Improved image quality with new ultrasound imaging techniques

AbstractThis work addresses three key subjects to the image quality with phased arrays: timing accuracy, beamforming strategy and post-processing for increased resolution and suppression of grating and side lobes.Timing accuracy is achieved by defining a modular and scalable architecture which guarantees timing errors of a few tens of picoseconds, whatever is the system size. The proposed beamforming methodology follows the progressive focusing correction technique, which keeps low focusing errors, provides a high information density and has a simple implementation for real-time imaging. Then, phase coherence imaging is defined to suppress grating and sidelobe indications and increasing the lateral resolution

The First Metriorhynchid Crocodylomorph from the Middle Jurassic of Spain, with Implications for Evolution of the Subclade Rhacheosaurini

Background: Marine deposits from the Callovian of Europe have yielded numerous species of metriorhynchid crocodylomorphs. While common in English and French Formations, metriorhynchids are poorly known from the Iberian Peninsula. Twenty years ago an incomplete, but beautifully preserved, skull was discovered from the Middle Callovian of Spain. It is currently the oldest and best preserved metriorhynchid specimen from the Iberian Peninsula. Until now it has never been properly described and its taxonomic affinities remained obscure. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here we present a comprehensive description for this specimen and in doing so we refer it to a new genus and species: Maledictosuchus riclaensis. This species is diagnosed by numerous autapomorphies, including: heterodont dentition; tightly interlocking occlusion; lachrymal anterior process excludes the jugal from the preorbital fenestra; orbits longer than supratemporal fenestrae; palatine has two non-midline and one midline anterior processes. Our phylogenetic analysis finds Maledictosuchus riclaensis to be the basal-most known member of Rhacheosaurini (the subclade of increasingly mesopelagic piscivores that includes Cricosaurus and Rhacheosaurus). Conclusions/Significance: Our description of Maledictosuchus riclaensis shows that the craniodental morphologies that underpinned the success of Rhacheosaurini in the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous, as a result of increasing marine specialization to adaptations for feeding on fast small-bodied prey (i.e. divided and retracted external nares; reorientation of the lateral processes of the frontal; elongate, tubular rostrum; procumbent and non-carinated dentition; high overall tooth count; and dorsolaterally inclined paroccipital processes), first appeared during the Middle Jurassic. Rhacheosaurins were curiously rare in the Middle Jurassic, as only one specimen of Maledictosuchus riclaensis is known (with no representatives discovered from the well-sampled Oxford Clay Formation of England). As such, the feeding/marine adaptations of Rhacheosaurini did not confer an immediate selective advantage upon the group, and it took until the Late Jurassic for this subclade to dominate in Western Europe

Creating and Maintaining Chemical Artificial Life by Robotic Symbiosis

We present a robotic platform based on the open source RepRap 3D printer that can print and maintain chemical artificial life in the form of a dynamic, chemical droplet. The robot uses computer vision, a self-organizing map, and a learning program to automatically categorize the behavior of the droplet that it creates. The robot can then use this categorization to autonomously detect the current state of the droplet and respond. The robot is programmed to visually track the droplet and either inject more chemical fuel to sustain a motile state or introduce a new chemical component that results in a state change (e.g., division). Coupling inexpensive open source hardware with sensing and feedback allows for replicable real-time manipulation and monitoring of nonequilibrium systems that would be otherwise tedious, expensive, and error-prone. This system is a first step towards the practical confluence of chemical, artificial intelligence, and robotic approaches to artificial life

Regenerative Strategy for Persistent Periprosthetic Leakage around Tracheoesophageal Puncture: Is It an Effective Long-Term Solution?

Autologous tissue-assisted regenerative procedures have been considered effective to close different types of fistula, including the leakage around tracheoesophageal puncture. The aim of this study was to retrospectively review 10 years of lipotransfer for persistent periprosthetic leakage in laryngectomized patients with voice prosthesis. Clinical records of patients who experienced periprosthetic leakage from December 2009 to December 2019 were reviewed. Patients receiving fat grafting were included. The leakage around the prosthesis was assessed with a methylene blue test. Twenty patients experiencing tracheoesophageal fistula enlargement were treated with fat grafting. At the one-month follow-up, all patients were considered improved with no leakage observed. At six months, a single injection was sufficient to solve 75% of cases (n 15), whereas 25% (n 5) required a second procedure. The overall success rate was 80% (n 16). Results remained stable for a follow-up of 5.54 � 3.97 years. Fat grafting performed around the voice prosthesis, thanks to its volumetric and regenerative properties, is a valid and lasting option to solve persistent periprosthetic leakage

