28 research outputs found
A Modified Linear Integral Resonant Controller for suppressing jump-phenomenon and hysteresis in micro-cantilever beam structures
No full textCredit author statement James MacLean: developed the theory and performed the simulations. Sumeet S. Aphale: supervised the overall research, helped with theoretical development, presentation of results and document formatting.Peer reviewe
Co-Surgeons in Breast Reconstructive Microsurgery: What Do They Bring to the Table?
No full textAs the content in this document has been previously published in the journal Microsurgery, an internal indefinite embargo will be placed on this document through the department of Medical Student Research at UT Southwestern. This will ensure that this document will not be published online and will remain only within the UT Southwestern system to not infringe upon copyright regulations established between the authors and Microsurgery.The general metadata -- e.g., title, author, abstract, subject headings, etc. -- is publicly available, but access to the submitted files is restricted to UT Southwestern campus access and/or authorized UT Southwestern users.INTRODUCTION: Current research within other surgical specialties suggests that a co-surgeon approach may reduce operative times and complications associated with complex bilateral procedures, possibly leading to improved patient and surgical outcomes. We sought to evaluate the role of the co-surgery team and its development in free flap breast reconstruction.
METHODS: A retrospective review of free-flap breast reconstruction by two surgeons from 2011-2016 was conducted. We analyzed 128 patients who underwent bilateral-DIEP breast. Surgical groups were: single-surgeon reconstruction (SSR; 35 patients), Co-Surgery where both surgeons are present for entire reconstruction (CSR-I; 69 patients), and Co-Surgery reconstruction where co-surgeons appropriately assist in two concurrent or staggered cases (CSR-II; 24 patients). Efficiency data collected was OR time and patient length-of-stay (LOS). The rate of flap-failure, return to OR, infection, wound breakdown, seroma, hematoma and PE/DVT were compared.
RESULTS: Single-surgeon reconstruction had significantly longer OR time (678 vs 485 minutes, p< 0.0001), LOS (5 vs 3.9 days, p<0.001), higher wound occurrences of the umbilical site that required surgical correction [11.4 percent (n=4) versus 1.5 percent,(n=1); p<0.043] compared to CSR-I. Similarly, SSR had significantly longer average OR time (678 vs 527 minutes p< 0.0001), average LOS (5 days vs 4 days, p=0.0005) when compared to CSR-II. There were no total increased patient related complications associated with co-surgery (CSR- I or II).
CONCLUSION: The addition of a Co-surgeon, even with concurrent surgery, reduces operative time, average patient LOS, and post-operative complications. This work lends a strong credence that Co-surgery model is associated with increased operative efficiency
The future is flexible: Practices of flexible architecture from the post-war period as influences on future developments in architecture
No full textAs technology advances and materials evolve, architects and designers have access to innovative tools such as digital fabrication, robotic production, CNC milling, and artificial intelligence. These tools have made them more resourceful and precise in their work, allowing them to constantly exceed the potentials and find solutions to future challenges. With the integration of technology and design, architecture is progressing to be extremely flexible to respond to the circularity movement driving the construction industry. While these technologies empower them, it is fair to say that the role of an architect in the future may be uncertain. It would not be surprising if a person received a notification saying, ‘your house has been delivered!’ The thesis explores the post war period when the architecturestarted becoming flexible, modular, and prompt reflecting on the circumstances. It specifically examines how these practices are shaping the present and the potential impact they may have on the future of architecture, including the possibility of architecture without architects.AR2A011Architectural History ThesisArchitecture, Urbanism and Building Science
Multi-target detection using Relevance Vector Machine
