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Digital tools may support people to self-manage their heart failure (HF). Having previously outlined the human-centered design development of a digital tool to support self-care of HF, the next step was to pilot the tool over a period of time to establish people's acceptance of it in practice. This study aims to conduct an observational pilot study to examine the usability, adherence, and feasibility of a digital health tool for HF within the Irish health care system. A total of 19 participants with HF were provided with a digital tool comprising a mobile app and the Fitbit Charge 4 and Aria Air smart scales for a period of 6 months. Changes to their self-care were assessed before and after the study with the 9-item European HF Self-care Behavior Scale (EHFScBS) and the Minnesota Living with HF Questionnaire (MLwHFQ) using a Wilcoxon signed rank test. After the study, 3 usability questionnaires were implemented and descriptively analyzed: the System Usability Scale (SUS), Wearable Technology Motivation Scale (WTMS), and Comfort Rating Scale (CRS). Participants also undertook a semistructured interview regarding their experiences with the digital tool. Interviews were analyzed deductively using the Theoretical Domains Framework. Participants wore their devices for an average of 86.2% of the days in the 6-month testing period ranging from 40.6% to 98%. Although improvements in the EHFScBS and MLwHFQ were seen, these changes were not significant (P=.10 and P=.70, respectively, where P>.03, after a Bonferroni correction). SUS results suggest that the usability of this system was not acceptable with a median score of 58.8 (IQR 55.0-60.0; range 45.0-67.5). Participants demonstrated a strong motivation to use the system according to the WTMS (median 6.0, IQR 5.0-7.0; range 1.0-7.0), whereas the Fitbit was considered very comfortable as demonstrated by the low CRS results (median 0.0, IQR 0.0-0.0; range 0.0-2.0). According to participant interviews, the digital tool supported self-management through increased knowledge, improved awareness, decision-making, and confidence in their own data, and improving their social support through a feeling of comfort in being watched. The digital health tool demonstrated high levels of adherence and acceptance among participants. Although the SUS results suggest low usability, this may be explained by participants uncertainty that they were using it fully, rather than it being unusable, especially given the experiences documented in their interviews. The digital tool targeted key self-management behaviors and feelings of social support. However, a number of changes to the tool, and the health service, are required before it can be implemented at scale. A full-scale feasibility trial conducted at a wider level is required to fully determine its potential effectiveness and wider implementation needs.

Effective self-care is an important factor in the successful management of patients with heart failure (HF). Despite the importance of self-care, most patients with HF are not adequately taught the wide range of skills required to become proficient in self-care. Digital health technology (DHT) may provide a novel solution to support patients at home in effective self-care, with the view to enhancing the quality of life and ultimately improving patient outcomes. However, many of the solutions developed to date have failed to consider users' perspectives at the point of design, resulting in poor effectiveness. Leveraging a human-centered design (HCD) approach to the development of DHTs may lead to the successful promotion of self-care behaviors in patients with HF. This study aimed to outline the HCD, development, and evaluation process of a DHT designed to promote effective self-care in patients with HF. A design thinking approach within the HCD framework was undertaken, as described in the International Organization for Standardization 9241-210:2019 regulations, using a 5-step process: empathize, ideate, design, develop, and test. Patients with HF were involved throughout the design and evaluation of the system. The designed system was grounded in behavior change theory using the Theoretical Domains Framework and included behavior change techniques. Mixed methods were used to evaluate the DHT during the testing phase. Steps 1 to 3 of the process resulted in a set of evidence- and user-informed design requirements that were carried forward into the iterative development of a version 1 system. A cross-platform (iOS and Android) mobile app integrated with Fitbit activity trackers and smart scales was developed. A 2-week user testing phase highlighted the ease of use of the system, with patients demonstrating excellent adherence. Qualitative analysis of semistructured interviews identified the early potential for the system to positively influence self-care. Specifically, users perceived that the system increased their confidence and motivation to engage in key self-care behaviors, provided them with skills and knowledge that made them more aware of the importance of self-care behaviors, and might facilitate timely help seeking. The use of an HCD methodology in this research has resulted in the development of a DHT that may engage patients with HF and potentially affect their self-care behaviors. This comprehensive work lays the groundwork for further development and evaluation of this solution before its implementation in health care systems. A detailed description of the HCD process used in this research will help guide the development and evaluation of future DHTs across a range of disease use cases.

