An epidemiologic, clinical, and therapeutic study of childhood Guillain-Barré syndrome in Kuwait: is it related to the oral polio vaccine?

We studied Guillain-Barré syndrome, affecting children 12 years old or less, throughout Kuwait, in the period between January 1, 1992, and March 31, 1997. Nineteen children had the diagnostic criteria of Guillain-Barré syndrome, with an overall annual incidence rate of 0.95/100,000 population at risk. Female patients outnumbered male patients with a sex ratio of 1.4:1. There was a clustering of cases in winter and spring and in the year 1996. The disease symptoms were relatively severe in our patients because only 16% (3 of 19) of them were able to walk at the height of their illness, whereas the rest were bed or chair bound or needed assisted ventilation. Two patients had the electrodiagnostic features of axonal neuropathy and both had residual deficits on follow-up, whereas the rest recovered fully. All the patients received intravenous immunoglobulin. The mean time to walk unaided was 23.5 days (range, 2-84 days) after intravenous immunoglobulin and excluding the two patients with axonal neuropathy, and full recovery was achieved in a mean time of 103 days (range, 30-300 days). Contrary to previous studies, we found no correlation between oral polio vaccine administration and Guillain-Barré syndrome in 2 successive years (1995 and 1996) during a nationwide campaign targeting children less than 5 years old.     

Predictive model for shear strength estimation in reinforced concrete beams with recycled aggregates using Gaussian process regression

Neural Computing and Applications - In order to attain sustainable development, recycled concrete aggregates (RCAs) are increasingly utilized in civil engineering projects. Therefore, it is vital...     

Human-centered design of a wearable kinesthetic haptic device for surgical teleoperation

Artificial Life and Robotics - This paper describes the design and performance evaluation of a flexible wearable haptic device that aims to realize full kinesthetic haptic feedback for application...     

On-chip whole blood plasma separator based on microfiltration,sedimentation and wetting contrast

Miniaturized on-chip blood separators have a great value for point-of-care diagnosis. In our work, a combined design strategy—microfiltration, sedimentation in a retarded flow, and wetting contrast—was taken to overcome the known limitations of on-chip blood separators. Our microfluidic chip consists of a polydimethylsiloxane micropillar array and an etched glass with microchannel branches. The red blood cells are significantly slowed and gradually settled down due to micropillars and enlarged dimension of a chamber. An etched glass microchannel allows the extraction of blood plasma exclusively due to the capillary effect. The fabricated microfluidic device can separate blood plasma from a whole blood sample without any external driving force or dilution. The measured plasma separation efficiency was close to 100 % from human whole blood. Autonomous on-chip separation and collection of blood plasma was demonstrated.     

A356 Reinforced with Nanoparticles: Numerical Analysis of Mechanical Properties

Commercial casting Al-Si (A356)-based composites reinforced with different volume fractions of alumina (Al₂O₃) nanoparticulates (average particle size 50 nm) were synthesized in this study. Particle distribution, hardness, and tensile properties in the as-cast condition were experimentally investigated. The A356 alloy composite showed an increase in hardness, elastic modulus, and tensile strength compared with monolithic alloys. Finally, a combination of an artificial neural network and the finite element method (FEM) was implemented to predict the microstructure and mechanical properties including grain size, length of silicon rods, amount of porosity, hardness, tensile yield stress, ultimate tensile stress, and elongation percentage.     

Superior Tribological Properties of Particulate Aluminum Matrix Nano Composites

Aluminum is the best metal for producing metal matrix composites which are known as one of the most useful and high-tech composites in our world. Combining aluminum and nano Al₂O₃ particles will yield a material with high mechanical properties. Characterization of tribological properties revealed that the presence of nano particles significantly increased wear resistance of the composite. In case of unreinforced Al alloy, the depth of penetration is governed by the hardness of the specimen surface and applied load. But, in case of Al matrix composite, the depth of penetration of the harder asperities of hardened steel disk is primarily governed by the protruded hard ceramic reinforcement. The hard Al₂O₃ particles act as a protrusion over the matrix, carries a major portion of the applied load and protect the abrasives from penetration into the specimen surface.     

Fault diagnosis of an automobile cylinder head using low frequency vibrational data

This paper proposes a vibration-based fault-diagnosis method for mechanical parts. This method, after algorithm development, only requires a single inexpensive test to inspect the part which could take as short as half a second. The algorithm is developed in three major stages, (i) exciting specimens without or with known faults using a controlled force and recording acceleration of a single point for a short time (ii) finding a signature for each faulty specimen, using Fourier transform and statistical analysis. (iii) Developing a multi-layer perceptron, as a mathematical model, using the results of stage (ii). The elements of a part signature are the inputs to the model. The location (and possibly size and shape factor) of the fault is model output. Stage (i) can be performed experimentally or alternatively with a validated FEM, one experiment or simulation per specimen. The proposed technique was examined to locate (isolate) a fault on an automobile cylinder head. The presented accuracy is considerable, and the data collected at fairly low frequency range (below 1200 Hz) were found to be sufficient for this technique. In the case study of this paper, possible fault locations are on a line; as a result, fault location has one dimension. It is shown that the technique can be extended to higher dimensions.     

Reductive removal of hexavalent chromium from aqueous solution using sepiolite-stabilized zero-valent iron nanoparticles: Process optimization and kinetic studies

We studied the optimization of hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) removal from aqueous solution using the synthesized zero-valent iron nanoparticles stabilized with sepiolite clay (S-ZVIN), under various parameters such as reaction time (min), initial solution pH and concentration of S-ZVIN (g·L^?1) using response surface methodology (RSM). The kinetic study of Cr(VI) was conducted using three types of the most commonly used kinetic models including pseudo zero-order, pseudo first-order, and pseudo second-order models. The rate of reduction reaction showed the best fit with the pseudo first-order kinetic model. The process optimization results revealed a high agreement between the experimental and the predicted data (R²=0.945, Adj-R²=0.890). The results of statistical analyses showed that reaction time was the most impressive factor influencing the efficiency of removal process. The optimum conditions for maximum response (98.15%) were achieved at the initial pH of 4.7, S-ZVIN concentration of 1.3 g·L^?1 and the reaction time of 75 min.