Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Florida, 2001. / Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains xvi, 186 p.; also contains graphics. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Florida, 2003. / Title from title page of source document. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Texas at Dallas, 2006. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-98)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 189-197).

Thesis (M. Nurs.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006.

Class of 2011 Absrtact / OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to analyze various published gentamicin dosing protocols in a neonate population to determine the percentage of patients that fell within defined concentration ranges, and determine which protocol was the most efficient at being within the desired concentration ranges. METHODS: Data from three published studies were used to create a database of 331 neonates who were up to seven days old and received gentamicin. Pharmacokinetic data was obtained and applied to specific dosing protocols from six published studies. The protocols were used to simulate peak and trough concentrations for each neonate. Desired trough concentrations include < 0.5 mg/L or < 1 mg/L and peak concentrations within 7-10 mg/L. Results were analyzed for frequency of achieving pre-specified concentration ranges based on dosing protocols from the study. RESULTS: The Begg protocol was adjusted for a desired Cmax of 8.5 mg/L and an estimated volume of distribution based on weight and was found to be the most efficient at achieving the highest percentage of patients achieving peaks of 7-10 mg/L and a trough of < 1 mg/L and < 0.5 mg/L, 63.0% and 61.5%, respectively. Also, other protocols which adjusted the dose based primarily on weight or gestational age such as the Fullas, Blackmer and Darmstadt protocols frequently achieved their desired trough however the average peak varied significantly, and was higher than the pre-specified concentration range. CONCLUSION: Achieving acceptable concentration ranges was suboptimal with much variability between each protocol requiring therapeutic drug monitoring and adjusting accordingly until a more efficient protocol is developed for this patient population.

Class of 2005 Abstract / Objectives: First, to evaluate five recent gentamicin dosing protocols that are specific for neonates and determine how frequently each protocol yields desirable peak and trough concentrations. Second, to make our evaluation more robust, we included AUC as one of the pharmacokinetic parameters and compared it to traditional parameters. Finally, to evaluate a fixed dosing protocol (3 mg/kg Q24-hours) that is currently being used at one Arizona hospital (UMC). Methods: This retrospective evaluation involved datasets from three independent sources. Dataset 1 was from a previously published study, while datasets 2 and 3 were derived for this study. Datasets 1 and 2 were pooled to evaluate the five dosing protocols, while dataset 3 was used to evaluate the fixed dosing protocol used at UMC. For all subjects, demographic and laboratory data was obtained from hospital databases or charts. The data collected was used to construct pharmacokinetic values, which in turn were used in simulations with the five protocols. Dataset 3 was evaluated as a whole for frequency of desired peaks and troughs, then for subsets based on weight, gestational age, and Apgar scores. Results: Of the five evaluated, the Avent protocol yielded the fewest potentially toxic troughs. The Murphy-Carter protocol stood out in that it was the easiest to use, most universally applicable, and it yielded only slightly fewer desired troughs then the Avent protocol. AUC values proved to be a novel and exceptionally useful tool in evaluating the dosing protocols. The fixed dosing protocol used at UMC was shown to consistently produce favorable trough concentrations as a whole as well as in our subset analyses. Implications: The multitude of dosing protocols that have been offered can create confusion among health care professionals and lead to discrepancies in dosing. The primary goal of any of these protocols is to minimize the risk of toxicity while avoiding subtherapeutic doses. A dosing protocol that can consistently meet these criterion, yet offer simplicity and wide applicability, then we can come that much closer to a universal standard.

Wireless networks enter a new era in which various objects, such as mobile phones, computers, vehicles, watches, are automatically and intelligently connected to provide ubiquitous services. Green communication protocols are required to save energy consumption and improve transmission performance. MAC protocols can detect the signal status and energy consumptions of physical channels to adapt to the dynamic wireless conditions. They can also provide node-to-node transmissions for network layer protocols under green wireless networks. The thesis presents three energy efficient communication solutions under different delay-tolerant networks scenarios to study the efficiency of MAC transmission protocols within wireless networks: CPMAC, AFLAS and TREE. CPMAC applies three energy-aware algorithms to transmit different quality requirements of data within one contact interval in sparsely connected sensor networks. Simulations and analysis shows CPMAC outperforms two other important MAC protocols in wireless sensor networks and vehicular ad-hoc networks in throughput, delay, energy consumption. AFLAS uses an adaptive frame length aggregation scheme for Vehicular Networks that is designed to improve transmission efficiency and increase data throughput. Suitable aggregation frame lengths are calculated according to the current wireless status, and applied in the MAC layer at the onset of data transmissions to save overhead and energy consumption. The simulations of AFLAS exhibit a significant improvement results in data throughput, retransmissions, overheads and transmission efficiency in comparison to non-adaptive aggregation schemes. TRaffic adaptive Energy Efficient MAC protocol (TREE) adapts its work modes: reservation and contention mode, to traffic density and adjusts its duty cycle to achieve energy efficiency. TREE demonstrates better performance in terms of energy efficiency and traffic adaptability than the schedule-based MAC protocol TDMA, the contention-based protocol CSMA and the traffic adaptive protocol TRAMA under mobile sensor network environments. By studying and designing MAC protocols in wireless environments, the thesis shows the comprehensive knowledge and principles of communication protocol designs with latency relaxed. Future work is discussed for further designs and implementations of green communication protocols.

This thesis discusses the problems of the conventional ISO 9646 methodology for OSI conformance testing, and proposes a new methodology based on trace analysis. In the proposed methodology, a trace analyzer is used to determine whether the observed behavior of the implementation under test is valid or invalid. This simplifies test cases dramatically, since they now need only specify the expected behavior of the IUT; unexpected behavior is checked by the trace analyzer. Test suites become correspondingly smaller. Because of this reduction in size and complexity, errors in test suites can be found and corrected far more easily. As a result, the reliability and the usefulness of the conformance testing process are greatly enhanced. In order to apply the proposed methodology, trace analyzers are needed. Existing trace analyzers are examined, and found to be unsuitable for OSI conformance testing. A family of new trace analysis algorithms is presented and proved. To verify the feasibility of the proposed methodology, and to demonstrate its benefits, it is applied to a particular protocol, the LAPB protocol specified by ISO 7776. The design and implementation of a trace analyzer for LAPB are described. The conventional ISO 8882-2 test suite for LAPB, when rewritten to specify only the expected behavior of the IUT, is found to be more than an order of magnitude smaller. / Science, Faculty of / Computer Science, Department of / Graduate

As Local Area Networks gain momentum in recent Computer Science research, implementation is generally characterized by various factors such as efficiency, reliability, error recovery, and synchronism; however, how well the above issues can be achieved is heavily dependent on the facilities available in an implementation environment. Due to the recent popularity of message passing and concurrent processes, the UNIX 4.2bsd operating system with its interprocess communication facility is chosen to be the implementation environment for the Cambridge Ring's Basic Block and Byte Stream Protocols. Basic Block Protocol, implemented as a device driver in the system kernel, is the lowest level protocol which provides an unreliable datagram service, while the Byte Stream Protocol, implemented using multi-concurrent processes in the user space, provides a reliable, full-duplex virtual circuit service based on the service provided by the Basic Block Protocol. This thesis describes the protocol implementation on a 68000 based SUN workstation, and discusses results learnt from the experiment. The multi-concurrent processes approach is found to work adequately well for a small number of clients, but incur high overhead when the number of clients is large. / Science, Faculty of / Computer Science, Department of / Graduate