Predicting First Time Reaching Deficiency Status (FTRDS) for Steel Bridges in Oklahoma

The need of an accurate model to characterize deficiency time for bridges is an important issue for bridge owners to ensure an adequate maintenance schedule. The main objective of this research is to create a simple, rational statistical model that characterizes bridge conditions in Oklahoma. Thus, this research focuses on addressing the influence of age on bridge components including deck, superstructure, and substructure. This was done by tracking historical data for steel bridges built between 1992 and 2015. In this study, condition ratings of 2,145 steel bridges were analyzed to determine the First Time Reaching Deficiency Status (FTRDS). Four well-known statistical distributions (gamma, Weibull, lognormal, and log-logistic) were investigated to predict each bridge component’s First Time Reaching Deficiency Status (FTRDS). The goal was to identify the best distribution that fits Oklahoma’s steel bridges to obtain the probability for the FTRDS. Based on the Anderson-Darling test for the goodness of fit test process, the Weibull distribution was the most appropriate distribution that characterized the effect of age on bridge components. The Weibull parameters, scale and shape factors were estimated to calculate the FTRDS probabilities based on bridge ages from the year built to the point that bridge reached deficiency status for the first time. Results show that data for superstructure and substructure elements were useful to calculate FTRDS while the deck element was excluded due to insufficient data. Finally, these models will be helpful in assisting agencies such as Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) in monitoring the condition of their bridges and to develop more reliable maintenance and rehabilitation plans.Civil Engineerin

An Examination of the Role of Shariah in the Recognition and Enforcement of Arbitral Awards in Saudi Arabia

This thesis explores the challenges encountered by parties seeking to have arbitral awards recognised and enforced within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Specifically, this thesis critically assesses the impact of Shariah on the enforcement of international awards within the Kingdom and aims to suggest actionable reforms to further develop the Saudi arbitration framework, and build on the modernisation efforts initiated through the Saudi Arbitration Law and Enforcement Law, both issued in 2012. This study aims to examine issues around the treatment and enforcement of domestic and international awards under the Saudi legal system and dispute settlement machinery. Particular focus will be directed to the differences between the enforcement of domestic and foreign awards, and the challenges that arise therein. By way of critical analysis, this thesis explores the history and development of arbitration law and procedure in Saudi Arabia, focusing on the role of Shariah principles in contract construction and dispute resolution. By bringing Saudi arbitration procedures into greater alignment with international standards and practices, and curtailing the power of local courts, the New Arbitration Law has been widely welcomed as establishing a more hospitable arbitration environment for commercial actors, foreign and domestic. While the New Saudi Arbitration Regime aimed to bring much-needed certainty and predictability to Saudi-based commercial arbitration awards, the Saudi legal system is still in its infancy and struggling to balance its Shariah roots with secular practices. As this thesis explores, the Saudi model of contract construction and dispute resolution is not yet embedded in a settled or ‘gapless’ body of legal principles, in large part because of on-going contestation among Islamic scholars over the scope and meaning of Shariah principles. While the new law significantly curtails the review power of local courts, judicial authorities in Saudi Arabia continue to enjoy broad discretion to reopen a final non-localised arbitral award issued elsewhere and to subject it to review on the merits. The grounds for annulment, revision or refusal to enforce include any agreement deemed to contravene Shariah law, Saudi public policy and prior Saudi court decrees, in addition to other public policy related defences. In the final analysis, the proposed thesis will consider the potential impacts of Shariah on arbitral award enforcement proceedings initiated in Saudi Arabia. At the level of conceptual analysis, the proposed research reflects on the familiar tension between international regulations, which is principally achieved through harmonisation of applicable arbitral procedures and the domestic enforcement of applicable national (substantive) laws on arbitration. From these premises, the proposed thesis will critically evaluate the extent to which Saudi arbitration law has reconciled the modernising ambitions of an ‘commerce friendly’ arbitration regime and where progress is still needed to achieve efficient and effective award enforcement

Nursing And Healthcare Administration Roles With The Respiratory Therapist, Medicine, Anesthesia And Radiology Team In ICU Setting