Effects of highly active antiretroviral therapy on semen parameters of a cohort of 770 HIV-1 infected men

Background HIV-1 infected patients show impaired semen parameters. Currently, it is not clear whether HIV-1 infection itself or antiretroviral therapy have an effect on semen parameters. We aim evaluate semen quality in a large cohort of fertile HIV-1 infected men under stable highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) and to assess the effect of HAART type and duration on semen parameters. Materials and methods Between January 2010 and June 2014, we enrolled in a retrospective case-control study 770 HIV-1 patients under stable HAART asking a reproductive counselling with their HIV negative partner. Co-infections with HBV or HCV, genital tract infections and known causes of infertility represented exclusion criteria. Semen samples were analysed and compared with the WHO reference values. A multivariate analysis including HAART type and duration, age, viral load and CD4 count, was performed on 600 patients out of 770. Results The median values of all semen parameters were significantly lower among HIV-1 infected patients compared to the WHO reference group, with a significant proportion of patients having values below the 5th percentile of the WHO reference value. In a multivariate analysis, only age and viral load negatively impacted progressive motility (\u3b2 -0.3 (95% CI: -0.5; -0.0) %, p<0.05) and semen morphology (\u3b2 -0.00 (95% CI: -0.00; -0.00) %, p0.01), while no associations were detected as regards HAART type and duration. Conclusions HIV-1 infected patients showed a significant impairment of semen parameters compared to the reference values. HAART type and duration showed no associations with semen quality. Further research is needed to investigate implications for clinical care of HIV infected men desiring a child

Traducciones de literatura árabe al español 2001-2005

Bibliographical review of translation from Arabic into Spanish between 2001 and 2005. Evolution of the publishing market, authors, countries, genres and translators.Recorrido bibliográfico por la traducción al español de literatura árabe entre los años 2001 y 2005 con comentarios sobre la evolución del mercado editorial, los autores elegidos, países de procedencia, género y traductores

SensoTrust: trustworthy domains in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) based on wearable devices are being used in a growing variety of applications, many of them with strict privacy requirements: medical, surveillance, e-Health, and so forth. Since private data is being shared (physiological measures, medical records, etc.), implementing security mechanisms in these networks has become a major challenge. The objective of deploying a trustworthy domain is achieving a nonspecific security mechanism that can be used in a plethora of network topologies and with heterogeneous application requirements. Another very important challenge is resilience. In fact, if a stand-alone and self-configuring WSN is required, an autosetup mechanism is necessary in order to maintain an acceptable level of service in the face of security issues or faulty hardware. This paper presents SensoTrust, a novel security model for WSN based on the definition of trustworthy domains, which is adaptable to a wide range of applications and scenarios where services are published as a way to distribute the acquired data. Security domains can be deployed as an add-on service to merge with any service already deployed, obtaining a new secured service

Tuning Deep Neural Networks for Predicting Energy Consumption in Arid Climate Based on Buildings Characteristics

The dramatic growth in the number of buildings worldwide has led to an increase interest in predicting energy consumption, especially for the case of residential buildings. As the heating and cooling system highly affect the operation cost of buildings; it is worth investigating the development of models to predict the heating and cooling loads of buildings. In contrast to the majority of the existing related studies, which are based on historical energy consumption data, this study considers building characteristics, such as area and floor height, to develop prediction models of heating and cooling loads. In particular, this study proposes deep neural networks models based on several hyper-parameters: the number of hidden layers, the number of neurons in each layer, and the learning algorithm. The tuned models are constructed using a dataset generated with the Integrated Environmental Solutions Virtual Environment (IESVE) simulation software for the city of Buraydah city, the capital of the Qassim region in Saudi Arabia. The Qassim region was selected because of its harsh arid climate of extremely cold winters and hot summers, which means that lot of energy is used up for cooling and heating of residential buildings. Through model tuning, optimal parameters of deep learning models are determined using the following performance measures: Mean Square Error (MSE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Regression (R) values, and coefficient of determination (R2 ). The results obtained with the five-layer deep neural network model, with 20 neurons in each layer and the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm, outperformed the results of the other models with a lower number of layers. This model achieved MSE of 0.0075, RMSE 0.087, R and R2 both as high as 0.99 in predicting the heating load and MSE of 0.245, RMSE of 0.495, R and R2 both as high as 0.99 in predicting the cooling load. As the developed prediction models were based on buildings characteristics, the outcomes of the research may be relevant to architects at the pre-design stage of heating and cooling energy-efficient buildings.Qassim University, represented by the Deanship of Scientific Research, (coc-2019-2-2-I-5422