic Theory of Chemical Carcinogenesis

PubMed Central

Putz, Mihai V.; Ionaşcu, Cosmin; Putz, Ana-Maria; Ostafe, Vasile

2011-01-01

Given the modeling and predictive abilities of quantitative structure activity relationships (QSARs) for genotoxic carcinogens or mutagens that directly affect DNA, the present research investigates structural alert (SA) intermediate-predicted correlations ASA of electrophilic molecular structures with observed carcinogenic potencies in rats (observed activity, A = Log[1/TD50], i.e., ASA=f(X1SA,X2SA,…)). The present method includes calculation of the recently developed residual correlation of the structural alert models, i.e., ARASA=f(A−ASA,X1SA,X2SA,…). We propose a specific electrophilic ligand-receptor mechanism that combines electronegativity with chemical hardness-associated frontier principles, equality of ligand-reagent electronegativities and ligand maximum chemical hardness for highly diverse toxic molecules against specific receptors in rats. The observed carcinogenic activity is influenced by the induced SA-mutagenic intermediate effect, alongside Hansch indices such as hydrophobicity (LogP), polarizability (POL) and total energy (Etot), which account for molecular membrane diffusion, ionic deformation, and stericity, respectively. A possible QSAR mechanistic interpretation of mutagenicity as the first step in genotoxic carcinogenesis development is discussed using the structural alert chemoinformation and in full accordance with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development QSAR guidance principles. PMID:21954348

The Nature and Variability of Automated Practice Alerts Derived from Electronic Health Records in a U.S. Nationwide Critical Care Research Network.

PubMed

Benthin, Cody; Pannu, Sonal; Khan, Akram; Gong, Michelle

2016-10-01

The nature, variability, and extent of early warning clinical practice alerts derived from automated query of electronic health records (e-alerts) currently used in acute care settings for clinical care or research is unknown. To describe e-alerts in current use in acute care settings at medical centers participating in a nationwide critical care research network. We surveyed investigators at 38 institutions involved in the National Institutes of Health-funded Clinical Trials Network for the Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL) for quantitative and qualitative analysis. Thirty sites completed the survey (79% response rate). All sites used electronic health record systems. Epic Systems was used at 56% of sites; the others used alternate commercially available vendors or homegrown systems. Respondents at 57% of sites represented in this survey used e-alerts. All but 1 of these 17 sites used an e-alert for early detection of sepsis-related syndromes, and 35% used an e-alert for pneumonia. E-alerts were triggered by abnormal laboratory values (37%), vital signs (37%), or radiology reports (15%) and were used about equally for clinical decision support and research. Only 59% of sites with e-alerts have evaluated them either for accuracy or for validity. A majority of the research network sites participating in this survey use e-alerts for early notification of potential threats to hospitalized patients; however, there was significant variability in the nature of e-alerts between institutions. Use of one common electronic health record vendor at more than half of the participating sites suggests that it may be possible to standardize e-alerts across multiple sites in research networks, particularly among sites using the same medical record platform.

A dramatic increase in the positive blood culture rates of Helicobacter cinaedi: the evidence of differential detection abilities between the Bactec and BacT/Alert systems.

PubMed

Miyake, Noriko; Chong, Yong; Nishida, Ruriko; Nagasaki, Yoji; Kibe, Yasushi; Kiyosuke, Makiko; Shimomura, Takeshi; Shimono, Nobuyuki; Shimoda, Shinji; Akashi, Koichi

2015-11-01

In our hospital, positive blood culture rates of Helicobacter cinaedi dramatically increased after introducing the Bactec system. A simulated culture model of H. cinaedi bacteremia demonstrated no positive signals using the BacT/Alert system, despite efficient growth in bottles. Clinically suspected H. cinaedi bacteremia should be monitored more closely when using the BacT/Alert system, preferably with subcultivation after 7days of incubation. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cockpit display of hazardous weather information

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hansman, R. John, Jr.; Wanke, Craig

1990-01-01

Information transfer and display issues associated with the dissemination of hazardous weather warnings are studied in the context of windshear alerts. Operational and developmental windshear detection systems are briefly reviewed. The July 11, 1988 microburst events observed as part of the Denver Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) operational evaluation are analyzed in terms of information transfer and the effectiveness of the microburst alerts. Information transfer, message content and display issues associated with microburst alerts generated from ground based sources are evaluated by means of pilot opinion surveys and part task simulator studies.

Cockpit display of hazardous weather information

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hansman, R. John, Jr.; Wanke, Craig

1989-01-01

Information transfer and display issues associated with the dissemination of hazardous-weather warnings are studied in the context of wind-shear alerts. Operational and developmental wind-shear detection systems are briefly reviewed. The July 11, 1988 microburst events observed as part of the Denver TDWR operational evaluation are analyzed in terms of information transfer and the effectiveness of the microburst alerts. Information transfer, message content, and display issues associated with microburst alerts generated from ground-based sources (Doppler radars, LLWAS, and PIREPS) are evaluated by means of pilot opinion surveys and part-task simulator studies.

Developing Network Situational Awareness through Visualizations of Fused Intrusion Detection System Alerts

DTIC Science & Technology

2008-06-01

Phishing with Plug and Play Exploit. In this attack, the at- tacker sets up a website offering the visitor free “ porn ” if they sign up. The user is allowed... porn alert so its unclear at the moment if 100.20.3.127 is compromised and if so, how it is compromised because there are no other alerts at this time...unauthorized porn website. The investigation would conclude that the attacker at 51.251.22.183 used the information gained from the website to open an

Clinical relevance of pharmacist intervention in an emergency department.

PubMed

Pérez-Moreno, Maria Antonia; Rodríguez-Camacho, Juan Manuel; Calderón-Hernanz, Beatriz; Comas-Díaz, Bernardino; Tarradas-Torras, Jordi

2017-08-01

To evaluate the clinical relevance of pharmacist intervention on patient care in emergencies, to determine the severity of detected errors. Second, to analyse the most frequent types of interventions and type of drugs involved and to evaluate the clinical pharmacist's activity. A 6-month observational prospective study of pharmacist intervention in the Emergency Department (ED) at a 400-bed hospital in Spain was performed to record interventions carried out by the clinical pharmacists. We determined whether the intervention occurred in the process of medication reconciliation or another activity, and whether the drug involved belonged to the High-Alert Medications Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) list. To evaluate the severity of the errors detected and clinical relevance of the pharmacist intervention, a modified assessment scale of Overhage and Lukes was used. Relationship between clinical relevance of pharmacist intervention and the severity of medication errors was assessed using ORs and Spearman's correlation coefficient. During the observation period, pharmacists reviewed the pharmacotherapy history and medication orders of 2984 patients. A total of 991 interventions were recorded in 557 patients; 67.2% of the errors were detected during medication reconciliation. Medication errors were considered severe in 57.2% of cases and 64.9% of pharmacist intervention were considered relevant. About 10.9% of the drugs involved are in the High-Alert Medications ISMP list. The severity of the medication error and the clinical significance of the pharmacist intervention were correlated (Spearman's ρ=0.728/p<0.001). In this single centre study, the clinical pharmacists identified and intervened on a high number of severe medication errors. This suggests that emergency services will benefit from pharmacist-provided drug therapy services. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

Fetal size in mid- and late pregnancy is related to infant alertness: the generation R study.

PubMed

Henrichs, Jens; Schenk, Jacqueline J; Schmidt, Henk G; Arends, Lidia R; Steegers, Eric A P; Hofman, Albert; Jaddoe, Vincent W V; Verhulst, Frank C; Tiemeier, Henning

2009-03-01

The vulnerability for behavioral problems is partly shaped in fetal life. Numerous studies have related indicators of intrauterine growth, for example, birth weight and body size, to behavioral development. We investigated whether fetal size in mid- and late pregnancy is related to infant irritability and alertness. In a population-based birth cohort of 4,255 singleton full-term infants ultrasound measurements of fetal head and abdominal circumference in mid- and late pregnancy were performed. Infant irritability and alertness scores were obtained by the Mother and Baby Scales at 3 months and z-standardized. Multiple linear regression analyses revealed curvilinear associations (inverted J-shape) of measures of fetal size in both mid- and late pregnancy with infant alertness. Fetal size characteristics were not associated with infant irritability. These results suggest that alterations of intrauterine growth affecting infant alertness are already detectable from mid-pregnancy onwards.

Recent Improvements to the Finite-Fault Rupture Detector Algorithm: FinDer II

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, D.; Boese, M.; Heaton, T. H.

2015-12-01

Constraining the finite-fault rupture extent and azimuth is crucial for accurately estimating ground-motion in large earthquakes. Detecting and modeling finite-fault ruptures in real-time is thus essential to both earthquake early warning (EEW) and rapid emergency response. Following extensive real-time and offline testing, the finite-fault rupture detector algorithm, FinDer (Böse et al., 2012 & 2015), was successfully integrated into the California-wide ShakeAlert EEW demonstration system. Since April 2015, FinDer has been scanning real-time waveform data from approximately 420 strong-motion stations in California for peak ground acceleration (PGA) patterns indicative of earthquakes. FinDer analyzes strong-motion data by comparing spatial images of observed PGA with theoretical templates modeled from empirical ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs). If the correlation between the observed and theoretical PGA is sufficiently high, a report is sent to ShakeAlert including the estimated centroid position, length, and strike, and their uncertainties, of an ongoing fault rupture. Rupture estimates are continuously updated as new data arrives. As part of a joint effort between USGS Menlo Park, ETH Zurich, and Caltech, we have rewritten FinDer in C++ to obtain a faster and more flexible implementation. One new feature of FinDer II is that multiple contour lines of high-frequency PGA are computed and correlated with templates, allowing the detection of both large earthquakes and much smaller (~ M3.5) events shortly after their nucleation. Unlike previous EEW algorithms, FinDer II thus provides a modeling approach for both small-magnitude point-source and larger-magnitude finite-fault ruptures with consistent error estimates for the entire event magnitude range.

ElarmS Earthquake Early Warning System: 2017 Performance and New ElarmS Version 3.0 (E3)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chung, A. I.; Henson, I. H.; Allen, R. M.; Hellweg, M.; Neuhauser, D. S.

2017-12-01

The ElarmS earthquake early warning (EEW) system has been successfully detecting earthquakes throughout California since 2007. ElarmS version 2.0 (E2) is one of the three algorithms contributing alerts to ShakeAlert, a public EEW system being developed by the USGS in collaboration with UC Berkeley, Caltech, University of Washington, and University of Oregon. E2 began operating in test mode in the Pacific Northwest in 2013, and since April of this year E2 has been contributing real-time alerts from Oregon and Washington to the ShakeAlert production prototype system as part of the ShakeAlert roll-out throughout the West Coast. Since it began operating west-coast-wide, E2 has correctly alerted on 5 events that matched ANSS catalog events with M≥4, missed 1 event with M≥4, and incorrectly created alerts for 5 false events with M≥4. The most recent version of the algorithm, ElarmS version 3.0 (E3), is a significant improvement over E2. It addresses some of the most problematic causes of false events for which E2 produced alerts, without impacting reliability in terms of matched and missed events. Of the 5 false events that were generated by E2 since April, 4 would have been suppressed by E3. In E3, we have added a filterbank teleseismic filter. By analyzing the amplitude of the waveform filtered in various passbands, it is possible to distinguish between local and teleseismic events. We have also added a series of checks to validate triggers and filter out spurious and S-wave triggers. Additional improvements to the waveform associator also improve detections. In this presentation, we describe the improvements and compare the performance of the current production (E2) and development (E3) versions of ElarmS over the past year. The ShakeAlert project is now working through a streamlining process to identify the best components of various algorithms and merge them. The ElarmS team is participating in this effort and we anticipate that much of E3 will continue in the final system.

Detecting a trend change in cross-border epidemic transmission

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Maeno, Yoshiharu

2016-09-01

A method for a system of Langevin equations is developed for detecting a trend change in cross-border epidemic transmission. The equations represent a standard epidemiological SIR compartment model and a meta-population network model. The method analyzes a time series of the number of new cases reported in multiple geographical regions. The method is applicable to investigating the efficacy of the implemented public health intervention in managing infectious travelers across borders. It is found that the change point of the probability of travel movements was one week after the WHO worldwide alert on the SARS outbreak in 2003. The alert was effective in managing infectious travelers. On the other hand, it is found that the probability of travel movements did not change at all for the flu pandemic in 2009. The pandemic did not affect potential travelers despite the WHO alert.

Design of DroDeASys (Drowsy Detection and Alarming System)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Juvale, Hrishikesh B.; Mahajan, Anant S.; Bhagwat, Ashwin A.; Badiger, Vishal T.; Bhutkar, Ganesh D.; Dhabe, Priyadarshan S.; Dhore, Manikrao L.

The paper discusses the Drowsy Detection & Alarming System that has been developed, using a non-intrusive approach. The system is basically developed to detect drivers dozing at the wheel at night time driving. The system uses a small infra-red night vision camera that points directly towards the driver`s face and monitors the driver`s eyes in order to detect fatigue. In such a case when fatigue is detected, a warning signal is issued to alert the driver. This paper discusses the algorithms that have been used to detect drowsiness. The decision whether the driver is dozing or not is taken depending on whether the eyes are open for a specific number of frames. If the eyes are found to be closed for a certain number of consecutive frames then the driver is alerted with an alarm.

Impact of e-alert systems on the care of patients with acute kidney injury.

PubMed

Breighner, Crystal M; Kashani, Kianoush B

2017-09-01

With the recent advancement in electronic health record systems and meaningful use of information technology incentive programs (i.e., the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services), interest in clinical decision support systems has risen. These systems have been used to examine a variety of different syndromes with variable reported effects. In recent years, electronic alerts (e-alerts) have been implemented at various institutions to decrease the morbidity associated with acute kidney injury (AKI). AKI is common, accounting for 1 in 7 hospital admissions, and is associated with increased length of hospital stay and mortality. AKI is often underrecognized, causing delayed intervention. The use of e-alerts may result in earlier recognition and intervention, as well as decreased morbidity and mortality. This must be balanced with the possibility of increased resource utilization that e-alerts may cause. Before widespread implementation, the ethical and legal consequences of not following e-alert recommendations must be established, and the optimal algorithm for AKI e-alert detection must be determined. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Vehicle-borne IED detection using the ULTOR correlation processor

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Burcham, Joel D.; Vachon, Joyce E.

2006-05-01

Advanced Optical Systems, Inc. developed the ULTOR(r) system, a real-time correlation processor that looks for improvised explosive devices (IED) by examining imagery of vehicles. The system determines the level of threat an approaching vehicle may represent. The system works on incoming video collected at different wavelengths, including visible, infrared, and synthetic aperture radar. Sensors that attach to ULTOR can be located wherever necessary to improve the safety around a checkpoint. When a suspect vehicle is detected, ULTOR can track the vehicle, alert personnel, check for previous instances of the vehicle, and update other networked systems with the threat information. The ULTOR processing engine focuses on the spatial frequency information available in the image. It correlates the imagery with templates that specify the criteria defining a suspect vehicle. It can perform full field correlations at a rate of 180 Hz or better. Additionally, the spatial frequency information is applied to a trained neural network to identify suspect vehicles. We have performed various laboratory and field experiments to verify the performance of the ULTOR system in a counter IED environment. The experiments cover tracking specific targets in video clips to demonstrating real-time ULTOR system performance. The selected targets in the experiments include various automobiles in both visible and infrared video.

Performance of two resin-containing blood culture media in detection of bloodstream infections and in direct matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) broth assays for isolate identification: clinical comparison of the BacT/Alert Plus and Bactec Plus systems.

PubMed

Fiori, Barbara; D'Inzeo, Tiziana; Di Florio, Viviana; De Maio, Flavio; De Angelis, Giulia; Giaquinto, Alessia; Campana, Lara; Tanzarella, Eloisa; Tumbarello, Mario; Antonelli, Massimo; Sanguinetti, Maurizio; Spanu, Teresa

2014-10-01

We compared the clinical performances of the BacT/Alert Plus (bioMérieux) and Bactec Plus (Becton Dickinson) aerobic and anaerobic blood culture (BC) media with adsorbent polymeric beads. Patients ≥ 16 years old with suspected bloodstream infections (BSIs) were enrolled in intensive care units and infectious disease wards. A single 40-ml blood sample was collected from each and used to inoculate (10 ml/bottle) one set of BacT/Alert Plus cultures and one set of Bactec Plus cultures, each set consisting of one aerobic and one anaerobic bottle. Cultures were incubated ≤ 5 days in the BacT/Alert 3D and Bactec FX instruments, respectively. A total of 128 unique BSI episodes were identified based on the recovery of clinically significant growth in 212 aerobic cultures (106 BacT/Alert and 106 Bactec) and 151 anaerobic cultures (82 BacT/Alert and 69 Bactec). The BacT/Alert aerobic medium had higher recovery rates for Gram-positive cocci (P = 0.024), whereas the Bactec aerobic medium was superior for recovery of Gram-negative bacilli (P = 0.006). BacT/Alert anaerobic medium recovery rates exceeded those of the Bactec anaerobic medium for total organisms (P = 0.003), Gram-positive cocci (P = 0.013), and Escherichia coli (P = 0.030). In terms of capacity for diagnosing the 128 septic episodes, the BacT/Alert and Bactec sets were comparable, although the former sets diagnosed more BSIs caused by Gram-positive cocci (P = 0.008). They also allowed earlier identification of coagulase-negative staphylococcal growth (mean, 2.8 h; P = 0.003) and growth in samples from patients not on antimicrobial therapy that yielded positive results (mean, 1.3 h; P < 0.001). Similarly high percentages of microorganisms in BacT/Alert and Bactec cultures (93.8% and 93.3%, respectively) were identified by direct matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry assay of BC broths. The BacT/Alert Plus media line appears to be a reliable, timesaving tool for routine detection of BSIs in the population we studied, although further studies are needed to evaluate their performance in other settings. Copyright © 2014, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Collaborative knowledge acquisition for the design of context-aware alert systems

PubMed Central

Joffe, Erel; Havakuk, Ofer; Herskovic, Jorge R; Patel, Vimla L

2012-01-01

Objective To present a framework for combining implicit knowledge acquisition from multiple experts with machine learning and to evaluate this framework in the context of anemia alerts. Materials and Methods Five internal medicine residents reviewed 18 anemia alerts, while ‘talking aloud’. They identified features that were reviewed by two or more physicians to determine appropriate alert level, etiology and treatment recommendation. Based on these features, data were extracted from 100 randomly-selected anemia cases for a training set and an additional 82 cases for a test set. Two staff internists assigned an alert level, etiology and treatment recommendation before and after reviewing the entire electronic medical record. The training set of 118 cases (100 plus 18) and the test set of 82 cases were explored using RIDOR and JRip algorithms. Results The feature set was sufficient to assess 93% of anemia cases (intraclass correlation for alert level before and after review of the records by internists 1 and 2 were 0.92 and 0.95, respectively). High-precision classifiers were constructed to identify low-level alerts (precision p=0.87, recall R=0.4), iron deficiency (p=1.0, R=0.73), and anemia associated with kidney disease (p=0.87, R=0.77). Discussion It was possible to identify low-level alerts and several conditions commonly associated with chronic anemia. This approach may reduce the number of clinically unimportant alerts. The study was limited to anemia alerts. Furthermore, clinicians were aware of the study hypotheses potentially biasing their evaluation. Conclusion Implicit knowledge acquisition, collaborative filtering and machine learning were combined automatically to induce clinically meaningful and precise decision rules. PMID:22744961

iFall: an Android application for fall monitoring and response.

PubMed

Sposaro, Frank; Tyson, Gary

2009-01-01

Injuries due to falls are among the leading causes of hospitalization in elderly persons, often resulting in a rapid decline in quality of life or death. Rapid response can improve the patients outcome, but this is often lacking when the injured person lives alone and the nature of the injury complicates calling for help. This paper presents an alert system for fall detection using common commercially available electronic devices to both detect the fall and alert authorities. We use an Android-based smart phone with an integrated tri-axial accelerometer. Data from the accelerometer is evaluated with several threshold based algorithms and position data to determine a fall. The threshold is adaptive based on user provided parameters such as: height, weight, and level of activity. The algorithm adapts to unique movements that a phone experiences as opposed to similar systems which require users to mount accelerometers to their chest or trunk. If a fall is suspected a notification is raised requiring the user's response. If the user does not respond, the system alerts pre-specified social contacts with an informational message via SMS. If a contact responds the system commits an audible notification, automatically connects, and enables the speakerphone. If a social contact confirms a fall, an appropriate emergency service is alerted. Our system provides a realizable, cost effective solution to fall detection using a simple graphical interface while not overwhelming the user with uncomfortable sensors.

Continuous glucose monitoring: quality of hypoglycaemia detection.

PubMed

Zijlstra, E; Heise, T; Nosek, L; Heinemann, L; Heckermann, S

2013-02-01

To evaluate the accuracy of a (widely used) continuous glucose monitoring (CGM)-system and its ability to detect hypoglycaemic events. A total of 18 patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus used continuous glucose monitoring (Guardian REAL-Time CGMS) during two 9-day in-house periods. A hypoglycaemic threshold alarm alerted patients to sensor readings <70 mg/dl. Continuous glucose monitoring sensor readings were compared to laboratory reference measurements taken every 4 h and in case of a hypoglycaemic alarm. A total of 2317 paired data points were evaluated. Overall, the mean absolute relative difference (MARD) was 16.7%. The percentage of data points in the clinically accurate or acceptable Clarke Error Grid zones A + B was 94.6%. In the hypoglycaemic range, accuracy worsened (MARD 38.8%) leading to a failure to detect more than half of the true hypoglycaemic events (sensitivity 37.5%). Furthermore, more than half of the alarms that warn patients for hypoglycaemia were false (false alert rate 53.3%). Above the low alert threshold, the sensor confirmed 2077 of 2182 reference values (specificity 95.2%). Patients using continuous glucose monitoring should be aware of its limitation to accurately detect hypoglycaemia. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Perceptual evaluation of visual alerts in surveillance videos

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rogowitz, Bernice E.; Topkara, Mercan; Pfeiffer, William; Hampapur, Arun

2015-03-01

Visual alerts are commonly used in video monitoring and surveillance systems to mark events, presumably making them more salient to human observers. Surprisingly, the effectiveness of computer-generated alerts in improving human performance has not been widely studied. To address this gap, we have developed a tool for simulating different alert parameters in a realistic visual monitoring situation, and have measured human detection performance under conditions that emulated different set-points in a surveillance algorithm. In the High-Sensitivity condition, the simulated alerts identified 100% of the events with many false alarms. In the Lower-Sensitivity condition, the simulated alerts correctly identified 70% of the targets, with fewer false alarms. In the control condition, no simulated alerts were provided. To explore the effects of learning, subjects performed these tasks in three sessions, on separate days, in a counterbalanced, within subject design. We explore these results within the context of cognitive models of human attention and learning. We found that human observers were more likely to respond to events when marked by a visual alert. Learning played a major role in the two alert conditions. In the first session, observers generated almost twice as many False Alarms as in the No-Alert condition, as the observers responded pre-attentively to the computer-generated false alarms. However, this rate dropped equally dramatically in later sessions, as observers learned to discount the false cues. Highest observer Precision, Hits/(Hits + False Alarms), was achieved in the High Sensitivity condition, but only after training. The successful evaluation of surveillance systems depends on understanding human attention and performance.

Analysis of clinical decision support system malfunctions: a case series and survey.

PubMed

Wright, Adam; Hickman, Thu-Trang T; McEvoy, Dustin; Aaron, Skye; Ai, Angela; Andersen, Jan Marie; Hussain, Salman; Ramoni, Rachel; Fiskio, Julie; Sittig, Dean F; Bates, David W

2016-11-01

To illustrate ways in which clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) malfunction and identify patterns of such malfunctions. We identified and investigated several CDSS malfunctions at Brigham and Women's Hospital and present them as a case series. We also conducted a preliminary survey of Chief Medical Information Officers to assess the frequency of such malfunctions. We identified four CDSS malfunctions at Brigham and Women's Hospital: (1) an alert for monitoring thyroid function in patients receiving amiodarone stopped working when an internal identifier for amiodarone was changed in another system; (2) an alert for lead screening for children stopped working when the rule was inadvertently edited; (3) a software upgrade of the electronic health record software caused numerous spurious alerts to fire; and (4) a malfunction in an external drug classification system caused an alert to inappropriately suggest antiplatelet drugs, such as aspirin, for patients already taking one. We found that 93% of the Chief Medical Information Officers who responded to our survey had experienced at least one CDSS malfunction, and two-thirds experienced malfunctions at least annually. CDSS malfunctions are widespread and often persist for long periods. The failure of alerts to fire is particularly difficult to detect. A range of causes, including changes in codes and fields, software upgrades, inadvertent disabling or editing of rules, and malfunctions of external systems commonly contribute to CDSS malfunctions, and current approaches for preventing and detecting such malfunctions are inadequate. CDSS malfunctions occur commonly and often go undetected. Better methods are needed to prevent and detect these malfunctions. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association.

A Survey on Anomaly Based Host Intrusion Detection System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jose, Shijoe; Malathi, D.; Reddy, Bharath; Jayaseeli, Dorathi

2018-04-01

An intrusion detection system (IDS) is hardware, software or a combination of two, for monitoring network or system activities to detect malicious signs. In computer security, designing a robust intrusion detection system is one of the most fundamental and important problems. The primary function of system is detecting intrusion and gives alerts when user tries to intrusion on timely manner. In these techniques when IDS find out intrusion it will send alert massage to the system administrator. Anomaly detection is an important problem that has been researched within diverse research areas and application domains. This survey tries to provide a structured and comprehensive overview of the research on anomaly detection. From the existing anomaly detection techniques, each technique has relative strengths and weaknesses. The current state of the experiment practice in the field of anomaly-based intrusion detection is reviewed and survey recent studies in this. This survey provides a study of existing anomaly detection techniques, and how the techniques used in one area can be applied in another application domain.

ECG Holter monitor with alert system and mobile application

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Teron, Abigail C.; Rivera, Pedro A.; Goenaga, Miguel A.

2016-05-01

This paper proposes a new approach on the Holter monitor by creating a portable Electrocardiogram (ECG) Holter monitor that will alert the user by detecting abnormal heart beats using a digital signal processing software. The alarm will be triggered when the patient experiences arrhythmias such as bradycardia and tachycardia. The equipment is simple, comfortable and small in size that fit in the hand. It can be used at any time and any moment by placing three leads to the person's chest which is connected to an electronic circuit. The ECG data will be transmitted via Bluetooth to the memory of a selected mobile phone using an application that will store the collected data for up to 24 hrs. The arrhythmia is identified by comparing the reference signals with the user's signal. The diagnostic results demonstrate that the ECG Holter monitor alerts the user when an arrhythmia is detected thru the Holter monitor and mobile application.

An investigation of air transportation technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1990-1991

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Simpson, Robert W.

1991-01-01

Brief summaries are given of research activities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) under the sponsorship of the FAA/NASA Joint University Program. Topics covered include hazard assessment and cockpit presentation issues for microburst alerting systems; the situational awareness effect of automated air traffic control (ATC) datalink clearance amendments; a graphical simulation system for adaptive, automated approach spacing; an expert system for temporal planning with application to runway configuration management; deterministic multi-zone ice accretion modeling; alert generation and cockpit presentation for an integrated microburst alerting system; and passive infrared ice detection for helicopter applications.

Evaluation of growth based rapid microbiological methods for sterility testing of vaccines and other biological products.

PubMed

Parveen, Seema; Kaur, Simleen; David, Selwyn A Wilson; Kenney, James L; McCormick, William M; Gupta, Rajesh K

2011-10-19

Most biological products, including vaccines, administered by the parenteral route are required to be tested for sterility at the final container and also at various stages during manufacture. The sterility testing method described in the Code of Federal Regulations (21 CFR 610.12) and the United States Pharmacopoeia (USP, Chapter <71>) is based on the observation of turbidity in liquid culture media due to growth of potential contaminants. We evaluated rapid microbiological methods (RMM) based on detection of growth 1) by adenosine triphosphate (ATP) bioluminescence technology (Rapid Milliflex(®) Detection System [RMDS]), and 2) by CO(2) monitoring technologies (BacT/Alert and the BACTEC systems), as alternate sterility methods. Microorganisms representing Gram negative, Gram positive, aerobic, anaerobic, spore forming, slow growing bacteria, yeast, and fungi were prepared in aliquots of Fluid A or a biological matrix (including inactivated influenza vaccines) to contain approximately 0.1, 1, 10 and 100 colony forming units (CFU) in an inoculum of 10 ml. These preparations were inoculated to the specific media required for the various methods: 1) fluid thioglycollate medium (FTM) and tryptic soy broth (TSB) of the compendial sterility method (both membrane filtration and direct inoculation); 2) tryptic soy agar (TSA), Sabouraud dextrose agar (SDA) and Schaedler blood agar (SBA) of the RMDS; 3) iAST and iNST media of the BacT/Alert system and 4) Standard 10 Aerobic/F and Standard Anaerobic/F media of the BACTEC system. RMDS was significantly more sensitive in detecting various microorganisms at 0.1CFU than the compendial methods (p<0.05), whereas the compendial membrane filtration method was significantly more sensitive than the BACTEC and BacT/Alert methods (p<0.05). RMDS detected all microorganisms significantly faster than the compendial method (p<0.05). BacT/Alert and BACTEC methods detected most microorganisms significantly faster than the compendial method (p<0.05), but took almost the same time to detect the slow growing microorganism P. acnes, compared to the compendial method. RMDS using SBA detected all test microorganisms in the presence of a matrix containing preservative 0.01% thimerosal, whereas the BacT/Alert and BACTEC systems did not consistently detect all the test microorganisms in the presence of 0.01% thimerosal. RMDS was compatible with inactivated influenza vaccines and aluminum phosphate or aluminum hydroxide adjuvants at up to 8 mg/ml without any interference in bioluminescence. RMDS was shown to be acceptable as an alternate sterility method taking 5 days as compared to the 14 days required of the compendial method. Isolation of microorganisms from the RMDS was accomplished by re-incubation of membranes with fresh SBA medium and microbial identification was confirmed using the MicroSEQ Identification System. BacT/Alert and BACTEC systems may be applicable as alternate methods to the compendial direct inoculation sterility method for products that do not contain preservatives or anti-microbial agents. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Evaluating 6 ricin field detection assays.

PubMed

Slotved, Hans-Christian; Sparding, Nadja; Tanassi, Julia Tanas; Steenhard, Nina R; Heegaard, Niels H H

2014-01-01

This study presents data showing the performance of 6 commercial detection assays against ricin around concentrations specified as detection limits by the producers. A 2-fold dilution series of 20 ng/ml ricin was prepared and used for testing the lateral-flow kits: BADD, Pro Strips™, ENVI, RAID DX, Ricin BioThreat Alert, and IMASS™ device. Three of the 6 tested field assays (IMASS™ device, ENVI assay, and the BioThreat Alert assay) were able to detect ricin, although differences in the measured detection limits compared to the official detection limits and false-negative results were observed. We were not able to get the BADD, Pro Strips™, and RAID assays to function in our laboratory. We conclude that when purchasing a field responder assay, there is large variation in the specificity of the assays, and a number of in-house tests must be performed to ensure functionality.

Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Delegation of Separation in NextGen Airspace

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kenny, Caitlin A.; Shively, Robert J.; Jordan, Kevin

2014-01-01

The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) performing delegated separation in the national airspace system (NAS). Delegated separation is the transfer of responsibility for maintaining separation between aircraft or vehicles from air navigation service providers to the relevant pilot or flight operator. The effects of delegated separation and traffic display information level were collected through performance, workload, and situation awareness measures. The results of this study show benefits related to the use of conflict detection alerts being shown on the UAS operator's cockpit situation display (CSD), and to the use of full delegation. Overall, changing the level of separation responsibility and adding conflict detection alerts on the CSD was not found to have an adverse effect on performance as shown by the low amounts of losses of separation. The use of conflict detection alerts on the CSD and full delegation responsibilities given to the UAS operator were found to create significantly reduced workload, significantly increased situation awareness and significantly easier communications between the UAS operator and air traffic controller without significantly increasing the amount of losses of separation.

Unmanned aircraft system (UAS) delegation of separation in NextGen airspace

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kenny, Caitlin A.

The purpose of this thesis was to determine the feasibility of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) performing delegated separation in the national airspace system (NAS). Delegated separation is the transfer of responsibility for maintaining separation between aircraft or vehicles from air navigation service providers to the relevant pilot or flight operator. The effects of delegated separation and traffic display information level were collected through performance, workload, and situation awareness measures. The results of this study showed benefits related to the use of conflict detection alerts being shown on the UAS operator's cockpit situation display (CSD) and to the use of full delegation. Overall, changing the level of separation responsibility and adding conflict detection alerts on the CSD were not found to have an adverse effect on performance as shown by the low amounts of losses of separation. The use of conflict detection alerts on the CSD and full delegation responsibilities given to the UAS operator were found to create significantly reduced workload, significantly increased situation awareness and significantly easier communications between the UAS operator and air traffic controller without significantly increasing the amount of losses of separation.

Automated oestrus detection using multimetric behaviour recognition in seasonal-calving dairy cattle on pasture.

PubMed

Brassel, J; Rohrssen, F; Failing, K; Wehrend, A

2018-06-11

To evaluate the performance of a novel accelerometer-based oestrus detection system (ODS) for dairy cows on pasture, in comparison with measurement of concentrations of progesterone in milk, ultrasonographic examination of ovaries and farmer observations. Mixed-breed lactating dairy cows (n=109) in a commercial, seasonal-calving herd managed at pasture under typical farming conditions in Ireland, were fitted with oestrus detection collars 3 weeks prior to mating start date. The ODS performed multimetric analysis of eight different motion patterns to generate oestrus alerts. Data were collected during the artificial insemination period of 66 days, commencing on 16 April 2015. Transrectal ultrasonographic examinations of the reproductive tract and measurements of concentrations of progesterone in milk were used to confirm oestrus events. Visual observations by the farmer and the number of theoretically expected oestrus events were used to evaluate the number of false negative ODS alerts. The percentage of eligible cows that were detected in oestrus at least once (and were confirmed true positives) was calculated for the first 21, 42 and 63 days of the insemination period. During the insemination period, the ODS generated 194 oestrus alerts and 140 (72.2%) were confirmed as true positives. Six confirmed oestrus events recognised by the farmer did not generate ODS alerts. The positive predictive value of the ODS was 72.2 (95% CI=65.3-78.4)%. To account for oestrus events not identified by the ODS or the farmer, four theoretical missed oestrus events were added to the false negatives. Estimated sensitivity of the automated ODS was 93.3 (95% CI=88.1-96.8)%. The proportion of eligible cows that were detected in oestrus during the first 21 days of the insemination period was 92/106 (86.8%), and during the first 42 and 63 days of the insemination period was 103/106 (97.2%) and 105/106 (99.1%), respectively. The ODS under investigation was suitable for oestrus detection in dairy cows on pasture and showed a high sensitivity of oestrus detection. Multimetric analysis of behavioural data seems to be the superior approach to developing and improving ODS for dairy cows on pasture. Due to a high proportion of false positive alerts, its use as a stand-alone system for oestrus detection cannot be recommended. As it is the first time the system was investigated, testing on other farms would be necessary for further validation.

The First Ground-Level Enhancement of Solar Cycle 24 on 17 May 2012 and Its Real-Time Detection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Papaioannou, A.; Souvatzoglou, G.; Paschalis, P.; Gerontidou, M.; Mavromichalaki, H.

2014-01-01

Ground-level enhancements (GLEs) are defined as sudden increases in the recorded intensity of cosmic-ray particles, usually by neutron monitors (NMs). In this work we present a time-shifting analysis (TSA) for the first arriving particles that were detected at Earth by NMs. We also present an automated real-time GLE alert that has been developed and is operating via the Neutron Monitor Database (NMDB), which successfully identified the 17 May 2012 event, designated as GLE71. We discuss the time evolution of the real-time GLE alert that was issued for GLE71 and present the event onset-time for NMs that contributed to this GLE alert based on their archived data. A comparison with their real-time time-stamp was made to illustrate the necessity for high-resolution data ( e.g. 1-min time resolution) made available at every minute. The first results on the propagation of relativistic protons that have been recorded by NMs, as inferred by the TSA, imply that they are most probably accelerated by the coronal-mass-ejection-driven shock. Furthermore, the successful usage of NM data and the corresponding achievement of issuing a timely GLE alert are discussed.

Design of anti-theft/cable cut real time alert system for copper cable using microcontroller and GSM technology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lim, E. K.; Norizan, M. N.; Mohamad, I. S.; Yasin, M. N. M.; Murad, S. A. Z.; Baharum, N. A.; Jamalullail, N.

2017-09-01

This paper presents the design of anti-theft/cable cut real time alert system using microcontroller and GSM technology. The detection part is using the electrical circuit wire connection in detecting the voltage drop of the cable inside the microcontroller digital input port. The GSM wireless modem is used to send the location of cable cut directly to the authority mobile phone. Microcontroller SK40C with Microchip PIC16F887 is used as a controller to control the wireless modem and also the detection device. The device is able to detect and display the location of the cable cut on the LCD display besides of and sending out the location of the cable break to the authority mobile phone wirelessly via SMS.

Assessing contextual factors that influence acceptance of pedestrian alerts by a night vision system.

PubMed

Källhammer, Jan-Erik; Smith, Kip

2012-08-01

We investigated five contextual variables that we hypothesized would influence driver acceptance of alerts to pedestrians issued by a night vision active safety system to inform the specification of the system's alerting strategies. Driver acceptance of automotive active safety systems is a key factor to promote their use and implies a need to assess factors influencing driver acceptance. In a field operational test, 10 drivers drove instrumented vehicles equipped with a preproduction night vision system with pedestrian detection software. In a follow-up experiment, the 10 drivers and 25 additional volunteers without experience with the system watched 57 clips with pedestrian encounters gathered during the field operational test. They rated the acceptance of an alert to each pedestrian encounter. Levels of rating concordance were significant between drivers who experienced the encounters and participants who did not. Two contextual variables, pedestrian location and motion, were found to influence ratings. Alerts were more accepted when pedestrians were close to or moving toward the vehicle's path. The study demonstrates the utility of using subjective driver acceptance ratings to inform the design of active safety systems and to leverage expensive field operational test data within the confines of the laboratory. The design of alerting strategies for active safety systems needs to heed the driver's contextual sensitivity to issued alerts.

[Analysis of false-positive reaction for bacterial detection of blood samples with the automated microbial detection system BacT/ALERT 3D].

PubMed

Zhu, Li-Wei; Yang, Xue-Mei; Xu, Xiao-Qin; Xu, Jian; Lu, Huang-Jun; Yan, Li-Xing

2008-10-01

This study was aimed to analyze the results of false positive reaction in bacterial detection of blood samples with BacT/ALERT 3D system, to evaluate the specificity of this system, and to decrease the false positive reaction. Each reaction flasks in past five years were processed for bacteria isolation and identification. When the initial cultures were positive, the remaining samples and the corresponding units were recultured if still available. 11395 blood samples were detected. It is worthy of note that the incubator temperature should be stabilized, avoiding fluctuation; when the cultures were alarmed, the reaction flasks showed be kept some hours for further incubation so as to trace a sharply increasing signal to support the judgement of true bacterial growth. The results indicated that 122 samples (1.07%) wee positive at initial culture, out of them 107 samples (88.7%) were found bacterial, and 15 samples (12.3%) were found nothing. The detection curves of positive samples resulted from bacterial growth showed ascent. In conclusion, maintenance of temperature stability and avoidance of temperature fluctuation in incubator could decrease the occurrence of false-positive reaction in detection process. The reaction flasks with positive results at initial culture should be recultured, and whether existence of a sharply ascending logarilhimic growth phase in bacterial growth curve should be further detected, which are helpful to distinguish false-positive reactions from true positive, and thus increase the specificity of the BacT/ALERT system.

The MOnitoring Resynchronization dEvices and CARdiac patiEnts (MORE-CARE) randomized controlled trial: phase 1 results on dynamics of early intervention with remote monitoring.

PubMed

Boriani, Giuseppe; Da Costa, Antoine; Ricci, Renato Pietro; Quesada, Aurelio; Favale, Stefano; Iacopino, Saverio; Romeo, Francesco; Risi, Arnaldo; Mangoni di S Stefano, Lorenza; Navarro, Xavier; Biffi, Mauro; Santini, Massimo; Burri, Haran

2013-08-21

Remote monitoring (RM) in patients with advanced heart failure and cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillators (CRT-D) may reduce delays in clinical decisions by transmitting automatic alerts. However, this strategy has never been tested specifically in this patient population, with alerts for lung fluid overload, and in a European setting. The main objective of Phase 1 (presented here) is to evaluate if RM strategy is able to reduce time from device-detected events to clinical decisions. In this multicenter randomized controlled trial, patients with moderate to severe heart failure implanted with CRT-D devices were randomized to a Remote group (with remote follow-up and wireless automatic alerts) or to a Control group (with standard follow-up without alerts). The primary endpoint of Phase 1 was the delay between an alert event and clinical decisions related to the event in the first 154 enrolled patients followed for 1 year. The median delay from device-detected events to clinical decisions was considerably shorter in the Remote group compared to the Control group: 2 (25(th)-75(th) percentile, 1-4) days vs 29 (25(th)-75(th) percentile, 3-51) days respectively, P=.004. In-hospital visits were reduced in the Remote group (2.0 visits/patient/year vs 3.2 visits/patient/year in the Control group, 37.5% relative reduction, P<.001). Automatic alerts were successfully transmitted in 93% of events occurring outside the hospital in the Remote group. The annual rate of all-cause hospitalizations per patient did not differ between the two groups (P=.65). RM in CRT-D patients with advanced heart failure allows physicians to promptly react to clinically relevant automatic alerts and significantly reduces the burden of in-hospital visits. Clinicaltrials.gov NCT00885677; http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT00885677 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6IkcCJ7NF).

The MOnitoring Resynchronization dEvices and CARdiac patiEnts (MORE-CARE) Randomized Controlled Trial: Phase 1 Results on Dynamics of Early Intervention With Remote Monitoring

PubMed Central

Da Costa, Antoine; Ricci, Renato Pietro; Quesada, Aurelio; Favale, Stefano; Iacopino, Saverio; Romeo, Francesco; Risi, Arnaldo; Mangoni di S Stefano, Lorenza; Navarro, Xavier; Biffi, Mauro; Santini, Massimo; Burri, Haran

2013-01-01

Background Remote monitoring (RM) in patients with advanced heart failure and cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillators (CRT-D) may reduce delays in clinical decisions by transmitting automatic alerts. However, this strategy has never been tested specifically in this patient population, with alerts for lung fluid overload, and in a European setting. Objective The main objective of Phase 1 (presented here) is to evaluate if RM strategy is able to reduce time from device-detected events to clinical decisions. Methods In this multicenter randomized controlled trial, patients with moderate to severe heart failure implanted with CRT-D devices were randomized to a Remote group (with remote follow-up and wireless automatic alerts) or to a Control group (with standard follow-up without alerts). The primary endpoint of Phase 1 was the delay between an alert event and clinical decisions related to the event in the first 154 enrolled patients followed for 1 year. Results The median delay from device-detected events to clinical decisions was considerably shorter in the Remote group compared to the Control group: 2 (25th-75th percentile, 1-4) days vs 29 (25th-75th percentile, 3-51) days respectively, P=.004. In-hospital visits were reduced in the Remote group (2.0 visits/patient/year vs 3.2 visits/patient/year in the Control group, 37.5% relative reduction, P<.001). Automatic alerts were successfully transmitted in 93% of events occurring outside the hospital in the Remote group. The annual rate of all-cause hospitalizations per patient did not differ between the two groups (P=.65). Conclusions RM in CRT-D patients with advanced heart failure allows physicians to promptly react to clinically relevant automatic alerts and significantly reduces the burden of in-hospital visits. Trial Registration Clinicaltrials.gov NCT00885677; http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT00885677 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6IkcCJ7NF). PMID:23965236

Mutagenicity, anticancer activity and blood brain barrier: similarity and dissimilarity of molecular alerts.

PubMed

Toropov, Andrey A; Toropova, Alla P; Benfenati, Emilio; Salmona, Mario

2018-06-01

The aim of the present work is an attempt to define computable measure of similarity between different endpoints. The similarity of structural alerts of different biochemical endpoints can be used to solve tasks of medicinal chemistry. Optimal descriptors are a tool to build up models for different endpoints. The optimal descriptor is calculated with simplified molecular input-line entry system (SMILES). A group of elements (single symbol or pair of symbols) can represent any SMILES. Each element of SMILES can be represented by so-called correlation weight i.e. coefficient that should be used to calculate descriptor. Numerical data on the correlation weights are calculated by the Monte Carlo method, i.e. by optimization procedure, which gives maximal correlation coefficient between the optimal descriptor and endpoint for the training set. Statistically stable correlation weights observed in several runs of the optimization can be examined as structural alerts, which are promoters of the increase or the decrease of a biochemical activity of a substance. Having data on several runs of the optimization correlation weights, one can extract list of promoters of increase and list of promoters of decrease for an endpoint. The study of similarity and dissimilarity of the above lists has been carried out for the following pairs of endpoints: (i) mutagenicity and anticancer activity; (ii) mutagenicity and blood brain barrier; and (iii) blood brain barrier and anticancer activity. The computational experiment confirms that similarity and dissimilarity for pairs of endpoints can be measured.

Six years' experience of using the BacT/ALERT system to screen all platelet concentrates, and additional testing of outdated platelet concentrates to estimate the frequency of false-negative results.

PubMed

Larsen, C P; Ezligini, F; Hermansen, N O; Kjeldsen-Kragh, J

2005-02-01

Approximately 1 in every 2000 units of platelets is contaminated with bacteria. The BacT/ALERT automated blood culture system can be used to screen platelet concentrates (PCs) for bacterial contamination. Data were collected from May 1998 until May 2004. The number of PCs tested during this period was 36 896, most of which were produced from pools of four buffy-coats. On the day following blood collection or platelet apheresis, a 5-10 ml sample of the PC was aseptically transferred to a BacT/ALERT culture bottle for detection of aerobic bacteria. The sample was monitored for bacterial growth during the entire storage period of the PC (6.5 days). When a positive signal was generated, the culture bottle, the PC and the erythrocyte concentrates were tested for bacterial growth. In order to determine the frequency of false-negative BacT/ALERT signals, 1061 outdated PCs were tested during the period from May 2002 to May 2004. Eighty-eight positive signals were detected by the BacT/ALERT system, of which 12 were interpreted as truly positive. Fourteen signals were interpreted as truly false positive. Thirty-three signals were interpreted to be probably false positive. Two of 1061 outdated units tested positive, and Bacillus spp. and Staphylococcus epidermidis, respectively, were isolated from these PCs. Between 0.03% and 0.12% of the PCs were contaminated with bacteria. BacT/ALERT is an efficient tool for monitoring PCs for bacterial contamination; however, it is important to realize that false-negative results may occur.

An assessment of detection canine alerts using flowers that release methyl benzoate, the cocaine odorant, and an evaluation of their behavior in terms of the VOCs produced.

PubMed

Cerreta, Michelle M; Furton, Kenneth G

2015-06-01

In recent years, the high frequency of illicit substance abuse reported in the United States has made the development of efficient and rapid detection methods important. Biological detectors, such as canines (Canis familiaris), are valuable tools for rapid, on-site identification of illicit substances. However, research indicates that in many cases canines do not alert to the contraband, but rather to the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are released from the contraband, referred to as the "active odor." In 2013, canine accuracy and reliability were challenged in the Supreme Court case, State of Florida v. Jardines. In this case, it was stated that if a canine alerts to the active odor, and not the contraband, the canine's accuracy and selectivity could be questioned, since many of these compounds have been found in common household products. Specifically, methyl benzoate, the active odor of cocaine, has been found to be the most abundant compound produced by snapdragon flowers. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the odor profiles of various species of snapdragon flowers to assess how significantly methyl benzoate contributes to the total VOC profile or fragrance that is produced. Particularly, this study examines the VOCs released from newly grown snapdragon flowers and determines its potential at eliciting a false alert from specially trained detection canines. The ability of detection canines to differentiate between cocaine and snapdragon flowers was determined in order to validate the field accuracy and discrimination power of these detectors. An optimized method using headspace solid-phase microextraction coupled with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (HS-SPME/GC-MS) was used to test the different types and abundances of compounds generated from snapdragon flowers at various stages throughout the plants' life cycle. The results indicate that although methyl benzoate is present in the odor profile of snapdragon flowers, other compounds are present that contribute significantly, if not more, than that of methyl benzoate. Canine teams, from various police departments throughout South Florida, certified for narcotics detection, took part in this study. Two canine trials involving 21 canines teams were performed by exposing the teams to 4 different species of snapdragon flowers. Of the 21 canine teams tested, none alerted to the snapdragon flowers presented, while all (100%) alerted to real cocaine samples, the positive control. Notably, the results revealed that although methyl benzoate is produced by snapdragon flowers, certified narcotics detection canines can distinguish cocaine's odor profile from that of snapdragon flowers. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Impact of electronic-alerting of acute kidney injury: workgroup statements from the 15(th) ADQI Consensus Conference.

