The use of Kernig’s and Brudzinski’s sign in determining Meningitis: A Review

Objective: Assess the diagnostic value of Kernig’s and Brudzinski’s signs in determining meningitis among individuals aged 18 to 64. Design: Systematic literature review. Methods: Searches done in PubMed utilizing the terms Kernig and Brudzinski. In PubMed, studies were excluded if not in English, older than 2000 or done on animals, and meta-analyses. Results: Three studies were found including Nakao JH, et al, Thomas KE, et al, and Waghdhare S, et al. Conclusion: Kernig’s and Brudzinski’s signs have high specificity but yield a low sensitivity in determining meningitis. They are great tools to be utilized by medical providers, but only support the diagnosis of meningitis when positive

Alcohol and gastrointestinal microbiota

Aşırı alkolkullanımı sebep olduğu çeşitli patolojik sorunlar nedeniyle günümüzde küreselbir sorundur. Yapılan çalışmalar göstermektedir ki; aşırı alkol kullanımıbağırsak mikrobiyotasında disbiyotik değişikliklere neden olabilmektedir.Mikrobiyotanın, özellikle de gastrointestinal mikrobiyotanın birçok hastalığıngelişiminde kilit rol oynadığı son yıllarda yapılan çalışmalarlagösterilmiştir. Kronik alkol kullanımı, bağırsaktaki artan oksidatif stres yüküyoluyla bağırsak bariyerini bozarak ve bağırsak aşırı geçirgenliğinde artışaneden olmaktadır. Artmış olan bu bağırsak aşırı geçirgenliği, endotoksin gibiproinflamatuar/patojen mikrobiyal ürünlerin portal ven vasıtasıyla bağırsaklümeninden karaciğere geçişine izin verir. Bu bakteriyel ürünlere maruziyetsonucunda karaciğerde inflamasyon gelişebilir. Kronik alkol kullanımınınbağırsak mikrobiyotası üzerine etkileri konusunda insan ve hayvanlarda yapılançalışmalar son derece az olmasına rağmen önemli veriler sağlamaktadır.Gelecekte daha fazla çalışma ile alkolün bağırsak mikrobiyotası üzerine etkileriçok daha iyi anlaşılabilecektir. Bu derlemede, alkol tüketiminingastrointestinal sistem mikrobiyotası üzerindeki etkileri incelenecektir.  Due tovarious pathological problems caused by excessive alcohol use, it is a globalproblem nowadays. Studies done shows that; Excessive alcohol consumption cancause disbiotic changes in the intestinal microbiota. Recent studies have shownthat microbiota plays a key role in the development of many diseases,especially gastrointestinal microbiota. Chronic alcohol use causes an increasein intestinal over permeability by disrupting the intestinal barrier throughincreased oxidative stress loading in the intestine. This increased intestinalover permeability allows the passage of proinflammatory/pathogenic microbialproducts such as endotoxin through the intestinal lumen to the liver via theportal vein. Exposure to these bacterial products may cause inflammation in theliver. Although human and animal studies on the effects of chronic alcohol useon intestinal microbiota are extremely rare, they provide important data.Further studies in the future will be able to better understand the effects onalcohol intestinal microbiota. In this review, the effects of alcoholconsumption on the microbiota of the gastrointestinal tract will be examined

Estimating soot emission in diesel engines using gated recurrent unit networks

In this paper, a new data-driven modeling of a diesel engine soot emission formation using gated recurrent unit (GRU) networks is proposed. Different from the traditional time series prediction methods such as nonlinear autoregressive with exogenous input (NARX) approach, GRU structure does not require the determination of the pure time delay between the inputs and the output, and the number of regressors does not have to be chosen beforehand. Gates in a GRU network enable to capture such dependencies on the past input values without any prior knowledge. As a design of experiment, 30 different points in engine speed - injected fuel quantity plane are determined and the rest of the input channels, i.e., rail pressure, main start of injection, equivalence ratio, and intake oxygen concentration are excited with chirp signals in the intended regions of operation. Experimental results show that the prediction performances of GRU based soot models are quite satisfactory with 77% training and 57% validation fit accuracies and normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) values are less than 0.038 and 0.069, respectively. GRU soot models surpass the traditional NARX based soot models in both steady-state and transient cycles

Building a Time Server with RaspberryPI & GPS, Connecting with a Free Web GIS Software

In this study, we have organized a revival project for Time Synchronization and used a Raspberry PI & GPS Module to capture The GPS Signal and parsed the Signal for building NTP Server. After building NTP Server, we are going to make a GPS handset by adding touch screens to our Raspberry Pis and we\u27re going to use this handset for locating the trees at the Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute Campus. At the end, collected the data will be used at the free and open source web GIS software for our project

Predicting NOx emissions in diesel engines via sigmoid NARX models using a new experiment design for combustion identification

Diesel engines are still widely used in heavy-duty engine industry because of their high energy conversion efficiency. In recent decades, governmental institutions limit the maximum acceptable hazardous emissions of diesel engines by stringent international regulations, which enforces engine manufacturers to find a solution for reducing the emissions while keeping the power requirements. A reliable model of the diesel engine combustion process can be quite useful to search for the best engine operating conditions. In this study, nonlinear modeling of a heavy-duty diesel engine NOx emission formation is presented. As a new experiment design, air-path and fuel-path input channels were excited by chirp signals where the frequency profile of each channel is different in terms of the number and the direction of the sweeps. This method is proposed as an alternative to the steady-state experiment design based modeling approach to substantially reduce testing time and improve modeling accuracy in transient operating conditions. Sigmoid based nonlinear autoregressive with exogenous input (NARX) model is employed to predict NOx emissions with given input set under both steady-state and transient cycles. Models for different values of parameters are generated to analyze the sensitivity to parameter changes and a parameter selection method using an easy-to-interpret map is proposed to find the best modeling parameters. Experimental results show that the steady-state and the transient validation accuracies for the majority of the obtained models are higher than 80% and 70%, respectively

The effects of functional electrical stimulation cycling on gait parameters in diplegic cerebral palsy: a single-blind randomized controlled trial

PurposeTo investigate the effects of functional electrical stimulation cycling (FES-C) training in addition to conventional physical therapy on gait, muscle strength, gross motor function, and energy expenditure in ambulatory children with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy.Materials and methodsTwenty children with diplegic cerebral palsy were randomly assigned to FES-C group (n = 10) or control group (n = 10). Subjects trained 3 days/week for 8 weeks. Control group received conventional physical therapy. The FES-C group additionally received FES-C training. The functional muscle test was used for muscle strength assessment. Vicon-3D system was used for gait analysis. Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM-88) was used for motor function assessment and calorimeter was used for energy expenditure. Measurements were performed at the baseline, at the eight week and at the sixteenth week.ResultsFunctional muscle strength, gross motor function, and energy expenditure improved more in the FES-C group after training and follow up (p 0.05). Pelvic tilt while walking decreased after training in the FES-C group (p < 0.05).ConclusionsFES-C applied in addition to conventional physical therapy in children with diplegic cerebral palsy is more effective than conventional physical therapy for increasing functional muscle strength, improving gross motor function functions, and reducing energy expenditure

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio