Early Warning System for Bathing Water Quality

Poster describing use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) in a Receiver-Operating Characteristic (ROC) scenario to predict bathing water quality exceedances at beaches in the SW UK.Environment Agency (SW

DIFFERENCES IN THE LEVELS OF LIPID STATUS IN PATIENTS WITH ISACHEMIC HEART DISEASE AND MALIGNANT DISEASE

Arteriosclerosis is the basis of all cardiovascular diseases. Numerous risk factors lead to the rise of malignant and cardiovascular diseases. Those are: elevated artery blood pressure, raised plasma cholesterol and triglycerides, low level of HDL-cholesterol, smoking, diabetes mellitus, diet, lack of physical exercises, heredity, stress, gender.The aim of the study was to compare the lipid status of patients with cardiovascular disease or malignancy.The database of the biochemical laboratory and oncology counseling unit of the "Ostrog Clinic" was used. The method of random sample was used and patients (n=29) of both genders were selected, who were at the age of 40 to 47, with cardiovascular diseases, and had significant occlusive coronary disease, which required operation or surgical revascularization procedure. The patients were classified in two groups: G1 (n=14) with statin therapy and G2 (n=15) without statin therapy. Both groups were statistically compared with a group of female patients (n=30) with breast cancer, who were between 37 and 69 years of age. Control group comprised 25 healthy subjects. Standard statistical methods were used for processing the lipid status parameters, namely: the arithmetic mean, standard deviation SDn and SDn-1, correlation coefficient, post hock test and a single factor analysis of variance.The results obtained have pointed to the existence of a marked hyperlipoproteinemia type 4 in the group of cardiovascular patients who did not use statin (G2). In G2, higher levels of cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and plasma triglycerides in comparison with the control and G1, while the value of HDL-cholesterol was within the range of referent values. The obvious suppressing effect of statin on cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol was observed in G1. Group G3 had, in comparison with the control and cardiovascular patients, significantly lower levels of cholesterol and triglycerides in plasma, as well as lower index of atherosclerosis and lower risk factors for the development of atherosclerosis.Elevated levels of cholesterol, LDL-C and LDL/HDL-C are the important risk factors for atherosclerosis development. These lipids’ risk factors could be modified, especially in the primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases. Lower values of lipid parameters in patients with malignancy compared to patients with cardiovascular diseases indicated posibble lower risk for malignancy in these patients

Tracheotomy in children

IntroductionTracheotomy is one of the most urgent procedures in medicine. It is an operative procedure that creates a surgical airway in the cervical trachea.AimTracheostomy refers to a surgical incision made into a trachea. Children are often considered “little people”, however, in medical sense, that is not completely true. The aim of our paper is to review the tracheostomy procedure in children.Materials and MethodsIn this paper, we analysed the tracheostomies in children performed in the Clinical Centre Niš (Serbia) in the five-year period from January 2015 to December 2019 inclusive. At our centre, all tracheostomies were solely performed by otolaryngologists.ResultsA total of 37 tracheotomies were performed in the studied period. There were 25 (67.6%) boys and 12 girls (32.4%). The main reason for this relatively low tracheostomy count in our study is because our practitioners are usually performing tracheostomies only in children that require urgent care. All chronic or complicated cases, if they are stable enough to transport, are referred to a higher specialised institution in Belgrade, Serbia.The youngest was a newborn, not older than 1 hour, and the oldest was 17 years old. We divided them into groups according to the age. There were 5 (13.5%) neonates, 25 (67.6%) infants, 3 (8.1%) preschoolers, 2 (5.4%) school-aged children, and 2 (5.4%) adolescents. This is in concurrence with other studies, where authors reported that the highest number of tracheostomies (around 65–70%) were performed before 1 year of age.In most cases, indication for tracheostomies were upper airway obstructions (n = 35, 94.6%). Prolonged orotracheal intubation (n = 1, 2.7%), and protective tracheostomy (n = 1, 2.7%) were the causes in the other two cases.ConclusionWhile researching the literature for this paper we found that there is little standardisation associated with tracheostomy, even though it is a procedure that is performed regularly all over the globe. There is evidence that there is a disparity in opinions not only among the practitioners in different countries, but in individual countries as well. With the increasing number of patients that require tracheostomy, we find that this topic should be addressed more carefully with the attempt to establish the best way of action for this procedure, and with that, lower the complication and mortality rates

Surgical stress response following hip arthroplasty regarding choice of anesthesia and postoperative analgesia

