Affordable interactive virtual reality system for the Dynamic Hip Screw surgery training in vitro

Interactive virtual reality systems provide safe and cost-effective training environment to improve the technical skills and competence of surgeons. The trainees can have as many practice sessions, without need to the trainer all the time, before even start carrying out the procedure on any real patient. In this paper, we present an affordable interactive virtual reality system for the Dynamic Hip Screw (DHS) surgery training in vitro, through 3D tracking. The system facilitates a safe (in vitro / off patient) training to improve the cognitive coordination of trainees and junior surgeons, in particular the Hands, Eyes and Brain coordination. The system is based on very cheap commercial off-the-shelf (COT) components, which are very affordable, and needs minimum setup effort and knowledge. It also provides a range of visual and quantitative feedback information and measures, such as position, orientation, insertion point, and depth of drilling. It is envisaged that improving this level of coordination, through the training system, will contribute to reducing the failure rate of the DHS procedure. This means better treatment for patients and less costs for the Health services systems (e.g. UK's NHS system)

Mid-Infrared Imaging of Two Circumstellar Disks: the cases of HD 179218 and Epsilon Eridani.

Recently, large ground-based telescopes and the new generation of astronomical instrumentation have allowed us to examine the environments of young stellar objects with high angular resolution. Mid-infrared (MIR) (7.5 - 25 micron) detectors mounted on 10 m class telescopes have been used extensively to study the properties of protoplanetary and debris disks through their thermal emission that comes from the dust. These instruments can achieve sub-arcsec resolution with a suitable field-of-view for investigating the disk structures on different scales from few to tens of astronomical units (AU). Such observations are used to study the evolution of the circumstellar disk, confirm the presence of gaps in the protoplanetary disks, and investigate the evolutionary connection between flared and flat disks. Moreover, they can provide us with more details about the geometry of the disk, dust properties, and how planets form. These observations can also be used to analyze the debris disk around main sequence stars and trace the origin of the dust emission to clarify the relation between the dust emission and planets in debris disks. There are two main projects in this dissertation: First project: The main goal of this project is to investigate in the MIR the properties of the Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) emission and the physical structure of the disk of the Herbig star HD 179218. I used MIR images in the PAH1(8.6 μm), PAH2(11.3 μm), and Si6(12.5 μm) filters, and N-band low-resolution spectra of HD 179218, using the CanariCam instrument on the 10.4 m Grand Telescopio Canarias (GTC). The FWHM of the images was measured in each of the three filters. Good observing conditions led to very stable measurements during the observation with average FWHM values of 0.232 00 , 0.280 00 , and 0.293 00 in filters PAH1, PAH2, and Si6, respectively. The data show that the disk emission is spatially resolved in the both PAH filters, while unresolved in the Si6 filter. I have extracted a lower limit for the angular diameter of the emission in the PAH band of ∼ 100 mas, (or 40 AU) by applying a quadratic subtraction of the PSF for the science and calibrator. The photometric measurements are consistent with published flux densities and without noticeable variability in the uncertainty. Besides that, the low-resolution spectrum result is comparable with the shape of the previous result using Spitzer and ISO space telescopes, except in the region ofthe Earth ozone band. Additionally, I built a 3-D radiative transfer model of the continuum emission of the protoplanetary disk using the code RADMC3D. The model is based on a disk with a gap to fit the observational spectral energy distribution and the radial brightness profile of HD 179218 at 12.5 μm. The physical properties such as the mass, size and chemical composition of the pre-transitional disk were derived from the model. This is the first time that HD 179218 is observed in the PAH filter and is spatially resolved. Finally, I discuss the origin of the PAH emission in the protoplanetary disk of HD 179218 by comparing the images and spectroscopic data with IRS 48 and HD 97048. The most likely explanation is that the PAH emission originates in the outer radius of the flared disk surface, and is mostly in an ionized charged state due to the strong UV radiation of the centralstar (180 L�). Second project: The main purpose of this project is to investigate the origin of the warm dust in the debris disk and of the exozodiacal dust around the main-sequence star Epsilon Eridani. High-resolution direct imaging in the Q-band using GTC / CanariCam instrument was performed to enhance the star-to-disk distinction and obtain diffraction limited bservations, we select the Q4 filter (20.5 μm). The MIR images of Epsilon Eridani were compared with a calibration star (Gamma Eridani). Due to poor seeing condition (> 1 00 ) the FWHM is very unstable.Consequently, more than half of the FWHM measurements of the science star were less than the diffraction limit of the telescope in the Q4 filter. Therefore, I used different techniques to examine the quality of good frames. The first technique is to compare the FWHM of each saveset of the calibration star and science star to the 1σ, 2σ, and 3σ levels. The result of this technique shows that the extended emission around Epsilon Eridani measures 200 mas with 3σ uncertainty. The second technique is to compare the FWHM measurements of each nodset (instead of the saveset) for the science star with a limit of 1σ, which shows a resolved disk emission with a diameter of 120 mas with 3σ uncertainty. Then, I used a visual selection technique to separate the good and bad nodsets to avoid electing elongated point-spread function with this technique and other two techniques are confirmed the results of found extend emission around Epsilon Eridani. The extended emission is estimated to be ∼ 180 mas with 3σ uncertainty. A temperature gradient model has been built to create a synthetic image of Epsilon Eridani, convolve it with the calibration image and then fit it with a radial brightness profile of the science image. Photometric calculations were performed and I obtain a flux value comparable to literature value in the Q4 filter of ∼ 2.5 Jy. The observational result suggests that the radial position of the dust is comparable with the planetary orbit and that the dust distribution is significantly shaped by the interaction with the planet