PubMed

Hoste, Eric A J; Kashani, Kianoush; Gibney, Noel; Wilson, F Perry; Ronco, Claudio; Goldstein, Stuart L; Kellum, John A; Bagshaw, Sean M

2016-01-01

Among hospitalized patients, acute kidney injury is common and associated with significant morbidity and risk for mortality. The use of electronic health records (EHR) for prediction and detection of this important clinical syndrome has grown in the past decade. The steering committee of the 15(th) Acute Dialysis Quality Initiative (ADQI) conference dedicated a workgroup with the task of identifying elements that may impact the course of events following Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) e-alert. Following an extensive, non-systematic literature search, we used a modified Delphi process to reach consensus regarding several aspects of the utilization of AKI e-alerts. Topics discussed in this workgroup included progress in evidence base practices, the characteristics of an optimal e-alert, the measures of efficacy and effectiveness, and finally what responses would be considered best practices following AKI e-alerts. Authors concluded that the current evidence for e-alert system efficacy, although growing, remains insufficient. Technology and human-related factors were found to be crucial elements of any future investigation or implementation of such tools. The group also concluded that implementation of such systems should not be done without a vigorous plan to evaluate the efficacy and effectiveness of e-alerts. Efficacy and effectiveness of e-alerts should be measured by context-specific process and patient outcomes. Finally, the group made several suggestions regarding the clinical decision support that should be considered following successful e-alert implementation. This paper reflects the findings of a non-systematic review and expert opinion. We recommend implementation of the findings of this workgroup report for use of AKI e-alerts.

Optical GRB Afterglows Detected with UVOT

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Marshall, F. E.

2008-05-01

The automated response of the UltraViolet and Optical Telescope (UVOT) on Swift to new GRBs has several parameters, including exposure time, filter sequence and data mode, that can be adjusted to optimize the science return of early afterglow observations. After some initial changes, the response has remained stable since March 15, 2006. From then through August 10, 2007, UVOT observed 122 of the 130 GRBs detected with Swift's Burst Alert Telescope (BAT). UVOT typically takes an initial 100-s exposure with the White filter (160-650 nm) starting 60-180 s after the trigger and then takes exposures with the other 6 filters. In its first finding chart exposure UVOT detected 39% of the 84 long (T90>2.0 s) GRBs that were not heavily reddened in the Milky Way (EB-V<0.5) and were observed within 500 seconds of the trigger. Another 4% were detected after including subsequent exposures. Afterglow magnitudes ranged from 12.8 to the sensitivity limit of ~21. Only 1 of 11 short GRBs were detected, and its magnitude was near the sensitivity limit. We also report correlations of afterglow magnitudes with other GRB properties.

IR panoramic alerting sensor concepts and applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

de Jong, Arie N.; Schwering, Piet B. W.

2003-09-01

During the last decade, protection of military and civilian operational platforms against weapons like guns, grenades, missiles, Unmanned Combat Aerial (and surface) Vehicles (UCAV's) and mines, has been an issue of increased importance due to the improved kill-probability of these threats. The standard countermeasure package of armour, guns, decoys, jammers, camouflage nets and smokes is inadequate when not accompanied by a suitable sensor package, primarily consisting of an alerting device, triggering consecutive steps in the countermeasure-chain. In this process of alert four different detection techniques are considered: pre-alert, giving the directions of possible attack, detection of an action of attack, identification of the threat and finally the precise localization (3-D). The design of the alerting device is greatly depending on the platform, on which it will be used, the associated and affordable cost and the nature of the threat. A number of sensor packages, considered, developed and evaluated at TNO-FEL is presented for simple, medium size and large and expensive platforms. In recent years the requirements for these sensors have become more and more strigent due to the growing number of scenarios. The attack can practically be from any direction, implying the need for a large Field of Regard (FOR), the attack range can vary considerably and the type of threat can be very diverse, implying great flexibility and dynamic range and rapid response of the sensor. Especially the localization at short ranges is a challenging issue. Various configurations including advantages and drawbacks are discussed.

Alerts of forest disturbance from MODIS imagery

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hammer, Dan; Kraft, Robin; Wheeler, David

2014-12-01

This paper reports the methodology and computational strategy for a forest cover disturbance alerting system. Analytical techniques from time series econometrics are applied to imagery from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor to detect temporal instability in vegetation indices. The characteristics from each MODIS pixel's spectral history are extracted and compared against historical data on forest cover loss to develop a geographically localized classification rule that can be applied across the humid tropical biome. The final output is a probability of forest disturbance for each 500 m pixel that is updated every 16 days. The primary objective is to provide high-confidence alerts of forest disturbance, while minimizing false positives. We find that the alerts serve this purpose exceedingly well in Pará, Brazil, with high probability alerts garnering a user accuracy of 98 percent over the training period and 93 percent after the training period (2000-2005) when compared against the PRODES deforestation data set, which is used to assess spatial accuracy. Implemented in Clojure and Java on the Hadoop distributed data processing platform, the algorithm is a fast, automated, and open source system for detecting forest disturbance. It is intended to be used in conjunction with higher-resolution imagery and data products that cannot be updated as quickly as MODIS-based data products. By highlighting hotspots of change, the algorithm and associated output can focus high-resolution data acquisition and aid in efforts to enforce local forest conservation efforts.

Can surveillance systems identify and avert adverse drug events? A prospective evaluation of a commercial application.

PubMed

Jha, Ashish K; Laguette, Julia; Seger, Andrew; Bates, David W

2008-01-01

Computerized monitors can effectively detect and potentially prevent adverse drug events (ADEs). Most monitors have been developed in large academic hospitals and are not readily usable in other settings. We assessed the ability of a commercial program to identify and prevent ADEs in a community hospital. and Measurement We prospectively evaluated the commercial application in a community-based hospital. We examined the frequency and types of alerts produced, how often they were associated with ADEs and potential ADEs, and the potential financial impact of monitoring for ADEs. Among 2,407 patients screened, the application generated 516 high priority alerts. We were able to review 266 alerts at the time they were generated and among these, 30 (11.3%) were considered substantially important to warrant contacting the physician caring for the patient. These 30 alerts were associated with 4 ADEs and 11 potential ADEs. In all 15 cases, the responsible physician was unaware of the event, leading to a change in clinical care in 14 cases. Overall, 23% of high priority alerts were associated with an ADE (95% confidence interval [CI] 12% to 34%) and another 15% were associated with a potential ADE (95% CI 6% to 24%). Active surveillance used approximately 1.5 hours of pharmacist time daily. A commercially available, computer-based ADE detection tool was effective at identifying ADEs. When used as part of an active surveillance program, it can have an impact on preventing or ameliorating ADEs.

Adaptive sequential Bayesian classification using Page's test

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lynch, Robert S., Jr.; Willett, Peter K.

2002-03-01

In this paper, the previously introduced Mean-Field Bayesian Data Reduction Algorithm is extended for adaptive sequential hypothesis testing utilizing Page's test. In general, Page's test is well understood as a method of detecting a permanent change in distribution associated with a sequence of observations. However, the relationship between detecting a change in distribution utilizing Page's test with that of classification and feature fusion is not well understood. Thus, the contribution of this work is based on developing a method of classifying an unlabeled vector of fused features (i.e., detect a change to an active statistical state) as quickly as possible given an acceptable mean time between false alerts. In this case, the developed classification test can be thought of as equivalent to performing a sequential probability ratio test repeatedly until a class is decided, with the lower log-threshold of each test being set to zero and the upper log-threshold being determined by the expected distance between false alerts. It is of interest to estimate the delay (or, related stopping time) to a classification decision (the number of time samples it takes to classify the target), and the mean time between false alerts, as a function of feature selection and fusion by the Mean-Field Bayesian Data Reduction Algorithm. Results are demonstrated by plotting the delay to declaring the target class versus the mean time between false alerts, and are shown using both different numbers of simulated training data and different numbers of relevant features for each class.

Combating Terrorism Technology Support Office 2006 Review

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-01-01

emplaced beyond the control point, activated manually or automatically , with warning lights and an audible alarm to alert innocent pedestrians. The...throughout a vehicle. When a tamper event is detected, SERVANT automatically records sensor data and surveillance video and sends an alert to the security...exposure to organophosphate nerve agents, botulinum toxin, cyanide, and carbon monoxide and will be packaged into a portable , lightweight, mobile hand

Airborne derivation of microburst alerts from ground-based Terminal Doppler Weather Radar information: A flight evaluation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hinton, David A.

1993-01-01

An element of the NASA/FAA windshear program is the integration of ground-based microburst information on the flight deck, to support airborne windshear alerting and microburst avoidance. NASA conducted a windshear flight test program in the summer of 1991 during which airborne processing of Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) data was used to derive microburst alerts. Microburst information was extracted from TDWR, transmitted to a NASA Boeing 737 in flight via data link, and processed to estimate the windshear hazard level (F-factor) that would be experienced by the aircraft in each microburst. The microburst location and F-factor were used to derive a situation display and alerts. The situation display was successfully used to maneuver the aircraft for microburst penetrations, during which atmospheric 'truth' measurements were made. A total of 19 penetrations were made of TDWR-reported microburst locations, resulting in 18 airborne microburst alerts from the TDWR data and two microburst alerts from the airborne reactive windshear detection system. The primary factors affecting alerting performance were spatial offset of the flight path from the region of strongest shear, differences in TDWR measurement altitude and airplane penetration altitude, and variations in microburst outflow profiles. Predicted and measured F-factors agreed well in penetrations near microburst cores. Although improvements in airborne and ground processing of the TDWR measurements would be required to support an airborne executive-level alerting protocol, the practicality of airborne utilization of TDWR data link data has been demonstrated.

Development and evaluation of a data-adaptive alerting algorithm for univariate temporal biosurveillance data.

PubMed

Elbert, Yevgeniy; Burkom, Howard S

2009-11-20

This paper discusses further advances in making robust predictions with the Holt-Winters forecasts for a variety of syndromic time series behaviors and introduces a control-chart detection approach based on these forecasts. Using three collections of time series data, we compare biosurveillance alerting methods with quantified measures of forecast agreement, signal sensitivity, and time-to-detect. The study presents practical rules for initialization and parameterization of biosurveillance time series. Several outbreak scenarios are used for detection comparison. We derive an alerting algorithm from forecasts using Holt-Winters-generalized smoothing for prospective application to daily syndromic time series. The derived algorithm is compared with simple control-chart adaptations and to more computationally intensive regression modeling methods. The comparisons are conducted on background data from both authentic and simulated data streams. Both types of background data include time series that vary widely by both mean value and cyclic or seasonal behavior. Plausible, simulated signals are added to the background data for detection performance testing at signal strengths calculated to be neither too easy nor too hard to separate the compared methods. Results show that both the sensitivity and the timeliness of the Holt-Winters-based algorithm proved to be comparable or superior to that of the more traditional prediction methods used for syndromic surveillance.

Decreased functional connectivity and structural deficit in alertness network with right-sided temporal lobe epilepsy.

PubMed

Gao, Yujun; Zheng, Jinou; Li, Yaping; Guo, Danni; Wang, Mingli; Cui, Xiangxiang; Ye, Wei

2018-04-01

Patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) often suffer from alertness alterations. However, specific regions connected with alertness remain controversial, and whether these regions have structural impairment is also elusive. This study aimed to investigate the characteristics and neural mechanisms underlying the functions and structures of alertness network in patients with right-sided temporal lobe epilepsy (rTLE) by performing the attentional network test (ANT), resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (R-SfMRI), and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI).A total of 47 patients with rTLE and 34 healthy controls underwent ANT, R-SfMRI, and DTI scan. The seed-based functional connectivity (FC) method and deterministic tractography were used to analyze the data.Patients with rTLE had longer reaction times in the no-cue and double-cue conditions. However, no differences were noted in the alertness effect between the 2 groups. The patient group had lower FC compared with the control group in the right inferior parietal lobe (IPL), amygdala, and insula. Structural deficits were found in the right parahippocampal gyrus, superior temporal pole, insula, and amygdala in the patient group compared with the control group. Also significantly negative correlations were observed between abnormal fractional anisotropy (between the right insula and the superior temporal pole) and illness duration in the patients with rTLE.The findings of this study suggested abnormal intrinsic and phasic alertness, decreased FC, and structural deficits within the alerting network in the rTLE. This study provided new insights into the mechanisms of alertness alterations in rTLE.

EEG quantification of alertness: methods for early identification of individuals most susceptible to sleep deprivation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Berka, Chris; Levendowski, Daniel J.; Westbrook, Philip; Davis, Gene; Lumicao, Michelle N.; Olmstead, Richard E.; Popovic, Miodrag; Zivkovic, Vladimir T.; Ramsey, Caitlin K.

2005-05-01

Electroencephalographic (EEG) and neurocognitive measures were simultaneously acquired to quantify alertness from 24 participants during 44-hours of sleep deprivation. Performance on a three-choice vigilance task (3C-VT), paired-associate learning/memory task (PAL) and modified Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT), and sleep technician-observed drowsiness (eye-closures, head-nods, EEG slowing) were quantified. The B-Alert system automatically classifies each second of EEG on an alertness/drowsiness continuum. B-Alert classifications were significantly correlated with technician-observations, visually scored EEG and performance measures. B-Alert classifications during 3C-VT, and technician observations and performance during the 3C-VT and PAL evidenced progressively increasing drowsiness as a result of sleep deprivation with a stabilizing effect observed at the batteries occurring between 0600 and 1100 suggesting a possible circadian effect similar to those reported in previous sleep deprivation studies. Participants were given an opportunity to take a 40-minute nap approximately 24-hours into the sleep deprivation portion of the study (i.e., 7 PM on Saturday). The nap was followed by a transient period of increased alertness. Approximately 8 hours after the nap, behavioral and physiological measures of drowsiness returned to levels prior to the nap. Cluster analysis was used to stratify individuals into three groups based on their level of impairment as a result of sleep deprivation. The combination of B-Alert and neuro-behavioral measures may identify individuals whose performance is most susceptible to sleep deprivation. These objective measures could be applied in an operational setting to provide a "biobehavioral assay" to determine vulnerability to sleep deprivation.

Influence of satellite alerts on the efficiency of aircraft monitoring of maritime oil pollution in German waters

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Helmke, Peer; Baschek, Björn; Hunsänger, Thomas; Kranz, Susanne

2014-10-01

For detecting accidental and illegal pollution by mineral oil, the German exclusive economic zone and surrounding waters have been monitored by aircraft operationally for more than 25 years. Aircraft surveillance uses predominantly Side-Looking-Airborne-Radar for visualization of the effect of oil to smoothen capillary waves. A set of near range sensors complements the remote sensing data available for the human operator to classify the detected features as "mineral oil", "natural phenomenon", "other substance" or "unknown" pollution. Today, as an add-on to aerial surveillance, the German Central Command of Maritime Emergencies uses the operational satellite service "CleanSeaNet" provided by the European Maritime Safety Agency: Radar satellite data is analyzed in near real time and alerts of potential pollution are sent out. Shortly after receiving the results, aircraft surveillance flights are started by the 3rd Naval Air Wing and the locations of the satellite alerts are checked. Thus, a combined system of satellite and aerial surveillance is in place. The German Federal Institute of Hydrology, BfG, has access to the data of the pollution events detected during these flights and the corresponding meta-data of flights and satellite images. In this work, a period of two years of this data is analyzed. The probability to detect pollutions is evaluated for (A) flight missions associated with satellite scenes, and (B) additional flights performed independently from satellite scenes. Thus, the influence of satellite alerts on the efficiency of aircraft monitoring is investigated. Coverage and coordination of the monitoring by aircraft and satellite are assessed and implications for the operational monitoring are discussed.

THE DETECTION OF A SN IIn IN OPTICAL FOLLOW-UP OBSERVATIONS OF ICECUBE NEUTRINO EVENTS

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Aartsen, M. G.; Abraham, K.; Ackermann, M.

2015-09-20

The IceCube neutrino observatory pursues a follow-up program selecting interesting neutrino events in real-time and issuing alerts for electromagnetic follow-up observations. In 2012 March, the most significant neutrino alert during the first three years of operation was issued by IceCube. In the follow-up observations performed by the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF), a Type IIn supernova (SN IIn) PTF12csy was found 0.°2 away from the neutrino alert direction, with an error radius of 0.°54. It has a redshift of z = 0.0684, corresponding to a luminosity distance of about 300 Mpc and the Pan-STARRS1 survey shows that its explosion time wasmore » at least 158 days (in host galaxy rest frame) before the neutrino alert, so that a causal connection is unlikely. The a posteriori significance of the chance detection of both the neutrinos and the SN at any epoch is 2.2σ within IceCube's 2011/12 data acquisition season. Also, a complementary neutrino analysis reveals no long-term signal over the course of one year. Therefore, we consider the SN detection coincidental and the neutrinos uncorrelated to the SN. However, the SN is unusual and interesting by itself: it is luminous and energetic, bearing strong resemblance to the SN IIn 2010jl, and shows signs of interaction of the SN ejecta with a dense circumstellar medium. High-energy neutrino emission is expected in models of diffusive shock acceleration, but at a low, non-detectable level for this specific SN. In this paper, we describe the SN PTF12csy and present both the neutrino and electromagnetic data, as well as their analysis.« less

An Analysis of EMS and ED Detection of Stroke.

PubMed

Medoro, Ian; Cone, David C

2017-01-01

Studies have shown a reduction in time-to-CT and improved process measures when EMS personnel notify the ED of a "stroke alert" from the field. However, there are few data on the accuracy of these EMS stroke alerts. The goal of this study was to examine diagnostic test performance of EMS and ED stroke alerts and related process measures. The EMS and ED records of all stroke alerts in a large tertiary ED from August 2013-January 2014 were examined and data abstracted by one trained investigator, with data accuracy confirmed by a second investigator for 15% of cases. Stroke alerts called by EMS prior to ED arrival were compared to stroke alerts called by ED physicians and nurses (for walk-in patients, and patients transported by EMS without EMS stroke alerts). Means ± SD, medians, unpaired t-tests (for continuous data), and two-tailed Fisher's exact tests (for categorical data) were used. Of 260 consecutive stroke alerts, 129 were EMS stroke alerts, and 131 were ED stroke alerts (70 called by physicians, 61 by nurses). The mean NIH Stroke Scale was higher in the EMS group (8.1 ± 7.6 vs. 3.0 ± 5.0, p < 0.0001). The positive predictive value of EMS stroke alerts was 0.60 (78/129), alerts by ED nurses was 0.25 (15/61), and alerts by ED physicians was 0.31 (22/70). The PPV for EMS was better than for nurses or physicians (both p < 0.001), and more patients in the EMS group had final diagnoses of stroke (62/129 vs. 24/131, p < 0.001). The positive likelihood ratio was 1.53 for EMS personnel, 0.45 for physicians, and 0.77 for nurses. The mean time to order the CT (8.5 ± 7.1 min vs. 23.1 ± 18.2 min, p < 0.0001) and the mean ED length of stay (248 ± 116 min vs. 283 ± 128 min, p = 0.022) were shorter for the EMS stroke alert group. More EMS stroke alert patients received tPA (16/129 vs. 6/131, p = 0.027). EMS stroke alerts have better diagnostic test performance than stroke alerts by ED staff, likely due to higher NIH Stroke Scale scores (more obvious presentations) and are associated with better process measures. The fairly low PPV suggests room for improvement in prehospital stroke protocols.

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 571 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-01-01

.... III. Detecting Red Flags The Program's policies and procedures should address the detection of Red... detect relevant Red Flags that may arise in the performance of the service provider's activities, and... or creditor detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of...

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 171 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-01-01

.... III. Detecting Red Flags The Program's policies and procedures should address the detection of Red... detect relevant Red Flags that may arise in the performance of the service provider's activities, and... or creditor detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of...

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 171 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-01-01

.... III. Detecting Red Flags The Program's policies and procedures should address the detection of Red... detect relevant Red Flags that may arise in the performance of the service provider's activities, and... or creditor detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of...

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 571 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-01-01

.... III. Detecting Red Flags The Program's policies and procedures should address the detection of Red... detect relevant Red Flags that may arise in the performance of the service provider's activities, and... or creditor detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of...

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 571 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-01-01

.... III. Detecting Red Flags The Program's policies and procedures should address the detection of Red... detect relevant Red Flags that may arise in the performance of the service provider's activities, and... or creditor detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of...

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 571 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-01-01

.... III. Detecting Red Flags The Program's policies and procedures should address the detection of Red... detect relevant Red Flags that may arise in the performance of the service provider's activities, and... or creditor detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of...

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 171 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-01-01

.... III. Detecting Red Flags The Program's policies and procedures should address the detection of Red... detect relevant Red Flags that may arise in the performance of the service provider's activities, and... or creditor detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of...

Experimental Study of Collision Detection Schema Used by Pilots During Closely Spaced Parallel Approaches

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Pritchett, Amy R.; Hansman, R. John

1996-01-01

An experimental flight simulator study was conducted to examine the mental alerting logic and thresholds used by subjects to issue an alert and execute an avoidance maneuver. Subjects flew a series of autopilot landing approaches with traffic on a closely-spaced parallel approach; during some runs, the traffic would deviate towards the subject and the subject was to indicate the point when they recognized the potential traffic conflict, and then indicate a direction of flight for an avoidance maneuver. A variety of subjects, including graduate students, general aviation pilots and airline pilots, were tested. Five traffic displays were evaluated, with a moving map TCAS-type traffic display as a baseline. A side-task created both high and low workload situations. Subjects appeared to use the lateral deviation of the intruder aircraft from its approach path as the criteria for an alert regardless of the display available. However, with displays showing heading and/or trend information, their alerting thresholds were significantly lowered. This type of range-only schema still resulted in many near misses, as a high convergence rate was often established by the time of the subject's alert. Therefore, the properties of the intruder's trajectory had the greatest effect on the resultant near miss rate; no display system reliably caused alerts timely enough for certain collision avoidance. Subjects' performance dropped significantly on a side-task while they analyzed the need for an alert, showing alert generation can be a high workload situation at critical times. No variation was found between subjects with and with out piloting experience. These results suggest the design of automatic alerting systems should take into account the range-type alerting schema used by the human, such that the rationale for the automatic alert should be obvious to, and trusted by, the operator. Although careful display design may help generate pilot/automation trust, issues such as user non-conformance to automatically generated commands can remain a possibility.

Environmental and cow-related factors affect cow locomotion and can cause misclassification in lameness detection systems.

PubMed

Van Nuffel, A; Van De Gucht, T; Saeys, W; Sonck, B; Opsomer, G; Vangeyte, J; Mertens, K C; De Ketelaere, B; Van Weyenberg, S

2016-09-01

To tackle the high prevalence of lameness, techniques to monitor cow locomotion are being developed in order to detect changes in cows' locomotion due to lameness. Obviously, in such lameness detection systems, alerts should only respond to locomotion changes that are related to lameness. However, other environmental or cow factors can contribute to locomotion changes not related to lameness and hence, might cause false alerts. In this study the effects of wet surfaces, dark environment, age, production level, lactation and gestation stage on cow locomotion were investigated. Data was collected at Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research research farm (Melle, Belgium) during a 5-month period. The gait variables of 30 non-lame and healthy Holstein cows were automatically measured every day. In dark environments and on wet walking surfaces cows took shorter, more asymmetrical strides with less step overlap. In general, older cows had a more asymmetrical gait and they walked slower with more abduction. Lactation stage or gestation stage also showed significant association with asymmetrical and shorter gait and less step overlap probably due to the heavy calf in the uterus. Next, two lameness detection algorithms were developed to investigate the added value of environmental and cow data into detection models. One algorithm solely used locomotion variables and a second algorithm used the same locomotion variables and additional environmental and cow data. In the latter algorithm only age and lactation stage together with the locomotion variables were withheld during model building. When comparing the sensitivity for the detection of non-lame cows, sensitivity increased by 10% when the cow data was added in the algorithm (sensitivity was 70% and 80% for the first and second algorithm, respectively). Hence, the number of false alerts for lame cows that were actually non-lame, decreased. This pilot study shows that using knowledge on influencing factors on cow locomotion will help in reducing the number of false alerts for lameness detection systems under development. However, further research is necessary in order to better understand these and many other possible influencing factors (e.g. trimming, conformation) of non-lame and hence 'normal' locomotion in cows.

Latencies in BOLD response during visual attention processes.

PubMed

Kellermann, Thilo; Reske, Martina; Jansen, Andreas; Satrapi, Peyman; Shah, N Jon; Schneider, Frank; Habel, Ute

2011-04-22

One well-investigated division of attentional processes focuses on alerting, orienting and executive control, which can be assessed applying the attentional network test (ANT). The goal of the present study was to add further knowledge about the temporal dynamics of relevant neural correlates. As a right hemispheric dominance for alerting and orienting has previously been reported for intrinsic but not for phasic alertness, we additionally addressed a potential impact of this lateralization of attention by employing a lateralized version of the ANT, capturing phasic alertness processes. Sixteen healthy subjects underwent event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while performing the ANT. Analyses of BOLD magnitude replicated the engagement of a fronto-parietal network in the attentional subsystems. The amplitudes of the attentional contrasts interacted with visual field presentation in the sense that the thalamus revealed a greater involvement for spatially cued items presented in the left visual field. Comparisons of BOLD latencies in visual cortices, first, verified faster BOLD responses following contra-lateral stimulus presentation. Second and more importantly, we identified attention-modulated activation in secondary visual and anterior cingulate cortices. Results are discussed in terms of bottom-up and lateralization processes. Although intrinsic and phasic alertness are distinct cognitive processes, we propose that neural substrates of intrinsic alertness may be accessed by phasic alertness provided that the attention-dominant (i.e., the right) hemisphere is activated directly by a warning stimulus. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Terminal Area Conflict Detection and Resolution Tool

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Verma, Savita Arora

2011-01-01

This poster will describe analysis of a conflict detection and resolution tool for the terminal area called T-TSAFE. With altitude clearance information, the tool can reduce false alerts to as low as 2 per hour.

Performance Assessment of Network Intrusion-Alert Prediction

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-09-01

the threats. In this thesis, we use Snort to generate the intrusion detection alerts. 2. SNORT Snort is an open source network intrusion...standard for IPS. (Snort, 2012) We choose Snort because it is an open source product that is free to download and can be deployed cross-platform...Learning & prediction in relational time series: A survey. 21st Behavior Representation in Modeling & Simulation ( BRIMS ) Conference 2012, 93–100. Tan

The impact of the heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) computerized alert on provider behaviors and patient outcomes.

PubMed

Austrian, Jonathan S; Adelman, Jason S; Reissman, Stan H; Cohen, Hillel W; Billett, Henny H

2011-01-01

The aim of this study was to measure the effect of an electronic heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) alert on provider ordering behaviors and on patient outcomes. A pop-up alert was created for providers when an individual's platelet values had decreased by 50% or to <100,000/mm(3) in the setting of recent heparin exposure. The authors retrospectively compared inpatients admitted between January 24, 2008 and August 24, 2008 to a control group admitted 1 year prior to the HIT alert. The primary outcome was a change in HIT antibody testing. Secondary outcomes included an assessment of incidence of HIT antibody positivity, percentage of patients started on a direct thrombin inhibitor (DTI), length of stay and overall mortality. There were 1006 and 1081 patients in the control and intervention groups, respectively. There was a 33% relative increase in HIT antibody test orders (p=0.01), and 33% more of these tests were ordered the first day after the criteria were met when a pop-up alert was given (p=0.03). Heparin was discontinued in 25% more patients in the alerted group (p=0.01), and more direct thrombin inhibitors were ordered for them (p=0.03). The number who tested HIT antibody-positive did not differ, however, between the two groups (p=0.99). The length of stay and mortality were similar in both groups. The HIT alert significantly impacted provider behaviors. However, the alert did not result in more cases of HIT being detected or an improvement in overall mortality. Our findings do not support implementation of a computerized HIT alert.

Protocol-driven remote monitoring of cardiac resynchronization therapy as part of a heart failure disease management strategy.

PubMed

Smeets, Christophe J P; Verbrugge, Frederik H; Vranken, Julie; Van der Auwera, Jo; Mullens, Wilfried; Dupont, Matthias; Grieten, Lars; De Cannière, Hélène; Lanssens, Dorien; Vandenberk, Thijs; Storms, Valerie; Thijs, Inge M; Vandervoort, Pieter

2018-06-01

Cardiac resynchronisation therapy (CRT) is an established treatment for heart failure (HF) with reduced ejection fraction. CRT devices are equipped with remote monitoring functions, which are pivotal in the detection of device problems, but may also facilitate disease management. The aim of this study was to provide a comprehensive overview of the clinical interventions taken based on remote monitoring. This is a single centre observational study of consecutive CRT patients (n = 192) participating in protocol-driven remote follow-up. Incoming technical- and disease-related alerts were analysed together with subsequently triggered interventions. During 34 ± 13 months of follow-up, 1372 alert-containing notifications were received (2.53 per patient-year of follow-up), comprising 1696 unique alerts (3.12 per patient-year of follow-up). In 60%, notifications resulted in a phone contact. Technical alerts constituted 8% of incoming alerts (0.23 per patient-year of follow-up). Rhythm (1.43 per patient-year of follow-up) and bioimpedance alerts (0.98 per patient-year of follow-up) were the most frequent disease-related alerts. Notifications included a rhythm alert in 39%, which triggered referral to the emergency room (4%), outpatient cardiology clinic (36%) or general practitioner (7%), or resulted in medication changes (13%). Sole bioimpedance notifications resulted in a telephone contact in 91%, which triggered outpatient evaluation in 8% versus medication changes in 10%. Clinical outcome was excellent with 97% 1-year survival. Remote CRT follow-up resulted in 0.23 technical- versus 2.64 disease-related alerts annually. Rhythm and bioimpedance notifications constituted the majority of incoming notifications which triggered an actual intervention in 22% and 15% of cases, respectively.

Improving regional influenza surveillance through a combination of automated outbreak detection methods: the 2015/16 season in France.

PubMed

Pelat, Camille; Bonmarin, Isabelle; Ruello, Marc; Fouillet, Anne; Caserio-Schönemann, Céline; Levy-Bruhl, Daniel; Le Strat, Yann

2017-08-10

The 2014/15 influenza epidemic caused a work overload for healthcare facilities in France. The French national public health agency announced the start of the epidemic - based on indicators aggregated at the national level - too late for many hospitals to prepare. It was therefore decided to improve the influenza alert procedure through (i) the introduction of a pre-epidemic alert level to better anticipate future outbreaks, (ii) the regionalisation of surveillance so that healthcare structures can be informed of the arrival of epidemics in their region, (iii) the standardised use of data sources and statistical methods across regions. A web application was developed to deliver statistical results of three outbreak detection methods applied to three surveillance data sources: emergency departments, emergency general practitioners and sentinel general practitioners. This application was used throughout the 2015/16 influenza season by the epidemiologists of the headquarters and regional units of the French national public health agency. It allowed them to signal the first influenza epidemic alert in week 2016-W03, in Brittany, with 11 other regions in pre-epidemic alert. This application received positive feedback from users and was pivotal for coordinating surveillance across the agency's regional units. This article is copyright of The Authors, 2017.

Adaptive Trajectory Prediction Algorithm for Climbing Flights

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Schultz, Charles Alexander; Thipphavong, David P.; Erzberger, Heinz

2012-01-01

Aircraft climb trajectories are difficult to predict, and large errors in these predictions reduce the potential operational benefits of some advanced features for NextGen. The algorithm described in this paper improves climb trajectory prediction accuracy by adjusting trajectory predictions based on observed track data. It utilizes rate-of-climb and airspeed measurements derived from position data to dynamically adjust the aircraft weight modeled for trajectory predictions. In simulations with weight uncertainty, the algorithm is able to adapt to within 3 percent of the actual gross weight within two minutes of the initial adaptation. The root-mean-square of altitude errors for five-minute predictions was reduced by 73 percent. Conflict detection performance also improved, with a 15 percent reduction in missed alerts and a 10 percent reduction in false alerts. In a simulation with climb speed capture intent and weight uncertainty, the algorithm improved climb trajectory prediction accuracy by up to 30 percent and conflict detection performance, reducing missed and false alerts by up to 10 percent.

Runway Incursion Prevention for General Aviation Operations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jones, Denise R.; Prinzel, Lawrence J., III

2006-01-01

A Runway Incursion Prevention System (RIPS) and additional incursion detection algorithm were adapted for general aviation operations and evaluated in a simulation study at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Research Center (LaRC) in the fall of 2005. RIPS has been designed to enhance surface situation awareness and provide cockpit alerts of potential runway conflicts in order to prevent runway incidents while also improving operational capability. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the airborne incursion detection algorithms and associated alerting and airport surface display concepts for general aviation operations. This paper gives an overview of the system, simulation study, and test results.

Runway Incursion Prevention System for General Aviation Operations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jones, Denise R.; Prinzel III, Lawrence J.

2006-01-01

A Runway Incursion Prevention System (RIPS) and additional incursion detection algorithm were adapted for general aviation operations and evaluated in a simulation study at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Research Center (LaRC) in the fall of 2005. RIPS has been designed to enhance surface situation awareness and provide cockpit alerts of potential runway conflicts in order to prevent runway incidents while also improving operational capability. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the airborne incursion detection algorithms and associated alerting and airport surface display concepts for general aviation operations. This paper gives an overview of the system, simulation study, and test results.

Collision Avoidance for Airport Traffic Concept Evaluation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jones, Denise R.; Prinzel, Lawrence J., III; Otero, Sharon D.; Barker, Glover D.

2009-01-01

An initial Collision Avoidance for Airport Traffic (CAAT) concept for the Terminal Maneuvering Area (TMA) was evaluated in a simulation study at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Research Center. CAAT is being designed to enhance surface situation awareness and provide cockpit alerts of potential conflicts during runway, taxi, and low altitude air-to-air operations. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the initial concept for an aircraft-based method of conflict detection and resolution (CD&R) in the TMA focusing on conflict detection algorithms and alerting display concepts. This paper gives an overview of the CD&R concept, simulation study, and test results.

FLaapLUC: A pipeline for the generation of prompt alerts on transient Fermi-LAT γ-ray sources

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lenain, J.-P.

2018-01-01

The large majority of high energy sources detected with Fermi-LAT are blazars, which are known to be very variable sources. High cadence long-term monitoring simultaneously at different wavelengths being prohibitive, the study of their transient activities can help shedding light on our understanding of these objects. The early detection of such potentially fast transient events is the key for triggering follow-up observations at other wavelengths. A Python tool, FLaapLUC, built on top of the Science Tools provided by the Fermi Science Support Center and the Fermi-LAT collaboration, has been developed using a simple aperture photometry approach. This tool can effectively detect relative flux variations in a set of predefined sources and alert potential users. Such alerts can then be used to trigger target of opportunity observations with other facilities. It is shown that FLaapLUC is an efficient tool to reveal transient events in Fermi-LAT data, providing quick results which can be used to promptly organise follow-up observations. Results from this simple aperture photometry method are also compared to full likelihood analyses. The FLaapLUC package is made available on GitHub and is open to contributions by the community.

Neural Correlates of Alerting and Orienting Impairment in Multiple Sclerosis Patients

PubMed Central

Vázquez-Marrufo, Manuel; Galvao-Carmona, Alejandro; González-Rosa, Javier J.; Hidalgo-Muñoz, Antonio R.; Borges, Mónica; Ruiz-Peña, Juan Luis; Izquierdo, Guillermo

2014-01-01

Background A considerable percentage of multiple sclerosis patients have attentional impairment, but understanding its neurophysiological basis remains a challenge. The Attention Network Test allows 3 attentional networks to be studied. Previous behavioural studies using this test have shown that the alerting network is impaired in multiple sclerosis. The aim of this study was to identify neurophysiological indexes of the attention impairment in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis patients using this test. Results After general slowing had been removed in patients group to isolate the effects of each condition, some behavioral differences between them were obtained. About Contingent Negative Variation, a statistically significant decrement were found in the amplitude for Central and Spatial Cue Conditions for patient group (p<0.05). ANOVAs showed for the patient group a significant latency delay for P1 and N1 components (p<0.05) and a decrease of P3 amplitude for congruent and incongruent stimuli (p<0.01). With regard to correlation analysis, PASAT-3s and SDMT showed significant correlations with behavioral measures of the Attention Network Test (p<0.01) and an ERP parameter (CNV amplitude). Conclusions Behavioral data are highly correlated with the neuropsychological scores and show that the alerting and orienting mechanisms in the patient group were impaired. Reduced amplitude for the Contingent Negative Variation in the patient group suggests that this component could be a physiological marker related to the alerting and orienting impairment in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. P1 and N1 delayed latencies are evidence of the demyelination process that causes impairment in the first steps of the visual sensory processing. Lastly, P3 amplitude shows a general decrease for the pathological group probably indexing a more central impairment. These results suggest that the Attention Network Test give evidence of multiple levels of attention impairment, which could help in the assessment and treatment of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis patients. PMID:24820333

Neural correlates of alerting and orienting impairment in multiple sclerosis patients.

PubMed

Vázquez-Marrufo, Manuel; Galvao-Carmona, Alejandro; González-Rosa, Javier J; Hidalgo-Muñoz, Antonio R; Borges, Mónica; Ruiz-Peña, Juan Luis; Izquierdo, Guillermo

2014-01-01

A considerable percentage of multiple sclerosis patients have attentional impairment, but understanding its neurophysiological basis remains a challenge. The Attention Network Test allows 3 attentional networks to be studied. Previous behavioural studies using this test have shown that the alerting network is impaired in multiple sclerosis. The aim of this study was to identify neurophysiological indexes of the attention impairment in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis patients using this test. After general slowing had been removed in patients group to isolate the effects of each condition, some behavioral differences between them were obtained. About Contingent Negative Variation, a statistically significant decrement were found in the amplitude for Central and Spatial Cue Conditions for patient group (p<0.05). ANOVAs showed for the patient group a significant latency delay for P1 and N1 components (p<0.05) and a decrease of P3 amplitude for congruent and incongruent stimuli (p<0.01). With regard to correlation analysis, PASAT-3s and SDMT showed significant correlations with behavioral measures of the Attention Network Test (p<0.01) and an ERP parameter (CNV amplitude). Behavioral data are highly correlated with the neuropsychological scores and show that the alerting and orienting mechanisms in the patient group were impaired. Reduced amplitude for the Contingent Negative Variation in the patient group suggests that this component could be a physiological marker related to the alerting and orienting impairment in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. P1 and N1 delayed latencies are evidence of the demyelination process that causes impairment in the first steps of the visual sensory processing. Lastly, P3 amplitude shows a general decrease for the pathological group probably indexing a more central impairment. These results suggest that the Attention Network Test give evidence of multiple levels of attention impairment, which could help in the assessment and treatment of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis patients.

DAIDALUS Observations From UAS Integration in the NAS Project Flight Test 4

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Vincent, Michael J.; Tsakpinis, Dimitrios

2016-01-01

In order to validate the Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Detect-and-Avoid (DAA) solution proposed by standards body RTCA Inc., the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) UAS Integration in the NAS project, alongside industry members General Atomics and Honeywell, conducted the fourth flight test in a series at Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. Flight Test 4 (FT4) investigated problems of interoperability with the TCAS collision avoidance system with a DAA system as well as problems associated with sensor uncertainty. A series of scripted flight encounters between the NASA Ikhana UAS and various "intruder" aircraft were flown while alerting and guidance from the DAA algorithm were recorded to investigate the timeliness of the alerts and correctness of the guidance triggered by the DAA system. The results found that alerts were triggered in a timely manner in most instances. Cases where the alerting and guidance was incorrect were investigated further.

Dopamine in motivational control: rewarding, aversive, and alerting

PubMed Central

Bromberg-Martin, Ethan S.; Matsumoto, Masayuki; Hikosaka, Okihide

2010-01-01

SUMMARY Midbrain dopamine neurons are well known for their strong responses to rewards and their critical role in positive motivation. It has become increasingly clear, however, that dopamine neurons also transmit signals related to salient but non-rewarding experiences such as aversive and alerting events. Here we review recent advances in understanding the reward and non-reward functions of dopamine. Based on this data, we propose that dopamine neurons come in multiple types that are connected with distinct brain networks and have distinct roles in motivational control. Some dopamine neurons encode motivational value, supporting brain networks for seeking, evaluation, and value learning. Others encode motivational salience, supporting brain networks for orienting, cognition, and general motivation. Both types of dopamine neurons are augmented by an alerting signal involved in rapid detection of potentially important sensory cues. We hypothesize that these dopaminergic pathways for value, salience, and alerting cooperate to support adaptive behavior. PMID:21144997

Volcanic Thunder From Explosive Eruptions at Bogoslof Volcano, Alaska

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Haney, Matthew M.; Van Eaton, Alexa R.; Lyons, John J.; Kramer, Rebecca L.; Fee, David; Iezzi, Alexandra M.

2018-04-01

Lightning often occurs during ash-producing eruptive activity, and its detection is now being used in volcano monitoring for rapid alerts. We report on infrasonic and sonic recordings of the related, but previously undocumented, phenomenon of volcanic thunder. We observe volcanic thunder during the waning stages of two explosive eruptions at Bogoslof volcano, Alaska, on a microphone array located 60 km away. Thunder signals arrive from a different direction than coeruptive infrasound generated at the vent following an eruption on 10 June 2017, consistent with locations from lightning networks. For the 8 March 2017 eruption, arrival times and amplitudes of high-frequency thunder signals correlate well with the timing and strength of lightning detections. In both cases, the thunder is associated with lightning that continues after significant eruptive activity has ended. Infrasonic and sonic observations of volcanic thunder offer a new avenue for studying electrification processes in volcanic plumes.

Radar based autonomous sensor module

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Styles, Tim

2016-10-01

Most surveillance systems combine camera sensors with other detection sensors that trigger an alert to a human operator when an object is detected. The detection sensors typically require careful installation and configuration for each application and there is a significant burden on the operator to react to each alert by viewing camera video feeds. A demonstration system known as Sensing for Asset Protection with Integrated Electronic Networked Technology (SAPIENT) has been developed to address these issues using Autonomous Sensor Modules (ASM) and a central High Level Decision Making Module (HLDMM) that can fuse the detections from multiple sensors. This paper describes the 24 GHz radar based ASM, which provides an all-weather, low power and license exempt solution to the problem of wide area surveillance. The radar module autonomously configures itself in response to tasks provided by the HLDMM, steering the transmit beam and setting range resolution and power levels for optimum performance. The results show the detection and classification performance for pedestrians and vehicles in an area of interest, which can be modified by the HLDMM without physical adjustment. The module uses range-Doppler processing for reliable detection of moving objects and combines Radar Cross Section and micro-Doppler characteristics for object classification. Objects are classified as pedestrian or vehicle, with vehicle sub classes based on size. Detections are reported only if the object is detected in a task coverage area and it is classified as an object of interest. The system was shown in a perimeter protection scenario using multiple radar ASMs, laser scanners, thermal cameras and visible band cameras. This combination of sensors enabled the HLDMM to generate reliable alerts with improved discrimination of objects and behaviours of interest.

17 CFR Appendix B to Part 162 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of information to... Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation B Appendix B to Part 162 Commodity and Securities... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation Section 162.30 requires each financial institution or creditor that...

Automated Detection of Sepsis Using Electronic Medical Record Data: A Systematic Review.

PubMed

Despins, Laurel A

Severe sepsis and septic shock are global issues with high mortality rates. Early recognition and intervention are essential to optimize patient outcomes. Automated detection using electronic medical record (EMR) data can assist this process. This review describes automated sepsis detection using EMR data. PubMed retrieved publications between January 1, 2005 and January 31, 2015. Thirteen studies met study criteria: described an automated detection approach with the potential to detect sepsis or sepsis-related deterioration in real or near-real time; focused on emergency department and hospitalized neonatal, pediatric, or adult patients; and provided performance measures or results indicating the impact of automated sepsis detection. Detection algorithms incorporated systemic inflammatory response and organ dysfunction criteria. Systems in nine studies generated study or care team alerts. Care team alerts did not consistently lead to earlier interventions. Earlier interventions did not consistently translate to improved patient outcomes. Performance measures were inconsistent. Automated sepsis detection is potentially a means to enable early sepsis-related therapy but current performance variability highlights the need for further research.

[Circadian rhythm : Influence on Epworth Sleepiness Scale score].

PubMed

Herzog, M; Bedorf, A; Rohrmeier, C; Kühnel, T; Herzog, B; Bremert, T; Plontke, S; Plößl, S

2017-02-01

The Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) is frequently used to determine daytime sleepiness in patients with sleep-disordered breathing. It is still unclear whether different levels of alertness induced by the circadian rhythm influence ESS score. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of circadian rhythm-dependent alertness on ESS performance. In a monocentric prospective noninterventional observation study, 97 patients with suspected sleep-disordered breathing were investigated with respect to daytime sleepiness in temporal relationship to polysomnographic examination and treatment. The Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) and the Stanford Sleepiness Scale (SSS) served as references for the detection of present sleepiness at three different measurement times (morning, noon, evening), prior to and following a diagnostic polysomnography night as well as after a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) titration night (9 measurements in total). The KSS, SSS, and ESS were performed at these times in a randomized order. The KSS and SSS scores revealed a circadian rhythm-dependent curve with increased sleepiness at noon and in the evening. Following a diagnostic polysomnography night, the scores were increased compared to the measurements prior to the night. After the CPAP titration night, sleepiness in the morning was reduced. KSS and SSS reflect the changes in alertness induced by the circadian rhythm. The ESS score war neither altered by the intra-daily nor by the inter-daily changes in the level of alertness. According to the present data, the ESS serves as a reliable instrument to detect the level of daytime sleepiness independently of the circadian rhythm-dependent level of alertness.

Automated In-Home Fall Risk Assessment and Detection Sensor System for Elders.

PubMed

Rantz, Marilyn; Skubic, Marjorie; Abbott, Carmen; Galambos, Colleen; Popescu, Mihail; Keller, James; Stone, Erik; Back, Jessie; Miller, Steven J; Petroski, Gregory F

2015-06-01

Falls are a major problem for the elderly people leading to injury, disability, and even death. An unobtrusive, in-home sensor system that continuously monitors older adults for fall risk and detects falls could revolutionize fall prevention and care. A fall risk and detection system was developed and installed in the apartments of 19 older adults at a senior living facility. The system includes pulse-Doppler radar, a Microsoft Kinect, and 2 web cameras. To collect data for comparison with sensor data and for algorithm development, stunt actors performed falls in participants' apartments each month for 2 years and participants completed fall risk assessments (FRAs) using clinically valid, standardized instruments. The FRAs were scored by clinicians and recorded by the sensing modalities. Participants' gait parameters were measured as they walked on a GAITRite mat. These data were used as ground truth, objective data to use in algorithm development and to compare with radar and Kinect generated variables. All FRAs are highly correlated (p < .01) with the Kinect gait velocity and Kinect stride length. Radar velocity is correlated (p < .05) to all the FRAs and highly correlated (p < .01) to most. Real-time alerts of actual falls are being sent to clinicians providing faster responses to urgent situations. The in-home FRA and detection system has the potential to help older adults remain independent, maintain functional ability, and live at home longer. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

An Evaluation of detectable warning surfaces for sidewalk curb ramps.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1995-01-01

The 1991 Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines required the installation of a detectable warning surface (raised truncated domes) on sidewalk curb ramps to alert visually impaired people to potential hazards. Although this requirem...

Reducing Runway Incursions: Can You Relate?

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1992-01-01

Side object detection systems (SODS) are collision warning systems which alert drivers to the presence of traffic alongside their vehicle within defined detection zones. The intent of SODS is to reduce collisions during lane changes and merging maneu...

