Sacral Fracture Causing Neurogenic Bladder: A Case Report

A 76-year-old man presented with a Denis Zone III sacral fracture after a traffic accident. He also developed urinary retention and perineal numbness. The patient was diagnosed with neurogenic bladder dysfunction caused by the sacral fracture. A computed tomogram (CT) revealed that third sacral lamina was fractured and displaced into the spinal canal, but vertebral body did not displace. The fracture lines began at the center of lamina and extended bilateraly. The fracture pattern was unique. The sacrum was osteoporosis, and this fracture may be based on osteoporosis. We performed laminectomy to decompress sacral nerve roots. One month after surgery, the patient was able to urinate. Three months after surgery, his bladder function recovered normally. One year after surgery, he returned to a normal daily life and had no complaints regarding urination. One-year postoperative CT showed the decompressed third sacrum without displacement

Machine learning thermal circuit network model for thermal design optimization of electronic circuit board layout with transient heating chips

This paper describes a method combining Bayesian optimization (BO) and a lamped-capacitance thermal circuit network model that is effective for speeding up the thermal design optimization of an electronic circuit board layout with transient heating chips. As electronic devices have become smaller and more complex, the importance of thermal design optimization to ensure heat dissipation performance has increased. However, such thermal design optimization is difficult because it is necessary to consider various trade-offs associated with packaging and transient temperature changes of heat-generating components. This study aims to improve the performance of thermal design optimization by artificial intelligence. BO using a Gaussian process was combined with the lamped-capacitance thermal circuit network model, and its performance was verified by case studies. As a result, BO successfully found the ideal circuit board layout as well as particle swarm optimization (PSO) and genetic algorithm (GA) could. The CPU time for BO was 1/5 and 1/4 of that for PSO and GA, respectively. In addition, BO found a non-intuitive optimal solution in approximately 7 minutes from 10 million layout patterns. It was estimated that this was 1/1000 of the CPU time required for analyzing all layout patterns.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure

A PRIVACY MANAGEMENT ARCHITECTURE FOR PATIENT-CONTROLLED PERSONAL HEALTH RECORD SYSTEM

Patient-controlled personal health record systems can help make health care safer, cheaper, and more convenient by facilitating patients to 1) grant any care provider access to their complete personal health records anytime from anywhere, 2) avoid repeated tests and 3) control their privacy transparently. In this paper, we present the architecture of our Privacy-aware Patient-controlled Personal Health Record (P3HR) system through which a patient can view her integrated health history, and share her health information transparently with others (e.g., healthcare providers). Access to the health information of a particular patient is completely controlled by that patient. We also carry out intuitive security and privacy analysis of the P3HR system architecture considering different types of security attacks. Finally, we describe a prototype implementation of the P3HR system that we developed reflecting the special view of Japanese society. The most important advantage of P3HR system over other existing systems is that most likely P3HR system provides complete privacy protection without losing data accuracy. Unlike traditional partially anonymous health records (e.g., using k-anonymity or l-diversity), the health records in P3HR are closer to complete anonymity, and yet preserve data accuracy. Our approach makes it very unlikely that patients could be identified by an attacker from their anonymous health records in the P3HR system

The Specific Sagittal Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Intradural Extra-Arachnoid Lumbar Disc Herniation

Intradural extra-arachnoid lumbar disc herniation is a rare disease. Few MRI findings have been reported. We experienced an intradural extra-arachnoid lumbar disc herniation. We reviewed the preoperative MRI findings. Lumbar spine T2-weighted sagittal MRI showed that one line of the ventral dura was divided into two by a disc herniation. We speculated that the two lines comprised the dura and arachnoid and that a disc herniation existed between them. We believe that division of the ventral dural line on T2-weighted sagittal images is a characteristic finding of intradural extra-arachnoid lumbar disc herniation. The division of ventral dural line seemed to be a “Y,” and, thus, we called it the “Y sign.” The “Y sign” may be useful for diagnosing intradural extra-arachnoid lumbar disc herniation

Thermodynamic Analysis of Expansion Profile for Displacement-type Expander in Low-temperature Rankine Cycle

Thermodynamic analysis of the isentropic and polytropic expansion profiles of typical working fluids was carried out in order to design a highly efficient displacement-type expander for a low-temperature Rankine cycle. First, expansion profiles were analyzed for three typical working fluids: HFC245fa, ammonia, and supercritical CO 2. The hot-side temperature ranged from 60 ° to 120 °C, and the cold-side temperature was 10 °C. In the analysis, isentropic and polytropic expansion processes were assumed to behave thermodynamically. In the analysis results, we noted similarities among the expansion profiles for different hot-side temperatures. This similarity allowed us to introduce the unique concept of a variable mechanism for expansion profile fitting in displacement-type expanders. This variable expansion mechanism can be achieved by simply adjusting the position of the inlet and/or outlet port of the expander. © 2010 by JSME

Sm-Nd isotopic systematics of lherzolitic shergottite Yamato-793605

We have undertaken Sm-Nd isotopic studies on Yamato-793605 lherzolitic shergottite. The Sm-Nd internal isochron obtained for acid leachates and residues of whole-rock and separated mineral fractions yields an age of 185±16Ma with an initial εNd value of +9.7±0.2. The obtained Sm-Nd age is, within analytical errors, identical to the Rb-Sr age of this meteorite as well as to the previous Rb-Sr and Sm-Nd ages of Allan Hills-77005 and Lewis Cliff 88516, although the ε_(Nd) values are not identical to each other. Elemental abundances of lithophile trace elements remain nearly unaffected by aqueous alteration on the Martian surface. The isotopic systems of lherzolitic shergottites, thus, are considered to be indigenous, although disturbances by shock metamorphism are clearly observed. "Young ages of ～180Ma" have been consistently obtained from this and previous Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd and U-Pb isotopic studies and appear to represent crystallization events