Load-Bearing Capacity of the Footing Resting on a Reinforced Fly Ash Slope

In several parts of the world, disposal of waste materials such as fly ash is a great problem. Application of waste materials as structural fills in foundations is one of the best solutions to disposal problems, because wastes can be used in large volumes in such applications. There may be difficulty due to poor load-bearing capacity of fly ash, especially when footing rests on the top of the fly ash fill slope. Inclusion of polymeric reinforcements as horizontal sheets within the fill may be one of the most viable solutions to improving the load-bearing capacity of reinforced fly ash slope, and it is particularly important for the situations where foundations need to be located either on the top of a slope or on slope itself. The present work is aimed at investigating the efficacy of a single layer of reinforcement in improving the loadbearing capacity when it gets incorporated within the body of a model fly ash embankment slope. An increase in load bearing capacity due to the incorporation of reinforcement in the model slope was found by conducting laboratory tests. Experimental results were compared by numerical values obtained using software GEO5 and PLAXIS

Quasiperiodic layers of free-electron metals studied using electron diffraction

Using electron diffraction, we show that free-electron metals, such as sodium and potassium, form a highly regular quasiperiodic monolayer on the fivefold surface of icosahedral Al-Pd-Mn and that the quasiperiodicity propagates up to the second layer in sodium. Our photoelectron spectroscopy results show that the quasicrystalline alkali-metal adlayer does not exhibit a pseudogap near the Fermi level thought to be characteristic for the electronic structure of quasicrystalline materials. Calculations based on density functional theory provide a model structure for the quasicrystalline alkali-metal monolayer and confirm the absence of a pseudogap

Shift in Staphylococcus aureus Clone Linked to an Infected Tattoo

A retrospective investigation of skin and soft tissue infections caused by community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains among inmates in a Wisconsin correctional facility suggested a shift in MRSA genotype. Case timeline indicated a displacement of USA400 clone by USA300 clone. The USA300 index case was associated with an infected new tattoo

High Isolation Quad-Element SWB-MIMO Antenna with Dual Band-Notch for ISM and WLAN Band Wireless Applications

A quad-element super-wideband (2-20GHz) MIMO antenna including dual notched-band response at WiMAX (3.30-3.70GHz) and satellite-band (6.99-8.09GHz) is designed on RO3035 with total dimension of 118mm×86mm×1.67mm. Unique decoupling structure has been deployed to enhance the isolation (˃20dB) between two antenna elements. The fundamental properties of MIMO antennas like bandwidth ratio (10:1), isolation (>18dB), gain (4.14dB), Envelop Correlation-Coefficient (<0.0065), Total Active Reflection-Coefficient (< 0dB), Channel Capacity Loss (<0.25bps/Hz) and radiation patterns are also investigated in order to determine their practicality. Measurement and simulation results of the proposed SWB-MIMO antenna from 2 to 20GHz indicate that it will be the suitable candidate for wireless and biomedical applications

High Isolation Quad-Element SWB-MIMO Antenna with Dual Band-Notch for ISM and WLAN Band Wireless Applications

A quad-element super-wideband (2-20GHz) MIMO antenna including dual notched-band response at WiMAX (3.30-3.70GHz) and satellite-band (6.99-8.09GHz) is designed on RO3035 with total dimension of 118mm×86mm×1.67mm. Unique decoupling structure has been deployed to enhance the isolation (˃20dB) between two antenna elements. The fundamental properties of MIMO antennas like bandwidth ratio (10:1), isolation (>18dB), gain (4.14dB), Envelop Correlation-Coefficient (<0.0065), Total Active Reflection-Coefficient (< 0dB), Channel Capacity Loss (<0.25bps/Hz) and radiation patterns are also investigated in order to determine their practicality. Measurement and simulation results of the proposed SWB-MIMO antenna from 2 to 20GHz indicate that it will be the suitable candidate for wireless and biomedical applications

