Month: August 2018

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Press Release: Reliability, learnability and efficiency of two tools for cement crowns retrieval

This research article by Dr. Cristina Bignardi et al is published in The Open Biomedical Engineering Journal, Volume 12, 2018

This research work aims to help other researchers in the field to set up an experimental bench to assess the performance of different tools for the retrieval of cement crowns, in terms of reliability, learnability and efficiency. Specifically, a sliding hammer and an automatic tool, powered by compressed air, have been considered by the authors of the article. Both skilled and unexperienced operators have been involved in the experimental campaign where an appositely designed set up allowed measuring the pattern of force versus time. The peak applied force has been taken as an output variable for the evaluation of tool performance.

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Experimental results have given evidence that the automatic tool improves both the inter-operator and the intra-operator reliability, respectively from 79% to 95%, and from 69% to 92%. Additionally, the force pattern is significantly different between these two tools: the instrument powered by compressed air produces a sharper peak force, as required to break fragile materials such as dental crown cement, and its efficiency can be estimated to be 75% higher. Both tools have a high learnability since the performances of experienced and unexperienced operators have not proved to be significantly different.

The experimental set up as well as the respective testing protocol introduced here can be used to characterize any other instrument for cement crown retrieval, with the advantage of producing objective, numerical data.

For More information about the article, please visit

https://benthamopen.com/ABSTRACT/TOBEJ-12-27#aff1

Reference: Bignardi C et al, (2018). Reliability, Learnability and Efficiency of Two Tools for Cement Crowns Retrieval in Dentistry. The Open Biomedical Engineering Journal, Volume 12, 2018. DOI: 10.2174/1874120701812010027

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Case Report- “Pyoderma Gangrenosum of the Face: A Rare Presentation and a Rapid Resolution”

Author: Julia Shah

Journal: The Open Dermatology Journal

 Abstract

Background:

Pyoderma Gangrenosum (PG) is a disorder of neutrophil chemotaxis that often affects the lower extremities of patients with concurrent autoimmune disorders.

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Result and Discussion:

Resolution of lesions typically requires a minimum of six weeks of treatment with systemic steroids. We present a unique case of multifocal PG involving the hand and face that healed after ten days of treatment with oral prednisone.

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Press Release – “A review of prevalent methods for automatic skin lesion diagnosis”

This article by Damilola A Okuboyejo and Oludayo O Olugbara is published in:

The Open Dermatology Journal  Volume 12, 2018

The three prevalent skin cancers, according to the literature are melanoma, basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma.

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Melanoma is an archetype of skin cancer that typically result from an unpredictable disorder in the melanocytic cells, thus causing improper synthesis of the melanin. While melanoma might account for the least amongst the three aforementioned skin cancer types, it has, however, been umpired to account for 75-79% of skin cancer related deaths. Literature reports have it that Melanoma melanoma is the 5th most common cancer occurring amongst males, 7th most commonly occurring cancer in females, and 2nd most common form of cancer amongst young adults ranging from 15-29 years of age.

Above The above concerns have propelled the need to provide automated systems for medical diagnosis of skin cancer diseases within a strict time window, which means working towards reducing the unnecessary biopsybiopsies, increasing the speed of diagnosis and providing reproducibility of diagnostic results.

Okuboyejo and Olugbara, in their work, used have applied comparative analysis to review and compare the existing novel approaches for automating the diagnostic procedures of melanocytic skin lesions, including their success and shortcomings. These lesion images could either be microscopic (dermoscopic) or macroscopic (clinical) in nature. The authors have equally enlightened the research community on the homogeneous skin lesion diagnostic procedures frequently used in the research community. This work is particularly valuable for decision makers to consider tradeoffs between accuracy of diagnostic procedures versus complexity of the procedures. Recommendations such as the need to embrace feature selection optimization are made in order to reduce complexity and protracted computation. In addition, the authors proposed to favour a better classification model over the need to identify a large number of features required to discriminate between lesion categories.

For more information about the article, please visit

https://benthamopen.com/FULLTEXT/TODJ-12-14

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Recently Published Article – “A Synoptic Study of Low Troposphere Wind at the Israeli Coast”

Author: Sigalit Berkovic

Journal: The Open Atmospheric Science Journal

Abstract

Objective:

This research is dedicated to the study of the feasibility of surface wind downscaling from 925 or 850 hPa winds according to synoptic class, season and hour.

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Methods:

Two aspects are examined: low tropospheric wind veering and wind speed correlation and verification of the ERA-Interim analysis wind by comparison to radiosonde data at Beit Dagan, a station on the Israeli coast.

Results:

Relatively small (< 60°) cross angles between the 1000 hPa wind vector and the 925 hPa or 850 hPa wind vector at 12Z and high correlation (0.6-0.8) between the wind speed at the two levels were found only under winter lows. Relatively small cross angles and small wind speed correlation were found under highs to the west and Persian troughs.

The verification of ERA-Interim analysis in comparison with radiosonde data has shown good prediction of wind direction at 12Z at 1000, 925 and 850 hPa levels (RMSE 20°-60°) and lower prediction quality at 1000 hPa at 0Z (RMSE 60°-90°). The analysis under-predicts the wind speed, especially at 1000 hPa. The wind speed RMSE is 1-2 m/s, except for winter lows with 2-3 m/s RMSE at 0Z, 12Z at all levels.

Conclusion:

Inference of surface wind may be possible at 12Z from 925 or 825 hPa winds under winter lows. Inference of wind direction from 925 hPa winds may be possible under highs to the west and Persian troughs. Wind speed should be inferred by interpolation, according to historical data of measurements or high resolution model.

To access this article, please visit:

https://benthamopen.com/FULLTEXT/TOASCJ-12-80