Doxorubicin cardiotoxicity in children: comparison of a consecutive divided daily dose administration schedule with single dose (rapid) infusion administration

Kyphoscoliosis surgery is frequently associated with major blood loss and coagulation disorders. A patient with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, heart valve prosthesis and respiratory restrictive syndrome, was submitted to surgical correction of kyphoscoliosis. Current drug therapy included digitalis, oral anticoagulant and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. After careful preoperative evaluation, oral anticoagulant and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs were discontinued (five and ten days before surgery, respectively), and intravenous heparin was introduced and maintained until two h before surgery. Bacterial endocarditis prophylaxis was obtained with ampicillin (50 mg.kg-1) and gentamicin (1.5 mg.kg-1). Anaesthetic management followed a general, balanced technique and the use of invasive monitoring devices. Clotting times were kept within the normal range--prothrombin time between 13 s and 14 s; partial thromboplastin time between 28 s and 30 s. Surgery was straightforward. The patient remained ventilated for 24 h and intravenous morphine (6 micrograms.kg-1.h-1) was used for nurse controlled analgesia. Afterwards, this was changed for patient controlled analgesia. Intravenous heparin was restarted 12 h after surgery and there were no complications postoperatively. Keeping the patient without anticoagulant therapy during this kind of surgery, was the less harmful option, taking into consideration that haemorrhage is inevitable and thromboembolism is a potential, though serious risk.     

Case study: an incremental approach to re-engineering a legacy FORTRAN Computational Fluid Dynamics code in C++

This article describes a practical approach to the manual re-engineering of numerical software systems. The strategy has been applied to re-develop a medium sized FORTRAN-77 Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code into C++. The motivation for software reverse-engineering is described, as are the special problems which influence the re-use of a legacy numerical code. The aim of this case study was to extract the implicit logical structure from the legacy code to form the basis of a C++ version using an imposed object-oriented design. An important secondary consideration was for the preservation of tried and tested numerical algorithms without excessive degradation of run-time performance. To this end an incremental re-engineering strategy was adopted that consisted of nine main stages, with extensive regression testing between each stage. The stages used in this development are described in this paper, with examples to illustrate the techniques employed and the problems encountered. This paper concludes with an appraisal of the development strategy used and a discussion of the central problems that have been addressed in this case study.     

Case-based retrieval of 3-dimensional shapes for the design of metal castings

This paper describes research into retrieval based on 3-dimensional shapes for use in the metal casting industry. The purpose of the system is to advise a casting engineer on the design aspects of a new casting by reference to similar castings which have been prototyped and tested in the past. The key aspects of the system are the orientation of the shape within the mould, the positions of feeders and chills, and particular advice concerning special problems and solutions, and possible redesign. The main focus of this research is the effectiveness of similarity measures based on 3-dimensional shapes. The approach adopted here is to construct similarity measures based on a graphical representation deriving from a shape decomposition used extensively by experienced casting design engineers. The paper explains the graphical representation and discusses similarity measures based on it. Performance measures for the CBR system are given, and the results for trials of the system are presented. The competence of the current case-base is discussed, with reference to a representation of cases as points in an n-dimensional feature space, and its principal components visualization. A refinement of the case base is performed as a result of the competence analysis and the performance of the case-base before and after refinement is compared.     

Fire safety assessment of Open Wide Gangway underground trains in tunnels using coupled fire and evacuation simulation

A new type of train configuration, known as Open Wide Gangway (OWG) is becoming popular, particularly in underground environments. Previous fire modelling analysis demonstrated that the OWG configuration was considered safe as or safer than conventional configurations as it reduced the likelihood of flashover. However, these studies have ignored the impact on evacuation of the spread of fire effluent to non‐fire cars. Here we explore the fire safety offered by conventional and OWG configurations using coupled fire and evacuation modelling techniques. Two tunnel train situations are considered: one in which the car side doors are available for evacuation (train in a wide tunnel) and the other in which only the end cab doors are available (train in a narrow tunnel). Two population configurations are considered, fully and half loaded. Two ignition sources are also considered, one representing an accidental fire and the other an arson fire. The analysis demonstrates that while the OWG configuration may produce improved fire performance in the car of fire origin compared to the conventional configuration, if the interaction of the fire effluent with the evacuating passengers is considered, the OWG configuration results in a significantly greater number of casualties in virtually all the scenarios considered. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Predicting HCl concentrations in fire enclosures using an HCl decay model coupled to a CFD‐based fire field model

The amount of atmospheric hydrogen chloride (HCl) within fire enclosures produced from the combustion of chloride‐based materials tends to decay as the fire effluent is transported through the enclosure due to mixing with fresh air and absorption by solids. This paper describes an HCl decay model, typically used in zone models, which has been modified and applied to a computational fluid dynamics (CFD)‐based fire field model. While the modified model still makes use of some empirical formulations to represent the deposition mechanisms, these have been reduced from the original three to two through the use of the CFD framework. Furthermore, the effect of HCl flow to the wall surfaces on the time to reach equilibrium between HCl in the boundary layer and on wall surfaces is addressed by the modified model. Simulation results using the modified HCl decay model are compared with data from three experiments. The model is found to be able to reproduce the experimental trends and the predicted HCl levels are in good agreement with measured values. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

为高性能信号路径选择放大器和ADC

通用模拟前端信号路径由信号源、低噪放大器(LNA)、ADC驱动器、通道滤波器、采样时钟和ADC组成,如图1 所示.     

Programmed cell death of identified peptidergic neurons involved in ecdysis behavior in the Moth, Manduca sexta

Molecular dynamics simulation in explicit solvent and continuum solvent models are applied to investigate the relative stability of A- and B-form helices for two DNA sequences, dA10-dT10 and dG10-dC10 in three structural forms. One structural form is based on an unrestrained molecular dynamics (MD) trajectory starting from a canonical B-DNA structure, the second is based on a MD trajectory starting in a canonical B-DNA structure with the sugars constrained to be C2'-endo and the third simulation started from a canonical A-DNA structure with the sugars constrained to C3'-endo puckers. For the energetic analysis, structures were taken as snapshots from nanosecond length molecular dynamics simulations computed in a consistent fashion in explicit solvent, applying the particle mesh Ewald method and the Cornell et al. force field. The electrostatic contributions to solvation free energies are computed using both a finite-difference Poisson-Boltzmann model and a pairwise Generalized Born model. The non-electrostatic contributions to the solvation free energies are estimated with a solvent accessible surface area dependent term. To estimate the gas phase component of the relative free energy between the various structures, the mean solute internal energies (determined with the Cornell et al. molecular mechanics potential including all pairwise interactions within the solute) and estimates of the solute entropy (using a harmonic approximation) were used. Consistent with experiment, the polyG-polyC (GC) structures are found to be much more A-phillic than the polyA-polyT (AT) structures, the latter being quite A-phobic. The dominant energy components responsible for this difference comes from the internal and van der Waal energies. A perhaps less appreciated difference between the GC and AT rich sequences is suggested by the calculated salt dependence which demonstrates a significantly enhanced ability to drive GC rich sequences towards an A-form structure compared to AT rich sequences. In addition to being A-phobic, the AT structure also has a noticably larger helical repeat than GC and other mixed sequence duplexes, consistent with experiment. Analysis of the average solvent density from the trajectories shows hydration patterns in qualitative agreement with experiment and previous theoretical treatments.