Within the sport, electronic mountain bikes (eMTB) are emerging as a popular option, however, there is a paucity of research on the injury profile of eMTB riders. The aim of the study was to provide ...insights into the demographic and injury profile of eMTB riders. Recruitment was through social media posts, flyers at MTB facilities and in The Canberra Hospital Emergency Department, as well as in person recruitment at Stromlo Forest Park. Riders in this study, however, had a higher frequency of chest trauma than expected based on previous MTB studies.
Methods: Concept Mapping is a mixed method participatory approach for qualitative data collection and quantitative data analysis. Statements were then reviewed and edited by four research team ...members (LT, AM, AD and JK) over four consensus meetings by splitting compound and deleting unrelated statements, collating similar ideas, and selecting statements that best represented the concept. Participants were then invited to sort the statements into groups of related concepts and rate their relative importance.
Naturally occurring radioactive material in containerized cargo challenges the state of the art in national and international efforts to detect illicit nuclear and radiological material in ...transported containers. Current systems are being evaluated and new systems envisioned to provide the high probability of detection necessary to thwart potential threats, combined with extremely low nuisance and false alarm rates necessary to maintain the flow of commerce impacted by the enormous volume of commodities imported in shipping containers. Maintaining flow of commerce also means that inspection must be rapid, requiring relatively non-intrusive, indirect measurements of cargo from outside containers to the extent possible. With increasing information content in such measurements, it is natural to ask how the information might be combined to improve detection. Toward this end, we present an approach to estimating isotopic activity of naturally occurring radioactive material in cargo grouped by commodity type, combining container manifest data with radiography and gamma-ray spectroscopy aligned to location along the container. The heart of this approach is our statistical model of gamma-ray counts within peak regions of interest, which captures the effects of background suppression, counting noise, convolution of neighboring cargo contributions, and down-scattered photons to provide estimates of counts due to decay of specific radioisotopes in cargo alone. Coupled to that model, we use a mechanistic model of self-attenuated radiation flux to estimate the isotopic activity within cargo, segmented by location within each container, that produces those counts. We test our approach by applying it to a set of measurements taken at the Port of Seattle in 2006. This approach to synthesizing disparate available data streams and extraction of cargo characteristics, while relying on several simplifying assumptions and approximations, holds the potential to support improvement of detection systems using current capabilities and to enable simulation-based evaluation of new candidate detection systems.
Methods: 19 asymptomatic senior elite (n=6, male=4) and under-23 rowers (n=13, male=7) currently competing at National level or above underwent ultrasound (US) evaluation of their distal forearms by ...a trained sonographer with postgraduate qualifications. The results of this study indicate that ultrasound identifiable pathology is common in the second extensor...
Age-related changes in gross and microscopic structure of the nasal cavity may alter local tissue susceptibility as well as the dose of inhaled toxicant delivered to susceptible sites. This article ...describes a novel method for the use of magnetic resonance imaging, 3-dimensional airway modeling, and morphometric techniques to characterize the distribution and magnitude of ozone-induced nasal injury in infant monkeys. Using this method, we generated age-specific, 3-dimensional, epithelial maps of the nasal airways of infant Rhesus macaques. The principal nasal lesions observed in this primate model of ozone-induced nasal toxicology were neutrophilic rhinitis, along with necrosis and exfoliation of the epithelium lining the anterior maxilloturbinate. These lesions, induced by acute or cyclic (episodic) exposures, were examined by light microscopy, quantified by morphometric techniques, and mapped on 3-dimensional models of the nasal airways. Here, we describe the histopathologic, imaging, and computational biology methods developed to precisely characterize, localize, quantify, and map these nasal lesions. By combining these techniques, the location and severity of the nasal epithelial injury were correlated with epithelial type, nasal airway geometry, and local biochemical and molecular changes on an individual animal basis. These correlations are critical for accurate predictive modeling of exposure-dose-response relationships in the nasal airways, and subsequent extrapolation of nasal findings in animals to humans for determining risk.
Advances in computational, and imaging techniques have enabled the rapid development of three-dimensional (3-D) models of biological systems in unprecedented detail. Using these advances, 3-D models ...of the lungs and nasal passages of the rat and human are being developed to ultimately improve predictions of airborne pollutant dosimetry. Techniques for imaging the respiratory tract by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) were developed to improve the speed and accuracy of geometric data collection for mesh reconstruction. The MRI resolution is comparable to that obtained by manual measurements but at much greater speed and accuracy. Newly developed software (NWGrid) was utilized to translate imaging data from MR into 3-D mesh structures. Together, these approaches significantly reduced the time to develop a 3-D model. This more robust airway structure will ultimately facilitate modeling gas or vapor exchange between the respiratory tract and vasculature as well as enable linkages of dosimetry with cell response models. The 3-D, finite volume, viscoelastic mesh structures form the geometric basis for computational fluid dynamics modeling of inhalation, exhalation and the delivery of individual particles (or concentrations of gas or vapors) to discrete regions of the respiratory tract. The ability of these 3-D models to resolve dosimetry at such a high level of detail will require new techniques to measure regional airflows and particulate deposition for model validation.
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