Fall prevention walker during rehabilitation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tee, Kian Sek; E, Chun Zhi; Saim, Hashim; Zakaria, Wan Nurshazwani Wan; Khialdin, Safinaz Binti Mohd; Isa, Hazlita; Awad, M. I.; Soon, Chin Fhong

2017-09-01

This paper proposes on the design of a walker for the prevention of falling among elderlies or patients during rehabilitation whenever they use a walker to assist them. Fall happens due to impaired balance or gait problem. The assistive device is designed by applying stability concept and an accelerometric fall detection system is included. The accelerometric fall detection system acts as an alerting device that acquires body accelerometric data and detect fall. Recorded accelerometric data could be useful for further assessment. Structural strength of the walker was verified via iterations of simulation using finite element analysis, before being fabricated. Experiments were conducted to identify the fall patterns using accelerometric data. The design process and detection of fall pattern demonstrates the design of a walker that could support the user without fail and alerts the helper, thus salvaging the users from injuries due to fall and unattended situation.

Neutrino detection of transient sources with optical follow-up observations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dornic, D.; Ageron, M.; Al Samarai, I.; Basa, S.; Bertin, V.; Brunner, J.; Busto, J.; Escoffier, S.; Schussler, F.; Vallage, B.; Vecchi, M.

2010-12-01

The ANTARES telescope has the opportunity to detect transient neutrino sources,such as gamma-ray bursts,core-collapse supernovae,flares of active galactic nuclei. To enhance the sensitivity to these sources, a new detection method based on coincident observations of neutrinos and optical signals has been developed. For this purpose the ANTARES Collaboration has implemented a fast on-line muon track reconstruction with a good angular resolution. These characteristics allow to trigger a network of optical telescopes in order to identify the nature of the neutrino sources. An optical follow-up of special events, such as neutrino doublets, coincident in time and direction, or single neutrinos with a very high energy, would not only give access to the nature of their sources but also improve the sensitivity for neutrino detection. The alert system is operational since early 2009, and as of September 2010, 22 alerts have been sent to the TAROT and ROTSE telescopes.

Effects of conflict alerting system reliability and task difficulty on pilots' conflict detection with cockpit display of traffic information.

PubMed

Xu, Xidong; Wickens, Christopher D; Rantanen, Esa M

2007-01-15

A total of 24 pilots viewed dynamic encounters between their own aircraft and an intruder aircraft on a 2-D cockpit display of traffic information (CDTI) and estimated the point and time of closest approach. A three-level alerting system provided a correct categorical estimate of the projected miss distance on 83% of the trials. The remaining 17% of alerts were equally divided between misses and false alarms, of large and small magnitude. Roughly half the pilots depended on automation to improve estimation of miss distance relative to the baseline pilots, who viewed identical trials without the aid of automated alerts. Moreover, they did so more on the more difficult traffic trials resulting in improved performance on the 83% correct automation trials without causing harm on the 17% automation-error trials, compared to the baseline group. The automated alerts appeared to lead pilots to inspect the raw data more closely. While assisting the accurate prediction of miss distance, the automation led to an underestimate of the time remaining until the point of closest approach. The results point to the benefits of even imperfect automation in the strategic alerts characteristic of the CDTI, at least as long as this reliability remains high (above 80%).

Functional Characterization of the Cingulo-Opercular Network in the Maintenance of Tonic Alertness

PubMed Central

Sadaghiani, Sepideh; D'Esposito, Mark

2015-01-01

The complex processing architecture underlying attentional control requires delineation of the functional role of different control-related brain networks. A key component is the cingulo-opercular (CO) network composed of anterior insula/operculum, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and thalamus. Its function has been particularly difficult to characterize due to the network's pervasive activity and frequent co-activation with other control-related networks. We previously suggested this network to underlie intrinsically maintained tonic alertness. Here, we tested this hypothesis by separately manipulating the demand for selective attention and for tonic alertness in a two-factorial, continuous pitch discrimination paradigm. The 2 factors had independent behavioral effects. Functional imaging revealed that activity as well as functional connectivity in the CO network increased when the task required more tonic alertness. Conversely, heightened selective attention to pitch increased activity in the dorsal attention (DAT) network but not in the CO network. Across participants, performance accuracy showed dissociable correlation patterns with activity in the CO, DAT, and fronto-parietal (FP) control networks. These results support tonic alertness as a fundamental function of the CO network. They further the characterization of this function as the effortful process of maintaining cognitive faculties available for current processing requirements. PMID:24770711

Disease management: atrial fibrillation and home monitoring.

PubMed

Ricci, Renato Pietro

2013-06-01

Device-detected atrial fibrillation (AF) episodes predict poor clinical outcome regardless of symptoms. Potential benefits of remote monitoring are early arrhythmia detection and patient continuous monitoring. Several studies of device remote monitoring consistently demonstrated that AF represents the most common clinical alert and that detailed information on arrhythmia onset, duration, and burden as well as on the ventricular rate may be early available for clinical evaluation. Reaction time to AF alerts was very short in all series involving either pacemakers or defibrillators and action ability of AF alerts was very high. In the Home Guide Registry, in which 1650 patients were enrolled, AF was detected in 16.3% of patients and represented 36% of all cardiovascular events during the follow-up. Timely anticoagulation introduction in asymptomatic patients may impact on the stroke rate. According to the results of repeated Monte Carlo simulations based on a real population of 166 patients, daily monitoring may reduce the 2-year stroke risk by 9-18% with an absolute reduction of 0.2-0.6%, compared with conventional inter-visit intervals of 6-12 months. In the COMPAS trial, the incidence of hospitalizations for atrial arrhythmias and related stroke was significantly higher in the control group than in the remote monitoring group. Major questions will be addressed by the ongoing IMPACT trial in which a remote monitoring guided anticoagulation strategy based on AF detection will be compared with a physician-directed standard strategy. In patients with heart failure, AF early detection combined with other indexes may help prevent hospitalizations.

Failure to detect critical auditory alerts in the cockpit: evidence for inattentional deafness.

PubMed

Dehais, Frédéric; Causse, Mickaël; Vachon, François; Régis, Nicolas; Menant, Eric; Tremblay, Sébastien

2014-06-01

The aim of this study was to test whether inattentional deafness to critical alarms would be observed in a simulated cockpit. The inability of pilots to detect unexpected changes in their auditory environment (e.g., alarms) is a major safety problem in aeronautics. In aviation, the lack of response to alarms is usually not attributed to attentional limitations, but rather to pilots choosing to ignore such warnings due to decision biases, hearing issues, or conscious risk taking. Twenty-eight general aviation pilots performed two landings in a flight simulator. In one scenario an auditory alert was triggered alone, whereas in the other the auditory alert occurred while the pilots dealt with a critical windshear. In the windshear scenario, II pilots (39.3%) did not report or react appropriately to the alarm whereas all the pilots perceived the auditory warning in the no-windshear scenario. Also, of those pilots who were first exposed to the no-windshear scenario and detected the alarm, only three suffered from inattentional deafness in the subsequent windshear scenario. These findings establish inattentional deafness as a cognitive phenomenon that is critical for air safety. Pre-exposure to a critical event triggering an auditory alarm can enhance alarm detection when a similar event is encountered subsequently. Case-based learning is a solution to mitigate auditory alarm misperception.

40 CFR 63.11583 - What are my monitoring requirements?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... preparation operation are in target HAP service: (a) Operate a bag leak detection system with alarm that will alert operators of a leak in the control device filter material. If a bag leak detection system with... install, calibrate, operate, and maintain each bag leak detection system and alarm according to...

The DOPA decarboxylase (DDC) gene is associated with alerting attention.

PubMed

Zhu, Bi; Chen, Chuansheng; Moyzis, Robert K; Dong, Qi; Chen, Chunhui; He, Qinghua; Li, Jin; Li, Jun; Lei, Xuemei; Lin, Chongde

2013-06-03

DOPA decarboxylase (DDC) is involved in the synthesis of dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin. It has been suggested that genes involved in the dopamine, norepinephrine, and cholinergic systems play an essential role in the efficiency of human attention networks. Attention refers to the cognitive process of obtaining and maintaining the alert state, orienting to sensory events, and regulating the conflicts of thoughts and behavior. The present study tested seven single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within the DDC gene for association with attention, which was assessed by the Attention Network Test to detect three networks of attention, including alerting, orienting, and executive attention, in a healthy Han Chinese sample (N=451). Association analysis for individual SNPs indicated that four of the seven SNPs (rs3887825, rs7786398, rs10499695, and rs6969081) were significantly associated with alerting attention. Haplotype-based association analysis revealed that alerting was associated with the haplotype G-A-T for SNPs rs7786398-rs10499695-rs6969081. These associations remained significant after correcting for multiple testing by max(T) permutation. No association was found for orienting and executive attention. This study provides the first evidence for the involvement of the DDC gene in alerting attention. A better understanding of the genetic basis of distinct attention networks would allow us to develop more effective diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of deficient or underdeveloped alerting attention as well as its related prevalent neuropsychiatric disorders. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Real-time monitoring of the human alertness level

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alvarez, Robin; del Pozo, Francisco; Hernando, Elena; Gomez, Eduardo; Jimenez, Antonio

2003-04-01

Many accidents are associated with a driver or machine operator's alertness level. Drowsiness often develops as a result of repetitive or monotonous tasks, uninterrupted by external stimuli. In order to enhance safety levels, it would be most desirable to monitor the individual's level of attention. In this work, changes in the power spectrum of the electroencephalographic signal (EEG) are associated with the subject's level of attention. This study reports on the initial research carried out in order to answer the following important questions: (i) Does a trend exist in the shape of the power spectrum, which will indicate the state of a subject's alertness state (drowsy, relaxed or alert)? (ii) What points on the cortex are most suitable to detect drowsiness and/or high alertness? (iii) What parameters in the power spectrum are most suitable to establish a workable alertness classification in human subjects? In this work, we answer these questions and combine power spectrum estimation and artificial neural network techniques to create a non-invasive and real - time system able to classify EEG into three levels of attention: High, Relaxed and Drowsiness. The classification is made every 10 seconds o more, a suitable time span for giving an alarm signal if the individual is with insufficient level of alertness. This time span is set by the user. The system was tested on twenty subjects. High and relaxed attention levels were measured in randomise hours of the day and drowsiness attention level was measured in the morning after one night of sleep deprivation.

Developing Software to “Track and Catch” Missed Follow-up of Abnormal Test Results in a Complex Sociotechnical Environment

PubMed Central

Smith, M.; Murphy, D.; Laxmisan, A.; Sittig, D.; Reis, B.; Esquivel, A.; Singh, H.

2013-01-01

Summary Background Abnormal test results do not always receive timely follow-up, even when providers are notified through electronic health record (EHR)-based alerts. High workload, alert fatigue, and other demands on attention disrupt a provider’s prospective memory for tasks required to initiate follow-up. Thus, EHR-based tracking and reminding functionalities are needed to improve follow-up. Objectives The purpose of this study was to develop a decision-support software prototype enabling individual and system-wide tracking of abnormal test result alerts lacking follow-up, and to conduct formative evaluations, including usability testing. Methods We developed a working prototype software system, the Alert Watch And Response Engine (AWARE), to detect abnormal test result alerts lacking documented follow-up, and to present context-specific reminders to providers. Development and testing took place within the VA’s EHR and focused on four cancer-related abnormal test results. Design concepts emphasized mitigating the effects of high workload and alert fatigue while being minimally intrusive. We conducted a multifaceted formative evaluation of the software, addressing fit within the larger socio-technical system. Evaluations included usability testing with the prototype and interview questions about organizational and workflow factors. Participants included 23 physicians, 9 clinical information technology specialists, and 8 quality/safety managers. Results Evaluation results indicated that our software prototype fit within the technical environment and clinical workflow, and physicians were able to use it successfully. Quality/safety managers reported that the tool would be useful in future quality assurance activities to detect patients who lack documented follow-up. Additionally, we successfully installed the software on the local facility’s “test” EHR system, thus demonstrating technical compatibility. Conclusion To address the factors involved in missed test results, we developed a software prototype to account for technical, usability, organizational, and workflow needs. Our evaluation has shown the feasibility of the prototype as a means of facilitating better follow-up for cancer-related abnormal test results. PMID:24155789

Developing software to "track and catch" missed follow-up of abnormal test results in a complex sociotechnical environment.

PubMed

Smith, M; Murphy, D; Laxmisan, A; Sittig, D; Reis, B; Esquivel, A; Singh, H

2013-01-01

Abnormal test results do not always receive timely follow-up, even when providers are notified through electronic health record (EHR)-based alerts. High workload, alert fatigue, and other demands on attention disrupt a provider's prospective memory for tasks required to initiate follow-up. Thus, EHR-based tracking and reminding functionalities are needed to improve follow-up. The purpose of this study was to develop a decision-support software prototype enabling individual and system-wide tracking of abnormal test result alerts lacking follow-up, and to conduct formative evaluations, including usability testing. We developed a working prototype software system, the Alert Watch And Response Engine (AWARE), to detect abnormal test result alerts lacking documented follow-up, and to present context-specific reminders to providers. Development and testing took place within the VA's EHR and focused on four cancer-related abnormal test results. Design concepts emphasized mitigating the effects of high workload and alert fatigue while being minimally intrusive. We conducted a multifaceted formative evaluation of the software, addressing fit within the larger socio-technical system. Evaluations included usability testing with the prototype and interview questions about organizational and workflow factors. Participants included 23 physicians, 9 clinical information technology specialists, and 8 quality/safety managers. Evaluation results indicated that our software prototype fit within the technical environment and clinical workflow, and physicians were able to use it successfully. Quality/safety managers reported that the tool would be useful in future quality assurance activities to detect patients who lack documented follow-up. Additionally, we successfully installed the software on the local facility's "test" EHR system, thus demonstrating technical compatibility. To address the factors involved in missed test results, we developed a software prototype to account for technical, usability, organizational, and workflow needs. Our evaluation has shown the feasibility of the prototype as a means of facilitating better follow-up for cancer-related abnormal test results.

Volcanic Alert System (VAS) developed during the (2011-2013) El Hierro (Canary Islands) volcanic process

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ortiz, Ramon; Berrocoso, Manuel; Marrero, Jose Manuel; Fernandez-Ros, Alberto; Prates, Gonçalo; De la Cruz-Reyna, Servando; Garcia, Alicia

2014-05-01

In volcanic areas with long repose periods (as El Hierro), recently installed monitoring networks offer no instrumental record of past eruptions nor experience in handling a volcanic crisis. Both conditions, uncertainty and inexperience, contribute to make the communication of hazard more difficult. In fact, in the initial phases of the unrest at El Hierro, the perception of volcanic risk was somewhat distorted, as even relatively low volcanic hazards caused a high political impact. The need of a Volcanic Alert System became then evident. In general, the Volcanic Alert System is comprised of the monitoring network, the software tools for the analysis of the observables, the management of the Volcanic Activity Level, and the assessment of the threat. The Volcanic Alert System presented here places special emphasis on phenomena associated to moderate eruptions, as well as on volcano-tectonic earthquakes and landslides, which in some cases, as in El Hierro, may be more destructive than an eruption itself. As part of the Volcanic Alert System, we introduce here the Volcanic Activity Level which continuously applies a routine analysis of monitoring data (particularly seismic and deformation data) to detect data trend changes or monitoring network failures. The data trend changes are quantified according to the Failure Forecast Method (FFM). When data changes and/or malfunctions are detected, by an automated watchdog, warnings are automatically issued to the Monitoring Scientific Team. Changes in the data patterns are then translated by the Monitoring Scientific Team into a simple Volcanic Activity Level, that is easy to use and understand by the scientists and technicians in charge for the technical management of the unrest. The main feature of the Volcanic Activity Level is its objectivity, as it does not depend on expert opinions, which are left to the Scientific Committee, and its capabilities for early detection of precursors. As a consequence of the El Hierro experience we consider the objectivity of the Volcanic Activity Level a powerful tool to focus the discussions in a Scientific Committee on the activity forecast and on the expected scenarios, rather than on the multiple explanations of the data fluctuations, which is one of the main sources of conflict in the Scientific Committee discussions. Although the Volcanic Alert System was designed specifically for the unrest episodes at El Hierro, the involved methodologies may be applied to other situations of unrest.

The results of the Seismic Alert System of Mexico SASMEX, during the earthquakes of 7 and 19 of September 2017

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Espinosa Aranda, J. M., Sr.; Cuellar Martinez, A.

2017-12-01

The Seismic Alert System of Mexico, SASMEX began in 1991, is integrated by the seismic alert system of Mexico City and the seismic alert system of Oaxaca. SASMEX has 97 seismic sensors which are distributed in the seismic regions of the Pacific coast and the South of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt of states of Jalisco, Colima, Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca and Puebla. The alert dissemination covers the cities of: Acapulco, Chilpancingo, Morelia, Puebla, Oaxaca, Toluca and Mexico City, reaching the earthquake warnings to more than 25 millions of people. SASMEX has detected correctly more than 5600 earthquakes and warned 156. Mexico City has different alert dissemination systems like several Radio and Tv commercial broadcasters, dedicated radio receivers, EAS-SAME-SARMEX radio receivers and more tha 6700 public loud speakers. The other cities have only some of those systems. The Mw 8.2 Chiapas earthquake on September 7, despite the epicentral distance far of the first seismic detections (more than 180 km) and the low amplitudes of the P waves, the earthquake warning time gave more than 90 seconds to Mexico City before the arrivals of S waves with minor damages to the city in contrast with high damages in towns in the coast. This earthquake offered an opportunity to show the developments and lacks to reduce the risk, such as the need to increase the seismic detection coverage and the earthquake warning dissemination in towns with high seismic vulnerability. The Mw 7.1 Morelos earthquake on September 19 caused thousands of damages and hundreds of deaths and injuries in Mexico City, this earthquake is the second with the most damages after the Mw 8.1 Michoacán earthquake of September 19 on 1985. The earthquake early warning gave 11 seconds after the arrivals of S waves, however the activation occurred few seconds after the P waves arrives to Mexico City, and due to the seismic focus was near to the city, the P waves were felt for the people. The Accelerographic Network of Mexico City, reported absolute accelerations of 225 cm/s2 in the transition soils , which have never recorded in the Mexico Valley.

False-positive alarms for bacterial screening of platelet concentrates with BacT/ALERT new-generation plastic bottles: a multicenter pilot study.

PubMed

Hundhausen, T; Müller, T H

2005-08-01

The microbial detection system BacT/ALERT (bioMérieux) is widely used to monitor bacterial contamination of platelet concentrates (PCs). Recently, the manufacturer introduced polycarbonate culture bottles and a modified pH-sensitive liquid emulsion sensor as microbial growth indicator. This reconfigured assay was investigated in a routine setting. In each of eight transfusion centers, samples from 500 consecutive PCs were monitored for 1 week. For all PCs with a positive BacT/ALERT signal, retained samples and, if available, original PC containers and concomitant red blood cell concentrates were analyzed independently. Initially BacT/ALERT-positive PCs without bacterial identification in any sample were defined as false-positive. BacT/ALERT-positive PCs with bacteria in the first sample only were called potentially positive. PCs with bacteria in the first sample and the same strain in at least one additional sample were accepted as positive. Five PCs (0.13%) were positive, 9 PCs (0.23%) were potentially positive, and 35 PCs (0.9%) were false-positive. The rate of false-positive BacT/ALERT results varied substantially between centers (<0.2%-3.2%). Tracings from false-positive cultures lacked an exponential increase of the signal during incubation. Most of these false-positives were due to malfunctioning cells in various BacT/ALERT incubation units. Careful assessment of individual tracings of samples with positive signals helps to identify malfunctioning incubation units. Their early shutdown or replacement minimizes the high rate of unrectifiable product rejects attributed to false-positive alarms and avoids unnecessary concern of doctors and patients after conversion to a reconfigured BacT/ALERT assay.

Real-time Automated Sampling of Electronic Medical Records Predicts Hospital Mortality

PubMed Central

Khurana, Hargobind S.; Groves, Robert H.; Simons, Michael P.; Martin, Mary; Stoffer, Brenda; Kou, Sherri; Gerkin, Richard; Reiman, Eric; Parthasarathy, Sairam

2016-01-01

Background Real-time automated continuous sampling of electronic medical record data may expeditiously identify patients at risk for death and enable prompt life-saving interventions. We hypothesized that a real-time electronic medical record-based alert could identify hospitalized patients at risk for mortality. Methods An automated alert was developed and implemented to continuously sample electronic medical record data and trigger when at least two of four systemic inflammatory response syndrome criteria plus at least one of 14 acute organ dysfunction parameters was detected. The SIRS/OD alert was applied real-time to 312,214 patients in 24 hospitals and analyzed in two phases: training and validation datasets. Results In the training phase, 29,317 (18.8%) triggered the alert and 5.2% of such patients died whereas only 0.2% without the alert died (unadjusted odds ratio 30.1; 95% confidence interval [95%CI] 26.1, 34.5; P<0.0001). In the validation phase, the sensitivity, specificity, area under curve (AUC), positive and negative likelihood ratios for predicting mortality were 0.86, 0.82, 0.84, 4.9, and 0.16, respectively. Multivariate Cox-proportional hazard regression model revealed greater hospital mortality when the alert was triggered (adjusted Hazards Ratio 4.0; 95%CI 3.3, 4.9; P<0.0001). Triggering the alert was associated with additional hospitalization days (+3.0 days) and ventilator days (+1.6 days; P<0.0001). Conclusion An automated alert system that continuously samples electronic medical record-data can be implemented, has excellent test characteristics, and can assist in the real-time identification of hospitalized patients at risk for death. PMID:27019043

Use of a Clinical Decision Support System Alert to Prevent Supratherapeutic Vancomycin Concentrations

PubMed Central

Ralph, Rachel; Patel, Jean A.; Postelnick, Michael; Ziauddin, Salma; Flis, Weronika; Galal, Audrey N.

2014-01-01

Background: Alerts issued by clinical decision support systems (CDSS) may be useful to identify and prevent the occurrence of acute kidney injury among patients on nephrotoxic drugs, particularly vancomycin. Objective: The purpose of this instructive study was to determine the effectiveness of using a pharmacist-run CDSS alert of early serum creatinine increases in patients receiving intravenous vancomycin to decrease the proportion of severely elevated vancomycin concentrations. Methods: This was a retrospective study of a prospectively reviewed CDSS alert that triggered in patients with an increase in serum creatinine by 25% from baseline within 24 hours. Severely elevated vancomycin concentrations were divided into a control group (before alert implementation) and a study group (after alert implementation) and considered for study inclusion. The proportion of severely elevated vancomycin concentrations (ie, >30 mg/L) were collected in the control and study groups. Results: There were 1290 and 1501 vancomycin concentrations in the control group and the study group, respectively. A total of 696 CDSS alerts triggered during the study period. The proportion of severely elevated vancomycin troughs decreased from 5.3% (n = 68, median = 36.6 mg/L, interquartile range = 33.75-43.2 mg/L) in the control group to 3.7% (n = 55, median = 34.7 mg/L, interquartile range = 31.3-39.3 mg/L) in the study group. This reflects a statistically significant decrease in the proportion of severely elevated vancomycin concentrations (P = .04). Conclusion: Overall, this instructive analysis on a novel use of CDSS software suggests that the implementation of an alert based on early detection of serum creatinine changes led to a significant decrease in the proportion of severely elevated serum vancomycin concentrations.

Evaluation of Potential LSST Spatial Indexing Strategies

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Nikolaev, S; Abdulla, G; Matzke, R

2006-10-13

The LSST requirement for producing alerts in near real-time, and the fact that generating an alert depends on knowing the history of light variations for a given sky position, both imply that the clustering information for all detections is available at any time during the survey. Therefore, any data structure describing clustering of detections in LSST needs to be continuously updated, even as new detections are arriving from the pipeline. We call this use case ''incremental clustering'', to reflect this continuous updating of clustering information. This document describes the evaluation results for several potential LSST incremental clustering strategies, using: (1)more » Neighbors table and zone optimization to store spatial clusters (a.k.a. Jim Grey's, or SDSS algorithm); (2) MySQL built-in R-tree implementation; (3) an external spatial index library which supports a query interface.« less

Pixel color feature enhancement for road signs detection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Qieshi; Kamata, Sei-ichiro

2010-02-01

Road signs play an important role in our daily life which used to guide drivers to notice variety of road conditions and cautions. They provide important visual information that can help drivers operating their vehicles in a manner for enhancing traffic safety. The occurrence of some accidents can be reduced by using automatic road signs recognition system which can alert the drivers. This research attempts to develop a warning system to alert the drivers to notice the important road signs early enough to refrain road accidents from happening. For solving this, a non-linear weighted color enhancement method by pixels is presented. Due to the advantage of proposed method, different road signs can be detected from videos effectively. With suitably coefficients and operations, the experimental results have proved that the proposed method is robust, accurate and powerful in road signs detection.

Block-Dependent Sedation during Epidural Anaesthesia is Associated with Delayed Brainstem Conduction

PubMed Central

Wadhwa, Anupama; Shah, Yunus M.; Lin, Chum-Ming; Haugh, Gilbert S.; Sessler, Daniel I.

2005-01-01

Neuraxial anaesthesia produces a sedative and anesthetic-sparing effect. Recent evidence suggests that spinal cord anaesthesia modifies reticulo-thalamo-cortical arousal by decreasing afferent sensory transmission. We hypothesized that epidural anaesthesia produces sensory deafferentation-dependent sedation that is associated with impairment of brainstem transmission. We used brainstem auditory evoked potentials (BAEP) to evaluate reticular function in 11 volunteers. Epidural anaesthesia was induced with 2% 2-chloroprocaine. Hemodynamic and respiratory responses, sensory block level, sedation depth and BAEP were assessed throughout induction and resolution of epidural anaesthesia. Sedation was evaluated using verbal rating score (VRS), observer's assessment alertness/sedation (OAA/S) score, and bispectral index (BIS). Prediction probability (PK) was used to associate sensory block with sedation, as well as BIS with other sedation measures. Spearman rank order correlation was used to associate block level and sedation with the absolute and interpeak BAEP latencies. Sensory block level significantly predicted VRS (PK = 0.747), OAA/S score (PK = 0.748) and BIS. Bispectral index predicted VRS and OAA/S score (PK = 0.728). The latency of wave III of BAEP significantly correlated with sedation level (rho = 0.335, P < 0.01) and sensory block (rho = 0.394, P < 0.01). The other BAEP parameters did not change during epidural anaesthesia. Hemodynamic and respiratory responses remained stable throughout the study. Sedation during epidural anaesthesia depends on sensory block level and is associated with detectable block-dependent alterations in the brainstem auditory evoked responses. Sensory deafferentation may reduce CNS alertness through mechanisms related to brainstem neural activity. PMID:15220178

12 CFR 391.23 - Duties of card issuers regarding changes of address.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-01-01

... detect relevant Red Flags that may arise in the performance of the service provider's activities, and... or creditor detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of..., App. Appendix to Subpart C of Part 391—Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention...

16 CFR Appendix A to Part 681 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-01-01

... covered accounts the financial institution or creditor should take steps to ensure that the activity of... detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of information to... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation A Appendix A to Part 681 Commercial Practices FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION...

16 CFR Appendix A to Part 681 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-01-01

... covered accounts the financial institution or creditor should take steps to ensure that the activity of... detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of information to... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation A Appendix A to Part 681 Commercial Practices FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION...

16 CFR Appendix A to Part 681 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-01-01

... covered accounts the financial institution or creditor should take steps to ensure that the activity of... detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of information to... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation A Appendix A to Part 681 Commercial Practices FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION...

16 CFR Appendix A to Part 681 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-01-01

... covered accounts the financial institution or creditor should take steps to ensure that the activity of... detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of information to... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation A Appendix A to Part 681 Commercial Practices FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION...

Development and Demonstration of a Prototype Free Flight Cockpit Display of Traffic Information

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Johnson, Walter W.; Battiste, Vernol; Delzell, Susanne; Holland, Sheila; Belcher, Sean; Jordan, Kevin

2003-01-01

Two versions of a prototype Free Flight cockpit situational display (Basic and Enhanced) were examined in a simulation at the NASA Ames Research Center. Both displays presented a display of traffic out to a range of 120 NM, and an alert when the automation detected a substantial danger of losing separation with another aircraft. The task for the crews was to detect and resolve threats to separation posed by intruder aircraft. An Enhanced version of the display was also examined. It incorporated two additional conflict alerting levels and tools to aid in trajectory prediction and path planning. Ten crews from a major airline participated in the study. Performance analyses and pilot debriefings showed that the Enhanced display was preferred, and that minimal separation between the intruder and the ownship was larger with the Enhanced display. In addition, the additional information on the Enhanced display did not lead crews to engage in more maneuvering. Instead an opposite trend was indicated. Finally, crews using the Enhanced display responded more proactively, tending to resolve alerts earlier.

Improving Night Time Driving Safety Using Vision-Based Classification Techniques.

PubMed

Chien, Jong-Chih; Chen, Yong-Sheng; Lee, Jiann-Der

2017-09-24

The risks involved in nighttime driving include drowsy drivers and dangerous vehicles. Prominent among the more dangerous vehicles around at night are the larger vehicles which are usually moving faster at night on a highway. In addition, the risk level of driving around larger vehicles rises significantly when the driver's attention becomes distracted, even for a short period of time. For the purpose of alerting the driver and elevating his or her safety, in this paper we propose two components for any modern vision-based Advanced Drivers Assistance System (ADAS). These two components work separately for the single purpose of alerting the driver in dangerous situations. The purpose of the first component is to ascertain that the driver would be in a sufficiently wakeful state to receive and process warnings; this is the driver drowsiness detection component. The driver drowsiness detection component uses infrared images of the driver to analyze his eyes' movements using a MSR plus a simple heuristic. This component issues alerts to the driver when the driver's eyes show distraction and are closed for a longer than usual duration. Experimental results show that this component can detect closed eyes with an accuracy of 94.26% on average, which is comparable to previous results using more sophisticated methods. The purpose of the second component is to alert the driver when the driver's vehicle is moving around larger vehicles at dusk or night time. The large vehicle detection component accepts images from a regular video driving recorder as input. A bi-level system of classifiers, which included a novel MSR-enhanced KAZE-base Bag-of-Features classifier, is proposed to avoid false negatives. In both components, we propose an improved version of the Multi-Scale Retinex (MSR) algorithm to augment the contrast of the input. Several experiments were performed to test the effects of the MSR and each classifier, and the results are presented in experimental results section of this paper.

Improving Night Time Driving Safety Using Vision-Based Classification Techniques

PubMed Central

Chien, Jong-Chih; Chen, Yong-Sheng; Lee, Jiann-Der

2017-01-01

The risks involved in nighttime driving include drowsy drivers and dangerous vehicles. Prominent among the more dangerous vehicles around at night are the larger vehicles which are usually moving faster at night on a highway. In addition, the risk level of driving around larger vehicles rises significantly when the driver’s attention becomes distracted, even for a short period of time. For the purpose of alerting the driver and elevating his or her safety, in this paper we propose two components for any modern vision-based Advanced Drivers Assistance System (ADAS). These two components work separately for the single purpose of alerting the driver in dangerous situations. The purpose of the first component is to ascertain that the driver would be in a sufficiently wakeful state to receive and process warnings; this is the driver drowsiness detection component. The driver drowsiness detection component uses infrared images of the driver to analyze his eyes’ movements using a MSR plus a simple heuristic. This component issues alerts to the driver when the driver’s eyes show distraction and are closed for a longer than usual duration. Experimental results show that this component can detect closed eyes with an accuracy of 94.26% on average, which is comparable to previous results using more sophisticated methods. The purpose of the second component is to alert the driver when the driver’s vehicle is moving around larger vehicles at dusk or night time. The large vehicle detection component accepts images from a regular video driving recorder as input. A bi-level system of classifiers, which included a novel MSR-enhanced KAZE-base Bag-of-Features classifier, is proposed to avoid false negatives. In both components, we propose an improved version of the Multi-Scale Retinex (MSR) algorithm to augment the contrast of the input. Several experiments were performed to test the effects of the MSR and each classifier, and the results are presented in experimental results section of this paper. PMID:28946643

In-season monitoring of hip and groin strength, health and function in elite youth soccer: Implementing an early detection and management strategy over two consecutive seasons.

PubMed

Wollin, Martin; Thorborg, Kristian; Welvaert, Marijke; Pizzari, Tania

2018-03-14

The primary purpose of this study was to describe an early detection and management strategy when monitoring in-season hip and groin strength, health and function in soccer. Secondly to compare pre-season to in-season test results. Longitudinal cohort study. Twenty-seven elite male youth soccer players (age: 15.07±0.73years) volunteered to participate in the study. Monitoring tests included: adductor strength, adductor/abductor strength ratio and hip and groin outcome scores (HAGOS). Data were recorded at pre-season and at 22 monthly intervals in-season. Thresholds for alerts to initiate further investigations were defined as any of the following: adductor strength reductions >15%, adductor/abductor strength ratio <0.90, and HAGOS subscale scores <75 out of 100 in any of the six subscales. Overall, 105 alerts were detected involving 70% of players. Strength related alerts comprised 40% and remaining 60% of alerts were related to HAGOS. Hip adductor strength and adductor/abductor strength ratio were lowest at pre-season testing and had increased significantly by month two (p<0.01, mean difference 0.26, CI95%: 0.12, 0.41N/kg and p<0.01, mean difference 0.09, CI95%: 0.04, 0.13 respectively). HAGOS subscale scores were lowest at baseline with all, except Physical Activity, showing significant improvements at time-point one (p<0.01). Most (87%) time-loss were classified minimal or mild. In-season monitoring aimed at early detection and management of hip and groin strength, health and function appears promising. Hip and groin strength, health and function improved quickly from pre-season to in-season in a high-risk population for ongoing hip and groin problems. Copyright © 2018 Sports Medicine Australia. All rights reserved.

RoboTAP: Target priorities for robotic microlensing observations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hundertmark, M.; Street, R. A.; Tsapras, Y.; Bachelet, E.; Dominik, M.; Horne, K.; Bozza, V.; Bramich, D. M.; Cassan, A.; D'Ago, G.; Figuera Jaimes, R.; Kains, N.; Ranc, C.; Schmidt, R. W.; Snodgrass, C.; Wambsganss, J.; Steele, I. A.; Mao, S.; Ment, K.; Menzies, J.; Li, Z.; Cross, S.; Maoz, D.; Shvartzvald, Y.

2018-01-01

Context. The ability to automatically select scientifically-important transient events from an alert stream of many such events, and to conduct follow-up observations in response, will become increasingly important in astronomy. With wide-angle time domain surveys pushing to fainter limiting magnitudes, the capability to follow-up on transient alerts far exceeds our follow-up telescope resources, and effective target prioritization becomes essential. The RoboNet-II microlensing program is a pathfinder project, which has developed an automated target selection process (RoboTAP) for gravitational microlensing events, which are observed in real time using the Las Cumbres Observatory telescope network. Aims: Follow-up telescopes typically have a much smaller field of view compared to surveys, therefore the most promising microlensing events must be automatically selected at any given time from an annual sample exceeding 2000 events. The main challenge is to select between events with a high planet detection sensitivity, with the aim of detecting many planets and characterizing planetary anomalies. Methods: Our target selection algorithm is a hybrid system based on estimates of the planet detection zones around a microlens. It follows automatic anomaly alerts and respects the expected survey coverage of specific events. Results: We introduce the RoboTAP algorithm, whose purpose is to select and prioritize microlensing events with high sensitivity to planetary companions. In this work, we determine the planet sensitivity of the RoboNet follow-up program and provide a working example of how a broker can be designed for a real-life transient science program conducting follow-up observations in response to alerts; we explore the issues that will confront similar programs being developed for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) and other time domain surveys.

An evaluation of an intelligent home monitoring system.

PubMed

Sixsmith, A J

2000-01-01

A trial was performed of an intelligent monitoring system which used sensors in the home to identify emergencies by detecting deviations from normal activity patterns. The field trial lasted three months. Twenty-two elderly people agreed to participate. Their ages ranged from early 60s to over 85, with two-thirds in the age range 75-84 years. They lived in four different localities within the UK--Ipswich, Northumberland, Merseyside and Nottingham. A total of 61 alerts was recorded, at a mean frequency about one alert per month per client. Of the 61 alerts generated, 46 were classified as false alerts and the other 15 as genuine, although no real emergencies occurred during the study. Many people in the field trial reported enhanced feelings of safety and security, which could help to stimulate independence and help them to remain living in their own homes. The monitoring system increased the care choices available to elderly people and supported and enhanced the carer's role.

Evaluating Post-Earthquake Building Safety Using Economical MEMS Seismometers.

PubMed

Hsu, Ting-Yu; Yin, Ren-Cheng; Wu, Yih-Min

2018-05-05

The earthquake early warning (EEW)-research group at National Taiwan University has been developing a microelectromechanical system-based accelerometer called “P-Alert”, designed for issuing EEWs. The main advantage of P-Alert is that it is a relatively economical seismometer. However, because of the expensive nature of commercial hardware for structural health monitoring (SHM) systems, the application of SHM to buildings remains limited. To determine the performance of P-Alert for evaluating post-earthquake building safety, we conducted a series of steel-frame shaking table tests with incremental damage. We used the fragility curves of different damage levels and the interstory drift ratios (calculated by the measured acceleration of each story using double integration and a filter) to gauge the potential damage levels. We concluded that the acceptable detection of damage for an entire building is possible. With improvements to the synchronization of the P-Alert sensors, we also anticipate a damage localization feature for the stories of a building.

Results of an independent evaluation of Project ALERT delivered in schools by Cooperative Extension.

PubMed

St Pierre, Tena L; Osgood, D Wayne; Mincemoyer, Claudia C; Kaltreider, D Lynne; Kauh, Tina J

2005-12-01

Reported are results of an independent effectiveness study of the Project ALERT drug prevention program implemented in eight Pennsylvania middle schools by outside program leaders employed by Cooperative Extension. In this randomized, 2-cohort longitudinal evaluation, 1,649 seventh-grade students completed a pretest and four waves of posttests over the 2-year program and 1-year follow-up. Project ALERT's effectiveness was tested through a 3-level hierarchical linear model. Analyses failed to yield any positive effects for substance use or mediators for use in the adult or teen-assisted delivery of the curriculum. An extensive set of additional analyses detected no differential program effects by student risk level, gender, school, or level of implementation quality. Potential explanations for outcomes relative to Project ALERT's original effectiveness trial are discussed, as well as implications for future research, including the need to conduct independent effectiveness studies of previously validated programs in a variety of contexts.

Transient Alerts in LSST

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kantor, J.

During LSST observing, transient events will be detected and alerts generated at the LSST Archive Center at NCSA in Champaign-Illinois. As a very high rate of alerts is expected, approaching ˜ 10 million per night, we plan for VOEvent-compliant Distributor/Brokers (http://voevent.org) to be the primary end-points of the full LSST alert streams. End users will then use these Distributor/Brokers to classify and filter events on the stream for those fitting their science goals. These Distributor/Brokers are envisioned to be operated as a community service by third parties who will have signed MOUs with LSST. The exact identification of Distributor/Brokers to receive alerts will be determined as LSST approaches full operations and may change over time, but it is in our interest to identify and coordinate with them as early as possible. LSST will also operate a limited Distributor/Broker with a filtering capability at the Archive Center, to allow alerts to be sent directly to a limited number of entities that for some reason need to have a more direct connection to LSST. This might include, for example, observatories with significant follow-up capabilities whose observing may temporarily be more directly tied to LSST observing. It will let astronomers create simple filters that limit what alerts are ultimately forwarded to them. These user defined filters will be possible to specify using an SQL-like declarative language, or short snippets of (likely Python) code. We emphasize that this LSST-provided capability will be limited, and is not intended to satisfy the wide variety of use cases that a full-fledged public Event Distributor/Broker could. End users will not be able to subscribe to full, unfiltered, alert streams coming directly from LSST. In this session, we will discuss anticipated LSST data rates, and capabilities for alert processing and distribution/brokering. We will clarify what the LSST Observatory will provide versus what we anticipate will be a community effort.

Daytime Sleepiness and Driving Performance in Patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea: Comparison of the MSLT, the MWT, and a Simulated Driving Task

PubMed Central

Pizza, Fabio; Contardi, Sara; Mondini, Susanna; Trentin, Lino; Cirignotta, Fabio

2009-01-01

Study Objectives: To test the reliability of a driving-simulation test for the objective measurement of daytime alertness compared with the Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT) and with the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT), and to test the ability to drive safely, in comparison with on-road history, in the clinical setting of untreated severe obstructive sleep apnea. Design: N/A. Setting: Sleep laboratory. Patients or Participants: Twenty-four patients with severe obstructive sleep apnea and reported daytime sleepiness varying in severity (as measured by the Epworth Sleepiness Scale). Interventions: N/A. Measurements and Results: Patients underwent MSLT and MWT coupled with 4 sessions of driving-simulation test on 2 different days randomly distributed 1 week apart. Simulated-driving performance (in terms of lane-position variability and crash occurrence) was correlated with sleep latency on the MSLT and more significantly on the MWT, showing a predictive validity toward the detection of sleepy versus alert patients with obstructive sleep apnea. In addition, patients reporting excessive daytime sleepiness or a history of car crashes showed poorer performances on the driving simulator. Conclusions: A simulated driving test is a suitable tool for objective measurement of daytime alertness in patients with obstructive sleep apnea. Further studies are needed to clarify the association between simulated-driving performance and on-road crash risk of patients with sleep disordered breathing. Citation: Pizza F; Contardi S; Mondini S; Trentin L; Cirignotta F. Daytime sleepiness and driving performance in patients with obstructive sleep apnea: comparison of the MSLT, the MWT, and a simulated driving task. SLEEP 2009;32(3):382-391. PMID:19294958

Alerting, orienting or executive attention networks: differential patters of pupil dilations

PubMed Central

Geva, Ronny; Zivan, Michal; Warsha, Aviv; Olchik, Dov

2013-01-01

Attention capacities, alerting responses, orienting to sensory stimulation, and executive monitoring of performance are considered independent yet interrelated systems. These operations play integral roles in regulating the behavior of diverse species along the evolutionary ladder. Each of the primary attention constructs—alerting, orienting, and executive monitoring—involves salient autonomic correlates as evidenced by changes in reactive pupil dilation (PD), heart rate, and skin conductance. Recent technological advances that use remote high-resolution recording may allow the discernment of temporo-spatial attributes of autonomic responses that characterize the alerting, orienting, and executive monitoring networks during free viewing, irrespective of voluntary performance. This may deepen the understanding of the roles of autonomic regulation in these mental operations and may deepen our understanding of behavioral changes in verbal as well as in non-verbal species. The aim of this study was to explore differences between psychosensory PD responses in alerting, orienting, and executive conflict monitoring tasks to generate estimates of concurrent locus coeruleus (LC) noradrenergic input trajectories in healthy human adults using the attention networks test (ANT). The analysis revealed a construct-specific pattern of pupil responses: alerting is characterized by an early component (Pa), its acceleration enables covert orienting, and executive control is evidenced by a prominent late component (Pe). PD characteristics seem to be task-sensitive, allowing exploration of mental operations irrespective of conscious voluntary responses. These data may facilitate development of studies designed to assess mental operations in diverse species using autonomic responses. PMID:24133422

The Diagnostic Utility of Bact/ALERT and Nested PCR in the Diagnosis of Tuberculous Meningitis.

PubMed

Sastry, Apurba Sankar; Bhat K, Sandhya; Kumudavathi

2013-01-01

The early laboratory diagnosis of Tuberculous Meningitis (TBM) is crucial, to start the antitubercular chemotherapy and to prevent its complications. However, the conventional methods are either less sensitive or time consuming. Hence, the diagnostic potentials of BacT/ALERT and Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) was evaluated in this study. The study group comprised of 62 cases and 33 controls. The cases were divided according to Ahuja's criteria into the confirmed (two cases), highly probable (19 cases), probable (26 cases) and the possible (15 cases) subgroups. Ziehl Neelsen's (ZN) and Auramine Phenol (AP) staining, Lowenstein Jensen (LJ) medium culture, BacT/ALERT and nested Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) which targeted IS6110 were carried out on all the patients. The sensitivity of the LJ culture was 3.22%. BacT/ALERT showed a sensitivity and a specificity of 25.80% and 100% and those of nested PCR were found to be 40.32% and 96.97% respectively. The mean detection time of growth of the LJ culture was 31.28 days, whereas that of BacT/ALERT was 20.68 days. The contamination rate in the LJ culture and BacT/ALERT were 7.2% and 5.8% respectively. Nested PCR was found to be more sensitive, followed by BacT/ALERT as compared to the LJ culture and smear microscopy. As both false negative and false positive results have been reported for nested PCR, so it should not be used alone as a criterion for initiating or terminating the therapy, but it should be supported by clinical, radiological, cytological and other microbiological findings.

Technical implementation plan for the ShakeAlert production system: an Earthquake Early Warning system for the West Coast of the United States

USGS Publications Warehouse

Given, Douglas D.; Cochran, Elizabeth S.; Heaton, Thomas; Hauksson, Egill; Allen, Richard; Hellweg, Peggy; Vidale, John; Bodin, Paul

2014-01-01

Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) systems can provide as much as tens of seconds of warning to people and automated systems before strong shaking arrives. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) and its partners are developing such an EEW system, called ShakeAlert, for the West Coast of the United States. This document describes the technical implementation of that system, which leverages existing stations and infrastructure of the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) regional networks to achieve this new capability. While significant progress has been made in developing the ShakeAlert early warning system, improved robustness of each component of the system and additional testing and certification are needed for the system to be reliable enough to issue public alerts. Major components of the system include dense networks of ground motion sensors, telecommunications from those sensors to central processing systems, algorithms for event detection and alert creation, and distribution systems to alert users. Capital investment costs for a West Coast EEW system are projected to be $38.3M, with additional annual maintenance and operations totaling $16.1M—in addition to current ANSS expenditures for earthquake monitoring. An EEW system is complementary to, but does not replace, other strategies to mitigate earthquake losses. The system has limitations: false and missed alerts are possible, and the area very near to an earthquake epicenter may receive little or no warning. However, such an EEW system would save lives, reduce injuries and damage, and improve community resilience by reducing longer-term economic losses for both public and private entities.

Detection of the relatively slow-growing Propionibacterium acnes in seven matrices of blood components and advanced therapeutical medicinal products.

PubMed

Arlt, Nicole; Rothe, Remo; Juretzek, Thomas; Peltroche, Heidrun; Tonn, Torsten; Moog, Rainer

2017-06-01

Relatively slow-growing bacteria like Propionibacterium acnes represent a challenge for quality control investigations in sterility release testing of blood components and advanced therapeutic medicinal products (ATMPs). A convenient validation with 7 matrices was performed using buffy coat, stem cells, islet cells, natural killer cells, red blood cells, platelets and plasma in the microbial detection system Bact/Alert ® 3D incubator. All matrix samples were spiked twofold with Propionibacterium acnes with approximately 50 colony forming units (CFUs) per bottle in iAST and iNST culture bottles for 14days using a multishot bioball. Additionally, the stem cell preparations were also incubated in iFAplus and iFNplus culture bottles, which include neutralizing polymers. The Bact/Alert ® 3D-System detected Propionibacterium acnes in anaerobic culture bottles in buffy coat [3.3 d (=positive signal day to detection as mean value)], red blood cells [3.2 d], platelets [3.3], plasma [3.7 d], natural killer cells [3.3 d] and islet cells [4.9 d], resp. No growth of Propionibacterium was found in autologous stem cells using iAST and iNST culture bottles. However, Propionibacterium was safely detected in the iFNplus culture bottle with polymers in the stem cell matrix. A successful validation of media was performed. Our study shows that Bact/Alert ® 3D-System safely detects the relatively slow-growing bacterium Propionibacterium acnes in different matrices in a practical way except stem cells. Using the iFNplus culture bottle for stem cell products positive signals were observed. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Severity Summarization and Just in Time Alert Computation in mHealth Monitoring.

PubMed

Pathinarupothi, Rahul Krishnan; Alangot, Bithin; Rangan, Ekanath

2017-01-01

Mobile health is fast evolving into a practical solution to remotely monitor high-risk patients and deliver timely intervention in case of emergencies. Building upon our previous work on a fast and power efficient summarization framework for remote health monitoring applications, called RASPRO (Rapid Alerts Summarization for Effective Prognosis), we have developed a real-time criticality detection technique, which ensures meeting physician defined interventional time. We also present the results from initial testing of this technique.

