Procedural sedation and analgesia in pediatric emergency department

The frequency of procedures in the emergency department has increased with changes in the medical environment and the demands of the times. Especially in children, sedation and analgesia are often inevitable due to the difficulty in seeking cooperation. Procedural sedation and analgesia is essential for successful completion of procedure, but the medical personnel who perform it must be prepared for complications caused by medications. Safe procedural sedation and analgesia requires well-trained medical personnel and well-prepared equipment, including appropriate patient assessments and choice of medications, faithful monitoring, and resuscitation. This review focuses on understanding of sedation processes, patient evaluation, medications, and monitoring

Communicative Development and Diffusion of Humanoid AI Robots for the Post-Pandemic Health Care System

As humanoid robot technology, anthropomorphized by artificial intelligence (AI), has rapidly advanced to introduce more human-resembling automated robots that can communicate, interact, and work like humans, we have begun to expect active interactions with Humanoid AI Robots (HAIRs) in the near future. Coupled with the HAIR technology development, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered our interest in using health care robots with many substantial advantages that overcome critical human vulnerabilities against the strong infectious COVID-19 virus. Recognizing the tremendous potential for the active application of HAIRs, this article explores feasible ways to implement HAIRs in health care and patient services and suggests recommendations for strategically developing and diffusing autonomous HAIRs in health care facilities. While discussing the integration of HAIRs into health care, this article points out some important ethical concerns that should be addressed for implementing HAIRs for health care services

Our Future Arrived: Diffusion of Human-Machine Communication and Transformation of the World for the Post-Pandemic Era

The world is getting into a new phase in history. For the first time, humans are verbally communicating and developing meaningful relationships with non-living objects. AI is a wormhole to open a gateway to the new world, and the COVID-19 pandemic prepared the world to transform its system to be an open system that responds to, communicates with, and utilizes the remnants coming out of the wormhole of the new world. Now, we urgently need to create a holistic discourse on how we can recognize, develop, or shape the identities of communicable machines as people develop a partnership with them. Based on the emerging questions and discourses about human-machine communication, this special issue strives to investigate the present and future of advanced human-machine communication

Ultimate strength performance of tankers associated with industry corrosion addition Practices

In the ship and offshore structure design, age-related problems such as corrosion damage, local denting, and fatigue damage are important factors to be considered in building a reliable structure as they have a significant influence on the residual structural capacity. In shipping, corrosion addition methods are widely adopted in structural design to prevent structural capacity degradation. The present study focuses on the historical trend of corrosion addition rules for ship structural design and investigates their effects on the ultimate strength performance such as hull girder and stiffened panel of double hull oil tankers. Three types of rules based on corrosion addition models, namely historic corrosion rules (pre-CSR), Common Structural Rules (CSR), and harmonised Common Structural Rules (CSR-H) are considered and compared with two other corrosion models namely UGS model, suggested by the Union of Greek Shipowners (UGS), and Time-Dependent Corrosion Wastage Model (TDCWM). To identib) the general trend in the effects of corrosion damage on the ultimate longitudinal strength performance, the corrosion addition rules are applied to four representative sizes of double hull oil tankers namely Panamax, Aframax, Suezmax, and VLCC. The results are helpful in understanding the trend of corrosion additions for tanker structures.11Ysciescopu

The influence of residual stress on the ultimate strength of longitudinally compressed stiffened panels

Welding-induced residual stress is known to reduce the ultimate compressive strength of moderately slender stiffened panels under longitudinal compression. This paper contributes a quantified measure of this strength reduction and draws some qualitative observations linking the significance of the residual stress influence to the collapse mode of the panel. A series of nonlinear finite element analyses are completed which covers a range of plate slenderness ratios (β = 1.0 − 4.0) and column slenderness ratios (λ = 0.2 − 1.2) typical for application to ship structures. Two residual stress scenarios are compared to a baseline stress-free condition. The first scenario includes residual stress in the plate only and the second scenario includes residual stress applied in the plate and the stiffener web. A modified edge function approach, which can be used in combination with a rule-based approach to account for the effects of residual stress, is examined with reference to the numerical results. A significant ultimate strength reduction due to residual stress is found in most test cases. It is found that residual stress in the plate causes a reduction of the ultimate compressive strength of stiffened panels regardless of failure modes. However, the residual stress in the stiffener web dominates the strength reduction of stiffened panels where collapse is triggered by beam-column buckling. Conversely it has little influence on the stiffened panels which collapse in a plate buckling mode. In addition, the modified edge function approach is demonstrated as conservative compared to the present numerical results, with its applicability confined to stocky panels

