The COVID-19 pandemic has adverse consequences on human psychology and behavior long after initial recovery from the virus. These COVID-19 health sequelae, if undetected and left untreated, may lead ...to more enduring mental health problems, and put vulnerable individuals at risk of developing more serious psychopathologies. Therefore, an early distinction of such vulnerable individuals from those who are more resilient is important to undertake timely preventive interventions. The main aim of this article is to present a comprehensive multimodal conceptual approach for addressing these potential psychological and behavioral mental health changes using state-of-the-art tools and means of artificial intelligence (AI). Mental health COVID-19 recovery programs at post-COVID clinics based on AI prediction and prevention strategies may significantly improve the global mental health of ex-COVID-19 patients. Most COVID-19 recovery programs currently involve specialists such as pulmonologists, cardiologists, and neurologists, but there is a lack of psychiatrist care. The focus of this article is on new tools which can enhance the current limited psychiatrist resources and capabilities in coping with the upcoming challenges related to widespread mental health disorders. Patients affected by COVID-19 are more vulnerable to psychological and behavioral changes than non-COVID populations and therefore they deserve careful clinical psychological screening in post-COVID clinics. However, despite significant advances in research, the pace of progress in prevention of psychiatric disorders in these patients is still insufficient. Current approaches for the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders largely rely on clinical rating scales, as well as self-rating questionnaires that are inadequate for comprehensive assessment of ex-COVID-19 patients' susceptibility to mental health deterioration. These limitations can presumably be overcome by applying state-of-the-art AI-based tools in diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of psychiatric disorders in acute phase of disease to prevent more chronic psychiatric consequences.
Comprehensive multimodal psychophysiological measurements and smart data analysis based on wearable and low-cost technologies could enhance traditional air traffic controller (ATC) selection process. ...Many recent studies in neuro-cognitive science and stress resilience illustrated effectiveness of these multimodal measurements and appropriate metrics in comprehensive assessment of ATCs' mental states, such as cognitive workload, cognitive decline, attention deficit, fatigue, emotional and behavioural problems, etc. Accordingly, this article is focused on innovation efforts in ATC selection protocols based on a set of comprehensive stimuli and corresponding multimodal psychophysiological measurements. The concept of enhancement of ATC selection process presented in this article includes complex physiological, oculometric and speech measurements and appropriate metrics. From these multimodal measurements during specific stimulation tasks, which include different versions of acoustic startle stimuli, airblasts, semantically relevant aversive images and sounds, different versions of Stroop tests, visual tracking test, a complex set of multimodal-multidimensional features is computed as predictors of ATC candidates' future performance, like: stress resilience, workload capacity, attention, visual performance, working memory etc. Such cost-effective, more objective, non-invasive preliminary measurements, lasting no longer than 45 minutes may have good discriminative power and might be used in ATC selection processes as enhancement of current selection procedures. Comprehensive analysis of presented multimodal features during different experimental conditions might also be very useful in selection processes of other stressful professional jobs, like first responders, pilots, astronauts etc.
Vocal Analysis of Acoustic Startle Responses Dropuljic, Branimir; Mijic, Igor; Petrinovic, Davor ...
IEEE/ACM transactions on audio, speech, and language processing,
02/2018, Letnik:
26, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This paper presents an extensive statistical analysis of the acoustic startle response of two vocal parameters: fundamental frequency (F0) and root-mean-square energy (E), as well as of the ...orbicularis oculi (eyeblink) surface electromyography (sEMG). An experiment was conducted in which fourteen participants were exposed to acoustic startle stimuli of varying parameters, i.e., intensity level, duration, rise time, and spectral type, during periods of sustained phonation. Voice recordings of the phonations were taken alongside several physiological signals, of which only the sEMG was analyzed in this paper. Response features (peak value, peak time, latency, rise time, fall time, and duration) were extracted on F0, E and sEMG data, and statistical analysis was conducted using linear mixed effects models to show the response behavior with the varying stimuli. The results for vocal F0 and E data were congruent with sEMG data and earlier work in the field. The results demonstrated that vocal analysis can be used as a feasible alternative to the sEMG eyeblink analysis of acoustic startle responses.
Synchronous anorectal melanoma Balicevic, Drinko; Tomic, Karla; Bekavac-Beslin, Miroslav ...
World journal of gastroenterology : WJG,
06/2006, Letnik:
12, Številka:
21
Journal Article
Odprti dostop
Anorectal melanoma is a very rare tumor with poor prognosis. Rectal bleeding is the most frequent symptom and surgical treatment ranges from local excision to radical abdominoperineal resection. We ...report a case of a 75-years-old male patient who presented with a history of recurrent rectal bleeding, and whose histopathological diagnosis was melanoma. Macroscopically, we found two distinct tumors in anorectal region, 0.5 cm and 1.5 cm from dentate line. The first one was pedunculated, on a thin stalk, measuring 1 cm in greatest diameter, and the second one was sessile and nodular measuring up to 2.8 cm in largest diameter. Microscopic examination and immunohistochemical analysis of both tumors confirmed the diagnosis of melanoma. This case represents multiple synchronous primary melanoma of the anorectal region, with a possibility that one of the lesions is primary melanoma and the second one is a satellite lesion.
Drilling fluid represents the most important fluid that must fulfill numerous important assignments during drilling operations. Many commercially available additives for water-based drilling fluid ...fall into the category of non-degradable and environmentally hazardous materials. Significant development in this area can be made by using biodegradable materials as additives in drilling fluids. The objective of this study was to determine whether mandarin peel powder particle size affects the properties of the drilling fluid. In this paper, mandarin peel was used in the form of a dry powder divided into particle sizes smaller than 0.1 mm, and between 0.1 mm and 0.16 mm. Mandarin peel powder was added to a water-based drilling fluid in four different concentrations (0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2% by volume of water). By increasing the mandarin peel powder concentration, the API filtration reduced up to 42%, PPT filtration significantly decreased up to 61.54%, while the rheological parameters generally increased but remained within acceptable limits. It is determined that the optimal concentration of mandarin peel powder is up to 1.5% by volume of water.