Diurnal Spectral Sensitivity of the Acute Alerting Effects of Light

PubMed Central

Rahman, Shadab A.; Flynn-Evans, Erin E.; Aeschbach, Daniel; Brainard, George C.; Czeisler, Charles A.; Lockley, Steven W.

2014-01-01

Study Objectives: Previous studies have demonstrated short-wavelength sensitivity for the acute alerting response to nocturnal light exposure. We assessed daytime spectral sensitivity in alertness, performance, and waking electroencephalogram (EEG). Design: Between-subjects (n = 8 per group). Setting: Inpatient intensive physiologic monitoring unit. Participants: Sixteen healthy young adults (mean age ± standard deviation = 23.8 ± 2.7 y). Interventions: Equal photon density exposure (2.8 × 1013 photons/cm2/s) to monochromatic 460 nm (blue) or 555 nm (green) light for 6.5 h centered in the middle of the 16-h episode of wakefulness during the biological day. Results were compared retrospectively to 16 individuals who were administered the same light exposure during the night. Measurements and Results: Daytime and nighttime 460-nm light exposure significantly improved auditory reaction time (P < 0.01 and P < 0.05, respectively) and reduced attentional lapses (P < 0.05), and improved EEG correlates of alertness compared to 555-nm exposure. Whereas subjective sleepiness ratings did not differ between the two spectral conditions during the daytime (P > 0.05), 460-nm light exposure at night significantly reduced subjective sleepiness compared to 555-nm light exposure at night (P < 0.05). Moreover, nighttime 460-nm exposure improved alertness to near-daytime levels. Conclusions: The alerting effects of short-wavelength 460-nm light are mediated by counteracting both the circadian drive for sleepiness and homeostatic sleep pressure at night, but only via reducing the effects of homeostatic sleep pressure during the day. Citation: Rahman SA; Flynn-Evans EE; Aeschbach D; Brainard GC; Czeisler CA; Lockley SW. Diurnal spectral sensitivity of the acute alerting effects of light. SLEEP 2014;37(2):271-281. PMID:24501435

On the SAR derived alert in the detection of oil spills according to the analysis of the EGEMP.

PubMed

Ferraro, Guido; Baschek, Björn; de Montpellier, Geraldine; Njoten, Ove; Perkovic, Marko; Vespe, Michele

2010-01-01

Satellite services that deliver information about possible oil spills at sea currently use different labels of "confidence" to describe the detections based on radar image processing. A common approach is to use a classification differentiating between low, medium and high levels of confidence. There is an ongoing discussion on the suitability of the existing classification systems of possible oil spills detected by radar satellite images with regard to the relevant significance and correspondence to user requirements. This paper contains a basic analysis of user requirements, current technical possibilities of satellite services as well as proposals for a redesign of the classification system as an evolution towards a more structured alert system. This research work offers a first review of implemented methodologies for the categorisation of detected oil spills, together with the proposal of explorative ideas evaluated by the European Group of Experts on satellite Monitoring of sea-based oil Pollution (EGEMP). Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 41 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-01-01

... covered accounts the financial institution or creditor should take steps to ensure that the activity of... detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of information to... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation J Appendix J to Part 41 Banks and Banking COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY...

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 222 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-01-01

... covered accounts the financial institution or creditor should take steps to ensure that the activity of... detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of information to... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation J Appendix J to Part 222 Banks and Banking FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM...

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 334 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-01-01

... should take steps to ensure that the activity of the service provider is conducted in accordance with... financial institution or creditor detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation J Appendix J to Part 334 Banks and Banking FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE...

12 CFR Appendix to Subpart C of... - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-01-01

... the financial institution or creditor should take steps to ensure that the activity of the service... detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of information to... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation Appendix to Subpart C of Part 391 Banks and Banking FEDERAL DEPOSIT...

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 41 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-01-01

... covered accounts the financial institution or creditor should take steps to ensure that the activity of... detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of information to... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation J Appendix J to Part 41 Banks and Banking COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY...

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 222 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-01-01

... covered accounts the financial institution or creditor should take steps to ensure that the activity of... detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of information to... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation J Appendix J to Part 222 Banks and Banking FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM...

17 CFR Appendix A to Subpart C of... - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... covered accounts the financial institution or creditor should take steps to ensure that the activity of... detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of information to... Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation A Appendix A to Subpart C of Part 248 Commodity and...

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 41 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-01-01

... covered accounts the financial institution or creditor should take steps to ensure that the activity of... detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of information to... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation J Appendix J to Part 41 Banks and Banking COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY...

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 334 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-01-01

... should take steps to ensure that the activity of the service provider is conducted in accordance with... financial institution or creditor detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation J Appendix J to Part 334 Banks and Banking FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE...

12 CFR Appendix to Subpart C of... - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-01-01

... the financial institution or creditor should take steps to ensure that the activity of the service... detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of information to... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation Appendix to Subpart C of Part 391 Banks and Banking FEDERAL DEPOSIT...

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 222 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-01-01

... covered accounts the financial institution or creditor should take steps to ensure that the activity of... detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of information to... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation J Appendix J to Part 222 Banks and Banking FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM...

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 222 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-01-01

... covered accounts the financial institution or creditor should take steps to ensure that the activity of... detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of information to... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation J Appendix J to Part 222 Banks and Banking FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM...

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 41 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-01-01

... covered accounts the financial institution or creditor should take steps to ensure that the activity of... detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements for furnishers of information to... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation J Appendix J to Part 41 Banks and Banking COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY...

12 CFR Appendix J to Part 334 - Interagency Guidelines on Identity Theft Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-01-01

... should take steps to ensure that the activity of the service provider is conducted in accordance with... financial institution or creditor detects a fraud or active duty alert; (c) Implementing any requirements... Detection, Prevention, and Mitigation J Appendix J to Part 334 Banks and Banking FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE...

An Unobtrusive Fall Detection and Alerting System Based on Kalman Filter and Bayes Network Classifier.

PubMed

He, Jian; Bai, Shuang; Wang, Xiaoyi

2017-06-16

Falls are one of the main health risks among the elderly. A fall detection system based on inertial sensors can automatically detect fall event and alert a caregiver for immediate assistance, so as to reduce injuries causing by falls. Nevertheless, most inertial sensor-based fall detection technologies have focused on the accuracy of detection while neglecting quantization noise caused by inertial sensor. In this paper, an activity model based on tri-axial acceleration and gyroscope is proposed, and the difference between activities of daily living (ADLs) and falls is analyzed. Meanwhile, a Kalman filter is proposed to preprocess the raw data so as to reduce noise. A sliding window and Bayes network classifier are introduced to develop a wearable fall detection system, which is composed of a wearable motion sensor and a smart phone. The experiment shows that the proposed system distinguishes simulated falls from ADLs with a high accuracy of 95.67%, while sensitivity and specificity are 99.0% and 95.0%, respectively. Furthermore, the smart phone can issue an alarm to caregivers so as to provide timely and accurate help for the elderly, as soon as the system detects a fall.

Multicenter Clinical Evaluation of BacT/Alert Virtuo Blood Culture System.

PubMed

Jacobs, Michael R; Mazzulli, Tony; Hazen, Kevin C; Good, Caryn E; Abdelhamed, Ayman M; Lo, Pauline; Shum, Bianche; Roman, Katharine P; Robinson, Danielle C

2017-08-01

BacT/Alert Virtuo is an advanced, automated blood culture system incorporating improved automation and an enhanced detection algorithm to shorten time to detection. A multicenter study of the investigational Virtuo system (bioMérieux, Inc., Durham, NC) compared to BacT/Alert 3D (BTA3D) for detection of bacteremia/fungemia in four bottle types, SA and FA Plus (aerobic) and SN and FN Plus (anaerobic), was performed in a clinical setting with patient samples in a matched system design clinical trial. Blood was added to paired aerobic or anaerobic bottles, with the volume in each bottle in each pair required to be ≤10 ml and with the volumes required to be within 30% of each other. Of 5,709 bottle sets (52.5% aerobic pairs and 47.5% anaerobic pairs), 430 (7.5%) were positive for bacterial or fungal growth, with 342 (6.0%) clinically significant and 83 (1.5%) contaminated. A total of 3,539 sets (62.0%) were volume compliant, with 203 sets (5.7%) clinically significant. The positivity rates for volume-compliant bottle pairs determined by the two systems were comparable, with 68.7% of clinically significant isolates detected by both instruments, 15.7% by Virtuo only, and 15.7% by BTA3D only. Virtuo detected microbial growth nearly 2 h sooner overall than BTA3D (mean, 15.9 h versus 17.7 h). Shorter time to detection by Virtuo was related to organism group, with the time to detection being significantly shorter for enteric Gram-negative bacilli and enterococci (means, 3.6 h and 2.3 h shorter, respectively). This large clinical study demonstrated that the Virtuo blood culture system produced results comparable to those seen with the long-established BTA3D system, with significantly shorter time to detection. Copyright © 2017 Jacobs et al.

Performance Evaluation of High Fluorescence Lymphocyte Count: Comparability to Atypical Lymphocyte Count and Clinical Significance.

PubMed

Tantanate, Chaicharoen; Klinbua, Cherdsak

2018-06-15

To investigate the association between high-fluorescence lymphocyte cell (HFLC) and atypical lymphocyte (AL) counts, and to determine the clinical significance of HFLC. We compared automated HFLC and microscopic AL counts and analyzed the findings. Patient clinical data for each specimen were reviewed. A total of 320 blood specimens were included. The correlation between HFLC and microscopic AL counts was 0.865 and 0.893 for absolute and percentage counts, respectively. Sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of HFLC at the cutoff value of 0.1 × 109 per L for detection of AL were 0.8, 0.77, and 0.8, respectively. Studied patients were classified into 4 groups: infection, immunological disorders, malignant neoplasms, and others. Patients with infections had the highest HFLC. Most of those patients (67.7%) had dengue infection. HFLC counts were well-correlated with AL counts with the acceptable test characteristics. Applying HFLC flagging may alert laboratory staff to be aware of ALs.

Automated intelligent video surveillance system for ships

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wei, Hai; Nguyen, Hieu; Ramu, Prakash; Raju, Chaitanya; Liu, Xiaoqing; Yadegar, Jacob

2009-05-01

To protect naval and commercial ships from attack by terrorists and pirates, it is important to have automatic surveillance systems able to detect, identify, track and alert the crew on small watercrafts that might pursue malicious intentions, while ruling out non-threat entities. Radar systems have limitations on the minimum detectable range and lack high-level classification power. In this paper, we present an innovative Automated Intelligent Video Surveillance System for Ships (AIVS3) as a vision-based solution for ship security. Capitalizing on advanced computer vision algorithms and practical machine learning methodologies, the developed AIVS3 is not only capable of efficiently and robustly detecting, classifying, and tracking various maritime targets, but also able to fuse heterogeneous target information to interpret scene activities, associate targets with levels of threat, and issue the corresponding alerts/recommendations to the man-in- the-loop (MITL). AIVS3 has been tested in various maritime scenarios and shown accurate and effective threat detection performance. By reducing the reliance on human eyes to monitor cluttered scenes, AIVS3 will save the manpower while increasing the accuracy in detection and identification of asymmetric attacks for ship protection.

RESEARCH PROGRAM FOR ALERTING, DETECTION AND IDENTIFICATION OF PATHOGENES.

DTIC Science & Technology

characteristic products. BHK-21 and RK-13 tissue cultures infected with NDV, influenza, YFV , Sendai, Vaccinia, and Herpes simplex showed a depletion of...infected and control serum could be detected in mice infected with YFV , influenza, Herpes simplex, and LDV superinfected with YFV . Several methods of

Automated Identification of Volcanic Plumes using the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Flower, V. J. B.; Oommen, T.; Carn, S. A.

2015-12-01

Volcanic eruptions are a global phenomenon which are increasingly impacting human populations due to factors such as the extension of population centres into areas of higher risk, expansion of agricultural sectors to accommodate increased production or the increasing impact of volcanic plumes on air travel. In areas where extensive monitoring is present these impacts can be moderated by ground based monitoring and alert systems, however many volcanoes have little or no monitoring capabilities. In many of these regions volcanic alerts are generated by local communities with limited resources or formal communication systems, however additional eruption alerts can result from chance encounters with passing aircraft. In contrast satellite based remote sensing instruments possess the capability to provide near global daily monitoring, facilitating automated volcanic eruption detection. One such system generates eruption alerts through the detection of thermal anomalies, known as MODVOLC, and is currently operational utilising moderate resolution MODIS satellite data. Within this work we outline a method to distinguish SO2 eruptions from background levels recorded by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) through the identification and classification of volcanic activity over a 5 year period. The incorporation of this data into a logistic regression model facilitated the classification of volcanic events with an overall accuracy of 80% whilst consistently identifying plumes with a mass of 400 tons or higher. The implementation of the developed model could facilitate the near real time identification of new and ongoing volcanic activity on a global scale.

Effects of historical and predictive information on ability of transport pilot to predict an alert

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Trujillo, Anna C.

1994-01-01

In the aviation community, the early detection of the development of a possible subsystem problem during a flight is potentially useful for increasing the safety of the flight. Commercial airlines are currently using twin-engine aircraft for extended transport operations over water, and the early detection of a possible problem might increase the flight crew's options for safely landing the aircraft. One method for decreasing the severity of a developing problem is to predict the behavior of the problem so that appropriate corrective actions can be taken. To investigate the pilots' ability to predict long-term events, a computer workstation experiment was conducted in which 18 airline pilots predicted the alert time (the time to an alert) using 3 different dial displays and 3 different parameter behavior complexity levels. The three dial displays were as follows: standard (resembling current aircraft round dial presentations); history (indicating the current value plus the value of the parameter 5 sec in the past); and predictive (indicating the current value plus the value of the parameter 5 sec into the future). The time profiles describing the behavior of the parameter consisted of constant rate-of-change profiles, decelerating profiles, and accelerating-then-decelerating profiles. Although the pilots indicated that they preferred the near term predictive dial, the objective data did not support its use. The objective data did show that the time profiles had the most significant effect on performance in estimating the time to an alert.

Do e-mail alerts of new research increase knowledge translation? A "Nephrology Now" randomized control trial.

PubMed

Tanna, Gemini V; Sood, Manish M; Schiff, Jeffrey; Schwartz, Daniel; Naimark, David M

2011-01-01

As the volume of medical literature increases exponentially, maintaining current clinical practice is becoming more difficult. Multiple, Internet-based journal clubs and alert services have recently emerged. The purpose of this study is to determine whether the use of the e-mail alert service, Nephrology Now, increases knowledge translation regarding current nephrology literature. Nephrology Now is a nonprofit, monthly e-mail alert service that highlights clinically relevant articles in nephrology. In 2007-2008, the authors randomized 1,683 subscribers into two different groups receiving select intervention articles, and then they used an online survey to assess both groups on their familiarity with the articles and their acquisition of knowledge. Of the randomized subscribers, 803 (47.7%) completed surveys, and the two groups had a similar number of responses (401 and 402, respectively). The authors noted no differences in baseline characteristics between the two groups. Familiarity increased as a result of the Nephrology Now alerts (0.23 ± 0.087 units on a familiarity scale; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.06-0.41; P = .007) especially in physicians (multivariate odds ratio 1.83; P = .0002). No detectable improvement in knowledge occurred (0.03 ± 0.083 units on a knowledge scale; 95% CI: -0.13 to 0.20; P = .687). An e-mail alert service of new literature improved a component of knowledge translation--familiarity--but not knowledge acquisition in a large, randomized, international population.

Increased appropriateness of customized alert acknowledgement reasons for overridden medication alerts in a computerized provider order entry system.

PubMed

Dekarske, Brian M; Zimmerman, Christopher R; Chang, Robert; Grant, Paul J; Chaffee, Bruce W

2015-12-01

Computerized provider order entry systems commonly contain alerting mechanisms for patient allergies, incorrect doses, or drug-drug interactions when ordering medications. Providers have the option to override (bypass) these alerts and continue with the order unchanged. This study examines the effect of customizing medication alert override options on the appropriateness of override selection related to patient allergies, drug dosing, and drug-drug interactions when ordering medications in an electronic medical record. In this prospective, randomized crossover study, providers were randomized into cohorts that required a reason for overriding a medication alert from a customized or non-customized list of override reasons and/or by free-text entry. The primary outcome was to compare override responses that appropriately correlate with the alert type between the customized and non-customized configurations. The appropriateness of a subset of free-text responses that represented an affirmative and active acknowledgement of the alert without further explanation was classified as "indeterminate." Results were analyzed in three different ways by classifying indeterminate answers as either appropriate, inappropriate, or excluded entirely. Secondary outcomes included the appropriateness of override reasons when comparing cohorts and individual providers, reason selection based on order within the override list, and the determination of the frequency of free-text use, nonsensical responses, and multiple selection responses. Twenty-two clinicians were randomized into 2 cohorts and a total of 1829 alerts with a required response were generated during the study period. The customized configuration had a higher rate of appropriateness when compared to the non-customized configuration regardless of how indeterminate responses were classified (p<0.001). When comparing cohorts, appropriateness was significantly higher in the customized configuration regardless of the classification of indeterminate responses (p<0.001) with one exception: when indeterminate responses were considered inappropriate for the cohort of providers that were first exposed to the non-customized list (p=0.103). Free-text use was higher in the customized configuration overall (p<0.001), and there was no difference in nonsensical response between configurations (p=0.39). There is a benefit realized by using a customized list for medication override reasons. Poor application design or configuration can negatively affect provider behavior when responding to important medication alerts. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

Category-Specific Comparison of Univariate Alerting Methods for Biosurveillance Decision Support

PubMed Central

Elbert, Yevgeniy; Hung, Vivian; Burkom, Howard

2013-01-01

Objective For a multi-source decision support application, we sought to match univariate alerting algorithms to surveillance data types to optimize detection performance. Introduction Temporal alerting algorithms commonly used in syndromic surveillance systems are often adjusted for data features such as cyclic behavior but are subject to overfitting or misspecification errors when applied indiscriminately. In a project for the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center to enable multivariate decision support, we obtained 4.5 years of out-patient, prescription and laboratory test records from all US military treatment facilities. A proof-of-concept project phase produced 16 events with multiple evidence corroboration for comparison of alerting algorithms for detection performance. We used the representative streams from each data source to compare sensitivity of 6 algorithms to injected spikes, and we used all data streams from 16 known events to compare them for detection timeliness. Methods The six methods compared were: Holt-Winters generalized exponential smoothing method (1)automated choice between daily methods, regression and an exponential weighted moving average (2)adaptive daily Shewhart-type chartadaptive one-sided daily CUSUMEWMA applied to 7-day means with a trend correction; and7-day temporal scan statistic Sensitivity testing: We conducted comparative sensitivity testing for categories of time series with similar scales and seasonal behavior. We added multiples of the standard deviation of each time series as single-day injects in separate algorithm runs. For each candidate method, we then used as a sensitivity measure the proportion of these runs for which the output of each algorithm was below alerting thresholds estimated empirically for each algorithm using simulated data streams. We identified the algorithm(s) whose sensitivity was most consistently high for each data category. For each syndromic query applied to each data source (outpatient, lab test orders, and prescriptions), 502 authentic time series were derived, one for each reporting treatment facility. Data categories were selected in order to group time series with similar expected algorithm performance: Median > 100 < Median ≤ 10Median = 0Lag 7 Autocorrelation Coefficient ≥ 0.2Lag 7 Autocorrelation Coefficient < 0.2 Timeliness testing: For the timeliness testing, we avoided artificiality of simulated signals by measuring alerting detection delays in the 16 corroborated outbreaks. The multiple time series from these events gave a total of 141 time series with outbreak intervals for timeliness testing. The following measures were computed to quantify timeliness of detection: Median Detection Delay – median number of days to detect the outbreak.Penalized Mean Detection Delay –mean number of days to detect the outbreak with outbreak misses penalized as 1 day plus the maximum detection time. Results Based on the injection results, the Holt-Winters algorithm was most sensitive among time series with positive medians. The adaptive CUSUM and the Shewhart methods were most sensitive for data streams with median zero. Table 1 provides timeliness results using the 141 outbreak-associated streams on sparse (Median=0) and non-sparse data categories. [Insert table #1 here] Data median Detection Delay, days Holt-winters Regression EWMA Adaptive Shewhart Adaptive CUSUM 7-day Trend-adj. EWMA 7-day Temporal Scan Median 0 Median 3 2 4 2 4.5 2 Penalized Mean 7.2 7 6.6 6.2 7.3 7.6 Median >0 Median 2 2 2.5 2 6 4 Penalized Mean 6.1 7 7.2 7.1 7.7 6.6 The gray shading in the table 1 indicates methods with shortest detection delays for sparse and non-sparse data streams. The Holt-Winters method was again superior for non-sparse data. For data with median=0, the adaptive CUSUM was superior for a daily false alarm probability of 0.01, but the Shewhart method was timelier for more liberal thresholds. Conclusions Both kinds of detection performance analysis showed the method based on Holt-Winters exponential smoothing superior on non-sparse time series with day-of-week effects. The adaptive CUSUM and She-whart methods proved optimal on sparse data and data without weekly patterns.

Global multi-sensor satellite monitoring of volcanic SO2 and ash emissions in support to aviation control

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brenot, H.; Theys, N.; van Gent, J.; Van Roozendael, M.; van der A, R.; Clarisse, L.; Hurtmans, D.; Ngadi, Y.; Coheur, P.-F.; Clerbaux, C.

2012-04-01

The "Support to Aviation Control Service" (SACS; http://sacs.aeronomie.be) is an ESA-funded project hosted by the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy. The service provides near real-time (NRT) global SO2 and volcanic ash data, as well as alerts in case of volcanic eruptions. The SACS service is primarily designed to support the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centers (VAACs) in their mandate to gather information on volcanic clouds and give advice to airline and air traffic control organisations. SACS also serves other users that subscribe to the service, in particular local volcano observatories and research scientists. SACS is based on the combined use of UV-visible (SCIAMACHY, OMI, GOME-2) and infrared (AIRS, IASI) satellite instruments. When a volcanic eruption is detected, SACS issues an alert that takes the form of a notification sent by e-mail to users. This notification points to a dedicated web page where all relevant information is available and can be visualized with user-friendly tools. The strength of a multi-sensor approach relies in the use of satellite data with different overpasses times, minimizing the time-lag for detection and enhancing the reliability of such alerts. This paper will give a general presentation of the SACS service, different techniques used to detect volcanic plumes. It will also highlight the strengths and limitations of the service and measurements.

Evaluation of a National Call Center and a Local Alerts System for Detection of New Cases of Ebola Virus Disease - Guinea, 2014-2015.

PubMed

Lee, Christopher T; Bulterys, Marc; Martel, Lise D; Dahl, Benjamin A

2016-03-11

The epidemic of Ebola virus disease (Ebola) in West Africa began in Guinea in late 2013 (1), and on August 8, 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the epidemic a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (2). Guinea was declared Ebola-free on December 29, 2015, and is under a 90 day period of enhanced surveillance, following 3,351 confirmed and 453 probable cases of Ebola and 2,536 deaths (3). Passive surveillance for Ebola in Guinea has been conducted principally through the use of a telephone alert system. Community members and health facilities report deaths and suspected Ebola cases to local alert numbers operated by prefecture health departments or to a national toll-free call center. The national call center additionally functions as a source of public health information by responding to questions from the public about Ebola. To evaluate the sensitivity of the two systems and compare the sensitivity of the national call center with the local alerts system, the CDC country team performed probabilistic record linkage of the combined prefecture alerts database, as well as the national call center database, with the national viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) database; the VHF database contains records of all known confirmed Ebola cases. Among 17,309 alert calls analyzed from the national call center, 71 were linked to 1,838 confirmed Ebola cases in the VHF database, yielding a sensitivity of 3.9%. The sensitivity of the national call center was highest in the capital city of Conakry (11.4%) and lower in other prefectures. In comparison, the local alerts system had a sensitivity of 51.1%. Local public health infrastructure plays an important role in surveillance in an epidemic setting.

Driver Performance in the Moments Surrounding a Microsleep

PubMed Central

Boyle, Linda Ng; Tippin, Jon; Paul, Amit; Rizzo, Matthew

2009-01-01

This study examined if individuals who are at increased risk for drowsy-driving because of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS), have impairments in driving performance in the moments during microsleep episodes as opposed to during periods of wakefulness. Twenty-four licensed drivers diagnosed with OSAS based on standard clinical and polysomnographic criteria, participated in an hour-long drive in a high-fidelity driving simulator with synchronous electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings for identification of microsleeps. The drivers showed significant deterioration in vehicle control during the microsleep episodes compared to driving performance in the absence of microsleeps on equivalent segments of roadway. The degree of performance decrement correlated with microsleep duration, particularly on curved roads. Results indicate that driving performance deteriorates during microsleep episodes. Detecting microsleeps in real-time and identifying how these episodes of transition between wakefulness and sleep impair driver performance is relevant to the design and implementation of countermeasures such as drowsy driver detection and alerting systems that use EEG technology. PMID:20090864

Web-based Tsunami Early Warning System: a case study of the 2010 Kepulaunan Mentawai Earthquake and Tsunami

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ulutas, E.; Inan, A.; Annunziato, A.

2012-06-01

This study analyzes the response of the Global Disasters Alerts and Coordination System (GDACS) in relation to a case study: the Kepulaunan Mentawai earthquake and related tsunami, which occurred on 25 October 2010. The GDACS, developed by the European Commission Joint Research Center, combines existing web-based disaster information management systems with the aim to alert the international community in case of major disasters. The tsunami simulation system is an integral part of the GDACS. In more detail, the study aims to assess the tsunami hazard on the Mentawai and Sumatra coasts: the tsunami heights and arrival times have been estimated employing three propagation models based on the long wave theory. The analysis was performed in three stages: (1) pre-calculated simulations by using the tsunami scenario database for that region, used by the GDACS system to estimate the alert level; (2) near-real-time simulated tsunami forecasts, automatically performed by the GDACS system whenever a new earthquake is detected by the seismological data providers; and (3) post-event tsunami calculations using GCMT (Global Centroid Moment Tensor) fault mechanism solutions proposed by US Geological Survey (USGS) for this event. The GDACS system estimates the alert level based on the first type of calculations and on that basis sends alert messages to its users; the second type of calculations is available within 30-40 min after the notification of the event but does not change the estimated alert level. The third type of calculations is performed to improve the initial estimations and to have a better understanding of the extent of the possible damage. The automatic alert level for the earthquake was given between Green and Orange Alert, which, in the logic of GDACS, means no need or moderate need of international humanitarian assistance; however, the earthquake generated 3 to 9 m tsunami run-up along southwestern coasts of the Pagai Islands where 431 people died. The post-event calculations indicated medium-high humanitarian impacts.

External modulation of the sustained attention network in traumatic brain injury.

PubMed

Richard, Nadine M; O'Connor, Charlene; Dey, Ayan; Robertson, Ian H; Levine, Brian

2018-05-07

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is associated with impairments in processing speed as well as higher-level cognitive functions that depend on distributed neural networks, such as regulating and sustaining attention. Although exogenous alerting cues have been shown to support patients in sustaining attentive, goal-directed behavior, the neural correlates of this rehabilitative effect are unclear. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of moderate to severe TBI on activity and functional connectivity in the well-documented right-lateralized frontal-subcortical-parietal sustained attention network, and to assess the effects of alerting cues. Using multivariate analysis of fMRI data, TBI patients and matched neurologically healthy (NH) comparison participants were scanned as they performed the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) in 60-s blocks, with or without exogenous cueing through brief auditory alerting tones. Results documented inefficient voluntary control of attention in the TBI patients, with reduced functional connectivity in the sustained attention network relative to NH participants. When alerting cues were present during the SART, however, functional connectivity increased and became comparable to activity patterns seen in the NH group. These findings provide novel evidence of a neural mechanism for the facilitatory effects of alerting cues on goal-directed behavior in patients with damaged attentional brain systems, and support their use in cognitive rehabilitation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Incorporation of operator knowledge for improved HMDS GPR classification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kennedy, Levi; McClelland, Jessee R.; Walters, Joshua R.

2012-06-01

The Husky Mine Detection System (HMDS) detects and alerts operators to potential threats observed in groundpenetrating RADAR (GPR) data. In the current system architecture, the classifiers have been trained using available data from multiple training sites. Changes in target types, clutter types, and operational conditions may result in statistical differences between the training data and the testing data for the underlying features used by the classifier, potentially resulting in an increased false alarm rate or a lower probability of detection for the system. In the current mode of operation, the automated detection system alerts the human operator when a target-like object is detected. The operator then uses data visualization software, contextual information, and human intuition to decide whether the alarm presented is an actual target or a false alarm. When the statistics of the training data and the testing data are mismatched, the automated detection system can overwhelm the analyst with an excessive number of false alarms. This is evident in the performance of and the data collected from deployed systems. This work demonstrates that analyst feedback can be successfully used to re-train a classifier to account for variable testing data statistics not originally captured in the initial training data.

Improving microcystin monitoring relevance in recreative waters: A regional case-study (Brittany, Western France, Europe).

PubMed

Pitois, Frédéric; Vezie, Chantal; Thoraval, Isabelle; Baurès, Estelle

2016-05-01

Cyanobacteria and their toxins are known as a health hazard in recreative and distributed waters. Monitoring data from 2004 to 2011 were collected at regional scale to characterize exposition parameters to microcystins in Brittany (Western France). The data show that cyanobacteria populations are experiencing a composition shift leading to a longer duration of cell densities higher than WHO alert levels 2 and 3. Microcystins however appear to be more frequently detected with subacute concentrations in low cell density samples than in high cell density samples or during bloom episodes. Positive relations are described between microcystin concentrations, detection frequencies and cyanobacteria biovolumes, allowing for a novel definition of alert levels and decision framework following WHO recommendations. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

Piloted "Well Clear" Performance Evaluation of Detect-and-Avoid Systems with Suggestive Guidance

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mueller, Eric R.; Santiago, Confesor; Watza, Spencer

2016-01-01

This study evaluated the performance of four prototype unmanned aircraft detect-and-avoid (DAA) display configurations, each with different informational elements driven by alerting and guidance algorithms. Sixteen unmanned aircraft pilots flew each combination of the display configurations, with half being given zero DAA surveillance sensor uncertainty and the other half experiencing errors that were comparable, and in some cases slightly better than, errors that were measured in DAA system flight tests. The displays that showed intruder alert information in altitude and heading bands had significantly fewer losses of well clear compared with alternative displays that lacked that information. This difference was significant from a statistical and practical perspective: those losses that did occur lasted for shorter periods and did not penetrate as far into the geometric "separation cylinder" as those in the non-banded displays. A modest level of DAA surveillance sensor uncertainty did not affect the proportion of losses of well clear or their severity. It is recommended that DAA traffic displays implement a band-type display in order to improve the safety of UAS operations in the National Airspace System. Finally, this report provides pilot response time distributions for responding to DAA alerts.

Do dogs sense hypoglycaemia?

PubMed

Weber, K S; Roden, M; Müssig, K

2016-07-01

To summarize the current knowledge on the phenomenon of dogs, both trained and untrained, sensing hypoglycaemia and alerting their owners to it. Electronic databases were searched for all types of articles reporting on untrained or trained 'diabetes alert' dogs. Articles published up until December 2014 in the English or German language were included. Several case reports and observational studies provide evidence that animals can perform at a level above that attributable to chance, and may reliably detect low diurnal as well as nocturnal hypoglycaemic episodes. Behavioural changes in untrained dogs were reported during 38-100% of hypoglycaemic events experienced by their owners. The sensitivity and specificity of the performance of trained diabetes alert dogs sensing hypoglycaemia ranged from 22 to 100% and 71 to 90%, respectively. Additionally, 75-81% of patients with diabetes who owned a trained dog reported a subsequent improvement in their quality of life. Nevertheless, the available data are limited and heterogeneous because they rely on low patient numbers and survey-based studies prone to recall bias. Further research is needed to confirm the preliminary data on the reliability and mechanism underlying the dogs' abilities to detect hypoglycaemia, and its impact on patient outcomes. © 2015 Diabetes UK.

Novel sample preparation methods and field testing procedures used to determine the chemical basis of cocaine detection by canines

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Furton, Kenneth G.; Hsu, Ya-Li; Luo, Tien-Ying; Alvarez, Nayiby; Lagos, Pedro

1997-02-01

The use of canines to signal money associated with drug trafficking is a major point of contention among dog handlers, forensic scientists, and the legal community particularly in light of recent reports that a significant amount of money in circulation is contaminated with detectable amounts of cocaine. The questions raised include: What exactly are the dogs alerting to? How selective are the dogs? How sensitive are the dogs? How reliable are the dogs? Tests with various volatile cocaine by-products confirm that the dominant chemical in cocaine odor is methyl benzoate. Field tests on fifteen different drug detector dogs with varying breeds, ages and training regimes show a consistent threshold level of 1 (mu) g of methyl benzoate spiked along with cocaine on U.S. currency required to initiate an alert. The majority of the canines did not alert to pharmaceutical grade cocaine even at levels as high as 1 g. Methyl benzoate is shown to evaporate rapidly from individual bills and is a function of the available surface area for wrapped currency. The canines tested were remarkably selective and reliable even under varying test conditions and using different delivery devices.

Investigating Driver Fatigue versus Alertness Using the Granger Causality Network.

PubMed

Kong, Wanzeng; Lin, Weicheng; Babiloni, Fabio; Hu, Sanqing; Borghini, Gianluca

2015-08-05

Driving fatigue has been identified as one of the main factors affecting drivers' safety. The aim of this study was to analyze drivers' different mental states, such as alertness and drowsiness, and find out a neurometric indicator able to detect drivers' fatigue level in terms of brain networks. Twelve young, healthy subjects were recruited to take part in a driver fatigue experiment under different simulated driving conditions. The Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals of the subjects were recorded during the whole experiment and analyzed by using Granger-Causality-based brain effective networks. It was that the topology of the brain networks and the brain's ability to integrate information changed when subjects shifted from the alert to the drowsy stage. In particular, there was a significant difference in terms of strength of Granger causality (GC) in the frequency domain and the properties of the brain effective network i.e., causal flow, global efficiency and characteristic path length between such conditions. Also, some changes were more significant over the frontal brain lobes for the alpha frequency band. These findings might be used to detect drivers' fatigue levels, and as reference work for future studies.

Investigating Driver Fatigue versus Alertness Using the Granger Causality Network

PubMed Central

Kong, Wanzeng; Lin, Weicheng; Babiloni, Fabio; Hu, Sanqing; Borghini, Gianluca

2015-01-01

Driving fatigue has been identified as one of the main factors affecting drivers’ safety. The aim of this study was to analyze drivers’ different mental states, such as alertness and drowsiness, and find out a neurometric indicator able to detect drivers’ fatigue level in terms of brain networks. Twelve young, healthy subjects were recruited to take part in a driver fatigue experiment under different simulated driving conditions. The Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals of the subjects were recorded during the whole experiment and analyzed by using Granger-Causality-based brain effective networks. It was that the topology of the brain networks and the brain’s ability to integrate information changed when subjects shifted from the alert to the drowsy stage. In particular, there was a significant difference in terms of strength of Granger causality (GC) in the frequency domain and the properties of the brain effective network i.e., causal flow, global efficiency and characteristic path length between such conditions. Also, some changes were more significant over the frontal brain lobes for the alpha frequency band. These findings might be used to detect drivers’ fatigue levels, and as reference work for future studies. PMID:26251909

Neurophysiological detection of impending spinal cord injury during scoliosis surgery.

PubMed

Schwartz, Daniel M; Auerbach, Joshua D; Dormans, John P; Flynn, John; Drummond, Denis S; Bowe, J Andrew; Laufer, Samuel; Shah, Suken A; Bowen, J Richard; Pizzutillo, Peter D; Jones, Kristofer J; Drummond, Denis S

2007-11-01

Despite the many reports attesting to the efficacy of intraoperative somatosensory evoked potential monitoring in reducing the prevalence of iatrogenic spinal cord injury during corrective scoliosis surgery, these afferent neurophysiological signals can provide only indirect evidence of injury to the motor tracts since they monitor posterior column function. Early reports on the use of transcranial electric motor evoked potentials to monitor the corticospinal motor tracts directly suggested that the method holds great promise for improving detection of emerging spinal cord injury. We sought to compare the efficacy of these two methods of monitoring to detect impending iatrogenic neural injury during scoliosis surgery. We reviewed the intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring records of 1121 consecutive patients (834 female and 287 male) with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (mean age, 13.9 years) treated between 2000 and 2004 at four pediatric spine centers. The same group of experienced surgical neurophysiologists monitored spinal cord function in all patients with use of a standardized multimodality technique with the patient under total intravenous anesthesia. A relevant neurophysiological change (an alert) was defined as a reduction in amplitude (unilateral or bilateral) of at least 50% for somatosensory evoked potentials and at least 65% for transcranial electric motor evoked potentials compared with baseline. Thirty-eight (3.4%) of the 1121 patients had recordings that met the criteria for a relevant signal change (i.e., an alert). Of those thirty-eight patients, seventeen showed suppression of the amplitude of transcranial electric motor evoked potentials in excess of 65% without any evidence of changes in somatosensory evoked potentials. In nine of the thirty-eight patients, the signal change was related to hypotension and was corrected with augmentation of the blood pressure. The remaining twenty-nine patients had an alert that was related directly to a surgical maneuver. Three alerts occurred following segmental vessel clamping, and the remaining twenty-six were related to posterior instrumentation and correction. Nine (35%) of these twenty-six patients with an instrumentation-related alert, or 0.8% of the cohort, awoke with a transient motor and/or sensory deficit. Seven of these nine patients presented solely with a motor deficit, which was detected by intraoperative monitoring of transcranial electric motor evoked potentials in all cases, and two patients had only sensory symptoms. Somatosensory evoked potential monitoring failed to identify a motor deficit in four of the seven patients with a confirmed motor deficit. Furthermore, when changes in somatosensory evoked potentials occurred, they lagged behind the changes in transcranial electric motor evoked potentials by an average of approximately five minutes. With an appropriate response to the alert, the motor or sensory deficit resolved in all nine patients within one to ninety days. This study underscores the advantage of monitoring the spinal cord motor tracts directly by recording transcranial electric motor evoked potentials in addition to somatosensory evoked potentials. Transcranial electric motor evoked potentials are exquisitely sensitive to altered spinal cord blood flow due to either hypotension or a vascular insult. Moreover, changes in transcranial electric motor evoked potentials are detected earlier than are changes in somatosensory evoked potentials, thereby facilitating more rapid identification of impending spinal cord injury.

SeizAlert could give patients 4.5 hour warning of seizure

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Dr. Lee Hively and Kara Kruse

2009-01-16

One percent of Americans, 3 million people, suffer from epilepsy. And their lives are about to be dramatically changed by scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. For 15 years, Dr. Lee Hively has been working on "SeizAlert", a seizure-detecting device that resembles a common PDA. "It allows us to analyze scalp brain waves and give us up to 4.5 hours' forewarning of that event," he said. With the help of partner Kara Kruse, he's now able to help patients predict the previously unpredictable.

Predicting Sepsis Risk Using the "Sniffer" Algorithm in the Electronic Medical Record.

PubMed

Olenick, Evelyn M; Zimbro, Kathie S; DʼLima, Gabrielle M; Ver Schneider, Patricia; Jones, Danielle

The Sepsis "Sniffer" Algorithm (SSA) has merit as a digital sepsis alert but should be considered an adjunct to versus an alternative for the Nurse Screening Tool (NST), given lower specificity and positive predictive value. The SSA reduced the risk of incorrectly categorizing patients at low risk for sepsis, detected sepsis high risk in half the time, and reduced redundant NST screens by 70% and manual screening hours by 64% to 72%. Preserving nurse hours expended on manual sepsis alerts may translate into time directed toward other patient priorities.

SeizAlert could give patients 4.5 hour warning of seizure

ScienceCinema

Dr. Lee Hively and Kara Kruse

2017-12-09

One percent of Americans, 3 million people, suffer from epilepsy. And their lives are about to be dramatically changed by scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. For 15 years, Dr. Lee Hively has been working on "SeizAlert", a seizure-detecting device that resembles a common PDA. "It allows us to analyze scalp brain waves and give us up to 4.5 hours' forewarning of that event," he said. With the help of partner Kara Kruse, he's now able to help patients predict the previously unpredictable.

STCA, TCAS, Airproxes and Collision Risk

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brooker, Peter

2005-09-01

The focus here is on the performance of and interaction between the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) and the controller's short-term conflict alert (STCA) system. The data source used is UK Airprox Board Reports of close encounters between aircraft, and the focus is on commercial air transport aircraft using UK controlled airspace with a radar service. Do the systems work well together? Are controllers surprised when they find out that a pilot has received a TCAS resolution advisory? What do TCAS and STCA events say about collision risk? Generally, the systems seem to work together well. On most occasions, controllers are not surprised by TCAS advisories: either they have detected the problem themselves or STCA has alerted them to it. The statistically expected rate of future mid-air collisions is estimated by extrapolation of Airprox closest encounter distances.

Vestibular afferent responses to linear accelerations in the alert squirrel monkey

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Somps, Christopher J.; Schor, Robert H.; Tomko, David L.

1994-01-01

The spontaneous activity of 40 otolith afferents and 44 canal afferents was recorded in 4 alert, intact squirrel monkeys. Polarization vectors and response properties of otolith afferents were determined during static re-orientations relative to gravity and during Earth-horizontal, sinusoidal, linear oscillations. Canal afferents were tested for sensitivity to linear accelerations. For regular otolith afferents, a significant correlation between upright discharge rate and sensitivity to dynamic acceleration in the horizontal plane was observed. This correlation was not present in irregular units. The sensitivity of otolith afferents to both static tilts and dynamic linear acceleration was much greater in irregularly discharging units than in regularly discharging units. The spontaneous activity and static and dynamic response properties of regularly discharging otolith afferents were similar to those reported in barbiturate-anesthetized squirrel monkeys. Irregular afferents also had similar dynamic response properties when compared to anesthetized monkeys. However, this sample of irregular afferents in alert animals had higher resting discharge rates and greater sensitivity to static tilts. The majority of otolith polarization vectors were oriented near the horizontal in the plane of the utricular maculae; however, directions of maximum sensitivity were different during dynamic and static testing. Canal afferents were not sensitive to static tilts or linear oscillations of the head.

Effects of clonidine and scopolamine on multiple target detection in rapid serial visual presentation.

PubMed

Brown, Stephen B R E; Slagter, Heleen A; van Noorden, Martijn S; Giltay, Erik J; van der Wee, Nic J A; Nieuwenhuis, Sander

2016-01-01

The specific role of neuromodulator systems in regulating rapid fluctuations of attention is still poorly understood. In this study, we examined the effects of clonidine and scopolamine on multiple target detection in a rapid serial visual presentation task to assess the role of the central noradrenergic and cholinergic systems in temporal attention. Eighteen healthy volunteers took part in a crossover double-dummy study in which they received clonidine (150/175 μg), scopolamine (1.2 mg), and placebo by mouth in counterbalanced order. A dual-target attentional blink task was administered at 120 min after scopolamine intake and 180 min after clonidine intake. The electroencephalogram was measured during task performance. Clonidine and scopolamine both impaired detection of the first target (T1). For clonidine, this impairment was accompanied by decreased amplitudes of the P2 and P3 components of the event-related potential. The drugs did not impair second-target (T2) detection, except if T2 was presented immediately after T1. The attentional blink for T2 was not affected, in line with a previous study that found no effect of clonidine on the attentional blink. These and other results suggest that clonidine and scopolamine may impair temporal attention through a decrease in tonic alertness and that this decrease in alertness can be temporarily compensated by a phasic alerting response to a salient stimulus. The comparable behavioral effects of clonidine and scopolamine are consistent with animal studies indicating close interactions between the noradrenergic and cholinergic neuromodulator systems.

Time until diagnosis of clinical events with different remote monitoring systems in Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillator patients.

PubMed

Söth-Hansen, Malene; Witt, Christoffer Tobias; Rasmussen, Mathis; Kristensen, Jens; Gerdes, Christian; Nielsen, Jens Cosedis

2018-05-24

Remote monitoring (RM) is an established technology integrated into routine follow-up of patients with implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD). Current RM systems differ according to transmission frequency and alert definition. We aimed to compare time difference between detection and acknowledgement of clinically relevant events between four RM systems. We analyzed time delay between detection of ventricular arrhythmic and technical events by the ICD and acknowledgement by hospital staff in 1.802 consecutive patients followed with RM during September 2014 - August 2016. Devices from Biotronik (BIO, n=374), Boston Scientific (BSC, n=196), Medtronic (MDT, n=468) and St Jude Medical (SJM, n=764) were included. We identified all events from RM webpages and their acknowledgement with RM or at in-clinic follow-up. Events occurring during weekends were excluded. We included 3.472 events. Proportion of events acknowledged within 24 hours was 72%, 23%, 18% and 65% with BIO, BSC, MDT and SJM, respectively, with median times of 13, 222, 163 and 18 hours from detection to acknowledgement (p<0.001 for both comparisons between manufacturers). Including only events transmitted as alerts by RM, 72%, 68%, 61% and 65% for BIO, BSC, MDT and SJM, respectively were acknowledged within 24 hours. Variation in time to acknowledgement of ventricular tachyarrhythmia episodes not treated with shock therapy was the primary cause for the difference between manufacturers. Significant and clinically relevant differences in time delay from event detection to acknowledgement exist between RM systems. Varying definitions of which events RM transmits as alerts are important for the differences observed. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Aircraft Conflict Analysis and Real-Time Conflict Probing Using Probabilistic Trajectory Modeling

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Yang, Lee C.; Kuchar, James K.

2000-01-01

Methods for maintaining separation between aircraft in the current airspace system have been built from a foundation of structured routes and evolved procedures. However, as the airspace becomes more congested and the chance of failures or operational error become more problematic, automated conflict alerting systems have been proposed to help provide decision support and to serve as traffic monitoring aids. The problem of conflict detection and resolution has been tackled from a number of different ways, but in this thesis, it is recast as a problem of prediction in the presence of uncertainties. Much of the focus is concentrated on the errors and uncertainties from the working trajectory model used to estimate future aircraft positions. The more accurate the prediction, the more likely an ideal (no false alarms, no missed detections) alerting system can be designed. Additional insights into the problem were brought forth by a review of current operational and developmental approaches found in the literature. An iterative, trial and error approach to threshold design was identified. When examined from a probabilistic perspective, the threshold parameters were found to be a surrogate to probabilistic performance measures. To overcome the limitations in the current iterative design method, a new direct approach is presented where the performance measures are directly computed and used to perform the alerting decisions. The methodology is shown to handle complex encounter situations (3-D, multi-aircraft, multi-intent, with uncertainties) with relative ease. Utilizing a Monte Carlo approach, a method was devised to perform the probabilistic computations in near realtime. Not only does this greatly increase the method's potential as an analytical tool, but it also opens up the possibility for use as a real-time conflict alerting probe. A prototype alerting logic was developed and has been utilized in several NASA Ames Research Center experimental studies.

Attention Performance Measured by Attention Network Test Is Correlated with Global and Regional Efficiency of Structural Brain Networks

PubMed Central

Xiao, Min; Ge, Haitao; Khundrakpam, Budhachandra S.; Xu, Junhai; Bezgin, Gleb; Leng, Yuan; Zhao, Lu; Tang, Yuchun; Ge, Xinting; Jeon, Seun; Xu, Wenjian; Evans, Alan C.; Liu, Shuwei

2016-01-01

Functional neuroimaging studies have indicated the involvement of separate brain areas in three distinct attention systems: alerting, orienting, and executive control (EC). However, the structural correlates underlying attention remains unexplored. Here, we utilized graph theory to examine the neuroanatomical substrates of the three attention systems measured by attention network test (ANT) in 65 healthy subjects. White matter connectivity, assessed with diffusion tensor imaging deterministic tractography was modeled as a structural network comprising 90 nodes defined by the automated anatomical labeling (AAL) template. Linear regression analyses were conducted to explore the relationship between topological parameters and the three attentional effects. We found a significant positive correlation between EC function and global efficiency of the whole brain network. At the regional level, node-specific correlations were discovered between regional efficiency and all three ANT components, including dorsolateral superior frontal gyrus, thalamus and parahippocampal gyrus for EC, thalamus and inferior parietal gyrus for alerting, and paracentral lobule and inferior occipital gyrus for orienting. Our findings highlight the fundamental architecture of interregional structural connectivity involved in attention and could provide new insights into the anatomical basis underlying human behavior. PMID:27777556

A-21st-century-approach to firefighting in the Western US: How microwave-based seismic networks can change fire suppression from reactive to proactive

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kent, G. M.; Smith, K. D.; Williams, M. C.; Slater, D. E.; Plank, G.; McCarthy, M.; Rojas-Gonzalez, R.; Vernon, F.; Driscoll, N. W.; Hidley, G.

