Husumdue0824

Soil radon (Rn-222) has been continuously monitored at Badargadh station (23.47°N, 70.62°E) in Kutch region of Gujarat to study the pre-seismic anomalies prior to occurrence of local earthquakes. This monitoring site is in close proximity to the South Wagad Fault, a seismically active fault in the study area. The raw data of radon along with meteorological parameters such as temperature, pressure and humidity in soil of this station for the period of January 01 to December 31, 2017 with a sampling interval of 10 min were used in the analysis. The wind speed and rainfall data of the corresponding period were collected from the nearest weather station. From descriptive statistics, we found an average soil radon concentration of 343 Bq.m-3. It is observed that radon has a maximum concentration during the rainy season compared to the other two seasons. We found that radon emission rate is less during mid-nights and early morning, whereas, the radon emission is more during afternoon hours when the sun light intensity is more. In order to identify and extract the periodic oscillations in the radon time series, the Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) was applied to the soil radon (Rn-222) time series by decomposing it into different oscillatory modes known as the Intrinsic Mode Function (IMF). Several interesting non-linear features emerged from the analysis after applying Hilbert Huang Transform (HHT) on significant IMFs. The temporal variation of the instantaneous energy is well correlated with four local earthquakes during the study period. Most interestingly, intermittencies in the temporal evolution of the instantaneous energy function have been observed prior to these local earthquakes. We present the results of the seismic and aseismic periods as well as a brief discussion of the analysis of radon data which can be used as a precursor of seismic activity. It is now possible to identify anomalies in radon time series using EMD based HHT method even for small-magnitude earthquakes.

Retrospective observational study aiming at testing whether different education levels in older adults are associated with the rehabilitation outcome.

The study planned to cover all patients of over 65 rehabilitated from 2015 to 2017 at Golgi-Redaelli, a large government-funded rehabilitation Institute in Northern Italy comprising of three centers. Different administrative datasets were linked to investigate the factors associated with the functional outcome. The cohort resulted in 2,486 older adults for whom information on education and rehabilitation outcome was available.

Rehabilitation outcome was measured with the Barthel Index testing the ability in basic activities of daily living and the Tinetti Performance Oriented Mobility Assessment measuring stability and walking. Multiple linear and logistic regression models were run controlling for rehabilitation setting and center of care, age, gender, cognitive functioning and comorbidity.

Education resulted negatively associated with functional recove needed to confirm our results and to test more specific hypotheses about the degree of effectiveness of rehabilitation across socio-economic groups.

Hip abductor muscles are important for the maintenance of postural stability, mainly on the mediolateral direction and unipodal support conditions. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the effect of unilateral induced fatigue of hip abductor muscles on balance and functional capacity of older women.

The study included physically independent women aged 60-75 years. We assessed static balance with the single limb stance test (SLS) and evaluated functional capacity with the maximum gait speed (MGS) and step test (ST). We ran the protocol of hip abductor muscle fatigue with a Biodex isokinetic dynamometer. Assessment of balance and functional capacity happened before and after the muscle fatigue protocol. We applied the t-test for repeated measures to determine whether unilateral hip abductor muscle fatigue influences the performance in the tests (SLS, MGS and ST).

The protocol of hip abductor muscle fatigue negatively affected all three evaluated tasks SLS (p = 0.000), ST (p = 0.000) and MGS (p = 0.000). However, the single limb stance test was the most task affected (effect size = 0.51, pre- and post-fatigue difference = 28.1 %).

After the unilateral muscle fatigue of hip abductors, we observed the worst performance on clinical tests, mainly regarding the SLS test, which shows the involvement of hip abductors during usual motor tasks. However, the small magnitude of the limitation of functional tests (MGS and ST) suggests the presence of postural compensations.

After the unilateral muscle fatigue of hip abductors, we observed the worst performance on clinical tests, mainly regarding the SLS test, which shows the involvement of hip abductors during usual motor tasks. However, the small magnitude of the limitation of functional tests (MGS and ST) suggests the presence of postural compensations.

Accurate prediction of post-hepatectomy liver failure (PHLF) is important in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). selleck kinase inhibitor We aimed to retrospectively evaluate the utility of gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI for predicting PHLF in patients who underwent anatomic hepatectomy for HCC with portal vein invasion.

Forty-one patients (32 men, 9 women) were included. Hepatobiliary-phase MR images were acquired 20 min after injection of gadoxetic acid using a 3D fat-suppressed T1-weighted spoiled gradient-echo sequence. Liver-spleen ratio (LSR), remnant hepatocellular uptake index (rHUI), and HUI were calculated. The severity of PHLF was defined according to the International Study Group of Liver Surgery. Differences in LSR between the resected liver and the remnant liver, and HUI and rHUI/HUI between no/mild and severe PHLF were compared using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and Wilcoxon rank-sum test, respectively. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to identify predictors of severe PHLF.ic resection.

While the lack of efficient tools yielding controllable uniform supersaturations (S) has delayed basic experimental heterogeneous nucleation studies, common diffusive condensation particle counters (DCPCs) would fill this gap if their present substantial S-variation could be minimized.

For an initially saturated vapor in two-dimensional (2D) parabolic flow, with discontinuous wall temperature change from T

to T

, we calculate the spatial S(x,y) distribution, including the curve S

(Ψ) of maximal supersaturations versus streamline Ψ. Activation probability curves P(T

,T

) are also calculated assuming that nucleation goes from zero to 100% at a critical supersaturation S*.

Two new approaches to achieve a nearly constant S

(Ψ) are discovered. (i) Sampling only the central 50% of the flow is most effective because the [dS

(Ψ)/Dψ]

 = 0. This advantage is lost in the more common axisymmetric configuration. (ii) When the ratio Le = α/D between gas-vapor heat and mass diffusivities is unity, we find the quite general property that S

(Ψ) is exactly constant.