Extended-reach drilling represents an advanced way of drilling and accessing reservoirs that were previously economically not feasible to drain, impossible to reach or in an environmentally sensitive ...area. One of the main issues that appears while drilling such wells is caused by the high values of friction factor which cause high values of torque and drag. One of the suggested solutions is to use a protective sliding ring made from materials such as POM, Teflon and PA6 in combination with lubricants added to a polymer mud system. First, measurements were conducted on a lubricity tester to choose the best material and, after finishing, a mechanical wear test was conducted on a specially designed device to measure mechanical wear. Results showed that Teflon showed lower values of friction factor in comparison to steel and the mechanical wear was minimal. The lowest value of friction force was recorded for blocks made from Teflon in tested mud systems. It is also noticeable that, in polymer mud with weighting additives and lubricant, the value of the friction force is higher than in polymer mud with lubricant only.
The growing energy demand in the world, as well as the current geopolitical situation, require countries to additional investments in the exploration and production of hydrocarbons from their own ...sources. This means that companies must develop new fields which have remained undeveloped until now mostly because extremely harsh environment where they are located (deep sea, high temperature, high pressure, heavy oils, etc.). The development of these new fields requires the development and adoption of new technology, among other things, and the development of a temperature-stable drilling fluid system able to fulfil all tasks according to the new technical challenges. Except for the technological challenges, there are also growing concerns related to the influence of the drilling operation on the environment. All of the above encourage the industry to develop new, inexpensive, and environmentally friendly additives which will be able to satisfy all technical and technological requirements and challenges of modern drilling. In the last few years, there has been a growing trend of laboratory research that includes different types of biodegradable waste as a potential additive that can achieve useful properties in mud. In this paper, the influence of mandarin peel powder on the filtration properties of mud after the aging process at elevated temperatures is examined. This eco-friendly additive was added to water-based muds in concentrations of 1% and 2% by volume of water. Laboratory research have shown stable filtration properties of the water-based mud containing mandarin peel powder even after exposing the mud to temperatures higher than 130 °C.
The storage of natural gas in geological structures such as depleted fields, aquifers and salt caverns plays an important role in a gas supply system as it balances the fluctuation of gas demand and ...price. Hydraulic loss due to fluid flow through gas storage production equipment and an interfering effect from nonequal productivity index of storage wells may have an important influence on gas storage performance. An integrated mathematical model is developed based on underground gas storage facility production data. Using this model, the hydraulic loss is determined. A real test case that consists of a gas storage reservoir linked to the surface facility is analysed. The mathematical model uses an experimentally determined pressure drop coefficient in chokes. The base case scenario created using real gas storage facility data enables the achievement of a good history match with the given parameters of the gas storage reservoir. Using the history match simulation case as an initial scenario (a base case), two different scenarios are created to determine the injection and withdrawal performance of the gas storage field. The results indicate that the pressure drop in chokes, when fully open as a constraints in an underground gas storage facility, has a significant impact on gas storage operations and deliverability.
The drilling of clay-rich formations, such as shale, is an extremely demanding technical and technological process. Shale consists of mixed clay minerals in different ratios and in contact with water ...from drilling mud. It tends to swell and cause different wellbore instability problems. Usually, the petroleum industry uses various types of salt and/or polymers as shale hydration inhibitors. The aim of this research was to determine whether nanoparticles can be used as shale swelling inhibitors because due to their small size they can enter the shale nanopores, plug them and stop further penetration of mud filtrate into the shale formation. Swelling of bentonite-calcium carbonate pellets after 2 and 24 h in water and drilling mud (water, bentonite, PAC and NaOH) without nanoparticles and with addition of TiO2 (0.5, 1 and 1.5 wt%) and SiO2 (0.5, 1 and 1.5 wt%) nanoparticles was measured using a linear swell meter. Additionally, granulometric analyses of bentonite as well as the zeta potential of tested muds containing nanoparticles were performed. Based on the laboratory research, it can generally be concluded that the addition of SiO2 and TiO2 nanoparticles in water and base drilling mud reduces the swelling of pellets up to 40.06%.
Wellbore instability is one of the most serious problems that can occur during drilling, mainly during drilling oil or gas wells through rocks that contain a higher proportion of clay, such as ...shales. To prevent wellbore instability, oil companies apply different approaches to strengthen wellbore walls, and use different shale swelling inhibitors. The aim of this research was to apply a green approach and the concept of the circular economy in mud design, and to determine whether mandarin peel powder, which is a waste material, can be used as an inhibitor of shale swelling. For that purpose, pellets consisting of bentonite and quartz in a 50:50 ratio were prepared using a compactor, and bentonite-based drilling mud (BM) with and without mandarin peel powder in concentrations of 0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2% by volume of water. The swelling of quartz–bentonite pellets after 2 and 24 h in each drilling-mud sample was determined at room temperature and 90 °C using a linear swell meter. On the basis of laboratory research, we concluded that increasing the concentration of mandarin peel powder reduces pellet swelling. By adding mandarin peel powder particles between 0.1 and 0.16 mm to the base mud at a concentration of 2% by volume of water, the following was achieved: 44% reduction in API filtration, 61.54% reduction in PPT filtration, 45% reduction in pellet swelling after 24 h at room temperature, and 48.6% reduction of pellet swelling after 24 h at 90 °C.
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