2015-12-01

The Nevada Seismological Laboratory (NSL) at UNR has recently embarked on a bold technical initiative, installing a high-speed (up to 190 Mb/sec) mountaintop-based Internet Protocol (IP) microwave network, enabling a myriad of sensor systems for Multi-Hazard Early Warning detection and response. In the Tahoe Basin, this system is known as AlertTahoe; a similar network has been deployed in north-central Nevada as part of a 5-year-long grant with BLM. The UNR network mirrors the successful HPWREN multi-hazard network run through UCSD; the UNR "Alert" program (Access to Leverage Emergency information in Real Time) has expanded on the original concept by providing a framework for early fire detection and discovery. Both systems do not rely on open-access public Internet services such as those provided by cellular service providers. Instead, they utilize private wireless communication networks to collect data 24/7 in real-time from multiple sensors throughout the system. Utilizing this restricted-access private communication platform enhances system reliability, capability, capacity and versatility for staff and its community of certified users. Both UNR and UCSD fire camera systems are presently being confederated under a common framework to provide end users (e.g., BLM, USFS, CalFire) a unified interface. Earthquake response has been both organizations' primary mission for decades; high-speed IP microwave fundamentally changes the playing field allowing for rapid early detection of wildfires, earthquakes and other natural disasters, greatly improving local and regional disaster response/recovery. For example, networked cameras can be optimally placed for wildfire detection and are significantly less vulnerable due infrastructure hardening and the ability to avoid extreme demands by the public on cellular and other public networks during a crisis. These systems also provide a backup for emergency responders to use when public access communications become overwhelmed or fail during an event. The crowd-sourced fire cameras can be viewed year round through AlertTahoe and AlertSoCal websites with on-demand time-lapse, an integrated real time lightning map, and other useful features.

Attentional Lapses of Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Tasks of Sustained Attention.

PubMed

Gmehlin, Dennis; Fuermaier, Anselm B M; Walther, Stephan; Tucha, Lara; Koerts, Janneke; Lange, Klaus W; Tucha, Oliver; Weisbrod, Matthias; Aschenbrenner, Steffen

2016-06-01

Adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show attentional dysfunction such as distractibility and mind-wandering, especially in lengthy tasks. However, fundamentals of dysfunction are ambiguous and relationships of neuropsychological test parameters with self-report measures of ADHD symptoms are marginal. We hypothesize that basic deficits in sustaining attention explain more complex attentional dysfunction in persons with ADHD and relate to ADHD symptoms. Attentional function was analyzed by computing ex-Gaussian parameters for 3 time Blocks in a 20 min test of sustained alertness. Changes in performance across these blocks were analyzed by comparing adult persons with ADHD (n = 24) with healthy matched controls (n = 24) and correlated with neuropsychological measures of selective and divided attention as well as self-report measures of ADHD symptoms. We found a significantly steeper increase in the number of slow responses (ex-Gaussian parameter τ) in persons with ADHD with time on task in basic sustained alertness. They also performed significantly worse in tasks of sustained selective and divided attention. However, after controlling for an increase in τ during the alertness task, significant differences between groups disappeared for divided and partly selective attention. Increases in τ in the sustained alertness task correlated significantly with self-report measures of ADHD symptoms. Our results provide evidence that very basic deficits in sustaining attention in adults with ADHD are related to infrequent slow responses (=attentional lapses), with changes over time being relevant for more complex attentional function and experienced ADHD symptoms in everyday life. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Eye blink detection for different driver states in conditionally automated driving and manual driving using EOG and a driver camera.

PubMed

Schmidt, Jürgen; Laarousi, Rihab; Stolzmann, Wolfgang; Karrer-Gauß, Katja

2018-06-01

In this article, we examine the performance of different eye blink detection algorithms under various constraints. The goal of the present study was to evaluate the performance of an electrooculogram- and camera-based blink detection process in both manually and conditionally automated driving phases. A further comparison between alert and drowsy drivers was performed in order to evaluate the impact of drowsiness on the performance of blink detection algorithms in both driving modes. Data snippets from 14 monotonous manually driven sessions (mean 2 h 46 min) and 16 monotonous conditionally automated driven sessions (mean 2 h 45 min) were used. In addition to comparing two data-sampling frequencies for the electrooculogram measures (50 vs. 25 Hz) and four different signal-processing algorithms for the camera videos, we compared the blink detection performance of 24 reference groups. The analysis of the videos was based on very detailed definitions of eyelid closure events. The correct detection rates for the alert and manual driving phases (maximum 94%) decreased significantly in the drowsy (minus 2% or more) and conditionally automated (minus 9% or more) phases. Blinking behavior is therefore significantly impacted by drowsiness as well as by automated driving, resulting in less accurate blink detection.

34 CFR 668.49 - Institutional fire safety policies and fire statistics.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... fire. Fire safety system: Any mechanism or system related to the detection of a fire, the warning resulting from a fire, or the control of a fire. This may include sprinkler systems or other fire extinguishing systems, fire detection devices, stand-alone smoke alarms, devices that alert one to the presence...

34 CFR 668.49 - Institutional fire safety policies and fire statistics.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... fire. Fire safety system: Any mechanism or system related to the detection of a fire, the warning resulting from a fire, or the control of a fire. This may include sprinkler systems or other fire extinguishing systems, fire detection devices, stand-alone smoke alarms, devices that alert one to the presence...

34 CFR 668.49 - Institutional fire safety policies and fire statistics.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... fire. Fire safety system: Any mechanism or system related to the detection of a fire, the warning resulting from a fire, or the control of a fire. This may include sprinkler systems or other fire extinguishing systems, fire detection devices, stand-alone smoke alarms, devices that alert one to the presence...

34 CFR 668.49 - Institutional fire safety policies and fire statistics.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... fire. Fire safety system: Any mechanism or system related to the detection of a fire, the warning resulting from a fire, or the control of a fire. This may include sprinkler systems or other fire extinguishing systems, fire detection devices, stand-alone smoke alarms, devices that alert one to the presence...

Electrodermal Activity Based Wearable Device for Drowsy Drivers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Malathi, D.; Dorathi Jayaseeli, JD; Madhuri, S.; Senthilkumar, K.

2018-04-01

Road safety and road accident mortality rate are a serious concern for the government. With rise in fatal road accidents, who’s leading cause is the driver being drowsy behind the wheel, measures to alleviate this problem becomes the prime task. To meet the purpose, methods adopted must be of minimum discomfort for the driver, easy to install, provide good detection accuracy and timely alert to circumvent a probable accident. A good candidate to meet these specifications is EDA. As it detects the level of sweat which directly corresponds to the mental state of the person, using EDA for the purposes of driver safety forms a good option. The novelty of this project lies in making use of EDA as a measure to detect if a person is drowsy or not. Much of the challenge lies in building a device equipped with the necessary sensors and processing the data on real-time. The novelty of this work lies in development of an embedded device interfaced with sensors and actuators to detect and alert a driver when found drowsy using sweat as a parameter.

A History of U.S. Navy Periscope Detection Radar, Sensor Design and Development

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-12-31

A History of U.S. Navy Periscope Detection Radar Sensor Design and Development John G. Shannon Paul M. Moser Rite-Solutions, Inc...superiority through the years. Highly effective radar sensors used for military applications were originally large ground-based units designed, developed...automatically. Until very recently, all fleet operational periscope detection radar (PDR) sensor systems have required a skilled and alert human

The Montsec Observatory and the Gaia science alerts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Carrasco, J. M.; Burgaz, U.; Vilardell, F.; Jordi, C.

2017-03-01

The continuous and reiterative scan of the whole sky performed by Gaia ESA's mission during its (at least) 5 years of mission allows to detect transient events (e.g., supernovae, microlensing events, cataclysmic variables, etc) almost in real time among the daily millions of observations. The pipeline in charge to discover these alerts does a quick look analysis of the daily data stream, identify those sources increasing their brightness with respect to previous Gaia observations and also analyse their spectrophotometry to decide if those sources are good candidates to be published as a Gaia Photometric Science Alerts. These events are publicly announced for follow-up observations (both photometric and spectroscopic are needed). Observatories around the world confirm, classify and study them in detail. Observations are put in common and analysed together in a common interface in order to get a single analysis as detailed and precise as possible. Our team in Barcelona contributes to this Gaia science alerts follow-up programme with the 0.8 m robotic telescope Joan Oró (TJO), at the Montsec Observatory (OAdM), located at Sant Esteve de la Sarga (Lleida, Spain) performing photometric observations to derive the lightcurves of the most interesting alerts accessible from the observatory. Until now we have contributed with about 4500 images in multicolour Johnson-Cousins passbands obtained with TJO for a total of 38 Gaia science alerts, becoming the third most contributing observatory in the programme. Here we summarise the procedure to select new targets to be observed by TJO, submit follow-up observations and we explain the analysis we did for some interesting obtained lightcurves.

Counterfeit medicines in Peru: a retrospective review (1997–2014)

PubMed Central

Medina, Edwin; Bel, Elvira; Suñé, Josep María

2016-01-01

Objective To consolidate and assess information on counterfeit medicines subject to pharmaceutical alerts issued by the Peruvian Medicines Regulatory Authority over 18 years (1997–2014) of health monitoring and enforcement. Design A retrospective review of drug alerts. Setting A search of the website of the General Directorate of Medicines, Supplies and Drugs (DIGEMID) of the Ministry of Health of Peru for drug alerts issued between 1997 and 2014. Eligibility criteria Drug alerts related to counterfeit medicines. Results A total of 669 DIGEMID alerts were issued during the study period, 354 (52.91%) of which cover 1738 cases of counterfeit medicines (many alerts deal with several cases at a time). 1010 cases (58.11%) involved pharmaceutical establishments and 349 (20.08%) involved non-pharmaceutical commercial outlets. In 126 cases (7.25%), counterfeit medicines were seized in an unauthorised trade (without any marketing authorisation); in 253 cases (14.56%) the type of establishment or business associated with the seized product was not identified. Conclusions Counterfeit medicines are a serious public health problem in Peru. A review of the data cannot determine whether counterfeit medicines in Peru increased during the study period, or if monitoring by different government health agencies highlighted the magnitude of the problem by providing more evidence. The problem is clearly structural, since the majority of cases (58.11% of the total) were detected in legitimate supply chains. Most counterfeit medicines involve staple pharmaceutical products and common dosage forms. Considerable work remains to be done to control the serious problem of counterfeit medicines in Peru. PMID:27044580

A Novel Free Flap Monitoring System Using Tissue Oximetry with Text Message Alerts.

PubMed

Ricci, Joseph A; Vargas, Christina R; Lin, Samuel J; Tobias, Adam M; Taghinia, Amir H; Lee, Bernard T

2016-06-01

Background The time to detection of vascular compromise is a significant predictor of free flap salvage outcomes as early reexploration improves salvage rates. Continuous transcutaneous near-infrared tissue oximetry is an objective, quantitative method of detecting flap vascular compromise and has been shown to allow earlier reexploration and higher salvage rates than clinical assessment alone. We designed a novel text messaging system to improve communication using tissue oximetry monitoring. Methods A retrospective review was performed of a prospectively collected database of all microsurgical breast reconstructions from 2008 to 2015. A novel text messaging system was introduced in 2013 and programmed to send text messages alert when the tissue oximetry readings suggested potential flap compromise based on established thresholds. Patient demographics and complications, including rate of reexploration and flap loss were assessed. Results There were 900 autologous microsurgical breast free flaps during the study period: 614 were monitored with standard clinical monitoring and tissue oximetry compared with 286 flaps with the additional text messaging system. There were 27 unplanned returns to the operating room in the tissue oximetry group and 5 in the text messaging group with 1 complete flap loss in each group. Reexploration occurred sooner as a result of these text message alerts (17.5 vs. 26.6 hours postoperatively), however, it did not achieve statistical significance. Conclusions We were able to demonstrate the use of a novel text messaging system for tissue oximetry. This alert system shows promise in identifying impending flap loss with rapid notification of the surgical team. Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.

Student Reactions During a Campus-Wide Blood Pressure Screening Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stern, Carol; Hertz, Dorith

1978-01-01

This blood pressure screening program met the goals of (1) detecting and treating asymptomatic hypertension among college students and (2) alerting the university community about high blood pressure. (MM)

Association of a Best-Practice Alert and Prenatal Administration With Tetanus Toxoid, Reduced Diphtheria Toxoid, and Acellular Pertussis Vaccination Rates.

PubMed

Morgan, Jamie L; Baggari, Sangameshwar R; Chung, Wendy; Ritch, Julia; McIntire, Donald D; Sheffield, Jeanne S

2015-08-01

To evaluate how implementation of a best-practice alert, a reminder of clinical guidelines within the electronic medical record, in combination with the recommended change in immunization timing from postpartum to antepartum, affected tetanus toxoid, reduced diphtheria toxoid and acellular pertussis (Tdap) rates, and to examine the association of vaccination with local pertussis attack rates. A Tdap best-practice alert was introduced into the electronic prenatal charting system in June 2013. The best-practice alert was designed to appear starting at 32 weeks of gestation and to reappear at every subsequent encounter until vaccine acceptance was recorded or delivery occurred. The overall acceptance rate was then compared with postpartum vaccination rates at our institution from the previous year. Records of pertussis cases in children younger than 2 years of age diagnosed since 2012 in Dallas County were also reviewed to correlate local trends with vaccination efforts. Of the 10,201 women offered Tdap during prenatal care, 9,879 (96.8%) ultimately accepted. This is compared with a 48% (5,064 of 10,600) Tdap postpartum immunization rate in the year prior, before introduction of the best-practice alert. The incidence of pertussis among neonates born to mothers who received prenatal care at Parkland Hospital showed a nonsignificant decline from 13 cases per 10,000 deliveries (19 of 14,834, 95% confidence interval [CI] 7-19) between January 2012 and May 2013 to seven per 10,000 deliveries during the study period (eight of 11,788, 95% CI 2-11, P=.174). The use of a best-practice alert, in concert with the recommended change in timing of maternal vaccination from postpartum to antepartum, was associated with an increase in the Tdap immunization rate to 97%. II.

Remote monitoring and security alert based on motion detection using mobile

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Suganya Devi, K.; Srinivasan, P.

2016-03-01

Background model does not have any robust solution and constitutes one of the main problems in surveillance systems. The aim of the paper is to provide a mobile based security to a remote monitoring system through a WAP using GSM modem. It is most designed to provide durability and versatility for a wide variety of indoor and outdoor applications. It is compatible with both narrow and band networks and provides simultaneous image detection. The communicator provides remote control, event driven recording, including pre-alarm and post-alarm and image motion detection. The web cam allowing them to be mounted either to a ceiling or wall without requiring bracket, with the use of web cam. We could continuously monitoring status in the client system through the web. If any intruder arrives in the client system, server will provide an alert to the mobile (what we are set in the message that message send to the authorized person) and the client can view the image using WAP.

Enhancing Time-Series Detection Algorithms for Automated Biosurveillance

PubMed Central

Burkom, Howard; Xing, Jian; English, Roseanne; Bloom, Steven; Cox, Kenneth; Pavlin, Julie A.

2009-01-01

BioSense is a US national system that uses data from health information systems for automated disease surveillance. We studied 4 time-series algorithm modifications designed to improve sensitivity for detecting artificially added data. To test these modified algorithms, we used reports of daily syndrome visits from 308 Department of Defense (DoD) facilities and 340 hospital emergency departments (EDs). At a constant alert rate of 1%, sensitivity was improved for both datasets by using a minimum standard deviation (SD) of 1.0, a 14–28 day baseline duration for calculating mean and SD, and an adjustment for total clinic visits as a surrogate denominator. Stratifying baseline days into weekdays versus weekends to account for day-of-week effects increased sensitivity for the DoD data but not for the ED data. These enhanced methods may increase sensitivity without increasing the alert rate and may improve the ability to detect outbreaks by using automated surveillance system data. PMID:19331728

The First Swift BAT Gamma-Ray Burst Catalog

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sakamoto, T.; Barthelmy, S. D.; Barbier, L.; Cummings, J. R.; Fenimore, E. E.; Gehrels, N.; Hullinger, D.; Krimm, H. A.; Markwardt, C. B.; Palmer, D. M.;

Implementation of the ground level enhancement alert software at NMDB database

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mavromichalaki, Helen; Souvatzoglou, George; Sarlanis, Christos; Mariatos, George; Papaioannou, Athanasios; Belov, Anatoly; Eroshenko, Eugenia; Yanke, Victor; NMDB Team

2010-11-01

The European Commission is supporting the real-time database for high-resolution neutron monitor measurements (NMDB) as an e-Infrastructures project in the Seventh Framework Programme in the Capacities section. The realization of the NMDB will provide the opportunity for several applications most of which will be implemented in real-time. An important application will be the establishment of an Alert signal when dangerous solar particle events are heading to the Earth, resulting into a ground level enhancement (GLE) registered by neutron monitors (NMs). The cosmic ray community has been occupied with the question of establishing such an Alert for many years and recently several groups succeeded in creating a proper algorithm capable of detecting space weather threats in an off-line mode. A lot of original work has been done to this direction and every group working in this field performed routine runs for all GLE cases, resulting into statistical analyses of GLE events. The next step was to make this algorithm as accurate as possible and most importantly, working in real-time. This was achieved when, during the last GLE observed so far, a real-time GLE Alert signal was produced. In this work, the steps of this procedure as well as the functionality of this algorithm for both the scientific community and users are being discussed. Nevertheless, the transition of the Alert algorithm to the NMDB is also being discussed.

The Earth Observation Monitor - Automated monitoring and alerting for spatial time-series data based on OGC web services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Eberle, J.; Hüttich, C.; Schmullius, C.

2014-12-01

Spatial time series data are freely available around the globe from earth observation satellites and meteorological stations for many years until now. They provide useful and important information to detect ongoing changes of the environment; but for end-users it is often too complex to extract this information out of the original time series datasets. This issue led to the development of the Earth Observation Monitor (EOM), an operational framework and research project to provide simple access, analysis and monitoring tools for global spatial time series data. A multi-source data processing middleware in the backend is linked to MODIS data from Land Processes Distributed Archive Center (LP DAAC) and Google Earth Engine as well as daily climate station data from NOAA National Climatic Data Center. OGC Web Processing Services are used to integrate datasets from linked data providers or external OGC-compliant interfaces to the EOM. Users can either use the web portal (webEOM) or the mobile application (mobileEOM) to execute these processing services and to retrieve the requested data for a given point or polygon in userfriendly file formats (CSV, GeoTiff). Beside providing just data access tools, users can also do further time series analyses like trend calculations, breakpoint detections or the derivation of phenological parameters from vegetation time series data. Furthermore data from climate stations can be aggregated over a given time interval. Calculated results can be visualized in the client and downloaded for offline usage. Automated monitoring and alerting of the time series data integrated by the user is provided by an OGC Sensor Observation Service with a coupled OGC Web Notification Service. Users can decide which datasets and parameters are monitored with a given filter expression (e.g., precipitation value higher than x millimeter per day, occurrence of a MODIS Fire point, detection of a time series anomaly). Datasets integrated in the SOS service are updated in near-realtime based on the linked data providers mentioned above. An alert is automatically pushed to the user if the new data meets the conditions of the registered filter expression. This monitoring service is available on the web portal with alerting by email and within the mobile app with alerting by email and push notification.

Good pharmacovigilance practices: technology enabled.

PubMed

Nelson, Robert C; Palsulich, Bruce; Gogolak, Victor

2002-01-01

The assessment of spontaneous reports is most effective it is conducted within a defined and rigorous process. The framework for good pharmacovigilance process (GPVP) is proposed as a subset of good postmarketing surveillance process (GPMSP), a functional structure for both a public health and corporate risk management strategy. GPVP has good practices that implement each step within a defined process. These practices are designed to efficiently and effectively detect and alert the drug safety professional to new and potentially important information on drug-associated adverse reactions. These practices are enabled by applied technology designed specifically for the review and assessment of spontaneous reports. Specific practices include rules-based triage, active query prompts for severe organ insults, contextual single case evaluation, statistical proportionality and correlational checks, case-series analyses, and templates for signal work-up and interpretation. These practices and the overall GPVP are supported by state-of-the-art web-based systems with powerful analytical engines, workflow and audit trials to allow validated systems support for valid drug safety signalling efforts. It is also important to understand that a process has a defined set of steps and any one cannot stand independently. Specifically, advanced use of technical alerting methods in isolation can mislead and allow one to misunderstand priorities and relative value. In the end, pharmacovigilance is a clinical art and a component process to the science of pharmacoepidemiology and risk management.

Cyanotoxins: Which detection technique for an optimum risk assessment?

PubMed

Gaget, Virginie; Lau, Melody; Sendall, Barbara; Froscio, Suzanne; Humpage, Andrew R

2017-07-01

The presence of toxigenic cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) in drinking water reservoirs poses a risk to human and animal health worldwide. Guidelines and health alert levels have been issued in the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines for three major toxins, which are therefore the subject of routine monitoring: microcystin, cylindrospermopsin and saxitoxin. While it is agreed that these toxic compounds should be monitored closely, the routine surveillance of these bioactive chemicals can be done in various ways and deciding which technique to use can therefore be challenging. This study compared several assays available for the detection of these toxins and their producers in environmental samples: microscopy (for identification and enumeration of cyanobacteria), ELISA (Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSorbant Assay), PPIA (Protein phosphatase inhibition assay), PSI (Protein synthesis inhibition), chemical analysis and PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction). Results showed that there was generally a good correlation between the presence of potentially toxigenic cyanobacteria and the detection of the toxin by ELISA. Nevertheless data suggest that cell numbers and toxin concentrations measured in bioassays do not necessarily correlate and that enumeration of potentially toxic cyanobacteria by microscopy, while commonly used for monitoring and risk assessment, is not the best indicator of real toxin exposure. The concentrations of saxitoxins quantified by ELISA were significantly different than those measured by LC-MS, while results were comparable in both assays for microcystin and cylindrospermopsin. The evaluation of these analytical methods led to the conclusion that there is no "gold standard" technique for the detection of the aforementioned cyanotoxins but that the choice of detection assay depends on cost, practicality, reliability and comparability of results and essentially on the question to be answered, notably on toxin exposure potential. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Design and construction of smart cane using infrared laser-based tracking system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wong, Chi Fung; Phitagragsakul, Narikorn; Jornsamer, Patcharaporn; Kaewmeesri, Pimsin; Jantakot, Pimsunan; Locharoenrat, Kitsakorn

2018-06-01

Our work is aimed to design and construct the smart cane. The infrared laser-based sensor was used as a distance detector and Arduino board was used as a microcontroller. On the other hand, Bluetooth was used as a wireless communicator and MP3 module together with the headset were used as a voice alert player. Our smart cane is a very effective device for the users under the indoor guidance. That is, the obstacle was detectable 3,000 cm away from the blind people. The white cane was assembled with the laser distance sensor and distance alert sensor served as the compact and light-weight device. Distance detection was very fast and precise when the smart cane was tested for the different obstacles, such as human, wall and wooden table under the indoor area.

Next Generation Monitoring: Tier 2 Experience

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fay, R.; Bland, J.; Jones, S.

2017-10-01

Monitoring IT infrastructure is essential for maximizing availability and minimizing disruption by detecting failures and developing issues. The HEP group at Liverpool have recently updated our monitoring infrastructure with the goal of increasing coverage, improving visualization capabilities, and streamlining configuration and maintenance. Here we present a summary of Liverpool’s experience, the monitoring infrastructure, and the tools used to build it. In brief, system checks are configured in Puppet using Hiera, and managed by Sensu, replacing Nagios. Centralised logging is managed with Elasticsearch, together with Logstash and Filebeat. Kibana provides an interface for interactive analysis, including visualization and dashboards. Metric collection is also configured in Puppet, managed by collectd and stored in Graphite, with Grafana providing a visualization and dashboard tool. The Uchiwa dashboard for Sensu provides a web interface for viewing infrastructure status. Alert capabilities are provided via external handlers. A custom alert handler is in development to provide an easily configurable, extensible and maintainable alert facility.

Role of sensory and cognitive conspicuity in the prevention of collisions between motorcycles and trucks at T-intersections.

PubMed

Law, Teik Hua; Ghanbari, Mahshid; Hamid, Hussain; Abdul-Halin, Alfian; Ng, Choy Peng

2016-11-01

Motorcyclists are particularly vulnerable to injury in crashes with heavy vehicles due to substantial differences in vehicle mass, the degree of protection and speed. There is a considerable difference in height between motorcycles and trucks; motorcycles are viewed by truck drivers from downward angles, and shorter distances between them mean steeper downward angles. Hence, we anticipated that the effects of motorcycle conspicuity treatments would be different for truck drivers. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the effects of motorcycle conspicuity treatments on the identification and detection of motorcycles by truck drivers. Two complementary experiments were performed; the first experiment assessed the impact of motorcycle sensory conspicuity on the ability of un-alerted truck drivers to detect motorcycles, and the second experiment assessed the motorcycle cognitive conspicuity to alerted truck drivers. The sensory conspicuity was measured in terms of motorcycle detection rates by un-alerted truck drivers when they were not anticipating a motorcycle within a realistic driving scene, while the cognitive conspicuity was determined by the time taken by alerted truck drivers to actively search for a motorcycle. In the first experiment, the participants were presented with 10 pictures and were instructed to report the kinds of vehicles that were presented in the pictures. Each picture was shown to the participants for 600ms. In the second experiment, the participants were presented with the same set of pictures and were instructed to respond by clicking the right button on a mouse as soon as they detected a motorcycle in the picture. The results indicate that the motorcycle detection rate increases, and the response time to search for a motorcycle decreases, as the distance between the targeted motorcycle and the viewer decreases. This is true regardless of the type of conspicuity treatment used. The use of daytime running headlights (DRH) was found to increase the detection rate and the identification of a motorcycle by a truck driver at a farther distance, but effect deteriorates as the distance decreases. The results show that the detection rate and the identification of a motorcyclist wearing a black helmet with a reflective sticker increases as the distance between the motorcycle and the truck decreases. We also found that a motorcyclist wearing a white helmet and a white outfit is more identifiable and detectable at both shorter and longer distances. In conclusion, although this study provides evidence that the use of appropriate conspicuity treatments enhances motorcycle conspicuity to truck drivers, we suggest that more attention should be paid to the effect of background environment on motorcycle conspicuity. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Nanosensor system for monitoring brain activity and drowsiness

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ramasamy, Mouli; Varadan, Vijay K.; Harbaugh, Robert

2015-04-01

Detection of drowsiness in drivers to avoid on-road collisions and accidents is one of the most important applications that can be implemented to avert loss of life and property caused by accidents. A statistical report indicates that drowsy driving is equally harmful as driving under influence of alcohol. This report also indicates that drowsy driving is the third most influencing factor for accidents and 30% of the commercial vehicle accidents are caused because of drowsy driving. With a motivation to avoid accidents caused by drowsy driving, this paper proposes a technique of correlating EEG and EOG signals to detect drowsiness. Feature extracts of EEG and blink variability from EOG is correlated to detect the sleepiness/drowsiness of a driver. Moreover, to implement a more pragmatic approach towards continuous monitoring, a wireless real time monitoring approach has been incorporated using textile based nanosensors. Thereby, acquired bio potential signals are transmitted through GSM communication module to the receiver continuously. In addition to this, all the incorporated electronics are equipped in a flexible headband which can be worn by the driver. With this flexible headband approach, any intrusiveness that may be experienced by other cumbersome hardware is effectively mitigated. With the continuous transmission of data from the head band, the signals are processed on the receiver side to determine the condition of the driver. Early warning of driver's drowsiness will be displayed in the dashboard of the vehicle as well as alertness voice and sound alarm will be sent via the vehicle radio.

Head Rotation Detection in Marmoset Monkeys

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Simhadri, Sravanthi

Head movement is known to have the benefit of improving the accuracy of sound localization for humans and animals. Marmoset is a small bodied New World monkey species and it has become an emerging model for studying the auditory functions. This thesis aims to detect the horizontal and vertical rotation of head movement in marmoset monkeys. Experiments were conducted in a sound-attenuated acoustic chamber. Head movement of marmoset monkey was studied under various auditory and visual stimulation conditions. With increasing complexity, these conditions are (1) idle, (2) sound-alone, (3) sound and visual signals, and (4) alert signal by opening and closing of the chamber door. All of these conditions were tested with either house light on or off. Infra-red camera with a frame rate of 90 Hz was used to capture of the head movement of monkeys. To assist the signal detection, two circular markers were attached to the top of monkey head. The data analysis used an image-based marker detection scheme. Images were processed using the Computation Vision Toolbox in Matlab. The markers and their positions were detected using blob detection techniques. Based on the frame-by-frame information of marker positions, the angular position, velocity and acceleration were extracted in horizontal and vertical planes. Adaptive Otsu Thresholding, Kalman filtering and bound setting for marker properties were used to overcome a number of challenges encountered during this analysis, such as finding image segmentation threshold, continuously tracking markers during large head movement, and false alarm detection. The results show that the blob detection method together with Kalman filtering yielded better performances than other image based techniques like optical flow and SURF features .The median of the maximal head turn in the horizontal plane was in the range of 20 to 70 degrees and the median of the maximal velocity in horizontal plane was in the range of a few hundreds of degrees per second. In comparison, the natural alert signal -- door opening and closing -- evoked the faster head turns than other stimulus conditions. These results suggest that behaviorally relevant stimulus such as alert signals evoke faster head-turn responses in marmoset monkeys.

The combined rapid detection and species-level identification of yeasts in simulated blood culture using a colorimetric sensor array

PubMed Central

Lim, Sung H.; Wilson, Deborah A.; SalasVargas, Ana Victoria; Churi, Yair S.; Rhodes, Paul A.; Mazzone, Peter J.; Procop, Gary W.

2017-01-01

Background A colorimetric sensor array (CSA) has been demonstrated to rapidly detect and identify bacteria growing in blood cultures by obtaining a species-specific “fingerprint” of the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) produced during growth. This capability has been demonstrated in prokaryotes, but has not been reported for eukaryotic cells growing in culture. The purpose of this study was to explore if a disposable CSA could differentially identify 7 species of pathogenic yeasts growing in blood culture. Methods Culture trials of whole blood inoculated with a panel of clinically important pathogenic yeasts at four different microorganism loads were performed. Cultures were done in both standard BacT/Alert and CSA-embedded bottles, after adding 10 mL of spiked blood to each bottle. Color changes in the CSA were captured as images by an optical scanner at defined time intervals. The captured images were analyzed to identify the yeast species. Time to detection by the CSA was compared to that in the BacT/Alert system. Results One hundred sixty-two yeast culture trials were performed, including strains of several species of Candida (Ca. albicans, Ca. glabrata, Ca. parapsilosis, and Ca. tropicalis), Clavispora (synonym Candida) lusitaniae, Pichia kudriavzevii (synonym Candida krusei) and Cryptococcus neoformans, at loads of 8.2 × 105, 8.3 × 103, 8.5 × 101, and 1.7 CFU/mL. In addition, 8 negative trials (no yeast) were conducted. All negative trials were correctly identified as negative, and all positive trials were detected. Colorimetric responses were species-specific and did not vary by inoculum load over the 500000-fold range of loads tested, allowing for accurate species-level identification. The mean sensitivity for species-level identification by CSA was 74% at detection, and increased with time, reaching almost 95% at 4 hours after detection. At an inoculum load of 1.7 CFU/mL, mean time to detection with the CSA was 6.8 hours (17%) less than with the BacT/Alert platform. Conclusion The CSA combined rapid detection of pathogenic yeasts in blood culture with accurate species-level identification. PMID:28296967

The combined rapid detection and species-level identification of yeasts in simulated blood culture using a colorimetric sensor array.

PubMed

Shrestha, Nabin K; Lim, Sung H; Wilson, Deborah A; SalasVargas, Ana Victoria; Churi, Yair S; Rhodes, Paul A; Mazzone, Peter J; Procop, Gary W

2017-01-01

A colorimetric sensor array (CSA) has been demonstrated to rapidly detect and identify bacteria growing in blood cultures by obtaining a species-specific "fingerprint" of the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) produced during growth. This capability has been demonstrated in prokaryotes, but has not been reported for eukaryotic cells growing in culture. The purpose of this study was to explore if a disposable CSA could differentially identify 7 species of pathogenic yeasts growing in blood culture. Culture trials of whole blood inoculated with a panel of clinically important pathogenic yeasts at four different microorganism loads were performed. Cultures were done in both standard BacT/Alert and CSA-embedded bottles, after adding 10 mL of spiked blood to each bottle. Color changes in the CSA were captured as images by an optical scanner at defined time intervals. The captured images were analyzed to identify the yeast species. Time to detection by the CSA was compared to that in the BacT/Alert system. One hundred sixty-two yeast culture trials were performed, including strains of several species of Candida (Ca. albicans, Ca. glabrata, Ca. parapsilosis, and Ca. tropicalis), Clavispora (synonym Candida) lusitaniae, Pichia kudriavzevii (synonym Candida krusei) and Cryptococcus neoformans, at loads of 8.2 × 105, 8.3 × 103, 8.5 × 101, and 1.7 CFU/mL. In addition, 8 negative trials (no yeast) were conducted. All negative trials were correctly identified as negative, and all positive trials were detected. Colorimetric responses were species-specific and did not vary by inoculum load over the 500000-fold range of loads tested, allowing for accurate species-level identification. The mean sensitivity for species-level identification by CSA was 74% at detection, and increased with time, reaching almost 95% at 4 hours after detection. At an inoculum load of 1.7 CFU/mL, mean time to detection with the CSA was 6.8 hours (17%) less than with the BacT/Alert platform. The CSA combined rapid detection of pathogenic yeasts in blood culture with accurate species-level identification.

Extension of platelet shelf life from 4 to 5 days by implementation of a new screening strategy in Germany.

PubMed

Sireis, W; Rüster, B; Daiss, C; Hourfar, M K; Capalbo, G; Pfeiffer, H-U; Janetzko, K; Goebel, M; Kempf, V A J; Seifried, E; Schmidt, M

2011-10-01

The Paul-Ehrlich-Institute analysed all fatalities due to bacterial infections between 1997 and 2007. Thereafter, the platelet shelf life was reduced to a maximum of 4 days after blood donation because the majority of all cases of severe transfusion-transmitted bacterial infections occurred with day 5 platelets. The current study compares the analytical sensitivity and the diagnostic specificity of four rapid bacterial detection procedures. Nine transfusion-relevant bacterial strains were spiked in pooled platelets or apheresis platelets at a low concentration (10 CFU/bag). Samples were collected after day 3, day 4 and day 5 and investigated by four rapid bacterial detection methods (modified BacT/ALERT, Bactiflow, FACS method and 16s DNA PCR methods). Seven out of nine bacterial strains were adequately detected by BacT/ALERT, Bactiflow and PCR in apheresis platelets and pooled platelets after sample collection at day 3, day 4 and day 5. For three bacterial strains, analytical sensitivity was reduced for the FACS method. Two bacterial strains did not grow under the storage conditions in either pooled or apheresis platelets. A late sample collection on day 3, day 4 or day 5 after blood donation in combination with a rapid bacterial detection method offers a new opportunity to improve blood safety and reduce errors due to sampling., BacT/ALERT, Bactiflow or 16s ID-NAT are feasible for late bacterial screening in platelets may provide data which support the extension of platelet shelf life in Germany to 5 days. © 2011 The Author(s). Vox Sanguinis © 2011 International Society of Blood Transfusion.

The Third Swift Burst Alert Telescope Gamma-Ray Burst Catalog

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lien, Amy; Sakamoto, Takanori; Barthelmy, Scott D.; Baumgartner, Wayne H.; Cannizzo, John K.; Chen, Kevin; Collins, Nicholas R.; Cummings, Jay R.; Gehrels, Neil; Krimm, Hans A.; Markwardt, Craig. B.; Palmer, David M.; Stamatikos, Michael; Troja, Eleonora; Ukwatta, T. N.

2016-09-01

To date, the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) onboard Swift has detected ˜1000 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), of which ˜360 GRBs have redshift measurements, ranging from z = 0.03 to z = 9.38. We present the analyses of the BAT-detected GRBs for the past ˜11 years up through GRB 151027B. We report summaries of both the temporal and spectral analyses of the GRB characteristics using event data (I.e., data for each photon within approximately 250 s before and 950 s after the BAT trigger time), and discuss the instrumental sensitivity and selection effects of GRB detections. We also explore the GRB properties with redshift when possible. The result summaries and data products are available at http://swift.gsfc.nasa.gov/results/batgrbcat/index.html. In addition, we perform searches for GRB emissions before or after the event data using the BAT survey data. We estimate the false detection rate to be only one false detection in this sample. There are 15 ultra-long GRBs (˜2% of the BAT GRBs) in this search with confirmed emission beyond ˜1000 s of event data, and only two GRBs (GRB 100316D and GRB 101024A) with detections in the survey data prior to the starting of event data.

THE THIRD SWIFT BURST ALERT TELESCOPE GAMMA-RAY BURST CATALOG

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Lien, Amy; Baumgartner, Wayne H.; Cannizzo, John K.

2016-09-20

To date, the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) onboard Swift has detected ∼1000 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), of which ∼360 GRBs have redshift measurements, ranging from z = 0.03 to z = 9.38. We present the analyses of the BAT-detected GRBs for the past ∼11 years up through GRB 151027B. We report summaries of both the temporal and spectral analyses of the GRB characteristics using event data (i.e., data for each photon within approximately 250 s before and 950 s after the BAT trigger time), and discuss the instrumental sensitivity and selection effects of GRB detections. We also explore the GRB propertiesmore » with redshift when possible. The result summaries and data products are available at http://swift.gsfc.nasa.gov/results/batgrbcat/index.html. In addition, we perform searches for GRB emissions before or after the event data using the BAT survey data. We estimate the false detection rate to be only one false detection in this sample. There are 15 ultra-long GRBs (∼2% of the BAT GRBs) in this search with confirmed emission beyond ∼1000 s of event data, and only two GRBs (GRB 100316D and GRB 101024A) with detections in the survey data prior to the starting of event data.« less

AGILE/GRID Science Alert Monitoring System: The Workflow and the Crab Flare Case

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bulgarelli, A.; Trifoglio, M.; Gianotti, F.; Tavani, M.; Conforti, V.; Parmiggiani, N.

2013-10-01

During the first five years of the AGILE mission we have observed many gamma-ray transients of Galactic and extragalactic origin. A fast reaction to unexpected transient events is a crucial part of the AGILE monitoring program, because the follow-up of astrophysical transients is a key point for this space mission. We present the workflow and the software developed by the AGILE Team to perform the automatic analysis for the detection of gamma-ray transients. In addition, an App for iPhone will be released enabling the Team to access the monitoring system through mobile phones. In 2010 September the science alert monitoring system presented in this paper recorded a transient phenomena from the Crab Nebula, generating an automated alert sent via email and SMS two hours after the end of an AGILE satellite orbit, i.e. two hours after the Crab flare itself: for this discovery AGILE won the 2012 Bruno Rossi prize. The design of this alert system is maximized to reach the maximum speed, and in this, as in many other cases, AGILE has demonstrated that the reaction speed of the monitoring system is crucial for the scientific return of the mission.

Distribution of radionuclides in the environment in northern Italy after the Chernobyl accident.

PubMed

Berzero, A; Borroni, P A; Oddone, M; Crespi, V C; Genova, N; Meloni, S

1992-03-01

Soon after the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the air-pumping stations in Pavia (northern Italy) were alerted. In a few days, a rapid increase in radionuclide concentration in air particulates was observed. Consequently, an environmental radioactivity monitoring programme was started in which several matrices such as soil, grass, vegetables and cows' milk were subjected to direct gamma-ray spectrometry. The radioactivity distribution and its variation with time is presented, discussed and compared with other available data. Detection limits, precision and accuracy are also reported, and depth profiles in soils for 137Cs are presented and correlated with soil quality parameters. A survey of environmental radioactivity in soil, in a search for residual Chernobyl fallout, was carried out and a map of the 137Cs distribution over a large area in northern Italy is presented and discussed.

Using activity-based monitoring systems to detect dairy cows in oestrus: a field evaluation.

PubMed

Dela Rue, B T; Kamphuis, C; Burke, C R; Jago, J G

2014-03-01

To assess the use and performance of activity-based oestrus detection systems (ODS) on two commercial dairy farms using a gold standard based on profiles of concentrations of progesterone in milk, artificial insemination (AI) records and pregnancy diagnosis results. Two activity-based ODS were evaluated in mature cows on two large pasture-grazed dairy farms (>500 cows) over the first 3 weeks of AI. Farm 1 (n=286 cows) used a leg-mounted device and cows were drafted automatically based on activity alerts. Decisions regarding AI were then made based on tail-paint and cow history for these cows. Farm 2 (n=345 cows) used a collar-mounted device and activity alerts were used in conjunction with other information, before the farmer manually selected cows for AI. The gold standard to define the timing of oestrus was based on profiles of concentrations of progesterone in milk measured twice-weekly, used in conjunction with AI records and pregnancy diagnosis results. Sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV) were calculated for the activity-based ODS data only, and then for AI decisions, against the gold standard. Farm 1 had 195 confirmed oestrus events and 209 activity alerts were generated. The sensitivity of the activity-based ODS was 89.2% with a PPV of 83.3%. Using tail-paint and cow history to confirm activity-based alerts 175 cows were inseminated, resulting in a sensitivity of 89.2% and an improved PPV of 99.4%. Farm 2 had 343 confirmed oestrus events, and 726 alerts were generated by the activity-based ODS, giving a sensitivity of 69.7% with a PPV of 32.9%. A total of 386 cows had AI records, giving a sensitivity of 81.3% and PPV of 72.3%. The two activity-based ODS were used differently on-farm; one automatically selecting cows and the other supporting the manual selection of cows in oestrus. Only one achieved a performance level suggested to be acceptable as a stand-alone ODS. Use of additional tools, such as observation of tail paint to confirm activity-based oestrus alerts before AI, substantially improved the PPV. A well performing activity-based ODS can be a valuable tool in identifying cows in oestrus prior to visual confirmation of oestrus status. However the performance of these ODS technologies varies considerably.

Ontology-Driven Monitoring of Patient's Vital Signs Enabling Personalized Medical Detection and Alert

PubMed Central

Hristoskova, Anna; Sakkalis, Vangelis; Zacharioudakis, Giorgos; Tsiknakis, Manolis; De Turck, Filip

2014-01-01

A major challenge related to caring for patients with chronic conditions is the early detection of exacerbations of the disease. Medical personnel should be contacted immediately in order to intervene in time before an acute state is reached, ensuring patient safety. This paper proposes an approach to an ambient intelligence (AmI) framework supporting real-time remote monitoring of patients diagnosed with congestive heart failure (CHF). Its novelty is the integration of: (i) personalized monitoring of the patients health status and risk stage; (ii) intelligent alerting of the dedicated physician through the construction of medical workflows on-the-fly; and (iii) dynamic adaptation of the vital signs’ monitoring environment on any available device or smart phone located in close proximity to the physician depending on new medical measurements, additional disease specifications or the failure of the infrastructure. The intelligence lies in the adoption of semantics providing for a personalized and automated emergency alerting that smoothly interacts with the physician, regardless of his location, ensuring timely intervention during an emergency. It is evaluated on a medical emergency scenario, where in the case of exceeded patient thresholds, medical personnel are localized and contacted, presenting ad hoc information on the patient's condition on the most suited device within the physician's reach. PMID:24445411

[Patient safety in primary care: PREFASEG project].

PubMed

Catalán, Arantxa; Borrell, Francesc; Pons, Angels; Amado, Ester; Baena, José Miguel; Morales, Vicente

2014-07-01

The Institut Català de la Salut (ICS) has designed and integrated in electronic clinical station of primary care a new software tool to support the prescription of drugs, which can detect on-line certain medication errors. The software called PREFASEG (stands for Secure drug prescriptions) aims to prevent adverse events related to medication use in the field of primary health care (PHC). This study was made on the computerized medical record called CPT, which is used by all PHC physicians in our institution -3,750- and prescribing physicians through it. PREFASEG integrated in eCAP in July 2010 and six months later we performed a cross-sectional study to evaluate their usefulness and refine their design. The software alerts on-line in 5 dimensions: drug interactions, redundant treatments, allergies, contraindications of drugs with disease, and advises against drugs in over 75 years. PREFASEG generated 1,162,765 alerts (1 per 10 high treatment), with the detection of therapeutic duplication (62%) the most alerted. The overall acceptance rate is 35%, redundancies pharmacological (43%) and allergies (26%) are the most accepted. A total of 10,808 professionals (doctors and nurses) have accepted some of the recommendations of the program. PREFASEG is a feasible and highly efficient strategy to achieve an objective of Quality Plan for the NHS. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Espana.

DANTi: Detect and Avoid iN The Cockpit

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Chamberlain, James; Consiglio, Maria; Munoz, Cesar

2017-01-01

Mid-air collision risk continues to be a concern for manned aircraft operations, especially near busy non-towered airports. The use of Detect and Avoid (DAA) technologies and draft standards developed for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), either alone or in combination with other collision avoidance technologies, may be useful in mitigating this collision risk for manned aircraft. This paper describes a NASA research effort known as DANTi (DAA iN The Cockpit), including the initial development of the concept of use, a software prototype, and results from initial flight tests conducted with this prototype. The prototype used a single Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast (ADS-B) traffic sensor and the own aircraft's position, track, heading and air data information, along with NASA-developed DAA software to display traffic alerts and maneuver guidance to manned aircraft pilots on a portable tablet device. Initial flight tests with the prototype showed a successful DANTi proof-of-concept, but also demonstrated that the traffic separation parameter set specified in the RTCA SC-228 Phase I DAA MOPS may generate excessive false alerts during traffic pattern operations. Several parameter sets with smaller separation values were also tested in flight, one of which yielded more timely alerts for the maneuvers tested. Results from this study may further inform future DANTi efforts as well as Phase II DAA MOPS development.

Diagnostic accuracy of a screening electronic alert tool for severe sepsis and septic shock in the emergency department.

PubMed

Alsolamy, Sami; Al Salamah, Majid; Al Thagafi, Majed; Al-Dorzi, Hasan M; Marini, Abdellatif M; Aljerian, Nawfal; Al-Enezi, Farhan; Al-Hunaidi, Fatimah; Mahmoud, Ahmed M; Alamry, Ahmed; Arabi, Yaseen M

2014-12-05

Early recognition of severe sepsis and septic shock is challenging. The aim of this study was to determine the diagnostic accuracy of an electronic alert system in detecting severe sepsis or septic shock among emergency department (ED) patients. An electronic sepsis alert system was developed as a part of a quality-improvement project for severe sepsis and septic shock. The system screened all adult ED patients for a combination of systemic inflammatory response syndrome and organ dysfunction criteria (hypotension, hypoxemia or lactic acidosis). This study included all patients older than 14 years who presented to the ED of a tertiary care academic medical center from Oct. 1, 2012 to Jan. 31, 2013. As a comparator, emergency medicine physicians or the critical care physician identified the patients with severe sepsis or septic shock. In the ED, vital signs were manually entered into the hospital electronic heath record every hour in the critical care area and every two hours in other areas. We also calculated the time from the alert to the intensive care unit (ICU) referral. Of the 49,838 patients who presented to the ED, 222 (0.4%) were identified to have severe sepsis or septic shock. The electronic sepsis alert had a sensitivity of 93.18% (95% CI, 88.78% - 96.00%), specificity of 98.44 (95% CI, 98.33% - 98.55%), positive predictive value of 20.98% (95% CI, 18.50% - 23.70%) and negative predictive value of 99.97% (95% CI, 99.95% - 99.98%) for severe sepsis and septic shock. The alert preceded ICU referral by a median of 4.02 hours (Q1 - Q3: 1.25-8.55). Our study shows that electronic sepsis alert tool has high sensitivity and specificity in recognizing severe sepsis and septic shock, which may improve early recognition and management.

