Bridge weigh in motion (B-WIM) uses accurate sensing systems to transform an existing bridge into a mechanism to determine actual traffic loading. This information on traffic loading can enable ...efficient and economical management of transport networks and is becoming a valuable tool for bridge safety assessment. B-WIM can provide site-specific traffic loading on deteriorating bridges, which can be used to determine if the reduced capacity is still sufficient to allow the structure to remain operational and minimise unnecessary replacement or rehabilitation costs and prevent disruption to traffic. There have been numerous reports on the accuracy classifications of existing B-WIM installations and some common issues have emerged. This paper details some of the recent developments in B-WIM which were aimed at overcoming these issues. A new system has been developed at Queens University Belfast using fibre optic sensors to provide accurate axle detection and improved accuracy overall. The results presented in this paper show that the fibre optic system provided much more accurate results than conventional WIM systems, as the FOS provide clearer signals at high scanning rates which require less filtering and less post-processing. A major disadvantage of existing B-WIM systems is the inability to deal with more than one vehicle on the bridge at the same time; sensor strips have been proposed to overcome this issue. A bridge can be considered safe if the probability that load exceeds resistance is acceptably low, hence B-WIM information from advanced sensors can provide confidence in our ageing structures.
Bridge weigh-in-motion (B-WIM) systems provide a non-destructive means of gathering traffic loading information by using an existing bridge as a weighing scale to determine the weights of vehicles ...passing over. In this research critical locations for sensors for the next-generation B-WIM were determined from a full 3D explicit finite element analysis (FEA) model. Although fiber optic sensors (FOS) have become increasingly popular in SHM systems there are currently no commercially available fiber optic WIM systems available. The FEA in this research facilitated the development of the first ever full fiber optic B-WIM and its potential has been demonstrated with the site installation of this system. The system combined nothing-on-the-road axle detection and alternative methods of measuring strain at the supports. The system was installed on a 20-m span beam and slab RC bridge in Northern Ireland and the results presented in this paper confirm the suitability of FOS in providing the clear defined peaks required for accurate axle detection in B-WIM.
Objective: Most trainees begin learning robotic minimally invasive surgery by performing inanimate practice tasks with clinical robots such as the Intuitive Surgical da Vinci. Expert surgeons are ...commonly asked to evaluate these performances using standardized five-point rating scales, but doing such ratings is time consuming, tedious, and somewhat subjective. This paper presents an automatic skill evaluation system that analyzes only the contact force with the task materials, the broad-bandwidth accelerations of the robotic instruments and camera, and the task completion time. Methods: We recruited N = 38 participants of varying skill in robotic surgery to perform three trials of peg transfer with a da Vinci Standard robot instrumented with our Smart Task Board. After calibration, three individuals rated these trials on five domains of the Global Evaluative Assessment of Robotic Skill (GEARS) structured assessment tool, providing ground-truth labels for regression and classification machine learning algorithms that predict GEARS scores based on the recorded force, acceleration, and time signals. Results: Both machine learning approaches produced scores on the reserved testing sets that were in good to excellent agreement with the human raters, even when the force information was not considered. Furthermore, regression predicted GEARS scores more accurately and efficiently than classification. Conclusion: A surgeon's skill at robotic peg transfer can be reliably rated via regression using features gathered from force, acceleration, and time sensors external to the robot. Significance: We expect improved trainee learning as a result of providing these automatic skill ratings during inanimate task practice on a surgical robot.
Streptococcus mutans has been studied as a model cariogenic bacterium for decades. In spite of myriad studies, growth and substrate utilization kinetics studies have been largely limited to human ...body temperature (37C). This makes it difficult to quantitatively assess the impact of temperature on metabolic kinetics. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of temperature, substrate, and nutrient conditions on S. mutans biokinetic parameters to provide comparability between biokinetic studies.
S. mutans UA159 from ATCC (700610) was maintained on brain heart infusion (BHI) agar plates. S. mutans was grown in a chemostat fed BHI with either sucrose or glucose to calculate yield, maximal substrate utilization rate, endogenous decay, and half saturation constant from cellmass and substrate data assuming Monod kinetics. Pseudo-first order growth rates were determined in batch culture grown on sucrose or glucose with rich (100% BHI) and diluted (10% BHI) media at different temperatures (20-37C). An Arrhenius plot was used to assess the impact of temperature on growth. Statistical significance was determined at the 95% confidence interval.
Cell yield was statistically significantly greater on sucrose compared to glucose (0.2g biomass/g sucrose compared to 0.1g biomass/g glucose) at 37C. The maximal substrate utilization rate was greater on glucose-amended media compared to sucrose. At lower temperatures, cell growth rate was statistically significantly greater on glucose compared to sucrose, but at 37C, the growth rate was statistically significantly greater for sucrose-amended diluted media. This indicates that growth on sucrose is more strongly impacted by changes in temperature under nutrient-limited conditions, as confirmed by Arrhenius slope for S. mutans at 65 +/- 15kJ/mol while growing on glucose and 84 +/- 20kJ/mol on sucrose. Growth on glucose under nutrient rich conditions had the greatest Arrhenius slope of 132 +/- 8kJ/mol.
These findings enhance the understanding of S. mutans biokinetics and provide useful data for comparing studies under different environmental conditions. S. mutans has a greater cell growth yield on sucrose compared to glucose. Further, growth at lower temperatures is more strongly dependent on having rich media regardless of substrate, as growth rate was approximately double in rich media compared to either sucrose or glucose in diluted media at 20C. At greater temperatures, these nutritional requirements were less important, as kinetic rates were only 10-20% greater when grown in rich media at human body temperature.
