Dental Treatment under General Anesthesia in Healthy and Medically Compromised/Developmentally Disabled Children: A Comparative Study

Aim: To compare the type, number of procedures and working time of dental treatment provided under dental general anesthesia (DGA) in healthy and medically compromised/developmentally disabled children (MCDD children). Design: This cross-sectional prospective study involved 80 children divided into two groups of 40 children each. Group 1 consisted of healthy and Group 2 consisted of MCDD children. Results: Healthy children needed more working time than MCDD children, the means being 161±7.9 and 84±5.7 minutes, respectively (P= 0.0001). Operative dentistry and endodontic treatments showed a significant statistical difference (P= 0.0001). The means of procedures were 17±5.0 for healthy children and 11±4.8 for MCDD children (P= 0.0001). Conclusions: Healthy children needed more extensive dental treatment than MCDD children under DGA. The information from this sample of Mexican children could be used as reference for determining trends both within a facility as well as in comparing facilities in cross-population studies

Two-stage Robust Optimization Approach for Enhanced Community Resilience Under Tornado Hazards

Catastrophic tornadoes cause severe damage and are a threat to human wellbeing, making it critical to determine mitigation strategies to reduce their impact. One such strategy, following recent research, is to retrofit existing structures. To this end, in this article we propose a model that considers a decision-maker (a government agency or a public-private consortium) who seeks to allocate resources to retrofit and recover wood-frame residential structures, to minimize the population dislocation due to an uncertain tornado. In the first stage the decision-maker selects the retrofitting strategies, and in the second stage the recovery decisions are made after observing the tornado. As tornado paths cannot be forecast reliably, we take a worst-case approach to uncertainty where paths are modeled as arbitrary line segments on the plane. Under the assumption that an area is affected if it is sufficiently close to the tornado path, the problem is framed as a two-stage robust optimization problem with a mixed-integer non-linear uncertainty set. We solve this problem by using a decomposition column-and-constraint generation algorithm that solves a two-level integer problem at each iteration. This problem, in turn, is solved by a decomposition branch-and-cut method that exploits the geometry of the uncertainty set. To illustrate the model's applicability, we present a case study based on Joplin, Missouri. Our results show that there can be up to 20 percent reductions in worst-case population dislocation by investing 15 million dollars in retrofitting and recovery; that our approach outperforms other retrofitting policies, and that the model is not over-conservative

Optimización del Tratamiento Térmico de Productos Tubulares de Acero

[Optimization of Heat Treatment of Steel Tubular Products] El problema a abordar es el de la optimización del tratamiento térmico de productos tubulares de acero, presente en la empresa siderúrgica Tenaris. Más específicamente, se estudia el problema de dar un tratamiento adecuado a cargas retenidas en el horno de revenido. En este caso, el tratamiento térmico se compone de un primer calentamiento de los tubos a temperaturas cercanas a los 900°C, en el que se austeniza el material, seguido por un enfriamiento rápido en el que el material se transforma en martensita. Esta etapa constituye el templado del acero. Para lograr las propiedades metalúrgicas finales especificadas para el producto se realiza un segundo calentamiento a temperaturas entre 500 y 700°C, que se denomina revenido. Para simplificar el análisis, en este trabajo se considera una única propiedad metalúrgica, la dureza, que para el producto que se analiza debe estar en el rango de 270-300 Hv

Correlation between Anthropometric Measures, Blood Glucose, and Cholesterol Levels in College-Aged Hispanic Males

PURPOSE: To investigate the relationship between anthropometric measures, blood pressure (BP), total cholesterol (TC), fasting blood glucose (FBG), and high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) among Hispanic college-aged males 18 to 30 in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. METHODS: Thirty-five male subjects (age= 23.2 ± 2.8) read and signed the informed consent prior to participation in this study. Subjects had their height, weight, and three circumference measurements taken [waist at umbilicus (WU), waist at smallest point (WSP), and hip at widest point (HWP)] and their body mass index (BMI) calculated. A fasting blood sample was taken to analyze TC, HDL, and FBG; in addition, TC:HDL ratio and non-HDL were calculated. Percent body fat (BF) was also measured using air displacement plethysmography. RESULTS: Age was found to be significantly correlated with weight (r= 0.491, p\u3c 0.01), BF (r= 0.575, p\u3c 0.01), BMI (r= 0.539, p\u3c 0.01), diastolic (DBP) (r= 0.427, p\u3c 0.01), WSP (r= 0.596, p\u3c 0.01), WU (r= 0.638, p\u3c 0.01), and HWP (r= 0.485, p\u3c 0.01), and non-HDL (r= 0.405, p\u3c 0.02). BF and BMI were significantly correlated with HDL (r= −0.370, p\u3c 0.03; r= −0.384, p\u3c 0.03) and correlated with TC:HDL ratio (r= 0.466, p\u3c 0.01; r= 0.441, p\u3c 0.01). WSP, WU, and HWP were significantly correlated with TC:HDL ratio (r= 0.429, p\u3c 0.01; r= 0.449, p\u3c 0.01; r= 0.372, p\u3c 0.03), while only the WU and HWP circumference measurements were significantly correlated with HDL cholesterol (r= −0.369, p\u3c 0.03; r= −0.428, p\u3c 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: The results indicated age had notable correlations across most measures, even within this small 12-year range, which may be due to a decrease in physical activity throughout the college career. The data indicated higher BMI and BF were similarly correlated with lower HDL blood concentration and an increased TC:HDL ratio. This suggests that BMI is still a strong predictor of cholesterol level and can be relied upon when body composition analyzation is not available. Our results also indicated that location of the waist measurements is important and WU may be preferred site for determining negative risk factor regarding cholesterol in college-aged Hispanic males

A neural network-based method for spruce tonewood characterization

The acoustical properties of wood are primarily a function of its elastic properties. Numerical and analytical methods for wood material characterization are available, although they are either computationally demanding or not always valid. Therefore, an affordable and practical method with sufficient accuracy is missing. In this article, we present a neural network-based method to estimate the elastic properties of spruce thin plates. The method works by encoding information of both the eigenfrequencies and eigenmodes of the system and using a neural network to find the best possible material parameters that reproduce the frequency response function. Our results show that data-driven techniques can speed up classic finite element model updating by several orders of magnitude and work as a proof of concept for a general neural network-based tool for the workshop. © 2023 Acoustical Society of America

Primary prevention for acute kidney injury in ambulatory patients

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a heterogeneous group of conditions characterized by a sudden decrease in glomerular filtration rate (GFR), which usually induces the accumulation of nitrogenous-waste substances in the blood. It is expressed as an increase in serum creatinine levels (≥ 0.3 mg/dl within 48 hours or ≥1.5 times from baseline within the previous 7 days) or by a urine volume reduction of ˂0.5 ml/kg/h in 6 hours [1]. AKI is a relevant condition since it is usually associated with 1–7% and 30–50% of hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, respectively; showing a significant morbidity-mortality rate, and progression to chronic kidney disease (CKD) [1–7]. Even though many strategies have been proposed to achieve an early AKI diagnosis (e.g. novel biomarkers, informatics alarms), and an AKI effective treatment (e.g. renal protective drugs, biocompatible renal replacement therapies), both objectives remain unachieved; therefore, AKI prevention is currently the best ‘therapeutic’ strategy for this condition