Correlation of Atrial Fibrillation with Left Atrial Volume in Patients with Mitral Stenosis. a Single Centre Study From Pakistan

Background: Rheumatic heart disease has a strong association with mitral valve stenosis. Atrial fibrillation is one of the most common complications of this condition and is a poor prognostic factor. Early detection and prompt management of atrial fibrillation can help to improve the quality of life and increase the life expectancy of the patients. We carried out this study to investigate the significance of left atrial volumetric changes in mitral stenosis and its correlation with atrial fibrillation. Methodology: We audited the data of 60 patients of rheumatic heart disease who had mitral valve stenosis. The patients were randomized into atrial fibrillation (Group A) and normal sinus rhythm (Group B). We conducted this cross-sectional analytical study at Cardiology Department, Mayo Hospital, Lahore, from 1st February 2017 to 31st January 2018. We only included those patients who consented to be a part of this study and fulfilled our predefined inclusion criteria. Left atrial volume was measured by prolate ellipse method and biplane methods on echocardiography. The Data was analyzed on SPSS v20. Results: Sixty patients were included in the study. Among the subjects, thirty-six (60%) were males, and twenty-four (40%) were females. Atrial fibrillation was noted in 43.33% of the patients of mitral valve stenosis. There was a marked difference in the mean volume of the left atrium among the two groups. We observed that the mean area of the mitral valve for Group A patients was larger than that of patients in Group B. Our study showed an inverse correlation between left atrial volume and mitral valve area among Group A patients. Conclusion: Patients of mitral stenosis are at an increased risk of developing atrial fibrillation if the left atrial volume is increasing. All patients with mitral stenosis should have routine echocardiography & measurement of left atrial volumes, so that proper treatment can be started if the left atrial volume is increasing, to prevent atrial fibrillation

Improving just-in-time delivery performance of IoT-enabled flexible manufacturing systems with AGV based material transportation

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs) are driverless material handling systems used for transportation of pallets and line side supply of materials to provide flexibility and agility in shop-floor logistics. Scheduling of shop-floor logistics in such systems is a challenging task due to their complex nature associated with the multiple part types and alternate material transfer routings. This paper presents a decision support system capable of supporting shop-floor decision-making activities during the event of manufacturing disruptions by automatically adjusting both AGV and machine schedules in Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs). The proposed system uses discrete event simulation (DES) models enhanced by the Internet-of-Things (IoT) enabled digital integration and employs a nonlinear mixed integer programming Genetic Algorithm (GA) to find near-optimal production schedules prioritising the just-in-time (JIT) material delivery performance and energy efficiency of the material transportation. The performance of the proposed system is tested on the Integrated Manufacturing and Logistics (IML) demonstrator at WMG, University of Warwick. The results showed that the developed system can find the near-optimal solutions for production schedules subjected to production anomalies in a negligible time, thereby supporting shop-floor decision-making activities effectively and rapidly

Assessment of Workers Exposure to Ammonia In Animal Facilities at Walter C. Todd Agricultural Research Center, Nacogdoches, Texas

Poultry, swine, and equine animal facilities are all considered as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). All these CAFOs are emission sources of gases and other pollutants which have negative impacts on the environment, human health, and animal health as well. One of those gases is Ammonia (NH3), which is a colorless, highly irritating gas with a pungent, suffocating odor, and if inhaled in high concentrations, it may cause harm to the human body and the function of lungs. Personal exposure to ammonia was assessed for six workers in the three animal facilities: poultry, swine, and equine. Two workers from each facility wore passive badges (Model 584, Assay Technologies, OH) once per day over the sampling days. Eleven microenvironments frequented by the workers (stalls, barns, swine facility’s rooms, broiler houses) were also monitored daily using color dosimeter tubes (Model 810-3DL, Gastec Corp., Japan). The concentrations in the microenvironments were read directly from the dosimeter tubes. An activity log was used to document the workers’ activities and locations during their shifts. A Repeated Measures ANOVA statistical analysis was used to test for the differences among the personal-exposure concentrations

A Cloud Platform-as-a-Service for Multimedia Conferencing Service Provisioning

Multimedia conferencing is the real-time exchange of multimedia content between multiple parties. It is the basis of a wide range of applications (e.g., multimedia multiplayer game). Cloud-based provisioning of the conferencing services on which these applications rely will bring benefits, such as easy service provisioning and elastic scalability. However, it remains a big challenge. This paper proposes a PaaS for conferencing service provisioning. The proposed PaaS is based on a business model from the state of the art. It relies on conferencing IaaSs that, instead of VMs, offer conferencing substrates (e.g., dial-in signaling, video mixer and audio mixer). The PaaS enables composition of new conferences from substrates on the fly. This has been prototyped in this paper and, in order to evaluate it, a conferencing IaaS is also implemented. Performance measurements are also made.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, IEEE ISCC 201

Searching for Dark Matter at the LHC with a Mono-Z

We investigate a mono-Z process as a potential dark matter search strategy at the LHC. In this channel a single Z boson recoils against missing transverse momentum, attributed to dark matter particles, $\chi$, which escape the detector. This search strategy is related, and complementary to, monojet and monophoton searches. For illustrative purposes we consider the process $q\bar{q} -> \chi\chi Z$ in a toy dark matter model, where the Z boson is emitted from either the initial state quarks, or from the internal propagator. Among the signatures of this process will be a pair of muons with high pT that reconstruct to the invariant mass of the Z, and large amounts of missing transverse energy. Being a purely electroweak signal, QCD and other Standard Model backgrounds are relatively easily removed with modest selection cuts. We compare the signal to Standard Model backgrounds and demonstrate that, even for conservative cuts, there exist regions of parameter space where the signal may be clearly visible above background in future LHC data, allowing either new discovery potential or the possibility of supplementing information about the dark sector beyond that available from other observable channels.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figure

Studi PRA Perancangan Kapal Monohull Katamaran Trimaran Di Perairan Bali

Jumlah wisatawan serta belum adanya transportasi terpadu di perairan Bali menjadipertimbangan utama dalam mendesain kapal mohull, katamaran, dan trimaran. Desain kapal iniberfungsi untuk liburan alternative. Jadi fungsi utama dari kapal yang digunakan sebagai saranapariwisata diperlukan rancangan dan dibuat senyaman mungkin dan memiliki fasilitas yang lengkap.Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan melakukan beberapa langkah, yang meliputi perhitunganukuran utama, membuat rencana garis, rencana umum, hidrostatik, analisis stabilitas kapal juga gerakkapal. Dan pemilihan peralatan kapal, mesin utama yang sesuai dengan perhitungan sesuai resistensiyang dialami oleh kapal.Hasil dari desain kapal ini mendapat ukuran utama LOA: 25,60 m, LWL: 25,2 m, B: 8,40 m,T: 1,55 m, H: 2,7 m pada kapal monohull katamaran trimaran. Dari hasil perhitungan terhadapperformance kapal, hasil menunjukkan stabilitas kapal memiliki titik M berada di atas titik G di segalakondisi. Gerak Kapal, telah terbukti tidak terjadi wettnes dek, kapasitas penumpang kapal adalah24persons dengan 13 awak. Kapal ini menggunakan dua mesin motor penggerak kapal dengan dayasebesar 185 HP