Computational studies for the effective electrical conductivity of Copper powder filled LDPE/LLDPE composites

486-493The effective electrical conductivity (EEC) of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) polymer composites filled with copper has been studied. The nonlinear behavior has been observed for effective electrical conductivity versus filler content. Several approaches have been described to predict the electrical conductivities of polymer composites. EEC is described by artificial neural network (ANN) and it demonstrates the accurate match of experimental data for EEC with different training functions (TRAINOSS, TRAINLM, TRAINBR, TRAINSCG, TRAINBFG, and TRAINRP). The ANN approach satisfied the experimental data for EEC of polymer composites reasonably well. The complex structure encountered in LDPE/Cu and LLDPE/Cu, along with the difference in the EEC of the components, make it difficult to estimate the EEC exactly. This is the reason for which artificial neural network has been employed here. By using ANN approach experimental results indicate that EEC of polymer composites increases with increasing filler content at the same concentration

Whole Slide Imaging Versus Microscopy for Primary Diagnosis in Surgical Pathology: A Multicenter Blinded Randomized Noninferiority Study of 1992 Cases (Pivotal Study)

Most prior studies of primary diagnosis in surgical pathology using whole slide imaging (WSI) versus microscopy have focused on specific organ systems or included relatively few cases. The objective of this study was to demonstrate that WSI is noninferior to microscopy for primary diagnosis in surgical pathology. A blinded randomized noninferiority study was conducted across the entire range of surgical pathology cases (biopsies and resections, including hematoxylin and eosin, immunohistochemistry, and special stains) from 4 institutions using the original sign-out diagnosis (baseline diagnosis) as the reference standard. Cases were scanned, converted to WSI and randomized. Sixteen pathologists interpreted cases by microscopy or WSI, followed by a wash-out period of ≥4 weeks, after which cases were read by the same observers using the other modality. Major discordances were identified by an adjudication panel, and the differences between major discordance rates for both microscopy (against the reference standard) and WSI (against the reference standard) were calculated. A total of 1992 cases were included, resulting in 15,925 reads. The major discordance rate with the reference standard diagnosis was 4.9% for WSI and 4.6% for microscopy. The difference between major discordance rates for microscopy and WSI was 0.4% (95% confidence interval, -0.30% to 1.01%). The difference in major discordance rates for WSI and microscopy was highest in endocrine pathology (1.8%), neoplastic kidney pathology (1.5%), urinary bladder pathology (1.3%), and gynecologic pathology (1.2%). Detailed analysis of these cases revealed no instances where interpretation by WSI was consistently inaccurate compared with microscopy for multiple observers. We conclude that WSI is noninferior to microscopy for primary diagnosis in surgical pathology, including biopsies and resections stained with hematoxylin and eosin, immunohistochemistry and special stains. This conclusion is valid across a wide variety of organ systems and specimen types

Terahertz radiation for medical application

Terahertz (THz) radiations focused at multiple positions are quite useful for their medical application. For this, we propose to employ beating of dark hollow Gaussian laser beams (DHGBs) of different beam orders in plasma. In view of realistic situations, we also include the collisions between the electrons and the neutrals. Because of a special intensity gradient distribution in DHGBs, the emitted THz radiation is found to have a unique field profile with multiple focii. The dependence of plasma density, order of the beams and collision frequency on the THz field amplitude is discussed. The important feature to consider hollow Gaussian laser beams is having the same power at different beam orders. It is found that the amplitude of the emitted radiation is highly sensitive to the beam order of the incident lasers. An optimization of the plasma parameters and the lasers characteristics can lead to the enhancement in the THz intensity and the efficiency of the mechanism