312 research outputs found
Use of morbidity and mortality conferences to analyze causes of death at sea: a useful tool in the process of training in maritime medicine
Background. Morbidity and mortality conferences (MandMC) are collective reviews of records of
patients, whose evolution was marked by an undesirable event: death or the occurrence of
complications. The MandMC aim to improve the quality of care. This article intends to present three
cases analyzed in MandMC in the French Telemedical Assistance Service (TMAS).
Material and methods. Three cases were selected according to the occurrence of a death at
sea or according to particular cases of pathology on board. The case presentation was done in
plenary session in our French TMAS, describing the facts, analyzing the defective processes,
and suggesting possible improvements for each case.
Results. Description of 3 cases: Gastroenteritis in Papua New Guinea with septic shock; traumatic
brain injury on a training boat with organizational and evacuation problems, and fever in
the Gulf of Guinea with negative thick blood smear test.
Conclusions. The MandMC tend to develop in all medical fields and are of particular interest in
maritime medicine. The achievement of MandMC in our TMAS highlighted some difficulties in our
daily work: diagnosis difficulty in tele-consultation and organizational or operational difficulties
related to maritime medicine. However, we hope that the proposals for improvement will be
applied to improve the quality of maritime medical care.
(Int Marit Health 2011; 62, 2: 104–109
Historia de las ciudades anseáticas [sic]
CALLám. grab. por Alb. Lenar y Lemaitr
Velocity profiles in shear-banding wormlike micelles
Using Dynamic Light Scattering in heterodyne mode, we measure velocity
profiles in a much studied system of wormlike micelles (CPCl/NaSal) known to
exhibit both shear-banding and stress plateau behavior. Our data provide
evidence for the simplest shear-banding scenario, according to which the
effective viscosity drop in the system is due to the nucleation and growth of a
highly sheared band in the gap, whose thickness linearly increases with the
imposed shear rate. We discuss various details of the velocity profiles in all
the regions of the flow curve and emphasize on the complex, non-Newtonian
nature of the flow in the highly sheared band.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Verifying the Mathematical Library of an UAV Autopilot with Frama-C
Ensuring safety of critical systems is crucial and is often attained by extensive testing of the system. Formal methods are now commonly accepted as powerful tools to obtain guarantees on such systems, even if it is generally not possible to formally prove the safety and correctness of the whole system. This paper presents an ongoing work on the formal verification of the Paparazzi UAV autopilot using the Frama-C verification platform. We focus on a Paparazzi mathematical library providing different UAV state representations and associated conversion functions and manage to prove the absence of runtime errors in the library and some interesting functional properties on floating-point conversion functions
Formal Verification for Autopilot - Preliminary state of the art
This document is a preliminary state of the art for the formal verification of the autopilot of an Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV). We will first present UAV autopilots and more specifically the Paparazzi autopilot developed at ENAC which will be our case study. We then present which properties could be verified and on which representation of the autopilot (source code, model). A more complete state of the art of current formal methods will be then detailed and focus on deductive methods, abstract interpretation, model checking and proof assistants. Finally, some immediate perspective for the thesis are proposed
Electrochemotherapy in radiotherapy-resistant epidural spinal cord compression in metastatic cancer patients
Objective: To report efficacy and safety of percutaneous electrochemotherapy (ECT) in patients with radiotherapy-resistant metastatic epidural spinal cord compression (MESCC).
Material/ methods: This retrospective study analyzed all consecutive patients treated with bleomycin-based ECT between February-2020 and September-2022 in a single tertiary referral cancer center. Changes in pain were evaluated with the Numerical Rating Score (NRS), in neurological deficit with the Neurological Deficit Scale, and changes in epidural spinal cord compression were evaluated with the epidural spinal cord compression scale (ESCCS) using an MRI.
