Cyclic branched coverings of Brieskorn spheres bounding acyclic 4-manifolds

We show that standard cyclic actions on Brieskorn homology 3-spheres with non-empty fixed set do not extend smoothly to any contractible smooth 4-manifold it may bound. The quotient of any such extension would be an acyclic $4$-manifold with boundary a related Brieskorn homology sphere. We briefly discuss well known invariants of homology spheres that obstruct acyclic bounding 4-manifolds, and then use a method based on equivariant Yang-Mills moduli spaces to rule out extensions of the actions

Mathematical Models for Estimating the Risk of vCJD Transmission

We present two different simple models for vCJD transmission by blood transfusion. Both models indicate that transfusions alone are unlikely to cause more than a few infections, unless the number of primary cases increases. To improve our models, future work should pursue data collection, empirical estimation of the model parameters, and examination of the underlying assumptions of our frameworks. Further improvements could also include examining susceptibility to vCJD infection by age group and iatrogenic infections introduced through surgical instruments. Regarding the latter, it may be worthwhile to conduct experiments to quantify the transmission of prions from an infected surgical instrument after repeated sterilization procedures

A case of pelvic peritoneal damage by laparoscopy instruments revealed under scanning electron microscope (SEM)

Introduction: The role of peritoneal membrane in human has been known in transport of fluids and electrolytes, host defense and reduce friction between bowels and other organs for a long time. This serosal layer consists of a single layer of mesothelial cells resting on basement membrane and submesothelial connective tissue with cell populations and structural proteins. In last decades, human pelvic peritoneum has been studied by using scanning electron microscopy in many conditions to diagnose the diseases especially in endometriosis, chronic pelvic pain and etc. In this study, microstructural changes caused by the surgeon due to unintentionally technical problems in tissue dissections is reported. This article presents unintentionally ultrastructural changes on the pelvic peritoneum during laparoscopic surgery by instruments that can lead to errors in diagnosis and understanding of the disease process for pathologist Case presentation: Two pieces of involved peritoneal tissues with size of 7�7 mm and two pieces of apparently normal peritoneum were evaluated by scanning electron microscopy in a patient with chronic pelvic pain and suspected to endometriosis. Conclusion: According to inadvertent damage of laparoscopic instruments to evaluate fine tissues such as peritoneum, this very simple but important tip should be noted during laparoscopic peritoneal tissue dissections for diagnostic and ultrastructural investigations. © 2016, Canadian Medical Association. All rights reserved

How Do We Study Pedestrian Interaction with Automated Vehicles? Preliminary Findings from the European interACT Project

This paper provides an overview of a set of behavioural studies, conducted as part of the European project interACT, to understand road user behaviour in current urban settings. The paper reports on a number of methodologies used to understand how humans currently interact in urban traffic, in order to establish what information would be useful for the design of future AVs, when interacting with other road users, especially pedestrians. In addition to summarising the results from a number of observation studies, we report on preliminary results from Virtual Reality studies, investigating if, in the absence of a human vehicle controller, externally presented interfaces can be used for communication between AVs and pedestrians. Finally, an overview of the mathematical and computational modelling techniques used to understand how AV and pedestrian behaviour can be both cooperative, and effective is provided. The hope is that future AVs can be designed with an understanding of how humans cooperate and communicate in mixed traffic, promoting good traffic flow, user acceptance and user trust

Consequences Of On-Track Competition In Railways By Use Of Simulations

Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies. Faculty of Economics and Business. The University of Sydne