Analysis of medicine consumption in peacekeeping level II hospitals

Background: The peacekeeping military units of contributing countries are unfamiliar with the conditions prevailing in foreign mission areas and therefore have difficulties with medical supplies storage.Aim: The aim of this study is to provide reasonable and practical guidance on the maintenance of medical supplies in the peacekeeping military units of contributing countries.Materials and methods: A total of 1,972 prescriptions were received by the pharmacy in the peacekeeping level II hospital in the Republic of Sudan from February to July of 2009 including a total of 186 drug categories and 17,713 minimum packing units. Pairwise comparison was performed using the c2 test. When thetotal number of samples was smaller than 40, the Fisher’s exact test was adopted for pairwise comparison.Results: The majority of the consumed medicines mainly belonged to 6 categories, including specialty drugs, anti-microbial drugs, Chinese patent medicines, gastrointestinal drugs, central nervous system drugs, and drugs regulating fluids, electrolytes, and acid-base balance. Altogether, the drugs in the 6 categories accounted for 74% of all consumed medicines that were divided into a total of 20 categories.Conclusions: Medicine consumption in peacekeeping level II hospitals is unique, therefore the drugs used in military medical facilities should be prepared according to their actual needs in the area of peacekeeping operations

Relaxation behavior of biaxially stretched PLA film during the heat setting stage

In this paper, the relaxation behavior of polylactic acid (PLA) film in the heat-setting stage of biaxial stretching was studied. Firstly, the polylactic acid casting films were stretched synchronously in different ratios. We found that the Machine direction (MD) and Transverse direction (TD) stress relaxation curves exhibited a separation trend with the increase in the stretching ratio, and the relaxation amplitude increased gradually. Then, the stress relaxation curves were fitted by the expansion exponential equation (KWW equation). The results showed that the coefficient used to characterize the homogeneity of stress relaxation increased with the increase in the stretching ratio, and the homogeneity in Machine direction was better than that in Transverse direction. Finally, we analyzed the evolution of rheological units and the activation energy spectrum during stress relaxation. We found that the volume of rheological units gradually decreased with the increase in the stretching ratio. The activation energy spectrum exhibited a Gaussian distribution, and the symmetry axis of distribution curves shifted to the high energy. The above results would be of great significance in further understanding the deformation mechanism of polylactic acid film during biaxial stretching and providing theoretical guidance for the preparation of high-performance BOPLA films

The association between physical activity and fear of falling among community-dwelling older women in China: the mediating role of physical fitness

BackgroundThis study aimed to explore the association between physical activity (PA) and fear of falling (FOF) and to determine whether this relationship was mediated by physical fitness (PF) in community-dwelling older women.MethodsFor this cross-sectional study, a total of 1,108 older women were recruited. Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and light physical activity (LPA) were objectively measured by accelerometers. Physical fitness indicators including body mass index (BMI), forced vital capacity, choice reaction time, grip strength, sit and reach, and five times sit-to-stand were measured. FOF was evaluated by the Chinese version of the activities-specific balance confidence scale. A stepwise linear regression model analysis was used for mediation analysis, and bootstrap analysis was used to verify the mediation effects.ResultThe Pearson correlation coefficient results suggested that MVPA was significantly and negatively correlated with FOF while LPA was not correlated with FOF. Logistic regression analysis suggested a significant association between MVPA, BMI, forced vital capacity, choice reaction time, sit and reach, grip strength, five times sit-to-stand, and FOF. The mediation analysis showed a negative relationship between MVPA and FOF. BMI completely mediated the relationship between MVPA and FOF while sit and reach, five times sit-to-stand, and forced vital capacity partially mediated the relationship between MVPA and FOF.ConclusionAccumulation of more daily MVPA was associated with reducing the odds of FOF in community-dwelling older women. PF indicators fully or partially mediate the relationship between MVPA and FOF. Therefore, more intervention efforts should focus on the promotion of MVPA to improve PF and thus reduce FOF among older women

Oxygen-deficient SnO2 nanoparticles with ultrathin carbon shell for efficient electrocatalytic N2 reduction

For high-efficiency NH3 synthesis via ambient-condition electrohydrogenation of inert N2, it is pivotal to ingeniously design an active electrocatalyst with multiple features of abundant surfacial deficiency, good conductivity and large surface area. Here, oxygen-deficient SnO2 nanoparticles encapsulated by ultrathin carbon layer (d-SnO2@C) are developed by hydrothermal deposition coupled with annealing process, as promising catalysts for ambient electrocatalytic N2 reduction. d-SnO2@C exhibits high activity and excellent selectivity for electrocatalytic conversion of N2 to NH3 in acidic electrolytes, with Faradic efficiency as high as 12.7% at ???0.15 V versus the reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) and large NH3 yield rate of 16.68 ??g h???1 mgcat???1 at ???0.25 V vs. RHE in 0.1 mol L???1 HCl. Benefiting from the structural superiority of enhanced charge transfer efficiency and optimized surface states, d-SnO2@C also achieves excellent long-term stability

