Reconstruction and rehabilitation of short-range, high-velocity gunshot injury to the lower face: a case report

BACKGROUND: Germ cell tumors (GCTs) and their metastases may be found in numerous sites that are accessible to cytologic sampling, and many are responsive to chemotherapy. METHODS: The authors reviewed 20 examples of GCT cytology from 16 males and 3 females ranging in age from 1.5 to 61 years (median, 34 years). With two exceptions, one benign cystic ovarian teratoma in which intraoperative cytology was used to diagnose an associated adult-type carcinoma and one undescended testis in which seminoma presented as an abdominal mass, the material reviewed included no examples of primary gonadal GCT. RESULTS: The authors studied 7 primary and 13 metastatic GCTs; these studies were based on 13 in vivo aspirations, 4 intraoperative preparations, and 3 samples of body cavity fluids. All samples were correctly interpreted as malignant, and only one was incorrectly classified as a non-GCT malignancy. CONCLUSIONS: Clinical and cytologic findings are useful in the diagnosis of GCTs and their metastases. Incorrect interpretation of these neoplasms as poorly differentiated malignancies of other types may deprive the patient of effective chemotherapy. Air-dried, Romanowsky-stained smear material and cell block sections may contribute to the resolution of diagnostic dilemmas.     

An efficient certificateless undeniable signature scheme

Certificateless cryptography addresses the private key escrow problem in identity-based systems, while overcoming the costly issues in traditional public key cryptography. Undeniable signature schemes were proposed with the aim of limiting the public verifiability of ordinary digital signatures. The first certificateless undeniable signature scheme was put forth by Duan. The proposed scheme can be considered as the certificateless version of the identity-based undeniable signature scheme which was introduced by Libert and Quisquater. In this paper, we propose a new scheme which is much more efficient comparing to Duan's scheme. Our scheme requires only one pairing evaluation for signature generation and provides more efficient confirmation and disavowal protocols for both the signer and the verifier. We also prove the security of our scheme in the strong security model based on the intractability of some well-known pairing-based assumptions in the random oracle model.     

A Wavelet-ANFIS Hybrid Model for Groundwater Level Forecasting for Different Prediction Periods

Artificial neural network (ANN) and Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) have an extensive range of applications in water resources management. Wavelet transformation as a preprocessing approach can improve the ability of a forecasting model by capturing useful information on various resolution levels. The objective of this research is to compare several data-driven models for forecasting groundwater level for different prediction periods. In this study, a number of model structures for Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS), Wavelet-ANN and Wavelet-ANFIS models have been compared to evaluate their performances to forecast groundwater level with 1, 2, 3 and 4 months ahead under two case studies in two sub-basins. It was demonstrated that wavelet transform can improve accuracy of groundwater level forecasting. It has been also shown that the forecasts made by Wavelet-ANFIS models are more accurate than those by ANN, ANFIS and Wavelet-ANN models. This study confirms that the optimum number of neurons in the hidden layer cannot be always determined by using a specific formula but trial-and-error method. The decomposition level in wavelet transform should be determined according to the periodicity and seasonality of data series. The prediction of these models is more accurate for 1 and 2 months ahead (for example RMSE?=?0.12, E?=?0.93 and R ²?=?0.99 for wavelet-ANFIS model for 1 month ahead) than for 3 and 4 months ahead (for example RMSE?=?2.07, E?=?0.63 and R ²?=?0.91 for wavelet-ANFIS model for 4 months ahead).     

Landslide susceptibility mapping of the Sea to Sky transportation corridor, British Columbia, Canada: comparison of two methods

The Sea to Sky corridor stretches over a distance of 135?km into British Columbia’s Coast Mountains. The corridor has witnessed hundreds of historical and pre-historic landslides. In the last 154?years, 155 landslide events have been reported. The most common types of landslides are rockfalls and debris flows, which are small in volume, but can be quite damaging. These are more abundant in the southern part of the corridor where infrastructure is built close to steep slopes. Two different methods were adapted to create debris flow and rockfall/rock slide susceptibility maps. Both qualitative heuristic and fuzzy logic susceptibility maps showed a similar distribution of susceptibility zones, especially high susceptibility. Correlation of high susceptibility zones with occurrence of historical and mapped geological landslide events was very good. Success rate curves were calculated for extrapolated zones of initiation for debris flow and rockfall/rock slide deposits. Success rate curves were better for debris flow than rockfall/rockslide maps.     

Membrane heat exchanger in HVAC energy recovery systems, systems energy analysis

The thermal performance of an enthalpy/membrane heat exchanger is experimentally investigated. The heat exchanger utilizes a 60gsm Kraft paper as the heat and moisture transfer surface for HVAC energy recovery. The heat exchanger sensible, latent and total effectiveness have been determined through temperature and moisture content measurements. The annual energy consumption of an air conditioner coupled with an enthalpy/membrane heat exchanger is also studied and compared with a conventional air conditioning cycle using in-house modified HPRate software. The heat exchanger effectiveness are used as thermal performance indicators and incorporated in the modified software. Energy analysis showed that an air conditioning system coupled with a membrane heat exchanger consumes less energy than a conventional air conditioning system in hot and humid climates where the latent load is high. It has been shown that in humid climate a saving of up to 8% in annual energy consumption can be achieved when membrane heat exchanger is used instead of a conventional HVAC system.     

