Agricultural food production is projected to be 70% higher by 2050 than it is today, with the world population rising to more than 9 billion, 34% higher than it is now. The farmers have been forced ...to produce more with the same resources. This pressure means that optimizing productivity is one of the main objectives of the producers but also in a sustainable way. Not only does agriculture face a decline in production, but it has also had to face limitations in data collection, storing, securing, and sharing, climate change, increases in input prices, traditional food supply chain systems where there is no direct connection between the farmer and the buyer, and limitations on energy use. Existing IoT-based agriculture systems have a centralized format and operate in isolation, leaving room for unresolved issues and major concerns, including data security, manipulation, and single failure points. This paper proposes a futuristic IoT with a blockchain model to meet these challenges. Further, this paper also proposes and novel energy-efficient clustering IoT-based agriculture protocol for lower energy consumption and network stability and compares its results with its counterpart low-energy adoptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH) protocol. The simulation results show that the proposed protocol network stability is 23% higher as compared to LEACH as first node of LEACH dies at 168 rounds while IoT-based agriculture first node dies after 463 rounds. Similarly, IoT-based agriculture protocol energy consumption is 68% lower than that of LEACH. The proposed protocol also extends the network life to more rounds and demonstrates an increase of 112%.
Cardiovascular screening in young athletes is widely recommended and routinely performed prior to participation in competitive sports. While there is general agreement that early detection of cardiac ...conditions at risk for sudden cardiac arrest and death (SCA/D) is an important objective, the optimal strategy for cardiovascular screening in athletes remains an issue of considerable debate. At the centre of the controversy is the addition of a resting ECG to the standard preparticipation evaluation using history and physical examination. The American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM) formed a task force to address the current evidence and knowledge gaps regarding preparticipation cardiovascular screening in athletes from the perspective of a primary care sports medicine physician. The absence of definitive outcome-based evidence at this time precludes AMSSM from endorsing any single or universal cardiovascular screening strategy for all athletes, including legislative mandates. This statement presents a new paradigm to assist the individual physician in assessing the most appropriate cardiovascular screening strategy unique to their athlete population, community needs and resources. The decision to implement a cardiovascular screening programme, with or without the addition of ECG, necessitates careful consideration of the risk of SCA/D in the targeted population and the availability of cardiology resources and infrastructure. Importantly, it is the individual physician's assessment in the context of an emerging evidence base that the chosen model for early detection of cardiac disorders in the specific population provides greater benefit than harm. AMSSM is committed to advancing evidenced-based research and educational initiatives that will validate and promote the most efficacious strategies to foster safe sport participation and reduce SCA/D in athletes.
Cement pastes are highly creep active materials at early ages. We here characterize both the elastic stiffness and the creep properties of ordinary Portland cement pastes conditioned at 20°C. Three ...different compositions are investigated, defined in terms of initial water-to-cement mass ratios amounting to 0.42, 0.45, and 0.50, respectively. Implementing a new early-age creep testing protocol, we perform a series of 168 three minute long uniaxial macroscopic creep tests on the aging materials, with one such test per hour and corresponding material ages spanning from 21h to approximately eight days. In this way, it is guaranteed that the material microstructure remains virtually unaltered during each individual creep test, while subsequent creep tests refer to clearly different microstructures. In order to minimize material damage, the compressive loads are restricted to at most 15% of the uniaxial compressive strength reached at the time of testing. The loading protocol consists of quasi-instantaneous compressive loading and unloading steps as well as a three minute long holding period in between. Representing the measured compliances very precisely by means of a power-law expression including elastic and creep moduli, as well as a creep exponent, while requiring the elastic and creep strains to be compressive at all times, yields concavely increasing time evolutions of elastic and creep moduli, as well as slightly decreasing or quasi-constant evolutions of the creep exponent. Combination of these results with calorimetry-based evolutions of the degree of hydration yields linear elasticity-hydration degree and over-linear creep modulus-hydration degree relations, while the creep exponents (slightly) decrease with ongoing hydration. The herein quasi-statically determined elastic moduli agree very well with those determined ultrasonically on the same cement pastes. This impressively underlines the fundamental characteristics of elastic properties being related to an energy potential, independently of loading paths and corresponding strain rates.
