Bentall operation, total aortic replacement and mitral valve replacement for a young adult with Marfan syndrome: a case of three-staged operation

BACKGROUND: Early postpartum discharge of babies was gradually introduced in Sweden in the 1980s on ideological grounds, based on the premise that maternity wards were unnatural settings for mothers and babies and hampered breastfeeding. From about 1990, early discharge was used as a means to reduce costs. The purpose of this study was to examine if mandated early discharge at Central Hospital of Karlstad, Sweden, influenced subsequent breastfeeding. METHOD: Breastfeeding outcomes of infants up to six months of age of all births in 1993 (n = 3231) were compared with the outcome of newborns in 1990 (n = 1462). RESULTS: Breastfeeding at six months postpartum continued to increase during the early 1990s for both healthy and sick infants, irrespective of whether or not they were discharged early. In infants born in 1995 the breastfeeding rate at six months was 64 percent for healthy newborns and 53 percent for sick newborns. CONCLUSION: Factors other than the time of discharge, most likely a positive change of attitude in society and vigorous introduction of the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative, seem to have been more important for successful breastfeeding.     

Segmentation and characterization of interscapular brown adipose tissue in rats by multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging

Objective

The aim was to auto-segment and characterize brown adipose, white adipose and muscle tissues in rats by multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging with validation by histology and UCP1.

Materials and methods

Male Wistar rats were randomized into two groups for thermoneutral (n = 8) and cold exposure (n = 8) interventions, and quantitative MRI was performed longitudinally at 7 and 11 weeks. Prior to imaging, rats were maintained at either thermoneutral body temperature (36 ± 0.5 °C), or short term cold exposure (26 ± 0.5 °C). Neural network based automatic segmentation was performed on multi-parametric images including fat fraction, T ₂ and T ₂* maps. Isolated tissues were subjected to histology and UCP1 analysis.

Results

Multi-parametric approach showed precise delineation of the interscapular brown adipose tissue (iBAT), white adipose tissue (WAT) and muscle regions. Neural network based segmentation results were compared with manually drawn regions of interest, and showed 96.6 and 97.1 % accuracy for WAT and BAT respectively. Longitudinal assessment of the iBAT volumes showed a reduction at 11 weeks of age compared to 7 weeks. The cold exposed group showed increased iBAT volume compared to thermoneutral group at both 7 and 11 weeks. Histology and UCP1 expression analysis supported our imaging results.

Conclusion

Multi-parametric MR based neural network auto-segmentation provides accurate separation of BAT, WAT and muscle tissues in the interscapular region. The cold exposure improves the classification and quantification of heterogeneous BAT.

     

Cooling action of grinding fluid in shallow grinding

A new method is proposed for measuring the heat transfer coefficient in the vicinity of the wheel-workpiece contact zone. The accuracy of measurement is estimated by using a finite element method and the factor for correcting the measured results is derived. The experiments are performed in a number of conditions where grinding fluid is supplied and the following measures are consequently recommended for increasing the cooling efficiency: (1) set the velocity of coolant to more than the critical value to penetrate the air flow layer formed around the wheel periphery; (2) use a nozzle with a thin throat, about 1 mm in height, and attach a scraper plate above the nozzle outlet; (3) choose a wheel of large grain size and dress roughly, or form shallow grooves on the wheel periphery; and (4) set a higher wheel speed.     

Bonding Strength and Grain Size Control of Dissimilar Joints of Al-Mg Alloys with Forge Welding

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A - High-productivity dissimilar bonding between A2024 aluminum (Al) alloy and AZ80 magnesium (Mg) alloy with a pure titanium (Ti) interlayer was achieved...     

Grinding of highly accurate hourglass worm gears — trial manufacture of the worm grinding device

Highly accurate worm gears can be effectively used as an angle standard. Wildhaber worm gearing is a kind of hourglass worm gearing, which owing to its geometrical simplicity, can have its worm and worm wheel easily finished and accurately measured. This study describes a precision grinding method of the Wildhaber worm. A hobbing machine can cut hourglass worms, but cannot give them higher accuracy than the master worm gears. To overcome this limitation, a special grinding device has been made. The main features of this grinding device are as follows: the linear motion of the ball screw gives a very accurate circular feed to the grinding spindle, and the device has no mechanical connection between that circular feed and the rotation of the workpiece. In the first place, the working accuracy of the device was measured. The rotational accuracy of the rotary table relative to the worm was 1 second of arc. The accuracy of the ground worm using this device was 1.2 second of arc.     

