Lightweight Bamboo Double Layer Grid System

The paper presents the structural and environmentally sustainable aspects of bamboo as a valid construction material. A special PVC joint designed for bamboo double layer grids (DLG) is presented and implemented in a 2.3x2.3x0.9m DLG module. Experimental results obtained from evaluating two bamboo species, proof loading of the proposed PVC joint and loading of the DLG module are presented and compared to numerical predictions. The results indicate that the proposed DLG system can be used in practice for constructing lightweight medium-span bamboo structures with excellent structural, aesthetic and environmental attributes

Mapping QTL for Fusarium head blight resistance in a tunisian-derived durum wheat population

Fusarium head blight (FHB) damage in durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. var. durum Desf., turgidum) inflicted massive economic losses worldwide. Meanwhile, FHB resistant durum wheat germplasm is extremely limited. ‘Tunisian108’ is a newly identified tetraploid wheat with FHB resistance. However, genomic regions in ‘Tunisian108’ that significantly associated with FHB resistance are yet unclear. Therefore, a population of 171 backcross inbred lines (BC1F7) derived from a cross between ‘Tunisian108’ and a susceptible durum cultivar ‘Ben’ was characterized. Fusarium graminearum (R010, R1267, and R1322) was point inoculated (greenhouse) or spawn inoculated (field) in 2010 and 2011. Disease severity, Fusarium-damaged kernel (FDK) and mycotoxins were measured. Analysis of variance showed significant genotype and genotype by environment effect on all traits. Approximately 8% of the lines in field and 25% of the lines in greenhouse were more resistance than Tunisian108. A framework linkage map of 267 DArt plus 62 SSR markers was developed representing 239 unique loci and covering a total distance of 1887.6 cM. Composite interval mapping revealed nine QTL for FHB severity, four QTL for DON, and four QTL for FDK on seven chromosomes. Two novel QTL, Qfhb.ndsu-3BL and Qfhb.ndsu-2B, were identified for disease severity, explaining 11 and 6% of the phenotypic variation, respectively. Also, a QTL with large effect on severity and a QTL with negative effect on FDK on chromosome 5A were identified. Importantly, a novel region on chromosome 2B was identified with multiple FHB resistance. Validation on these QTL would facilitate the durum wheat resistance breeding

Isolated Pulmonary Valve Endocarditis.

Infective endocarditis involving the right side of the heart is typically associated with IV drug abuse and chronic indwelling catheters which commonly involve the tricuspid valve. Isolated pulmonary valve endocarditis (PVE) is a rare clinical entity. We report a rare case of a young woman with a history of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) on hemodialysis through tunneled catheter presenting with persistent coagulase-negative staphylococcus (CoNS) epidermidis bacteremia despite being on appropriate treatment with IV vancomycin for two weeks. Because of the persistent bacteremia, a transesophageal echocardiogram was performed and it revealed a thickened pulmonary valve with 1.8 cm vegetation in the left posterior cusp. She was successfully treated with IV daptomycin course for a total of six weeks. The recommended management for PVE is usually medical treatment with IV antibiotics gauged according to sensitivities of the cultures. Our article highlights the fact that the decision to manage it medically versus surgically can propose a challenge as the guidelines are not very robust

Novel microwave apparatus for breast lesions detection: Preliminary clinical results

This paper presents preliminary results of an innovative microwave imaging apparatus for breast lesions detection. Specially, a Huygens Principle based method is employed to process the microwave signals and to build the respective microwave images. The apparatus has been first tested on phantoms. Next, its performance has been verified through clinical examinations on 22 healthy breasts and on 29 breast having lesions, using as gold standard the output of the radiologist study review obtained using conventional techniques. Specifically, we introduce a metric, which is the ratio between maximum and average of the image intensity (MAX/AVG). We found that MAX/AVG of microwave images can be used for classifying breasts containing lesions. In addition, using MAX/AVG as classification parameter, receiver operating characteristic curves have been empirically determined. Furthermore, for one randomly selected breast having lesion, we have demonstrated that the localisation of the inclusion acquired through microwave imaging is compatible with mammography images

Discontinuous Phase Transition in an Exactly Solvable One-Dimensional Creation-Annihilation System

An exactly solvable reaction-diffusion model consisting of first-class particles in the presence of a single second-class particle is introduced on a one-dimensional lattice with periodic boundary condition. The number of first-class particles can be changed due to creation and annihilation reactions. It is shown that the system undergoes a discontinuous phase transition in contrast to the case where the density of the second-class particles is finite and the phase transition is continuous.Comment: Revised, 8 pages, 1 EPS figure. Accepted for publication in Journal of Statistical Mechanics: theory and experimen

