Does inhalation injury increase the mortality rate in burn patients? Investigation of relationship between inhalation injury and severity of burn surface

Objective. Inhalation injury accounts for 20% to 80% of deaths in burn patients due to severe cardiopulmonary distress not seen in cutaneous injury alone. However, there are few comparative studies or retrospective analyses of the injury severity or deaths of patients with inhalation injury. Methods. We evaluated 59 patients (31 with inhalation injury and 27 without inhalation injury) who had sustained a severe burn injury and were treated in the intensive care unit at our medical center from 2004 through 2006. Of the 31 patients with inhalation injury, 14 (45.2%) died, and of the 27 without inhalation injury, 4 (16.7%) died. Results. We investigated specific aspects of the severity and mortality of burn patients. The median (mean) burn index in patients without and with inhalation injury were 45 and 50 points (17.9 and 34.4), and the median (mean) prognostic burn index scores between patients with and without inhalation injury were 88.5 and 55.5 points (86.8 and 69.4). The median (mean) prognostic burn index scores in surviving patients with and without inhalation injury were 49.5 and 67 points (60.0 and 70.0), which suggest that patients with inhalation injury sustained significantly more severe cutaneous burns than did patients without inhalation injury. Conclusions. We conclude that inhalation injury alone may be fatal, but many patients with inhalation injury also sustain more severe cutaneous burns, which can further increase the mortality rate

Development of a low-alpha-emitting {\mu}-PIC for NEWAGE direction-sensitive dark-matter search

NEWAGE is a direction-sensitive dark-matter-search experiment that uses a micro-patterned gaseous detector, or {\mu}-PIC, as the readout. The main background sources are {\alpha}-rays from radioactive contaminants in the {\mu}-PIC. We have therefore developed a low-alpha-emitting {\mu}-PICs and measured its performances. We measured the surface {\alpha}-ray emission rate of the {\mu}-PIC in the Kamioka mine using a surface {\alpha}-ray counter based on a micro TPC.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Study of Negative-Ion TPC Using {\mu}-PIC for Directional Dark Matter Search

Negative-ion time projection chambers(TPCs) have been studied for low-rate and high-resolution applications such as dark matter search experiments. Recently, a full volume fiducialization in a self-triggering TPC was realized. This innovative technology demonstrated a significant reduction in the background with MWPC-TPCs. We studied negative-ion TPC using the {\mu}-PIC+GEM system and obtained sufficient gas gain with CS$_{2}$gas and SF$_{6}$ gas at low pressures. We expect an improvement in detector sensitivity and angular resolution with better electronics

Produção de material didático em educação a distância

Orientadora : Onilza Borges MartinsMonografia (especialização) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Especialização em Formação de Professores em Educação a Distânci

An Open-Source Library for the Numerical Modeling of Mass-Transfer in Solid-Oxide Fuel Cells

The generation of direct current electricity using Solid Oxidize Fuel Cells (SOFCs) involves several interplaying transport phenomena. Their simulation is crucial for the design and optimization of reliable and competitive equipment, and for the eventual market deployment of this technology. An open-source library for the computational modeling of mass-transport phenomena in SOFCs is presented in this article. It includes several multicomponent mass-transport models (ie Fickian, Stefan-Maxwell and Dusty Gas Model), which can be applied both within porous media and in porosity-free domains, and several diffusivity models for gases. The library has been developed for its use with OpenFOAM(R), a widespread open-source code for fluid and continuum mechanics. The library can be used to model any fluid flow configuration involving multi-component transport phenomena and it is validated in this paper against the analytical solution of one-dimensional test cases. In addition, it is applied for the simulation of a real SOFC and further validated using experimental dat