A room-temperature alternating current susceptometer - Data analysis, calibration, and test

An AC susceptometer operating in the range of 10 Hz to 100 kHz and at room temperature is designed, built, calibrated and used to characterize the magnetic behaviour of coated magnetic nanoparticles. Other weakly magnetic materials (in amounts of some millilitres) can be analyzed as well. The setup makes use of a DAQ-based acquisition system in order to determine the amplitude and the phase of the sample magnetization as a function of the frequency of the driving magnetic field, which is powered by a digital waveform generator. A specific acquisition strategy makes the response directly proportional to the sample susceptibility, taking advantage of the differential nature of the coil assembly. A calibration method based on conductive samples is developed.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, 19 ref

Long-term outcomes in corticosteroid-refractory Graves' orbitopathy treated with tocilizumab.

Up to 20% of patients with moderate to severe Graves' orbitopathy (GO) do not respond to high-dose glucocorticoids (GC). A few studies, including a randomized trial, have demonstrated the efficacy of interleukin-6 (IL-6) blockade with tocilizumab (TCZ) in GC-refractory GO. However, data on predictors of response to TCZ and long-term outcomes are lacking. Observational single-center study on ten consecutive patients treated with TCZ for GC-refractory GO, between 2016 and 2020. Median (interquartile range) follow-up was 24 (12-36) months. Inflammation and exophthalmos improved dramatically in all patients within months after starting TCZ. Mean Clinical Activity Score decreased from 4.80 ± 1.13 to 0.70 ± 0.82 points at 6 months (mean change: -4.10 ± 1.52; p < .0001). Proptosis improved from 23.2 ± 2.1 to 20.6 ± 2.0 mm at 6 months (mean change: -2.9 ± 1.4 mm; p < .0001). Diplopia resolved in 7 patients. Thyroid receptor antibodies decreased markedly during TCZ treatment. Baseline serum IL-6 levels did not predict clinical response. TCZ was well-tolerated. During follow-up, 3 patients were diagnosed with cancer (breast cancer in 2 and urothelial cancer in 1). TCZ was rapidly effective and well-tolerated in our patients with GC-refractory GO. Four patients experienced mild/moderate adverse events as neutropenia, hyperlipidemia, and infections; nearly a third developed cancer during the follow-up. The increased incidence observed could be explained by the high prevalence of smokers, that are at higher risk for Graves' orbitopathy and solid malignancies as breast cancer. Thus, regular cancer screening could be proposed to this vulnerable population receiving high doses of immunosuppressants

Disentangling the corporate entrepreneurship construct: conceptualizing through co-words

This study defines the conceptual structure of corporate entrepreneurship (CE) by looking at the terms scholars have used over the last 26 years of research. With the use of a co-word analysis, five distinctive dimensions of CE and the evolution of related key terms are identified: sustained regeneration, competitive advantage, external entrepreneurship, organizational rejuvenation, and domain redefinition. Over time scholars’ attention has shifted from strategy to entrepreneurship by highlighting the relevance of the terms ‘intrapreneurship’ and ‘entrepreneurial orientation’. Surprisingly, concepts related to strategic entrepreneurship and strategic renewal are less relevant than expected. Besides laying the ground for a shared conceptualization of CE, this study highlights how bibliomeitrics can contribute to decreasing conceptual ambiguity in emergent research fields, such as entrepreneurship. Implications for managers on how to strategically create and develop CE within different organizational settings are also discussed

Analyzing Product Lifecycle Costs for a Better Understanding of Cost Drivers in Additive Manufacturing

The costs of additive manufactured parts often seem too high in comparison to those of traditionally manufactured parts, as the information about major cost drivers, especially for additive manufactured metal parts, is weak. Therefore, a lifecycle analysis of additive manufactured parts is needed to understand and rate the cost drivers that act as the largest contributors to unit costs, and to provide a focus for future cost reduction activities for the Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology. A better understanding of the cost structure will help to compare the AM costs with the opportunity costs of the classical manufacturing technologies and will make it easier to justify the use of AM manufactured parts. This paper will present work in progress and methodology based on a sample investigated with business process analysis / simulation and activity based costing. In addition, cost drivers associated with metal AM process will be rated.Mechanical Engineerin

Impact and Influence Factors of Additive Manufacturing on Product Lifecycle Costs

At first sight the direct costs of Additive Manufacturing (AM) seem too high in comparison to traditional manufacturing. Considering the whole lifecycle costs of parts changes the point of view. Due to the modification of the new production process and new supply chains during a parts lifecycle, producing companies can strongly benefit from AM. Therefore, a costing model for assessing lifecycle costs with regard to specific applications and branches has been developed. The costing model represents the advantages of AM monetary. For the evaluation of this model and the influence factors, different case studies have been performed including different approaches in part redesign. Deeper research is and will be carried out with respect to the AM building rates and the comparability of various AM machines, as these facts are hardly comparable for end users. This paper will present the methodology as well as the results of the case studies conducted over the whole product lifecycle.Mechanical Engineerin