Optimization of electromagnetic phased-arrays for hyperthermia via magnetic resonance temperature estimation

A technique for the optimization of electromagnetic annular phased arrays (APAs) for therapeutic hyperthermia has been developed and implemented. The controllable inputs are the amplitudes and phases of the driving signals of each element of the array. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is used to estimate noninvasively the temperature distribution based on the temperature dependence of the proton resonance frequency (PRF). A parametric model of the dynamics that couple the control inputs to the resultant temperature elevations is developed based on physical considerations. The unknown parameters of this model are estimated during a pretreatment identification phase and can be continuously updated as new measurement data become available. Based on the parametric model, a controller automatically chooses optimal phases and amplitudes of the driving signals of the APA. An advantage of this approach to optimizing the APA is that no a priori information is required, eliminating the need for patient-specific computational modeling and optimization. Additionally, this approach represents a first step toward employing temperature feedback to make the optimization of the APA robust with respect to modeling errors and physiological changes. The ability of the controller to choose therapeutically beneficial driving amplitudes and phases is demonstrated via simulation. Experimental results are presented which demonstrate the ability of the controller to choose optimal phases for the APA using only information from magnetic resonance thermometry (MRT).     

A comparison of classification algorithms using Landsat-7 and Landsat-8 data for mapping lithology in Canada’s Arctic

To map Arctic lithology in central Victoria Island, Canada, the relative performance of advanced classifiers (Neural Network (NN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Random Forest (RF)) were compared to Maximum Likelihood Classifier (MLC) results using Landsat-7 and Landsat-8 imagery. A ten-repetition cross-validation classification approach was applied. Classification performance was evaluated visually and statistically using the global classification accuracy, producer’s and user’s accuracies for each individual lithological/spectral class, and cross-comparison agreement. The advanced classifiers outperformed MLC, especially when training data were not normally distributed. The Landsat-8 classification results were comparable to Landsat-7 using the advanced classifiers but differences were more pronounced when using MLC. Rescaling the Landsat-8 data from 16 bit to 8 bit substantially increased classification accuracy when MLC was applied but had little impact on results from the advanced classifiers.     

Impact of carbon tax on internal combustion engine size selection in a medium scale CHP system

Combined heat and power (CHP) systems due to their high efficiency compared to the conventional power generation systems have received considerable attention as they have less harmful impact on the environment. Recently, the serious concern with reducing the greenhouse gas emissions has focussed the attention on the possibility of a carbon tax in some countries. Here, we address the impact of such tax on the sizing and economics of a CHP system.     

Stability analysis in nuclear reactor using Lyapunov exponent

A simple model for nuclear reactor is proposed. With increasing the fuel concentration, our minimal model shows two successive phases; subcritical and supercritical. In subcritical regime, the neutron population grows with increasing the fuel concentration. In the supercritical state, the Lyapunov exponent is positive implying that the neutron diffusion phenomena are spatiotemporal chaos. In the present paper, the infinite multiplication factor curve is qualitatively reproduced for fuel concentration. We have derived the critical fuel concentration based on the Lyapunov exponents. The basic objective of the work is to improve the prediction of the critical neutron population with respect to the fuel concentration.     

Combined non-gray radiative and conductive heat transfer in solar collector glass cover

A rigorous approach for the radiative heat transfer analysis in solar collector glazing is developed. The model allows a more accurate prediction of thermal performance of a solar collector system. The glass material is analysed as a non-gray plane-parallel medium subjected to solar and thermal irradiations in the one-dimensional case using the Radiation Element Method by Ray Emission Model (REM by REM).This method is used to analyse the combined non-gray convective, conductive and radiative heat transfer in glass medium. The boundary surfaces of the glass are specular. The spectral dependence of the relevant radiation properties of glass (i.e. specular reflectivity, refraction angle and absorption coefficient) are taken into consideration. Both collimated and diffuse incident irradiation are applied at the boundary surfaces using the spectral solar model proposed by Bird and Riordan. The optical constants of a commercial ordinary clear glass material have been used. These optical constants (100 values) of real and imaginary parts of the complex refractive index of the glass material cover the range of interest for calculating the solar and thermal radiative heat transfer through the solar collector glass cover. The model allows the calculation of the steady-state heat flux and temperature distribution within the glass layer. The effect of both conduction and radiation in the heat transfer process is examined. It has been shown that the real and imaginary parts of the complex refractive index have a substantial effect on the layer temperature distribution. The computational time for predicting the combined heat transfer in such a system is very long for the non-gray case with 100 values of n and k. Therefore, a simplified non-gray model with 10 values of n and k and two semi-gray models have been proposed for rapid computations. A comparison of the proposed models with the reference non-gray case is presented. The result shows that 10 bandwidths could be used for rapid computation with a very high level of accuracy.