Detecting Selective Laser Melting Beam Power from Ultrasonic Temporal and Spectral Responses of Phononic Crystal Artifacts Toward Real-Time Quality Monitoring.

Unlike many conventional manufacturing techniques, 3D Printing/Additive Manufacturing (3DP/AM) fabrication creates builds with unprecedented degrees of structural and geometrical complexities. However, uncertainties in 3DP/AM processes and material attributes could cause geometric and structural quality issues in resulting builds and products. Evaluating the sensitivity of process parameters and material properties for process optimization, quality assessment, and closed-loop control is crucial in practice.

The Impact of Deep Local Lung Hyperthermia on COVID-19 Cancer Patients.

Background: The goal of this study was to assess the impact of deep local hyperthermia on oxygen (O) saturation and infected volumes of lungs on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cancer patients.

Materials And Methods: Fifty patients who suffered from COVID-19 (according to their computed tomography (CT) images and laboratory findings) were included in this study. The mentioned patients were divided into two groups (I and II) with thirty-five participants.

Ultrasonic Evaluation of Laser Scanning Speed Effect on the Spectral Properties of Three-Dimensional-Printed Metal Phononic Crystal Artifacts.

Additive manufacturing/three-dimensional printing (AM/3DP) processes promise a flexible production modality to fabricate a complex build directly from its digital design file with minimal postprocessing. However, some critical shortcomings of AM/3DP processes related to the build quality and process repeatability are frequently experienced and reported in the literature. In this study, an real-time nondestructive monitoring framework based on the dispersive properties of phononic crystal artifacts (PCAs) to address such quality challenges is described.

Comparison of the effects of training in the standing and lying positions on the quality of life and clinical symptoms in women with mild varicose veins: A randomized controlled trial.

Background: Patients with varicose veins are prevented from prolonged standing. Considering that exercise can be implemented in different positions, the aim of the current study was to compare the effects of training at standing and lying positions on quality of life, and clinical symptoms in women with mild varicose veins.

Methods: Twenty-five women with mild varicose veins aged 35-50 years were randomly assigned to three groups; exercise at standing position (n=10), exercise at lying position (n=8) and control (no treatment) group (n=7).

Impact of Using Standard and High-Resolution Exposure Modalities of Cone-Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) System for Dental Implants Dimension Measurements.

Background: This study aimed to analyze the effects of standard and high-resolution exposures on the diagnostic accuracy of CBCT in the evaluation of dental implant dimensions.

Materials And Methods: A descriptive-analytical study was carried out on 40 dry human mandibles with appropriate ridge quality based on panoramic radiography. CBCT (Soredex, Cranex 3D, Finland) with a large field of view (FOV) and CMOS flat panel detector were used.

Diffusion-Weighted MRI Monitoring of Embolic Brain Stroke for COVID-19 Patients.

Background: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic around the world has some adverse effects on the human body, and there is limited data about the impacts of this pandemic disease on embolic brain stroke.

Materials And Methods: Fifty-two COVID-19 patients with embolic brain stroke were included in this study. The COVID-19 patients were diagnosed according to their clinical findings.

Evaluation of Using Panoramic Radiography and Ultrasonography for Diagnosing Carotid Artery Calcifications.

Background: The aim of this study was to determine the reliability of panoramic radiograph (PR) as a screening tool for the detection of calcified carotid atheroma (CCA) in comparison with Doppler ultrasonography (DU) examination.

Materials And Methods: In this study, DU was performed for 52 patients who had carotid calcification or other differential diagnoses of carotid calcification on PR routine screening. The data relating to the presence or absence of calcified atheroma in DU and PR were evaluated using SPSS software.

Effect of Shields in Radiation Dose and Secondary Biological Risk of Gonads in Lumbosacral Digital and Computerized Radiography.

Background: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of shields in imposed radiation dose to gonads in anterior-posterior (AP) and lateral views of lumbosacral radiography using digital radiography (DR) and computerized radiography (CR) methods.

Materials And Methods: Sixty patients who were suspected to AP and lateral view of lumbosacral radiography were included in this study. The patients were exposed with and without shields which have 0.

Recent Studies of Membranes for Liquids Separation and Water Treatment.

Rapid urbanization and industrialization in the past decades have resulted in vast amounts of wastewater containing pollutants such as inorganic chemicals, pathogens, pharmaceuticals, plant nutrients, petrochemical products, and microplastics [...

Asymptotic Behavior of Adversarial Training in Binary Linear Classification.

Adversarial training using empirical risk minimization (ERM) is the state-of-the-art method for defense against adversarial attacks, that is, against small additive adversarial perturbations applied to test data leading to misclassification. Despite being successful in practice, understanding the generalization properties of adversarial training in classification remains widely open. In this article, we take the first step in this direction by precisely characterizing the robustness of adversarial training in binary linear classification.

On Smart Geometric Non-Destructive Evaluation: Inspection Methods, Overview, and Challenges.

Inspection methods, also known as non-destructive evaluation (NDE), is a process for inspecting materials, products, and facilities to identify flaws, imperfections, and malfunctions without destruction or changing the integrity of materials, structures, and mechanisms. However, detecting those defects requires test conducting and results inferring, which is highly demanding in terms of analysis, performance, and time. New technologies are therefore needed to increase the efficiency, probability of detection, and interpretability of NDE methods to establish smart inspection.