Multi-Actors Collaboration in Ecolabelling Community Teak Forest Management in Southeast Sulawesi Province, Indonesia

Forest management practice in Indonesia has changed from “the forest first” paradigm to “the forest second” paradigm which emphasis on balancing between ecological dynamics and social dynamics (economy, culture, and politics) in forest management. “The forest second” paradigm have been practiced in HJRE (Hutan Jati Rakyat Ecolabel or Ecolabling Community Teak Forest) program in Konawe Selatan District of Southeast Sulawesi Province, Indonesia. This paper was intended to explain the collaboration of the actors involve in the program at community level. Data used in this paper gathered from in-depth interview of various actors who have involved in this program at community level especially local people who have registered as members of KHJL (Koperasi Hutan Jati Lestari or Sustainable Teak Forest Cooperative) and actively involved in the program. These people selected as informants from 8 villages where this study conducted. Beside that, it was interviewed also other actors involved in the program. This study revealed that the actors involved in collaboration process of HJRE program at community level were householdmembers of KHJL, Management Unit, JAUH (Jaringan Untuk Hutan or Network for Forest), TFT (Tropical Forest Trust), Wood Industry (PT. KJL), Head of Villages, and Head of KRPH (Kesatuan Resort Pemangku Hutan or Forest Functionary Unit). All actors involved in collaboration process contributed R-O-N (Resources-Organization-Norms) capacities in the stage of development of HJRE program. Some actors contributed much or less on R-O-N or its combinations. The capacities contributed of the actors gradually from social initiation/ awareness stage up to expansion and sustainability stage were R/N – O/N – R – R – N/R.Degree of collaboration of the actors involved in the HJRE program were not the same. Some actors have high collaboration and some low collaboration. These situation determined by the power and interest of the actors

Naming the Identified Feature Implementation Blocks from Software Source Code

Identifying software identifiers that implement a particular feature of a software product is known as feature identification. Feature identification is one of the most critical and popular processes performed by software engineers during software maintenance activity. However, a meaningful name must be assigned to the Identified Feature Implementation Block (IFIB) to complete the feature identification process. The feature naming process remains a challenging task, where the majority of existing approaches manually assign the name of the IFIB. In this paper, the approach called FeatureClouds was proposed, which can be exploited by software developers to name the IFIBs from software code. FeatureClouds approach incorporates word clouds visualization technique to name Feature Blocks (FBs) by using the most frequent words across these blocks. FeatureClouds had evaluated by assessing its added benefit to the current approaches in the literature, where limited tool support was supplied to software developers to distinguish feature names of the IFIBs. For validity, FeatureClouds had applied to draw shapes and ArgoUML software. The findings showed that the proposed approach achieved promising results according to well-known metrics in terms of Precision and Recall