Prioritizing earthquake and tsunami alerting efforts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Allen, R. M.; Allen, S.; Aranha, M. A.; Chung, A. I.; Hellweg, M.; Henson, I. H.; Melgar, D.; Neuhauser, D. S.; Nof, R. N.; Strauss, J. A.

2015-12-01

The timeline of hazards associated with earthquakes ranges from seconds for the strong shaking at the epicenter, to minutes for strong shaking at more distant locations in big quakes, to tens of minutes for a local tsunami. Earthquake and tsunami warning systems must therefore include very fast initial alerts, while also taking advantage of available time in bigger and tsunami-generating quakes. At the UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory we are developing a suite of algorithms to provide the fullest possible information about earthquake shaking and tsunami inundation from seconds to minutes after a quake. The E-larmS algorithm uses the P-wave to rapidly detect an earthquake and issue a warning. It is currently issuing alerts to test users in as little as 3 sec after the origin time. Development of a new waveform detector may lead to even faster alerts. G-larmS uses permanent deformation estimates from GNSS stations to estimate the geometry and extent of rupture underway providing more accurate ground shaking estimates in big (M>~7) earthquakes. It performed well in the M6.0 2014 Napa earthquake. T-larmS is a new algorithm designed to extend alert capabilities to tsunami inundation. Rapid estimates of source characteristics for subduction zones event can not only be used to warn of the shaking hazard, but also the local tsunami inundation hazard. These algorithms are being developed, implemented and tested with a focus on the western US, but are also now being tested in other parts of the world including Israel, Turkey, Korea and Chile. Beta users in the Bay Area are receiving the alerts and beginning to implement automated actions. They also provide feedback on users needs, which has led to the development of the MyEEW smartphone app. This app allows beta users to receive the alerts on their cell phones. All these efforts feed into our ongoing assessment of directions and priorities for future development and implementation efforts.

Hypoglycemic Accuracy and Improved Low Glucose Alerts of the Latest Dexcom G4 Platinum Continuous Glucose Monitoring System.

PubMed

Peyser, Thomas A; Nakamura, Katherine; Price, David; Bohnett, Lucas C; Hirsch, Irl B; Balo, Andrew

2015-08-01

Accuracy of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices in hypoglycemia has been a widely reported shortcoming of this technology. We report the accuracy in hypoglycemia of a new version of the Dexcom (San Diego, CA) G4 Platinum CGM system (software 505) and present results regarding the optimum setting of CGM hypoglycemic alerts. CGM values were compared with YSI analyzer (YSI Life Sciences, Yellow Springs, OH) measurements every 15 min. We reviewed the accuracy of the CGM system in the hypoglycemic range using standard metrics. We analyzed the time required for the CGM system to detect biochemical hypoglycemia (70 mg/dL) compared with the YSI with alert settings at 70 mg/dL and 80 mg/dL. We also analyzed the time between the YSI value crossing 55 mg/dL, defined as the threshold for cognitive impairment due to hypoglycemia, and when the CGM system alerted for hypoglycemia. The mean absolute difference for a glucose level of less than 70 mg/dL was 6 mg/dL. Ninety-six percent of CGM values were within 20 mg/dL of the YSI values between 40 and 80 mg/dL. When the CGM hypoglycemic alert was set at 80 mg/dL, the device provided an alert for biochemical hypoglycemia within 10 min in 95% of instances and at least a 10-min advance warning before the cognitive impairment threshold in 91% of instances in the study. Use of an 80 mg/dL threshold setting for hypoglycemic alerts on the G4 Platinum (software 505) may provide patients with timely warning of hypoglycemia before the onset of cognitive impairment, enabling them to treat themselves for hypoglycemia with fast-acting carbohydrates and prevent neuroglycopenia associated with very low glucose levels.

Relationship between alertness, performance, and body temperature in humans.

PubMed

Wright, Kenneth P; Hull, Joseph T; Czeisler, Charles A

2002-12-01

Body temperature has been reported to influence human performance. Performance is reported to be better when body temperature is high/near its circadian peak and worse when body temperature is low/near its circadian minimum. We assessed whether this relationship between performance and body temperature reflects the regulation of both the internal biological timekeeping system and/or the influence of body temperature on performance independent of circadian phase. Fourteen subjects participated in a forced desynchrony protocol allowing assessment of the relationship between body temperature and performance while controlling for circadian phase and hours awake. Most neurobehavioral measures varied as a function of internal biological time and duration of wakefulness. A number of performance measures were better when body temperature was elevated, including working memory, subjective alertness, visual attention, and the slowest 10% of reaction times. These findings demonstrate that an increased body temperature, associated with and independent of internal biological time, is correlated with improved performance and alertness. These results support the hypothesis that body temperature modulates neurobehavioral function in humans.

Attention failures versus misplaced diligence: separating attention lapses from speed-accuracy trade-offs.

PubMed

Seli, Paul; Cheyne, James Allan; Smilek, Daniel

2012-03-01

In two studies of a GO-NOGO task assessing sustained attention, we examined the effects of (1) altering speed-accuracy trade-offs through instructions (emphasizing both speed and accuracy or accuracy only) and (2) auditory alerts distributed throughout the task. Instructions emphasizing accuracy reduced errors and changed the distribution of GO trial RTs. Additionally, correlations between errors and increasing RTs produced a U-function; excessively fast and slow RTs accounted for much of the variance of errors. Contrary to previous reports, alerts increased errors and RT variability. The results suggest that (1) standard instructions for sustained attention tasks, emphasizing speed and accuracy equally, produce errors arising from attempts to conform to the misleading requirement for speed, which become conflated with attention-lapse produced errors and (2) auditory alerts have complex, and sometimes deleterious, effects on attention. We argue that instructions emphasizing accuracy provide a more precise assessment of attention lapses in sustained attention tasks. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Relationship between alertness, performance, and body temperature in humans

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wright, Kenneth P Jr; Hull, Joseph T.; Czeisler, Charles A.

2002-01-01

Body temperature has been reported to influence human performance. Performance is reported to be better when body temperature is high/near its circadian peak and worse when body temperature is low/near its circadian minimum. We assessed whether this relationship between performance and body temperature reflects the regulation of both the internal biological timekeeping system and/or the influence of body temperature on performance independent of circadian phase. Fourteen subjects participated in a forced desynchrony protocol allowing assessment of the relationship between body temperature and performance while controlling for circadian phase and hours awake. Most neurobehavioral measures varied as a function of internal biological time and duration of wakefulness. A number of performance measures were better when body temperature was elevated, including working memory, subjective alertness, visual attention, and the slowest 10% of reaction times. These findings demonstrate that an increased body temperature, associated with and independent of internal biological time, is correlated with improved performance and alertness. These results support the hypothesis that body temperature modulates neurobehavioral function in humans.

Modifying pro-drug risk factors in adolescents: results from project ALERT.

PubMed

Ghosh-Dastidar, Bonnie; Longshore, Douglas L; Ellickson, Phyllis L; McCaffrey, Daniel F

2004-06-01

The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of a revised state-of-the-art drug prevention program, Project ALERT, on risk factors for drug use in mostly rural midwestern schools and communities. Fifty-five middle schools from South Dakota were randomly assigned to treatment or control conditions. Treatment-group students received 11 lessons in Grade 7 and 3 more in Grade 8. Effects for 4276 eighth graders were assessed 18 months after baseline. Results indicate that Project ALERT had statistically significant effects on all the targeted risk factors associated with cigarette and marijuana use and more modest gains with the pro-alcohol risk factors. The program helped adolescents at low, moderate, and high risk for future use, with the effect sizes typically stronger for the low- and moderate-risk groups. Thus, school-based drug prevention programs can lower risk factors that correlate with drug use, help low- to high-risk adolescents, and be effective in diverse school environments.

Time course of sleep inertia dissipation in human performance and alertness

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jewett, M. E.; Wyatt, J. K.; Ritz-De Cecco, A.; Khalsa, S. B.; Dijk, D. J.; Czeisler, C. A.

1999-01-01

Alertness and performance on a wide variety of tasks are impaired immediately upon waking from sleep due to sleep inertia, which has been found to dissipate in an asymptotic manner following waketime. It has been suggested that behavioural or environmental factors, as well as sleep stage at awakening, may affect the severity of sleep inertia. In order to determine the time course of sleep inertia dissipation under normal entrained conditions, subjective alertness and cognitive throughput were measured during the first 4 h after habitual waketime from a full 8-h sleep episode on 3 consecutive days. We investigated whether this time course was affected by either sleep stage at awakening or behavioural/environmental factors. Sleep inertia dissipated in an asymptotic manner and took 2-4 h to near the asymptote. Saturating exponential functions fitted the sleep inertia data well, with time constants of 0.67 h for subjective alertness and 1.17 h for cognitive performance. Most awakenings occurred out of stage rapid eye movement (REM), 2 or 1 sleep, and no effect of sleep stage at awakening on either the severity of sleep inertia or the time course of its dissipation could be detected. Subjective alertness and cognitive throughput were significantly impaired upon awakening regardless of whether subjects got out of bed, ate breakfast, showered and were exposed to ordinary indoor room light (approximately 150 lux) or whether subjects participated in a constant routine (CR) protocol in which they remained in bed, ate small hourly snacks and were exposed to very dim light (10-15 lux). These findings allow for the refinement of models of alertness and performance, and have important implications for the scheduling of work immediately upon awakening in many occupational settings.

Counterfeit medicines in Peru: a retrospective review (1997-2014).

PubMed

Medina, Edwin; Bel, Elvira; Suñé, Josep María

2016-04-04

To consolidate and assess information on counterfeit medicines subject to pharmaceutical alerts issued by the Peruvian Medicines Regulatory Authority over 18 years (1997-2014) of health monitoring and enforcement. A retrospective review of drug alerts. A search of the website of the General Directorate of Medicines, Supplies and Drugs (DIGEMID) of the Ministry of Health of Peru for drug alerts issued between 1997 and 2014. Drug alerts related to counterfeit medicines. A total of 669 DIGEMID alerts were issued during the study period, 354 (52.91%) of which cover 1738 cases of counterfeit medicines (many alerts deal with several cases at a time). 1010 cases (58.11%) involved pharmaceutical establishments and 349 (20.08%) involved non-pharmaceutical commercial outlets. In 126 cases (7.25%), counterfeit medicines were seized in an unauthorised trade (without any marketing authorisation); in 253 cases (14.56%) the type of establishment or business associated with the seized product was not identified. Counterfeit medicines are a serious public health problem in Peru. A review of the data cannot determine whether counterfeit medicines in Peru increased during the study period, or if monitoring by different government health agencies highlighted the magnitude of the problem by providing more evidence. The problem is clearly structural, since the majority of cases (58.11% of the total) were detected in legitimate supply chains. Most counterfeit medicines involve staple pharmaceutical products and common dosage forms. Considerable work remains to be done to control the serious problem of counterfeit medicines in Peru. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/

FT4 Data Analysis Summary (SSI-ARC)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Isaacson, Douglas R.; Gong, Chester; Reardon, Scott Edward; Santiago, Confesor

2016-01-01

Standards for Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Detect-and-Avoid (DAA) systems are currently being developed under the auspices of the RTCA Special Committee 228 (SC-228). To support the development of these standards, a series of flight tests has been conducted at NASAs Armstrong Flight Research Center (NASA-AFRC). The fourth in this series of flight test activities (Flight Test 4, or simply FT4) was conducted during the Spring and Summer of 2016. FT4 supported the objectives of numerous organizations working toward UAS DAA Minimum Operational Performance Standards (MOPS) and UAS DAA Radar MOPS. The summary provided herein is limited to the objectives, analysis and conclusions of the NASA Ames Research Center (NASA-ARC) SSI team toward the refinement of UAS DAA MOPS. This document provides a high-level overview of FT4 and the SSI-ARC objectives, a summary of the data analysis methodology and recommendations for UAS DAA MOPS refinements based on the data analysis results. A total of 72 encounters were flown to support SSI-ARC objectives. Test results were generally consistent with acceptable UAS DAA system performance and will be considered in broader SC-228 requirements validation efforts. Observed alert lead times indicated acceptable UAS DAA alerting performance. Effective interoperability between the UAS DAA system and the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) was observed with one notable exception: TCAS Resolutions Advisories (RA) were observed in the absence of any DAA alert on two occasions, indicating the need for alert parameter refinement. Findings further indicated the need for continued work in the areas of DAA Well Clear Recovery logic and alert stability for Mode-C-only intruders. Finally, results demonstrated a high level of compliance with a set of evaluation criteria designed to provide anecdotal evidence of acceptable UAS DAA system performance.

Early warning of active fire hotspots through NASA FIRMS fire information system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ilavajhala, S.; Davies, D.; Schmaltz, J. E.; Murphy, K. J.

2014-12-01

Forest fires and wildfires can threaten ecosystems, wildlife, property, and often, large swaths of populations. Early warning of active fire hotspots plays a crucial role in planning, managing, and mitigating the damaging effects of wildfires. The NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) has been providing active fire location information to users in easy-to-use formats for the better part of last decade, with a view to improving the alerting mechanisms and response times to fight forest and wildfires. FIRMS utilizes fires flagged as hotspots by the MODIS instrument flying aboard the Aqua and Terra satellites and sends early warning of detected hotspots via email in near real-time or as daily and weekly summaries. The email alerts can also be customized to send alerts for a particular region of interest, a country, or a specific protected area or park. In addition, a web mapping component, named "Web Fire Mapper" helps query and visualize hotspots. A newer version of Web Fire Mapper is being developed to enhance the existing visualization and alerting capabilities. Plans include supporting near real-time imagery from Aqua and Terra satellites to provide a more helpful context while viewing fires. Plans are also underway to upgrade the email alerts system to provide mobile-formatted messages and short text messages (SMS). The newer version of FIRMS will also allow users to obtain geo-located image snapshots, which can be imported into local GIS software by stakeholders to help further analyses. This talk will discuss the FIRMS system, its enhancements and its role in helping map, alert, and monitor fire hotspots by providing quick data visualization, querying, and download capabilities.

Terrorism-related fear and avoidance behavior in a multiethnic urban population.

PubMed

Eisenman, David P; Glik, Deborah; Ong, Michael; Zhou, Qiong; Tseng, Chi-Hong; Long, Anna; Fielding, Jonathan; Asch, Steven

2009-01-01

We sought to determine whether groups traditionally most vulnerable to disasters would be more likely than would be others to perceive population-level risk as high (as measured by the estimated color-coded alert level) would worry more about terrorism, and would avoid activities because of terrorism concerns. We conducted a random digit dial survey of the Los Angeles County population October 2004 through January 2005 in 6 languages. We asked respondents what color alert level the country was under, how often they worry about terrorist attacks, and how often they avoid activities because of terrorism. Multivariate regression modeled correlates of worry and avoidance, including mental illness, disability, demographic factors, and estimated color-coded alert level. Persons who are mentally ill, those who are disabled, African Americans, Latinos, Chinese Americans, Korean Americans, and non-US citizens were more likely to perceive population-level risk as high, as measured by the estimated color-coded alert level. These groups also reported more worry and avoidance behaviors because of concerns about terrorism. Vulnerable populations experience a disproportionate burden of the psychosocial impact of terrorism threats and our national response. Further studies should investigate the specific behaviors affected and further elucidate disparities in the disaster burden associated with terrorism and terrorism policies.

Terrorism-Related Fear and Avoidance Behavior in a Multiethnic Urban Population

PubMed Central

Glik, Deborah; Ong, Michael; Zhou, Qiong; Tseng, Chi-Hong; Long, Anna; Fielding, Jonathan; Asch, Steven

2009-01-01

Objectives. We sought to determine whether groups traditionally most vulnerable to disasters would be more likely than would be others to perceive population-level risk as high (as measured by the estimated color-coded alert level) would worry more about terrorism, and would avoid activities because of terrorism concerns. Methods. We conducted a random digit dial survey of the Los Angeles County population October 2004 through January 2005 in 6 languages. We asked respondents what color alert level the country was under, how often they worry about terrorist attacks, and how often they avoid activities because of terrorism. Multivariate regression modeled correlates of worry and avoidance, including mental illness, disability, demographic factors, and estimated color-coded alert level. Results. Persons who are mentally ill, those who are disabled, African Americans, Latinos, Chinese Americans, Korean Americans, and non-US citizens were more likely to perceive population-level risk as high, as measured by the estimated color-coded alert level. These groups also reported more worry and avoidance behaviors because of concerns about terrorism. Conclusions. Vulnerable populations experience a disproportionate burden of the psychosocial impact of terrorism threats and our national response. Further studies should investigate the specific behaviors affected and further elucidate disparities in the disaster burden associated with terrorism and terrorism policies. PMID:19008521

The international experience of bacterial screen testing of platelet components with an automated microbial detection system: a need for consensus testing and reporting guidelines.

PubMed

Benjamin, Richard J; McDonald, Carl P

2014-04-01

The BacT/ALERT microbial detection system (bioMerieux, Inc, Durham, NC) is in routine use in many blood centers as a prerelease test for platelet collections. Published reports document wide variation in practices and outcomes. A systematic review of the English literature was performed to describe publications assessing the use of the BacT/ALERT culture system on platelet collections as a routine screen test of more than 10000 platelet components. Sixteen publications report the use of confirmatory testing to substantiate initial positive culture results but use varying nomenclature to classify the results. Preanalytical and analytical variables that may affect the outcomes differ widely between centers. Incomplete description of protocol details complicates comparison between sites. Initial positive culture results range from 539 to 10606 per million (0.054%-1.061%) and confirmed positive from 127 to 1035 per million (0.013%-0.104%) donations. False-negative results determined by outdate culture range from 662 to 2173 per million (0.066%-0.217%) and by septic reactions from 0 to 66 per million (0%-0.007%) collections. Current culture protocols represent pragmatic compromises between optimizing analytical sensitivity and ensuring the timely availability of platelets for clinical needs. Insights into the effect of protocol variations on outcomes are generally restricted to individual sites that implement limited changes to their protocols over time. Platelet manufacturers should reassess the adequacy of their BacT/ALERT screening protocols in light of the growing international experience and provide detailed documentation of all variables that may affect culture outcomes when reporting results. We propose a framework for a standardized nomenclature for reporting of the results of BacT/ALERT screening. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Early Detection of Rapidly Developing Cumulus Area using HIMAWARI-8

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yamada, Y.; Kadosaki, G.

2017-12-01

In recent years, many disasters have been occured by influence of meteorological change in Japan. So, it becomes more important to inform rapid weather change caused by cumulus which brings concentrated heavy rain/hail, wind gust, lightning in a short period. These severe events should inclease in the future by global warming. Therefore we are developping the alert system for Rapidly Developing Cumulus Area (RDCA) detection using Japanese new satellite. At July 2015, Japan Meteorological Agency started operation of new geostationary meteorological satellite "Himawari-8". This satellite has optical imager named Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI). It can observe Japan area every 2.5 minutes. The frequently infrared image with high resolution (2km) is the key of our alert system. We took some special functions in the algorithm of this system. One of the points is cloud location which shifts to north from true location around Japan by viewing angle from the satellite above the equator. We moved clouds to the correct position using geometric correction method according to its height and latitude. This algorithm also follows a movement of cloud every 2.5 minutes during several observations. It derives the information about degree of the development of cumulus. The prototype system gives the alert before 30 to 60 minutes in advance to the first lightning in typical cumulus case. However, we understand that there are some difficult cases to alert. For example, winter low cloud over the Japan Sea which brings a winter lightning, and tornado (although it is not cumulus). Now, we are adjusting some parameters of the algorithm. In the near future, our algorithm will be used in weather information delivery service to the customer.

Rail integrity alert system (RIAS) feature discrimination : final report.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2016-08-01

This report describes GE Global Researchs research, in partnership with GE Transportation, into developing and deploying : algorithms for a locomotive-based inductive sensing system that has a very high probability of detecting broken rails with v...

Hydrogen-Detection Apparatus

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ross, H. Richard; Bourgeois, Chris M.

1995-01-01

Apparatus continuously monitors concentration of hydrogen, at level ranging from few parts per million to several percent, in mixture of gases. Simple and fast, providing high sensitivity and linear response. Used to alert technicians to potentially explosive concentrations of residual hydrogen.

40 CFR 280.44 - Methods of release detection for piping.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... accordance with the following: (a) Automatic line leak detectors. Methods which alert the operator to the... pounds per square inch line pressure within 1 hour. An annual test of the operation of the leak detector...

40 CFR 280.44 - Methods of release detection for piping.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... accordance with the following: (a) Automatic line leak detectors. Methods which alert the operator to the... pounds per square inch line pressure within 1 hour. An annual test of the operation of the leak detector...

40 CFR 280.44 - Methods of release detection for piping.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... accordance with the following: (a) Automatic line leak detectors. Methods which alert the operator to the... pounds per square inch line pressure within 1 hour. An annual test of the operation of the leak detector...

40 CFR 280.44 - Methods of release detection for piping.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... accordance with the following: (a) Automatic line leak detectors. Methods which alert the operator to the... pounds per square inch line pressure within 1 hour. An annual test of the operation of the leak detector...

40 CFR 280.44 - Methods of release detection for piping.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... accordance with the following: (a) Automatic line leak detectors. Methods which alert the operator to the... pounds per square inch line pressure within 1 hour. An annual test of the operation of the leak detector...

UAS in the NAS Flight Test Series 4 Overview

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Murphy, Jim

2016-01-01

Flight Test Series 4 (FT4) provides the researchers with an opportunity to expand on the data collected during the first flight tests. Following Flight Test Series 3, additional scripted encounters with different aircraft performance and sensors will be conducted. FT4 is presently planned for Spring of 2016 to ensure collection of data to support the validation of the final RTCA Phase 1 DAA (Detect and Avoid) Minimum Operational Performance Standards (MOPS). There are three research objectives associated with this goal: Evaluate the performance of the DAA system against cooperative and non-cooperative aircraft encounters Evaluate UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) pilot performance in response to DAA maneuver guidance and alerting with live intruder encounters Evaluate TCAS/DAA (Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System/Detect and Avoid) interoperability. This flight test series will focus on only the Scripted Encounters configuration, supporting the collection of data to validate the interoperability of DAA and collision avoidance algorithms.

Low momentum recoil detectors in CLAS12 at Jefferson Lab

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Charles, Gabriel; CLAS Collaboration Collaboration

2017-01-01

Part of the experimental program in Hall B of the Jefferson Lab is dedicated to studying nucleon structure using DIS on nuclei and detecting low-momentum recoil particles in coincidence with the scattered electron. For this purpose, specially designed central detectors are required in place of the inner tracker of CLAS12 to detect particles with momenta below 100 MeV/c. We will present the status of the BONuS12 RTPC detector that will take data within the next 2 years. We will detail the main improvements made from the previous BONuS RTPC. In a second part, we will discuss another recoil experiment, called ALERT, that has been proposed to run in Hall B. The constraints being different, the recoil detector is based on a drift chamber and an array of scintillators. We will present the main differences between the two detectors and summarize the R&D performed to develop the ALERT detector.

Optical flow and driver's kinematics analysis for state of alert sensing.

PubMed

Jiménez-Pinto, Javier; Torres-Torriti, Miguel

2013-03-28

Road accident statistics from different countries show that a significant number of accidents occur due to driver's fatigue and lack of awareness to traffic conditions. In particular, about 60% of the accidents in which long haul truck and bus drivers are involved are attributed to drowsiness and fatigue. It is thus fundamental to improve non-invasive systems for sensing a driver's state of alert. One of the main challenges to correctly resolve the state of alert is measuring the percentage of eyelid closure over time (PERCLOS), despite the driver's head and body movements. In this paper, we propose a technique that involves optical flow and driver's kinematics analysis to improve the robustness of the driver's alert state measurement under pose changes using a single camera with near-infrared illumination. The proposed approach infers and keeps track of the driver's pose in 3D space in order to ensure that eyes can be located correctly, even after periods of partial occlusion, for example, when the driver stares away from the camera. Our experiments show the effectiveness of the approach with a correct eyes detection rate of 99.41%, on average. The results obtained with the proposed approach in an experiment involving fifteen persons under different levels of sleep deprivation also confirm the discriminability of the fatigue levels. In addition to the measurement of fatigue and drowsiness, the pose tracking capability of the proposed approach has potential applications in distraction assessment and alerting of machine operators.

Optical Flow and Driver's Kinematics Analysis for State of Alert Sensing

PubMed Central

Jiménez-Pinto, Javier; Torres-Torriti, Miguel

2013-01-01

Road accident statistics from different countries show that a significant number of accidents occur due to driver's fatigue and lack of awareness to traffic conditions. In particular, about 60% of the accidents in which long haul truck and bus drivers are involved are attributed to drowsiness and fatigue. It is thus fundamental to improve non-invasive systems for sensing a driver's state of alert. One of the main challenges to correctly resolve the state of alert is measuring the percentage of eyelid closure over time (PERCLOS), despite the driver's head and body movements. In this paper, we propose a technique that involves optical flow and driver's kinematics analysis to improve the robustness of the driver's alert state measurement under pose changes using a single camera with near-infrared illumination. The proposed approach infers and keeps track of the driver's pose in 3D space in order to ensure that eyes can be located correctly, even after periods of partial occlusion, for example, when the driver stares away from the camera. Our experiments show the effectiveness of the approach with a correct eyes detection rate of 99.41%, on average. The results obtained with the proposed approach in an experiment involving fifteen persons under different levels of sleep deprivation also confirm the discriminability of the fatigue levels. In addition to the measurement of fatigue and drowsiness, the pose tracking capability of the proposed approach has potential applications in distraction assessment and alerting of machine operators. PMID:23539029

Critical Infrastructure Protection and Resilience Literature Survey: Modeling and Simulation

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-11-01

2013 Page 34 of 63 Below the yellow set is a purple cluster bringing together detection , anomaly , intrusion, sensors, monitoring and alerting (early...hazards and threats to security56 Water ADWICE, PSS®SINCAL ADWICE for real-time anomaly detection in water management systems57 One tool that...Systems. Cybernetics and Information Technologies. 2008;8(4):57-68. 57. Raciti M, Cucurull J, Nadjm-Tehrani S. Anomaly detection in water management

State of the Practice of Intrusion Detection Technologies

DTIC Science & Technology

2000-01-01

security incident response teams ) - the role of IDS in threat management, such as defining alarm severity, monitoring, alerting, and policy-based...attacks in an effort to sneak under the radar of security specialists and intrusion detection software, a U.S. Navy network security team said today...to get the smoking gun," said Stephen Northcutt, head of the Shadow intrusion detection team at the Naval Surface Warfare Center. "To know what’s

Acquisition and use of Orlando, Florida and Continental Airbus radar flight test data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Eide, Michael C.; Mathews, Bruce

1992-01-01

Westinghouse is developing a lookdown pulse Doppler radar for production as the sensor and processor of a forward looking hazardous windshear detection and avoidance system. A data collection prototype of that product was ready for flight testing in Orlando to encounter low level windshear in corroboration with the FAA-Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR). Airborne real-time processing and display of the hazard factor were demonstrated with TDWR facilitated intercepts and penetrations of over 80 microbursts in a three day period, including microbursts with hazard factors in excess of .16 (with 500 ft. PIREP altitude loss) and the hazard factor display at 6 n.mi. of a visually transparent ('dry') microburst with TDWR corroborated outflow reflectivities of +5 dBz. Range gated Doppler spectrum data was recorded for subsequent development and refinement of hazard factor detection and urban clutter rejection algorithms. Following Orlando, the data collection radar was supplemental type certified for in revenue service on a Continental Airlines Airbus in an automatic and non-interferring basis with its ARINC 708 radar to allow Westinghouse to confirm its understanding of commercial aircraft installation, interface realities, and urban airport clutter. A number of software upgrades, all of which were verified at the Receiver-Transmitter-Processor (RTP) hardware bench with Orlando microburst data to produce desired advanced warning hazard factor detection, included some preliminary loads with automatic (sliding window average hazard factor) detection and annunciation recording. The current (14-APR-92) configured software is free from false and/or nuisance alerts (CAUTIONS, WARNINGS, etc.) for all take-off and landing approaches, under 2500 ft. altitude to weight-on-wheels, into all encountered airports, including Newark (NJ), LAX, Denver, Houston, Cleveland, etc. Using the Orlando data collected on hazardous microbursts, Westinghouse has developed a lookdown pulse Doppler radar product with signal and data processing algorithms which detect realistic microburst hazards and has demonstrated those algorithms produce no false alerts (or nuisance alerts) in urban airport ground moving vehicle (GMTI) and/or clutter environments.

MAXI/GSC detection of a new outburst from the black hole candidate H 1743-322

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shidatsu, M.; Nakahira, S.; Negoro, H.; Ueno, S.; Tomida, H.; Ishikawa, M.; Sugawara, Y.; Nakagawa, Y. E.; Mihara, T.; Sugizaki, M.; Serino, M.; Iwakiri, W.; Sugimoto, J.; Takagi, T.; Matsuoka, M.; Kawai, N.; Isobe, N.; Sugita, S.; Yoshii, T.; Tachibana, Y.; Ono, Y.; Fujiwara, T.; Harita, S.; Muraki, Y.; Yoshida, A.; Sakamoto, T.; Kawakubo, Y.; Kitaoka, Y.; Tsunemi, H.; Shomura, R.; Nakajima, M.; Tanaka, K.; Masumitsu, T.; Kawase, T.; Ueda, Y.; Kawamuro, T.; Hori, T.; Tanimoto, A.; Oda, S.; Tsuboi, Y.; Nakamura, Y.; Sasaki, R.; Yamauchi, M.; Furuya, K.; Yamaoka, K.

2016-11-01

The MAXI/GSC nova-alert system detected an X-ray brightening of the Galactic black hole candidate H 1743-322 in November 6, UT 03:01. The 2-20 keV flux increased from 12 +- 3 mCrab on November 4 (MJD 57696) to 37 +- 5 mCrab on November 6 (MJD 57698).

49 CFR Appendix A to Part 209 - Statement of Agency Policy Concerning Enforcement of the Federal Railroad Safety Laws

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-10-01

... exercise of jurisdiction. In this context, the presence of intrusion detection devices to alert one or both... about sufficient intrusion detection and related safety measures designed to avoid a collision between...). By “general railroad system of transportation,” FRA refers to the network of standard gage track over...

49 CFR Appendix A to Part 209 - Statement of Agency Policy Concerning Enforcement of the Federal Railroad Safety Laws

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-10-01

... exercise of jurisdiction. In this context, the presence of intrusion detection devices to alert one or both... about sufficient intrusion detection and related safety measures designed to avoid a collision between...). By “general railroad system of transportation,” FRA refers to the network of standard gage track over...

49 CFR Appendix A to Part 209 - Statement of Agency Policy Concerning Enforcement of the Federal Railroad Safety Laws

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-10-01

... exercise of jurisdiction. In this context, the presence of intrusion detection devices to alert one or both... about sufficient intrusion detection and related safety measures designed to avoid a collision between...). By “general railroad system of transportation,” FRA refers to the network of standard gage track over...

Robotic Telescopes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Akerlof, C. W.

2001-05-01

Since the discovery of gamma-ray bursts, a number of groups have attempted to detect correlated optical transients from these elusive objects. Following the flight of the BATSE instrument on the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory in 1991, a prompt burst coordinate alert service, BACODINE (now GCN) became available to ground-based telescopes. Several instruments were built to take advantage of this facility, culminating in the discovery of a bright optical flash associated with GRB990123. To date, that single observation remains unique - no other prompt flashes have been seen for a dozen or so other bursts observed with comparably short response times. Thus, GRB prompt optical luminosities may be considerably dimmer than observed for the GRB990123 event or even absent altogether. A new generation of instruments is prepared to explore these possibilties using burst coordinates provided by HETE-2, Swift, Ballerina, Agile and other satellite missions. These telescopes have response times as short as a few seconds and reach limiting magnitudes, m_v 20, guaranteeing a sensitivity sufficient to detect the afterglow many hours later. Results from these experiments should provide important new data about the dynamics and locale of GRBs.

TANDI: threat assessment of network data and information

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Holsopple, Jared; Yang, Shanchieh Jay; Sudit, Moises

2006-04-01

Current practice for combating cyber attacks typically use Intrusion Detection Sensors (IDSs) to passively detect and block multi-stage attacks. This work leverages Level-2 fusion that correlates IDS alerts belonging to the same attacker, and proposes a threat assessment algorithm to predict potential future attacker actions. The algorithm, TANDI, reduces the problem complexity by separating the models of the attacker's capability and opportunity, and fuse the two to determine the attacker's intent. Unlike traditional Bayesian-based approaches, which require assigning a large number of edge probabilities, the proposed Level-3 fusion procedure uses only 4 parameters. TANDI has been implemented and tested with randomly created attack sequences. The results demonstrate that TANDI predicts future attack actions accurately as long as the attack is not part of a coordinated attack and contains no insider threats. In the presence of abnormal attack events, TANDI will alarm the network analyst for further analysis. The attempt to evaluate a threat assessment algorithm via simulation is the first in the literature, and shall open up a new avenue in the area of high level fusion.

Automated detection of physiologic deterioration in hospitalized patients

PubMed Central

Evans, R Scott; Kuttler, Kathryn G; Simpson, Kathy J; Howe, Stephen; Crossno, Peter F; Johnson, Kyle V; Schreiner, Misty N; Lloyd, James F; Tettelbach, William H; Keddington, Roger K; Tanner, Alden; Wilde, Chelbi; Clemmer, Terry P

2015-01-01

Objective Develop and evaluate an automated case detection and response triggering system to monitor patients every 5 min and identify early signs of physiologic deterioration. Materials and methods A 2-year prospective, observational study at a large level 1 trauma center. All patients admitted to a 33-bed medical and oncology floor (A) and a 33-bed non-intensive care unit (ICU) surgical trauma floor (B) were monitored. During the intervention year, pager alerts of early physiologic deterioration were automatically sent to charge nurses along with access to a graphical point-of-care web page to facilitate patient evaluation. Results Nurses reported the positive predictive value of alerts was 91–100% depending on erroneous data presence. Unit A patients were significantly older and had significantly more comorbidities than unit B patients. During the intervention year, unit A patients had a significant increase in length of stay, more transfers to ICU (p = 0.23), and significantly more medical emergency team (MET) calls (p = 0.0008), and significantly fewer died (p = 0.044) compared to the pre-intervention year. No significant differences were found on unit B. Conclusions We monitored patients every 5 min and provided automated pages of early physiologic deterioration. This before–after study found a significant increase in MET calls and a significant decrease in mortality only in the unit with older patients with multiple comorbidities, and thus further study is warranted to detect potential confounding. Moreover, nurses reported the graphical alerts provided information needed to quickly evaluate patients, and they felt more confident about their assessment and more comfortable requesting help. PMID:25164256

Weak central coherence in weight-restored adolescent anorexia nervosa: Characteristics and remediation.

PubMed

Weinbach, Noam; Perry, Amit; Sher, Helene; Lock, James D; Henik, Avishai

2017-08-01

Weak central coherence (WCC) refers to a bias towards processing details (local processing) at the expense of paying attention to the bigger picture (global processing). Multiple studies reported WCC in adults with anorexia nervosa (AN). Evidence for WCC in adolescents with AN has been inconsistent. The current study characterizes WCC in weight-restored adolescents with AN (WR-AN) using a direct measure of WCC, and examines whether WCC can be remediated by increasing alertness level-a manipulation that was found useful in enhancing global processing in healthy individuals and clinical populations. 40 adolescents (18 WR-AN and 22 healthy adolescents) performed a global/local processing task (Navon task). Auditory alerting cues that elevate alertness level were integrated into the task. Both groups processed global information faster than local information. However, compared with controls, adolescents with WR-AN were better at ignoring an irrelevant bigger picture while attending to details (smaller global interference) and had greater difficulty ignoring irrelevant details while attending to the bigger picture (larger local interference). These differences were attenuated when adolescents with WR-AN were under a state of high alertness. Additionally, the local interference effect was positively correlated with three independent self-report questionnaires assessing eating disorders symptomatology. This study suggests that abnormal interference by irrelevant global and local information is a central characteristic of WCC in adolescents with WR-AN that cannot be accounted for by enduring illness or malnourishment. Additionally, this study demonstrates that WCC can be temporarily remediated by encouraging a state of high alertness. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Sleep and alertness in North Sea helicopter operations.

PubMed

Simons, Ries; Wilschut, Ellen S; Valk, Pierre J L

2011-07-01

Dutch North Sea helicopter operations are characterized by multiple sector flights to offshore platforms under difficult environmental conditions. In the context of a Ministry of Transport program to improve safety levels of helicopter operations, we assessed effects of pre-duty sleep, pre-duty travel time, and workload factors on the alertness and vigilance of pilots. Data of 24 pilots comprising 224 duty days were analyzed. Pilots performed 10-min test sessions after wake up, pre-duty, halfway-duty, end-duty, and at bedtime during normal duty rosters. Test sessions included completion of a vigilance task, vigor and sleepiness ratings, and questions on sleep and operational characteristics. Pilots wore an actometer to objectify sleep data. Vigor scores were high and sleepiness levels were low during the entire flight duty periods (FDPs), while vigilance was impaired only 6.8% in the course of the FDPs. Pre-duty sleep before morning duties was 1.5 h shorter than sleep before duties starting after midday. Longer pre-duty travel time was correlated with shorter pre-duty sleep and lower vigilance levels during duty. During the FDPs, pilots maintained alertness and vigilance levels that may be considered safe in terms of alertness-related flight safety. This favorable outcome may be attributed to reasonable length of FDPs, favorable circadian start and end times of duties, sufficient opportunities for restorative pre-duty sleep, and relatively good weather conditions. Appropriate FDP scheduling is an important measure to optimize alertness of helicopter pilots who have to cope with adverse environmental conditions and limited landing and air traffic control facilities.

49 CFR 176.905 - Motor vehicles or mechanical equipment powered by internal combustion engines.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-10-01

... of ignition. A motor vehicle or mechanical equipment showing any signs of leakage or electrical fault... smoke or fire detection system capable of alerting personnel on the bridge. (h) All electrical equipment...

Developing a reliable method for signal wire attachment : [research results].

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2013-03-01

Railroad signaling systems detect trains on the track, identify track fractures, prevent derailments, and alert signal crossing stations when trains approach. These systems are vital to safe train operation; therefore, each component of this system h...

Vehicle-based drowsy driver detection : current status and future prospects

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1994-01-01

Driver drowsiness is a major, though elusive, cause of traffic crashes. As part of its : IVHS/human factors program, NHTSA is supporting research to develop in-vehicle systems . : to continuously monitor driver alertness and performance. Scientific s...

MASTER OT J015539.85+485955.6 was detected during Fermi alert inspection 3.5h after the trigger time

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rebolo, R.; Lipunov, V.; Gorbovskoy, E.; Serra, M.; Lodieu, N.; Israelian, G.; Suarez-Andres, L.; Shumkov, V.; Tyurina, N.; Kornilov, V.; Balanutsa, P.; Kuznetsov, A.; Vlasenko, D.; Gorbunov, I.; Vladimirov, V.; Popova, E.; Buckley, D.; Potter, S.; Kniazev, A.; Kotze, M.; Tlatov, A.; Parhomenko, A. V.; Dormidontov, D.; Senik, V.; Gress, O.; Ivanov, K.; Budnev, N. M.; Yurkov, V.; Sergienko, Yu.; Gabovich, A.; Sinyakov, E.; Krushinski, V.; Zalozhnih, I.; Shurpakov, S.

2015-11-01

MASTER-IAC, MASTER-Kislovodsk and MASTER-SAAO was pointed to the FERMI GBM GRB151107B (Stanbro, Meegan, GCN #18570 ) at 2015-11-07 20:25:52(/59s/58s) UT (R.Rebolo et al., GCN #18576 ). There were the prompt pointing observations because duration of the GRB was ~140s . After 5 minutes of the alert observations of the error-box center, MASTER telescopes in IAC and Kislovodsk started the inspect survey inside large Fermi error box (ra=00 42 28 dec=+48 48 58 r=4.533300) obtained by GCN socket.

Alerting device and method for reminding a person of a risk

DOEpatents

Runyon, Larry [Richland, WA; Gunter, Wayne M [West Richland, WA; Pratt, Richard M [Richland, WA

2001-11-27

An alerting device and method to remind personnel of a risk is disclosed. The device has at least two sensors, a logic controller, a power source, and an annunciator that delivers a visual message, with or without an audible alarm, about a risk to a person when the sensors detect the person exiting a predetermined space. In particular, the present invention reminds a person of a security, safety, or health risk upon exiting a predetermined space. More particularly, the present invention reminds a person of an information security risk relating to sensitive, proprietary, confidential, trade secret, classified, or intellectual property information.

Multimodal intraoperative neuromonitoring in corrective surgery for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis: Evaluation of 354 consecutive cases

PubMed Central

Kundnani, Vishal K; Zhu, Lisa; Tak, HH; Wong, HK

2010-01-01

Background: Multimodal intraoperative neuromonitoring is recommended during corrective spinal surgery, and has been widely used in surgery for spinal deformity with successful outcomes. Despite successful outcomes of corrective surgery due to increased safety of the patients with the usage of spinal cord monitoring in many large spine centers, this modality has not yet achieved widespread popularity. We report the analysis of prospectively collected intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring data of 354 consecutive patients undergoing corrective surgery for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) to establish the efficacy of multimodal neuromonitoring and to evaluate comparative sensitivity and specificity. Materials and Methods: The study group consisted of 354 (female = 309; male = 45) patients undergoing spinal deformity corrective surgery between 2004 and 2008. Patients were monitored using electrophysiological methods including somatosensory-evoked potentials and motor-evoked potentials simultaneously. Results: Mean age of patients was 13.6 years (±2.3 years). The operative procedures involved were instrumented fusion of the thoracic/lumbar/both curves, Baseline somatosensory-evoked potentials (SSEP) and neurogenic motor-evoked potentials (NMEP) were recorded successfully in all cases. Thirteen cases expressed significant alert to prompt reversal of intervention. All these 13 cases with significant alert had detectable NMEP alerts, whereas significant SSEP alert was detected in 8 cases. Two patients awoke with new neurological deficit (0.56%) and had significant intraoperative SSEP + NMEP alerts. There were no false positives with SSEP (high specificity) but 5 patients with false negatives with SSEP (38%) reduced its sensitivity. There was no false negative with NMEP but 2 of 13 cases were false positive with NMEP (15%). The specificity of SSEP (100%) is higher than NMEP (96%); however, the sensitivity of NMEP (100%) is far better than SSEP (51%). Due to these results, the overall sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive value of combined multimodality neuromonitoring in this adult deformity series was 100, 98.5 and 85%, respectively. Conclusion: Neurogenic motor-evoked potential (NMEP) monitoring appears to be superior to conventional SSEP monitoring for identifying evolving spinal cord injury. Used in conjunction, the sensitivity and specificity of combined neuromonitoring may reach up to 100%. Multimodality monitoring with SSEP + NMEP should be the standard of care. PMID:20165679

Compound extremes of summer temperature and precipitation leading to intensified departures from natural variability.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mahony, C. R.; Cannon, A. J.

2017-12-01

Climate change can drive local climates outside the range of their historical year-to-year variability, straining the adaptive capacity of ecological and human communities. We demonstrate that interactions between climate variables can produce larger and earlier departures from natural variability than is detectable in individual variables. For example, summer temperature (Tx) and precipitation (Pr) are negatively correlated in most terrestrial regions, such that interannual variability lies along an axis from warm-and-dry to cool-and-wet conditions. A climate change trend perpendicular to this axis, towards warmer-wetter conditions, can depart more quickly from the range of natural variability than a warmer-drier trend. This multivariate "departure intensification" effect is evident in all six CMIP5 models that we examined: 23% (9-34%) of the land area of each model exhibits a pronounced increase in 2σ extremesin the Tx-Pr regime relative to Tx or Pr alone. Observational data suggest that Tx-Pr correlations are sufficient to produce departure intensification in distinct regions on all continents. Departures from the historical Tx-Pr regime may produce ecological disruptions, such as in plant-pathogen interactions and human diseases, that could offset the drought mitigation benefits of increased precipitation. Our study alerts researchers and adaptation practitioners to the presence of multivariate climate change signals and compound extremes that are not detectable in individual climate variables.

Detecting Driver Drowsiness Based on Sensors: A Review

PubMed Central

Sahayadhas, Arun; Sundaraj, Kenneth; Murugappan, Murugappan

2012-01-01

In recent years, driver drowsiness has been one of the major causes of road accidents and can lead to severe physical injuries, deaths and significant economic losses. Statistics indicate the need of a reliable driver drowsiness detection system which could alert the driver before a mishap happens. Researchers have attempted to determine driver drowsiness using the following measures: (1) vehicle-based measures; (2) behavioral measures and (3) physiological measures. A detailed review on these measures will provide insight on the present systems, issues associated with them and the enhancements that need to be done to make a robust system. In this paper, we review these three measures as to the sensors used and discuss the advantages and limitations of each. The various ways through which drowsiness has been experimentally manipulated is also discussed. We conclude that by designing a hybrid drowsiness detection system that combines non-intusive physiological measures with other measures one would accurately determine the drowsiness level of a driver. A number of road accidents might then be avoided if an alert is sent to a driver that is deemed drowsy. PMID:23223151

Autoblocker: a system for detecting and blocking of network scanning based on analysis of netflow data

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bobyshev, A.; Lamore, D.; Demar, P.

2004-12-01

In a large campus network, such at Fermilab, with tens of thousands of nodes, scanning initiated from either outside of or within the campus network raises security concerns. This scanning may have very serious impact on network performance, and even disrupt normal operation of many services. In this paper we introduce a system for detecting and automatic blocking excessive traffic of different kinds of scanning, DoS attacks, virus infected computers. The system, called AutoBlocker, is a distributed computing system based on quasi-real time analysis of network flow data collected from the border router and core switches. AutoBlocker also has anmore » interface to accept alerts from IDS systems (e.g. BRO, SNORT) that are based on other technologies. The system has multiple configurable alert levels for the detection of anomalous behavior and configurable trigger criteria for automated blocking of scans at the core or border routers. It has been in use at Fermilab for about 2 years, and has become a very valuable tool to curtail scan activity within the Fermilab campus network.« less

Visualization techniques for computer network defense

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Beaver, Justin M.; Steed, Chad A.; Patton, Robert M.; Cui, Xiaohui; Schultz, Matthew

2011-06-01

Effective visual analysis of computer network defense (CND) information is challenging due to the volume and complexity of both the raw and analyzed network data. A typical CND is comprised of multiple niche intrusion detection tools, each of which performs network data analysis and produces a unique alerting output. The state-of-the-practice in the situational awareness of CND data is the prevalent use of custom-developed scripts by Information Technology (IT) professionals to retrieve, organize, and understand potential threat events. We propose a new visual analytics framework, called the Oak Ridge Cyber Analytics (ORCA) system, for CND data that allows an operator to interact with all detection tool outputs simultaneously. Aggregated alert events are presented in multiple coordinated views with timeline, cluster, and swarm model analysis displays. These displays are complemented with both supervised and semi-supervised machine learning classifiers. The intent of the visual analytics framework is to improve CND situational awareness, to enable an analyst to quickly navigate and analyze thousands of detected events, and to combine sophisticated data analysis techniques with interactive visualization such that patterns of anomalous activities may be more easily identified and investigated.

DO THE FERMI GAMMA-RAY BURST MONITOR AND SWIFT BURST ALERT TELESCOPE SEE THE SAME SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS?

