An evaluation of innovative countermeasures for pedestrian safety

The objective of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of innovative countermeasures deployed to help improve pedestrian safety and walkability. Potential countermeasures evaluated in this research include: (1) a portable speed trailer, (2) a high visibility crosswalks, (3) advance yield markings, (4) yield here to pedestrians signs, (5) in-roadway knockdown signs, (6) danish offsets, (7) median refuges, (8) intelligent transportation system (ITS) based automatic pedestrian detection device, (9) smart lighting, (10) pedestrian activated flashing lights; A before-and-after analysis strategy was be used to evaluate the selected countermeasures. Measures of effectiveness (MOEs) identified to evaluate the impacts of these countermeasures, include pedestrians\u27 and motorists\u27 behaviors. Data were collected immediately prior to the installation of each countermeasure during AM and PM peak periods and two weeks after the installation of each countermeasure. The results were evaluated for their statistical significance; Results from the analyses of the data showed that the installation of high visibility crosswalk, advance yield markings, yield here to pedestrians signs, median refuge, danish offset, in-roadway knockdown signs were effective in the following ways: increase motorists\u27 yielding, diverted pedestrians, pedestrians who look for vehicles before beginning to cross and before crossing second half of the street. These countermeasures also resulted in fewer vehicles blocking the crosswalk, reducing average pedestrian delay and decreasing the number of pedestrians trapped in the roadway. Also, drivers yielded at greater distances upstream of the crosswalk. The average vehicle speed was reduced upstream and downstream of the location of the portable speed trailer. The installation of ITS based automatic pedestrian detection device and smart lighting resulted in fewer pedestrians trapped in the roadway and increased driver yielding behavior. The countermeasures at a mid-block location showed positive safety benefits in motorists\u27 and pedestrians\u27 behaviors; The improvements in MOEs for both motorists\u27 and pedestrians\u27 behaviors are positive and statistically significant in most cases. The findings from this research may be of value to other regions with similar characteristics

Use of alloy 800H for applications in hydrogen generation using nuclear power

Alloy 800H, a candidate structural material for heat-exchangers to be used in nuclear hydrogen generation, was investigated for its high-temperature tensile properties and corrosion behavior. The tensile properties evaluated at different temperatures indicate that Alloy 800H was capable of maintaining high strength up to 600°C followed by its reduction in yield strength and ultimate tensile strength beyond this temperature. Further, the ductility was reduced at some critical temperatures, possibly due to the dynamic strain aging effect. Alloy 800H did not exhibit cracking in acidic aqueous solutions, both under constant-load and self-loaded conditions. Slight reductions in the true failure stress, percent elongation, percent reduction in area, and time-to-failure were observed when tested under a slow-strain-rate condition. The critical potentials became more active with increasing temperature determined by an electrochemical technique. The effect of anodic applied potential was more pronounced on the cracking susceptibility. Dimpled microstructures, characteristic of ductile failure, with some intergranular cracks were observed in the tested specimens. Typical austenitic grains with annealing twins and precipitates were observed in the microstructure

Accelerated Iterative Algorithms with Asynchronous Accumulative Updates on a Heterogeneous Cluster

In recent years with the exponential growth in web-based applications the amount of data generated has increased tremendously. Quick and accurate analysis of this \u27big data\u27 is indispensable to make better business decisions and reduce operational cost. The challenges faced by modern day data centers to process big data are multi fold: to keep up the pace of processing with increased data volume and increased data velocity, deal with system scalability and reduce energy costs. Today\u27s data centers employ a variety of distributed computing frameworks running on a cluster of commodity hardware which include general purpose processors to process big data. Though better performance in terms of big data processing speed has been achieved with existing distributed computing frameworks, there is still an opportunity to increase processing speed further. FPGAs, which are designed for computationally intensive tasks, are promising processing elements that can increase processing speed. In this thesis, we discuss how FPGAs can be integrated into a cluster of general purpose processors running iterative algorithms and obtain high performance. In this thesis, we designed a heterogeneous cluster comprised of FPGAs and CPUs and ran various benchmarks such as PageRank, Katz and Connected Components to measure the performance of the cluster. Performance improvement in terms of execution time was evaluated against a homogeneous cluster of general purpose processors and a homogeneous cluster of FPGAs. We built multiple four-node heterogeneous clusters with different configurations by varying the number of CPUs and FPGAs. We studied the effects of load balancing between CPUs and FPGAs. We obtained a speedup of 20X, 11.5X and 2X for PageRank, Katz and Connected Components benchmarks on a cluster cluster configuration of 2 CPU + 2 FPGA for an unbalancing ratio against a 4-node homogeneous CPU cluster. We studied the effect of input graph partitioning, and showed that when the input is a Multilevel-KL partitioned graph we obtain an improvement of 11%, 26% and 9% over randomly partitioned graph for Katz, PageRank and Connected Components benchmarks on a 2 CPU + 2 FPGA cluster

Haglund’s disease: surgical outcome of calcaneal osteotomy

Background: The aim of the present study was to assess the surgical outcome of Haglund’s disease by calcaneal osteotomy.Methods: 23 cases of Haglund’s disease who failed to respond to conservative treatment were considered for surgery. Parallel pitch lines were drawn in the lateral view radiograph of the calcaneum and the bursal projection to be resected was assessed. All cases were surgically treated with calcaneal osteotomy through lateral approach and followed.Results: 23 cases of Haglund’s disease were treated with this procedure and 21 were available for follow up. The mean follow-up was 15 months. The mean preoperative AOFAS score of 60.57 points (SD= 3.23) and postoperative score of 88.71 points (SD= 3.92) was obtained. Three minor complications were noted. Conclusions: The results of the current study suggest that calcaneal ostectomy produces outcomes that justify surgical intervention in cases of Haglund’s disease

