Pelvic lipomatosis: a case report and literature review

Pelvic lipomatosis is a rare disorder where fat tissue deposition is observed in spaces of the pelvic area, causing extrinsic compression of the bladder, rectum and blood vessels. In the present report, the authors describe the case of a 48-year-old male patient presenting low back pain, dysuria and pollakiuria. Findings at excretory urography, computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging are described.

Pyogenic and tuberculous discitis: magnetic resonance imaging findings for differential diagnosis

Spondylodiscitis represents 2%–4% of all bone infections cases. The correct diagnosis and appropriate treatment can prevent complications such as vertebral collapse and spinal cord compression, avoiding surgical procedures. The diagnosis is based on characteristic clinical and radiographic findings and confirmed by blood culture and biopsy of the disc or the vertebra. The present study was developed with Clementino Fraga Filho University Hospital patients with histopathologically and microbiologically confirmed diagnosis of spondylodiscitis, submitted to magnetic resonance imaging of the affected regions. In most cases, pyogenic spondylodiscitis affects the lumbar spine. The following findings are suggestive of the diagnosis: segmental involvement; ill-defined abscesses; early intervertebral disc involvement; homogeneous vertebral bodies and intervertebral discs involvement. Tuberculous spondylodiscitis affects preferentially the thoracic spine. Most suggestive signs include: presence of well-defined and thin-walled abscess; multisegmental, subligamentous involvement; heterogeneous involvement of vertebral bodies; and relative sparing of intervertebral discs. The present pictorial essay is aimed at showing the main magnetic resonance imaging findings of pyogenic and tuberculous discitis.

Re-disseny d’utillatge i anàlisi de vinclament per l’assaig de compressió en laminats prims

El grup de recerca AMADE de la Universitat de Girona està especialitzat en la caracteritzacióde materials compòsits. Per avaluar la resistència i la tolerància al dany d'aquestes estructures,típicament es realitzen dos assajos: impacte a baixa velocitat i compressió després d'impacte(CAI per les sigles en anglès de Compression After Impact), respectivament. L'objectiu del'assaig CAI és obtenir la resistència residual a compressió de l'estructura.L'objectiu d'aquest treball és el de crear una adaptació per l'utillatge capaç d'assajar plaquesamb baix gruix . La modelització amb el mètode dels elements finits serveix per avaluar quantitativament el valorde les càrregues crítiques de vinclament per diferents gruixos de placa.Les plaques d'assaig són plaques de material compòsit amb làmines unidireccionals amb apilamentsimètric i balancejat

Evolution of mammographic image quality in the state of Rio de Janeiro

Objective:To evaluate the evolution of mammographic image quality in the state of Rio de Janeiro on the basis of parameters measured and analyzed during health surveillance inspections in the period from 2006 to 2011.Materials and Methods:Descriptive study analyzing parameters connected with imaging quality of 52 mammography apparatuses inspected at least twice with a one-year interval.Results:Amongst the 16 analyzed parameters, 7 presented more than 70% of conformity, namely: compression paddle pressure intensity (85.1%), films development (72.7%), film response (72.7%), low contrast fine detail (92.2%), tumor mass visualization (76.5%), absence of image artifacts (94.1%), mammography-specific developers availability (88.2%). On the other hand, relevant parameters were below 50% conformity, namely: monthly image quality control testing (28.8%) and high contrast details with respect to microcalcifications visualization (47.1%).Conclusion:The analysis revealed critical situations in terms of compliance with the health surveillance standards. Priority should be given to those mammography apparatuses that remained non-compliant at the second inspection performed within the one-year interval.

Robust watermarking scheme based on the JPEG2000 standard

Peer reviewed

Syrjäytystilavuuspumpun toiminnallisen välyksen säätömekanismin kehitys

Syrjäytystilavuuspumppua käytetään kuluttavien, syövyttävien, jähmeiden ja kiteytyvien väliaineiden pumppaukseen. Sähkömoottorin pyörittämä akseli puristaa rullan välityksellä letkun tiiviisti rungon sisäpintaa vasten työntäen samalla väliainetta edellään kulkiessaan letkua pitkin. Puristuksen jälkeen letku palautuu pyöreään muotoonsa muodostaen alipaineen pumpun imupuolelle. Nykyisen konstruktion iskunsäätö on toteutettu ruuvi-epäkeskomekanismilla, jolle haetaan vaihtoehtoja. Tässä työssä on tavoitteena kehittää syrjäytystilavuuspumpun iskunsäätömekanismista nykyistä konstruktiota yksinkertaisempi ja halvempi vaihtoehto. Työssä ideoidaan koneensuunnittelun perinteisin keinoin uusia ratkaisuvaihtoehtoja, joista kaksi valitaan jatkokehitykseen. Näistä kahdesta valitaan nykyiseen konstruktioon tehdyn vertailun jälkeen toinen lopulliseksi vaihtoehdoksi.

