Predictive Modeling of Hip Dislocation: Assessment of Surgical and Patient Factors to Reduce the Occurrence of Hip Instability and Adverse Clinical Outcomes

Instability and dislocation remain leading indications for revision of primary Total Hip Arthroplasty (THA). Many studies have addressed the links between implant design and propensity for dislocation, however a comprehensive review of the ability of modern THA constructs to protect against joint instability is needed. Accordingly, the objective of this study is to provide objective data about THA risks to be considered in the treatment algorithm to protect against adverse joint loading conditions and joint instability. Adverse loading conditions were assessed in a population of activities of daily living using data from telemetric hip implant representation in an FE simulation which included probabilistic representation of clinical implant position variation. Separately, dislocation was assessed using a series of strength-calibrated joint contact and muscle forces for a variety of THA implant designs in subject-specific musculoskeletal models of patients performing activities consistent with posterior and anterior THA dislocation. The resistive moment at the point of dislocation, as well as the overall dislocation rate per construct, provide relevant measures of resistance of the THA construct to dislocation. Based on a range of acetabular implant alignments reported clinically, variation in cup anteversion/retroversion had the largest impact on liner peak loading location of any degree of freedom throughout the prescribed activities. Cup inclination also showed a relationship to response liner loading; stem variation in either longitudinal plane was not strongly correlated to edge loading propensity across activities. Increased cup anteversion and inclination reduced the occurrence of posterior hip dislocation (82% vs 48% for anteversion and 86% vs 34% for inclination with neutral liners), however increased the occurrence of anterior hip dislocation (13% vs 94% and 39% vs 70%). Increased hip abduction and internal rotation reduced the occurrence of dislocation during posterior activities (79% vs 43% and 76% vs 50% for neutral liners respectively), but increase the occurrence of dislocation in anterior dislocation activities (45% vs 69% and 46% vs 67% for neutral liners respectively). Use of a lipped liner did increase the resistive moment at posterior dislocation, by an average of 5.2 Nm, and the flexion angle at dislocation by 1.4 degrees compared to a neutral liner. There was a reduction of similar magnitude in resistance to anterior dislocation. In each instance, a lipped liner with a posterior-inferior lip position reduced the occurrence of posterior dislocation, but increased the occurrence of anterior dislocation. Considering implant geometry, head offset had a large impact on the resulting resistive moment of the THA construct, with a sensitivity of approximately 3.8 Nm/mm of additional offset. Increasing head diameter increased resistive moment from 21 Nm to 27 Nm, a sensitivity of 0.75 Nm/mm of head diameter. Three lipped liners were considered with increasing jump distance (JD), which is a linear measure of distance a head must translate to dislocate. These designs corresponded to 23 Nm, 25 Nm, and 31 Nm resistive moments, respectively, a sensitivity of approximately 2.8 Nm/mm of additional jump distance. A dual-mobility acetabular design resulted in a resistive moment of 30 Nm. Tradeoffs between acetabular component position, design, and patient activity and the relative clinical risk of adverse implant loading as well as anterior and posterior dislocation must be considered and weighted accordingly. A quantitative understanding of tradeoffs in the dislocation risk inherent to THA construct options is valuable in supporting surgical decision making. Computer modeling provides a framework for meaningful design assessments which can be transferred and have meaningful input to clinical practice

Nutritional Immunomodulation as an Approach to Decreasing the Negative Effects of Stress in Poultry Production

Stress can lead to changes in the immune response resulting in both increased and decreased resistance to opportunistic bacterial pathogens. Growth-promoting antibiotics have been a major tool in modulating hostpathogen interactions and limiting clinical and subclinical bacterial infection in confined animal production. Regulatory pressures to limit antibiotic use in poultry production and recent international marketing agreements that prohibit treating poultry with antibiotics have limited the disease-fighting tools available to poultry and livestock producers, particularly in Europe. There is a need to evaluate potential antibiotic alternatives to improve both production and disease resistance in high-intensity food animal production. Nutritional approaches to counteract the debilitating effects of stress and infection may provide producers with useful alternatives to antibiotics. Improving disease resistance in food animals, particularly in the absence of antibiotic treatment, is a key strategy in the effort to increase food safety. ARS research has demonstrated the efficacy of several nutritional immunomodulators, including vitamin D3 and yeast cell wall products, to protect against bacterial infection due to stress and challenge with opportunistic pathogens. These studies also provide an animal model for testing the efficacy of nutritional strategies that may affect the response to stress and related infection in humans

Evaluation of three turbulence models for the prediction of steady and unsteady airloads

