Fire Performance Assessment of a Fiber Reinforced Polymer Wall Panel Used in a Single Family Dwelling

This paper describes a fire performance assessment of a sandwich panel selected as the primary material in a high-performance house developed for the 2013 China Solar Decathlon competition. The sandwich panel has fiber reinforced polymer skins and a foam plastic core. Evaluation of fire performance showed that the selected panel would not comply with U.S. building code requirements for a single-family dwelling without additional protection. However, the use of an intumescent fire protective coating, coupled with the installation of a residential fire sprinkler system, is shown to be effective in meeting the intent of the fire and life safety requirements of the International Residential Code. Fire testing shows that the application of an intumescent fire protective coating to the panels significantly decreases the heat release rate, the smoke production characteristics, and the extent of flame spread on the panels.     

Could Alcohol Abuse and Dependence on Junk Foods Inducing Obesity and/or Illicit Drug Use Represent Danger to Liver in Young People with Altered Psychological/Relational Spheres or Emotional Problems?

Recent data show that young people, mainly due to the pressure of some risk factors or due to disrupted interpersonal relationships, utilise greater reward value and display greater sensitivity to the reinforcing properties of “pleasurable stimuli”, specifically in those situations in which an enhanced dopamine release is present. Alcoholic beverages, foods rich in sugar and fat, and illicit drug use are pleasurable feelings associated with rewards. Research shows that there is a link between substance abuse and obesity in brain functioning. Still, alcohol excess is central in leading to obesity and obesity-related morbidities, such as hepatic steatosis, mainly when associated with illicit drug dependence and negative eating behaviours in young people. It is ascertained that long-term drinking causes mental damage, similarly to drug abuse, but also affects liver function. Indeed, beyond the pharmacokinetic interactions of alcohol with drugs, occurring in the liver due to the same metabolic enzymes, there are also pharmacodynamic interactions of both substances in the CNS. To complicate matters, an important noxious effect of junk foods consists of inducing obesity and obesity-related NAFLD. In this review, we focus on some key mechanisms underlying the impact of these addictions on the liver, as well as those on the CNS.     

Ultrasound screening for deep venous thrombosis after total knee arthroplasty. 2-year reassessment

The efficacy of ultrasound compared with ascending venography for the detection of deep venous thrombosis immediately after total knee arthroplasty was assessed after a 2-year interval. One hundred thirty-seven patients were eligible for the study; however, 31 patients received only one of the screening methods and a color Doppler examination was inconclusive in six patients. Therefore, 100 patients had a Doppler examination and a venogram. Overall, the sensitivity of ultrasound was 85%, the specificity 97%, the positive predictive value 85%, the negative predictive value 97%, and the accuracy 95%. The sensitivity in the calf was 83%, in the popliteal vein 86%, and in the femoral vein 100%. Two years ago, the initial assessment of ultrasound for the detection of deep venous thrombosis after surgery in patients who had total joint arthroplasty revealed a 75% sensitivity, 99% specificity, 91% positive predictive value, 97% negative predictive value, and 97% accuracy. The sensitivity in the calf was 83%; the sensitivity in the popliteal vein was 40%; and the sensitivity in the femoral vein was 50%. After 2 years of using this screening test with one technician and one radiologist, an improvement with this noninvasive technique was shown. However, it was found that Doppler imaging is not as sensitive as venography for detecting calf thrombi. Any imaging technique should be validated by each institution to determine the validity of the instrument and the learning curve of the technician administering the examination.     

Corticosteroids in kidney transplant recipients. Safety issues and timing of discontinuation

Personal response services operating over public telephone networks are now widespread in Western Europe and North America. They serve the needs of a million people in the UK and a further two to three million elsewhere. While most clients are elderly, the scope of such services is extending to people with support needs of all ages, especially where there are medical risks or a likelihood of falls. Such services are, therefore, on a convergent course with those concerned with telemedicine. A study of two personal response services was carried out, one based in Ottawa (Canada) and the other in Oldham (UK). The parallels and contrasts were examined through a survey involving personal interviews with samples of clients. Thirty-eight valid personal interviews were completed, 20 in Ottawa and 18 in Oldham, representing 14% and 53% respectively of all service clients in the survey areas. It is concluded that services established within the health sector (such as many in Canada) are better placed to accommodate change. Convergence with telemedicine will, as a result, be facilitated. In the UK, health authorities and trusts are likely to develop their own telemedicine services in competition with current providers of personal response services, thus delaying convergence.     