Trigger and data link system for CMS Resistive Plate Chambers at the LHC accelerator

The purpose of the work was to realize a high-speed digital data transfer system for RPC muon chambers in the CMS experiment on CERN’s new LHC accelerator. This large scale system took many years and many stages of prototyping to develop, and required the participation of tens of people. The system interfaces to Frontend Boards (FEB) at the 200,000-channel detector and to the trigger and readout electronics in the control room of the experiment. The distance between these two is about 80 metres and the speed required for the optic links was pushing the limits of available technology when the project was started. Here, as in many other aspects of the design, it was assumed that the features of readily available commercial components would develop in the course of the design work, just as they did. By choosing a high speed it was possible to multiplex the data from some the chambers into the same fibres to reduce the number of links needed. Further reduction was achieved by employing zero suppression and data compression, and a total of only 660 optical links were needed. Another requirement, which conflicted somewhat with choosing the components a late as possible was that the design needed to be radiation tolerant to an ionizing dose of 100 Gy and to a have a moderate tolerance to Single Event Effects (SEEs). This required some radiation test campaigns, and eventually led to ASICs being chosen for some of the critical parts. The system was made to be as reconfigurable as possible. The reconfiguration needs to be done from a distance as the electronics is not accessible except for some short and rare service breaks once the accelerator starts running. Therefore reconfigurable logic is extensively used, and the firmware development for the FPGAs constituted a sizable part of the work. Some special techniques needed to be used there too, to achieve the required radiation tolerance. The system has been demonstrated to work in several laboratory and beam tests, and now we are waiting to see it in action when the LHC will start running in the autumn 2008.

Features extraction based on the Discrete Hartley Transform for closed contour

In this paper the authors propose a new closed contour descriptor that could be seen as a Feature Extractor of closed contours based on the Discrete Hartley Transform (DHT), its main characteristic is that uses only half of the coefficients required by Elliptical Fourier Descriptors (EFD) to obtain a contour approximation with similar error measure. The proposed closed contour descriptor provides an excellent capability of information compression useful for a great number of AI applications. Moreover it can provide scale, position and rotation invariance, and last but not least it has the advantage that both the parameterization and the reconstructed shape from the compressed set can be computed very efficiently by the fast Discrete Hartley Transform (DHT) algorithm. This Feature Extractor could be useful when the application claims for reversible features and when the user needs and easy measure of the quality for a given level of compression, scalable from low to very high quality.

The performance and the characteristic field of a centrifugal compressor

Tässä työssä tarkastellaan radiaalikompressorin puristusprosessiin liittyvä peruslaskenta. Ilmankosteuden vaikutukset laskentaan huomioidaan ja kompressorin tunnuskenttä esitellään tässä työssä. Esimerkkinä lasketaan pisteitä kompressorin tunnuskentästä.

Secure logarithmic audio watermarking scheme based on the human auditory system

Peer-reviewed

Introducción técnica a la implementación de compresores y descompresores basados en los sistemas Huffman y Lempev-Ziv

Peer-reviewed

Cost Optimisation of Mobile Advertising Client Data Transfer

Data traffic caused by mobile advertising client software when it is communicating with the network server can be a pain point for many application developers who are considering advertising-funded application distribution, since the cost of the data transfer might scare their users away from using the applications. For the thesis project, a simulation environment was built to mimic the real client-server solution for measuring the data transfer over varying types of connections with different usage scenarios. For optimising data transfer, a few general-purpose compressors and XML-specific compressors were tried for compressing the XML data, and a few protocol optimisations were implemented. For optimising the cost, cache usage was improved and pre-loading was enhanced to use free connections to load the data. The data traffic structure and the various optimisations were analysed, and it was found that the cache usage and pre-loading should be enhanced and that the protocol should be changed, with report aggregation and compression using WBXML or gzip.

Present-day deformation of the Pyrenees revealed by GPS surveying and earthquake focal mechanisms until 2011

The Pyrenean mountain range is a slowly deforming belt with continuous and moderate seismic activity. To quantify its deformation field, we present the velocity field estimated from a GPS survey of the Pyrenees spanning 18 yr. The PotSis and ResPyr networks, including a total of 85 GPS sites, were installed and first measured in 1992 and 1995 1997, respectively, and remeasured in 2008 and 2010. We obtain a deformation field with velocities less than 1 mm yr−1 across the range. The estimated velocities for individual stations do not differ significantly from zero with 95 per cent confidence. Even so, we estimate a maximum extensional horizontal strain rate of 2.0 ± 1.7 nanostrain per year in a N S direction in the western part of the range. We do not interpret the vertical displacements due to their large uncertainties. In order to compare the horizontal strain rates with the seismic activity, we analyse a set of 194 focal mechanisms using three methods: (i) the 'r' factor relating their P and T axes, (ii) the stress tensors obtained by fault slip inversion and (iii) the strain-rate tensors. Stress and strain-rate tensors are estimated for: (i) the whole data set, (ii) the eastern and western parts of the range separately, and (iii) eight zones, which are defined based on the seismicity and the tectonic patterns of the Pyrenees. Each of these analyses reveals a lateral variation of the deformation style from compression and extension in the east to extension and strike-slip in the west of the range. Although the horizontal components of the strain-rate tensors estimated from the seismic data are slightly smaller in magnitude than those computed from the GPS velocity field, they are consistent within the 2σ uncertainties. Furthermore, the orientations of their principal axes agree with the mapped active faults.

Prevalencia de la sintomatología del Síndrome de Asperger y variables asociadas en preescolares españoles

Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) forms part of the whole spectrum of autistic disorders. Until recently it has not been studied in early ages. The aim of this study is to determine the AS’s prevalence of symptoms in general preschool, rural and urban population. In addition, the association of the development areas and symptoms of anxiety and the presence of symptoms of AS was analized. The sample ofthis study consisted in 1104 preschool children between 3-6 years old. The presence of AS’s symptoms was evaluated by a screening tool for psychiatric disorders. This tool was applied to both, preschooler’s parents and their teachers The prevalence of symptoms of AS for parents and teachers was 11.7‰ and 8.1‰, respectively. The presence of AS’s symptoms was associated with language compression delays, general and fine motor coordination, self-help skills and impairment in game activities. In addition, our results showed that the AS has a strong association with specific phobia symptoms and tics. We conclude that an early detection of AS’s symptoms is possible since we found similar prevalence described in other recent researches. Given the impairment associated with AS, its detection is highly recommended