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Burns, Eric; Briggs, Michael S.; Connaughton, Valerie

2016-02-20

Compact binary system mergers are expected to generate gravitational radiation detectable by ground-based interferometers. A subset of these, the merger of a neutron star with another neutron star or a black hole, are also the most popular model for the production of short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) and the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) trigger on short GRBs (SGRBs) at rates that reflect their relative sky exposures, with the BAT detecting 10 per year compared to about 45 for GBM. We examine the SGRB populations detected by Swift BAT and Fermi GBM. We find thatmore » the Swift BAT triggers on weaker SGRBs than Fermi GBM, providing they occur close to the center of the BAT field of view, and that the Fermi GBM SGRB detection threshold remains flatter across its field of view. Overall, these effects combine to give the instruments the same average sensitivity, and account for the SGRBs that trigger one instrument but not the other. We do not find any evidence that the BAT and GBM are detecting significantly different populations of SGRBs. Both instruments can detect untriggered SGRBs using ground searches seeded with time and position. The detection of SGRBs below the on-board triggering sensitivities of Swift BAT and Fermi GBM increases the possibility of detecting and localizing the electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave (GW) events seen by the new generation of GW detectors.« less

CISN ShakeAlert: Faster Warning Information Through Multiple Threshold Event Detection in the Virtual Seismologist (VS) Early Warning Algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cua, G. B.; Fischer, M.; Caprio, M.; Heaton, T. H.; Cisn Earthquake Early Warning Project Team

2010-12-01

The Virtual Seismologist (VS) earthquake early warning (EEW) algorithm is one of 3 EEW approaches being incorporated into the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN) ShakeAlert system, a prototype EEW system that could potentially be implemented in California. The VS algorithm, implemented by the Swiss Seismological Service at ETH Zurich, is a Bayesian approach to EEW, wherein the most probable source estimate at any given time is a combination of contributions from a likehihood function that evolves in response to incoming data from the on-going earthquake, and selected prior information, which can include factors such as network topology, the Gutenberg-Richter relationship or previously observed seismicity. The VS codes have been running in real-time at the Southern California Seismic Network since July 2008, and at the Northern California Seismic Network since February 2009. We discuss recent enhancements to the VS EEW algorithm that are being integrated into CISN ShakeAlert. We developed and continue to test a multiple-threshold event detection scheme, which uses different association / location approaches depending on the peak amplitudes associated with an incoming P pick. With this scheme, an event with sufficiently high initial amplitudes can be declared on the basis of a single station, maximizing warning times for damaging events for which EEW is most relevant. Smaller, non-damaging events, which will have lower initial amplitudes, will require more picks to initiate an event declaration, with the goal of reducing false alarms. This transforms the VS codes from a regional EEW approach reliant on traditional location estimation (and the requirement of at least 4 picks as implemented by the Binder Earthworm phase associator) into an on-site/regional approach capable of providing a continuously evolving stream of EEW information starting from the first P-detection. Real-time and offline analysis on Swiss and California waveform datasets indicate that the multiple-threshold approach is faster and more reliable for larger events than the earlier version of the VS codes. In addition, we provide evolutionary estimates of the probability of false alarms (PFA), which is an envisioned output stream of the CISN ShakeAlert system. The real-time decision-making approach envisioned for CISN ShakeAlert users, where users specify a threshhold PFA in addition to thresholds on peak ground motion estimates, has the potential to increase the available warning time for users with high tolerance to false alarms without compromising the needs of users with lower tolerances to false alarms.

SC-228 Inclusion of DAA Warning Alert for TCAS Interoperability

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Fern, Lisa

2016-01-01

This white paper summarizes NASA research results that have informed Special Committee 228 (SC-228) discussions and decisions regarding the inclusion of a warning-level alert within the detect and avoid (DAA) alerting structure for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). For UAS, the removal of the pilot from onboard the aircraft has eliminated the ability of the ground-based pilot in command (PIC) to use out-the-window visual information to make judgments about a potential threat of a loss of well clear with another aircraft. As a result, the DAA traffic display will be the primary source of information that the PIC can use to execute the three primary well clear functions: 1) detect a potential loss of well clear, 2) determine a resolution maneuver, and 3) upload that maneuver to the aircraft via the ground control station (GCS). In addition, pilots are required to coordinate with air traffic control (ATC) prior to maneuvering off of their approved flight plan. In determining an appropriate resolution maneuver to avoid a loss of well clear, the PIC must decide both when and how to maneuver, and both the timeliness and the accuracy (i.e., correctness) of the maneuver are critical to reducing the likelihood and/or severity of a loss of well clear. Alerting information is one of three critical components of the DAA display, along with traffic information elements (e.g., relative heading, speed and altitude) and maneuver guidance. Alerting information and maneuver guidance, in particular, have been found to have a significant impact, both statistically and practically, on pilots' ability to avoid and minimize the severity of losses of well clear While all three display components are key to pilots performing the traffic avoidance task of remaining well clear, in general, alerting information provides crucial information about when a resolution maneuver is required while maneuver guidance assists the pilot in determining how best to maneuver. A fundamental task of the DAA alerting system is to provide critical timing information to the pilot about the potential for a loss of well clear with another aircraft. This is done by employing both temporal and spatial thresholds that indicate to the pilot the likelihood and imminence of a loss of well clear. The design of the DAA alerting thresholds is a balancing act between eliciting the desired pilot response in real loss of well clear threat events and reducing excessive, unnecessary, and/or uncoordinated UAS maneuvering within the air traffic environment; larger thresholds, both spatially and temporally, may increase the likelihood of a pilot avoiding a loss of well clear, but it can also increase the frequency of maneuvering - especially in cases where a maneuver is not actually needed to maintain well clear. A series of human in the loop (HITL) simulations have been conducted as part of NASA's Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration in the National Airspace System (NAS) project. The purpose of these HITLs has been to provide empirical results in order to inform development of the minimum human-machine interface requirements for the DAA system. This white paper will present those results which provide evidence of a human performance benefit (in terms of response times and ability to remain well clear of other aircraft) of the DAA warning alert both with and without a collision avoidance system on board the aircraft.

Alert dwell time: introduction of a measure to evaluate interruptive clinical decision support alerts

PubMed Central

McDaniel, Robert B; Burlison, Jonathan D; Baker, Donald K; Hasan, Murad; Robertson, Jennifer; Hartford, Christine; Howard, Scott C; Sablauer, Andras

2016-01-01

Metrics for evaluating interruptive prescribing alerts have many limitations. Additional methods are needed to identify opportunities to improve alerting systems and prevent alert fatigue. In this study, the authors determined whether alert dwell time—the time elapsed from when an interruptive alert is generated to when it is dismissed—could be calculated by using historical alert data from log files. Drug–drug interaction (DDI) alerts from 3 years of electronic health record data were queried. Alert dwell time was calculated for 25,965 alerts, including 777 unique DDIs. The median alert dwell time was 8 s (range, 1–4913 s). Resident physicians had longer median alert dwell times than other prescribers (P < .001). The 10 most frequent DDI alerts (n = 8759 alerts) had shorter median dwell times than alerts that only occurred once (P < .001). This metric can be used in future research to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of interruptive prescribing alerts. PMID:26499101

Evaluating Post-Earthquake Building Safety Using Economical MEMS Seismometers

PubMed Central

Yin, Ren-Cheng

2018-01-01

The earthquake early warning (EEW)-research group at National Taiwan University has been developing a microelectromechanical system-based accelerometer called “P-Alert”, designed for issuing EEWs. The main advantage of P-Alert is that it is a relatively economical seismometer. However, because of the expensive nature of commercial hardware for structural health monitoring (SHM) systems, the application of SHM to buildings remains limited. To determine the performance of P-Alert for evaluating post-earthquake building safety, we conducted a series of steel-frame shaking table tests with incremental damage. We used the fragility curves of different damage levels and the interstory drift ratios (calculated by the measured acceleration of each story using double integration and a filter) to gauge the potential damage levels. We concluded that the acceptable detection of damage for an entire building is possible. With improvements to the synchronization of the P-Alert sensors, we also anticipate a damage localization feature for the stories of a building. PMID:29734736

AMON: a wearable multiparameter medical monitoring and alert system.

PubMed

Anliker, Urs; Ward, Jamie A; Lukowicz, Paul; Tröster, Gerhard; Dolveck, François; Baer, Michel; Keita, Fatou; Schenker, Eran B; Catarsi, Fabrizio; Coluccini, Luca; Belardinelli, Andrea; Shklarski, Dror; Alon, Menachem; Hirt, Etienne; Schmid, Rolf; Vuskovic, Milica

2004-12-01

This paper describes an advanced care and alert portable telemedical monitor (AMON), a wearable medical monitoring and alert system targeting high-risk cardiac/respiratory patients. The system includes continuous collection and evaluation of multiple vital signs, intelligent multiparameter medical emergency detection, and a cellular connection to a medical center. By integrating the whole system in an unobtrusive, wrist-worn enclosure and applying aggressive low-power design techniques, continuous long-term monitoring can be performed without interfering with the patients' everyday activities and without restricting their mobility. In the first two and a half years of this EU IST sponsored project, the AMON consortium has designed, implemented, and tested the described wrist-worn device, a communication link, and a comprehensive medical center software package. The performance of the system has been validated by a medical study with a set of 33 subjects. The paper describes the main concepts behind the AMON system and presents details of the individual subsystems and solutions as well as the results of the medical validation.

Prevalence of L. Monocytogenes in Environmental Samples Collected in Dairy Plants of Sassari Province, Italy

PubMed Central

Fadda, Antonio; Frongia, Giorgio; Sanna, Antonietta; Melillo, Rita

2015-01-01

Listeria (L.) monocytogenes is frequently isolated from food production environment and often persists in dairy plants despite vigorous sanitation regimes. In recent years several alert notifications were sent to Rapid Alert System for Food Products system as a consequence of Listeria monocytogenes contamination of ricotta cheese. After the alert of 2012, competent authority (Local Health Unit of Sassari Province) organised an environmental monitoring plan with the partnership of the Institute for Experimental Veterinary Medicine of Sardinia to verify analysis of dairy plants own-check according to Regulation (EC) N° 2073/05 and further modifications. In 2014 n. 665 processing areas samples of n. 50 dairy plants of Sassari Province were examined. UNI EN ISO 11290-1:2005 for detection of L. monocytogenes was used. Non-compliance in n. 5 diary plants are observed (n. 8 positive samples). Post-non-compliance environmental sanitisation was efficient and own-check plans included appropriate corrective actions. PMID:27800407

Solar Demon: near real-time Flare, Dimming and EUV wave monitoring

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kraaikamp, Emil; Verbeeck, Cis

Dimmings and EUV waves have been observed routinely in EUV images since 1996. They are closely associated with coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and therefore provide useful information for early space weather alerts. On the one hand, automatic detection and characterization of dimmings and EUV waves can be used to gain better understanding of the underlying physical mechanisms. On the other hand, every dimming and EUV wave provides extra information on the associated front side CME, and can improve estimates of the geo-effectiveness and arrival time of the CME. Solar Demon has been designed to detect and characterize dimmings, EUV waves, as well as solar flares in near real-time on Solar Dynamics Observatory/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (SDO/AIA) data. The detection modules are running continuously at the Royal Observatory of Belgium on both quick-look data, as well as synoptic science data. The output of Solar Demon can be accessed in near real-time on the Solar Demon website, and includes images, movies, light curves, and the numerical evolution of several parameters. Solar Demon is the result of collaboration between the FP7 projects AFFECTS and COMESEP. Flare detections of Solar Demon are integrated into the COMESEP alert system. Here we present the Solar Demon detection algorithms and their output. We will show several interesting flare, dimming and EUV wave events, and present general statistics of the detections made so far during solar cycle 24.

Automated Collection of Real-Time Alerts of Citizens as a Useful Tool to Continuously Monitor Malodorous Emissions.

PubMed

Brattoli, Magda; Mazzone, Antonio; Giua, Roberto; Assennato, Giorgio; de Gennaro, Gianluigi

2016-02-26

The evaluation of odor emissions and dispersion is a very arduous topic to face; the real-time monitoring of odor emissions, the identification of chemical components and, with proper certainty, the source of annoyance represent a challenge for stakeholders such as local authorities. The complaints of people, often not systematic and variously distributed, in general do not allow us to quantify the perceived annoyance. Experimental research has been performed to detect and evaluate olfactory annoyance, based on field testing of an innovative monitoring methodology grounded in automatic recording of citizen alerts. It has been applied in Taranto, in the south of Italy where a relevant industrial area is located, by using Odortel(®) for automated collection of citizen alerts. To evaluate its reliability, the collection system has been integrated with automated samplers, able to sample odorous air in real time, according to the citizen alerts of annoyance and, moreover, with meteorological data (especially the wind direction) and trends in odor marker compounds, recorded by air quality monitoring stations. The results have allowed us, for the first time, to manage annoyance complaints, test their reliability, and obtain information about the distribution and entity of the odor phenomena, such that we were able to identify, with supporting evidence, the source as an oil refinery plant.

Stacked search for time shifted high energy neutrinos from gamma ray bursts with the Antares neutrino telescope

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Adrián-Martínez, S.; Albert, A.; André, M.; Anghinolfi, M.; Anton, G.; Ardid, M.; Aubert, J.-J.; Baret, B.; Barrios-Marti, J.; Basa, S.; Bertin, V.; Biagi, S.; Bormuth, R.; Bouwhuis, M. C.; Bruijn, R.; Brunner, J.; Busto, J.; Capone, A.; Caramete, L.; Carr, J.; Chiarusi, T.; Circella, M.; Coniglione, R.; Costantini, H.; Coyle, P.; Creusot, A.; Dekeyser, I.; Deschamps, A.; De Bonis, G.; Distefano, C.; Donzaud, C.; Dornic, D.; Drouhin, D.; Dumas, A.; Eberl, T.; Elsässer, D.; Enzenhöfer, A.; Fehn, K.; Felis, I.; Fermani, P.; Folger, F.; Fusco, L. A.; Galatà, S.; Gay, P.; Geißelsöder, S.; Geyer, K.; Giordano, V.; Gleixner, A.; Gracia-Ruiz, R.; Graf, K.; Hallmann, S.; van Haren, H.; Heijboer, A. J.; Hello, Y.; Hernández-Rey, J. J.; Hößl, J.; Hofestädt, J.; Hugon, C.; James, C. W.; de Jong, M.; Kadler, M.; Kalekin, O.; Katz, U.; Kießling, D.; Kooijman, P.; Kouchner, A.; Kreter, M.; Kreykenbohm, I.; Kulikovskiy, V.; Lahmann, R.; Lefèvre, D.; Leonora, E.; Loucatos, S.; Marcelin, M.; Margiotta, A.; Marinelli, A.; Martínez-Mora, J. A.; Mathieu, A.; Michael, T.; Migliozzi, P.; Moussa, A.; Müller, C.; Nezri, E.; Păvălaş, G. E.; Pellegrino, C.; Perrina, C.; Piattelli, P.; Popa, V.; Pradier, T.; Racca, C.; Riccobene, G.; Richter, R.; Roensch, K.; Saldaña, M.; Samtleben, D. F. E.; Sánchez-Losa, A.; Sanguineti, M.; Sapienza, P.; Schmid, J.; Schnabel, J.; Schüssler, F.; Seitz, T.; Sieger, C.; Spurio, M.; Steijger, J. J. M.; Stolarczyk, Th.; Taiuti, M.; Tamburini, C.; Trovato, A.; Tselengidou, M.; Tönnis, C.; Vallage, B.; Vallée, C.; Van Elewyck, V.; Visser, E.; Vivolo, D.; Wagner, S.; Wilms, J.; Zornoza, J. D.; Zúñiga, J.

2017-01-01

A search for high-energy neutrino emission correlated with gamma-ray bursts outside the electromagnetic prompt-emission time window is presented. Using a stacking approach of the time delays between reported gamma-ray burst alerts and spatially coincident muon-neutrino signatures, data from the Antares neutrino telescope recorded between 2007 and 2012 are analysed. One year of public data from the IceCube detector between 2008 and 2009 have been also investigated. The respective timing profiles are scanned for statistically significant accumulations within 40 days of the Gamma Ray Burst, as expected from Lorentz Invariance Violation effects and some astrophysical models. No significant excess over the expected accidental coincidence rate could be found in either of the two data sets. The average strength of the neutrino signal is found to be fainter than one detectable neutrino signal per hundred gamma-ray bursts in the Antares data at 90% confidence level.

Estimating Driving Performance Based on EEG Spectrum Analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lin, Chin-Teng; Wu, Ruei-Cheng; Jung, Tzyy-Ping; Liang, Sheng-Fu; Huang, Teng-Yi

2005-12-01

The growing number of traffic accidents in recent years has become a serious concern to society. Accidents caused by driver's drowsiness behind the steering wheel have a high fatality rate because of the marked decline in the driver's abilities of perception, recognition, and vehicle control abilities while sleepy. Preventing such accidents caused by drowsiness is highly desirable but requires techniques for continuously detecting, estimating, and predicting the level of alertness of drivers and delivering effective feedbacks to maintain their maximum performance. This paper proposes an EEG-based drowsiness estimation system that combines electroencephalogram (EEG) log subband power spectrum, correlation analysis, principal component analysis, and linear regression models to indirectly estimate driver's drowsiness level in a virtual-reality-based driving simulator. Our results demonstrated that it is feasible to accurately estimate quantitatively driving performance, expressed as deviation between the center of the vehicle and the center of the cruising lane, in a realistic driving simulator.

Use of EEG workload indices for diagnostic monitoring of vigilance decrement.

PubMed

Kamzanova, Altyngul T; Kustubayeva, Almira M; Matthews, Gerald

2014-09-01

A study was run to test which of five electroencephalographic (EEG) indices was most diagnostic of loss of vigilance at two levels of workload. EEG indices of alertness include conventional spectral power measures as well as indices combining measures from multiple frequency bands, such as the Task Load Index (TLI) and the Engagement Index (El). However, it is unclear which indices are optimal for early detection of loss of vigilance. Ninety-two participants were assigned to one of two experimental conditions, cued (lower workload) and uncued (higher workload), and then performed a 40-min visual vigilance task. Performance on this task is believed to be limited by attentional resource availability. EEG was recorded continuously. Performance, subjective state, and workload were also assessed. The task showed a vigilance decrement in performance; cuing improved performance and reduced subjective workload. Lower-frequency alpha (8 to 10.9 Hz) and TLI were most sensitive to the task parameters. The magnitude of temporal change was larger for lower-frequency alpha. Surprisingly, higher TLI was associated with superior performance. Frontal theta and El were influenced by task workload only in the final period of work. Correlational data also suggested that the indices are distinct from one another. Lower-frequency alpha appears to be the optimal index for monitoring vigilance on the task used here, but further work is needed to test how diagnosticity of EEG indices varies with task demands. Lower-frequency alpha may be used to diagnose loss of operator alertness on tasks requiring vigilance.

49 CFR 229.5 - Definitions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-10-01

... locomotive engineer attentiveness by monitoring select locomotive engineer-induced control activities. If fluctuation of a monitored locomotive engineer-induced control activity is not detected within a predetermined... monitored control, or acknowledge the alerter alarm activity through a manual reset provision, results in a...

49 CFR 229.5 - Definitions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-10-01

... locomotive engineer attentiveness by monitoring select locomotive engineer-induced control activities. If fluctuation of a monitored locomotive engineer-induced control activity is not detected within a predetermined... monitored control, or acknowledge the alerter alarm activity through a manual reset provision, results in a...

49 CFR 229.5 - Definitions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-10-01

... locomotive engineer attentiveness by monitoring select locomotive engineer-induced control activities. If fluctuation of a monitored locomotive engineer-induced control activity is not detected within a predetermined... monitored control, or acknowledge the alerter alarm activity through a manual reset provision, results in a...

21st Century Cancer ALERT (Access to Life-Saving Early detection, Research and Treatment) Act

THOMAS, 111th Congress

Sen. Kennedy, Edward M. [D-MA

2009-03-26

Senate - 03/26/2009 Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. (All Actions) Tracker: This bill has the status IntroducedHere are the steps for Status of Legislation:

Reduced Effectiveness of Interruptive Drug-Drug Interaction Alerts after Conversion to a Commercial Electronic Health Record.

PubMed

Wright, Adam; Aaron, Skye; Seger, Diane L; Samal, Lipika; Schiff, Gordon D; Bates, David W

2018-05-15

Drug-drug interaction (DDI) alerts in electronic health records (EHRs) can help prevent adverse drug events, but such alerts are frequently overridden, raising concerns about their clinical usefulness and contribution to alert fatigue. To study the effect of conversion to a commercial EHR on DDI alert and acceptance rates. Two before-and-after studies. 3277 clinicians who received a DDI alert in the outpatient setting. Introduction of a new, commercial EHR and subsequent adjustment of DDI alerting criteria. Alert burden and proportion of alerts accepted. Overall interruptive DDI alert burden increased by a factor of 6 from the legacy EHR to the commercial EHR. The acceptance rate for the most severe alerts fell from 100 to 8.4%, and from 29.3 to 7.5% for medium severity alerts (P < 0.001). After disabling the least severe alerts, total DDI alert burden fell by 50.5%, and acceptance of Tier 1 alerts rose from 9.1 to 12.7% (P < 0.01). Changing from a highly tailored DDI alerting system to a more general one as part of an EHR conversion decreased acceptance of DDI alerts and increased alert burden on users. The decrease in acceptance rates cannot be fully explained by differences in the clinical knowledge base, nor can it be fully explained by alert fatigue associated with increased alert burden. Instead, workflow factors probably predominate, including timing of alerts in the prescribing process, lack of differentiation of more and less severe alerts, and features of how users interact with alerts.

Hot spots in a wired world: WHO surveillance of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases.

PubMed

Heymann, D L; Rodier, G R

2001-12-01

The resurgence of the microbial threat, rooted in several recent trends, has increased the vulnerability of all nations to the risk of infectious diseases, whether newly emerging, well-established, or deliberately caused. Infectious disease intelligence, gleaned through sensitive surveillance, is the best defence. The epidemiological and laboratory techniques needed to detect, investigate, and contain a deliberate outbreak are the same as those used for natural outbreaks. In April 2000, WHO formalised an infrastructure (the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network) for responding to the heightened need for early awareness of outbreaks and preparedness to respond. The Network, which unites 110 existing networks, is supported by several new mechanisms and a computer-driven tool for real time gathering of disease intelligence. The procedure for outbreak alert and response has four phases: systematic detection, outbreak verification, real time alerts, and rapid response. For response, the framework uses different strategies for combating known risks and unexpected events, and for improving both global and national preparedness. New forces at work in an electronically interconnected world are beginning to break down the traditional reluctance of countries to report outbreaks due to fear of the negative impact on trade and tourism. About 65% of the world's first news about infectious disease events now comes from informal sources, including press reports and the internet.

Using the eServices platform for detecting behavior patterns deviation in the elderly assisted living: a case study.

PubMed

Marcelino, Isabel; Lopes, David; Reis, Michael; Silva, Fernando; Laza, Rosalía; Pereira, António

2015-01-01

World's aging population is rising and the elderly are increasingly isolated socially and geographically. As a consequence, in many situations, they need assistance that is not granted in time. In this paper, we present a solution that follows the CRISP-DM methodology to detect the elderly's behavior pattern deviations that may indicate possible risk situations. To obtain these patterns, many variables are aggregated to ensure the alert system reliability and minimize eventual false positive alert situations. These variables comprehend information provided by body area network (BAN), by environment sensors, and also by the elderly's interaction in a service provider platform, called eServices--Elderly Support Service Platform. eServices is a scalable platform aggregating a service ecosystem developed specially for elderly people. This pattern recognition will further activate the adequate response. With the system evolution, it will learn to predict potential danger situations for a specified user, acting preventively and ensuring the elderly's safety and well-being. As the eServices platform is still in development, synthetic data, based on real data sample and empiric knowledge, is being used to populate the initial dataset. The presented work is a proof of concept of knowledge extraction using the eServices platform information. Regardless of not using real data, this work proves to be an asset, achieving a good performance in preventing alert situations.

Using the eServices Platform for Detecting Behavior Patterns Deviation in the Elderly Assisted Living: A Case Study

PubMed Central

Marcelino, Isabel; Laza, Rosalía

2015-01-01

World's aging population is rising and the elderly are increasingly isolated socially and geographically. As a consequence, in many situations, they need assistance that is not granted in time. In this paper, we present a solution that follows the CRISP-DM methodology to detect the elderly's behavior pattern deviations that may indicate possible risk situations. To obtain these patterns, many variables are aggregated to ensure the alert system reliability and minimize eventual false positive alert situations. These variables comprehend information provided by body area network (BAN), by environment sensors, and also by the elderly's interaction in a service provider platform, called eServices—Elderly Support Service Platform. eServices is a scalable platform aggregating a service ecosystem developed specially for elderly people. This pattern recognition will further activate the adequate response. With the system evolution, it will learn to predict potential danger situations for a specified user, acting preventively and ensuring the elderly's safety and well-being. As the eServices platform is still in development, synthetic data, based on real data sample and empiric knowledge, is being used to populate the initial dataset. The presented work is a proof of concept of knowledge extraction using the eServices platform information. Regardless of not using real data, this work proves to be an asset, achieving a good performance in preventing alert situations. PMID:25874219

Research on the Relationship between Reaction Ability and Mental State for Online Assessment of Driving Fatigue.

PubMed

Guo, Mengzhu; Li, Shiwu; Wang, Linhong; Chai, Meng; Chen, Facheng; Wei, Yunong

2016-11-24

Background: Driving fatigue affects the reaction ability of a driver. The aim of this research is to analyze the relationship between driving fatigue, physiological signals and driver's reaction time. Methods: Twenty subjects were tested during driving. Data pertaining to reaction time and physiological signals including electroencephalograph (EEG) were collected from twenty simulation experiments. Grey correlation analysis was used to select the input variable of the classification model. A support vector machine was used to divide the mental state into three levels. The penalty factor for the model was optimized using a genetic algorithm. Results: The results show that α/β has the greatest correlation to reaction time. The classification results show an accuracy of 86%, a sensitivity of 87.5% and a specificity of 85.53%. The average increase of reaction time is 16.72% from alert state to fatigued state. Females have a faster decrease in reaction ability than males as driving fatigue accumulates. Elderly drivers have longer reaction times than the young. Conclusions: A grey correlation analysis can be used to improve the classification accuracy of the support vector machine (SVM) model. This paper provides basic research that online detection of fatigue can be performed using only a simple device, which is more comfortable for users.

Research on the Relationship between Reaction Ability and Mental State for Online Assessment of Driving Fatigue

PubMed Central

Guo, Mengzhu; Li, Shiwu; Wang, Linhong; Chai, Meng; Chen, Facheng; Wei, Yunong

2016-01-01

Background: Driving fatigue affects the reaction ability of a driver. The aim of this research is to analyze the relationship between driving fatigue, physiological signals and driver’s reaction time. Methods: Twenty subjects were tested during driving. Data pertaining to reaction time and physiological signals including electroencephalograph (EEG) were collected from twenty simulation experiments. Grey correlation analysis was used to select the input variable of the classification model. A support vector machine was used to divide the mental state into three levels. The penalty factor for the model was optimized using a genetic algorithm. Results: The results show that α/β has the greatest correlation to reaction time. The classification results show an accuracy of 86%, a sensitivity of 87.5% and a specificity of 85.53%. The average increase of reaction time is 16.72% from alert state to fatigued state. Females have a faster decrease in reaction ability than males as driving fatigue accumulates. Elderly drivers have longer reaction times than the young. Conclusions: A grey correlation analysis can be used to improve the classification accuracy of the support vector machine (SVM) model. This paper provides basic research that online detection of fatigue can be performed using only a simple device, which is more comfortable for users. PMID:27886139

Real-time Transient Monitoring With the HAWC Detector: Design and Performance

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wisher, Ian Gabriel

Blazars are some of the most energetic environments in the Universe with exceptionally strong non-thermal emission. Since the detection of VHE variability in the blazar Markarian 421, observations of blazars and their VHE variability have been an active field of research. Through long campaigns of observations, blazars have shown variability over timescales that vary from minutes to days across the electromagnetic spectrum from radio to TeV gamma rays. Though rare, the variability can also have extreme outburst events where the flux peaks at several orders of magnitude higher than the quiescent state of the source. These outbursts are interesting not only for constraining the models of acceleration and variability but also as tools to study other physics topics such as the extragalactic background light, intergalactic magnetic field, and Lorentz invariance. Though powerful, the rarity of these events makes studies challenging and motivates additional searches and detections. The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) detector is an extensive air shower instrument with a high duty cycle, large field of view, and extraordinary sensitivity to TeV gamma rays. This allows HAWC to perform unbiased monitoring of a large number of different sources for flaring states and catch rare events such as the aforementioned blazar flares. This work presents a search for short timescale flares from known blazars and TeV sources for the first year of HAWC data with the capability to generate alerts in real time. In the course of this work, a variety of new hardware, software, and detection techniques were developed in conjunction with the construction of the HAWC detector. These include hardware development on the design of the main data acquisition system, electronics integrations and testing, design/testing of the online reconstruction system, and design of the electronics for the outrigger extension. Algorithms and methods to detect transients in HAWC time series data were developed and characterized to allow the rapid reporting of detected flares to other observatories for follow up observations. We identify several candidate flares from historical data that would have been good candidates for alerting other experiments. This shows the method is behaving as expected and capable of detecting and alerting other experiments of large flares.

INITIATE: An Intelligent Adaptive Alert Environment.

PubMed

Jafarpour, Borna; Abidi, Samina Raza; Ahmad, Ahmad Marwan; Abidi, Syed Sibte Raza

2015-01-01

Exposure to a large volume of alerts generated by medical Alert Generating Systems (AGS) such as drug-drug interaction softwares or clinical decision support systems over-whelms users and causes alert fatigue in them. Some of alert fatigue effects are ignoring crucial alerts and longer response times. A common approach to avoid alert fatigue is to devise mechanisms in AGS to stop them from generating alerts that are deemed irrelevant. In this paper, we present a novel framework called INITIATE: an INtellIgent adapTIve AlerT Environment to avoid alert fatigue by managing alerts generated by one or more AGS. We have identified and categories the lifecycle of different alerts and have developed alert management logic as per the alerts' lifecycle. Our framework incorporates an ontology that represents the alert management strategy and an alert management engine that executes this strategy. Our alert management framework offers the following features: (1) Adaptability based on users' feedback; (2) Personalization and aggregation of messages; and (3) Connection to Electronic Medical Records by implementing a HL7 Clinical Document Architecture parser.

Providing accurate near real-time fire alerts for Protected Areas through NASA FIRMS: Opportunities and Challenges

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ilavajhala, S.; Davies, D.; Schmaltz, J. E.; Wong, M.; Murphy, K. J.

2013-12-01

The NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) is at the forefront of providing global near real-time (NRT) MODIS thermal anomalies / hotspot location data to end-users . FIRMS serves the data via an interactive Web GIS named Web Fire Mapper, downloads of NRT active fire, archive data downloads for MODIS hotspots dating back to 1999 and a hotspot email alert system The FIRMS Email Alerts system has been successfully alerting users of fires in their area of interest in near real-time and/or via daily and weekly email summaries, with an option to receive MODIS hotspot data as a text file (CSV) attachment. Currently, there are more than 7000 email alert subscriptions from more than 100 countries. Specifically, the email alerts system is designed to generate and send an email alert for any region or area on the globe, with a special focus on providing alerts for protected areas worldwide. For many protected areas, email alerts are particularly useful for early fire detection, monitoring on going fires, as well as allocating resources to protect wildlife and natural resources of particular value. For protected areas, FIRMS uses the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) supplied by United Nations Environment Program - World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC). Maintaining the most up-to-date, accurate boundary geometry for the protected areas for the email alerts is a challenge as the WDPA is continuously updated due to changing boundaries, merging or delisting of certain protected areas. Because of this dynamic nature of the protected areas database, the FIRMS protected areas database is frequently out-of-date with the most current version of WDPA database. To maintain the most up-to-date boundary information for protected areas and to be in compliance with the WDPA terms and conditions, FIRMS needs to constantly update its database of protected areas. Currently, FIRMS strives to keep its database up to date by downloading the most recent WDPA database at regular intervals, processing it, and ingesting it into the FIRMS spatial database. However, due to the large size of database, the process to download, process and ingest the database is quite time consuming. The FIRMS team is currently working on developing a method to update the protected areas database via web at regular intervals or on-demand. Using such a solution, FIRMS will be able access the most up-to-date extents of any protected area and the corresponding spatial geometries in real time. As such, FIRMS can utilize such a service to access the protected areas and their associated geometries to keep users' protected area boundaries in sync with those of the most recent WDPA database, and thus serve a more accurate email alert to the users. Furthermore, any client accessing the WDPA protected areas database could potentially use the solution of real-time access to the protected areas database. This talk primarily focuses on the challenges for FIRMS in sending accurate email alerts for protected areas, along with the solution the FIRMS team is developing. This talk also introduces the FIRMS fire information system and its components, with a special emphasis on the FIRMS email alerts system.

Neisseria gonorrhoeae and extended-spectrum cephalosporins in California: surveillance and molecular detection of mosaic penA.

PubMed

Gose, Severin; Nguyen, Duylinh; Lowenberg, Daniella; Samuel, Michael; Bauer, Heidi; Pandori, Mark

2013-12-04

The spread of Neisseria gonorrhoeae strains with mosaic penA alleles and reduced susceptibility to extended-spectrum cephalosporins is a major public health problem. While much work has been performed internationally, little is known about the genetics or molecular epidemiology of N. gonorrhoeae isolates with reduced susceptibility to extended-spectrum cephalosporins in the United States. The majority of N. gonorrhoeae infections are diagnosed without a live culture. Molecular tools capable of detecting markers of extended-spectrum cephalosporin resistance are needed. Urethral N. gonorrhoeae isolates were collected from 684 men at public health clinics in California in 2011. Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) to ceftriaxone, cefixime, cefpodoxime and azithromycin were determined by Etest and categorized according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control 2010 alert value breakpoints. 684 isolates were screened for mosaic penA alleles using real-time PCR (RTPCR) and 59 reactive isolates were subjected to DNA sequencing of their penA alleles and Neisseria gonorrhoeae multi-antigen sequence typing (NG-MAST). To increase the specificity of the screening RTPCR in detecting isolates with alert value extended-spectrum cephalosporin MICs, the primers were modified to selectively amplify the mosaic XXXIV penA allele. Three mosaic penA alleles were detected including two previously described alleles (XXXIV, XXXVIII) and one novel allele (LA-A). Of the 29 isolates with an alert value extended-spectrum cephalosporin MIC, all possessed the mosaic XXXIV penA allele and 18 were sequence type 1407, an internationally successful strain associated with multi-drug resistance. The modified RTPCR detected the mosaic XXXIV penA allele in urethral isolates and urine specimens and displayed no amplification of the other penA alleles detected in this study. N. gonorrhoeae isolates with mosaic penA alleles and reduced susceptibility to extended-spectrum cephalosporins are currently circulating in California. Isolates with the same NG-MAST ST, penA allele and extended-spectrum cephalosporin MICs have caused treatment failures elsewhere. The RTPCR assay presented here may be useful for the detection of N. gonorrheoae isolates and clinical specimens with reduced extended-spectrum cephalosporin MICs in settings where antimicrobial susceptibility testing is unavailable. In an era of increasing antimicrobial resistance and decreasing culture capacity, molecular assays capable of detecting extended-spectrum cephalosporin of resistance are essential to public health.

Neisseria gonorrhoeae and extended-spectrum cephalosporins in California: surveillance and molecular detection of mosaic penA

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background The spread of Neisseria gonorrhoeae strains with mosaic penA alleles and reduced susceptibility to extended-spectrum cephalosporins is a major public health problem. While much work has been performed internationally, little is known about the genetics or molecular epidemiology of N. gonorrhoeae isolates with reduced susceptibility to extended-spectrum cephalosporins in the United States. The majority of N. gonorrhoeae infections are diagnosed without a live culture. Molecular tools capable of detecting markers of extended-spectrum cephalosporin resistance are needed. Methods Urethral N. gonorrhoeae isolates were collected from 684 men at public health clinics in California in 2011. Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) to ceftriaxone, cefixime, cefpodoxime and azithromycin were determined by Etest and categorized according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control 2010 alert value breakpoints. 684 isolates were screened for mosaic penA alleles using real-time PCR (RTPCR) and 59 reactive isolates were subjected to DNA sequencing of their penA alleles and Neisseria gonorrhoeae multi-antigen sequence typing (NG-MAST). To increase the specificity of the screening RTPCR in detecting isolates with alert value extended-spectrum cephalosporin MICs, the primers were modified to selectively amplify the mosaic XXXIV penA allele. Results Three mosaic penA alleles were detected including two previously described alleles (XXXIV, XXXVIII) and one novel allele (LA-A). Of the 29 isolates with an alert value extended-spectrum cephalosporin MIC, all possessed the mosaic XXXIV penA allele and 18 were sequence type 1407, an internationally successful strain associated with multi-drug resistance. The modified RTPCR detected the mosaic XXXIV penA allele in urethral isolates and urine specimens and displayed no amplification of the other penA alleles detected in this study. Conclusion N. gonorrhoeae isolates with mosaic penA alleles and reduced susceptibility to extended-spectrum cephalosporins are currently circulating in California. Isolates with the same NG-MAST ST, penA allele and extended-spectrum cephalosporin MICs have caused treatment failures elsewhere. The RTPCR assay presented here may be useful for the detection of N. gonorrheoae isolates and clinical specimens with reduced extended-spectrum cephalosporin MICs in settings where antimicrobial susceptibility testing is unavailable. In an era of increasing antimicrobial resistance and decreasing culture capacity, molecular assays capable of detecting extended-spectrum cephalosporin of resistance are essential to public health. PMID:24305088

The French Infectious Diseases Society's readiness and response to epidemic or biological risk-the current situation following the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus and Ebola virus disease alerts.

PubMed

Coignard-Biehler, H; Rapp, C; Chapplain, J M; Hoen, B; Che, D; Berthelot, P; Cazenave-Roblot, F; Rabaud, C; Brouqui, P; Leport, C

2018-03-01

In 2012, the French Infectious Diseases Society (French acronym SPILF) initiated the "Coordination of epidemic and biological risk" (SPILF-COREB - Emergences [SCE]) group to support the readiness and response of healthcare workers (HCWs) to new alerts. To present the SCE group, its functioning, and the main support it provided for frontline HCWs. A multidisciplinary group of heads of infectious disease departments from reference hospitals was created to build a network of clinical expertise for care, training, and research in the field of epidemic and biological risk (EBR). The network developed a set of standardized operational procedures (SOPs) to guide interventions to manage EBR-suspect patients. A working group created the SOP aimed at frontline HCWs taking care of patients. Priority was given to the development of a generic procedure, which was then adapted according to the current alert. Five key steps were identified and hierarchized: detecting, protecting, caring for, alerting, and referring the EBR patient. The interaction between clinicians and those responsible for the protection of the community was crucial. The SOPs validated by the SPILF and its affiliates were disseminated to a wide range of key stakeholders through various media including workshops and the SPILF's website. SPILF can easily adapt and timely mobilize the EBR expertise in case of an alert. The present work suggests that sharing and discussing this experience, initiated at the European level, can generate a new collective expertise and needs to be further developed and strengthened. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Clinical decision support alert malfunctions: analysis and empirically derived taxonomy.

PubMed

Wright, Adam; Ai, Angela; Ash, Joan; Wiesen, Jane F; Hickman, Thu-Trang T; Aaron, Skye; McEvoy, Dustin; Borkowsky, Shane; Dissanayake, Pavithra I; Embi, Peter; Galanter, William; Harper, Jeremy; Kassakian, Steve Z; Ramoni, Rachel; Schreiber, Richard; Sirajuddin, Anwar; Bates, David W; Sittig, Dean F

2018-05-01

To develop an empirically derived taxonomy of clinical decision support (CDS) alert malfunctions. We identified CDS alert malfunctions using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods: (1) site visits with interviews of chief medical informatics officers, CDS developers, clinical leaders, and CDS end users; (2) surveys of chief medical informatics officers; (3) analysis of CDS firing rates; and (4) analysis of CDS overrides. We used a multi-round, manual, iterative card sort to develop a multi-axial, empirically derived taxonomy of CDS malfunctions. We analyzed 68 CDS alert malfunction cases from 14 sites across the United States with diverse electronic health record systems. Four primary axes emerged: the cause of the malfunction, its mode of discovery, when it began, and how it affected rule firing. Build errors, conceptualization errors, and the introduction of new concepts or terms were the most frequent causes. User reports were the predominant mode of discovery. Many malfunctions within our database caused rules to fire for patients for whom they should not have (false positives), but the reverse (false negatives) was also common. Across organizations and electronic health record systems, similar malfunction patterns recurred. Challenges included updates to code sets and values, software issues at the time of system upgrades, difficulties with migration of CDS content between computing environments, and the challenge of correctly conceptualizing and building CDS. CDS alert malfunctions are frequent. The empirically derived taxonomy formalizes the common recurring issues that cause these malfunctions, helping CDS developers anticipate and prevent CDS malfunctions before they occur or detect and resolve them expediently.

The Study of Biobehavioral Rhythms in a Psychology Laboratory Course.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rowland, David L.; Wesselhoft, Theresa

1998-01-01

Reports on a laboratory experiment where students measured their heart rate, blood pressure, mood, alertness, and cognitive performance. Measures showed significant circadian heart rhythm variations. They were strongly correlated and peaked at different times. Discusses the implications of this and students' reactions to the experiment. (MJP)

Improving Service Management in Campus IT Operations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wan, Stewart H. C.; Chan, Yuk-Hee

2008-01-01

Purpose: This paper aims at presenting the benefits from implementing IT service management (ITSM) in an organization for managing campus-wide IT operations. In order to improve the fault correlation from business perspectives, we proposed a framework to automate network and system alerts with respect to its business service impact for proactive…

Solar Demon: near real-time solar eruptive event detection on SDO/AIA images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kraaikamp, Emil; Verbeeck, Cis

Solar flares, dimmings and EUV waves have been observed routinely in extreme ultra-violet (EUV) images of the Sun since 1996. These events are closely associated with coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and therefore provide useful information for early space weather alerts. The Solar Dynamics Observatory/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (SDO/AIA) generates such a massive dataset that it becomes impossible to find most of these eruptive events manually. Solar Demon is a set of automatic detection algorithms that attempts to solve this problem by providing both near real-time warnings of eruptive events and a catalog of characterized events. Solar Demon has been designed to detect and characterize dimmings, EUV waves, as well as solar flares in near real-time on SDO/AIA data. The detection modules are running continuously at the Royal Observatory of Belgium on both quick-look data and synoptic science data. The output of Solar Demon can be accessed in near real-time on the Solar Demon website, and includes images, movies, light curves, and the numerical evolution of several parameters. Solar Demon is the result of collaboration between the FP7 projects AFFECTS and COMESEP. Flare detections of Solar Demon are integrated into the COMESEP alert system. Here we present the Solar Demon detection algorithms and their output. We will focus on the algorithm and its operational implementation. Examples of interesting flare, dimming and EUV wave events, and general statistics of the detections made so far during solar cycle 24 will be presented as well.

Alert dwell time: introduction of a measure to evaluate interruptive clinical decision support alerts.

PubMed

McDaniel, Robert B; Burlison, Jonathan D; Baker, Donald K; Hasan, Murad; Robertson, Jennifer; Hartford, Christine; Howard, Scott C; Sablauer, Andras; Hoffman, James M

2016-04-01

Metrics for evaluating interruptive prescribing alerts have many limitations. Additional methods are needed to identify opportunities to improve alerting systems and prevent alert fatigue. In this study, the authors determined whether alert dwell time-the time elapsed from when an interruptive alert is generated to when it is dismissed-could be calculated by using historical alert data from log files. Drug-drug interaction (DDI) alerts from 3 years of electronic health record data were queried. Alert dwell time was calculated for 25,965 alerts, including 777 unique DDIs. The median alert dwell time was 8 s (range, 1-4913 s). Resident physicians had longer median alert dwell times than other prescribers (P < 001). The 10 most frequent DDI alerts (n = 8759 alerts) had shorter median dwell times than alerts that only occurred once (P < 001). This metric can be used in future research to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of interruptive prescribing alerts. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Nova Mus 2018 (PNV J11261220-6531086) Is Forming Dust

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Walter, Frederick M.

2018-02-01

Nova Mus 2018 (PNV J11261220-6531086) was discovered by R Kaufman on 2018 Jan 14.486, and reported by P. Schmeer in vsnet-alert 21772. The first detection was 2018 Jan 3.24 (ASAS-SN, reported in the TOCP).

The effects of spectral tuning of evening ambient light on melatonin suppression, alertness and sleep.

PubMed

Rahman, Shadab A; St Hilaire, Melissa A; Lockley, Steven W

2017-08-01

We compared the effects of bedroom-intensity light from a standard fluorescent and a blue- (i.e., short-wavelength) depleted LED source on melatonin suppression, alertness, and sleep. Sixteen healthy participants (8 females) completed a 4-day inpatient study. Participants were exposed to blue-depleted circadian-sensitive (C-LED) light and a standard fluorescent light (FL, 4100K) of equal illuminance (50lx) for 8h prior to a fixed bedtime on two separate days in a within-subject, randomized, cross-over design. Each light exposure day was preceded by a dim light (<3lx) control at the same time 24h earlier. Compared to the FL condition, control-adjusted melatonin suppression was significantly reduced. Although subjective sleepiness was not different between the two light conditions, auditory reaction times were significantly slower under C-LED conditions compared to FL 30min prior to bedtime. EEG-based correlates of alertness corroborated the reduced alertness under C-LED conditions as shown by significantly increased EEG spectral power in the delta-theta (0.5-8.0Hz) bands under C-LED as compared to FL exposure. There was no significant difference in total sleep time (TST), sleep efficiency (SE%), and slow-wave activity (SWA) between the two conditions. Unlike melatonin suppression and alertness, a significant order effect was observed on all three sleep variables, however. Individuals who received C-LED first and then FL had increased TST, SE% and SWA averaged across both nights compared to individuals who received FL first and then C-LED. These data show that the spectral characteristics of light can be fine-tuned to attenuate non-visual responses to light in humans. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A Protocol Specification-Based Intrusion Detection System for VoIP and Its Evaluation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Phit, Thyda; Abe, Kôki

We propose an architecture of Intrusion Detection System (IDS) for VoIP using a protocol specification-based detection method to monitor the network traffics and alert administrator for further analysis of and response to suspicious activities. The protocol behaviors and their interactions are described by state machines. Traffic that behaves differently from the standard specifications are considered to be suspicious. The IDS has been implemented and simulated using OPNET Modeler, and verified to detect attacks. It was found that our system can detect typical attacks within a reasonable amount of delay time.

Monitoring heart rate variability to assess experimentally induced pain using the analgesia nociception index: A randomised volunteer study.

PubMed

Jess, Gunnar; Pogatzki-Zahn, Esther M; Zahn, Peter K; Meyer-Frießem, Christine H

2016-02-01

Pain assessment using a numerical rating scale (NRS) is considered good clinical practice, but objective assessment in noncommunicating patients is still a challenge. A potential solution is to monitor changes in heart rate variability transformed into the analgesia nociception index (ANI), that offers a noninvasive means of pain quantification. The aim was to measure magnitudes, descending slopes and time courses of ANI following expected and unexpected painful, nonpainful and sham experimental stimuli and compare these with pain intensity as assessed by NRS in conscious human volunteers. We expected a negative correlation between ANI and NRS after painful stimuli. Randomised stimuli and placebo-controlled, single-blinded study. Experimental pain simulation laboratory, Bochum, Germany. Twenty healthy male students, (mean ± standard deviation; 24.2 ± 1.9 years) recruited via local advertising, were consecutively included. ANI values were continuously recorded. After resting, four stimuli were applied in a random order on the right forearm (unexpected and expected electrical pain, expected nonpainful and sham stimuli). Blinded volunteers were asked to rate all four stimuli on NRS. ANI means (0-100), amplitudes, maxima, minima and slopes with NRS pain intensity scores (0-10). Resting alert volunteers showed ANI values of 82.05 ± 10.71. ANI decreased after a random stimulus (maximal decrease of 25.0 ± 7.3%), but different kinds of stimuli evoked similar results. NRS scores (median; interquartiles) were significantly (P = 0.008) higher after expected (5.25; 3.5-6.75) compared with unexpected (4.50; 3.0-5.0) pain stimuli. No correlation was found between ANI and NRS. ANI did not allow a differentiation of painful, nonpainful or sham stimuli in alert volunteers. Therefore, ANI does not exclusively detect nociception, but may be modified by stress and emotion. Thus, we conclude that ANI is not a specific, robust measure for assessment of pain intensity.

Potential Drug-Drug Interactions in a Cohort of Elderly, Polymedicated Primary Care Patients on Antithrombotic Treatment.

