Extra-articular tenodesis combined with an anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction in acute anterior cruciate ligament tear in elite female football players

PURPOSE: The growing popularity of elite soccer among female participants has led to increased incidents of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) ruptures. Many authors underline a positive glide after ACL reconstruction (ACLR), especially in women. In fact, an isolated intra-articular ACLR may be inadequate to control rotational instability after a combined injury of the ACL and the peripheral structures of the knee. Extra-articular procedures are sometimes used in primary cases displaying excessive antero-lateral rotatory instability. The purpose of this case series was to report subjective and objective outcomes after combined ACL and lateral extra-articular tenodesis (LET) with a minimum 4-year follow-up in a selected high-risk population of elite female football players. METHODS: Between January 2007 and December 2010, 16 elite Italian female football players were included in the study. All patients underwent the same surgical technique: anatomical ACLR with autogenous semitendinosus and gracilis tendons. After the intra-articular reconstruction was performed, an additional extra-articular MacIntosh modified Coker-Arnold procedure was carried out. Patients were assessed pre- and post-operatively with the subjective and objective International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) evaluation form, Tegner activity scale (TAS) and Lysholm score. Joint laxity was assessed with KT-1000 by measuring the side-to-side (S/S) differences in displacement at manual maximum (mm) testing. RESULTS: At a mean follow-up of 72.6 ± 8.1 months, two independent examiners reviewed all players. All of the patients had a fully recovered range of motion. Lachman test was negative in all patients (100 %). The evaluation of joint laxity and clinical evaluation showed a statistically significant improvement. No patients experienced complication or a re-rupture. DISCUSSION: The rationale of combining extra-articular procedures with ACLR is to restrict the internal rotation of the reconstructed knee, taking advantage of its long lever arm and thus providing more stability in the rotational axis and preventing the ACL graft from undergoing further excessive strain. CONCLUSIONS: The combination of an LET with ACLR in elite female football players demonstrated excellent results in terms of subjective scales, post-operative residual laxity and re-rupture rate with no complication, and a complete return to sport activity

Evolutionary Modeling to Evaluate the Shear Behavior of Circular Reinforced Concrete Columns

Despite their frequent occurrence in practice, only limited studies on the shear behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) circular members are available in the literature. Such studies are based on poor assumptions about the physical model, often resulting in being too conservative, as well as technical codes that essentially propose empirical conversion rules. On this topic in this paper, an evolutionary approach named EPR is used to create a structured polynomial model for predicting the shear strength of circular sections. The adopted technique is an evolutionary data mining methodology that generates a transparent and structured representation of the behavior of a system directly from experimental data. In this study experimental data of 61 RC circular columns, as reported in the technical literature, are used to develop the EPR models. As final result, physically consistent shear strength models for circular columns are obtained, to be used in different design situations. The proposed formulations are compared with models available from building codes and literature expressions, showing that EPR technique is capable of capturing and predicting the shear behavior of RC circular elements with very high accuracy. A parametric study is also carried out to evaluate the physical consistency of the proposed models

Exploring waste-collection fleet data: challenges in a real-world use case from multiple data providers

In the age of connected vehicles, large amounts of data can be collected while driving through a variety of on-board sensors. The information collected can be used for various types of data-driven analytics that can be of great benefit to both vehicle owners, e.g., to reduce costs by means of predictive maintenance, and to society as a whole, e.g., to optimize mobility behavior. Prior to any real-world data analysis, an investigation and characterization of the available data is of utmost importance in order to evaluate the quality and quantity of the data and to set the right expectations. In this paper, we focus on the data exploration and characterization step, which is necessary to avoid inconsistencies in the collected parameters and to enable valid, data-driven modeling. The proposed data exploration considers both the frequency of samples and their values for all monitored parameters. A specific cross-provider data comparison is performed to compare values collected for the same vehicle at the same time from different fleet monitoring data providers. The study is applied to a real-world use case with months of data from dozens of vehicles deployed in the waste collection service managed by SEA, Soluzioni Eco Ambientali, in Italy. The analyzes uncover unexpected behaviors in the measurements and lead to their early identification, bringing great benefits to the company operating the fleet by improving data collection and enabling a safe modeling phase

In Vitro Assessment of Single-Retainer Tooth-Colored Adhesively Fixed Partial Dentures for Posterior Teeth

The purpose of this paper was to investigate, by means of marginal adaptation and fracture strength, three different types of single retainer posterior fixed partial dentures (FPDs) for the replacement of a missing premolar. Two-unit cantilever FPDs were fabricated from composite resin, feldspathic porcelain, and fiber-reinforced composite resin. After luting procedures and margin polishing, all specimens were subjected to a Scanning Electron Microscopic marginal evaluation both prior to and after thermomechanical loading with a custom made chewing simulator comprising both thermal and mechanical loads. The results indicated that the highest score of marginal adaptation, that is, the closest score to 100% of continuous margins, at the tooth-composite resin interface was attained by the feldspathic porcelain group (88.1% median), followed by the fiber-reinforced composite resin group (78.9% median). The worse results were observed in the composite resin group (58.05% median). Fracture strength was higher in feldspathic porcelain (196N median) when compared to resin composite (114.9 N median). All the fixed prostheses made of fiber-reinforced composite resin detached from the abutment teeth before fracturing, suggesting that the adhesive surface's retainer should be increased

A study for the characterization of high QE photocathodes

Based on our experience on photocathode production, we present in this paper the results of the application of different optical diagnostic techniques on fresh and used photocathodes. These techniques allow studying effects like non uniformity, cathode aging, etc. In particular, photocathode optical parameters and QE characterization, both done at different wavelengths, give fundamentals information for the construction of a model of the photoemission process to be applied to Cs2Te photocathodes. These studies are useful for further improving key cathode features, such as its robustness and lifetime as well as to study and control the photocathodes thermal emittance