HIGH-CYCLE FATIGUE BEHAVIOUR OF SPHEROIDAL GRAPHITE CAST IRON

International audienc

Surgical Management of Trigeminal Neuralgia in Children

Background Trigeminal neuralgia (TN) is a well-recognized facial pain syndrome. Discrete forms with disparate pain symptoms include classic and atypical. However, atypical facial pain includes neuralgiform pain along a spectrum. Most cases of TN are diagnosed in the adult population. Case reports and series of children have presented TN as a similar entity, with treatment similar to that for adults. We reviewed the pertinent data and present 2 pediatric TN cases successfully treated with microvascular decompression (MVD). Case Description Two pediatric patients (age 12 and 15 years) with TN refractory to previous medical therapy were identified. Both patients were deemed appropriate surgical candidates and underwent MVD to manage their TN. TN compression was arterial in both cases and involved portions of the anterior inferior cerebellar artery. Patient 1 was pain free 6 months after the procedure. Patient 2 was pain free immediately after the procedure and had been weaned off preoperative symptomatic management at the latest follow-up visit. The most recent follow-up examination was 12 and 8 months for patients 1 and 2, respectively, with both experiencing continued freedom from pain. Conclusions Few studies have reported on the effectiveness of MVD in the pediatric population for the management of TN. The supporting data and our 2 cases have demonstrated that MVD is effective for pediatric patients to treat their TN. Furthermore, the side effects appear to be minimal, with excellent pain relief after MVD in this patient population

Long-term effectiveness of the midwifery initiated oral health-dental service program on maternal oral health knowledge, preventative dental behaviours and the oral health status of children in Australia

Background The Midwifery Initiated Oral Health-Dental Service was developed to train midwives to promote maternal oral health, and a large trial showed it substantially improved the oral health, knowledge and behaviours of pregnant women. Aim Evaluate the long-term effectiveness of the program (post-trial) on maternal oral health knowledge, dental behaviours, and early childhood caries in offspring. Methods A prospective cohort study involving 204 women and children 3–4 years (followed after trial) was conducted in Sydney, Australia from 2017 to 2019. Results The program did not have a significant impact on the study measures. Mothers who received the program did have comparatively better knowledge around preventative behaviours to reduce early childhood caries and significantly more mothers were engaging in a key behaviour of using a cup to feed their child. Overall maternal oral health knowledge and level of education did have a protective effect on the dental decay of children. Higher knowledge and levels of education reduced the odds of having a dmft of one or more by over half (OR 0.473), and almost 80% (OR 0.212) respectively. Conclusions Although the MIOH-DS program was not effective, there is still value in exploring other complementary interventions to improve maternal oral health, especially for disadvantaged families. Future research should focus on co-designing an antenatal and postnatal oral health intervention and exploring its long-term impact on the oral health of children

Next-Generation Environment-Aware Cellular Networks: Modern Green Techniques and Implementation Challenges

Over the last decade, mobile communications have been witnessing a noteworthy increase of data traffic demand that is causing an enormous energy consumption in cellular networks. The reduction of their fossil fuel consumption in addition to the huge energy bills paid by mobile operators is considered as the most important challenges for the next-generation cellular networks. Although most of the proposed studies were focusing on individual physical layer power optimizations, there is a growing necessity to meet the green objective of fifth-generation cellular networks while respecting the user's quality of service. This paper investigates four important techniques that could be exploited separately or together in order to enable wireless operators achieve