© 2017, Inst. Sci. inf., Univ. Defence in Belgrade. All Rights Reserved. Background/Aim. Significant surgical stress response consisting of hormonal, metabolic and inflammatory changes can be initiated by the hip replacement surgery. Appropriate choice of anesthesia and postoperative analgesia should provide diminution of surgical stress response and may reduce number of perioperative complica-tions. Surgical stress response after peripheral nerve blocks has not been studied extensively in patients who underwent hip replace-ment. The aim of the study was to investigate whether continuous lumbar plexus block can significantly reduce surgical stress re-sponse in comparison to other types of postoperative analgesia – continuous epidural analgesia and intravenous patient controlled analgesia (PCA) with morphine. Methods. Prospective study in-cluded 60 patients, scheduled for total hip arthroplasty. The pa-tients were randomized into 4 groups: group CNB (central nerve block - epidural), group PNB (Peripheral nerve block - lumbar plexus block), SAM (Spinal anesthesia- PCA (anesthesia) mor-phine) and GAM (General anesthesia + PCA with Morphine). Se-rum levels of cortisol, thyroid hormones (T3, T4) and thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), insulin, glucose and C-reactive pro-tein (CRP) were measured in all groups – preoperatively, as well as 4 h, 12 h and 24 h after surgery. Results. The study showed that average serum cortisol levels were significantly lower 4 h after the operation in the groups where methods of regional anesthesia were performed intraoperatively (SAM, CNB, PNB); (F = 19.867; p < 0.01). Groups with postoperative continuous catheter analgesia (CNB, PNB) had significantly lower serum cortisol levels 12 h after the operation (F = 8.050; p < 0.01). The highest serum insulin levels were detected 4 h postoperatively in the CNB and PNB group, while the lowest were in the GAM group (F = 5.811; p < 0.05). Twelve hours after the operation, the lowest values of insulin were measured in the SAM group (F = 5.052; p < 0.05), while 24 h postoperatively, the lowest values were found in the SAM and GAM group (F = 6.394; p < 0.05). T3, T4 and TSH levels showed slight reduction in comparison to preoperative values without sta-tistical significance. Blood glucose levels were significantly different among the groups 4 h after surgery with the highest values re-corded in the GAM group and the lowest ones in the SAM group (F = 10.084; p < 0.01). On the other hand, 12 h after the operation significant rise in blood glucose levels was detected in the SAM group (F = 7.186; p < 0.01) Levels of CRP increased remarkably 12 h and 24 h after the surgery, but without significant difference among the groups. Conclusion. Administration of postoperative analgesia using continuous lumbar plexus block following hip ar-throplasty reduces significantly stress response in comparison to postoperative PCA with morphine and has comparable effects on hormone release to epidural analgesia. Spinal anesthesia provides the best diminution of surgical stress response in the early postoperative period in comparison with other types of intraoperative analgesia

Rain Gauge and Radar Rainfall Information for Urban Flash Flood Analysis

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchive

The urban inundation model with bidirectional flow interaction between 2D overland surface and 1D sewer networks

8th international conference, Novatech 2013, Lyon, France, 23 – 27 June 2013An integrated numerical model is developed in the study for simulating the runoff processes in urban areas. A 1D model is used for calculating the rainfall-runoff hydrographs and the flow conditions in drainage networks. A 2D model is employed for routing flow on overland surface. Both models are solved by different numerical schemes and using different time steps with the flow through manholes adopted as model connections. The effluents and influents via manholes are determined by the weir or the orifice equations. Timing synchronisation between both models is taken into account to guarantee suitable model linkages.EPSRC: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Counci

An analysis of the combined consequences of pluvial and fluvial flooding

Copyright © IWA Publishing 2010. The definitive peer-reviewed and edited version of this article is published in Water Science & Technology Vol. 62 No. 7 pp 1491–1498 (2010), DOI: 10.2166/wst.2010.486, and is available at www.iwapublishing.comIntense rainfall in urban areas often generates both pluvial flooding due to the limited capacity of drainage systems, as well as fluvial flooding caused by deluges from river channels. The concurrence of pluvial and fluvial flooding can aggravate their (individual) potential damages. To analyse the impact caused by individual and composite type of flooding, the SIPSON/UIM model, an integrated 1D sewer and 2D overland flow was applied to numerical modelling. An event matrix of possible pluvial scenarios was combined with hypothetic overtopping and breaching situations to estimate the surface flooding consequences in the Stockbridge area, Keighley (Bradford, UK). The modelling results identified different flooding drivers in different parts of the study area and showed that the worst scenarios resulted from synthesised events.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

Multi-layered coarse grid modelling in 2D urban flood simulations

Copyright © 2012 Elsevier. NOTICE: This is the author’s version of a work accepted for publication by Elsevier. Changes resulting from the publishing process, including peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting and other quality control mechanisms, may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Hydrology Vol. 470-471, DOI: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2012.06.022Regular grids are commonly used in 2D flood modelling due to wide availability of terrain models and low pre-processing required for input preparation. Despite advances in both computing software and hardware, high resolution flood modelling remains computationally demanding when applied to a large study area when the available time and resources are limited. Traditional grid coarsening approach may reduce not only the computing demands, but also the accuracy of results due to the loss of detailed information. To keep key features that affect flow propagation within coarse grid, the approach proposed and tested in this paper adopts multiple layers in flood modelling to reflect individual flow paths separated by buildings within a coarse grid cell. The cell in each layer has its own parameters (elevation, roughness, building coverage ratio, and conveyance reduction factors) to describe itself and the conditions at boundaries with neighbourhood cells. Results of tests on the synthetic case study and the real world urban area show that the proposed multi-layered approach greatly improves the accuracy of coarse grid modelling with an insignificant additional computing cost. The proposed approach has been tested in conjunction with the UIM model by taking the high resolution results as the benchmark. The implementation of the proposed multi-layered methodology to any regular grid based 2D model would be straightforward

Application of cellular automata approach for fast flood simulation

CCWI 2011: Computing and Control for the Water Industry, 5-7 September 2011, University of Exeter, UKThe increasing pluvial flooding in many urban areas of the world has caused tremendous damage to societies and has drawn the attention of researchers to the development of a fast flood inundation model. Most available models are based on solving a set of partial differential equations that require a huge computational effort. Researchers are increasingly interested in an alternative grid-based approach called Cellular Automata (CA), due to its computational efficiency (both with respect to time and computational cost) and inherent parallel nature. This paper deals with the computational experiment with a new CA method for modelling 2D pluvial flood propagation. A Digital Elevation Model (DEM) comprising square grids forms the discrete space for the CA setup. Local rules are applied in the von Neumann Neighbourhood for the spatio-temporal evolution of the flow field. The proposed model is applied to a hypothetical terrain to assess its performance. The results from the CA model are compared with those of a physically based 2D urban inundation model (UIM). The CA model results are comparable with the results from UIM model. The advantages of low computational cost of CA and its ability to mimic realistic fluid movement are combined in a novel and fast flood simulation model