Wax crosslinking with dicumyl peroxide

A Fischer—Tropsch paraffin wax of high molecular weight, congealing point 205°F (96·1°C), was crosslinked with dicumyl peroxide as initiator. At peroxide/wax molar ratios of less than 1·15 : 1, crosslinked waxes with molecular weights up to approximately double that of the starting material are obtained. These products are characterised by an increase in elasticity. At peroxide/wax ratios greater than 1·15 : 1 insoluble and infusible gels are formed. The efficiency and fate of the initiator and possible side reactions are discussed.     

Severe tardive dystonia: treatment with continuous intrathecal baclofen administration

A retrospective clinical study to evaluate the effects of paralyzing vermifuges on the course of intestinal obstructions complicating ascariasis was performed. Forty-two patients, 26 patients with partial and 16 patients with complete intestinal obstructions, were treated over 7 years. Although 24 patients have not received any medications two patients with partial obstructions received flaccid paralyzing agent before referral. However, 12 of 16 patients with complete obstruction received spastic paralyzing agent, and the remaining patients received flaccid paralyzing agent before referral. Paralyzing agents, especially those causing spastic paralysis, should be avoided in patients with abdominal symptoms presumed to be related to ascariasis because of the risk of causing complete obstruction and making surgery more complex.     

Bicycle helmets are highly effective at preventing head injury during head impact: Head-form accelerations and injury criteria for helmeted and unhelmeted impacts

Cycling is a popular form of recreation and method of commuting with clear health benefits. However, cycling is not without risk. In Canada, cycling injuries are more common than in any other summer sport; and according to the US National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, 52,000 cyclists were injured in the US in 2010. Head injuries account for approximately two-thirds of hospital admissions and three-quarters of fatal injuries among injured cyclists. In many jurisdictions and across all age levels, helmets have been adopted to mitigate risk of serious head injuries among cyclists and the majority of epidemiological literature suggests that helmets effectively reduce risk of injury. Critics have raised questions over the actual efficacy of helmets by pointing to weaknesses in existing helmet epidemiology including selection bias and lack of appropriate control for the type of impact sustained by the cyclist and the severity of the head impact. These criticisms demonstrate the difficulty in conducting epidemiology studies that will be regarded as definitive and the need for complementary biomechanical studies where confounding factors can be adequately controlled. In the bicycle helmet context, there is a paucity of biomechanical data comparing helmeted to unhelmeted head impacts and, to our knowledge, there is no data of this type available with contemporary helmets. In this research, our objective was to perform biomechanical testing of paired helmeted and unhelmeted head impacts using a validated anthropomorphic test headform and a range of drop heights between 0.5 m and 3.0 m, while measuring headform acceleration and Head Injury Criterion (HIC). In the 2 m (6.3 m/s) drops, the middle of our drop height range, the helmet reduced peak accelerations from 824 g (unhelmeted) to 181 g (helmeted) and HIC was reduced from 9667 (unhelmeted) to 1250 (helmeted). At realistic impact speeds of 5.4 m/s (1.5 m drop) and 6.3 m/s (2.0 m drop), bicycle helmets changed the probability of severe brain injury from extremely likely (99.9% risk at both 5.4 and 6.3 m/s) to unlikely (9.3% and 30.6% risk at 1.5 m and 2.0 m drops respectively). These biomechanical results for acceleration and HIC, and the corresponding results for reduced risk of severe brain injury show that contemporary bicycle helmets are highly effective at reducing head injury metrics and the risk for severe brain injury in head impacts characteristic of bicycle crashes.     

A framework for inter-domain routing in virtual coordinate based mobile networks

Routing is considered to be one the most challenging problems in mobile ad hoc networks. It has been shown that the use of virtual coordinates or identifiers for efficient routing and data management has several advantages compared to classical topology control techniques based on pre-defined addresses or geographical coordinates. However, these advantages only hold for single domain networks with limited mobility. In a previous paper, we discussed the challenges arising from using virtual coordinates for routing (to a particular destination ID or to indexed data or resources) in mobile networks in multi-domain network scenarios. We developed a solution by managing data with a distributed hash table scheme. Based on our virtual cord protocol, we then implemented inter-domain routing using appropriate indirections. That approach, however, was still limited in finding efficient routes over multiple transit networks. In this paper, we extend that work by defining a framework for optimized inter-domain routing. In particular, we investigate the use of ant colony optimization for optimizing routes between multiple network domains. We show how distributed routing tables can be created and maintained and we outline a heuristic for finding candidate routes. Simulation experiments confirm the efficiency of the selected routes both on a intra and on a inter-domain level.     

A framework for controlling model-based diagnosis systems with multiple actions

In recent years reasoning about structure and function of physical systems for the purpose of diagnosis has seen a dramatic increase in activities. New exciting results concerning modelling issues, diagnostic inference patterns and inferential power have emerged. A state of the art diagnosis agent now has a considerable toolset at hand. A main obstacle for building large diagnosis systems, however, remains. How can we controlwhen to usewhich inference pattern or representation? We argue that the actions available to a diagnosis agent can be understood in terms of change ofworking hypotheses. The control problem then becomes a belief revision problem: when to adopt or drop beliefs. Our approach proceeds in two steps. First, we adopt the principle of informational economy from Gärdenfors, Knowledge in Flux (MIT Press, 1988) as kind of a law of inertia for diagnostic processes, that helps us identify candidates for revised belief states. In a second step we employ specificdiagnostic knowledge to actually choose the next belief state. We demonstrate the use of our concepts on an example in the domain of ballast tank systems as e.g. used in offshore plants.