Two dimensional quasi-three dimensional Navier-Stokes solvers were used to predict the static and dynamic airload characteristics of airfoils. The following three turbulence models were used: the Baldwin-Lomax algebraic model, the Johnson-King ODE model for maximum turbulent shear stress, and a two equation k-e model with law-of-the-wall boundary conditions. It was found that in attached flow the three models have good agreement with experimental data. In unsteady separated flows, these models give only a fair correlation with experimental data

Analysis of viscous transonic flow over airfoil sections

A full Navier-Stokes solver has been used to model transonic flow over three airfoil sections. The method uses a two-dimensional, implicit, conservative finite difference scheme for solving the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. Results are presented as prescribed for the Viscous Transonic Airfoil Workshop to be held at the AIAA 25th Aerospace Sciences Meeting. The NACA 0012, RAE 2822 and Jones airfoils have been investigated for both attached and separated transonic flows. Predictions for pressure distributions, loads, skin friction coefficients, boundary layer displacement thickness and velocity profiles are included and compared with experimental data when possible. Overall, the results are in good agreement with experimental data

Political Advertisements in the Era of Fleeting Indecent Images and Utterances

Political Advertisements in the Era of Fleeting Indecent Images and Utterances by LaVonda N. Reed-Huff This article is both timely and beneficial to the legal profession in its analysis of the Federal Communications Commission’s (the “FCC”) efforts to craft regulations regarding broadcast indecency and to address the prevalence of increasingly sexually suggestive material in political broadcast advertisements. This five-part article explores the statutory dilemma facing broadcasters who are presented political broadcast advertisements that contain indecent material. This dilemma is presented by the intersection of three federal statutes. One federal statute, 47 U.S.C. § 312, grants candidates for federal elective office reasonable access to broadcast stations in furtherance of their political campaigns. Another statute, 47 U.S.C. § 315, provides legally qualified candidates for federal, state, and local office equal opportunities to use broadcast stations as are afforded their opponents. This section also prohibits broadcast licensees from censoring political broadcast material. Finally, 18 U.S.C. § 1464 prohibits the broadcast of obscene, indecent, and profane material over the public airwaves. The racy and sexually suggestive political broadcast advertisements sponsored by some candidates in recent years suggest that the possibility of a broadcaster having to determine whether to air a candidate-sponsored political advertisement that actually could be defined as indecent is not so far-fetched. This article highlights several recent political advertisements and suggests that the dilemma created by this loophole in the statutes must be addressed. One such sexually suggestive television advertisement appeared in 2006 in Tennessee endorsing Republican Bob Corker in his race against Democrat Harold Ford, Jr. for a U.S. Senate seat. The Corker advertisement used sexually suggestive visual images to suggest that Ford frequented wild sex parties and had wild sexual liaisons. In the advertisement, the bare shoulders and face of an otherwise seemingly unclothed young blonde woman appeared on the screen as the young blonde winked and purred into the camera that she had previously met Ford at a Playboy party. The advertisement closed with another shot of the still questionably clothed young blonde teasing Ford to call her. Ford lost the election. Another television advertisement broadcast in New York in the same year endorsed Republican Raymond Meier in his U.S. congressional campaign against Democrat Michael Arcuri. The advertisement opened with superimposed images of a woman who appeared to be an exotic dancer straddling a chair and seductively dancing while purring “Hi, sexy…” Meanwhile, the target of the advertisement, Arcuri stared in the dancer’s direction while lasciviously and seductively licking his lips. The advertisement accused Arcuri of using Oneida County, New York taxpayer dollars to satisfy his sexual desires while on official business by calling an adult fantasy telephone hotline and then charging the call to his hotel room. Despite this advertisement, which ran in the days leading up to the election, Arcuri defeated his opponent to win the congressional seat. In an era where the media appears to take great fascination in the sex lives of elected officials and more so in actually catching and embarrassing them for these exploits, we are certain to see more of this type of material emerge in political campaign advertisements. In fact, it is possible that in the 2010 Louisiana U.S. Senate race, voters will have to choose between an adult film star and an incumbent senator who has been implicated in a Washington prostitution scandal. The possibilities for campaign advertisements containing indecent material are endless. This article does not assert that either the anti-Ford or the anti-Arcuri advertisements squarely falls within the subject matter scope of the FCC’s current definition of indecency, but that they do signal a gradual yet significant shift toward the willingness of political candidates and their supporters to pay for campaign advertisements with a sexual tinge. This article asks a question that has been asked by other scholars—what is a broadcaster to do in the event it is presented with political material that might fall within the subject matter scope of the FCC’s definition of indecency. It offers a number of new judicial, congressional, and agency resolutions to this conflict taking into consideration recent court cases dealing with the issue of broadcast indecency and fleeting expletives and images. Part I of the article describes the statutory conflict. Part II addresses recent broadcast indecency actions including the indecency cases recently decided by the Second and Third Circuits and one currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court addressing the FCC’s authority to sanction licensees for the broadcast of isolated or fleeting indecent material. Part III specifically evaluates recent political advertisements containing sexually suggestive material. Part IV addresses how courts have handled earlier claims of offensive political speech offering insight and how they might handle future claims. Part V of this article revisits some of the earlier proposals for resolution of the dilemma facing broadcast licensees and will suggest others. This article reiterates the call for immunity for broadcasters that air political advertisements containing indecent material. In addition to evaluating these earlier proposals, this part offers additional resolutions of the issue that have yet to be considered. This article addresses the recent struggle of the FCC and the courts to define indecency and to defend the continued relevance of current indecency rules in light of a converging and ever-changing technological environment. The FCC has on more than one occasion sidestepped ruling on the issue where the material was determined not to have passed the threshold satisfying the definition of indecency. None of these prior cases clearly answers the question of a broadcaster’s liability in the event a broadcaster airs or chooses not to air a political advertisement that actually is determined to be indecent, profane, or obscene as those terms have come to be defined

