A Comprehensive Survey of the Tactile Internet: State of the art and Research Directions

The Internet has made several giant leaps over the years, from a fixed to a mobile Internet, then to the Internet of Things, and now to a Tactile Internet. The Tactile Internet goes far beyond data, audio and video delivery over fixed and mobile networks, and even beyond allowing communication and collaboration among things. It is expected to enable haptic communication and allow skill set delivery over networks. Some examples of potential applications are tele-surgery, vehicle fleets, augmented reality and industrial process automation. Several papers already cover many of the Tactile Internet-related concepts and technologies, such as haptic codecs, applications, and supporting technologies. However, none of them offers a comprehensive survey of the Tactile Internet, including its architectures and algorithms. Furthermore, none of them provides a systematic and critical review of the existing solutions. To address these lacunae, we provide a comprehensive survey of the architectures and algorithms proposed to date for the Tactile Internet. In addition, we critically review them using a well-defined set of requirements and discuss some of the lessons learned as well as the most promising research directions

The impact of vaccination on the burden of invasive pneumococcal disease from a nationwide surveillance program in Lebanon: an unexpected increase in mortality driven by non-vaccine serotypes

Background: The impact of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) on the burden of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) and serotype distribution was examined across age groups from data collected by the Lebanese Inter-Hospital Pneumococcal Surveillance Program. Methods: Between 2005 and 2020, 593 invasive Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates were collected from 79 hospitals throughout Lebanon. Serotypes and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) profiles were identified, and trends compared over 3 eras: PCV7, post-PCV7/ pre-PCV13, and PCV13 eras. Results: The prevalence of PCV7 serotypes decreased significantly from 43.6% in the PCV7 era to 17.8% during the PCV13 era (p<0.001). PCV13-only serotypes remained stable in the PCV13 compared to the post-PCV7 eras, especially serotypes 1 and 3, whereas non-vaccine types (NVT) increased throughout the study period, especially 24 and 16F. The mortality rate increased substantially from 12.5% (PCV7 era) to 24.8% (PCV13 era). A significant decrease in AMR was observed across the three study eras. Conclusion: PCVs substantially impacted IPD and AMR in vaccinated and unvaccinated populations despite an increase in mortality driven by NVT. Broadening the recommendation of vaccination to include older age-groups, using higher valency vaccines, and implementing stringent antimicrobial stewardship are likely to further impact the burden of IPD. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Determinants of hospital efficiency: A literature review

Background: Inefficiency is a pervasive problem in health systems. The World Health Organization estimates that on average, 20%-40% of the global total health expenditure is wasted. The proportion of total health expenditure attributed to hospitals is high, which implies that improving the efficiency of hospitals will lead to more efficient health systems. This study aims to synthetize the major determinants of hospital inefficiency and to develop a framework to identify causes of inefficiency and develop multi-factor interventions to address inefficiencies.Methods: The study is based on survey of the literature on the determinants of hospital efficiency. The studies include those that employ ratio methods of efficiency analysis, data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier models and econometric models such as the Tobit regression to assess determinants of technical efficiency. Data was extracted in a table format categorized as those that are within the hospital, outside the hospital but within the health system and those that are outside the hospital and health system in the broader macroeconomic system and analyzed.Results: Hospital efficiency is influenced by factors that may be internal to the hospital or external and thus could be wholly or partially out of the control of the hospital. Hospital-level characteristics that influence efficiency include ownership, size, specialization/scope economies, teaching status, membership of multihospital system and other factors such as case-mix and ratio of outpatients to inpatients. However, the effects of these variables are not definitive and consistent; all depends on the context. Factors out of the direct control of the hospital include geographic location, competition and reimbursement systems. The findings further elucidate that no single factor is effective in addressing hospital inefficiencies in isolation from others.Conclusion: There is no one single magic formula or intervention that can be adopted by different hospitals to improve hospital efficiencies. Multiple factors influence the efficiency of hospitals. To address hospital inefficiency multi-intervention packages focusing on the hospital and its environment should be developed.</jats:p

Waveguiding through a two-dimensional metallic photonic crystal

We present a two-dimensional (2D) finite-difference time domain simulation of the propagation of light through linear and bent channels in metallic photonic crystals. We took as a starting point the Bozhevolnyi experiment, consisting of the scattering of surface plasmons by a 2D structure of finitely sized periodic gold dots arranged in a triangular lattice of 400-nm period. We model injection and propagation of light through linear channels of different widths. We also study the behaviour of light in the presence of a 90 degrees bent line defect made in the structure. We show that the confinement depends on the orientation of the input and output line defects. The two cases of GammaM and GammaK orientations are considered and a spectral study for five different wavelengths is carried out