A new class of sum rules for products of Bessel functions

In this paper we derive a new class of sum rules for products of the Bessel functions of first kind. Using standard algebraic manipulations we extend some of the well known properties of $J_n$. Some physical applications of the results are also discussed. A comparison with the Newberger[J. Math. Phys. \textbf{23} (1982) 1278] sum rules is performed on a typical example.Comment: Published in Journal of Mathematical Physics, 9 pages, no picture

Recognition of cooking activities through air quality sensor data for supporting food journaling

Abstract Unhealthy behaviors regarding nutrition are a global risk for health. Therefore, the healthiness of an individual's nutrition should be monitored in the medium and long term. A powerful tool for monitoring nutrition is a food diary; i.e., a daily list of food taken by the individual, together with portion information. Unfortunately, frail people such as the elderly have a hard time filling food diaries on a continuous basis due to forgetfulness or physical issues. Existing solutions based on mobile apps also require user's effort and are rarely used in the long term, especially by elderly people. For these reasons, in this paper we propose a novel architecture to automatically recognize the preparation of food at home in a privacy-preserving and unobtrusive way, by means of air quality data acquired from a commercial sensor. In particular, we devised statistical features to represent the trend of several air parameters, and a deep neural network for recognizing cooking activities based on those data. We collected a large corpus of annotated sensor data gathered over a period of 8 months from different individuals in different homes, and performed extensive experiments. Moreover, we developed an initial prototype of an interactive system for acquiring food information from the user when a cooking activity is detected by the neural network. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that adopts air quality sensor data for cooking activity recognition

Anti-inflammatory and anti-pyretic effects of hexane fraction of Ardisia crispa Thunb. D.C

Hexane fraction of Ardisia crispa root (ACHE) was used to investigate its anti-inflammatory and anti-pyretic activities in this study. For anti-inflammatory activity, 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA) was applied to ear of mice to induce oedema and treated with 0.5,1 and 2mg/ear of ACHE topically. In cotton-pellet granuloma test, treated groups have received 3, 10, 30 and 100mg/kg of hexane extract administered orally for 7 days. For antipyretic activity, brewer's yeast was injected in mice to induce fever and later, ACHE at dose ranging from 10 to 300 mg/kg were administered to the rats orally. The results exhibited that 1 and 2mg/ear of ACHE produced significant suppression by 19.9% and 20.2% respectively. the lowest dose of ACHE showed no significant effect when compared with control. Results showed that ACHE showed significant anti-pyretic effect at all doses (10, 30, 100 and 300 mg/kg). At 30, 100 and 300mg/kg, ACHE even exhibited higher efficacy when compared with 100 mg/kg acetaminophen. ACHE also elicited a significant (P<0.05) inhibition of granuloma tissue and exudate formation. Thus, it can be concluded that Ardisia crispa posseses antiinflammatory and antipyretic effects

Improved and standardized method for assessing years lived with disability after burns and its application to estimate the non-fatal burden of disease of burn injuries in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands

Background: Burden of disease estimates are an important resource in public health. Currently, robust estimates are not available for the burn population. Our objectives are to adapt a refined methodology (INTEGRIS method) to burns and to apply this new INTEGRIS-burns method to estimate, and compare, the burden of disease of burn injuries in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands. Methods: Existing European and Western-Australian health-related quality of life (HRQL) datasets were combined to derive disability weights for three homogenous burn injury groups based on percentage total body surface area (%TBSA) burned. Subsequently, incidence data from Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands from 2010 to 2017 were used to compute annual non-fatal burden of disease estimates for each of these three countries. Non-fatal burden of disease was measured by years lived with disability (YLD). Results: The combined dataset included 7159 HRQL (EQ-5D-3 L) outcomes from 3401 patients. Disability weights ranged from 0.046 (subgroup  24 months post-burn) to 0.497 (subgroup > 20% TBSA burned 0–1 months post-burn). In 2017 the non-fatal burden of disease of burns for the three countries (YLDs/100,000 inhabitants) was 281 for Australia, 279 for New Zealand and 133 for the Netherlands. Conclusions: This project established a method for more precise estimates of the YLDs of burns, as it is the only method adapted to the nature of burn injuries and their recovery. Compared to previous used methods, the INTEGRIS-burns method includes improved disability weights based on severity categorization of burn patients; a better substantiated proportion of patients with lifelong disability based; and, the application of burn specific recovery timeframes. Information derived from the adapted method can be used as input for health decision making at both the national and international level. Future studies should investigate whether the application is valid in low- and middle- income countries