DIAGNOSIS OF THE CRITICAL STATE OF CONCRETE

Reinforced concrete is the material with which it is built much of the architectural heritage, ordinary, but also monumental the last 100 years. Recently, there has, however, found that it is not the eternal material that you dreamed when you started to use it massively and with time degrades by various phenomena that are often attributed to the degradation that attacks the plates, but is not this the only cause which can lead to damage of the same, also the load cycles to the limits of rupture may determine, mechanically, a loss of capacity. And this, for example, the case of a building subject to an earthquake that while not causing collapse or breakage evident engages the concrete severely. The concrete thus "reduced" is still able to withstand the same loads? Is there a way to figure out when it is exceeded a threshold of attention? In this paper we want to present the results of a campaign of investigations in the laboratory with ultrasound helps to create a first answer to these questions. The technique, suitably calibrated, may be used in all those cases in which it must operate on elements that have been subject to exceptional loads to evaluate properly the areas in which it is essential to the intervention

The "DICA" endoscopic classification for diverticular disease of the colon shows a significant interobserver agreement among community endoscopists

BACKGROUND AND AIM: An endoscopic classification of Diverticular Disease (DD), called DICA (Diverticular Inflammation and Complication Assessment) is currently available. It scores severity of the disease as DICA 1, DICA 2 and DICA 3. Our aim was to assess the agreement levels for this classification among an endoscopist community setting. METHODS: A total of 66 endoscopists independently scored a set of DD endoscopic videos. The percentages of overall agreement on the DICA score and a free-marginal multirater kappa (κ) coefficient were reported as statistical measures of the inter-rater agreement. RESULTS: The overall agreement levels were: 70.2% for DICA 1, 70.5% for DICA 2, 81.3% for DICA 3. The free marginal κ was: 0.553 for DICA 1, 0.558 for DICA 2, 0.719 for DICA 3. The agreement levels among the expert group were: 78.8% for DICA 1, 80.2% for DICA 2, 88.5% for DICA 3. The free marginal κ among the expert group were: 0.682 for DICA 1, 0.712 for DICA 2, 0.828 for DICA 3. The agreement of expert raters on the single item of the DICA classification was superior to the agreement of the overall group. CONCLUSIONS: The overall inter-rater agreement for DICA score in this study ranges from moderate to good, with a significant improvement in the expert subgroup of raters. Diverticular Inflammation and Complication Assessment is a simple and reproducible endoscopic scoring system