Positive- and Negative-Pressure Ventilation Characterized by Local and Global Pulmonary Mechanics.

There is continued debate regarding the equivalency of positive-pressure ventilation (PPV) and negative-pressure ventilation (NPV). Resolving this question is important because of the different practical ramifications of the two paradigms. We sought to investigate the parallel between PPV and NPV and determine whether or not these two paradigms cause identical ventilation profiles by analyzing the local strain mechanics when the global tidal volume (Vt) and inflation pressure was matched.

Secondary Infertility: A Neglected Aspect of Buerger's Disease.

Background: During the gathering of demographic data for the biobank on Buerger's Disease (BD), we found that, after the clinical manifestation of BD, the patients usually became infertile, and the age of their last child was compatible with the time of disease diagnosis. The aim of this study was to evaluate the underlying cause of secondary infertility in BD patients.

Methods: Anti-sperm antibodies (ASA), testosterone, luteinizing hormone (LH), and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) in the sera of 39 male BD patients were measured and compared with 39 age-matched Caucasian male controls.

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Smart Technologies for Nondestructive Evaluation.

Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques are used in many industries to evaluate the properties of components and inspect for flaws and anomalies in structures without altering the part's integrity or causing damage to the component being tested. This includes monitoring materials' condition (Material State Awareness (MSA)) and health of structures (Structural Health Monitoring (SHM)). NDE techniques are highly valuable tools to help prevent potential losses and hazards arising from the failure of a component while saving time and cost by not compromising its future usage.

All-optical dissipative discrete time crystals.

Time crystals are periodic states exhibiting spontaneous symmetry breaking in either time-independent or periodically-driven quantum many-body systems. Spontaneous modification of discrete time-translation symmetry in periodically-forced physical systems can create a discrete time crystal (DTC) constituting a state of matter possessing properties like temporal rigid long-range order and coherence, which are inherently desirable for quantum computing and information processing. Despite their appeal, experimental demonstrations of DTCs are scarce and significant aspects of their behavior remain unexplored.

Improved coupled-mode theory for high-index-contrast photonic platforms.

Coupled-mode theory (CMT) has been widely used in optics and photonics design. Despite its popularity, several different formulations of CMT exist in the literature, and their applicable range is not entirely clear, in particular when it comes to high-index-contrast photonics platforms. Here we propose an improved formulation of CMT and demonstrate its superior performance through numerical simulations that compare CMT-derived quantities with supermode calculations and full wave propagation simulations.

Milestones in thromboangiitis obliterans: a position paper of the VAS-European independent foundation in angiology/vascular medicine.

Even today thromboangiitis obliterans has disease features that remain misunderstood or underappreciated. The epidemiology, etiology and pathophysiology of the disease are still unclear. Biomarkers and disease activity markers are lacking, thus clinical assessment is difficult.

Sharp Guarantees and Optimal Performance for Inference in Binary and Gaussian-Mixture Models.

We study convex empirical risk minimization for high-dimensional inference in binary linear classification under both discriminative binary linear models, as well as generative Gaussian-mixture models. Our first result sharply predicts the statistical performance of such estimators in the proportional asymptotic regime under isotropic Gaussian features. Importantly, the predictions hold for a wide class of convex loss functions, which we exploit to prove bounds on the best achievable performance.

Cholesteryl Ester Transfer Protein Inhibitors and Cardiovascular Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.

Background: Cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP) inhibitors increase serum high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c) concentration; however, their impact on cardiovascular outcomes is not clear. This systematic review examines the effect of CETP inhibitors on serum lipid profiles, cardiovascular events, and all-cause mortality.

Methods: We searched MEDLINE, Embase, and the Cochrane Library of Clinical Trials for placebo-controlled randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that examined the effect of a CETP inhibitor (dalcetrapib, anacetrapib, evacetrapib, or TA-8995) on all-cause mortality, major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), or the components of MACE at ≥6 months.

Detection of Rickettsia Endosymbiont Bemisia Tabaci in the Amputated Limbs of Three Buerger's Disease Patients.

Until recently, the aetiology of Buerger's disease (BD) has been unknown. Although there is a close relationship between BD and smoking, it cannot explain the low prevalence of BD among smokers or the disease's geographical distribution. Infectious pathogens, such as Rickettsial infection, have also been suggested as the trigger of BD development, but this theory has neither been proven nor ruled out.

A Novel Algorithm in Radiation Dosimetry of Regular and Irregular Treatment Fields.

Background: The aim of this study was to design an algorithm for the calculation of monitor unit (MU) in a short time and high precision for different radiotherapy (RT) fields.

Materials And Methods: The algorithm for calculating MU for the stated patients was designed in MATLAB software. To investigate the efficiency of this algorithm, 11 regular chest fields with the sizes of 7 cm × 7 cm up to 17 cm × 17 cm were considered, and the obtained MUs were compared with MUs of 13 patients which were calculated with a "hand calculation" which is used in some RT centers for the aforementioned fields.

Angiogenesis induction in Buerger's disease: a disease management double-edged sword?

Due to unknown aetiology of Thromboangiitis obliterans (TAO), its effectively treating is challenging. However, angiogenesis induction is one of the acceptable treatments for TAO patients. Recently, we have noticed that TAO patients who were under long-term treatment with angiogenesis-inducing medication showed considerable improvement in terms of healing chronic ulcers over the course of one to 2 years of treatment.