Remanence plots as a probe of spin disorder in magnetic nanoparticles

Remanence magnetization plots (e.g., Henkel or δM plots) have been extensively used as a straightforward way to determine the presence and intensity of dipolar and exchange interactions in assemblies of magnetic nanoparticles or single domain grains. Their evaluation is particularly important in functional materials whose performance is strongly affected by the intensity of interparticle interactions, such as patterned recording media and nanostructured permanent magnets, as well as in applications such as hyperthermia and magnetic resonance imaging. Here, we demonstrate that δM plots may be misleading when the nanoparticles do not have a homogeneous internal magnetic configuration. Substantial dips in the M plots of γ-FeO nanoparticles isolated by thick SiO shells indicate the presence of demagnetizing interactions, usually identified as dipolar interactions. Our results, however, demonstrate that it is the inhomogeneous spin structure of the nanoparticles, as most clearly evidenced by Mössbauer measurements, that has a pronounced effect on the δM plots, leading to features remarkably similar to those produced by dipolar interactions. X-ray diffraction results combined with magnetic characterization indicate that this inhomogeneity is due to the presence of surface structural (and spin) disorder. Monte Carlo simulations unambiguously corroborate the critical role of the internal magnetic structure in the δM plots. Our findings constitute a cautionary tale on the widespread use of remanence plots to assess interparticle interactions as well as offer new perspectives in the use of Henkel and δM plots to quantify the rather elusive inhomogeneous magnetization states in nanoparticles

Metabolic-Associated Fatty Liver Disease Is Highly Prevalent in the Postacute COVID Syndrome.

Background: A proposal has recently been advanced to change the traditional definition of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease to metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD), to reflect the cluster of metabolic abnormalities that may be more closely associated with cardiovascular risk. Long coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a smoldering inflammatory condition, characterized by several symptom clusters. This study aims to determine the prevalence of MAFLD in patients with postacute COVID syndrome (PACS) and its association with other PACS-cluster phenotypes. Methods: We included 235 patients observed at a single university outpatient clinic. The diagnosis of PACS was based on ≥1 cluster of symptoms: respiratory, neurocognitive, musculoskeletal, psychological, sensory, and dermatological. The outcome was prevalence of MAFLD detected by transient elastography during the first postdischarge follow-up outpatient visit. The prevalence of MAFLD at the time of hospital admission was calculated retrospectively using the hepatic steatosis index. Results: Of 235 patients, 162 (69%) were men (median age 61). The prevalence of MAFLD was 55.3% at follow-up and 37.3% on admission (P < .001). Insulin resistance (odds ratio [OR] = 1.5; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.14-1.96), body mass index (OR = 1.14; 95% CI, 1.04-1.24), and the metabolic syndrome (OR = 2.54; 95% CI, 1.13-5.68) were independent predictors of MAFLD. The number of PACS clusters was inversely associated with MAFLD (OR = 0.86; 95% CI, .76-0.97). Thirty-one patients (13.2%) had MAFLD with no other associated PACS clusters. All correlations between MAFLD and other PACS clusters were weak. Conclusions: Metabolic-associated fatty liver disease was highly prevalent after hospital discharge and may represent a specific PACS-cluster phenotype, with potential long-term metabolic and cardiovascular health implications

Scheduling M2M traffic over LTE uplink of a dense small cell network

We present an approach to schedule Long Term Evolution (LTE) uplink (UL) Machine-to-Machine (M2M) traffic in a densely deployed heterogeneous network, over the street lights of a big boulevard for smart city applications. The small cells operate with frequency reuse 1, and inter-cell interference (ICI) is a critical issue to manage. We consider a 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) compliant scenario, where single-carrier frequency-division multiple access (SC-FDMA) is selected as the multiple access scheme, which requires that all resource blocks (RBs) allocated to a single user have to be contiguous in the frequency within each time slot. This adjacency constraint limits the flexibility of the frequency-domain packet scheduling (FDPS) and inter-cell interference coordination (ICIC), when trying to maximize the scheduling objectives, and this makes the problem NP-hard. We aim to solve a multi-objective optimization problem, to maximize the overall throughput, maximize the radio resource usage and minimize the ICI. This can be modelled through a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) and solved through a heuristic implementable in the standards. We propose two models. The first one allocates resources based on the three optimization criteria, while the second model is more compact and is demonstrated through numerical evaluation in CPLEX, to be equivalent in the complexity, while it performs better and executes faster. We present simulation results in a 3GPP compliant network simulator, implementing the overall protocol stack, which support the effectiveness of our algorithm, for different M2M applications, with respect to the state-of-the-art approaches