The widespread availability of internet-connected smart devices in the health care setting has the potential to improve the delivery of research evidence to the care pathway and fulfill health care professionals' information needs. This study aims to evaluate the frequency with which physiotherapists experience information needs, the capacity of digital information resources to fulfill these needs, and the specific types of resources they use to do so. A total of 38 participants (all practicing physiotherapists; 19 females, 19 males) were randomly assigned to complete three 20-question multiple-choice questionnaire (MCQ) examinations under 3 conditions in a randomized crossover study design: assisted by a web browser, assisted by a federated search portal system, and unassisted. MCQ scores, times, and frequencies of information needs were recorded for overall examination-level and individual question-level analyses. Generalized estimating equations were used to assess differences between conditions for the primary outcomes. A log file analysis was conducted to evaluate participants' web search and retrieval behaviors. Participants experienced an information need in 55.59% (845/1520) MCQs (assisted conditions only) and exhibited a mean improvement of 10% and 16% in overall examination scores for the federated search and web browser conditions, respectively, compared with the unassisted condition (P<.001). In the web browser condition, Google was the most popular resource and the only search engine used, accounting for 1273 (64%) of hits, followed by PubMed (195 hits; 10% of total). In the federated search condition, Wikipedia and PubMed were the most popular resources with 1518 (46% of total) and 1273 (39% of total) hits, respectively. In agreement with the findings of previous research studies among medical physicians, the results of this study demonstrate that physiotherapists frequently experience information needs. This study provides new insights into the preferred digital information resources used by physiotherapists to fulfill these needs. Future research should clarify the implications of physiotherapists' apparent high reliance on Google, whether these results reflect the authentic clinical environment, and whether fulfilling clinical information needs alters practice behaviors or improves patient outcomes.

Many runners report \"hitting The Wall\" (HTW) during a marathon (42.2 km). However, the performance manifestation of this subjectively experienced phenomenon remains unclear. To identify a pace-based classification for HTW by integrating subjective reports of fatigue and runners' pacing profiles during a marathon. Cross-sectional study. Public race event (2018 Dublin Marathon). Eighty-three runners (28 [34%] women, 55 [66%] men, age = 41.5 ± 9.1 years, height = 1.73 ± 0.09 m, mass = 70.2 ± 10.1 kg). The pacing profiles for respondents to our postrace questionnaire that concerned the phenomenon of HTW were evaluated. Receiver operating characteristic analyses were performed on discretized outcomes of the time series of marathoners' paces during the race. Using the receiver operating characteristic analyses, we observed that runners could be classified as having experienced HTW if they ran any 1-km segment 11% slower than the average of the remaining segments of the race (accuracy = 84.6%, sensitivity = 1, specificity = 0.6) or if the standard deviation of the normalized 1-km split times exceeded 0.0532 (accuracy = 83%, sensitivity = 0.818, specificity = 0.8). Similarly, runners could be classified as having experienced HTW if they ran any 5-km segment 7.3% slower than the average of the remaining 5-km segments of the race (accuracy = 84.6%, sensitivity = 1, specificity = 0.644) or if the standard deviation of the normalized 5-km split times exceeded 0.0346 (accuracy = 82%, sensitivity = 0.909, specificity = 0.622). These pace-based criteria could be valuable to researchers evaluating HTW prevalence in cohorts for whom they lack subjective questionnaire data.