Out-of-Band Power Suppression for Cyclic SLM with Delayed Correlation and Matched Filter

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) has been used in many communication systems. However, OFDM suffers from undesirable high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) as it uses inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT) operation at the transmitter. One of the simplest schemes of the PAPR reduction is the cyclic-selective mapping (SLM). This paper presents cyclic-SLM without side information (SI) which employs delayed correlation with a matched filter (DC-MF) at the receiver. The cyclic-SLM combines the original OFDM signal and its cyclically shifted ones. In the previous conventional cyclic-SLM, the cyclically shifted signal samples are multiplied by a phase sequence which is drawn from Barker code sequence. However, this scheme results in higher out-of-band (OOB) power leakage. In this paper, we propose to use different phase sequence for each OFDM symbol in one OFDM frame to overcome the OOB problem. As a consequence, multiple matched filters are used at the receiver. Simulation results show that the proposed method has the same OOB as the conventional OFDM. In addition, we also analyze the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of the PAPR reduction and bit error rate (BER)

Longitudinal Image Registration with Temporal-Order and Subject-Specificity Discrimination

Morphological analysis of longitudinal MR images plays a key role in monitoring disease progression for prostate cancer patients, who are placed under an active surveillance program. In this paper, we describe a learning-based image registration algorithm to quantify changes on regions of interest between a pair of images from the same patient, acquired at two different time points. Combining intensity-based similarity and gland segmentation as weak supervision, the population-data-trained registration networks significantly lowered the target registration errors (TREs) on holdout patient data, compared with those before registration and those from an iterative registration algorithm. Furthermore, this work provides a quantitative analysis on several longitudinal-data-sampling strategies and, in turn, we propose a novel regularisation method based on maximum mean discrepancy, between differently-sampled training image pairs. Based on 216 3D MR images from 86 patients, we report a mean TRE of 5.6 mm and show statistically significant differences between the different training data sampling strategies

Morphological Change Forecasting for Prostate Glands using Feature-based Registration and Kernel Density Extrapolation

Organ morphology is a key indicator for prostate disease diagnosis and prognosis. For instance, In longitudinal study of prostate cancer patients under active surveillance, the volume, boundary smoothness and their changes are closely monitored on time-series MR image data. In this paper, we describe a new framework for forecasting prostate morphological changes, as the ability to detect such changes earlier than what is currently possible may enable timely treatment or avoiding unnecessary confirmatory biopsies. In this work, an efficient feature-based MR image registration is first developed to align delineated prostate gland capsules to quantify the morphological changes using the inferred dense displacement fields (DDFs). We then propose to use kernel density estimation (KDE) of the probability density of the DDFrepresented future morphology changes, between current and future time points, before the future data become available. The KDE utilises a novel distance function that takes into account morphology, stage-of-progression and duration-ofchange, which are considered factors in such subject-specific forecasting. We validate the proposed approach on image masks unseen to registration network training, without using any data acquired at the future target time points. The experiment results are presented on a longitudinal data set with 331 images from 73 patients, yielding an average Dice score of 0.865 on a holdout set, between the ground-truth and the image masks warped by the KDE-predicted-DDFs

Autologous cricoid cartilage as a graft for airway reconstruction in an emergent technique - A case report

Introduction: Laryngotracheal stenosis can be caused after traumatic injuries to the neck from the subglottic larynx to the trachea. Patients with laryngotracheal stenosis often need a tracheotomy and occasionally may become tracheotomy dependent. Different procedures have been described for the management of these lesions. Management options include techniques of endoscopic dilation, laser resection, laryngo-fissure, and an innovative array of plastic reconstructions with or without the use of stents. Case Report: This paper presents airway reconstruction in a young patient with severe subglottic stenosis due to a blunt trauma to the neck, who was treated using particles of an autologous fractured cricoid cartilage as the source for airway augmentation. An incision was made in the anterior midline of the cricoid lamina and deepened through the scar tissue to the posterior cricoid lamina. Then two lateral incisions (right&left) were made in the cricoid lamina and fractured cartilage particles and the scar tissue were removed via these two lateral incisions. The mucosal lining at the right and left of the midline incision, after debulking, were sutured to a lateral position. Thereafter three cartilage particles were used to reconstruct the anterior cricoid lamina and augment the lumen. Conclusion: It is worth to mention that an autologus cartilage graft can be used for certain cases with traumatic airway stenosis. Further follow up and more patients are needed to approve this method of reconstructive surgery in emergent situations