Oral verapamil in paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia recurrence control: A randomized clinical trial

Background: Adenosine is the first-line medication in patients with paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia. Because it is cleared so rapidly from the circulation, recurrence of paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia after initial successful conversion may occur. This study was conducted to evaluate the role of oral verapamil administration to control early recurrences of paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia after adenosine infusion. Methods: Patients with acute paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia and no contraindications for adenosine or verapamil treatment were included in study. All patients received an adenosine protocol (6 mg rapid bolus intravenous injection followed by two repeated doses of 12 mg if necessary). Patients in the adenosine-only group did not received any other medications but patients in the adenosine/verapamil group received 40 mg verapamil orally immediately after converting the rhythm to sinus rhythm. All patients were followed up for 6 h in the acute care area of the emergency department under continuous cardiac monitoring. Results: A total of 113 patients were assessed for eligibility and 92 patients were randomized into two groups (adenosine only versus adenosine/verapamil). There was no statistically significant difference in paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia recurrence rate between the two groups in the first 30 min after treatment. Recurrence rate was statistically significantly lower in the adenosine/verapamil group than in the adenosine-only group between 30 and 120 min after treatment and thereafter. Two patients in the adenosine-only group experienced flushing and one patient in the adenosine/verapamil group experienced decreased systolic blood pressure. Oral verapamil can decrease paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia recurrence after successful control with intravenous adenosine. © 2014, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved

Optimization and Analysis of Underactuated Linkage Robotic Finger

In this study it is required to maximize the transmission performance, which is leading to increase the transmitted torque from the actuated joints to the underactuated joints through transmission mechanism. Accordingly grasping forces in finger phalanges will increase. Studying the four bar mechanism parameters of a specific configuration within defined limits led to the linkage transmission defect parameter, which play a major role in deciding the linkage performance, used as optimization objective function to be minimized. This study presents an optimization procedure carried out using matlab fminunc function, formulated by using Freudenstein's equations to be applied on a (Cassino-Underactuated-Multifinger-Hand) design , using  one finger and a thumb .A mathematical model of grasping forces of the finger were introduced taking into account the solid links in the( Ca.U.M.Ha)  robotic finger . Keywords: Linkage , underactuated, optimizatio

Workplace Giving in Universities: A U.S. Case Study at Indiana University

The phenomenon of workplace giving is underexamined in the scholarly literature; philanthropic gifts by employees to their nonprofit employers have received less attention within national and transnational contexts. This study considered the association between university staff propensity toward “internal workplace giving” and donor characteristics, drawing on literature about organizational commitment and identification as a beginning for advancing theoretical understanding of employee–employer relationships and giving at both the micro-level and meso-level. The sample of 17,038 employees covered 3 years at Indiana University, an American, public, multicampus institution. Despite its specific national and cultural context, the study raises relevant issues about workplace giving. Relational and personal characteristics were found to be significant predictors for determining who donates; using these characteristics to predict giving levels, however, was less successful. The study anticipates a growing need for related research and provides direction for further methodological and theoretical approaches

Synthesis and Evaluation of Some New Thiazoles as Antioxidant Additives for Egyptian Lubricating Oils

4-(2-Aminothiazol-4-yl)-phenol (1) reacted with 2-(4-methoxy-benzylidene)-malononitrile or 1,3-diphenyl-1H- pyrazole-4-carbaldehyde to afford enaminonitrile, pyrazolo derivatives 2 and 3, respectively. On the other hand, methylation of 1 afforded the acetyl derivative 4 which reacted with phenyl isothiocyanate, diazonium salt, acetic anhydride, cyclic anhydride, ethyl acetoacetate, benzaldehyde or phosphorous oxychloride to afford compounds 5-9, 11 and 12, respectively. Moreover, the compound 12 reacted with ethyl cyanoacetate to afford compound 13. A one-pot reaction of compound 1 with ethyl acetoacetate and benzaldehyde afforded compound 10. The synthesized compounds were evaluated as antioxidant additives for lube oil. Key words: Key words: Aminothiazole; Condensation; Antioxidant Additive

Nustar observation of the binary system 4U 0114+65

The high mass X-ray binary system 4U 0114+65 was observed by Nustar in October 2019, and by XMM-Newton in August 2015. Here we performed spectral and timing analysis of the Nustar observation, and carry out timing analysis on the XMM-Newton data. We measured the spin period of the neutron star from both observations and found a spin-up rate $\dot{p} = 1.54 \pm 0.38 \times 10^{-6} s s^{-1}$. During the Nustar observation two flares occured, one occured shortly after the start of the observation and the other near the end separated by a long period of low/quiescent- state. The large and sudden flares mostly resulted from accretion of Corotating Interaction Region (CIR) material. A common spectral model to HMXBs, powerlaw with high energy cutoff and absorption at low energy, gave a good fit to both flaring and quiescent states. A flourescent iron line was not required in fitting any of the states. On the other hand, very tentative evidence of Cyclotron Resonant Scattering Feature (CRSF) at $\sim$ 17 keV was found during fitting using cyclabs model, however fitting improvement was not significant enough to confirm its detection, plus a very narrow width (< 1 keV) was obtained for the line and its first harmonic. Visual inspection of the spectra showed a deficiency of emission near the expected first and second harmonic. Another important feature visually noticed in the spectra is the presence of hard tail above 50 keV. This could be explained by the shocked material bounding the CIR

Investigating 2d and 3d convolutions for multitemporal land cover classification using remote sensing images