Interprofessional rounds in the intensive care unit (ICU) facilitate scheduled meetings among diverse healthcare professionals to evaluate and analyze clinical information and formulate concise treatment plans for critically ill patients. Implementing a systematic approach to rounding enables each member of the healthcare team to focus on their specific objectives, challenges, and worries. Furthermore, they provide specialist input to the daily care plan to minimize its implications, which is crucial in the management of critically ill patients. A novel quality management (QM) effort has been introduced in an intensive care unit (ICU) to enhance the administration of radiological tests. During regular multidisciplinary conferences (MDCs), radiologists and ICU physicians conduct a thorough reassessment of recent examinations. Additionally, the objectives encompass reducing negative events, enhancing patient contentment, shortening hospital stays, and lowering mortality rates. This issue is especially arduous in critical care units, as these wards admit patients who are severely unwell, have complex medical conditions, and have the worst prognoses. By implementing interprofessional rounds and adopting a collaborative team-based approach, patient outcomes can be maximized

The Effect of Oral Microbes on Human

The goal of the current study is the effect of oral microbes on humans. What are the microbes that are present in the mouth area, and what is the extent of their impact on the upper area of humans (mouth, teeth, upper and lower jaw)? The questionnaire was created electronically via the Google Drive program, and then distributed via mobile phone to Social Media Program (The target population is residents of the city of Makkah, who are between the ages of 25-55 years. The social network WhatsApp was used to distribute 450 questionnaires, and the researcher received electronic responses to 440 questionnaires via email

pH Measurements in Ionic Liquids

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) and ionic liquids (ILs) have been significantly used in a variety of applications and one of the challenges is to understand the behaviour of protons in these non-aqueous media. The aim of this study is to investigate pH scales in DESs and ILs and to use the values to understand processes which occur in these media. The first stage of the study involved the development of a spectroscopic analytical method for measuring effective proton activity in IL media. Its pKIn data for bromophenol blue as an indicator were obtained in DESs and ionic liquids and it was found that the pKIn was influenced by the amount of the salt in the system. The value of pKIn was lower in DESs and ILs than in water. pKIn values were used to obtain pKa values for different organic acid in variety of DESs and in two different imidazolium-based ILs containing different anions. The order of acidity is controlled by the element of the anion within it and it was found that F- > HSO4-> Cl-> Ac- suggesting some correlation with hydrogen bond strength. In the second stage of this study a glass membrane electrode was used for the first time in DESs and ILs. The investigation successfully measured the pH scales of different DESs. It was shown that the response of a glass electrode was almost Nernstian in a DES with minimal water incorporated. The Nernstian slope increased as more water was added to the DES. A new, non-aqueous glass electrode was also made using Ag/AgCl in Ethaline reference electrodes. It was shown that this also had a Nernstian response showing that the glass membrane could function with only the traces of water naturally incorporated in the DESs. In the final part of this study the pH values of DESs were used to investigate the solubility of metal oxides in different DESs and the solubility was found to correlate well with the pH of the liquid. The formation of polyaniline was invetgated in solutions of differing pH both with and without water. The data showed the effect of both pH and mass transport on the rate of film growth. It was found that pH was not directly related to polymer growth rate but it showed that polymer only grew when an emulsion of monomer formed in solution. This significant discovery was only enabled by quantification of solution pH

Uremic encephalopathy manifesting with a unique MRI finding (the lentiform fork sign) in an adult male: A case report

Key Clinical Message A novel radiologic sign in patients with renal failure and uremic encephalopathy (UE) with metabolic acidosis has recently been identified as the lentiform fork sign. On magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the “lentiform fork sign” has been described as bilateral symmetrical hyperintensities in the basal ganglia encircled by a hyperintese rim delineating the lentiform nucleus. Changes in uremic solute retention, aberrant blood–brain barrier transport, disordered vascular reactivity, altered electrolyte and acid–base balance, and altered hormone metabolism are the most likely causes of the condition. A 56‐year‐old male with end‐stage renal disease was brought to the emergency room for a progressive change in mental status and involuntary arm movements over the previous 5 days, which were accompanied by mild dyspnea. A brain MRI was performed, and it revealed hyperintensity on T2/FLAIR in the white matter surrounding the basal ganglia. the patient was treated with dialysis and improved greatly. Intensified hemodialysis and glycemic control are the cornerstones of treating diabetic uremic syndrome (DUS) with likely reversible clinical symptoms and remission of imaging abnormalities