Humidity dependence of microwear characteristics of amorphous carbon films on silicon substrates

Influences of environmental humidity on various scanning-scratched wear characteristics, such as long-term stability of wear resistance and load dependence, scratch number dependence and scratch velocity dependence of wear depth, are evaluated by using an atomic force microscope and diamond tips. Amorphous carbon (a-C) films are deposited on silicon substrates by the electron cyclotron resonance plasma (ECR) sputtering method and the RF sputtering method combined with CVD using argon gas containing methane (CH₄) as a sputtering gas. In carbon samples with a higher hydrogen content, clear influences of the humidity on various wear characteristics are observed and their wear resistances decrease with increase of the humidity. In the ECR sputtered carbon film with low hydrogen content, wear resistance is stable during long-term exposure to an environment of high temperature and high humidity. In this film, the influences of humidity on the wear resistance and adhesion forces between the films and the substrates are not observed, since it is highly wear resistant and the wear depths are shallow in each test. Thus, amorphous carbon films with low hydrogen content are suitable as wear resistant protective overcoats from the point of view of the wear resistance, in particular the influence of the humidity on the wear resistance including its long-term stability.     

An experimental feasibility study on applying SDN technology to disaster-resilient wide area networks

The Internet may get catastrophic impacts when unexpected disasters such as earthquakes, tsunami, etc. happen. Therefore, it is necessary to equip resilient technologies for the Internet backbones in order to face challenges (e.g., link, device failures, rerouting traffic, etc.) in the disasters. The emerging software-defined networking (SDN) technology, which logically centralizes network function on a controller and remotely manages distributed SDN devices, shows a lot of potential. This paper presents an experimental feasibility study on applying SDN to wide area backbones for the disaster-resilient purpose. To show the efficiency of SDN technology in responding fast to the network situation changes, we conduct three evaluations on real SDN devices and large-scale SDN-based wide area networks (WANs) assuming disaster scenarios. In the first evaluation, we explore the proactive recovery mechanism using the fast failover on SDN devices. In the second one, we investigate the communication latency between controllers and SDN devices, which is one of the most important factors in the reactive recovery in the software-defined backbone. In the last one, we experiment the fast end-to-end reactive recovery behavior of a TCP flow in a disaster scenario. The evaluation results clearly indicate that the SDN-based WAN is technically feasible and effective for fast recovery from disasters.     

Development of a Thermal Rectifier Usable at High Temperature

By using Al-based metallic alloys characterized by a disordered structure and a narrow pseudogap of a few hundred meV in energy width persisting at the Fermi level, we succeeded in preparing materials possessing a large increase of thermal conductivity with increasing temperature. This unusual increase of thermal conductivity is caused by the electronic structure effect known as the bipolar diffusion effect (BDE) in the context of the two-band model. A thermal rectifier was constructed using materials exhibiting the BDE. By showing the thermal rectification of the bulk sample prepared in this study, we demonstrate that our newly proposed idea of a thermal rectifier using the BDE is applicable for practical use.     

Effect of surface oxide film and atmosphere on microwave heating of compacted copper powder

The microwave irradiation was performed using a compacted Cu powder under different oxygen partial pressures. After reaching about 600 K, an abrupt temperature rise and drop occurred. The abrupt temperature drop is caused by both sintering of Cu powder particles and growing of surface oxide film. The magnitude of the abrupt temperature drop decreased with increasing oxygen partial pressure. The temperature then remained constant (steady state), gradually increased or exhibited a secondary significant increase. The magnitude of the temperature rise after abrupt temperature drop increased with increasing oxygen partial pressure. The microwave heating behavior of the compacted Cu powder depended on the type and thickness of the surface oxide film and also on the type and volume fraction of the gas occupying the vacant spaces between the Cu powder particles.     

Spherical ultrasonic motor drive system for camera orientation in pipe inspection

We propose a camera actuating system using a spherical ultrasonic motor for inspection of the inside wall of a small pipe. The spherical ultrasonic motor has advantages that include three degrees of freedom, high responsiveness and high accuracy all within a compact body. We describe here the development of an outer rotor spherical ultrasonic motor (OR-SUSM) that enables a camera to rotate by more than 360° along the side of the pipe. All components, including the OR-SUSM, the sensing system, and the electric circuits, are designed to be assembled in the pipe inspection device with outer diameter of 52?mm. To control the system, the phase difference and frequency of the applied voltages are used. The rotational direction is determined by the phase difference and the angular velocity is controlled by the frequency. The completed system can be controlled to within 2° in an experimental pipe inspection test.