Toward QoS Monitoring in IoT Edge Devices Driven Healthcare-A Systematic Literature Review.

Smart healthcare is altering the delivery of healthcare by combining the benefits of IoT, mobile, and cloud computing. Cloud computing has tremendously helped the health industry connect healthcare facilities, caregivers, and patients for information sharing. The main drivers for implementing effective healthcare systems are low latency and faster response times. Thus, quick responses among healthcare organizations are important in general, but in an emergency, significant latency at different stakeholders might result in disastrous situations. Thus, cutting-edge approaches like edge computing and artificial intelligence (AI) can deal with such problems. A packet cannot be sent from one location to another unless the "quality of service" (QoS) specifications are met. The term QoS refers to how well a service works for users. QoS parameters like throughput, bandwidth, transmission delay, availability, jitter, latency, and packet loss are crucial in this regard. Our focus is on the individual devices present at different levels of the smart healthcare infrastructure and the QoS requirements of the healthcare system as a whole. The contribution of this paper is five-fold: first, a novel pre-SLR method for comprehensive keyword research on subject-related themes for mining pertinent research papers for quality SLR; second, SLR on QoS improvement in smart healthcare apps; third a review of several QoS techniques used in current smart healthcare apps; fourth, the examination of the most important QoS measures in contemporary smart healthcare apps; fifth, offering solutions to the problems encountered in delivering QoS in smart healthcare IoT applications to improve healthcare services.

The effects of regional climatic condition on the spread of COVID-19 at global scale.

The pandemic outbreak of the novel coronavirus epidemic disease (COVID-19) is spreading like a diffusion-reaction in the world and almost 208 countries and territories are being affected around the globe. It became a sever health and socio-economic problem, while the world has no vaccine to combat this virus. This research aims to analyze the connection between the fast spread of COVID-19 and regional climate parameters over a global scale. In this research, we collected the data of COVID-19 cases from the time of 1st reported case to the 5th June 2020 in different affected countries and regional climatic parameters data from January 2020 to 5th June 2020. It was found that most of the countries located in the relatively lower temperature region show a rapid increase in the COVID-19 cases than the countries locating in the warmer climatic regions despite their better socio-economic conditions. A correlation between metrological parameters and COVID-19 cases was observed. Average daylight hours are correlated to total the COVID-19 cases with a coefficient of determination of 0.42, while average high-temperature shows a correlation of 0.59 and 0.42 with total COVID-19 cases and death cases respectively. The finding of the study will help international health organizations and local administrations to combat and well manage the spread of COVID-19.

Long-term (2007-2013) analysis of aerosol optical properties over four locations in the Indo-Gangetic plains: erratum.

The authors regret the incomplete acknowledgment in Appl. Opt.55, 6199 (2016)APOPAI0003-693510.1364/AO.55.006199.

Long-term (2007-2013) analysis of aerosol optical properties over four locations in the Indo-Gangetic plains.

The emphasis of the present work lies on the examination of the distribution and spectral behavior of the optical properties of atmospheric aerosols in the Indo-Gangetic plains (IGP). Measurements were performed using an AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) Sun photometer at four sites (Karachi, Lahore, Jaipur, and Kanpur) with different aerosol environments during the period 2007-2013. The aerosol optical depth (AOD) and Ångström exponent (α) were measured, and the results revealed a high AOD with a low α value over Karachi and Jaipur in July, while a high AOD with a high α value was reported over Lahore and Kanpur during October and December. The pattern of the aerosol volume size distribution (VSD) was similar across all four sites, with a prominent peak in coarse mode at a radius of 4.0-5.0 µm, and in fine mode at a radius of 0.1-4.0 µm, for all seasons. On the other hand, during the winter months, the fine-mode peaks were comparable to the coarse mode, which was not the case during the other seasons. The single scattering albedo (SSA) was found to be strongly wavelength-dependent during all seasons and for all sites, with the exception of Kanpur, where the SSA decreases with increasing wavelength during winter and post-monsoon. It was found that the phase function of the atmospheric aerosol was high at a small angle and stable around a scattering angle of 90°-180° at all sites and during all seasons. Spectral variation of the asymmetry parameter (ASY) revealed a decreasing trend with increasing wavelength, and this decreasing trend was more pronounced during the summer, winter, and post-monsoon as compared to pre-monsoon. Furthermore, extensive measurements suggest that both real (RRI) and imaginary (IRI) parts of the refractive index (RI) show contrasting spectral behavior during all seasons. Finally, the analysis of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hybrid single particle Lagrangian integrated trajectory model back trajectory revealed that the seasonal variation in aerosol types was influenced by a contribution of air masses from multiple source locations.

Variations in the Dose Profiles of Physical and Virtual Wedge Filters of ONCOR Linear Accelerator.

PURPOSE: In this study, we measured the dose profiles of physical wedges (PWs) and virtual wedges (VW) for photon energies (6 MV and 15 MV), various field sizes (10 × 10, 15 × 15, and 20 × 20 cm2), depths (dmax, 10 cm, 20 cm), and wedge angles (15°, 30°, 45°, and 60°). This study was performed using a Siemens ONCOR IMRT Plus linear accelerator. The acquired dose profiles of PW and VW were compared and statistically analyzed. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The dose profiles were measured using IBA CC13 ion chamber in IBA Blue phantom (a three-dimensional water phantom). The source-to-surface distance was kept 100 cm and measurements were taken for 10 × 10, 15 × 15, and 20 × 20 cm2 field sizes and for 15°, 30°, 45°, and 60° PWs. These measurements were taken for both 6 MV and 15 MV photon energies. VW profiles were obtained using LDA-99 linear detector array (IBA, Germany). The percent off-axis dose difference between PW and VW profiles were calculated, analyzed, and plotted. Statistics on the measured data was applied using SPSS version 13. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The percent dose difference between PW and VW beam profiles were calculated at different off-axis positions. These dose variations increased in the wedge direction (toe region), but were negligible in the nonwedge direction. The results of one-way analysis of variance show that the dose variation between PW and VW are significant with off-axis positions, wedge angles, and depth, but are statistically nonsignificant with energy and field sizes. These variations could produce abnormal doses, especially in large field sizes and wedge angles in clinical applications, which could be avoided by understanding the behavior of wedge profiles and comparing the calculated (from treatment planning system) and measured (actual) doses.