Human-Based Interaction Analysis via Automated Key Point Detection and Neural Network Model

The human interaction with an object is one of the most challenging domains in real-life applications, such as smart homes, surveillance, medical, education, safety-based application of computer vision, and artificial intelligence. In this research article, we have proposed a framework for human and object interaction in real-life examples such as sports and other activities. Initially, we reviewed video-based data by considering the three state-of-the-art data sets. Preprocessing steps have been followed to avoid extra costs, such as video-to-frame conversion, noise reduction and background subtraction. Human silhouette extraction has been performed via the Gaussian mixture model (GMM) and supper pixel model. Next, human body points and object location detection were performed. Finally, human and object-based features have been extracted. To minimize the features replication and to achieve optimized results, we have applied stochastic gradient descent and Restricted Boltzmann Machine; As a result, we have achieved an accuracy of 88.46%, 82.00%, and 88.30% on human body parts recognition over the MPII dataset, UCF_aerial dataset, and wild Dataset respectively. The classification accuracy for the MPII dataset is 92.71%, for the UCF_aerial dataset is 90.60%, and for sports video in the wild Dataset is 92.42%. We have achieved a high accuracy rate compared to other state-of-the-art methods and frameworks due to the complex feature extraction and optimization approach

Hand Gesture Recognition for Characters Understanding Using Convex Hull Landmarks and Geometric Features

With the latest advancements, hand gesture recognition is becoming an effective way of communication and gaining popularity from a research point of view. Hearing impaired people around the world need assistance, while sign language is only understood by a few people around the globe. It becomes challenging for untrained people to communicate easily, research community has tried to train systems with a variety of models to facilitate communication with hearing impaired people and also human-computer interaction. Researchers have detected gestures with numerous recognition rates; however, the recognition rate still needs improvement. As the images captured via cameras possess multiple issues, the light intensity variation makes it a challenging task to extract gestures from such images, extra information in captured images, such as noise hinders the computation time, and complex backgrounds make the extraction of gestures difficult. A novel approach is proposed in this paper for character detection and recognition. The proposed system is divided into five steps for hand gesture recognition. Firstly, images are pre-processed to reduce noise and intensity is adjusted. The pre-processed images region of interest is detected via directional images. After hand extraction, landmarks are extracted via a convex hull. Each gesture is used to extract geometric features for the proposed hand gesture recognition (HGR) system. The extracted features helped in gesture detection and recognition via the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) classifier. The proposed approach experimentation result demonstrated over the MNIST dataset achieved a gesture recognition rate of 93.2% and 90.2% with one-third and two-third training validation systems, respectively. Also, the proposed system performance is validated on the ASL dataset, giving accuracy of 91.6% and 88.14% with one-third and two-third training validation systems, respectively. The proposed system is also compared with other conventional systems. Different emerging domains such as human-computer interaction (HCI), human-robot interaction (HRI), and virtual reality (VR) are applicable to the proposed system to fill the communication gap

The impact of a nursing spiritual care module on nursing competence: an experimental design

Abstract Purpose This study aimed to assess the impact of the Nursing Spiritual Care Module on the competence of nurses in providing spiritual care in the context of Malaysia. Method This study employed an experimental design and involved a total of 122 nurses, with 59 in the experimental group and 63 in the control group. Participants were selected from palliative care wards associated with Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia. Nurses in the experimental group underwent a two-week educational module on nursing spiritual care, while nurses in the control group attended a single lecture on spiritual care provided by the hospital. Results The results indicated no significant differences in sociodemographic characteristics between the two groups. A significant difference in spiritual care competence within the intervention group and the control group over time (p-value = 0.001), between the two groups (p-value = 0.038), and in the interaction between time and group (p-value = 0.001). Conclusion The Nursing Spiritual Care Module is crucial in aiding nurses and healthcare professionals in cultivating the appropriate and wholesome attitudes and practices necessary to address the spiritual needs of patients