Summary
This review analyzes the economic costs of HF in Asia. The availability and quality of studies on the burden of osteoporosis in Asia are very scarce. There is a need to encourage more quality ...cost of osteoporosis studies based on standardized methods to convince healthcare authorities in implementing appropriate strategies.
Introduction
Osteoporosis fractures, especially hip fractures, impose large economic costs to governments and societies. This review aimed to systematically analyze available evidence on healthcare costs associated with osteoporosis-related hip fractures (HF) in Asia.
Methods
Articles were systematically sought from databases including PubMed, EMBASE, and EBSCOHost between 2000 and 2015. Total costs associated with HF care, the cost components, and length of stays were retrieved and analyzed. Study designs were also qualitatively analyzed.
Results
The availability of published studies on economic burden of HF in Asia is severely lacking with only 15 articles met the inclusion criteria. Even among the included studies, only two studies reported comprehensive costs evaluating all costs including indirect or intangible costs. Most studies satisfactorily reported criteria for conducting economic evaluation, but large variations existed in the methodological design. Due to study design and other influencing factors, large variation in the cost of HF treatment from US$774 to US$14,198.90 (median S$2943), representing an average of 18.95% (range: 3.58–57.05%) of the countries’ 2014 GDP/capita, was observed. This highlighted the heavy burden of managing HF in Asia with about 40% of the included studies reported using more than one third of GDP/capita.
Conclusion
There is a paucity of burden of illness studies of osteoporosis in the Asian region. For the few available studies, there was a lack of standardization in methodological approach in evaluating the economic burden of the disease. There is a need to encourage more quality burden of illness studies of osteoporosis to inform policymakers in healthcare planning.
The effectiveness of graphite as self-lubricating reinforcement in anodic oxide is still unknown despite showing clear dependency towards water to provide lubrication. The objective of this study is ...to evaluate the tribological behavior of aluminium anodic oxide reinforced graphite coating under different relative humidity conditions. In this study, the oxide coating was reinforced with graphite varied between 0 to 20 gL−1. The graphite distribution, and structure hybridization were first analyzed. The coating with the highest sliding durability at room condition was tested under different relative humidity at 5 and 85 RH%. Overall, graphite reinforcement improved the coating’s hardness and roughness. Tribological wise, coating with 1 gL−1 of graphite reinforcement has the longest durability.
The subject of high-energy-density (HED) states in matter is of considerable importance to numerous branches of basic as well as applied physics. Intense heavy-ion beams are an excellent tool to ...create large samples of HED matter in the laboratory with fairly uniform physical conditions. Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung, Darmstadt, is a unique worldwide laboratory that has a heavy-ion synchrotron, SIS18, that delivers intense beams of energetic heavy ions. Construction of a much more powerful synchrotron, SIS100, at the future international facility for antiprotons and ion research (FAIR) at Darmstadt will lead to an increase in beam intensity by 3 orders of magnitude compared to what is currently available. The purpose of this Letter is to investigate with the help of two-dimensional numerical simulations, the potential of the FAIR to carry out research in the field of HED states in matter.
We present the linear theory of two-dimensional incompressible magneto-Rayleigh–Taylor instability in a system composed of a linear elastic (Hookean) layer above a lighter semi-infinite ideal fluid ...with magnetic fields present, above and below the layer. As expected, magnetic field effects and elasticity effects together enhance the stability of thick layers. However, the situation becomes more complicated for relatively thin slabs, and a number of new and unexpected phenomena are observed. In particular, when the magnetic field beneath the layer dominates, its effects compete with effects due to elasticity, and counteract the stabilising effects of the elasticity. As a consequence, the layer can become more unstable than when only one of these stabilising mechanisms is acting. This somewhat unexpected result is explained by the different physical mechanisms for which elasticity and magnetic fields stabilise the system. Implications for experiments on magnetically driven accelerated plates and implosions are discussed. Moreover, the relevance for triggering of crust-quakes in strongly magnetised neutron stars is also pointed out.
Summary
From the perspective of Malaysian health care providers, denosumab was cost-effective in the treatment of postmenopausal osteoporosis, with an optimal outcome starting at age 60 years. Our ...results provide important insights into the value for money of anti-osteoporotic agents that can serve as a reference for other countries with comparable epidemiological data.
Introduction
The study aimed to compare the cost-effectiveness of denosumab with alendronate and no treatment in the management of postmenopausal osteoporosis among the Malaysian population.
Methods
A well-validated Markov model was used to estimate the cost-effectiveness of denosumab in a hypothetical cohort of postmenopausal osteoporotic women between 50 and 80 years old who had no history of fractures. A 10-year time horizon from the perspective of Malaysian health care providers was used in this analysis. The model parameters, including transition probabilities and costs, were based on Malaysian sources. Treatment efficacy data were obtained from a network meta-analysis. The study outcomes were presented as incremental cost per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) gained. Sensitivity analyses were performed to ensure the robustness of the results. A cost-effectiveness threshold was set at MYR 21,438 (USD 5175) per QALY.
Results
Denosumab was found to be a cost-effective option for postmenopausal osteoporotic women aged 60 and older. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) for denosumab versus alendronate ranged from MYR 16,955 (USD 4093) per QALY at age 60 to MYR 4380 (USD 1057) per QALY at age 80. The cost-effectiveness of denosumab improved monotonically with increasing age. Denosumab was 72.8–92.7% likely to be cost-effective at the cost-effectiveness threshold. Sensitivity analyses demonstrated that the results were robust across all parameter variations, with the annual cost of denosumab being the most sensitive.