Arsenic (As) contamination is continuously increasing in the groundwaters and soils around the world causing toxicity in the plants with a detrimental effect on physiology, growth, and yield. In a ...hydroponic system, thirty-day-old plants of Trigonella foenum-graecum were subjected to 0, 50, or 100 µM NaHAsO40.7 H2O for 10 days. The magnitude of oxidative stress increased, whereas growth indices and photosynthetic parameters decreased in a dose-dependent manner. The efficiency of photosystem II in terms of Hill reaction activity (HRA) or chlorophyll-a was adversely affected by As stress. The antioxidant potential of plants regarding ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) and 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assays was enhanced, indicating the augmented resistance mechanism in plants to counter As stress. The metabolite analysis of leaf extracts revealed many As responsive metabolites including amino acids, organic acids, sugars/polyols, and others. Phenylalanine and citrulline were highly accumulated at 50 or 100 µM As, salicylic acid accumulated more at 50 µM of As while ascorbic acid notably increased at 100 µM of As. At 50 or 100 µM As, the glucose and fructose contents increased while the sucrose content decreased. At both As doses, tagatose and glucitol contents were 13 times higher than controls. Varied accumulation of metabolites could be associated with the different As doses that represent the range of tolerance in T. foenum-graecum towards As toxicity. Pathway analysis of metabolites revealed that amino acid and carbohydrate metabolism and the citrate cycle play important roles under As stress. This study helps in a better metabolomic understanding of the dose-dependent toxicity and response of As in T. foenum-graecum.
•As induced oxidative stress impaired growth index of Trigonella foenum-graecum.•Increased antioxidant potential attenuates the As induced oxidative stress.•Photosynthetic system was more disturbed at 100 µM As then 50 µM As stress.•Modulation of metabolites specifies dose dependent variations in the metabolome.•As stress affected primarily amino acid and carbohydrate metabolism in Trigonella foenum-graecum.
In view of ecological concern and energy security, execution of refrigeration system should be enriched which can be done by improving the characteristics of working liquids. The nanoliquids have ...gained interest in industrial and engineering fields due to their outstanding thermophysical features. Researchers used nanoliquids as working liquid and detected substantial variations in thermal performance. In the present research work, our intention is to explore the impact of nonlinear thermal radiation and variable thermal conductivity on 3D flow of cross-nanofluid. Moreover, heat sink–source, chemical processes and activation energy are implemented. Zero mass flux relation with thermophoresis and Brownian motion mechanisms are scrutinized. The required system of ordinary ones is achieved by implementing appropriate transformations. The achieved system of ordinary ones is computed numerically by implementing bvp4c scheme. Graphs are plotted to explore the impact of various physical parameters on concentration, temperature and velocity fields. It is detected from obtained graphical data that thermophoresis and Brownian motion mechanisms significantly affect heat transport mechanism. Furthermore, graphical analysis reveals that concentration of cross-nanofluid enhances for augmented values of activation energy.
The purpose of current investigation is to analysis the 2D flow of modified Eyring Powell model under the influence of magnetic field. Aspects of Brownian motion and thermophoresis diffusion for ...modified Eyring Powell nanofluid model capturing the features of thermal-motile and solutal stratification and thermal radiation are considered. Activation energy phenomenon is also part of discussion. Furthermore, bioconvection is an interesting phenomenon of fluid dynamics that is caused by the rotation of microbes which is also considered here. It is characterized because of hydrodynamics unsteadiness as well as patterns inside suspension of influenced swimming microbes. Here, coupled PDEs is converted into set of ODEs. Moreover, these ODEs are tackled by using bvp4c scheme then compared the results with homtopy analysis technique. Effects of physical parameters are shown pictorially. It is observed that temperature rises for thermophoresis and thermal radiation while decline for Prandtl number. The motile microorganism's showed decrement for increasing values of Peclet number.
In this study, the unique thermoelectric properties along with structural, electronic, and photoluminescence properties of divanadate oxides XV
2
O
6
(X = Mg, Ca, and Ba) have been investigated using ...DFT and experimental routes for waste heat recovery applications. For the synthesis process, the solid-state reaction technique was employed and the monoclinic structure of the synthesized oxides was confirmed by the XRD results. The formation of well-shaped particles was demonstrated by SEM images and the presence of Mg, Ca, Ba, V, and O with the proper compositions was confirmed by EDS mapping. The calculated bandgap values for MgV
2
O
6
, CaV
2
O
6
, and BaV
2
O
6
were 3.20 eV, 2.14 eV, and 1.76 eV, respectively. To see how atomic orbitals affect the creation of bands, total and partial density of states calculations were also made. The BoltzTraP algorithm within Wien2k was used to study transport properties. Photoluminescence (PL) was done to analyze the optical behavior of synthesized oxides. For all the divanadate oxides XV
2
O
6
(X = Mg, Ca, Ba), productive values for the Seebeck coefficient (S), electrical conductivity (σ), power factor (PF), and figure of merit (ZT) have been observed. The semi-metallic nature, low synthesis cost, and thermoelectric results demonstrate that the studied oxides have exceptional potential for waste heat recovery applications and can be very efficient in energy harvesting devices, especially in thermoelectric generators.