No full textThe main purpose of a radar is to detect, recognize, and track objects of interest. When it is known that only a single target is present, the matched filter is proven to be optimal detector. However, in practice, a radar scene often consists of multiple targets. For example, in air surveillance and monitoring applications, multiple aircrafts might be in the airspace. When multiple targets are to be detected the matched filter is not guaranteed to give the best results. This can happen when a strong reflector masks the signals reflected from weak reflectors, thereby resulting in missed detections. Furthermore, when the sensor resolution is low, targets that are spaced closely together may only result in a single target actually being detected. This research explores how the Relevance Vector Machine (RVM) framework may be used to achieve a better multi-target detector than the commonly used basic matched filter approach. RVM was selected to resolve the multi-target detection problem as it estimates the target locations iteratively. In this research it was shown how the RVM framework can be used to model the fluctuation of swerling I/II targets. Additionally, the RVM algorithm was modified to incorporate a notion of statistical thresholding. Simulations show that using RVM the false alarm rate can be reduced and target locations can be more accurately recovered compared to other existing methods in case of multiple swerling I/II fluctuating targets. Furthermore, the proposed approach is shown to have a much lower convergence time compared to a similar expectation-maximization based method, namely Enhanced Sparse Bayesian Learning.Electrical Engineerin
Preparation and Study of the Nutritional Properties of Cereal Flakes with special reference to Oat Flakes
No full textThis Dissertation / Report is the outcome of investigation carried out by the creator(s) / author(s) at the department/division of Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), Mysore mentioned below in this page
PV system design for an RC plane
No full textSolar energy is being increasingly used in many sectors as it is clean energy which requires minimum operation and maintenance costs [1]. One of the potential _elds of applications of solar energy is the aviation industry, speci_cally in small aircraft and monitoring devices. Many research projects have been conducted in developing solar energy based aircrafts, like Helios and Solar Impulse [2][3]. The total energy that can be harnessed by using solar panels in the aircraft may not alone be su_cient to provide enough power required for the aircraft due to several reasons including additional weights of components (battery, converter) and requirements of large surface area [4][5]. Therefore, one of the attractive options is to use solar technology as an additional source of energy for extending the ight time or range of an aircraft. PV technology o_ers the ability to provide an uninterrupted longer term power supply as energy can be continuously harvested during ight and stored for later use. This extension possibility of ight time has become increasingly important in various _elds such as environmental monitoring and military applications in manned and unmanned aircrafts. This BSc thesis is a part of the `Solar Plane` bachelor graduation project. The main goal of the project was to extend the ight time of a small commercially available aircraft using photovoltaic (PV) technology. The project was split into 3 sub-groups: PV (Photovoltaic), power electronics (PE) and control. This thesis describes the design and implementation of the PV system/layout and the software used for maximum power point tracking (MPPT)
A prospective evaluation of prevalence of microbial flora and significance of intraoperative Peritoneal culture of fungus in perforation Peritonitis
No full textObjective: To study the prevalence of intraabdominal flora and significance of intraoperative peritoneal fluid culture of fungus in patients with perforation peritonitis.
Study design: Prospective study.
Methods: In this study, we analyzed 91 patients of gastrointestinal perforation admitted during the period from January 2011 to July 2012 in Department of Surgery. Any patient undergoing exploratory laparotomy for gastrointestinal perforation above 5 years was included. Intraoperative abdominal fluid samples were collected and cultured.
Results: Ninety one patients of gastrointestinal perforation were studied. The mean presenting age was 35.21+ 12.87 years. Gastro duodenal perforation was the commonest (48.35%), 34.07% were having ileal perforation, 6.59% were having appendicular perforation , 5.49% were having jejunal and 5.49% had large bowel perforation. Out of 91 patients, 79 (86.8%) patients showed growth of either bacteria or fungus and in 12 (13.2%) patient’s culture was sterile. Gram positive cocci was found in 46.1%, E.Coli in 40.65%, Klebsiella in 14.28%, Enterobacter in 1.098% and Pseudomonas in 1.089% of patients. Fungal growth was seen in 48.3% of patients. Patients with fungal positive culture had superficial surgical site infection in 77.27%, deep surgical site infection 59.09% and residual abscesses formation in 27.27% of cases. Patient with no growth of fungus have superficial site infection in 40%, deep surgical site infection in 25.71% and residual abscess formation in 5.71%.