The Second Monocular Depth Estimation Challenge

This paper discusses the results for the second edition of the Monocular Depth Estimation Challenge (MDEC). This edition was open to methods using any form of supervision, including fully-supervised, self-supervised, multi-task or proxy depth. The challenge was based around the SYNS-Patches dataset, which features a wide diversity of environments with high-quality dense ground-truth. This includes complex natural environments, e.g. forests or fields, which are greatly underrepresented in current benchmarks. The challenge received eight unique submissions that outperformed the provided SotA baseline on any of the pointcloud- or image-based metrics. The top supervised submission improved relative F-Score by 27.62%, while the top self-supervised improved it by 16.61%. Supervised submissions generally leveraged large collections of datasets to improve data diversity. Self-supervised submissions instead updated the network architecture and pretrained backbones. These results represent a significant progress in the field, while highlighting avenues for future research, such as reducing interpolation artifacts at depth boundaries, improving self-supervised indoor performance and overall natural image accuracy.Comment: Published at CVPRW202

The Mean First Passage Time of the Stochastic Resonance Driven by Dual-Sequence-Frequency-Hopping Signal and Noise

The mean first passage time (MFPT) represents the dynamic characteristic of stochastic resonance (SR). The study focuses on how can the Dual-Sequence-Frequency-Hopping (DSFH) signal influence the MFPT and any difficulty in solving the MFPT problem considering the DSFH signal. In this current study, the SR system driven by DSFH signal and Gaussian white noise is described with the parameters of the signal amplitude, the frequency of Intermediate Frequency (IF) of the receptive DSFH signal, the SR system parameter, scale transformation coefficient, the noise intensity, and the sampling multiple, firstly. Secondly, under the assumption that MFPT is small aqueous about the domain of 0, the nonautonomous differential equation with MFPT is transformed to a nonhomogeneous differential equation with one unknown variable coefficient of second order. Finally, the numerical solution of MFPT can be obtained by the method of Runge–Kutta. Theoretical and simulation results are shown as below: (1) the effect of the signal amplitude, the IF frequency, the noise intensity, the SR system parameter, and the scale transformation coefficient, for decrease the MFPT, are positive; however, the effect of the sampling multiple is negative; (2) the MFPT cannot follow the dynamic period of the SR controlled by the IF frequency, when SNR is low; (3) when SNR = −12 dB, the sampling multiple is 200, the IF frequency is 2100, and the duty cycle reaches 25% (available for DSFH signal detection with peek or valley decision Liu et al. (2019)), so we need to decrease the IF frequency or increase the SNR for further availability

Evaluation system for CO2 emission of hot asphalt mixture

The highway construction industry plays an important role in economic and development, but is also a primary source of carbon emission. Accordingly, with the global climate change, energy conservation and reduction of carbon emissions have become critical issues in the highway construction industry. However, to date, a model for the highway construction industry has not been established. Hence, to implement a low-carbon construction model for highways, this study divided asphalt pavement construction into aggregate stacking, aggregate supply, and other stages, and compiled a list of energy consumption investigation. An appropriate calculation model of CO2 emission was then built. Based on the carbon emission calculation model, the proportion of carbon emissions in each stage was analyzed. The analytic hierarchy process was used to establish the system of asphalt pavement construction with a judgment matrix, thereby enabling calculation of the weight coefficient of each link. In addition, the stages of aggregate heating, asphalt heating, and asphalt mixture mixing were defined as key stages of asphalt pavement construction. Carbon emissions at these stages accounted for approximately 90% of the total carbon emissions. Carbon emissions at each stage and their impact on the environment were quantified and compared. The energy saving construction schemes as well as the environmental and socioeconomic benefits were then proposed. Through these schemes, significant reductions in carbon emissions and costs can be achieved. The results indicate that carbon emissions reduce by 32.30% and 35.93%, whereas costs reduce by 18.58% and 6.03%. The proposed energy-saving and emission reduction scheme can provide a theoretical basis and technical support for the development of low-carbon highway construction

Study on the Effect of Calcium Alloy on Arsenic Removal from Scrap-Based Steel Production

Scrap steel is a kind of resource that can be recycled indefinitely. However, the enrichment of arsenic in the recycling process will seriously affect the performance of the product, making the recycling process unsustainable. In this study, the removal of arsenic from molten steel using calcium alloys was investigated experimentally, and the underlying mechanism was explored based on thermodynamic principles. The results show that the addition of calcium alloy is an effective means of reducing the arsenic content in molten steel, with the highest removal percentage of 56.36% observed with calcium aluminum alloy. A thermodynamic analysis revealed that the critical calcium content required for arsenic removal reaction is 0.0037%. Moreover, ultra-low levels of oxygen and sulfur were found to be crucial in achieving a good arsenic removal effect. When the arsenic removal reaction occurs in molten steel, the oxygen and sulfur concentrations in equilibrium with calcium were wO=0.0012% and wS=0.00548%, respectively. After successful arsenic removal, the arsenic removal product of the calcium alloy is Ca3As2, which usually does not appear alone. Instead, it is prone to combining with alumina, calcium oxide, and other inclusions to form composite inclusions, which is beneficial for the floating removal of inclusions and the purification of scrap steel in molten steel