PubMed

Schneider, Katharina Luise; Kastenmüller, Kathrin; Weckbecker, Klaus; Bleckwenn, Markus; Böhme, Miriam; Stingl, Julia Carolin

2018-06-01

Drug-drug interactions (DDIs) are an important risk factor for adverse drug reactions. Older, polymedicated patients are particularly affected. Although antithrombotics have been detected as high-risk drugs for DDIs, data on older patients exposed to them are scarce. Baseline data of 365 IDrug study outpatients (≥ 60 years, use of an antithrombotic and one or more additional long-term drug) were analyzed regarding potential drug-drug interactions (pDDIs) with a clinical decision support system. Data included prescription and self-medication drugs. The prevalence of having one or more pDDI was 85.2%. The median number of alerts per patient was three (range 0-17). For 58.4% of the patients, potential severe/contraindicated interactions were detected. Antiplatelets and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) showed the highest number of average pDDI alert involvements per use (2.9 and 2.2, respectively). For NSAIDs, also the highest average number of severe/contraindicated alert involvements per use (1.2) was observed. 91.8% of all pDDI involvements concerned the 25 most frequently used drug classes. 97.5% of the severe/contraindicated pDDIs were attributed to only nine different potential clinical manifestations. The most common management recommendation for severe/contraindicated pDDIs was to intensify monitoring. Number of drugs was the only detected factor significantly associated with increased number of pDDIs (p < 0.001). The findings indicate a high risk for pDDIs in older, polymedicated patients on antithrombotics. As a consequence of patients' frequently similar drug regimens, the variety of potential clinical manifestations was small. Awareness of these pDDI symptoms and the triggering drugs as well as patients' self-medication use may contribute to increased patient safety.

Automated detection of physiologic deterioration in hospitalized patients.

PubMed

Evans, R Scott; Kuttler, Kathryn G; Simpson, Kathy J; Howe, Stephen; Crossno, Peter F; Johnson, Kyle V; Schreiner, Misty N; Lloyd, James F; Tettelbach, William H; Keddington, Roger K; Tanner, Alden; Wilde, Chelbi; Clemmer, Terry P

2015-03-01

Develop and evaluate an automated case detection and response triggering system to monitor patients every 5 min and identify early signs of physiologic deterioration. A 2-year prospective, observational study at a large level 1 trauma center. All patients admitted to a 33-bed medical and oncology floor (A) and a 33-bed non-intensive care unit (ICU) surgical trauma floor (B) were monitored. During the intervention year, pager alerts of early physiologic deterioration were automatically sent to charge nurses along with access to a graphical point-of-care web page to facilitate patient evaluation. Nurses reported the positive predictive value of alerts was 91-100% depending on erroneous data presence. Unit A patients were significantly older and had significantly more comorbidities than unit B patients. During the intervention year, unit A patients had a significant increase in length of stay, more transfers to ICU (p = 0.23), and significantly more medical emergency team (MET) calls (p = 0.0008), and significantly fewer died (p = 0.044) compared to the pre-intervention year. No significant differences were found on unit B. We monitored patients every 5 min and provided automated pages of early physiologic deterioration. This before-after study found a significant increase in MET calls and a significant decrease in mortality only in the unit with older patients with multiple comorbidities, and thus further study is warranted to detect potential confounding. Moreover, nurses reported the graphical alerts provided information needed to quickly evaluate patients, and they felt more confident about their assessment and more comfortable requesting help. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Field and laboratory comparison of the sensitivity and reliability of cocaine detection on currency using chemical sensors, humans, K-9s, and SPME/GC/MS/MS analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Furton, Kenneth G.; Hsu, Ya-Li; Luo, Tien-Ying; Norelus, Arnold; Rose, Stefan

1999-02-01

Reports that money in general circulation is contaminated with cocaine have resulted in contaminated money theories purporting that any person carrying currency could potentially initiate a drug dog alert. Field tests on dozens of different drug detector dogs with widely varying breeds, ages and training regimes show a consistent threshold level of 1 - 10 (mu) g of methyl benzoate spiked along with cocaine on U.S. currency or 0.1 - 1 ng/sec methyl benzoate diffusion required to initiate an alert. No other substance studied to data has initiated consistent responses by the drug dogs studied.

The Generic Resolution Advisor and Conflict Evaluator (GRACE) for Detect-And-Avoid (DAA) Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Abramson, Michael; Refai, Mohamad; Santiago, Confesor

2017-01-01

The paper describes the Generic Resolution Advisor and Conflict Evaluator (GRACE), a novel alerting and guidance algorithm that combines flexibility, robustness, and computational efficiency. GRACE is "generic" in that it makes no assumptions regarding temporal or spatial scales, aircraft performance, or its sensor and communication systems. Accordingly, GRACE is well suited to research applications where alerting and guidance is a central feature and requirements are fluid involving a wide range of aviation technologies. GRACE has been used at NASA in a number of real-time and fast-time experiments supporting evolving requirements of DAA research, including parametric studies, NAS-wide simulations, human-in-the-loop experiments, and live flight tests.

Simulator Evaluation of Runway Incursion Prevention Technology for General Aviation Operations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jones, Denise R.; Prinzel, Lawrence J., III

2011-01-01

A Runway Incursion Prevention System (RIPS) has been designed under previous research to enhance airport surface operations situation awareness and provide cockpit alerts of potential runway conflict, during transport aircraft category operations, in order to prevent runway incidents while also improving operations capability. This study investigated an adaptation of RIPS for low-end general aviation operations using a fixed-based simulator at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Research Center (LaRC). The purpose of the study was to evaluate modified RIPS aircraft-based incursion detection algorithms and associated alerting and airport surface display concepts for low-end general aviation operations. This paper gives an overview of the system, simulation study, and test results.

Runway Incursion Prevention System Simulation Evaluation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jones, Denise R.

2002-01-01

A Runway Incursion Prevention System (RIPS) was evaluated in a full mission simulation study at the NASA Langley Research center in March 2002. RIPS integrates airborne and ground-based technologies to provide (1) enhanced surface situational awareness to avoid blunders and (2) alerts of runway conflicts in order to prevent runway incidents while also improving operational capability. A series of test runs was conducted in a high fidelity simulator. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the RIPS airborne incursion detection algorithms and associated alerting and airport surface display concepts. Eight commercial airline crews participated as test subjects completing 467 test runs. This paper gives an overview of the RIPS, simulation study, and test results.

A Hybrid Approach to Detect Driver Drowsiness Utilizing Physiological Signals to Improve System Performance and Wearability.

PubMed

Awais, Muhammad; Badruddin, Nasreen; Drieberg, Micheal

2017-08-31

Driver drowsiness is a major cause of fatal accidents, injury, and property damage, and has become an area of substantial research attention in recent years. The present study proposes a method to detect drowsiness in drivers which integrates features of electrocardiography (ECG) and electroencephalography (EEG) to improve detection performance. The study measures differences between the alert and drowsy states from physiological data collected from 22 healthy subjects in a driving simulator-based study. A monotonous driving environment is used to induce drowsiness in the participants. Various time and frequency domain feature were extracted from EEG including time domain statistical descriptors, complexity measures and power spectral measures. Features extracted from the ECG signal included heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV), including low frequency (LF), high frequency (HF) and LF/HF ratio. Furthermore, subjective sleepiness scale is also assessed to study its relationship with drowsiness. We used paired t -tests to select only statistically significant features ( p < 0.05), that can differentiate between the alert and drowsy states effectively. Significant features of both modalities (EEG and ECG) are then combined to investigate the improvement in performance using support vector machine (SVM) classifier. The other main contribution of this paper is the study on channel reduction and its impact to the performance of detection. The proposed method demonstrated that combining EEG and ECG has improved the system's performance in discriminating between alert and drowsy states, instead of using them alone. Our channel reduction analysis revealed that an acceptable level of accuracy (80%) could be achieved by combining just two electrodes (one EEG and one ECG), indicating the feasibility of a system with improved wearability compared with existing systems involving many electrodes. Overall, our results demonstrate that the proposed method can be a viable solution for a practical driver drowsiness system that is both accurate and comfortable to wear.

A Hybrid Approach to Detect Driver Drowsiness Utilizing Physiological Signals to Improve System Performance and Wearability

PubMed Central

Badruddin, Nasreen

2017-01-01

Driver drowsiness is a major cause of fatal accidents, injury, and property damage, and has become an area of substantial research attention in recent years. The present study proposes a method to detect drowsiness in drivers which integrates features of electrocardiography (ECG) and electroencephalography (EEG) to improve detection performance. The study measures differences between the alert and drowsy states from physiological data collected from 22 healthy subjects in a driving simulator-based study. A monotonous driving environment is used to induce drowsiness in the participants. Various time and frequency domain feature were extracted from EEG including time domain statistical descriptors, complexity measures and power spectral measures. Features extracted from the ECG signal included heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV), including low frequency (LF), high frequency (HF) and LF/HF ratio. Furthermore, subjective sleepiness scale is also assessed to study its relationship with drowsiness. We used paired t-tests to select only statistically significant features (p < 0.05), that can differentiate between the alert and drowsy states effectively. Significant features of both modalities (EEG and ECG) are then combined to investigate the improvement in performance using support vector machine (SVM) classifier. The other main contribution of this paper is the study on channel reduction and its impact to the performance of detection. The proposed method demonstrated that combining EEG and ECG has improved the system’s performance in discriminating between alert and drowsy states, instead of using them alone. Our channel reduction analysis revealed that an acceptable level of accuracy (80%) could be achieved by combining just two electrodes (one EEG and one ECG), indicating the feasibility of a system with improved wearability compared with existing systems involving many electrodes. Overall, our results demonstrate that the proposed method can be a viable solution for a practical driver drowsiness system that is both accurate and comfortable to wear. PMID:28858220

The Advanced Linked Extended Reconnaissance & Targeting Technology Demonstration project

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Edwards, Mark

2008-04-01

The Advanced Linked Extended Reconnaissance & Targeting (ALERT) Technology Demonstration (TD) project is addressing many operational needs of the future Canadian Army's Surveillance and Reconnaissance forces. Using the surveillance system of the Coyote reconnaissance vehicle as an experimental platform, the ALERT TD project aims to significantly enhance situational awareness by fusing multi-sensor and tactical data, developing automated processes, and integrating beyond line-of-sight sensing. The project is exploiting important advances made in computer processing capability, displays technology, digital communications, and sensor technology since the design of the original surveillance system. As the major research area within the project, concepts are discussed for displaying and fusing multi-sensor and tactical data within an Enhanced Operator Control Station (EOCS). The sensor data can originate from the Coyote's own visible-band and IR cameras, laser rangefinder, and ground-surveillance radar, as well as from beyond line-of-sight systems such as mini-UAVs and unattended ground sensors. Video-rate image processing has been developed to assist the operator to detect poorly visible targets. As a second major area of research, automatic target cueing capabilities have been added to the system. These include scene change detection, automatic target detection and aided target recognition algorithms processing both IR and visible-band images to draw the operator's attention to possible targets. The merits of incorporating scene change detection algorithms are also discussed. In the area of multi-sensor data fusion, up to Joint Defence Labs level 2 has been demonstrated. The human factors engineering aspects of the user interface in this complex environment are presented, drawing upon multiple user group sessions with military surveillance system operators. The paper concludes with Lessons Learned from the project. The ALERT system has been used in a number of C4ISR field trials, most recently at Exercise Empire Challenge in China Lake CA, and at Trial Quest in Norway. Those exercises provided further opportunities to investigate operator interactions. The paper concludes with recommendations for future work in operator interface design.

Method for stationarity-segmentation of spike train data with application to the Pearson cross-correlation.

PubMed

Quiroga-Lombard, Claudio S; Hass, Joachim; Durstewitz, Daniel

2013-07-01

Correlations among neurons are supposed to play an important role in computation and information coding in the nervous system. Empirically, functional interactions between neurons are most commonly assessed by cross-correlation functions. Recent studies have suggested that pairwise correlations may indeed be sufficient to capture most of the information present in neural interactions. Many applications of correlation functions, however, implicitly tend to assume that the underlying processes are stationary. This assumption will usually fail for real neurons recorded in vivo since their activity during behavioral tasks is heavily influenced by stimulus-, movement-, or cognition-related processes as well as by more general processes like slow oscillations or changes in state of alertness. To address the problem of nonstationarity, we introduce a method for assessing stationarity empirically and then "slicing" spike trains into stationary segments according to the statistical definition of weak-sense stationarity. We examine pairwise Pearson cross-correlations (PCCs) under both stationary and nonstationary conditions and identify another source of covariance that can be differentiated from the covariance of the spike times and emerges as a consequence of residual nonstationarities after the slicing process: the covariance of the firing rates defined on each segment. Based on this, a correction of the PCC is introduced that accounts for the effect of segmentation. We probe these methods both on simulated data sets and on in vivo recordings from the prefrontal cortex of behaving rats. Rather than for removing nonstationarities, the present method may also be used for detecting significant events in spike trains.

West Nile virus: the Italian national transplant network reaction to an alert in the north-eastern region, Italy 2011.

PubMed

Costa, A Nanni; Capobianchi, M R; Ippolito, G; Palù, G; Barzon, L; Piccolo, G; Andreetta, B; Filippetti, M; Fehily, D; Lombardini, L; Grossi, P

2011-10-13

We report four cases of West Nile virus (WNV) transmission following a single multiorgan donation in north-eastern Italy. The transmissions were promptly detected by local transplant centres. The donor had been tested for WNV by nucleic acid amplification test (NAT) prior to transplantation and was negative. There were no detected errors in the nationally implemented WNV safety protocols.

Influenza surveillance in Europe: establishing epidemic thresholds by the Moving Epidemic Method

PubMed Central

Vega, Tomás; Lozano, Jose Eugenio; Meerhoff, Tamara; Snacken, René; Mott, Joshua; Ortiz de Lejarazu, Raul; Nunes, Baltazar

2012-01-01

Please cite this paper as: Vega et al. (2012) Influenza surveillance in Europe: establishing epidemic thresholds by the moving epidemic method. Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses 7(4), 546–558. Background  Timely influenza surveillance is important to monitor influenza epidemics. Objectives  (i) To calculate the epidemic threshold for influenza‐like illness (ILI) and acute respiratory infections (ARI) in 19 countries, as well as the thresholds for different levels of intensity. (ii) To evaluate the performance of these thresholds. Methods  The moving epidemic method (MEM) has been developed to determine the baseline influenza activity and an epidemic threshold. False alerts, detection lags and timeliness of the detection of epidemics were calculated. The performance was evaluated using a cross‐validation procedure. Results  The overall sensitivity of the MEM threshold was 71·8% and the specificity was 95·5%. The median of the timeliness was 1 week (range: 0–4·5). Conclusions  The method produced a robust and specific signal to detect influenza epidemics. The good balance between the sensitivity and specificity of the epidemic threshold to detect seasonal epidemics and avoid false alerts has advantages for public health purposes. This method may serve as standard to define the start of the annual influenza epidemic in countries in Europe. PMID:22897919

Continuous Glucose Monitoring Enables the Detection of Losses in Infusion Set Actuation (LISAs)

PubMed Central

Howsmon, Daniel P.; Cameron, Faye; Baysal, Nihat; Ly, Trang T.; Forlenza, Gregory P.; Maahs, David M.; Buckingham, Bruce A.; Hahn, Juergen; Bequette, B. Wayne

2017-01-01

Reliable continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) enables a variety of advanced technology for the treatment of type 1 diabetes. In addition to artificial pancreas algorithms that use CGM to automate continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII), CGM can also inform fault detection algorithms that alert patients to problems in CGM or CSII. Losses in infusion set actuation (LISAs) can adversely affect clinical outcomes, resulting in hyperglycemia due to impaired insulin delivery. Prolonged hyperglycemia may lead to diabetic ketoacidosis—a serious metabolic complication in type 1 diabetes. Therefore, an algorithm for the detection of LISAs based on CGM and CSII signals was developed to improve patient safety. The LISA detection algorithm is trained retrospectively on data from 62 infusion set insertions from 20 patients. The algorithm collects glucose and insulin data, and computes relevant fault metrics over two different sliding windows; an alarm sounds when these fault metrics are exceeded. With the chosen algorithm parameters, the LISA detection strategy achieved a sensitivity of 71.8% and issued 0.28 false positives per day on the training data. Validation on two independent data sets confirmed that similar performance is seen on data that was not used for training. The developed algorithm is able to effectively alert patients to possible infusion set failures in open-loop scenarios, with limited evidence of its extension to closed-loop scenarios. PMID:28098839

Continuous Glucose Monitoring Enables the Detection of Losses in Infusion Set Actuation (LISAs).

PubMed

Howsmon, Daniel P; Cameron, Faye; Baysal, Nihat; Ly, Trang T; Forlenza, Gregory P; Maahs, David M; Buckingham, Bruce A; Hahn, Juergen; Bequette, B Wayne

2017-01-15

Reliable continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) enables a variety of advanced technology for the treatment of type 1 diabetes. In addition to artificial pancreas algorithms that use CGM to automate continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII), CGM can also inform fault detection algorithms that alert patients to problems in CGM or CSII. Losses in infusion set actuation (LISAs) can adversely affect clinical outcomes, resulting in hyperglycemia due to impaired insulin delivery. Prolonged hyperglycemia may lead to diabetic ketoacidosis-a serious metabolic complication in type 1 diabetes. Therefore, an algorithm for the detection of LISAs based on CGM and CSII signals was developed to improve patient safety. The LISA detection algorithm is trained retrospectively on data from 62 infusion set insertions from 20 patients. The algorithm collects glucose and insulin data, and computes relevant fault metrics over two different sliding windows; an alarm sounds when these fault metrics are exceeded. With the chosen algorithm parameters, the LISA detection strategy achieved a sensitivity of 71.8% and issued 0.28 false positives per day on the training data. Validation on two independent data sets confirmed that similar performance is seen on data that was not used for training. The developed algorithm is able to effectively alert patients to possible infusion set failures in open-loop scenarios, with limited evidence of its extension to closed-loop scenarios.

Dengue disease surveillance: an updated systematic literature review

PubMed Central

Runge-Ranzinger, S; McCall, P J; Kroeger, A; Horstick, O

2014-01-01

Objectives To review the evidence for the application of tools for dengue outbreak prediction/detection and trend monitoring in passive and active disease surveillance systems in order to develop recommendations for endemic countries and identify important research needs. Methods This systematic literature review followed the protocol of a review from 2008, extending the systematic search from January 2007 to February 2013 on PubMed, EMBASE, CDSR, WHOLIS and Lilacs. Data reporting followed the PRISMA statement. The eligibility criteria comprised (i) population at risk of dengue, (ii) dengue disease surveillance, (iii) outcome of surveillance described and (iv) empirical data evaluated. The analysis classified studies based on the purpose of the surveillance programme. The main limitation of the review was expected publication bias. Results A total of 1116 papers were identified of which 36 articles were included in the review. Four cohort-based prospective studies calculated expansion factors demonstrating remarkable levels of underreporting in the surveillance systems. Several studies demonstrated that enhancement methods such as laboratory support, sentinel-based reporting and staff motivation contributed to improvements in dengue reporting. Additional improvements for passive surveillance systems are possible by incorporating simple data forms/entry/electronic-based reporting; defining clear system objectives; performing data analysis at the lowest possible level (e.g. district); seeking regular data feedback. Six studies showed that serotype changes were positively correlated with the number of reported cases or with dengue incidence, with lag times of up to 6 months. Three studies found that data on internet searches and event-based surveillance correlated well with the epidemic curve derived from surveillance data. Conclusions Passive surveillance providing the baseline for outbreak alert should be strengthened and appropriate threshold levels for outbreak alerts investigated. Additional enhancement tools such as syndromic surveillance, laboratory support and motivation strategies can be added. Appropriate alert signals need to be identified and integrated into a risk assessment tool. Shifts in dengue serotypes/genotype or electronic event-based surveillance have also considerable potential as indicator in dengue surveillance. Further research on evidence-based response strategies and cost-effectiveness is needed. Objectifs Analyser les résultats de l'application d'outils pour la prédiction/détection des épidémies de dengue et la surveillance des tendances dans les systèmes de surveillance active et passive des maladies, afin d’élaborer des recommandations pour les pays endémiques et identifier les besoins importants de recherche. PMID:24889501

Swift detection of MAXI J1820+070

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kennea, J. A.; Marshall, F. E.; Page, K. L.; Palmer, D. M.; Siegel, M. H.; Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory Team

2018-03-01

This is reposted from GCN #22471 as it is of interest to the transient community. At 00:11:39 UT, the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) triggered and located MAXI J1820+070 (Kawamuro et al, 2018; ATel #11399) (trigger=813771, retriggering as trigger=813772).

Real-Time Detector of Human Fatigue: Detecting Lapses in Alertness

DTIC Science & Technology

2008-02-15

These coefficients and their variances, covariances and standard errors were computed simultaneously using HLM 6 (Raudenbush, Bryk, Cheong, & Congdon ...CA: Sage. Raudenbush, S. W., Bryk, A. S., Cheong, Y. F., & Congdon , R. T. (2004). HLM6: Hierarchical Linear and Nonlinear Modeling [Computer software

Examining the Role of Metadata in Testing IED Detection Systems

DTIC Science & Technology

2009-09-01

energy management, crop assessment, weather forecasting, disaster alerts, and endangered species assessment [ Biagioni and Bridges 2002; Main- waring et...accessed June 10, 2008). Biagioni , E. and K. Bridges. 2002. The application of remote sensor technology to assist the recovery of rare endangered species

A comparison of detection efficiency on an air traffic control monitoring task with and without computer aiding.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1989-01-01

Future levels of air traffic control automation plan to incorporate computer aiding features designed to alert the controller to upcoming problem situations by displaying information that will identify the situation and suggest possible solutions. Co...

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Baker, J.; Modlin, C.W.; Frerking, C.J.

HIPROTECT (pronounced High-protect) is a system designed to protect national archaeological and natural treasures from destruction by vandals or looters. The system is being developed jointly by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the University of California at Riverside under the DOD Legacy Resource Management Program. Thousands of archaeological sites are located on military bases and national park lands. Treasure hunters or vandals are pillaging and destroying these sites at will, since the sites are generally located in remote areas, unattended and unprotected. The HIPROTECT system is designed to detect trespassers at the protected sites and to alert park officialsmore » or military officials of intrusions. An array of sensors is used to detect trespassers. The sensors are triggered when a person or vehicle approaches the site. Alarm messages are transmitted to alert park officials or law enforcement officials by way of a cellular telephone link. A video and audio system is included to assist the officials in verifying that an intrusion has occurred and to allow two-way communication with the intruders.« less

Hazard evaluation and operational cockpit display of ground-measured windshear data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wanke, Craig; Hansman, R. John, Jr.

1993-01-01

Low-altitude windshear is the leading weather-related cause of fatal aviation accidents in the U.S. Since 1964, there have been 26 accidents attributed to windshear resulting in over 500 fatalities. Low-altitude windshear can take several forms, including macroscopic forms such as cold-warm gustfronts down to the small, intense downdrafts known as microbursts. Microbursts are particularly dangerous and difficult to detect due to their small size, short duration, and occurrence under both heavy precipitation and virtually dry conditions. For these reasons, the real-time detection of windshear hazards is a very active field of research. Also, the advent of digital ground-to-air datalinks and electronic flight instrumentation opens up many options for implementation of windshear alerts in the terminal area environment. Study is required to determine the best content, format, timing, and cockpit presentation of windshear alerts in the modern ATC environment to best inform the flight crew without significantly increasing crew workload.

Practical results from a mathematical analysis of guard patrols

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Indusi, Joseph P.

1978-12-01

Using guard patrols as a primary detection mechanism is not generally viewed as a highly efficient detection method when compared to electronic means. Many factors such as visibility, alertness, and the space-time coincidence of guard and adversary presence all have an effect on the probability of detection. Mathematical analysis of the guard patrol detection problem is related to that of classical search theory originally developed for naval search operations. The results of this analysis tend to support the current practice of using guard forces to assess and respond to previously detected intrusions and not as the primary detection mechanism. 6more » refs.« less

Technologic Distractions (Part 1): Summary of Approaches to Manage Alert Quantity With Intent to Reduce Alert Fatigue and Suggestions for Alert Fatigue Metrics.

PubMed

Kane-Gill, Sandra L; O'Connor, Michael F; Rothschild, Jeffrey M; Selby, Nicholas M; McLean, Barbara; Bonafide, Christopher P; Cvach, Maria M; Hu, Xiao; Konkani, Avinash; Pelter, Michele M; Winters, Bradford D

2017-09-01

To provide ICU clinicians with evidence-based guidance on tested interventions that reduce or prevent alert fatigue within clinical decision support systems. Systematic review of PubMed, Embase, SCOPUS, and CINAHL for relevant literature from 1966 to February 2017. Focus on critically ill patients and included evaluations in other patient care settings, as well. Identified interventions designed to reduce or prevent alert fatigue within clinical decision support systems. Study selection was based on one primary key question to identify effective interventions that attempted to reduce alert fatigue and three secondary key questions that covered the negative effects of alert fatigue, potential unintended consequences of efforts to reduce alert fatigue, and ideal alert quantity. Data were abstracted by two reviewers independently using a standardized abstraction tool. Surveys, meeting abstracts, "gray" literature, studies not available in English, and studies with non-original data were excluded. For the primary key question, articles were excluded if they did not provide a comparator as key question 1 was designed as a problem, intervention, comparison, and outcome question. We anticipated that reduction in alert fatigue, including the concept of desensitization may not be directly measured and thus considered interventions that reduced alert quantity as a surrogate marker for alert fatigue. Twenty-six articles met the inclusion criteria. Approaches for managing alert fatigue in the ICU are provided as a result of reviewing tested interventions that reduced alert quantity with the anticipated effect of reducing fatigue. Suggested alert management strategies include prioritizing alerts, developing sophisticated alerts, customizing commercially available alerts, and including end user opinion in alert selection. Alert fatigue itself is studied less frequently, as an outcome, and there is a need for more precise evaluation. Standardized metrics for alert fatigue is needed to advance the field. Suggestions for standardized metrics are provided in this document.

Randomized Trial of Intelligent Sensor System for Early Illness Alerts in Senior Housing.

PubMed

Rantz, Marilyn; Phillips, Lorraine J; Galambos, Colleen; Lane, Kari; Alexander, Gregory L; Despins, Laurel; Koopman, Richelle J; Skubic, Marjorie; Hicks, Lanis; Miller, Steven; Craver, Andy; Harris, Bradford H; Deroche, Chelsea B

2017-10-01

Measure the clinical effectiveness and cost effectiveness of using sensor data from an environmentally embedded sensor system for early illness recognition. This sensor system has demonstrated in pilot studies to detect changes in function and in chronic diseases or acute illnesses on average 10 days to 2 weeks before usual assessment methods or self-reports of illness. Prospective intervention study in 13 assisted living (AL) communities of 171 residents randomly assigned to intervention (n=86) or comparison group (n=85) receiving usual care. Intervention participants lived with the sensor system an average of one year. Continuous data collected 24 hours/7 days a week from motion sensors to measure overall activity, an under mattress bed sensor to capture respiration, pulse, and restlessness as people sleep, and a gait sensor that continuously measures gait speed, stride length and time, and automatically assess for increasing fall risk as the person walks around the apartment. Continuously running computer algorithms are applied to the sensor data and send health alerts to staff when there are changes in sensor data patterns. The randomized comparison group functionally declined more rapidly than the intervention group. Walking speed and several measures from GaitRite, velocity, step length left and right, stride length left and right, and the fall risk measure of functional ambulation profile (FAP) all had clinically significant changes. The walking speed increase (worse) and velocity decline (worse) of 0.073 m/s for comparison group exceeded 0.05 m/s, a value considered to be a minimum clinically important difference. No differences were measured in health care costs. These findings demonstrate that sensor data with health alerts and fall alerts sent to AL nursing staff can be an effective strategy to detect and intervene in early signs of illness or functional decline. Copyright © 2017 AMDA – The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Joint Seismic-Geodetic Algorithm for Finite-Fault Detection and Slip Inversion in the West Coast ShakeAlert System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, D. E.; Felizardo, C.; Minson, S. E.; Boese, M.; Langbein, J. O.; Murray, J. R.

2016-12-01

Finite-fault source algorithms can greatly benefit earthquake early warning (EEW) systems. Estimates of finite-fault parameters provide spatial information, which can significantly improve real-time shaking calculations and help with disaster response. In this project, we have focused on integrating a finite-fault seismic-geodetic algorithm into the West Coast ShakeAlert framework. The seismic part is FinDer 2, a C++ version of the algorithm developed by Böse et al. (2012). It interpolates peak ground accelerations and calculates the best fault length and strike from template matching. The geodetic part is a C++ version of BEFORES, the algorithm developed by Minson et al. (2014) that uses a Bayesian methodology to search for the most probable slip distribution on a fault of unknown orientation. Ultimately, these two will be used together where FinDer generates a Bayesian prior for BEFORES via the methodology of Minson et al. (2015), and the joint solution will generate estimates of finite-fault extent, strike, dip, best slip distribution, and magnitude. We have created C++ versions of both FinDer and BEFORES using open source libraries and have developed a C++ Application Protocol Interface (API) for them both. Their APIs allow FinDer and BEFORES to contribute to the ShakeAlert system via an open source messaging system, ActiveMQ. FinDer has been receiving real-time data, detecting earthquakes, and reporting messages on the development system for several months. We are also testing FinDer extensively with Earthworm tankplayer files. BEFORES has been tested with ActiveMQ messaging in the ShakeAlert framework, and works off a FinDer trigger. We are finishing the FinDer-BEFORES connections in this framework, and testing this system via seismic-geodetic tankplayer files. This will include actual and simulated data.

Investigation into the Value of Trained Glycaemia Alert Dogs to Clients with Type I Diabetes

PubMed Central

Rooney, Nicola J.; Morant, Steve; Guest, Claire

2013-01-01

Previous studies have suggested that some pet dogs respond to their owners’ hypoglycaemic state. Here, we show that trained glycaemia alert dogs placed with clients living with diabetes afford significant improvements to owner well-being. We investigated whether trained dogs reliably respond to their owners’ hypoglycaemic state, and whether owners experience facilitated tightened glycaemic control, and wider psychosocial benefits. Since obtaining their dog, all seventeen clients studied reported positive effects including reduced paramedic call outs, decreased unconscious episodes and improved independence. Owner-recorded data showed that dogs alerted their owners, with significant, though variable, accuracy at times of low and high blood sugar. Eight out of the ten dogs (for which owners provided adequate records) responded consistently more often when their owner’s blood sugars were reported to be outside, than within, target range. Comparison of nine clients’ routine records showed significant overall change after obtaining their dogs, with seven clients recording a significantly higher proportion of routine tests within target range after obtaining a dog. HbA1C showed a small, non significant reduction after dog allocation. Based on owner-reported data we have shown, for the first time, that trained detection dogs perform above chance level. This study points to the potential value of alert dogs, for increasing glycaemic control, client independence and consequent quality of life and even reducing the costs of long-term health care. PMID:23950905

The effects of Project ALERT one year past curriculum completion.

PubMed

Ringwalt, Chris L; Clark, Heddy Kovach; Hanley, Sean; Shamblen, Stephen R; Flewelling, Robert L

2010-06-01

School-based drug prevention curricula constitute the nation's most prevalent strategy to prevent adolescent drug use. We evaluated the effects of one such curriculum, Project ALERT, on adolescent substance use. In particular, we sought to determine if a single effect on 30-day alcohol use, noted shortly following the completion of the 2-year program, could be detected 1 year later. We also looked for delayed effects on other outcomes of interest, namely lifetime alcohol use, and 30-day and lifetime use of cigarettes, marijuana, and inhalants. We employed a randomized controlled trial that used school as the unit of assignment. Thirty-four schools with grades 6-8 from 11 states completed the study. Seventy-one Project ALERT instructors taught 11 core lessons to sixth graders and 3 booster lessons to seventh graders. Students were assessed prior to the onset of the intervention, as sixth graders, after the completion of the 2-year curriculum, as seventh graders, and again 1 year later as eighth graders. This paper examines data from the pretest and final posttest. Using hierarchical nonlinear modeling, we found that our earlier effect on 30-day alcohol use did not persist. Further, we continued to find no effects for lifetime alcohol use and both the lifetime and 30-day use of cigarettes, marijuana, and inhalants. Our findings do not support the long-term effectiveness of Project ALERT, when delivered to sixth graders.

Visualization Techniques for Computer Network Defense

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Beaver, Justin M; Steed, Chad A; Patton, Robert M

2011-01-01

Effective visual analysis of computer network defense (CND) information is challenging due to the volume and complexity of both the raw and analyzed network data. A typical CND is comprised of multiple niche intrusion detection tools, each of which performs network data analysis and produces a unique alerting output. The state-of-the-practice in the situational awareness of CND data is the prevalent use of custom-developed scripts by Information Technology (IT) professionals to retrieve, organize, and understand potential threat events. We propose a new visual analytics framework, called the Oak Ridge Cyber Analytics (ORCA) system, for CND data that allows an operatormore » to interact with all detection tool outputs simultaneously. Aggregated alert events are presented in multiple coordinated views with timeline, cluster, and swarm model analysis displays. These displays are complemented with both supervised and semi-supervised machine learning classifiers. The intent of the visual analytics framework is to improve CND situational awareness, to enable an analyst to quickly navigate and analyze thousands of detected events, and to combine sophisticated data analysis techniques with interactive visualization such that patterns of anomalous activities may be more easily identified and investigated.« less

Relative merits of reactive and forward-look detection for wind-shear encounters during landing approach for various microburst escape strategies

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hinton, David A.

1990-01-01

The goal was to quantify the benefits of airborne forward-look windshear detection and to develop and test a candidate set of strategies for recovery from inadvertent microburst encounters during the landing approach, given the utilization of both reactive-only and forward-look windshear detection. Candidate strategies were developed and evaluated using a non-piloted simulation consisting of a simple point-mass performance model of a transport-category airplane flying through an analytical microburst model. The results indicate that the factor which most strongly effects a microburst recovery is the time at which the recovery is initiated. Forward-look alerts given 10 seconds prior to microburst entry permitted recoveries to be made with negligible altitude loss. The results also show that no single microburst scenario can be used to evaluate the relative merits of various recovery strategies. The type of alert used to initiate the recovery (reactive or forward-look) and the altitude of the microburst encounter had an effect on the type of recovery strategy that performed best. These factors may have serious implications for the design and certification of windshear systems.

Clinical Decision Support Alert Appropriateness: A Review and Proposal for Improvement

PubMed Central

McCoy, Allison B.; Thomas, Eric J.; Krousel-Wood, Marie; Sittig, Dean F.

2014-01-01

Background Many healthcare providers are adopting clinical decision support (CDS) systems to improve patient safety and meet meaningful use requirements. Computerized alerts that prompt clinicians about drug-allergy, drug-drug, and drug-disease warnings or provide dosing guidance are most commonly implemented. Alert overrides, which occur when clinicians do not follow the guidance presented by the alert, can hinder improved patient outcomes. Methods We present a review of CDS alerts and describe a proposal to develop novel methods for evaluating and improving CDS alerts that builds upon traditional informatics approaches. Our proposal incorporates previously described models for predicting alert overrides that utilize retrospective chart review to determine which alerts are clinically relevant and which overrides are justifiable. Results Despite increasing implementations of CDS alerts, detailed evaluations rarely occur because of the extensive labor involved in manual chart reviews to determine alert and response appropriateness. Further, most studies have solely evaluated alert overrides that are appropriate or justifiable. Our proposal expands the use of web-based monitoring tools with an interactive dashboard for evaluating CDS alert and response appropriateness that incorporates the predictive models. The dashboard provides 2 views, an alert detail view and a patient detail view, to provide a full history of alerts and help put the patient's events in context. Conclusion The proposed research introduces several innovations to address the challenges and gaps in alert evaluations. This research can transform alert evaluation processes across healthcare settings, leading to improved CDS, reduced alert fatigue, and increased patient safety. PMID:24940129

A framework for evaluating the appropriateness of clinical decision support alerts and responses

PubMed Central

Waitman, Lemuel R; Lewis, Julia B; Wright, Julie A; Choma, David P; Miller, Randolph A; Peterson, Josh F

2011-01-01

Objective Alerting systems, a type of clinical decision support, are increasingly prevalent in healthcare, yet few studies have concurrently measured the appropriateness of alerts with provider responses to alerts. Recent reports of suboptimal alert system design and implementation highlight the need for better evaluation to inform future designs. The authors present a comprehensive framework for evaluating the clinical appropriateness of synchronous, interruptive medication safety alerts. Methods Through literature review and iterative testing, metrics were developed that describe successes, justifiable overrides, provider non-adherence, and unintended adverse consequences of clinical decision support alerts. The framework was validated by applying it to a medication alerting system for patients with acute kidney injury (AKI). Results Through expert review, the framework assesses each alert episode for appropriateness of the alert display and the necessity and urgency of a clinical response. Primary outcomes of the framework include the false positive alert rate, alert override rate, provider non-adherence rate, and rate of provider response appropriateness. Application of the framework to evaluate an existing AKI medication alerting system provided a more complete understanding of the process outcomes measured in the AKI medication alerting system. The authors confirmed that previous alerts and provider responses were most often appropriate. Conclusion The new evaluation model offers a potentially effective method for assessing the clinical appropriateness of synchronous interruptive medication alerts prior to evaluating patient outcomes in a comparative trial. More work can determine the generalizability of the framework for use in other settings and other alert types. PMID:21849334

Medication-related clinical decision support alert overrides in inpatients.

PubMed

Nanji, Karen C; Seger, Diane L; Slight, Sarah P; Amato, Mary G; Beeler, Patrick E; Her, Qoua L; Dalleur, Olivia; Eguale, Tewodros; Wong, Adrian; Silvers, Elizabeth R; Swerdloff, Michael; Hussain, Salman T; Maniam, Nivethietha; Fiskio, Julie M; Dykes, Patricia C; Bates, David W

2018-05-01

To define the types and numbers of inpatient clinical decision support alerts, measure the frequency with which they are overridden, and describe providers' reasons for overriding them and the appropriateness of those reasons. We conducted a cross-sectional study of medication-related clinical decision support alerts over a 3-year period at a 793-bed tertiary-care teaching institution. We measured the rate of alert overrides, the rate of overrides by alert type, the reasons cited for overrides, and the appropriateness of those reasons. Overall, 73.3% of patient allergy, drug-drug interaction, and duplicate drug alerts were overridden, though the rate of overrides varied by alert type (P < .0001). About 60% of overrides were appropriate, and that proportion also varied by alert type (P < .0001). Few overrides of renal- (2.2%) or age-based (26.4%) medication substitutions were appropriate, while most duplicate drug (98%), patient allergy (96.5%), and formulary substitution (82.5%) alerts were appropriate. Despite warnings of potential significant harm, certain categories of alert overrides were inappropriate >75% of the time. The vast majority of duplicate drug, patient allergy, and formulary substitution alerts were appropriate, suggesting that these categories of alerts might be good targets for refinement to reduce alert fatigue. Almost three-quarters of alerts were overridden, and 40% of the overrides were not appropriate. Future research should optimize alert types and frequencies to increase their clinical relevance, reducing alert fatigue so that important alerts are not inappropriately overridden.

Future Earth: Reducing Loss By Automating Response to Earthquake Shaking

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Allen, R. M.

2014-12-01

Earthquakes pose a significant threat to society in the U.S. and around the world. The risk is easily forgotten given the infrequent recurrence of major damaging events, yet the likelihood of a major earthquake in California in the next 30 years is greater than 99%. As our societal infrastructure becomes ever more interconnected, the potential impacts of these future events are difficult to predict. Yet, the same inter-connected infrastructure also allows us to rapidly detect earthquakes as they begin, and provide seconds, tens or seconds, or a few minutes warning. A demonstration earthquake early warning system is now operating in California and is being expanded to the west coast (www.ShakeAlert.org). In recent earthquakes in the Los Angeles region, alerts were generated that could have provided warning to the vast majority of Los Angelinos who experienced the shaking. Efforts are underway to build a public system. Smartphone technology will be used not only to issue that alerts, but could also be used to collect data, and improve the warnings. The MyShake project at UC Berkeley is currently testing an app that attempts to turn millions of smartphones into earthquake-detectors. As our development of the technology continues, we can anticipate ever-more automated response to earthquake alerts. Already, the BART system in the San Francisco Bay Area automatically stops trains based on the alerts. In the future, elevators will stop, machinery will pause, hazardous materials will be isolated, and self-driving cars will pull-over to the side of the road. In this presentation we will review the current status of the earthquake early warning system in the US. We will illustrate how smartphones can contribute to the system. Finally, we will review applications of the information to reduce future losses.

Liverpool Telescope follow-up of candidate electromagnetic counterparts during the first run of Advanced LIGO

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Copperwheat, C. M.; Steele, I. A.; Piascik, A. S.; Bersier, D.; Bode, M. F.; Collins, C. A.; Darnley, M. J.; Galloway, D. K.; Gomboc, A.; Kobayashi, S.; Lamb, G. P.; Levan, A. J.; Mazzali, P. A.; Mundell, C. G.; Pian, E.; Pollacco, D.; Steeghs, D.; Tanvir, N. R.; Ulaczyk, K.; Wiersema, K.

2016-11-01

The first direct detection of gravitational waves was made in 2015 September with the Advanced LIGO detectors. By prior arrangement, a worldwide collaboration of electromagnetic follow-up observers were notified of candidate gravitational wave events during the first science run, and many facilities were engaged in the search for counterparts. Three alerts were issued to the electromagnetic collaboration over the course of the first science run, which lasted from 2015 September to 2016 January. Two of these alerts were associated with the gravitational wave events since named GW150914 and GW151226. In this paper we provide an overview of the Liverpool Telescope contribution to the follow-up campaign over this period. Given the hundreds of square degree uncertainty in the sky position of any gravitational wave event, efficient searching for candidate counterparts required survey telescopes with large (˜degrees) fields of view. The role of the Liverpool Telescope was to provide follow-up classification spectroscopy of any candidates. We followed candidates associated with all three alerts, observing 1, 9 and 17 candidates respectively. We classify the majority of the transients we observed as supernovae. No counterparts were identified, which is in line with expectations given that the events were classified as black hole-black hole mergers. However these searches laid the foundation for similar follow-up campaigns in future gravitational wave detector science runs, in which the detection of neutron star merger events with observable electromagnetic counterparts is much more likely.

Comparison of methods of alert acknowledgement by critical care clinicians in the ICU setting

PubMed Central

Harrison, Andrew M.; Thongprayoon, Charat; Aakre, Christopher A.; Jeng, Jack Y.; Dziadzko, Mikhail A.; Gajic, Ognjen; Pickering, Brian W.

2017-01-01

Background Electronic Health Record (EHR)-based sepsis alert systems have failed to demonstrate improvements in clinically meaningful endpoints. However, the effect of implementation barriers on the success of new sepsis alert systems is rarely explored. Objective To test the hypothesis time to severe sepsis alert acknowledgement by critical care clinicians in the ICU setting would be reduced using an EHR-based alert acknowledgement system compared to a text paging-based system. Study Design In one arm of this simulation study, real alerts for patients in the medical ICU were delivered to critical care clinicians through the EHR. In the other arm, simulated alerts were delivered through text paging. The primary outcome was time to alert acknowledgement. The secondary outcomes were a structured, mixed quantitative/qualitative survey and informal group interview. Results The alert acknowledgement rate from the severe sepsis alert system was 3% (N = 148) and 51% (N = 156) from simulated severe sepsis alerts through traditional text paging. Time to alert acknowledgement from the severe sepsis alert system was median 274 min (N = 5) and median 2 min (N = 80) from text paging. The response rate from the EHR-based alert system was insufficient to compare primary measures. However, secondary measures revealed important barriers. Conclusion Alert fatigue, interruption, human error, and information overload are barriers to alert and simulation studies in the ICU setting. PMID:28316887

Comparison of methods of alert acknowledgement by critical care clinicians in the ICU setting.

PubMed

Harrison, Andrew M; Thongprayoon, Charat; Aakre, Christopher A; Jeng, Jack Y; Dziadzko, Mikhail A; Gajic, Ognjen; Pickering, Brian W; Herasevich, Vitaly

2017-01-01

Electronic Health Record (EHR)-based sepsis alert systems have failed to demonstrate improvements in clinically meaningful endpoints. However, the effect of implementation barriers on the success of new sepsis alert systems is rarely explored. To test the hypothesis time to severe sepsis alert acknowledgement by critical care clinicians in the ICU setting would be reduced using an EHR-based alert acknowledgement system compared to a text paging-based system. In one arm of this simulation study, real alerts for patients in the medical ICU were delivered to critical care clinicians through the EHR. In the other arm, simulated alerts were delivered through text paging. The primary outcome was time to alert acknowledgement. The secondary outcomes were a structured, mixed quantitative/qualitative survey and informal group interview. The alert acknowledgement rate from the severe sepsis alert system was 3% ( N  = 148) and 51% ( N  = 156) from simulated severe sepsis alerts through traditional text paging. Time to alert acknowledgement from the severe sepsis alert system was median 274 min ( N  = 5) and median 2 min ( N  = 80) from text paging. The response rate from the EHR-based alert system was insufficient to compare primary measures. However, secondary measures revealed important barriers. Alert fatigue, interruption, human error, and information overload are barriers to alert and simulation studies in the ICU setting.

Landfast ice thickness in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago from observations and models

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Howell, Stephen E. L.; Laliberté, Frédéric; Kwok, Ron; Derksen, Chris; King, Joshua

2016-07-01

Observed and modelled landfast ice thickness variability and trends spanning more than 5 decades within the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA) are summarized. The observed sites (Cambridge Bay, Resolute, Eureka and Alert) represent some of the Arctic's longest records of landfast ice thickness. Observed end-of-winter (maximum) trends of landfast ice thickness (1957-2014) were statistically significant at Cambridge Bay (-4.31 ± 1.4 cm decade-1), Eureka (-4.65 ± 1.7 cm decade-1) and Alert (-4.44 ± 1.6 cm -1) but not at Resolute. Over the 50+-year record, the ice thinned by ˜ 0.24-0.26 m at Cambridge Bay, Eureka and Alert with essentially negligible change at Resolute. Although statistically significant warming in spring and fall was present at all sites, only low correlations between temperature and maximum ice thickness were present; snow depth was found to be more strongly associated with the negative ice thickness trends. Comparison with multi-model simulations from Coupled Model Intercomparison project phase 5 (CMIP5), Ocean Reanalysis Intercomparison (ORA-IP) and Pan-Arctic Ice-Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) show that although a subset of current generation models have a "reasonable" climatological representation of landfast ice thickness and distribution within the CAA, trends are unrealistic and far exceed observations by up to 2 orders of magnitude. ORA-IP models were found to have positive correlations between temperature and ice thickness over the CAA, a feature that is inconsistent with both observations and coupled models from CMIP5.

Physicians’ response to computerised alerts for psychotropic drugs in older persons: a multilevel analysis of the associated alert, patient and physician characteristics

PubMed Central

Tamblyn, Robyn; Reidel, Kristen; Patel, Vaishali

2012-01-01

Objective Computerised drug alerts are expected to reduce patients’ risk of adverse drug events. However, physicians over-ride most drug alerts, because they believe that the benefit exceeds the risk. The purpose of this study was to determine the drug alert, patient and physician characteristics associated with the: (1) occurrence of psychotropic drug alerts for elderly patients and the (2) response to these alerts by their primary care physicians. Setting Primary care, Quebec, Canada. Design Prospective cohort study. Participants Sixty-one physicians using an electronic prescribing and drug alert decision-support system in their practice, and 3413 elderly patients using psychotropic drugs. Primary and secondary measures Psychotropic drug class, alert severity, patient risk for fall injuries and physician experience, practice volume and computer use were evaluated in relationship to the likelihood of having: (1) a psychotropic drug alert, (2) the prescription revised in response to an alert. Cluster-adjusted alternating logistic regression was used to assess multilevel predictors of alert occurrence and response. Results In total 13 080 psychotropic drug alerts were generated in 8931 visits. Alerts were more likely to be generated for male patients at higher risk of fall-related injury and for physicians who established the highest alert threshold. In 9.9% of alerts seen, the prescription was revised. The highest revision rate was for antipsychotic alerts (22.6%). Physicians were more likely to revise prescriptions for severe alerts (OR 2.03; 95%CI 1.39 to 2.98), if patients had cognitive impairment (OR 1.95; 95%CI 1.13 to 3.36), and if they made more visits to their physician (OR 1.05 per 5 visits; 95%CI 1 to 1.09). Conclusions Physicians view and respond to a small proportion of alerts, mainly for higher-risk patients. To reduce the risk of psychotropic drug-related fall injuries, a new generation of evidence-based drug alerts should be developed. PMID:23024254