Prediction of Post-Earthquake Failure for a Near-Shore Slope in a Low Seismic Region

Liquefaction of water-saturated sandy soils remains a major concern in geotechnical earthquake engineering. Experience from past earthquakes indicates that large lateral spreads and flow slides in sand deposits have taken place in coastal and river areas not only during shaking but also some time after earthquake shaking ceases. The ground slopes in these slides were often gentler than a few percent. Recent research including physical model tests and numerical investigations indicates that the presence of a low permeability silt or clay layer as a hydraulic barrier may be responsible for some of the historical and seemingly unexplainable landslides. This paper describes the results of a coupled stress-flow analysis carried out for a near-shore LNG import terminal to be founded on a moderate submarine slope comprising a liquefiable sand layer overlain by a clay layer located in a region with moderate seismic risk (PGA\u3c 0.15g). Artesian water conditions are present at the site due to the presence of the hydraulic barrier layer and the mountain slopes near the shoreline. An effective-stress based approach was employed to analyze the excess pore pressure generation in the sand layer associated with earthquake loading. The analyses showed that pore pressure redistribution during and after earthquake shaking may result in continued displacements after shaking has ceased, although the magnitude of displacements at the end of shaking was not very large

Decoherence Effects in a Three-Level System under Gaussian Process

When subjected to a classical fluctuating field characterized by a Gaussian process, we examine the {purity} and coherence protection in a three-level quantum system. This symmetry of the three-level system is examined when the local random field is investigated further in the noiseless and noisy regimes. In~particular, we consider fractional Gaussian, Gaussian, Ornstein--Uhlenbeck, and~power law noisy regimes. We show that the destructive nature of the Ornstein--Uhlenbeck noise toward the symmetry of the qutrit to preserve encoded {purity and coherence} remains large. Our findings suggest that properly adjusting the noisy parameters to specifically provided values can facilitate optimal extended {purity and coherence} survival. Non-vanishing terms appear in the final density matrix of the single qutrit system, indicating that it is in a strong coherence regime. Because~of all of the Gaussian noises, monotonic decay with no revivals has been observed in the single qutrit system. In~terms of coherence and information preservation, we find that the current qutrit system outperforms systems with multiple qubits or qutrits using purity and von Neumann entropy. A~comparison of noisy and noiseless situations shows that the fluctuating nature of the local random fields is ultimately lost when influenced using the classical Gaussian noise

(E)-1-(4-Chloro­benzyl­idene)thio­semi­carbazide

In the crystal of the title compound, C8H8ClN3S, mol­ecules are connected by N—H⋯S hydrogen bonds into strips parallel to the (112) planes and running along [10]. One of the amino H atoms is not involved in a classical hydrogen bond. In addition, there is a rather short inter­molecular Cl⋯S distance of 3.3814 (5) Å

Direct access lifestyle training improves liver biochemistry and causes weight loss but uptake is suboptimal in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Objective: To evaluate the uptake and effectiveness of an existing open access lifestyle intervention forged in collaboration between a third sector organisation, funded by local government and a secondary care non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) service in the North West of England. Method: A service outcome evaluation using pre-post comparison design was conducted to analyse changes between baseline clinical health records and 12 week follow up for NAFLD patients who completed the lifestyle intervention. Lifestyle factors, weight loss, changes in alanine aminotransferase (ALT) enzymes and lipid profiles were compared between patients who completed the programme versus 1:1 matched patients who did not. Results: Only 16 of 167 NAFLD patients offered the intervention completed the programme. Intervention patients achieved significant weight loss (-2.3% p ≤ 0.05) over 12 weeks, where the non-intervention group had non-significant weight gain (+0.95%). ALT improved by 20IU/L in the interventional group and 15 IU/L in the non-intervention group; however, this was not statistically different. Conclusion: This study presents first of its kind evaluation of a service collaboration in the UK. Only 1 in 10 patients offered the opportunity completed the programme, a limitation that could affect future strategies. Patient and public involvement research is needed to identify barriers to participation, address adherence issues and identify support mechanisms for lifestyle interventions with NAFLD patients