EVALUATION OF ANTIDIABETIC ACTIVITY OF ZANTHOXYLUM OVALIFOLIUM LEAF EXTRACTS

Objective: The present study was aimed to investigate the antidiabetic activity of ethanolic and aqueous extract of Zanthoxylum ovalifolium on alloxan induced diabetic rat model in rats. Methods: The leaves of Zanthoxylum ovalifolium were evaluated for antidiabetic activity by using alloxan induced diabetic model in diabetic rats. Diabetes was induced by single intraperitoneal injection of alloxan (100 mg/kg) and rats were treated orally with test extracts, standard drug (glibenclamide 5 mg/kg) and vehicle for 21 d. The hypoglycemic effects and lipid profile of diabetic rats were assessed using diagnostic kits. Finally, histopathological studies were carried out for pancreas. Results: The acute toxicity studies revealed at the dose of 2000 mg/kg (b. w) of Zanthoxylum ovalifolium for ethanol and aqueous extract were found to be safe. A significant reduction (p<0.001) in blood glucose was observed in diabetic rats treated with different doses of extracts compared to untreated diabetic rats. The drug possesses a good hyperlipidemic effect by normalizing the lipid parameters. This was evidenced by histopathological studies; both glibenclamide and 400 mg/kg of Ethanolic extract does appear to be regulated diabetes at the cellular level, resulting in the restoration of near normal architecture pancreatic islet of langerhans. Conclusion: It can be concluded from our research findings that ethanolic and aqueous extract of Zanthoxylum ovalifoliumat high dose (400 mg/kg) exhibited significant antihyperglycemic activity than extract at low dose (200 mg/kg) in alloxan induced diabetic rats. These extracts also showed improvement in parameters like lipid profile as well as regeneration β-cells in the pancreas and so might be of value in diabetes treatment

Comparison of the protein fractions of finger millet

Sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) has been employed to resolve protein subunits of finger millet (Eleusine coracana) varieties according to their MW. These studies have established that varietal differences exist in the protein composition of finger millet varieties. The MW distribution of the protein subunits in the albumin-globulin, prolamin and glutelin fractions show many differences between the parental and cross-bred varieties and these differences are greater in the albumin-globulin and glutelin fractions than in the prolamin fraction. The amino acid compositions of the protein fractions show some differences between varieties. © 1978

Glutathione S-Transferase activity and total thiol status in chronic alcohol abusers before and 30 days after alcohol abstinence

Background: Glutathione S Transferase (GST) has been involved in detoxification process in the liver and its activity has been shown to be increased in alcohol abusers. In the current work we measured the GST activity, total thiol status, AST, ALT, and direct bilirubin in chronic alcohol abusers before and 30 days after alcohol abstinence and lifestyle modification. Methods: Serum and urine GST activity and total thiol status were determined using spectrophotometric methods and serum transaminases were determined using clinical chemistry analyzer. Results: We found,significant increase in serum and urine GST (p<0.001), AST (p<0.001), ALT (p<0.001), and decrease in total thiol status (p<0.001) in chronic alcohol abusers. GST activity significantly decreased (p<0.001) and total thiol status were improved significantly (p<0.001) 30 days after alcohol abstinence and lifestyle modification. Conclusion: This study provides preliminary data to suggest the role of GST as prognostic indicator of alcohol abstinence with possible trend towards an improvement in liver function

Relationship between tannin levels and in vitro protein digestibility in finger millet (Eleusine coracana Gaertn.)

Determination of the total phenol and tannin levels of finger millet varieties indicated wide variations in phenolic contents. White-grain varieties had lower phenolic content than the brown-grain varieties. In vitro protein digestibility values of low tannin samples were higher than those of the high tannin samples. Dehulling had the effect of removing most of the phenolics from finger millet grain with concomitant increase in vitro protein digestibility. Addition of tannic acid to low tannin or dehulled finger millet samples decreased the in vitro protein digestibility. Tannins were found to be associated mostly with the glutelin fraction of finger millet protein

Total laparoscopic hysterectomy versus vaginal hysterectomy: a retrospective study

Background: Total laparoscopic hysterectomy (TLH) is now emerging as a safe procedure even in patients suitable for vaginal hysterectomy (VH) due to its advantages like better visualisation, less post-operative pain and shorter hospital stay. This study was done to compare the duration of surgery, intra-operative and postoperative complications, hospital stay and post-operative analgesia requirement in TLH and VH.Methods: A retrospective study of women undergoing TLH and VH between June 2013 and September 2014 in JSS Hospital, Mysore was done. Patients with suspected genital malignancy and uterine prolapse were excluded. Baseline characteristics like age, BMI, parity, indication for hysterectomy, uterine size and previous pelvic surgeries were noted. Intra-operative and post-operative parameters like duration of surgery, complications, post-operative analgesic dosage and hospital stay were compared between the two surgeries and the results were analysed using Chi square test and independent t test.Results: The mean time taken to perform TLH was significantly longer, i.e. 113.46 minutes compared with VH, i.e. 61.18 minutes ( p <0.0001). But the duration of stay in the hospital was shorter for the women undergoing TLH, mean duration being 3.74 days as opposed to 5.85 days in women undergoing VH  (p<0.0001). Also, women undergoing VH required more analgesic doses (mean 1.79) than those undergoing TLH (mean 1.36). When we studied the rate of complications in both the groups, we found no statistically significant difference.Conclusions: TLH was as safe as VH and had advantages like shorter hospital stay and reduced analgesia dose.