Abstract P816: Nurse-Driven Rapid Covid-19 Testing in Emergency Department Stroke Patients

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic presents obstacles to time sensitive emergencies, such as stroke care. In acute strokes, knowing the COVID-19 status may help to preserve personal protective equipment (PPE) in patients in whom a thrombectomy may be indicated and helps to decrease unnecessary exposure. This study aims to demonstrate that rapid evaluation of a patient’s COVID-19 status is feasible without delaying treatment times. Methods: An intradisciplinary team was convened to create a workflow for rapid COVID-19 testing. The Abbott Rapid® COVID-19 swab kit and assay were stocked in the ED Pyxis, utilizing the narcotic count feature to ensure all swabs were accounted. Upon activation of Code Stroke, the ED RN donned PPE and swabbed the patient’s naso-oral pharynx. The collected swab was labeled, placed in a bio-hazard bag, sanitized and handed to a second RN outside of the room. The specimen was taken to a pre-alerted lab technician who prepped the assay after hearing the code stroke. After specimen collection, the patient followed the normal code stroke pathway and was taken to the CT scanner. Metrics were analyzed for the pre COVID-19 (January through April) and during active COVID-19 (May through July) periods. Results: There were 136 code strokes from January thru July 2020. 81 were during pre-COVID vs. 55 during active-COVID. 47 of 55 (96%) were swabbed, 2 (4%) of whom were positive. There was no difference between pre-COVID and active-COVID door to CT initiated time (16 mins [IQR 13-24] vs. 22 mins [IQR 13-25] p=0.75), door to CT resulted time (21 mins [IQR 15-26]) vs. 23 mins [IQR 16-29] p=0.63). 18 patients received tPA pre-COVID and 5 during active-COVID with no difference in DTN (pre: 37.5 mins [IQR 30-43] vs. active: 28 mins {IQR 26-41] p=0.37). Door to CT initiated was faster for those who had their COVID swab performed pre-CT (14 mins [IQR 11.5-16.5] p=0.034) vs. post-CT (20 mins [IQR 17-28]). Likewise, door to CT resulted was also faster pre-CT: 24 mins [IQR 19-32] vs. post-CT: 17 mins [IQR 15-23] (p=0.04). Conclusion: The COVID-19 rapid swab code stroke process was feasible and did not delay treatment times.

Pandemi dalam Worldview Islam; Dari Konsepsi ke Konspirasi

In order to face the challenge of COVID-19 Pandemic, Muslims are demanded to execute Health Protocols in accordance with the Worldview of Islam. Through the conceptualization of ‘Pandemic’ in Worldview of Islam, Muslims are able to find several crucial elements constructing ‘Pandemic’ based on a proper comprehension of their Theological Foundation. This paper will re-examine the concept of Pandemic utilizing Worldview of Islam as an analytical framework; started from an enquiry of Pandemic concept in Quran and Prophetic Tradition, altogether with a reflection from the great legacy of Islamic Civilization in Medical Issues. As such, some issues related to the ‘conspiracy theory’ related to COVID-19 will also discussed, before finally ended with a brief note regarding ‘New Normal’ code.

FRand: MATLAB Toolbox for Fuzzy Random Number Simulation

Context: This paper presents a MATLAB code implementation and the GUI (General User Interface) for fuzzy random variable generation. Based on previous theoretical results and applications, a MATLAB toolbox has been developed and tested for selected membership functions. Method: A two–step methodology was used: i) a MATLAB toolbox was implemented to be used as interface and ii) all .m functions are available to be used as normal code. The main goal is to provide graphical and code–efficient tools to users. Results: The main obtained results are the MATLAB GUI and code. In addition, some experiments were ran to evaluate its capabilities and some randomness statistical tests were successfully performed. Conclusions: Satisfactory results were obtained from the implementation of the MATLAB code/toolbox. All randomness tests were accepted and all performed experiments shown stability of the toolbox even for large samples (>10.000). Also, the code/toolbox are available online. Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank to the Prof. M Sc. Miguel Melgarejo and Prof. Jos´e Jairo Soriano–Mendez sincerely for their interest and invaluable support, and a special gratefulness is given to all members of LAMIC.

Hybrid Obfuscation Using Signals and Encryption

Obfuscation of software and data is one of the subcategories of software security. Hence, the outlines of the obfuscation problem and its various methods have been studied in this article. This paper proposes a hybrid of two signals and encryption obfuscation to hide the behaviour program and prevent reconstruction of the normal code by hackers. The usual signal method is strong enough for obfuscation, but its problem is the high complexity because of a lot of call and return instructions. In this study, a new dispatcher was added to the source code to reconstruct the original control flow graph from the hidden one to solve the problem of the signal method. This dispatcher code is encrypted to preclude access by the hacker. In this paper, the potency that makes the obfuscation strong has been increased and the resilience that makes the obfuscation poor has been decreased. The results of a comparison of the similarity among the ambiguous data with its original code and with available efficient methods present a performance advantage of the proposed hybrid obfuscation algorithm.

An Efficient Code-Based Threshold Ring Signature Scheme with a Leader-Participant Model

Digital signature schemes with additional properties have broad applications, such as in protecting the identity of signers allowing a signer to anonymously sign a message in a group of signers (also known as a ring). While these number-theoretic problems are still secure at the time of this research, the situation could change with advances in quantum computing. There is a pressing need to design PKC schemes that are secure against quantum attacks. In this paper, we propose a novel code-based threshold ring signature scheme with a leader-participant model. A leader is appointed, who chooses some shared parameters for other signers to participate in the signing process. This leader-participant model enhances the performance because every participant including the leader could execute the decoding algorithm (as a part of signing process) upon receiving the shared parameters from the leader. The time complexity of our scheme is close to Courtois et al.’s (2001) scheme. The latter is often used as a basis to construct other types of code-based signature schemes. Moreover, as a threshold ring signature scheme, our scheme is as efficient as the normal code-based ring signature.

Study into the Use of Signage on Exit Choice Behaviour in a Virtual Environment

The effectiveness of egress paths from a building could be attributed to good signage or intuitive Architecture but we know it is also influenced by human behaviour in fire. The extent to which human behaviour plays a role in the effectiveness of egress routes is not yet fully understood.The aim of this paper is to investigate human behaviour in a relatively simple study of exit choice. The study is conducted in a virtual environment by examining the effectiveness of additional floor-based chevron arrows when compared with conventional exit signage on the same escape routes.Fifty nine participants were asked to interact with the software to escape from a fire in the created virtual environment. Thirty two of the participants used a model with conventional exit signs only. Twenty seven of the participants used the model with exit signs and chevrons on the floor. After completing the virtual egress exercise the participants were given a questionnaire to help understand their behaviour during the task. This allowed the authors to compare results of the post experiment questionnaire with the video output of the test.This research is novel in that involves the use of already existing technologies for new purposes; in this case, commercial computer games engines, generally used for entertainment purposes. As technology reaches new levels it is inevitable that there will be overlap in functionality.This paper describes the experiments, analyses the information gleaned from the research and provides some conclusions for consideration by others in this field. By assessing exit choice behaviour and evacuation time it is possible to compare the effectiveness of the additional floor based signage as a fire protection measure provided above and beyond normal code requirements.