Scribble-based Domain Adaptation via Co-segmentation

Although deep convolutional networks have reached state-of-the-art performance in many medical image segmentation tasks, they have typically demonstrated poor generalisation capability. To be able to generalise from one domain (e.g. one imaging modality) to another, domain adaptation has to be performed. While supervised methods may lead to good performance, they require to fully annotate additional data which may not be an option in practice. In contrast, unsupervised methods don't need additional annotations but are usually unstable and hard to train. In this work, we propose a novel weakly-supervised method. Instead of requiring detailed but time-consuming annotations, scribbles on the target domain are used to perform domain adaptation. This paper introduces a new formulation of domain adaptation based on structured learning and co-segmentation. Our method is easy to train, thanks to the introduction of a regularised loss. The framework is validated on Vestibular Schwannoma segmentation (T1 to T2 scans). Our proposed method outperforms unsupervised approaches and achieves comparable performance to a fully-supervised approach.Comment: Accepted at MICCAI 202

Adverse clinical sequelae after skin branding: a case series

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Spontaneous Bacterial Peritonitis due to Ochrobactrum anthropi: A Case Report

We report a case of spontaneous bacterial peritonitis from Ochrobactrum anthropi. O. anthropi is recognized as an emerging pathogen in immunocompromised patients. In contrast to most previously described cases, the patient reported here had no indwelling catheter. To our knowledge, no case of O. anthropi spontaneous bacterial peritonitis has been reported in the medical literature until now

The impact of human EGFR kinase domain mutations on lung tumorigenesis and in vivo sensitivity to EGFR-targeted therapies

SummaryTo understand the role of human epidermal growth factor receptor (hEGFR) kinase domain mutations in lung tumorigenesis and response to EGFR-targeted therapies, we generated bitransgenic mice with inducible expression in type II pneumocytes of two common hEGFR mutants seen in human lung cancer. Both bitransgenic lines developed lung adenocarcinoma after sustained hEGFR mutant expression, confirming their oncogenic potential. Maintenance of these lung tumors was dependent on continued expression of the EGFR mutants. Treatment with small molecule inhibitors (erlotinib or HKI-272) as well as prolonged treatment with a humanized anti-hEGFR antibody (cetuximab) led to dramatic tumor regression. These data suggest that persistent EGFR signaling is required for tumor maintenance in human lung adenocarcinomas expressing EGFR mutants

The Development and Application of a Dot-ELISA Assay for Diagnosis of Southern Rice Black-Streaked Dwarf Disease in the Field

Outbreaks of the southern rice black-streaked dwarf virus (SRBSDV) have caused significant crop losses in southern China in recent years, especially in 2010. There are no effective, quick and practicable methods for the diagnosis of rice dwarf disease that can be used in the field. Traditional reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) methodology is accurate but requires expensive reagents and instruments, as well as complex procedures that limit its applicability for field tests. To develop a sensitive and reliable assay for routine laboratory diagnosis, a rapid dot enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (dot-ELISA) method was developed for testing rice plants infected by SRBSDV. Based on anti-SRBSDV rabbit antiserum, this new dot-ELISA was highly reliable, sensitive and specific toward SRBSDV. The accuracy of two blotting media, polyvinylidene fluoride membrane (PVDF membrane) and nitrocellulose filter membrane (NC membrane), was compared. In order to facilitate the on-site diagnosis, three county laboratories were established in Shidian (Yunnan province), Jianghua (Hunan Province) and Libo (Guizhou province). Suspected rice cases from Shidian, Yuanjiang and Malipo in Yunnan province were tested and some determined to be positive for SRBSDV by the dot-ELISA and confirmed by the One Step RT-PCR method. To date, hundreds of suspected rice samples collected from 61 districts in southwestern China have been tested, among which 55 districts were found to have rice crops infected by SRBSDV. Furthermore, the test results in the county laboratories showed that Libo, Dehong (suspected samples were sent to Shidian) and Jianghua were experiencing a current SRBSDV outbreak