Recommendation of RILEM Technical Committee 250-CSM: Test method for Textile Reinforced Mortar to substrate bond characterization

Textile Reinforced Mortar (TRM), also known as Fabric Reinforced Mortar or Fabric Reinforced Cementitious Matrix, composites are an emerging technology for the external repair and strengthening of existing structures. For most applications, the effectiveness of the TRM reinforcement relies on its bond performance. This recommendation identifies the best practice to characterize the bond behaviour of TRM. A shear bond test method is proposed to determine the peak axial stress (associated with the maximum load that can be transferred from the structural member to the externally bonded TRM reinforcement), the stress–slip relationship and the failure mode that controls the TRM-to-substrate load transfer capacity. Guidelines on specimen manufacturing, experimental setup, test execution, and determination of test results are provided.     

Statistical segmentation and structural recognition for floor plan interpretation

A generic method for floor plan analysis and interpretation is presented in this article. The method, which is mainly inspired by the way engineers draw and interpret floor plans, applies two recognition steps in a bottom-up manner. First, basic building blocks, i.e., walls, doors, and windows are detected using a statistical patch-based segmentation approach. Second, a graph is generated, and structural pattern recognition techniques are applied to further locate the main entities, i.e., rooms of the building. The proposed approach is able to analyze any type of floor plan regardless of the notation used. We have evaluated our method on different publicly available datasets of real architectural floor plans with different notations. The overall detection and recognition accuracy is about 95 %, which is significantly better than any other state-of-the-art method. Our approach is generic enough such that it could be easily adopted to the recognition and interpretation of any other printed machine-generated structured documents.     

Nitric oxide is present in exhaled breath in humans: direct GC-MS confirmation

The physiological role of nitric oxide (NO) is being investigated in many experimental and clinical settings. There is considerable evidence that NO is involved in the regulation of lung vascular function. In addition there are many studies reporting the beneficial effect of NO inhalation. NO formed from L-Arginine has been detected in exhaled breath using indirect mass spectrometry and chemiluminescence. Both methods provided good evidence for the presence of NO in breath samples but were not unequivocal. We therefore developed a method using gas-chromatography-mass spectrometry which allowed us to measure trace levels of NO in air and breath. Eight healthy volunteers supplied numerous breath samples for analysis. A clear peak for nitric oxide was observed in seven volunteers. The mean level was 13ppb (n = 7, range < 2 to 19ppb). This data is in good agreement with our previous data and unequivocally confirms the presence of nitric oxide in human breath.     

Coupling of apertures in enclosures to external cabling structures

In addition to the direct radiation from enclosure apertures, an indirect contribution also exists due to the coupling to external cables. Based on an inductive coupling model, a relation for the external coupling voltage is derived and combined with a resonant dipole-antenna model for worst case estimations of the radiation level. An expression for the direct-to-indirect radiation-amplitude ratio is deduced. The model is well confirmed by a numerical example for a rectangular box with a slit. The results clearly indicate that in the low-to-intermediate frequency range the indirect cable radiation exceeds by far the direct radiation from the aperture.     

Secondary haematological neoplasm after treatment of adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia: analysis of 1170 adult ALL patients enrolled in the GIMEMA trials. Gruppo Italiano Malattie Ematologiche Maligne dell'Adulto

Between 1983 and 1994 the incidence of secondary haematological neoplasms (SHM) was evaluated in 1170 new cases of ALL enrolled in the GIMEMA trials. Of the 942 patients who achieved complete remission (CR); seven developed a SHM: four AMLs and three NHLs. The median latency from onset of ALL and of secondary haematological neoplasm was 69 months for AML and 61 months for NHL. Three out of four patients with secondary AML were unresponsive to the new chemotherapy and died, whereas the fourth patient achieved a new CR. Among the three NHL cases, two patients are presently alive in CR, whereas the third patient was refractory to chemotherapy and died. The relative risk of haematological malignancy among the GIMEMA trials population, as compared to that of the Italian Cancer Registries, was 15.25-fold higher, and the actuarial estimated cumulative proportion of ALL patients with a secondary haematological neoplasm at 5 and 10 years were 0.59% and 3.63% respectively. The incidence of adult ALL who developed a SHM, although apparently lower than in the paediatric ALL series, was higher when compared to the normal population. The difference between paediatric and adult ALL is probably due to the lack of craniospinal radiotherapy and to the lower doses of epipodoxiphyllotoxins used in adult trials. The higher percentage of childhood ALL with a prolonged event-free survival could result in an increase of secondary neoplasms in these cases, which suggests that secondary haematological neoplasms in adult ALL patients are real, although rare, events.     

Can endothelial function be assessed in vivo by measuring acetylcholine induced changes in nitrate in the forearm in man?

A 26-yr-old AC-130 gunner developed unilateral temporomandibular joint (TMJ) pain while flying a combat support mission. A diagnosis of decompression sickness (DCS) was made based on his symptoms and risk factors that included prolonged exposure to high altitude (60 to 90 min at 18,000 ft), cold temperature (-11 degrees C), and increased inflight activity. His symptoms resolved with 100% oxygen and he was returned to flying status after 72 h. Altitude related DCS is an unusual occurrence and this is the first reported case of inflight DCS affecting the temporomandibular joint.     

Analysis of the distorted Born approximation for subsurface reconstruction: truncation and uncertainties effects

The problem of determining the dielectric permittivity profile of buried objects starting from the knowledge of the scattered field is considered in the two-dimensional geometry when incomplete near-zone data are collected at a single frequency under a multiview/multistatic measurement configuration. In particular, attention is paid to the practical issues of the truncated observation domain and the presence of uncertainties on data. The problem is tackled with reference to the scalar polarization by linearization of the mathematical relationship between the unknown dielectric permittivity profile and the scattered field. A homogeneous, possibly lossy, half-space geometry for the subsurface modeling is adopted, thus leading to the so-called distorted Born approximation (DBA). A thorough investigation of the class of unknown functions that can be reliably retrieved is performed by dealing with singular value decomposition of the relevant linear operator. It results that even if sources and receivers are located at the interface, a very restricted set of profile variations can be reconstructed by a stable inversion algorithm. In particular, reduced vertical features of the buried objects with respect to the horizontal ones can be reconstructed under DBA. Moreover, the truncation of the observation domain further restricts this set, affecting mainly the vertical resolution. Numerical results confirming the validity of the analysis are also provided.     

The surgical therapy of prostatic tumors]

A random sample of 26,000 Swedish women who were asked about their smoking habits in the early 1960s have now been followed for 26 years with respect to cancer incidence. Most findings regarding tobacco smoking and cancer from studies of men were confirmed also among the women. Elevated relative risk for current smokers compared with women who never smoked regularly were seen for cancers of the lung, upper aerodigestive sites, pancreas, bladder, cervix and all cancers combined, as well as a notably high relative risk for cancers of organs of the urinary tract other than kidney and bladder. Relative risk increased with dose, measured as grams of tobacco smoked per day, for cancers of the upper aerodigestive sites, lung, cervix, bladder, organs of the urinary tract other than kidney and bladder and all cancers combined. For cancers of the lung, bladder and cervix, there was an inverse relationship with age when starting to smoke tobacco. The reported inverse relationship between smoking and endometrial cancer could not be corroborated, nor was there any significant relationship between smoking and colorectal or breast cancer.