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is an important cause of stroke. Given the morbidity and mortality associated with stroke, the risk stratification of patients based on left atrial appendage (LAA) ...characteristics is of great interest.
To explore the association between LAA morphology and LAA characteristics including the extent of trabeculations, orifice diameter, and length with prevalent stroke in a large cohort of patients with drug refractory AF who underwent AF ablation to develop mechanistic insight regarding the risk of stroke.
An institutional cohort of 1063 patients referred for AF ablation from 2003 to 2012 was reviewed to identify patients that underwent preprocedural cardiac computed tomography (CT). LAA morphology was characterized as chicken wing, cactus, windsock, or cauliflower by using previously reported methodology. Left atrial size and LAA trabeculations, morphology, orifice diameter, and length were compared between patients with prevalent stroke and patients without prevalent stroke.
Of 678 patients with CT images, 65 (10%) had prior stroke or transient ischemic attack. In univariate analyses, prevalent heart failure (7.7% in cases vs 2.8% in controls; P = .033), smaller LAA orifice (2.26 ± 0.52 cm vs 2.78 ± 0.71 cm ; P < .001), shorter LAA length (5.06 ± 1.17 cm vs 5.61 ± 1.17 cm; P < .001), and extensive LAA trabeculations (27.7% vs 14.4%; P = .019) were associated with stroke. LAA morphologies were unassociated with stroke risk. In multivariable analysis, smaller LAA orifice diameter and extensive LAA trabeculations remained independently associated with thromboembolic events.
The extent of LAA trabeculations and smaller LAA orifice diameter are associated with prevalent stroke and may mediate the previously described association of cauliflower LAA morphology with stroke.
Abstract
Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is the leading cause of mortality in athletes during sport. A variety of mostly hereditary, structural, or electrical cardiac disorders are associated with SCD in ...young athletes, the majority of which can be identified or suggested by abnormalities on a resting 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG). Whether used for diagnostic or screening purposes, physicians responsible for the cardiovascular care of athletes should be knowledgeable and competent in ECG interpretation in athletes. However, in most countries a shortage of physician expertise limits wider application of the ECG in the care of the athlete. A critical need exists for physician education in modern ECG interpretation that distinguishes normal physiological adaptations in athletes from distinctly abnormal findings suggestive of underlying pathology. Since the original 2010 European Society of Cardiology recommendations for ECG interpretation in athletes, ECG standards have evolved quickly over the last decade; pushed by a growing body of scientific data that both tests proposed criteria sets and establishes new evidence to guide refinements. On 26–27 February 2015, an international group of experts in sports cardiology, inherited cardiac disease, and sports medicine convened in Seattle, Washington, to update contemporary standards for ECG interpretation in athletes. The objective of the meeting was to define and revise ECG interpretation standards based on new and emerging research and to develop a clear guide to the proper evaluation of ECG abnormalities in athletes. This statement represents an international consensus for ECG interpretation in athletes and provides expert opinion-based recommendations linking specific ECG abnormalities and the secondary evaluation for conditions associated with SCD.
The pathogenesis of sudden cardiac death in college athletes has not been defined by systematic case identification.
A total of 45 cases of sudden cardiac death were identified in National Collegiate ...Athletic Association (NCAA) athletes from 2004 to 2008 based on an internal reporting system and review of media reports. Autopsy reports were reviewed and adjudicated by a multidisciplinary panel. Cause of death could be reasonably determined in 36 cases; 3 athletes had no autopsy, 5 autopsy reports could not be obtained, and 1 autopsy had insufficient information to determine cause of death. The most common finding at death was a structurally normal heart or autopsy-negative sudden unexplained death (11, 31%), followed by coronary artery abnormalities (5, 14%), dilated cardiomyopathy (3, 8%), myocarditis related (3, 8%), aortic dissection (3, 8%), and idiopathic left ventricular hypertrophy/possible hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM; 3, 8%). There was 1 case each (3%) of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, long QT syndrome, commotio cordis, and Kawasaki disease. There was 1 case of death in a sickle cell positive athlete who also had left ventricular hypertrophy. The adjudicated diagnosis agreed with the official pathology report in only 59% of cases.
Unexplained death with a structurally normal heart is the most common finding after suspected sudden cardiac death in NCAA athletes. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is infrequently seen, and conclusions in autopsy reports may not accurately reflect the pathological findings. Standardized protocols for cardiovascular autopsies in athletes are needed, including postmortem genetic testing, particularly in autopsy-negative cases.
PDF
