The Importance of Maxillary Sinuses in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgical Procedures

Oral and maxillofacial surgical procedures, such as tooth extractions, surgical treatment of odontogenic maxillary sinus pathologies, dental implant surgery, orthognathic surgery, and sinus lift procedures, often correlate with the maxillary sinuses, due to anatomical proximity. For instance, in Le Fort I osteotomy, which is the predominant surgical technique preferred for the treatment of dentofacial deformities of the maxilla, the osteotomy line includes maxillary sinus and nasal walls. Maxillary sinus-lifting surgery is performed to regenerate bone in the posterior maxilla for dental implant placement. Additionally, maxillary sinus pathologies of odontogenic origin, such as sinusitis, cysts, and neoplasms, can impact the oral and maxillofacial region, and surgical intervention may be required to manage these conditions. Proper diagnosis, treatment planning, and surgical techniques are essential to optimize patient outcomes and minimize complications related to the maxillary sinuses in oral and maxillofacial surgical procedures

Management Patterns of Male Urethral Stricture Disease among Urologists: What Do the Guidelines Say? What Do Urologists Do?

BACKGROUND: The aim of the present study is to evaluate and analyze the daily clinical practice for male urethral stricture disease (MUSD) among urologists. METHODS: Considering the latest guidelines on urethral stricture disease, a survey was developed regarding the various treatment options and preferences in different sites of male urethral stricture disease. The survey was sent to urologists via e-mail and phone application. RESULTS: A total of 266 urologists completed the survey and were included in the final analysis. In regard to workplace, 62 (23.3%), 58 (21.8%), 71 (26.7%), and 75 (28.2%) respondents worked in university hospitals, training and research hospitals, state hospitals, and private practice hospitals, respectively. In regard to the diagnostic method used in male urethral strictures, 88.7% of the participants would choose uroflowmetry + postvoiding residual (UF + PVR), and 64.6% would choose retrograde urethrography (RUG). Direct vision internal urethrotomy (DVIU) was the most frequently chosen method in penile urethral strictures (PUS), being chosen by 72.9%. Direct vision anterior internal urethrotomy was the most common method for both ≤2 cm and >2 cm strictures, 63.1%, and 30.8%, respectively. The most preferred graft for augmentation urethroplasty was buccal mucosa (75.8%). Endoscopic incision/resection (transurethral resection (TUR)) is the most frequently applied treatment method for posterior urethral/vesicourethral anastomotic strictures (86.4%). CONCLUSIONS: The present study clearly shows that most urologists still prefer DVIU and urethral dilatation to urethroplasty in MUSD, which contradicts current guidelines. Urologists should be encouraged to perform urethroplasty and/or refer patients to experienced centres for recurrent MUSD

SPEECH DETECTION ON BROADCAST AUDIO

Speech boundary detection contributes to performance of speech based applications such as speech recognition and speaker recognition. Speech boundary detector implemented in this study works on broadcast audio as a pre-processor module of a keyword spotter. Speech boundary detection is handled in 3 steps. At first step, audio data is segmented into homogeneous regions in an unsupervised manner. After an ACTIVITY/NON-ACTIVITY decision is made for each region, ACTIVITY regions are classified as Speech/Non-speech via Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) based classification. GMM's are trained using a novel feature, Spectral Flow Direction (SFD), and an improved multi-band harmonicity feature in addition to widely used Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC's)

VISKON-RS : Rapid Damage Assessment Software with Remote Sensing

23nd Signal Processing and Communications Applications Conference (SIU) -- MAY 16-19, 2015 -- Inonu Univ, Malatya, TURKEYWOS: 000380500900422After a disaster, a rapid damage assessment is required for coordinating emergency response teams and planning emergency aid. In this study, in line with AFAD requirements, ViSKON-RS software was developed for the aim of using disaster damage assessment by analysing images obtained via remote(space/air) imaging technologies. The developed software includes specialized applications for damage assessment of disaster types such as earthquake, flood and forest fires. In addition, applications for general image analysis were integrated to the software like change detection analysis, supervised/unsupervised classification, object based image analysis and texture analysis. The main purpose of ViSKON-RS software is to be integrated software solution by opening, processing, analysing, showing and exporting results to desicion support system of post-disaster remote sensing data.Dept Comp Engn & Elect & Elect Engn, Elect & Elect Engn, Bilkent Uni

Adaptive protection scheme for a distribution system considering grid-connected and islanded modes of operation

The renewable energy-based distributed generation (DG) implementation in power systems has been an active research area during the last few decades due to several environmental, economic and political factors. Although the integration of DG offers many advantages, several concerns, including protection schemes in systems with the possibility of bi-directional power flow, are raised. Thus, new protection schemes are strongly required in power systems with a significant presence of DG. In this study, an adaptive protection strategy for a distribution system with DG integration is proposed. The proposed strategy considers both grid-connected and islanded operating modes, while the adaptive operation of the protection is dynamically realized considering the availability of DG power production (related to faults or meteorological conditions) in each time step. Besides, the modular structure and fast response of the proposed strategy is validated via simulations conducted on the IEEE 13-node test system

Content Based Copy Detection with Coarse Audio-Visual Fingerprints

Content based copy detection (CBCD) emerges as a viable choice against active detection methodology of watermarking. The very first reason is that the media already under circulation cannot be marked and secondly, CBCD inherently can endure various severe attacks, which watermarking cannot. Although in general, media content is handled independently as visual and audio in this work both information sources are utilized in a unified framework, in which coarse representation of fundamental features are employed. From the copy detection perspective, number of attacks on audio content is limited with respect to visual case. Therefore audio, if present, is an indispensable part of a robust video copy detection system. In this study, the validity of this statement is presented through various experiments on a large data set