Energy aware power allocation strategies for multihop-cooperative transmission schemes

This paper is focused on the optimization of transmitted power in a cooperative decoded relaying scheme for nodes belonging to the single primary route towards. a destination. The proposed transmission protocol, referred to as Multihop Cooperative Transmission Chain (MCTC), is based on the linear combination of copies of the same message by multiple previous terminals along the route in order to maximize the multihop diversity. Power allocations among transmitting nodes in the route can be obtained according to the average (not instantaneous) node-to-node path attenuation using a recursive power assignment. The latter can be employed locally on each node with limited signalling exchange (for fixed or nomadic terminals) among nodes. In this paper the power assignments for the MCTC strategy employing conventional linear combining schemes at receivers (i.e., selection combining, maximal ratio combining and equal gain combining) have been derived analytically when the power optimization is constrained to guarantee the end-to-end outage probability. In particular, we show that the power assignment that minimize the maximum spread of received power (min-max strategy) can efficiently exploit the multihop diversity. In addition, for ad hoc networks where the energy of each node is an issue, the MCTC protocol with the min-max power assignment increases considerably the network lifetime when compared to non-cooperative multihop schemes     

Molecular characterization of Italian rice cultivars

Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) is an efficient tool to detect DNA polymorphisms and to distinguish different clones and cultivars. We have applied the RAPD technique to distinguish, starting from a single rice seed, among some Italian rice cultivars from market and from National Institute for research on food and nutrition, Italy. We also estimated the genomic similarity among the rice cultivars object of this study taking advantage of the amplification patterns. Despite the low genomic variability among Italian rice cultivars, RAPD technique allowed us to distinguish among them. This indicates that RAPD can be used routinely to verify the identity of Italian rice cultivars in order to prevent fraudulent commercial activity.     

Grasping a fruit: Selection for action.

This study used a natural task, with no emphasis placed on speeded responses, to investigate unconscious information processing. Using the ELITE system, a kinematic analysis was performed of the upper limb reach-to-grasp movement. Nine experiments explored how the presence of distractors affects the transport and grasp component of this movement. Experiment 1showed that the kinematics for grasping apples, mandarins, cherries, and bananas were measurably different. Experiments 2A–D, 3, and 4 showed that these kinematics were not affected by the presence of nearby distractor fruits of either the same or a different kind. In Experiment 5, interference effects became evident when participants were required to perform a subsidiary task involving the distractor (counting the number of times a laterally placed fruit was illuminated). Experiment 6, requiring both grasping a target fruit and counting the number of times that this fruit was illuminated, revealed no interference effects. Taken together, these results suggest that selection for action does not involve substantial passive processing of distractors. However, dual-action processing of simultaneously presented objects does appear to involve automatic processing of even the task-irrelevant properties of the distractor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Percutaneous ethanol injection under general anesthesia for hepatocellular carcinoma: 3 year survival in 112 patients

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to determine whether the expression of thymidine phosphorylase by ovarian cancer cells correlates with the density of microvessels within the tumor, and with ultrasound-derived indices of blood flow. METHODS: Transvaginal ultrasonography with color Doppler imaging and pulsed Doppler spectral analysis was used to scan patients with an overt ovarian mass immediately before laparotomy. Sections of malignant tumors were analyzed for the cellular expression of thymidine phosphorylase and the intratumoral density of microvessels by immunohistochemistry using monoclonal antibodies to thymidine phosphorylase and factor VIII-related antigen, respectively. The main outcome measures were the histological classification of the tumor, the stage of the disease, whether or not the tumor cells were positive or negative for thymidine phosphorylase, the microvessel count and the peak systolic velocity (PSV). RESULTS: Forty-two tumors were studied (three of low malignant potential, 29 epithelial, four granulosa cell, two germ cell and four metastatic); 18 were stage I, six stage II, 11 stage III and three stage IV. Twenty-seven tumors (64%) were classified as thymidine phosphorylase-positive. The proportion of stage I tumors that was thymidine phosphorylase-positive (44%) was significantly lower (p = 0.022) than the corresponding value for stages II-IV (85%), but the values for microvessel count and PSV were similar. The microvessel count in thymidine phosphorylase-positive tumors was significantly higher than in thymidine phosphorylase-negative tumors (p = 0.005). Similarly, the PSV was significantly higher in thymidine phosphorylase-positive tumors (p = 0.009). There was a significant correlation between the microvessel count and the PSV (r = 0.354, p = 0.022). CONCLUSIONS: The expression of thymidine phosphorylase by malignant tumor cells is associated with an increase in microvessel density and PSV in patients with ovarian cancer.     

Effects of increasing visual load on aurally and visually guided target acquisition in a virtual environment

The aim of the present study is to investigate interactions between vision and audition during a target acquisition task performed in a virtual environment. We measured the time taken to locate a visual target (acquisition time) signalled by auditory and/or visual cues in conditions of variable visual load. Visual load was increased by introducing a secondary visual task. The auditory cue was constructed using virtual three-dimensional (3D) sound techniques. The visual cue was constructed in the form of a 3D updating arrow. The results suggested that both auditory and visual cues reduced acquisition time as compared to an uncued condition. Whereas the visual cue elicited faster acquisition time than the auditory cue, the combination of the two cues produced the fastest acquisition time. The introduction of secondary visual task differentially affected acquisition time depending on cue modality. In conditions of high visual load, acquiring a target signalled by the auditory cue led to slower and more error-prone performance than acquiring a target signalled by either the visual cue alone or by both the visual and auditory cues.