Abstract
Background
Acute coronary syndrome (ACS) is one of the leading causes of cardiovascular related deaths for adults in US. The clinical presentation of ACS is broad, which includes ST-segment ...elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), non-ST-segment elevation MI (NSTEMI), and unstable angina (UA). There are limited data around contemporary real-world treatment landscape, therefore it is critical to understand the treatment pattern of the US ACS patients in the real-world setting.
Purpose
This study evaluated antiplatelet therapy (APT) treatment patterns among US patients without atrial fibrillation or oral anticoagulants (OACs) who experienced their first hospitalized ACS event during observation period.
Methods
The Optum® de-identified Electronic Health Record dataset from January 2018 through December 2020 was used for this study. Adult patients with an inpatient primary diagnosis of ACS during the index period were identified by ICD10 codes. The date of admission for the first ACS hospitalization was the index date. Patients with atrial fibrillation diagnosis or a record for OAC use before index date and during hospitalization were excluded. ACS subgroups and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) status were assessed during index hospitalization; patient characteristics and in-hospital antiplatelet treatment type were also evaluated.
Results
Among 63,767 patients included in this study, the mean age was 64.1 and 40.5% were female; 89.2% were treated with APT. For those patients not treated with APT, majority were treated with parental anticoagulants. Among 89.2% APT treated patients, 52.7% were initiated on dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT), 27.4% were initiated on single antiplatelet therapy (SAPT), and 9.1% switched between different DAPT regimens. The top three used DAPT were aspirin+clopidogrel (30.5%), aspirin+ticagrelor (18.9%) and aspirin+prasugrel (2.6%); the most used SAPT were aspirin (22.6%), clopidogrel (2.6%), and ticagrelor (2.0%). For ACS subtypes, 26.3% were diagnosed as STEMI, 62.9% were NSTEMI, and 10.8% were UA; of them, 45.0% had PCI procedure within 30-days before or after the index date. ACS patients with PCI procedure had the highest APT treatment rate (95.2%) and highest DAPT treatment rate (70.6%). Across ACS subtypes, patients hospitalized for STEMI had the highest usage of aspirin+ticagrelor (34.5%), whereas patients hospitalized for NSTEMI had the highest usage of aspirin+clopidogrel (34.7%).
Conclusion
We observed wide variability in APT treatment across STEMI vs. NSTEMI and +/-PCI. Only 38.1% of non-PCI treated ACS patients received DAPT despite current guidelines. Further analyses are planned to explore the varying APT (and/or anticoagulant) regimens.Figure 1Figure 2
is a helminth parasite of economic importance to the global cattle industry, with documented high international herd prevalence. The objective of the present study was to generate the first published ...genetic parameter estimates for liver damage caused by as well as antibody response to in cattle. Abattoir data on the presence of live , or -damaged livers, were available between the years 2012 and 2015, inclusive. A second data set was available on cows from 68 selected dairy herds with a blood ELISA test for antibody response to in autumn 2015. Animals were identified as exposed by using herd mate phenotype, and only exposed animals were retained for analysis. The abattoir data set consisted of 20,481 dairy cows and 75,041 young dairy and beef animals, whereas the study herd data set consisted of 6,912 dairy cows. (Co)variance components for phenotypes in both data sets were estimated using animal linear mixed models. Fixed effects included in the model for both data sets were contemporary group, heterosis coefficient, recombination loss coefficient, parity, age relative to parity/age group, and stage of lactation. An additional fixed effect of abattoir by date of slaughter was included in the model for the analysis of the abattoir data. Direct additive genetic effects and a residual effect were included as random effects for all analyses. After data edits, the prevalence of liver damage caused by in cows and young cattle was 47% and 20%, respectively. The prevalence of a positive antibody response to in cows from the study herd data was 36% after data edits. The heritability of as a binary trait for dairy cows in abattoir data and study herd data was 0.03 ± 0.01 and 0.09 ± 0.02, respectively; heritability in young cattle was 0.01 ± 0.005. The additive genetic SD of as a binary trait was 0.069 and 0.050 for cows and young cattle from the abattoir data, respectively, and 0.112 from the study herd cows. The genetic correlation between liver damage caused by in young cattle and cows from the abattoir data was 0.94 ± 0.312 and the genetic correlation between liver damage caused by in cows and positive antibody response to in cows in the study herd data was 0.37 ± 0.283.
An innovative reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method is validated for the simultaneous determination of rofecoxib and celecoxib in human plasma. The internal standard is ...4-n-pentyl-phenyl-acetic acid. Good chromatographic separation is achieved using a Zorbax SB-CN (5 µm) analytical column operated at room temperature and mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile and water containing 0.1M potassium dihydrogen orthophosphate buffer adjusted to pH 2.4 with 85% orthophosphoric acid (42:58, v/v). UV detection is performed at 254 nm, and the flow rate is maintained at 1.0 mL/min. Plasma samples are extracted into an organic solvent (1-chlorobutane) and evaporated under an air flow. The calibration curve for rofecoxib is linear over the range of 10 to 500 µg/L, and the celecoxib calibration curve is linear over the range of 20 to 2000 µg/L. The lower limit of quantitation for rofecoxib and celecoxib is 10 and 20 µg/L, respectively, using 1.0 mL of human plasma. The validation data show that the assay is sensitive, accurate, specific, and reproducible for the determination of rofecoxib and celecoxib. This method is therefore appropriate for pharmacokinetic studies to quantitate these therapeutic agents in patients with arthritis conditions.
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