Results: Forty consecutive solid tumour patients with previously radiated MESCC and no effective systemic treatment options were eligible. With a median follow-up of 5.1 months [1-19.1], toxicities were temporary acute radicular pain (25%), prolonged radicular hypoesthesia (10%), and paraplegia (7.5%). At 1 month, pain was significantly improved over baseline (median NRS: 1.0 [0-8] versus 7.0 [1.0-10], P < .001) and neurological benefits were considered as marked (28%), moderate (28%), stable (38%), or worse (8%). Three-month follow-up (21 patients) confirmed improved over baseline (median NRS: 2.0 [0-8] versus 6.0 [1.0-10], P < .001) and neurological benefits were considered as marked (38%), moderate (19%), stable (33.5%), and worse (9.5%). One-month post-treatment MRI (35 patients) demonstrated complete response in 46% of patients by ESCCS, partial response in 31%, stable disease in 23%, and no patients with progressive disease. Three-month post-treatment MRI (21 patients) demonstrated complete response in 28.5%, partial response in 38%, stable disease in 24%, and progressive disease in 9.5%.
Conclusions: This study provides the first evidence that ECT can rescue radiotherapy-resistant MESCC
Faster Secret Keys for (T)FHE
GLWE secret keys come with some associated public information, like their size or the distribution probability of their coefficients. Those information have an impact on the FHE algorithms, their
computational cost, their noise growth, and the overall security level.
In this paper, we identify two limitations with (T)FHE: there is no fine-grained control over the size of a GLWE secret key, and there is a minimal noise variance which leads to an unnecessary increment of the level of security with large GLWE secret keys.
We introduce two (non exclusive) new types of secret keys for GLWE-based cryptosystems, that are designed to overcome the aforementioned limitations. We explain why these are as secure as the traditional ones, and detail all the improvements that they brought to the FHE algorithms. We provide many comparisons with state-of-the-art TFHE techniques, and benchmarks showing computational speed-ups between and while keeping the same level of security and failure probability. Furthermore, the size of the public material (i.e., key switching and bootstrapping keys) is also reduced by factors from and
Neighborhood and weight-related health behaviors in the Look AHEAD (Action for Health in Diabetes) Study
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Previous studies have shown that neighborhood factors are associated with obesity, but few studies have evaluated the association with weight control behaviors. This study aims to conduct a multi-level analysis to examine the relationship between neighborhood SES and weight-related health behaviors.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In this ancillary study to Look AHEAD (Action for Health in Diabetes) a trial of long-term weight loss among individuals with type 2 diabetes, individual-level data on 1219 participants from 4 clinic sites at baseline were linked to neighborhood-level data at the tract level from the 2000 US Census and other databases. Neighborhood variables included SES (% living below the federal poverty level) and the availability of food stores, convenience stores, and restaurants. Dependent variables included BMI, eating patterns, weight control behaviors and resource use related to food and physical activity. Multi-level models were used to account for individual-level SES and potential confounders.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The availability of restaurants was related to several eating and weight control behaviors. Compared to their counterparts in neighborhoods with fewer restaurants, participants in neighborhoods with more restaurants were more likely to eat breakfast (prevalence Ratio [PR] 1.29 95% CI: 1.01-1.62) and lunch (PR = 1.19, 1.04-1.36) at non-fast food restaurants. They were less likely to be attempting weight loss (OR = 0.93, 0.89-0.97) but more likely to engage in weight control behaviors for food and physical activity, respectively, than those who lived in neighborhoods with fewer restaurants. In contrast, neighborhood SES had little association with weight control behaviors.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In this selected group of weight loss trial participants, restaurant availability was associated with some weight control practices, but neighborhood SES was not. Future studies should give attention to other populations and to evaluating various aspects of the physical and social environment with weight control practices.</p
Shear-banding in a lyotropic lamellar phase, Part 2: Temporal fluctuations
We analyze the temporal fluctuations of the flow field associated to a
shear-induced transition in a lyotropic lamellar phase: the layering transition
of the onion texture. In the first part of this work [Salmon et al., submitted
to Phys. Rev. E], we have evidenced banded flows at the onset of this
shear-induced transition which are well accounted for by the classical picture
of shear-banding. In the present paper, we focus on the temporal fluctuations
of the flow field recorded in the coexistence domain. These striking dynamics
are very slow (100--1000s) and cannot be due to external mechanical noise.
Using velocimetry coupled to structural measurements, we show that these
fluctuations are due to a motion of the interface separating the two
differently sheared bands. Such a motion seems to be governed by the
fluctuations of , the local stress at the interface between the
two bands. Our results thus provide more evidence for the relevance of the
classical mechanical approach of shear-banding even if the mechanism leading to
the fluctuations of remains unclear
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