The reliability of counting actinic keratosis

Many epidemiological studies and clinical trials have been performed concerning actinic keratoses. The most eligible endpoint in the majority of articles is counting of actinic keratoses before and after treatments, nevertheless some authors support that this is not a reliable form of evaluation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the actinic keratoses counting by various raters and suggest approaches to increase the reliability. Cross-sectional study: forty-three patients were evaluated by four raters (inter- and intra-rater assessment) on the face and forearms. The mean actinic keratoses counts on the face and forearms were 7.7 and 9.1. The overall agreement among the raters for the facial and forearm actinic keratoses was 0.74 and 0.77. The intra-rater assessment showed high rates of agreement for the face (ICC = 0.93) and forearms (ICC = 0.83). Higher agreement occurred when counting up to five lesions. Four raters led to increased measurement variability and loss of reliability. Higher rates of agreement may be achieved with small number of lesions, limitation and/or segmentation of body areas to reduce their number, in AK prevention designs, are strategies that may lead to a greater reliability of these measurements. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Avaliação da tenacidade à fratura na região de transição dúctil-frágil dos aços API 5L X70 e X80 utilizando a metodologia da curva mestra

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Projeto de um transdutor binocular utilizando extensometria e aplicação na pesagem rodoviária

With the passage of time, the variety of companies from each branch has gradually grown throughout the country. As a consequence, the logistics to attend to such demand has grown in the same proportion. One factor to highlight about this rapid growth is the increase of freight vehicles roaming the roads, often carrying loads over the limit established by law. At first it may seem that this would not bring any problem, however, note that an excessive number of overloads ends up deteriorating the asphalt, causing ondulations, potholes and other imperfections on the roads, which can cause accidents. In addition, the money spent for the maintenance of the roads is high. Thinking about it, it was established by law a regulation that restricts the weight limit for these vehicles, through axle weighing, subject to a fine. With this control the road floor is preserved for longer, requiring less maintenance expenses. The weighing stations use load cells to display the inferred weight, these cells use strain gages in its construction. The following work presents a methodology to dimension a binocular load cell, its main elements and its dimensioning. Showing how different materials can affect the dimensioning, so that can work satisfactorily. It also presents an overview of how are the parameters for weighing, and fines

Estudo em fadiga no aço API 5L X80 soldado pelo processo HF/ERW

The technological advancement in order to improve the methods of obtaining energy sources such as oil and natural gas is mainly motivated by the recent discovery of oil reserves. So, increasingly , there is a need for a thorough knowledge of the materials used in the manufacture of pipelines for transportation and exploration of oil and natural gas. The steels which follow the API standard (American Petroleum Institute), also known as high strenght low alloy (hsla), are used in the manufacture of these pipes, as they have, with their welded joints, mechanical properties to withstand the working conditions to which these ducts will be submitted . The objective of this study is to evaluate the fatigue behavior in microalloyed steel grade API 5L X80 welded by process HF / ERW . For this, axial fatigue tests to obtain S-N curve (stress vs. number of cycles ) were conducted. To complement the study, it was performed metallographic , fractographic , Vickers hardness tests and tensile tests to characterize the mechanical properties of the steel and check whether the values satisfy the specifications of the API 5L standard . From the fatigue tests , it was concluded that the surface finish influences directly on the fatigue life of the material

Total bacterial counting and the response to treatment of bacterial vaginosis with metronidazole

Objective: To evaluate if the total bacterial count of vaginal samples with bacterial vaginosis assessed by flow cytometry influences the response to treatment with metronidazol. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 273 low-risk reproductive aged women were enrolled. Vaginal samples were taken to evaluate the pattern of vaginal flora according to Nugent’s criteria, as well as the presence of trichomoniasis and candidosis. Cases identified of bacterial vaginosis were treated with metronidazole and controlled after 45 days. Cervical infection by Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae were also assessed. Flow cytometry for total bacterial counting was performed in propidium iodide stained cervicovaginal samples, using fluorescent beads at a known concentration. Non-parametric Mann-Whitney test was used to compare total bacterial count between groups of interest, at p<0.05. Results: From the total of 273 women enrolled, 50 were excluded as they presented at least one of the infections investigated. Bacterial vaginosis was detected in 79 women (35.4%), of which 33 (41.8%) returned for re-evaluation after treatment, being 21 cases successfully treated and 12 with persistent abnormal vaginal flora. Flow cytometric data showed that total bacterial counting does not differ between normal flora and bacterial vaginosis samples (p=0.14). Also, no difference was found between the cases of treated and persistent bacterial vaginosis (p=0.48). Conclusion: Total bacterial counting does not influence the response to metronidazole treatment of bacterial vaginosis

NN -> NN pi(+) reaction near threshold in a chiral power counting approach

Power-counting arguments are used to organize the interactions contributing to the NN-->d pi,pn pi reactions near threshold. We estimate the contributions from the three formally leading mechanisms: the Weinberg-Tomozawa (WT) term, the impulse term, and the Delta-excitation mechanism. Subleading but potentially large mechanisms, including S-wave pion rescattering, the Galilean correction to the WT term, and short-ranged contributions are also examined. The WT term is shown to be numerically the largest, and the other contributions are found to approximately cancel. Similarly to the reaction pp-->pp pi(0), the computed cross sections are considerably smaller than the data. We discuss possible origins of this discrepancy.

