A clinical study on the surgical management of fracture shaft femur in children and adolescents by using Ender’s nail

Background: Femoral shaft fractures account for 1.6% of all pediatric bony injuries. Current treatment options include early spica casting, traction, external fixation, open reduction and internal fixation with plating, flexible intramedullary nails and intramedullary rods. Experience of many clinicians has shown that children with diaphyseal fractures do not always recover with conservative treatment. Ender rod fixation in the paediatric population is simple, effective and minimally invasive. It allows stable fixation, rapid healing and a prompt return of the child to normal activity. The objective of the study was to evaluate the functional outcome of the pediatric femur shaft fractures with Ender’s intramedullary nailing.Methods: 20 patients aged 5 to 16 years with fracture shaft of the femur treated with retrograde flexible intramedullary nailing at Bapuji hospital attached to JJM Medical College, Davangere in the period from September 2014 to August 2015 were included in the study.Results: All patients were followed until fracture union occurred. The follow up period ranged from 6 months to 1 year. Results were analysed both clinically and radiologically. 1 case united within 8 weeks,14 cases in 10 weeks and 5 cases in 12 weeks. Out of 20 cases there is limb length discrepancy in 6 cases, infection in 2 cases, nail back out in 2 cases, varus malalignment in 2 cases, valgus malalingment in 3 cases, anterior angulation in 6 cases and rotational malalignment in 2 cases..Conclusions: Closed intramedullary nailing is an efficient method and does not expose the patient to an undue risk of infection or non-union. There is also no risk of limb length discrepancy and the angulation and rotational malalignment are within the acceptable limits. This safe procedure can be recommended in children with multiple injuries co-existent head injury and in age groups 5 to 16 years

Ni/H-ZSM-5 as a stable and promising catalyst for COx free H2 production by CH4 decomposition

Catalytic decomposition of methane for COx free hydrogen production is carried out over Ni supported on H-ZSM-5 catalysts with different Si/Al ratios (i.e. 40, 150, 300 and 485) at 550 °C and atmospheric pressure. Methane decomposition activity of Ni/H-ZSM-5 is decreased with time on stream and finally deactivated completely. The fresh and reduced catalysts are characterized by BET-SA, XRD, FT-IR, UV-DRS, TPR, pulse chemisorption of H2 and N2O and some of the used catalysts are characterised by CHNS, SEM, TEM and Raman spectroscopy. Raman spectra of the used catalysts showed both ordered and disordered carbon at 1580 cm-1 and 1320 cm-1. The 20 wt% Ni/H-ZSM-5 (Si/Al = 150) exhibited a higher H2 production rate over the other Ni loadings. The superior performance of 20 wt% Ni/H-ZSM-5 (Si/Al = 150) is rationalized by the physico-chemical properties of the various Ni loaded H-ZSM-5 catalysts

Implants in the severely resorbed mandibles: whether or not to augment? What is the clinician’s preference?

Contains fulltext : 96000.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)INTRODUCTION: The aim of this study is to inventory in the Netherlands which therapy is the clinician's first choice when restoring the edentulous mandible. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A questionnaire was sent to all Dutch Oral and Maxillofacial surgeons. As part of this, the surgeons were invited to treat five virtual edentulous patients, differing only in mandibular residual height. RESULTS: In cases of a sufficient residual height of 15 mm, all surgeons were in favour to insert solely two implants to anchor an overdenture. In case of a residual height of 12 mm, 10% of the surgeons choose for an augmentation procedure. If a patient was presented with a mandibular height of 10 mm, already 40% of the OMF surgeons executed an augmentation procedure. Most (80%) surgeons prefer the (anterior) iliac crest as donor site. The choice of 'whether or not to augment' was not influenced by the surgeon's age; however, the hospital, where he was trained, did. Surgeons trained in Groningen were more in favour of installing short implants in mandibles with reduced vertical height. DISCUSSION: As the option overdenture supported on two interforaminal implants is reimbursed by the Dutch health assurance, this treatment modality is very popular in the Netherlands. From a point of costs and to minimize bypass comorbidity, surgeons should be more reluctant in executing augmentation procedures to restore the resorbed edentulous mandible as it is dated in literature that also in mandibles with a residual height of 10 mm or less, solely placing implants, thus without an augmentation procedure in advance, is a reliable treatment option

Face Recognition Using Ensembles of Networks

We describe a novel approach for fully automated face recognition and show its feasibility on a large data base of facial images (FERET). Our approach, based on a hybrid architecture consisting of an ensemble of connectionist networks - radial basis functions (RBF) - and inductive decision trees (DT), combines the merits of 'discrete and abstractive' features with those of 'holistic' template matching'. Training for face detection takes place over both positive and negative examples. The benefits of our architecture include (i) robust detection of facial landmarks using decision trees, and (ii) robust face recognition using consensus methods over ensembles of RBF networks. Experiments carried out using k - fold cross validation on a large data base consisting of 748 images corresponding to 374 subjects, among them 11 duplicates, yield on the average 87 % correct match, and (ROC curves where) 99 % correct verification is achieved for a 2 % reject rate. 1. Introduction Face recognition..

TV Content Recommender System

The plethora of content available to the consumer has become overwhelming. Increasing amounts of information are being disseminated through terrestrial broadcast, satellite, and cable leading to an information overload. Common modes of searching for TV programs currently in existence include: TV-guide, PreVue channel and rudimentary search tools available through satellite dish TV programming service. These tools are general-purpose in nature and are not specifically tailored to the individual viewer’s taste. Towards that end we advance in this paper a recommender system that searches for TV programs based on their likes/dislikes through implicit personalization techniques