A probabilistic approach to assess the computational uncertainty of ultimate strength of hull girders

The simplified progressive collapse method is codified in the IACS Common Structural Rules (CSR) to calculate the ultimate strength of ship hull girders in longitudinal bending. Several benchmark studies have demonstrated the uncertainty of this method, which is primarily attributed to the variation in the load-shortening curve (LSC) of local structural components adopted by different participants. Quantifying this computational uncertainty will allow the model error factor applied for the ultimate strength of hull girder in a reliability-based ship structural design to be determined. A probabilistic approach is proposed in this paper to evaluate the prediction uncertainty of ultimate strength of the hull girder caused by the critical characteristics within the LSCs. The probability distributions of critical load-shortening characteristics of stiffened panels are developed based on a dataset generated by empirical formulae and the nonlinear finite element method. An adaptable LSC formulation, with the ability to cater for specific response features of local components, is utilised in conjunction with the Monte-Carlo simulation procedure and the simplified progressive collapse method to calculate the ultimate strength of a hull girder at each sampling. The proposed method is applied to four merchant ships and four naval vessels. The computational uncertainties of the ultimate strength of the case study vessels are discussed in association with their mean values and standard deviations. The study shows that the ultimate strength of ship hull girders is subjected to different uncertainties in sagging and hogging. Whist the strength of merchant ships are primarily governed by the ultimate compressive strength of critical stiffened panels, the strength of naval vessels are also sensitive to the post-collapse response of critical members

Recommended Finite Element Formulations for the Analysis of Off-shore Blast Walls in an Explosion

This study suggests relevant finite element (FE) formulations for the structural analysis of offshore blast walls subjected to blast loadings due to hydrocarbon explosions. The present blast wall model adopted from HSE (2003) consists of a corrugated panel and supporting members, and was modelled with shell, thick-shell, and solid element combinations in LS-DYNA, an explicit finite element analysis (FEA) solver. Stainless and mild steels were employed as materials for the blast wall model, with consideration of strain rate effect throughout ten (10) pulse pressure load regimes. The obtained FEA results were validated by experimental data from HSE (2003) with decent agreement. In the present study, recommended FE formulations with additional hourglass control functions were widely discussed from the perspectives of solution accuracy and computational cost based on a statistical approach. The obtained outcomes could be used for the structural analysis and design of offshore blast walls in the estimations of maximum and permanent deformations under blast loadings.111Ysciescopu

Fibre-based modelling for predicting the progressive collapse of cylindrical shells under combined axial compression and bending moment

Cylindrical shell is a fundamental building block of many engineering structures. They are usually designed to be the primary load-carrying component to withstand different combinations of environmental loads. This paper presents a fibre-based approach to modelling the progressive collapse of cylindrical shells under combined axial compression and bending moment. In this method, the progressive collapse behaviour of cylindrical shells is incrementally evaluated by accounting for the local response of each fibre element. This approach offers a computationally efficient and robust scheme to compute the ultimate strength of cylindrical shells. Moreover, it enables the modelling of load-shedding between the buckled and intact shell elements on the compressive side, and the yielding failure on the tensile side, which appears to be ignored in existing design codes. Analyses are performed on cylindrical shells with a wide range of design parameters. Validation using the finite element method demonstrates a reasonably well performance of the proposed fibre-based modelling technique

A novel formula for predicting the ultimate compressive strength of the cylindrically curved plates

The present study aims to develop an empirical formula to predict the ultimate compressive strength of unstiffened cylindrically curved plates. Drawing from an extensive analysis of 400 unique curved plate scenarios under longitudinal compression, we investigated critical parameters: the flank angle (denoted as ɵ), plate aspect ratio (denoted as a/b), and plate slenderness ratio (denoted as β). The ANSYS Nonlinear Finite Element Method (NLFEM) was employed to assess each scenario, considering the average level of initial imperfections (denoted as 0.1β2t) and configurations of one-bay and one-span. It is important to note that the models were designed without accounting for the effects of residual stresses. The simulation data generated from this analysis served as the foundation for developing our empirical formula. The proposed formula strongly agreed with the numerical simulations and experimental test results. This research provides structural engineers with a reliable predictive tool, aiding in more accurate predictions of the ultimate limit state (ULS) of curved plates during early design phases