306 research outputs found

    A comparative study of positive pressure ventilation via laryngeal mask airway and endotracheal tube

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    Objective: To investigate the use of Laryngeal Mask Airway (LMA) and its comparison with the endotracheal tube for positive pressure ventilation.SETTING: A tertiary care teaching hospital.Methods: Fifty adult ASA I and II patients undergoing peripheral limb surgery were randomly allocated to 2 groups for LMA or endotracheal tube insertion. A standardized anaesthetic technique was used. The groups were then compared regarding haemodynamic changes on insertion as well as removal of LMA and ETT and any complications that occurred were noted.Results: The haemodynamic response to insertion was significantly attenuated (p \u3c 0.05) in LMA group as compared to ETT group. The cardiovascular response to extubation was not significantly different between the groups. A higher incidence of coughing and mild hypoxaemia at extubation was noted in ETT group as compared to LMA group (p \u3c 0.05) and blood was detected in 4 cases after LMA removal.CONCLUSION: It is concluded that the use of LMA during positive pressure ventilation is safe in selected cases. There is an attenuated haemodynamic response to insertion of LMA as compared to endotracheal tube which will be beneficial in certain patients e.g., those with ischaemic heart disease, vascular disease and hypertensives

    A Framework for Realistic Simulation of Daily Human Activity

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    For social robots like Astro which interact with and adapt to the daily movements of users within the home, realistic simulation of human activity is needed for feature development and testing. This paper presents a framework for simulating daily human activity patterns in home environments at scale, supporting manual configurability of different personas or activity patterns, variation of activity timings, and testing on multiple home layouts. We introduce a method for specifying day-to-day variation in schedules and present a bidirectional constraint propagation algorithm for generating schedules from templates. We validate the expressive power of our framework through a use case scenario analysis and demonstrate that our method can be used to generate data closely resembling human behavior from three public datasets and a self-collected dataset. Our contribution supports systematic testing of social robot behaviors at scale, enables procedural generation of synthetic datasets of human movement in different households, and can help minimize bias in training data, leading to more robust and effective robots for home environments.Comment: Accepted and Presented at IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Communication (ROMAN) 202

    Decarbonising cement and concrete production: Strategies, challenges and pathways for sustainable development

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    This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of decarbonising cement and concrete production, addressing strategies, technologies, policy considerations, case studies, economic implications, challenges and future recommendations. The cement and concrete industry are major contributors to carbon emissions and environmental degradation, making decarbonisation crucial for sustainable development. The paper explores various strategies, including alternative clinker technologies, carbon capture and storage, improved energy efficiency, low-carbon cements and circular economy approaches. Additionally, it examines technologies such as supplementary cementitious materials, carbonation, low-carbon concrete mixes, recycling and novel manufacturing processes. The importance of policy interventions, collaboration and standards and certifications is emphasised. Case studies and best practices highlight successful decarbonisation initiatives, while economic implications and market opportunities are considered. The paper also identifies challenges, including technological limitations, financing constraints, resistance to change and the need for awareness and education. Finally, future recommendations focus on pathways for deep decarbonisation, policy measures, research priorities and fostering collaboration. This review serves as a valuable resource for researchers, policymakers and industry professionals striving to achieve sustainable and low-carbon cement and concrete production

    Managing the Quality of Chromium Sulphate during the Recycling From Tanning Waste Water

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    Quality management is a big issue during recovery and recycling process because if desired quality is not received during chromium recovery or recycling process, we may be faced another problem of recycled materials. This also seen that most important that the production processes is useless without taking specific required quality of chromium., in real way about 60%-70% of chromium salt is used as chemical interaction with the hides but 30%-40% of chemical chromium salt is wasted as the solid and liquid form. Therefore, the quality during the recovery process of the chromium sulphate from chromium wastewater that is most important step for controlling environmental pollution with some economical benefits. Recycling of chromium sulphate is possible by using chemical precipitation method for water treatment, two precipitating agents' magnesium oxide and calcium hydroxide plus alum are used for this purpose. Final findings showed that the optimum pH for efficient recovery with required quality was 8 and the Recycling of chromium sulphate was about 99(%) at pH 8 with good sludge with high settling rate. on the Base of these findings an economical production plant can be designed which are useful for quality improvement

    Prevalence of hepatitis B and C and assessment of responsible risk factors among the vulnerable β-thalassemic patients of Azad Kashmir, Pakistan

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    Approximately 350 million patients of hepatitis B and 170 million patients of Hepatitis C are present worldwide according to WHO. Many risk factors are involved in the transmission of theses deadly viral infections but blood transfusion in Beta thalassemic patients is working with two faces, one as remedy and the other is key risk factor in the spread of silent killers. Thalassemia patients registered in Combine Military Hospital (CMH) Rawalakot and Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan Hospital, Muzaffarabad Azad Jammu and Kashmir Pakistan were studied for the viral hepatitis B and C prevalence. A total of 303 (including 164 males and 139 females) individuals, aged between 1 and 12 years were studied. All the understudy participants were interviewed through questionnaire method. After taking written consent from each participant or guardian, 5 ml of blood was collected from each participant and brought to the working laboratory for HBV and HCV screening through ICT kit method. All ICT positive samples were further confirmed through ELISA. Individuals 25(8.2%) were found positive for both hepatitis B surface Antigen (HBsAg) and Anti hepatitis C antibody (Anti-HCV antibody) after initial screening with no coinfection of both diseases. Out of 25 total infected individuals, 05(1.6%) were found HBsAg positive and 20(6.6%) were found anti-HCV positive. All the ICT positive individuals were further confirmed by quantitative Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) and 23(7.6%) individuals were confirmed for both hepatitis B and C including 05(1.6%) HBsAg positive as well as 18(5.9%) anti-HCV antibody positive individuals. We can conclude that 8.2% prevalence of hepatitis B and C among thalassemic patients is an alarming health concern which directly indicates to pay attention for ensuring 100% safe blood transfusion

    Assessing the transferability of a hybrid Taguchi-objective function method to optimize image segmentation for detecting and counting cave roosting birds using terrestrial laser scanning data

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    As far back as early 15th century during the reign of the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1634 AD), Gomantong cave in Sabah (Malaysia) has been known as one of the largest roosting sites for wrinkle-lipped bats (Chaerephon plicata) and swiftlet birds (Aerodramus maximus and Aerodramus fuciphagus) in very large colonies. Until recently, no study has been done to quantify or estimate the colony sizes of these inhabitants in spite of the grave danger posed to this avifauna by human activities and potential habitat loss to postspeleogenetic processes. This paper evaluates the transferability of a hybrid optimization image analysis-based method developed to detect and count cave roosting birds. The method utilizes high-resolution terrestrial laser scanning intensity image. First, segmentation parameters were optimized by integrating objective function and the statistical Taguchi methods. Thereafter, the optimized parameters were used as input into the segmentation and classification processes using two images selected from Simud Hitam (lower cave) and Simud Putih (upper cave) of the Gomantong cave. The result shows that the method is capable of detecting birds (and bats) from the image for accurate population censusing. A total number of 9998 swiftlet birds were counted from the first image while 1132 comprising of both bats and birds were obtained from the second image. Furthermore, the transferability evaluation yielded overall accuracies of 0.93 and 0.94 (area under receiver operating characteristic curve) for the first and second image, respectively, with p value of <0.0001 at 95% confidence level. The findings indicate that the method is not only efficient for the detection and counting cave birds for which it was developed for but also useful for counting bats; thus, it can be adopted in any cave
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