Presence of BlaPER-1 and BlaVEB-1 Beta-Lactamase Genes among Isolates of Pseudomonas Aeruginosa from Burn and Trauma Hospital Peshawar, Pakistan

Pseudomonas aeruginosa spp are the most prevalent bacteria that cause nosocomial infections in hospitals. Most antibiotics, including novel new β-lactams, are already resistant to them, and they can become resistant during treatment, which can make the treatment fail. P. aeruginosa isolates from ICU patients who had Per-1 and VEB-1 were the main focus of this study. These two ESBLs are the two most common in ICU patients who had them. 50 isolates were gathered from Peshawar\u27s LRH ICU facilities in the year 2021. The antibiotic susceptibility test was conducted in accordance with the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute\u27s standards (CLSI). The combination disc test used to identify isolates that produce ESBLs. Ceftazidime MIC was determined using the agar dilution method using particular primers, the PER-1 and VEB-1 genes were detected using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Fifty-six percent patients (n=40) male, whereas forty percent (n=25) were female. Augmentin (96.6%, n=61) and cefpodoxim (86.7%, n=55) resistance was found in the majority of ICU isolates. Fifty isolates (77%) tested positive for ESBL, with 94 percent (n=47) carrying the PER-1 gene and VEB-1 gene 52 percent (n=26). Ten isolates had blaPER1 and blaVEB1 present at the same time, and seven of them amplified all three genes. ESBL producers were found in a large number of ICU P. aeruginosa isolates. Although blaVEB1 and blaPER1 were found in a small number of isolates, their frequency was very high. Furthermore, carbapenem resistance was negligible. Because of drug-resistant P. aeruginosa isolates, it is vital to monitor ICU centers

Exploring the effect of image enhancement techniques on COVID-19 detection using chest X-ray images

Computer-aided diagnosis for the reliable and fast detection of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has become a necessity to prevent the spread of the virus during the pandemic to ease the burden on the healthcare system. Chest X-ray (CXR) imaging has several advantages over other imaging and detection techniques. Numerous works have been reported on COVID-19 detection from a smaller set of original X-ray images. However, the effect of image enhancement and lung segmentation of a large dataset in COVID-19 detection was not reported in the literature. We have compiled a large X-ray dataset (COVQU) consisting of 18,479 CXR images with 8851 normal, 6012 non-COVID lung infections, and 3616 COVID-19 CXR images and their corresponding ground truth lung masks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest public COVID positive database and the lung masks. Five different image enhancement techniques: histogram equalization (HE), contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE), image complement, gamma correction, and balance contrast enhancement technique (BCET) were used to investigate the effect of image enhancement techniques on COVID-19 detection. A novel U-Net model was proposed and compared with the standard U-Net model for lung segmentation. Six different pre-trained Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) (ResNet18, ResNet50, ResNet101, InceptionV3, DenseNet201, and ChexNet) and a shallow CNN model were investigated on the plain and segmented lung CXR images. The novel U-Net model showed an accuracy, Intersection over Union (IoU), and Dice coefficient of 98.63%, 94.3%, and 96.94%, respectively for lung segmentation. The gamma correction-based enhancement technique outperforms other techniques in detecting COVID-19 from the plain and the segmented lung CXR images. Classification performance from plain CXR images is slightly better than the segmented lung CXR images; however, the reliability of network performance is significantly improved for the segmented lung images, which was observed using the visualization technique. The accuracy, precision, sensitivity, F1-score, and specificity were 95.11%, 94.55%, 94.56%, 94.53%, and 95.59% respectively for the segmented lung images. The proposed approach with very reliable and comparable performance will boost the fast and robust COVID-19 detection using chest X-ray images.COVID19 Emergency Response Grant #QUERG-CENG-2020-1 from Qatar University, Doha, Qatar provided the support for the work and the claims made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors

The global, regional, and national burden of oesophageal cancer and its attributable risk factors in 195 countries and territories, 1990-2017: A systematic analysis for the global burden of disease study 2017

© 2020 The Author(s). Background Oesophageal cancer is a common and often fatal cancer that has two main histological subtypes: oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma and oesophageal adenocarcinoma. Updated statistics on the incidence and mortality of oesophageal cancer, and on the disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) caused by the disease, can assist policy makers in allocating resources for prevention, treatment, and care of oesophageal cancer. We report the latest estimates of these statistics for 195 countries and territories between 1990 and 2017, by age, sex, and Socio-demographic Index (SDI), using data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2017 (GBD). Methods We used data from vital registration systems, vital registration-samples, verbal autopsy records, and cancer registries, combined with relevant modelling, to estimate the mortality, incidence, and burden of oesophageal cancer from 1990 to 2017. Mortality-to-incidence ratios (MIRs) were estimated and fed into a Cause of Death Ensemble model (CODEm) including risk factors. MIRs were used for mortality and non-fatal modelling. Estimates of DALYs attributable to the main risk factors of oesophageal cancer available in GBD were also calculated. The proportion of oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma to all oesophageal cancers was extracted by use of publicly available data, and its variation was examined against SDI, the Healthcare Access and Quality (HAQ) Index, and available risk factors in GBD that are specific for oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (eg, unimproved water source and indoor air pollution) and for oesophageal adenocarcinoma (gastro-oesophageal reflux disease). Findings There were 473 000 (95% uncertainty interval [95% UI] 459 000-485 000) new cases of oesophageal cancer and 436 000 (425 000-448 000) deaths due to oesophageal cancer in 2017. Age-standardised incidence was 5.9 (5.7-6.1) per 100 000 population and age-standardised mortality was 5.5 (5.3-5.6) per 100 000. Oesophageal cancer caused 9.78 million (9.53-10.03) DALYs, with an age-standardised rate of 120 (117-123) per 100 000 population. Between 1990 and 2017, age-standardised incidence decreased by 22.0% (18.6-25.2), mortality decreased by 29.0% (25.8-32.0), and DALYs decreased by 33.4% (30.4-36.1) globally. However, as a result of population growth and ageing, the total number of new cases increased by 52.3% (45.9-58.9), from 310 000 (300 000-322 000) to 473 000 (459 000-485 000); the number of deaths increased by 40.0% (34.1-46.3), from 311 000 (301 000-323 000) to 436 000 (425 000-448 000); and total DALYs increased by 27.4% (22.1-33.1), from 7.68 million (7.42-7.97) to 9.78 million (9.53-10.03). At the national level, China had the highest number of incident cases (235 000 [223 000-246 000]), deaths (213 000 [203 000-223 000]), and DALYs (4.46 million [4.25-4.69]) in 2017. The highest national-level agestandardised incidence rates in 2017 were observed in Malawi (23.0 [19.4-26.5] per 100 000 population) and Mongolia (18.5 [16.4-20.8] per 100 000). In 2017, age-standardised incidence was 2.7 times higher, mortality 2.9 times higher, and DALYs 3.0 times higher in males than in females. In 2017, a substantial proportion of oesophageal cancer DALYs were attributable to known risk factors: tobacco smoking (39.0% [35.5-42.2]), alcohol consumption (33.8% [27.3-39.9]), high BMI (19.5% [6.3-36.0]), a diet low in fruits (19.1% [4.2-34.6]), and use of chewing tobacco (7.5% [5.2-9.6]). Countries with a low SDI and HAQ Index and high levels of indoor air pollution had a higher proportion of oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma to all oesophageal cancer cases than did countries with a high SDI and HAQ Index and with low levels of indoor air pollution. Interpretation Despite reductions in age-standardised incidence and mortality rates, oesophageal cancer remains a major cause of cancer mortality and burden across the world. Oesophageal cancer is a highly fatal disease, requiring increased primary prevention efforts and, possibly, screening in some high-risk areas. Substantial variation exists in age-standardised incidence rates across regions and countries, for reasons that are unclear