Conclusions
From the perspective of the Malaysian health care provider, denosumab appears to be a cost-effective treatment choice for postmenopausal osteoporotic women over 60 years of age.
Pakistan is facing problem of deforestation. Pakistan lost 14.7% of its forest habitat between 1990 and 2005 interval. This paper assesses the present forest wood consumption rate by 6000 brick kilns ...established in the country and its implications in terms of deforestation and emission of greenhouse gases. Information regarding consumption of forest wood by the brick kilns was collected during a manual survey of 180 brick kiln units conducted in eighteen provincial divisions of country. Considering annual emission contributions of three primary GHGs i.e., CO
2, CH
4 and N
2O, due to burning of forest wood in brick kiln units in Pakistan and using IPCC recommended GWP indices, the combined CO
2-equivalent has been estimated to be 533019 t y
−1.
Consumption of forest wood in the brick industry poses the problem of deforestation in Pakistan in addition to release of GHGs in the environment owing to biomass burning.
Asphalt cracks are one of the major road damage problems in civil field as it may potentially threaten the road and highway safety. Crack detection and classification is a challenging task because ...complicated pavement conditions due to the presence of shadows, oil stains and water spot will result in poor visual and low contrast between cracks and the surrounding pavement. In this paper, the network proposed a fully automated crack detection and classification using deep convolution neural network (DCNN) architecture. First, the image of pavement cracks manually prepared in RGB format with dimension of 1024x768 pixels, captured using NIKON digital camera. Next, the image will segmented into patches (32x32 pixels) as a training dataset from the original pavement cracks and trained DCNN with two different filter sizes: 3x3 and 5x5. The proposed method has successfully detected the presence of crack in the images with 98%, 99% and 99% of recall, precision and accuracy respectively. The network was also able to automatically classify the pavement cracks into no cracks, transverse, longitudinal and alligator with acceptable classification accuracy for both filter sizes. There was no significant different in classification accuracy between the two different filters. However, smaller filter size need more processing training time compared to the larger filter size. Overall, the proposed method has successfully achieved accuracy of 94.5% in classifying different types of crack.
Semiconductor photocatalysis is one of most appealing and attractive technologies, which has been directly utilized to harvest solar energy for energy and environmental applications. Titanium dioxide ...(TiO2) has been proved to be leading semiconductor photocatalyst for the degradation of pollutants. However, it suffers from low photocatalytic activity under visible light activation because of its intrinsic wide band gap. Various strategies have been developed to enhance TiO2 efficiency in the visible light region. Among them TiO2 modification with carbonaceous nanomaterials is very effective route for excellent photocatalytic activity. This critical review aims to present recent progress in the design and synthesis of carbonaceous-TiO2 photocatalysts, covering carbon doping, activated carbon, fullerenes, carbon nanotubes and graphene. Moreover, proposed mechanisms of enhancement, effect of synthesis routes, demonstrations of performance and applications reported in literature are reviewed. Ongoing challenges and possible new directions are outlined.
We present the analysis of Chandra and NuSTAR spectra of NGC 4968, a local (D ∼ 44 Mpc) 12 m selected Seyfert 2 galaxy, enshrouded within Compton-thick layers of obscuring gas. We find no evidence of ...variability between the Chandra and NuSTAR observations (separated by 2 yr), nor between the two NuSTAR observations (separated by 10 months). Using self-consistent X-ray models, we rule out the scenario where the obscuring medium is nearly spherical and uniform, contradicting the results implied by the <10 keV Chandra spectrum. The line-of-sight column density, from intervening matter between the source and observer that intercepts the intrinsic active galactic nucleus (AGN) X-ray emission, is well within the Compton-thick regime, with a minimum column density of 2 × 1024 cm−2. The average global column density is high (>3 × 1023 cm−2), with both Compton-thick and Compton-thin solutions permitted, depending on the X-ray spectral model. The spectral models provide a range of intrinsic AGN continuum parameters and implied 2-10 keV luminosities (L2-10 keV,intrinsic), where the higher end of L2-10 keV,intrinsic is consistent with expectations from the 12 m luminosity (L2-10 keV,intrinisc ∼ 7 × 1042 erg s−1). Compared with Compton-thick AGN previously observed by NuSTAR, NGC 4968 is among the most intrinsically X-ray luminous. However, despite its close proximity and relatively high intrinsic X-ray luminosity, it is undetected by the 105 month Swift-Burst Alert Telescope survey, underscoring the importance of multiwavelength selection for obtaining the most complete census of the most hidden black holes.
We investigate the anomalous behavior of localization length of a non-interacting one-dimensional Anderson model at zero temperature. We report numerical calculations of the Thouless expression of ...localization length, based on the Kernel polynomial method (KPM), which has an ( N ) computational complexity, where N is the system size. The KPM results show excellent agreement with perturbative results in a large system size limit, confirming the validity of the Thouless formula. In the perturbative regime, we show that the KPM approximation of the Thouless expression produces the correct localization length at the band center in the thermodynamic limit. The Thouless expression relates localization length in terms of density of states in a one-dimensional disordered system. By calculating the KPM estimates of the density of states, we find a cusp-like behavior around the band center in the perturbative regime. This cusp-like singularity can not be obtained by approximate analytical calculations within the second-order approximations, reflects the band-center anomaly.
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