Risk factors of gallbladder cancer in Karachi-a case-control study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Gallbladder carcinoma (GC) is a relatively rare malignancy worldwide but is the second commonest gastrointestinal cancer in Pakistani women. Gallstones have a positive association with GC but other factors also influence in causation.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This is a retrospective case control study over a period of 19 years. The cases (Group A) were patients with histopathological proven carcinoma gallbladder (N = 60) and controls were patients with cholelithiasis but no carcinoma gallbladder on histopathology (N = 120). Multivariate regression analysis was done to calculate the odds ratio, 95% confidence interval and P-Value. A positive relationship was found between size of stone > 1 cm, solitary stone, age > 55 years and multi-parity in women.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There were 60 patients in Group A and 120 patients in Group B. mean age of diagnosis in Group A patients was 57 ± 2.4 years while mean age of diagnosis in Group B patients was 48 ± 1.35 years. Sixty seven percent of cancer group patients were female as compared to 78% females in non-cancer group. In Group A, 69% of female patients were multiparous (parity of more than 5) while 43% of group B patients were multiparous. For body mass index (BMI), both groups were not very different in our study population i.e. around 78% patients in each group has BMI of more than 23 Kg/m2. In Group A, 37% (n = 22) have solitary stones as compared to 15% (n = 18) in group B. similarly Group A patients has larger stone size as compared to Group B i.e.59% (n = 36) patients in Group A have stones of more than 1 cm when compared to 35% (n = 41) patients in Group B. After using multivariate regression analysis, age more than 55 years (OR - 7.27, p value- < 0.001), solitary stone (OR - 3.33, p value - 0.002) and stone of more than 1 cm (OR - 2.73, p value - 0.004) were found to be independent risk factors for development of gallbladder cancer.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Most of the patients (78%) with GC were female, and the statistically significant risk factors were older age, solitary stones and stones size more than one centimeter. A case can be made for prophylactic cholecystectomy in such a high risk group. However a population based study is required to calculate the true incidence of GC in Karachi and a prospective multi center study is needed to produce strong evidence for screening and prophylactic cholecystectomy.</p> <p>Trial Registration</p> <p>As this was a retrospective review of medical records, as per institution policy, its gives waiver from any registration (ethical/trial).</p

Brain extraction on MRI scans in presence of diffuse glioma: Multi-institutional performance evaluation of deep learning methods and robust modality-agnostic training

Brain extraction, or skull-stripping, is an essential pre-processing step in neuro-imaging that has a direct impact on the quality of all subsequent processing and analyses steps. It is also a key requirement in multi-institutional collaborations to comply with privacy-preserving regulations. Existing automated methods, including Deep Learning (DL) based methods that have obtained state-of-the-art results in recent years, have primarily targeted brain extraction without considering pathologically-affected brains. Accordingly, they perform sub-optimally when applied on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans with apparent pathologies such as brain tumors. Furthermore, existing methods focus on using only T1-weighted MRI scans, even though multi-parametric MRI (mpMRI) scans are routinely acquired for patients with suspected brain tumors. In this study, we present a comprehensive performance evaluation of recent deep learning architectures for brain extraction, training models on mpMRI scans of pathologically-affected brains, with a particular focus on seeking a practically-applicable, low computational footprint approach, generalizable across multiple institutions, further facilitating collaborations. We identified a large retrospective multi-institutional dataset of n=3340 mpMRI brain tumor scans, with manually-inspected and approved gold-standard segmentations, acquired during standard clinical practice under varying acquisition protocols, both from private institutional data and public (TCIA) collections. To facilitate optimal utilization of rich mpMRI data, we further introduce and evaluate a novel ‘‘modality-agnostic training’’ technique that can be applied using any available modality, without need for model retraining. Our results indicate that the modality-agnostic approach1 obtains accurate results, providing a generic and practical tool for brain extraction on scans with brain tumors

A Timescale for Evolution, Population Expansion, and Spatial Spread of an Emerging Clone of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus

Due to the lack of fossil evidence, the timescales of bacterial evolution are largely unknown. The speed with which genetic change accumulates in populations of pathogenic bacteria, however, is a key parameter that is crucial for understanding the emergence of traits such as increased virulence or antibiotic resistance, together with the forces driving pathogen spread. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a common cause of hospital-acquired infections. We have investigated an MRSA strain (ST225) that is highly prevalent in hospitals in Central Europe. By using mutation discovery at 269 genetic loci (118,804 basepairs) within an international isolate collection, we ascertained extremely low diversity among European ST225 isolates, indicating that a recent population bottleneck had preceded the expansion of this clone. In contrast, US isolates were more divergent, suggesting they represent the ancestral population. While diversity was low, however, our results demonstrate that the short-term evolutionary rate in this natural population of MRSA resulted in the accumulation of measurable DNA sequence variation within two decades, which we could exploit to reconstruct its recent demographic history and the spatiotemporal dynamics of spread. By applying Bayesian coalescent methods on DNA sequences serially sampled through time, we estimated that ST225 had diverged since approximately 1990 (1987 to 1994), and that expansion of the European clade began in 1995 (1991 to 1999), several years before the new clone was recognized. Demographic analysis based on DNA sequence variation indicated a sharp increase of bacterial population size from 2001 to 2004, which is concordant with the reported prevalence of this strain in several European countries. A detailed ancestry-based reconstruction of the spatiotemporal dispersal dynamics suggested a pattern of frequent transmission of the ST225 clone among hospitals within Central Europe. In addition, comparative genomics indicated complex bacteriophage dynamics