Safe Zones in Hip-Implant Designs to Resist Dislocation

Major contributing parameters to hip implant dislocation include preoperative, intra-operative and post-operative factors. Implant geometry are design as well as non-design related. Femoral and acetabular component design features causing dislocation and/or resisting it are elucidated. Twelve implants were designed during this investigation were analyzed for dislocation resistance. A safe zone, establishes combinations of implant dimensions, was analyzed for all the 12 implants where implants were dislocation resistant. Head diameters between 26 mm to 32 mm, neck diameters closer to 14 mm, and neck angle between 25 to 35º were examined to be the safest ranges for hip implant designs

ECALTOOL: fuzzy logic based computer program to calibrate the Hargreaves equation for accurate estimation of evapotranspiration

A reference evapotranspiration rate (ET0) is vital information for irrigation scheduling as well as plant growth modeling.  Estimation of evapotranspiration using environmental variables is a convenient approach compare to direct measurement.  Several mathematical models have been proposed for the estimation of ET0.  Among all these, the Hargreaves equation has received maximum attention of the agricultural fraternity as it needs minimum weather data.  However, requirement of minimal weather data in the Hargreaves equation makes it a simple and pragmatic model for estimation of ET0.  The minimalist approach makes the equation incapable to estimate ET0 accurately under extreme weather conditions.  The calibration or adjustment of the Hargreaves equation parameter CH and EH for different climate conditions is well accepted approach to accomplish error free estimation from the equation.  The establish calibration methods are empirical and time consuming.  Further, the results obtained by these methods are valid only for the restricted area and season only.  This paper presents Evapotranspiration CALibration TOOL (ECALTOOL), which is a fuzzy based universal computer program developed on the platform of NI LabVIEW to calibrate CH and EH.  The key features of the tool are its ability to provide calibration of ET0 for 1100 locations of 190 countries, and its user friendliness.  The performance of the tool is compared and validated against the benchmark Penman-Monteith equation as well as the experimentally calibrated values for various locations with diverse climate conditions.  Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) is in the range of 0.4856 – 1.1562 and 1.21%– 2.06% respectively.  The calibrated values of CH and EH are proved to be accurate in comparison with experimentally carried out calibration.  The developed tool eliminates the need of location specific experimental calibration process for the Hargreaves equation.Keywords: evapotranspiration, fuzzy logic, Hargreaves equation, LabVIE

Walking the Tightrope: Coopetition Capability Construct and Its Role in Value Creation

Prior research emphasizes the paradoxical nature of coopetition and the need for specialized capabilities—coopetition capability—to deal effectively with opportunities and challenges stemming from the simultaneous pursuit of cooperation and competition and to create superior value. However, we know little about the underlying conceptual properties of coopetition capability (construct clarity) and lack a reliable and valid scale to measure it (construct validity). We conduct a study in three phases to address this critical gap. First, building on paradox literature, we conceptualize coopetition capability as a multidimensional construct reflected by three underlying dimensions: coopetition mindset, analytical acumen, and executional skills. Second, we develop a 15-item psychometrically valid scale using a sample of 647 coopetitive alliances in high-technology sectors. Finally, using a matched sample of 536 coopetitive alliances, we extend the focal construct's nomological network by examining two relationships: coopetition experience's impact on coopetition capability and the effect of coopetition capability on the relationship between the coopetition paradox and value creation. Overall, our paper lays a foundation for deeper theory development and empirical research on coopetition by providing much-needed construct clarity and psychometrically valid measures for coopetition capability

Context-NER : Contextual Phrase Generation at Scale

NLP research has been focused on NER extraction and how to efficiently extract them from a sentence. However, generating relevant context of entities from a sentence has remained under-explored. In this work we introduce the task Context-NER in which relevant context of an entity has to be generated. The extracted context may not be found exactly as a substring in the sentence. We also introduce the EDGAR10-Q dataset for the same, which is a corpus of 1,500 publicly traded companies. It is a manually created complex corpus and one of the largest in terms of number of sentences and entities (1 M and 2.8 M). We introduce a baseline approach that leverages phrase generation algorithms and uses the pre-trained BERT model to get 33% ROUGE-L score. We also do a one shot evaluation with GPT-3 and get 39% score, signifying the hardness and future scope of this task. We hope that addition of this dataset and our study will pave the way for further research in this domain.Comment: 12 pages, 2 Figures, 1 Algorithm, 8 Tables. Accepted in NeurIPS 2022 - Efficient Natural Language and Speech Processing (ENLSP) Worksho

