IEA SHC Task 42 / ECES Annex 29 WG A1: Engineering and Processing of PCMs, TCMs and Sorption Materials

An overview on the recent results on the engineering and characterization of sorption materials, PCMs and TCMs investigated in the working group WG A1 "Engineering and processing of TES materials" of IEA SHC Task 42 / ECES Annex 29 (Task 4229) entitled "Compact Thermal Energy Storage" is presented

TOpic: rare and special cases, the real "Strange cases"

Introduction: The bladder hernia represents approximately 1-3% of all inguinal hernias, where patients aged more than 50 years have a higher incidence (10%). Many factors contribute to the development of a bladder hernia, including the presence of a urinary outlet obstruction causing chronic bladder distention, the loss of bladder tone, pericystitis, the perivesical bladder fat protrusion and the obesity

Impact of age on outcome after colorectal cancer surgery in the elderly - a developing country perspective

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a major source of morbidity and mortality in the elderly population and surgery is often the only definitive management option. The suitability of surgical candidates based on age alone has traditionally been a source of controversy. Surgical resection may be considered detrimental in the elderly solely on the basis of advanced age. Based on recent evidence suggesting that age alone is not a predictor of outcomes, Western societies are increasingly performing definitive procedures on the elderly. Such evidence is not available from our region. We aimed to determine whether age has an independent effect on complications after surgery for colorectal cancer in our population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A retrospective review of all patients who underwent surgery for pathologically confirmed colorectal cancer at Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi between January 1999 and December 2008 was conducted. Using a cut-off of 70 years, patients were divided into two groups. Patient demographics, tumor characteristics and postoperative complications and 30-day mortality were compared. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed with clinically relevant variables to determine whether age had an independent and significant association with the outcome.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 271 files were reviewed, of which 56 belonged to elderly patients (≥ 70 years). The gender ratio was equal in both groups. Elderly patients had a significantly higher comorbidity status, Charlson score and American society of anesthesiologists (ASA) class (all p < 0.001). Upon multivariate analysis, factors associated with more complications were ASA status (95% CI = 1.30-6.25), preoperative perforation (95% CI = 1.94-48.0) and rectal tumors (95% CI = 1.21-5.34). Old age was significantly associated with systemic complications upon univariate analysis (p = 0.05), however, this association vanished upon multivariate analysis (p = 0.36).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Older patients have more co-morbid conditions and higher ASA scores, but increasing age itself is not independently associated with complications after surgery for CRC. Therefore patient selection should focus on the clinical status and ASA class of the patient rather than age.</p

Automatic summarization of voicemail messages using lexical and prosodic features

This article presents trainable methods for extracting principal content words from voicemail messages. The short text summaries generated are suitable for mobile messaging applications. The system uses a set of classifiers to identify the summary words with each word described by a vector of lexical and prosodic features. We use an ROC-based algorithm, Parcel, to select input features (and classifiers). We have performed a series of objective and subjective evaluations using unseen data from two different speech recognition systems as well as human transcriptions of voicemail speech

Novel Building Materials

The proper choice of building envelope material may optimize building energy efficiency and indoor-outdoor comfort conditions in the built environment, together with its environmental sustainability. Therefore, a deep and multidisciplinary understanding of building envelopes and the new potentialities associated to building materials is needed in order to design green and smart constructions. In this perspective, the present chapter concerns, firstly, basics of building physics about hygro-thermal, acoustics, and lighting performance of the built environment. Then the main building material properties and the key traditional and innovative typologies are assessed with a specific focus on energy efficiency and environmental sustainability targets. © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Genotype response to haploid embryo induction with pollination by irradiated pollens in melon, obtaining of dihaploid lines, determination of haploid and diploid plants by different techniques [Kavunda işinlanmiş polen tozlamalari ile haploid embriyo uyartiminda genotip etkisi, dihaploid hatlarin oluşturulmasi, haploid ve diploid bitkilerin degişik yöntemlerle ayrimi]

In this study, 18 melon cultivars which belong to 3 different botanical varieties (var. inodorus, var. reticulatus and var. cantalupensis) of Cucumis melo were tested in order to investigate genotypes effect on hapioid embryos induction by pollination with pollens irradiated with Co60 gamma ray. Embryos were obtained from gamma ray. Embryos were obtained from 14 genotypes belong to 3 different botanical varieties and these embryos were regenerated into plantlets using in vitro embryo rescue method. In order to obtain dihaploid plants, in vitro hapioid plantlets were firstly treated with 0.5 % colchidne solution for two hours and then they were cloned with in vitro micro cutting. These dihaploid plants were acclimatizated in greenhouse conditions. The percentage of acclimatization were ranged between 57-63 % . Seeds were obtained by selfing from all plants grown in greenhouse. Ploidy levels of hapioid and dihaploid plants verified using both chromosome counting (n=12) on root cells and flow cytometry on leaf cells. Also the measurement of stomata dimension and counting of chroloplast in guard cells were performed in hapioid and dihaploid plants. The results showed that stoma diameter and length of dihaploids were higher than haploids at the rate of 31 % and 58 % respectively. The number of chloroplast was ranged between 6-8 in haploids and 10-12 in diploids