With the availability of large amounts of satellite image time series (SITS), the identification of different materials of the Earth's surface is possible with a high temporal resolution. One of the basic tasks is the pixel-wise classification of land cover, i.e.The task of identifying the physical material of the Earth's surface in an image. Fully convolutional neural networks (FCN) are successfully used for this task. In this paper, we investigate different FCN variants, using different methods for the computation of spatial, spectral, and temporal features. We investigate the impact of 3D convolutions in the spatial-Temporal as well as in the spatial-spectral dimensions in comparison to 2D convolutions in the spatial dimensions only. Additionally, we introduce a new method to generate multitemporal input patches by using time intervals instead of fixed acquisition dates. We then choose the image that is closest in time to the middle of the corresponding time interval, which makes our approach more flexible with respect to the requirements for the acquisition of new data. Using these multi-Temporal input patches, generated from Sentinel-2 images, we improve the classification of land cover by 4% in the mean F1-score and 1.3% in the overall accuracy compared to a classification using mono-Temporal input patches. Furthermore, the usage of 3D convolutions instead of 2D convolutions improves the classification performance by a small amount of 0.4% in the mean F1-score and 1.2% in the overall accuracy

Contact mechanics for soft robotic fingers: modeling and experimentation

Human fingers possess mechanical characteristics, which enable them to manipulate objects. In robotics, the study of soft fingertip materials for manipulation has been going on for a while; however, almost all previous researches have been carried on hemispherical shapes whereas this study concentrates on the use of hemicylindrical shapes. These shapes were found to be more resistant to elastic deformations for the same materials. The purpose of this work is to generate a modified nonlinear contact-mechanics theory for modeling soft fingertips, which is proposed as a power-law equation. The contact area of a hemicylindrical soft fingertip is proportional to the normal force raised to the power of γcy, which ranges from 0 to 1/2. Subsuming the Timoshenko and Goodier (S. P. Timoshenko and J. N. Goodier, Theory of Elasticity, 3rd ed. (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1970) pp. 414-420) linear contact theory for cylinders confirms the proposed power equation. We applied a weighted least-squares curve fitting to analyze the experimental data for different types of silicone (RTV 23, RTV 1701, and RTV 240). Our experimental results supported the proposed theoretical prediction. Results for human fingers and hemispherical soft fingers were also compare

The effect of music on pain perception in women scheduled for elective cesarean section: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective: To study the effect of music on pain perception in women scheduled for elective cesarean section (CS) Search Strategy: We used the following keywords (“music” or “music therapy” and any of the following: cesarean section OR cesarean delivery OR CS OR cesarean OR Caesarean OR "post-op*) Selection Criteria: We included all studies satisfying the following criteria: (1) Population: pregnant women scheduled for cesarean section. (2) Intervention: the addition of any type of music to routine care compared with routine care alone. (3) Study design: randomized controlled trials (RCTs). We excluded the following: (1) non-randomized trials, (2) in vitro and animal studies, (3) studies in languages other than English, and (4) studies whose data were unreliable for extraction and analysis. Data Collection and Analysis: Data extraction was independently performed using a standardized form. In case of discrepancies, a consensus was reached after the involvement of the senior investigator. Then, data were extracted from assessed articles and entered RevMan software for meta-analysis. Main Results: Pooled data significantly favored the music group over the non-music one in terms of pain and anxiety scores (p<0.001). Heart rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressure did not differ significantly between both groups. Conclusion: Music can be used during, before, and after cesarean section to reduce associated pain and anxiety

Analyzing Three Decades of Philanthropic Giving to U.S. Higher Education (1988–2018)

This investigation explores trends in U.S. higher education philanthropy across 30 years, exploring giving by donor type, the purposes of the contributions, and institutional-type variation in philanthropy. We used a longitudinal national sample (1988–2018) of approximately 400 public and private institutions from the Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) survey. In the sample of mostly 4-year institutions, giving increased by an inflation-adjusted average of 3.6% annually and 175% overall, from $9.1 billion to$25.1 billion (2018 dollars). All donor types gave more dollars, gifts supported a broad range of purposes, and all institutional types benefited. Four notable trends include: an increase in the proportion of donations from organizations, and especially foundations, rather than individuals; an early shift in funding toward capital/endowment purposes but then back to current operations since 1998; designation of a larger proportion of funds for restricted, rather than unrestricted, purposes; and a higher proportion of dollars contributed to public, as compared to private institutions. Within sector trends reveal that increased giving to public institutions partly accounts for the rising proportions of both organizational donations and donations for current operations purposes. This study fills gaps in the scholarly literature about higher education philanthropy and provides information for institutional leaders to benchmark fundraising trends and prepare for the future

Upcycling Used Garments to Recreate Sustainable Fashion Designs Treated by Soil Release Finishing

Upcycled garments can have that independent appeal. No matter whom the designer is or what styling options designers choose, these upcycled fashion garments and accessories are by nature one-of-a kind. Finishing of textile fabric is carried out to increase attractiveness and/or serviceability of the fabric. Different finishing treatments are available to get various effects, which add value to the basic textile material, which can be better solutions for sustainable fashion. The sustainable fashion was achieved to a certain extent by using available materials to its ultimate USAge, using waste material, recycling of the products, planning second life for the fashion product, slowing down the fashion etc. The main idea to do so is to develop more sustainable and responsible designs. This paper is not just about recycled clothes but about fashion, recycling, upcycling, adding value and uniqueness by the resulting one-of-a-kind design available for women to purchase in any retail store. Create nine designs using waste garments treated by soil release finishing agent as a source of sustainable fashionable designs