Reducing the expense of ear wax

Ear wax is one of the commonest presenting complaints both in Ear Nose and Throat surgery and in General Practice. The commonest treatment by far given for this condition is Arachis oil (Cerumol®). Results from various studies however show that this appears not to be the most effective treatment and that cheaper options exist which may drastically reduce the costs incurred by the Health Department in this respect. We hereby outline the advantages of the use of 0.9% saline drops in the treatment of ear wax.peer-reviewe

Review of the financial and medicolegal implications of nasal fractures seen at St Luke’s Hospital

Simple nasal bone fractures are the third most common type of all fractures leading to numerous patient visits at the Accident & Emergency department. Nasal fractures are commonly over-investigated in St Luke’s hospital leading to a substantial financial burden on our health system. In this article we review the frequency of simple nasal fractures as well as the necessity or otherwise of nasal x-ray imaging in addition to the financial and health consequences that result from nasal x-ray imaging. These issues are also discussed from a legal perspective.peer-reviewe

Adaptive delayed channel access for IEEE 802.11n WLANs

Abstract— In this paper we investigate potential benefits that an adaptive delayed channel access algorithm can attain for the next-generation wireless LANs, the IEEE 802.11n. We show that the performance of frame aggregation introduced by the 802.11n adheres due to the priority mechanism of the legacy 802.11e EDCA scheduler, resulting in a poor overall performance. Because high priority flows have low channel utilization, the low priority flows throughputs can be amerced further. By introducing an additional delay at the MAC layer, before the channel access scheduling, it will retain aggregate sizes at higher numbers and consequently a better channel utilization. Also, in order to support both UDP and TCP transport layer protocols, the algorithm’s operational conditions are kept adaptive. The simulation results demonstrate that our proposed adaptive delayed channel access outperforms significantly the current 802.11n specification and non-adaptive delayed channel access

Audit on the use of radiological investigations in the management of rhinosinusitis

Objectives: The aim of this audit is to establish the cost to the Maltese health system from the use of radiological imaging in managing rhinosinusitis and to identify areas in which these costs can be minimised by following guidelines on the management of rhinosinusitis. Methods: All plain radiographs and computed tomography scans (CT) of the paranasal sinuses requested in the Mater Dei Hospital over a one year period were analysed. Data was collected regarding: the quantity of investigations ordered, age of the patients, cost and requesting department. Results: Over one year: 205 CT scans and 113 sets of plain radiographs of the paranasal sinuses were requested, costing a total of euro103,440. The majority (73%) were elective requests made by ENT consultants. Five percent of CT scans were requested for patients less than 10 years of age. Conclusion: Rhinosinusitis is diagnosed clinically, only requiring radiological investigation in more complex cases best managed by specialists in ENT. Plain radiographs have limited use in the management of rhinosinusitis. Judicious use of imaging requests whilst following clinical guidelines is required to save money and minimise patient exposure to ionising radiation.peer-reviewe

The FADE mass-stat:A technique for inserting or deleting particles in molecular dynamics simulations

The emergence of new applications of molecular dynamics (MD) simulation calls for the development of mass-statting procedures that insert or delete particles on-the-fly. In this paper we present a new mass-stat which we term FADE, because it gradually “fades-in” (inserts) or “fades-out” (deletes) molecules over a short relaxation period within a MD simulation. FADE applies a time-weighted relaxation to the intermolecular pair forces between the inserting/deleting molecule and any neighbouring molecules. The weighting function we propose in this paper is a piece-wise polynomial that can be described entirely by two parameters: the relaxation time scale and the order of the polynomial. FADE inherently conserves overall system momentum independent of the form of the weighting function. We demonstrate various simulations of insertions of atomic argon, polyatomic TIP4P water, polymer strands, and C60 Buckminsterfullerene molecules. We propose FADE parameters and a maximum density variation per insertion-instance that restricts spurious potential energy changes entering the system within desired tolerances. We also demonstrate in this paper that FADE compares very well to an existing insertion algorithm called USHER, in terms of accuracy, insertion rate (in dense fluids), and computational efficiency. The USHER algorithm is applicable to monatomic and water molecules only, but we demonstrate that FADE can be generally applied to various forms and sizes of molecules, such as polymeric molecules of long aspect ratio, and spherical carbon fullerenes with hollow interiors

A DSMC investigation of gas flows in micro-channels with bends

Pressure-driven, implicit boundary conditions are implemented in an open source direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) solver, and benchmarked against simple micro-channel flow cases found in the literature. DSMC simulations are then carried out of gas flows for varying degrees of rarefaction along micro-channels with both one and two ninety-degree bends. The results are compared to those from the equivalent straight micro-channel geometry. Away from the immediate bend regions, the pressure and Mach number profiles do not differ greatly from those in straight channels, indicating that there are no significant losses introduced when a bend is added to a micro-channel geometry. It is found that the inclusion of a bend in a micro-channel can increase the amount of mass that a channel can carry, and that adding a second bend produces a greater mass flux enhancement. This increase happens within a small range of Knudsen number (0.02 Knin 0.08). Velocity slip and shear stress profiles at the channel walls are presented for the Knudsen showing the largest mass flux enhancement

VLA Observations of the Infrared Dark Cloud G19.30+0.07

We present Very Large Array observations of ammonia (NH3) (1,1), (2,2), and CCS (2_1-1_0) emission toward the Infrared Dark Cloud (IRDC) G19.30+0.07 at ~22GHz. The NH3 emission closely follows the 8 micron extinction. The NH3 (1,1) and (2,2) lines provide diagnostics of the temperature and density structure within the IRDC, with typical rotation temperatures of ~10 to 20K and NH3 column densities of ~10^15 cm^-2. The estimated total mass of G19.30+0.07 is ~1130 Msun. The cloud comprises four compact NH3 clumps of mass ~30 to 160 Msun. Two coincide with 24 micron emission, indicating heating by protostars, and show evidence of outflow in the NH3 emission. We report a water maser associated with a third clump; the fourth clump is apparently starless. A non-detection of 8.4GHz emission suggests that the IRDC contains no bright HII regions, and places a limit on the spectral type of an embedded ZAMS star to early-B or later. From the NH3 emission we find G19.30+0.07 is composed of three distinct velocity components, or "subclouds." One velocity component contains the two 24 micron sources and the starless clump, another contains the clump with the water maser, while the third velocity component is diffuse, with no significant high-density peaks. The spatial distribution of NH3 and CCS emission from G19.30+0.07 is highly anti-correlated, with the NH3 predominantly in the high-density clumps, and the CCS tracing lower-density envelopes around those clumps. This spatial distribution is consistent with theories of evolution for chemically young low-mass cores, in which CCS has not yet been processed to other species and/or depleted in high-density regions.Comment: 29 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication by ApJ. Please contact the authors for higher resolution versions of the figure

A friend in need is a friend indeed

Ġabra ta’ poeżiji u proża li tinkludi: Eleġija ta’ K. Mallia – A friend in need is a friend indeed ta’ M. A. Scalpello-Borg.N/