Genomic characterization and epidemiology of an emerging SARS-CoV-2 variant in Delhi, India

Delhi, the national capital of India, experienced multiple severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreaks in 2020 and reached population seropositivity of >50% by 2021. During April 2021, the city became overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases and fatalities, as a new variant, B.1.617.2 (Delta), replaced B.1.1.7 (Alpha). A Bayesian model explains the growth advantage of Delta through a combination of increased transmissibility and reduced sensitivity to immune responses generated against earlier variants (median estimates: 1.5-fold greater transmissibility and 20% reduction in sensitivity). Seropositivity of an employee and family cohort increased from 42% to 87.5% between March and July 2021, with 27% reinfections, as judged by increased antibody concentration after a previous decline. The likely high transmissibility and partial evasion of immunity by the Delta variant contributed to an overwhelming surge in Delhi

SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 Delta variant replication and immune evasion

Abstract: The B.1.617.2 (Delta) variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was first identified in the state of Maharashtra in late 2020 and spread throughout India, outcompeting pre-existing lineages including B.1.617.1 (Kappa) and B.1.1.7 (Alpha)1. In vitro, B.1.617.2 is sixfold less sensitive to serum neutralizing antibodies from recovered individuals, and eightfold less sensitive to vaccine-elicited antibodies, compared with wild-type Wuhan-1 bearing D614G. Serum neutralizing titres against B.1.617.2 were lower in ChAdOx1 vaccinees than in BNT162b2 vaccinees. B.1.617.2 spike pseudotyped viruses exhibited compromised sensitivity to monoclonal antibodies to the receptor-binding domain and the amino-terminal domain. B.1.617.2 demonstrated higher replication efficiency than B.1.1.7 in both airway organoid and human airway epithelial systems, associated with B.1.617.2 spike being in a predominantly cleaved state compared with B.1.1.7 spike. The B.1.617.2 spike protein was able to mediate highly efficient syncytium formation that was less sensitive to inhibition by neutralizing antibody, compared with that of wild-type spike. We also observed that B.1.617.2 had higher replication and spike-mediated entry than B.1.617.1, potentially explaining the B.1.617.2 dominance. In an analysis of more than 130 SARS-CoV-2-infected health care workers across three centres in India during a period of mixed lineage circulation, we observed reduced ChAdOx1 vaccine effectiveness against B.1.617.2 relative to non-B.1.617.2, with the caveat of possible residual confounding. Compromised vaccine efficacy against the highly fit and immune-evasive B.1.617.2 Delta variant warrants continued infection control measures in the post-vaccination era

Finite Element Optimization of Hip Implant Geometrical Parameters to Determine Safe Zones and Resist Dislocation

A computational study was performed using finite element analysis (FEA) of three dimensional solid hip implant models. Twelve different hip implant models were designed to investigate the performance of geometrical parameters affecting hip stability. The parameters examined were head diameter, neck diameter, head-to-neck ratio, neck angle and acetabular liner thickness. Component orientations included cup anatomical inclination and cup anteversion, which should be accounted for during total hip implant design as well as in the practice of arthroplasties. A static analysis was performed for all 12 hip designs using stainless steel 316L. von Mises stress, contact stress, contact penetration, and sliding displacement were correlated with the geometrical parameters as well as with anatomical orientations of acetabular component. Analytical results were used to define safe zones for a combination of geometrical parameters that provided maximum hip stability. Head diameters from 26 mm to 32 mm were found within safe ranges. Lower head diameters showed comparatively higher contact penetration increasing risk of dislocation in vivo. The preeminent stress results were found with combinations of 26 mm head and 14 mm neck diameters with 35 degrees of neck angle. Lower cup anatomical inclination tends to provide higher contact surface with femoral head during articulations developing lower contact stresses. The safe combination for cup orientation was observed with cup anatomical inclinations ranging from 35 to 50 degrees and cup anteversion below 20 degrees. New generic and specific equations were developed using the data from FE analysis to predict penetration. Evaluated penetration can then be used to determine the linear wear rate (in vivo)

Managing Risks And Uncertainty In Business-Government Relationship : Three Essays On Nonmarket Strategy