Conclusion: Positive peritoneal fungal co-infection is a bad prognostic factor and a significant risk factor for adverse outcome in perforation peritonitis
Caste Identities and Structures of Threats: Stigma, Prejudice and Social Representation in Indian universities
No full textCaste is a complex ontological construction. Despite several anti-caste move-ments and constitutional provisions, caste exists in the Indian psyche as part of everyday life. Even in the advent of globalization, caste continues to foster social and economic inequalities and exclusion in newer forms and perpetuates violence. The available research on caste-based stigma and humiliation provides a limited understanding as it deals with Dalits only; and ignores caste-Hindus (upper-caste) agency. Based largely on qualitative data collected at an intense three-day workshop, including two Focus Group Discussions and a year-long ethnography, this article illustrates the micro processes of everyday life experiences of caste-based stigma and humiliation among university students, academic staff and administrative staff. It explores subtle and overt caste discrimination, prejudices and stereotypes existing in the spatial morphologies of Indian higher education, its perpetuation on campuses and its impact on students’ psyche. It highlights the dearth of scholarship in this area of caste identity and stigma; and proposes nuanced questions for future research to understand why universities in India are turning into places of social defeat for Dalit and OBC students. The article argues the basis of caste discrimination and humiliation in universities is not the same as it exists in other social institutions. Instead of asserting conclusions on this matter we set out justifiable lines of inquiry. There are two issues that this article examines first, how students in Indian higher education evolve strategies for coping with threatened identities. Second, what structural repair in higher education is required to heal the wounded (caste) psyche
Neuromorphic Retina Design to encode LIDAR based Scene Dynamics
No full textAutonomous vehicle (AV technology) relies heavily on vision based applications like object recognition, obstacle/collision avoidance etc. In order to achieve this, understanding and estimating the dynamics in the environment is extremely important. LIDARs are proven to detect both shape as well as the speed/movement of the objects in the scene but one of the biggest challenges faced in adapting LIDAR technology is the huge amount of data it produces and the way it is processed. Most of this data is redundant static information which results in wastage of system memory, computational resources, power and time. Inspired from biological retina, first Neuromorphic-Retina for LIDAR is proposed that is able to extract and encode movement happening at particular distance, particular angle and with particular velocity from raw LIDAR temporal pulses into unique spike sequences so that the information about the dynamic environment can be efficiently classified and processed by event based and low powered Neuromorphic processing unit. The system is designed in such a way that it avoids consumption of large amount of computational resources and system memory. Simulation results show that the Retina is able to filter out redundant static information from the LIDAR data stream thereby reducing data throughput of around 50 - 70 % with 5 - 22 % spatial quality loss (based on scenario) as well as remove noise caused due to luminous reflections. This has tremendous impact on system latency and power consumption due to drop in memory accesses.Electrical Engineering | Circuits and System
Multifaceted utilization of a cortical stimulator during tumor resection
No full textAbstractBackgroundNeurosurgeons use Ojemann cortical stimulators to map and localize cortical and subcortical regions of the brain to map functional areas intraoperatively to avoid resecting or damaging functional tissue. Here we describe a technique where, rather than using a separate retracting tool, a handheld Ojemann cortical stimulator was used to retract cerebral parenchyma while simultaneously stimulating descending white matter tracts to prevent accidental damage to white matter tracts involved with motor function.Case descriptionA 48-year-old patient developed intractable seizures and preoperative workup showed a left frontal brain mass close to her motor region. Subdural grid electrodes were implanted to localize the patient's ictal onset zone. The electrodes were then removed and the tumor was resected along with the ictal onset zone. During the resection, the neurosurgeon (S. Vadera) successfully utilized the Ojemann cortical stimulator to stimulate descending white matter tracts to prevent accidental injury to the patient and also retract cerebral parenchyma during resection. Four weeks post-operative, the patient had made a complete recovery and had no unforeseen deficits or weaknesses.ConclusionHere we show that the Ojemann cortical stimulator can be used as an effective retraction tool as well as a cerebral parenchyma stimulator, effectively preventing accidental injury to functional tissue while concurrently giving the neurosurgeon a free hand to perform other tasks