Are You Still Settling For Cable? A Case for Broader Application of the FCC’s Over-The-Air Reception Devices Rule

Many renters in the United States have no choice when it comes to selecting a video or communications service provider for their residence, due to their inability to install satellite dishes on their rental property. Because of this lack of choice, many must rely on traditional broadcast television, cable service and traditional telephone dial-up for receiving video programming and accessing advanced technologies such as the Internet. Others simply go without service altogether. While the FCC has attempted to address this problem, the rule they have promulgated, known as the OTARD Rule, fails to go far enough to make video and communications services available to all Americans regardless of their status as renters or property owners. This Article proposes an expansion of the rights granted to tenants under the modem leasehold, and makes a case for broader application of the OTARD Rule in order to fulfill Congress\u27s objectives under the Telecommunications Act without triggering a takings problem

Analysis of Rocket, Ram-Jet, and Turbojet Engines for Supersonic Propulsion of Long-Range Missles. II - Rocket Missile Performance

The theoretical performance of a two-stage ballistic rocket mis having a centerbody and two parallel boosters was investigated for J oxygen and ammonia-fluorine propellants. Both power-plant and missi parameters were optimized to give minimum cost on-the basis of the analysis for a range of 5500 nautical miles. After optimum values were found, each parameter was varied independently to determine its effect on performance of the missile. The missile using the ammonia-fluorine propellant weighs about one half as much as a missile using JP4-oxygen. Based on an expected unit cost of fluorine in quantity production, the ammonia-fluorine missile has a substantially lower relative cost than a JP4-oxygen missile. Optimum chamber pressures for both propellant systems and for both the centerbody and boosters were between 450 and 600 pounds per square inch. High design altitudes for the exhaust nozzle are desirable for both the centerbody and boosters. For the centerbody, the design altitude should be between 45,000 and 60,000 feet, with the value for ammonia-fluorine lower than that for JP4-oxygen. For the boosters, the design altitude should be 20,000 to 30,000 feet, with the value for the ammonia-fluorine. missile higher

Critical Evaluation of Bacteriophage to Prevent and Treat Colibacillosis in Poultry

There is a continuing need to find alternatives to antibiotics in animal and human medicine. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect and kill bacteria, with no known activity to plant and animal cells. We have conducted research to critically evaluate the efficacy of bacteriophage to both prevent and treat colibacillosis in poultry. Bacteriophages lytic to an Escherichia coli pathogenic to poultry were isolated from municipal waste water treatment plants and poultry processing plants. Two bacteriophage isolates were selected to use in studies designed to determine the efficacy of these bacteriophage to prevent and treat severe colibacillosis in poultry. Colibacillosis was induced by injecting 6 X 104 cfu of E. coli into the thoracic airsac when the birds were 1 week of age. Initial studies demonstrated that mortality was significantly reduced when the challenge culture was mixed with bacteriophage prior to challenging the birds. In subsequent studies, we have shown that an aerosol spray of bacteriophage given to the birds prior to this E. coli challenge can prevent the disease, and that an intramuscular injection of bacteriophage provides an effective treatment of this disease. We have demonstrated that bacteriophage can be used to both prevent and treat colibacillosis in poultry and may provide an effective alternative to antibiotic use in animal and human medicine