Dans ce vaste domaine de la stratégie non marchande, j'étudie un ensemble de questions de recherche concernant les stratégies de gestion des risques et des incertitudes des entreprises en réponse aux actions politiques du gouvernement. Une littérature solide sur la stratégie, les affaires internationales et la gestion a établi depuis longtemps que les intérêts des gouvernements et des entreprises ne correspondent pas toujours et qu'une mesure des risques et de l'incertitude persiste concernant l'intention, les priorités et le comportement futur des gouvernements du point de vue des entreprises. En adoptant une approche axée sur les phénomènes, j'avance et développe notre compréhension de chacune de ces perspectives théoriques - théorie de signalisation, risques politiques et incertitude politique - en examinant des exemples d'actions politiques des gouvernements en tant que changements dans l'environnement institutionnel et comment cela peut se rapportent à l'évaluation par les entreprises des risques et incertitudes sous-jacents. Plus précisément, j'étudie trois de ces initiatives - les actions répressives contre le crime organisé, l'encouragement de la participation privée aux projets d'infrastructure et l'harmonisation des lois sur les brevets avec les normes mondiales - sous la forme de trois essais. Ce faisant, je me concentre sur l'entreprise comme unité d'analyse, en m'appuyant principalement sur des analyses quantitatives sur un échantillon de données d'observation, mais j'utilise également d'autres approches – étude de cas, entretiens, etc. – pour étayer mes conclusions.Within this broad domain of nonmarket strategy, I study a set of research questions concerning firms’ risk and uncertainty management strategies as a response to government’s policy actions. A robust literature in strategy, international business, and management has long established that governments’ and businesses’ interests do not always align and a measure of risks and uncertainty persists regarding governments’ intent, priorities, and future behavior from the firms’ perspective. Adopting a phenomena-driven approach, I advance and elaborate upon our understanding with respect to each of these theoretical perspectives – signaling theory, political risks, and policy uncertainty – by examining instances of governments’ policy actions as shifts in institutional environment and how that may relate to firms’ evaluation of underlying risks and uncertainty. Specifically, I study three such initiatives – law enforcement actions against organized crime, encouraging private participation in infrastructure projects, and harmonization of patent laws with global standards – in the form of three essays. In doing so, I focus on the firm as the unit of analysis, relying principally on quantitative analyses on a sample of observational data but also use other approaches – case study, interviews, etc. – to support my findings

Modeling the dynamics of contamination in the food supply to analyze the impact of intervention strategies

The modern food supply is a complex interdependent global system of systems. The increase in complexity results in an inherent inability to analyze the impact of changes to the system. The difficulty of conducting experiments on the real food supply motivated the development of a computational model of the supply chain built using real world data. The three objectives of the study were to: i) develop a computational model of the U.S. food supply, ii) use the model to evaluate the public health and economic impact of contamination scenarios and the intervention strategies used, and iii) analyze the impact of improved traceability and detection and testing methods on the impact of contamination scenarios. A subset of the U.S. food supply was built from bulk ingredient suppliers, food processors, distribution centers, retailers and artificially intelligent consumers. The economic and public health impact of virtual contamination scenarios was then evaluated based on the response action plans deployed by the industry and regulatory agencies. The model was validated by comparing the results of the virtual scenarios to recent food outbreaks. In the worst case scenario, the public health impact of a contaminated ingredient resulted in 91,661 illnesses. The intervention strategies employed by the participants of a simulation exercise, from tracing, holding, testing, releasing or recalling products, resulted in lowering the public health impact to 77,500 illnesses at an economic impact of $638,239,360. The results from the exercises indicate firms closer to the consumers employ a more aggressive intervention strategy during a foodborne crisis. The two types of action plans, conservative and aggressive, captured during simulation events were used to conduct incremental experimental studies on the public health impact of improving traceability and the speed of rapid detection techniques. A reduction in time to test from 4 days to 1 day resulted in the lowering of the public health impact by 52.6%, from 77,500 to 36,759 illnesses. An increase in visibility of traceability data from 1 level forwards and backwards to 4 levels resulted in the lowering of the intensity of the public health impact by 29.5% to 54,607 illnesses. Improving detection allowed a more timely response to the foodborne contamination event, resulting in the earlier peak of the public health impact. Improved traceability afforded a more accurate response to the scenario, resulting in a lower peak in the number of illnesses. The value of using computer simulation models to conduct such large scale analyses is their ability to improve decision-making capabilities by linking actions to their impact in near-real time. For future research work, a more complex supply chain needs to be evaluated in order to validate the findings of this study. Responses to the same scenario should also be recorded with more simulation exercise events in order to make more generalized intervention strategies