Cataract surgery: emotional reactions of patients with monocular versus binocular vision

Purpose: To analyze emotional reactions related to cataract surgery in two groups of patients (monocular vision - Group 1; binocular vision - Group 2). Methods: A transversal comparative study was performed using a structured questionnaire from a previous exploratory study before cataract surgery. Results: 206 patients were enrolled in the study, 96 individuals in Group 1 (69.3 +/- 10.4 years) and 110 in Group 2 (68.2 +/- 10.2 years). Most patients in group 1 (40.6%) and 22.7% of group 2, reported fear of surgery (p<0.001). The most important causes of fear were: possibility of blindness, ocular complications and death during surgery. The most prevalent feelings among the groups were doubts about good results and nervousness. Conclusion: Patients with monocular vision reported more fear and doubts related to surgical outcomes. Thus, it is necessary that phisycians considers such emotional reactions and invest more time than usual explaining the risks and the benefits of cataract surgery. Ouvir

Counting singularities via fitting ideals

The stable singularities of differential map germs constitute the main source of studying the geometric and topological behavior of these maps. In particular, one interesting problem is to find formulae which allow us to count the isolated stable singularities which appear in the discriminant of a stable deformation of a finitely determined map germ. Mond and Pellikaan showed how the Fitting ideals are related to such singularities and obtain a formula to count the number of ordinary triple points in map germs from C-2 to C-3, in terms of the Fitting ideals associated with the discriminant. In this article we consider map germs from (Cn+m, 0) to (C-m, 0), and obtain results to count the number of isolated singularities by means of the dimension of some associated algebras to the Fitting ideals. First in Corollary 4.5 we provide a way to compute the total sum of these singularities. In Proposition 4.9, for m = 3 we show how to compute the number of ordinary triple points. In Corollary 4.10 and with f of co-rank one, we show a way to compute the number of points formed by the intersection between a germ of a cuspidal edge and a germ of a plane. Furthermore, we show in some examples how to calculate the number of isolated singularities using these results.

Multi-Sensor people counting

[EN]An accurate estimation of the number of people entering / leaving a controlled area is an interesting capability for automatic surveil- lance systems. Potential applications where this technology can be ap- plied include those related to security, safety, energy saving or fraud control. In this paper we present a novel con guration of a multi-sensor system combining both visual and range data specially suited for trou- blesome scenarios such as public transportation. The approach applies probabilistic estimation lters on raw sensor data to create intermediate level hypothesis that are later fused using a certainty-based integration stage. Promising results have been obtained in several tests performed on a realistic test bed scenario under variable lightning conditions.

People counting with re-identification using depth cameras

[EN]Low cost real-time depth cameras offer new sensors for a wide field of applications apart from the gaming world. Other active research scenarios as for example surveillance, can take ad- vantage of the capabilities offered by this kind of sensors that integrate depth and visual information. In this paper, we present a system that operates in a novel application context for these devices, in troublesome scenarios where illumination conditions can suffer sudden changes. We focus on the people counting problem with re-identification and trajectory analysis.

A Phase Space Box-counting based Method for Arrhythmia Prediction from Electrocardiogram Time Series

Arrhythmia is one kind of cardiovascular diseases that give rise to the number of deaths and potentially yields immedicable danger. Arrhythmia is a life threatening condition originating from disorganized propagation of electrical signals in heart resulting in desynchronization among different chambers of the heart. Fundamentally, the synchronization process means that the phase relationship of electrical activities between the chambers remains coherent, maintaining a constant phase difference over time. If desynchronization occurs due to arrhythmia, the coherent phase relationship breaks down resulting in chaotic rhythm affecting the regular pumping mechanism of heart. This phenomenon was explored by using the phase space reconstruction technique which is a standard analysis technique of time series data generated from nonlinear dynamical system. In this project a novel index is presented for predicting the onset of ventricular arrhythmias. Analysis of continuously captured long-term ECG data recordings was conducted up to the onset of arrhythmia by the phase space reconstruction method, obtaining 2-dimensional images, analysed by the box counting method. The method was tested using the ECG data set of three different kinds including normal (NR), Ventricular Tachycardia (VT), Ventricular Fibrillation (VF), extracted from the Physionet ECG database. Statistical measures like mean (μ), standard deviation (σ) and coefficient of variation (σ/μ) for the box-counting in phase space diagrams are derived for a sliding window of 10 beats of ECG signal. From the results of these statistical analyses, a threshold was derived as an upper bound of Coefficient of Variation (CV) for box-counting of ECG phase portraits which is capable of reliably predicting the impeding arrhythmia long before its actual occurrence. As future work of research, it was planned to validate this prediction tool over a wider population of patients affected by different kind of arrhythmia, like atrial fibrillation, bundle and brunch block, and set different thresholds for them, in order to confirm its clinical applicability.

Focal cystic high-attenuation lesions: characterization in renal phantom by using photon-counting spectral CT--improved differentiation of lesion composition

To evaluate the capability of spectral computed tomography (CT) to improve the characterization of cystic high-attenuation lesions in a renal phantom and to test the hypothesis that spectral CT will improve the differentiation of cystic renal lesions with high protein content and those that have undergone hemorrhage or malignant contrast-enhancing transformation.

Carbohydrate counting of food

Carbohydrate counting is a principal strategy in nutritional management of type 1 diabetes. The Nutri-Learn buffet (NLB) is a new computer-based tool for patient instruction in carbohydrate counting. It is based on food dummies made of plastic equipped with a microchip containing relevant food content data. The tool enables the dietician to assess the patient's food counting abilities and the patient to learn in a hands-on interactive manner to estimate food contents such as carbohydrate content.