The text deals with the iconography of the medieval wall paintings in the churches in Rimavské Brezovo and Liptovské Sliače. Both of these paintings of female figures holding vessels and beset by demons represent the specific motif of a landlady or tavern keeper suffering in Hell. Depictions of the figure of the landlady in combination with demons can be found throughout medieval Europe from the early 14th century until the early modern period, and negative portrayals of the character appear in numerous literary sources of the period. The preserved paintings in Rimavské Brezovo and Liptovské Sliače are valuable evidence of eschatological concepts and the ways in which they were disseminated in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Understanding the traffic profile of the Loteraet ban become one of the most impar- taot asd most challeogiog issues for lawroet Servire Providers (ISP). To this esd, USPs ose differeas tratiic ideat®cation took tbat cao help them profling the octwork appkcations whict load the® systems. Usieg this crecial ioformation ther are able to appl diftmot charging polres, traffic shape, aod off: diferent Qualin of Sze (QoS) gearaowes to selected osers or appScatiogs.Traffic Weatifration tads are asaally chusifed isto three groope: (i) port-baned metbods, where a protocol ix ideatified oaly by the information in the tmoxport- layer beader, (ii) statistical-based metbods wher statistical @dicators aw derived from different characteristics of the artwork flows (r.g., average of packet sires of inter-packet times) aed the results are matched with a kamed database, and (ii! Deep Packet lespection (DPI) where packet payloads are matcbed agaiost a sgeaure database whith cootains goiqee expr mioos for tbe differest protocols. DPI was ietrodared ax a sclation for sewral ixsers axsocinted with port-based and statistical- based identification approaches ie order tw achieve ap accoraw aod timel traffic ideatifcatins. This procedure was proves to be the most efficeet ose amoog tbe traffic identification methods and it ix often axed ax a ground troth for sting otber idea ifcatine tools. However, wmiog DPI algorithms io terms of both performaece aod acceracy is still ae opee issec in the research community.The goal of this dimenation & to present mr msarb achievermeots op a traffic emektion framework samed tbe User Bebavior Based Traffic Emutawr (UBE ). VBE is able to geserate bigh speed traffic aggregates mixed op by arbitrary oser profiles. By this process the framework can generate a sodable iopet for DPI testing which cas ako be freely distributed amoog the research commodity withowt aey privacy cooceres. Io the first part I present the archnectere of VBE which is constrected by three main parts: ji} the user emulator where an arbitrary user behavior can be played in remotely controlled machines, jii} the measurement processor where typical user behaviors can be extracted from real traffic measurement, and (iii) the traffic aggregator where high speed aggregates can be mixed up using the recorded traffic traces. I highlight the new results and explain how the three parts can work together in order to achieve my original research goal. | validate the framework by comparing its output with traffic measurements on real operational networks.In the second part of this Thesis | continue my research with the characterization of user behavior by creating a model where user bandwidth utilization can be provi- sioued by a modified Pareto distribution. Using this model | gave a formula which can be used by operators to estimate the time share when the aggregated traffic of their users exceeds the capacity of the aggregated link. This model has the advan- tage that it takes into account the users’ natural bandwidth scaling as well as the maximum bandwidth they're offered. Moreover, the model's parameters can be easily adjustable by new broadband measurements as the generated traffic keeps growing in an exponential rate.In the final part of my dissertation | follow the newest trends in networking by investigating the advantages of centralized control and OpenFlow protocol in Software Defined Networking (SDNj for traffic measurement purposes. | defined an algorithm that can determine the available bandwidth between any two points in a SDN uctwork. 1 also analyzed the error rate of such measurements and gave theoretical error bounds based on the network delay and the measurement time interval.

Network Coding (NC) shows great potential in various communication scenarios through changing the packet forwarding principles of current networks. It can improve not only throughput, latency, reliability and security but also alleviates the need of coordination in many cases. However, it is still controversial due to widespread misunderstandings on how to exploit the advantages of it. The aim of the paper is to facilitate the usage of NC by \\((i)\\) explaining how it can improve the performance of the network (regardless the existence of any butterfly in the network), \\((ii)\\) showing how Software Defined Networking (SDN) can resolve the crucial problems of deployment and orchestration of NC elements, and \\((iii)\\) providing a prototype architecture with measurement results on the performance of our network coding capable software router implementation compared by fountain codes.

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have emerged as promising agents in cancer diagnostics and/or therapy, demonstrating a lot of possible pharmacological actions. However, understanding the pharmacokinetics and safety profiles of nanoparticles, which is crucial for their clinical application, still raises many questions. Studies indicate that AgNPs can accumulate in tumour tissues, improving drug delivery and specificity. However, their interaction with biological systems necessitates thorough safety evaluations. Classical methods for assessing AgNPs’ safety include cytotoxicity assays, genotoxicity tests, and histopathological examinations. However, novel techniques are emerging, such as advanced imaging and biomarker analysis, offering more precise toxicity assessments. Prediction models, including computational simulations and in silico analyses, are being developed to forecast AgNPs’ toxicity profiles. These models aim to reduce reliance on animal testing and expedite the evaluation process. To mitigate potential risks associated with nanoparticle-based therapies, strategies such as surface modification, controlled release systems, and targeted delivery are being explored. These methods aim to enhance therapeutic efficacy while minimizing adverse effects. The main aim of this review article is to describe AgNPs from the point of view of their pharmacokinetic/toxicokinetic profile in the light of modern knowledge. Special attention will be given to novel methods for assessing the safety and toxicity profiles of AgNPs, providing insights into their interactions with cancer therapies and their potential clinical applications.