Hasil untuk "Miscellaneous systems and treatments"

Hyungsun Jun, Dasol Park, Haerim Kim et al.

Background: Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in older adults. However, older adults with ischemic heart disease (IHD) are often exposed to risks associated with polypharmacy, and standard treatments may not fully address their complex clinical needs. Therefore, integrative approaches, such as acupuncture, may play a complementary role. This study assessed the association between early acupuncture exposure and mortality among older adults with newly diagnosed IHD. Methods: Using the Korean National Health Insurance Service database, we identified patients aged ≥65 years with newly diagnosed IHD. Those receiving ≥6 acupuncture sessions within six months post-diagnosis formed the acupuncture group; those without any acupuncture formed the conventional group. Primary outcomes were five-year all-cause and circulatory system disease-specific mortality. Exploratory analyses compared regular and irregular acupuncture exposure. Results: Of 9865 patients, 667 received acupuncture. They were younger, included more females, and had more severe disabilities than the conventional group. After adjustment for confounders, the acupuncture group showed lower all-cause mortality (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] 0.71, 95 % confidence interval [CI] 0.58–0.88) and circulatory system disease-specific mortality (aHR 0.54, 95 % CI 0.34–0.89). Regular acupuncture use conferred further survival benefits over irregular use and no acupuncture. Conclusions: These findings suggest that early-phase acupuncture intervention may play a meaningful role in improving survival outcomes in this population. Prospective studies are needed to confirm these findings and determine causality.

Kyou-Young Lee, Dong-Nyung Lee, Na-Yoen Kwon et al.

Objectives: Cold hypersensitivity in the hands and feet (CHHF) is defined as the symptom of a sensation of coldness in the extremities under conditions that are not considered cold by an unaffected person. CHHF can affect the quality of life by placing restrictions on one's daily activities. Although electroacupuncture (EA) and acupuncture have been widely used for treating CHHF, randomized clinical trial (RCT) has not yet been conducted for evaluating the safety and efficacy of EA or acupuncture for the treatment of CHHF. This study aims to evaluate the effects of EA in CHHF patients. Methods: This study is a randomized, multicenter, and parallel design clinical trial. Overall, 72 participants will be randomly assigned to the EA treatment group, acupuncture treatment group, and untreated control group in 1:1:1 ratio via a web-based randomization system. The EA treatment group and acupuncture treatment group will receive EA or acupuncture treatment by visiting ten times at intervals of twice a week for five weeks. Follow-up visits will be made four weeks after the end of treatment. For the untreated control group, three visits will be made. The primary outcome measures will be the CHHF visual analogue scale score. Secondary outcome measures will be the body temperature of hands and feet, total scores of the Korean version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life Scale abbreviated version, the results of the questionnaire of health-related quality of life, questionnaire of demonstration, and questionnaire of cold hypersensitivity. Conclusion : :This study will be the first clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of EA for the treatment of CHHF. We expect this study to provide basic evidence for the treatment of CHHF with EA and future large-scale RCTs.

Ana Carolina Nunes Almeida, Mariana Procópio Arruda Lemos, Elaine Cristina Dias Franco Franco

Objetivo: Compreender, na perspectiva dos profissionais da Estratégia de Saúde da Família (ESF), os significados atribuídos à adolescência, bem como as estratégias de acolhimento e de acompanhamento das condições de saúde do adolescente-família no cotidiano da prática profissional. Metodologia: Estudo descritivo exploratório, de abordagem qualitativa, que analisou 13 entrevistas realizadas com profissionais da ESF de Divinópolis, Minas Gerais, Brasil. Para o tratamento dos dados produzidos no corpus do estudo, adotou-se a análise de conteúdo proposta por Bardin. Resultados: Os resultados mostraram que, na percepção dos profissionais da ESF, a compreensão da adolescência é permeada pela definição da faixa etária, por mudanças hormonais e psicossociais. A dependência das redes sociais apresentou-se como um dos principais desafios durante este ciclo de vida. Não foram relatadas ações de planejamento e de saúde específicas voltadas ao adolescente e sua família, mas sim, iniciativas individuais de atenção à saúde para atender à demanda deste grupo. Conclusão: O estudo contribui para o aprofundamento da temática adolescência nas ações de cuidado pela equipe da ESF. A construção de estratégias coletivas para contemplar este público, buscando qualificar o cuidado pautado nos princípios do Sistema Único de Saúde, por meio de práticas de saúde interprofissionais que atendam às necessidades da população, são recomendadas. Na formação, estimula-se a reorganização dos currículos dos cursos de graduação em saúde por ciclos de vida, com foco na atenção à saúde do adolescente. Estudos complementares são esperados, buscando ampliar o número de ESF participantes e incluindo adolescentes e famílias como participantes de pesquisa.

Olga Kozachek, Nikolay Nikolaev, Olga Slita et al.

In this paper an adaptive state observer and parameter identification algorithm for a linear time-varying system are developed under condition that the state matrix of the system contains unknown time-varying parameters of a known form. The state vector is observed using only output and input measurements without identification of the unknown parameters. When the state vector estimate is obtained, the identification algorithm is applied to find unknown parameters of the system.

Suiyi He, Maziar Zamanpour, Jianshe Guo et al.

Red light violation is a major cause of traffic collisions and resulting injuries and fatalities. Despite extensive prior work to reduce red light violations, they continue to be a major problem in practice, partly because existing systems suffer from the flaw of providing the same guidance to all drivers. As a result, some violations are avoided, but other drivers ignore or respond inappropriately to red light running systems, resulting in safety issues overall. We show a method of providing accurate warnings to individual drivers to avoid the broad guidance approach of most existing systems. Recognizing if a driver will run red lights is highly dependent on signal phase and timing, traffic conditions along the road, and individual driver behaviour, the proposed warning system contains three parts: a traffic prediction algorithm, an individual warning signal optimizer, and a driver warning display. The traffic prediction algorithm predicts future traffic states along the road towards the signalized intersections using the latest traffic conditions obtained through vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. Then, an optimization problem is formulated to compute the optimal warning signal based on predicted traffic states and driver reaction model. Finally, the optimal warning signal is shown on the display screen to advise driver on how much braking is needed to avoid running the red light. The system continuously updates the latest warning signal as the vehicle is approaching the intersection. Both numerical simulated driving scenarios and real-world road tests are used to demonstrate the proposed algorithm's performance under different conditions by comparing with previous work on red light running warning system. The results show that the system provides more effective and accurate warning signals to drivers, helping them avoid running red lights.

Jake Welde, Vijay Kumar

In this work, we address the design of tracking controllers that drive a mechanical system's state asymptotically towards a reference trajectory. Motivated by aerospace and robotics applications, we consider fully-actuated systems evolving on the broad class of homogeneous spaces (encompassing all vector spaces, Lie groups, and spheres of any finite dimension). In this setting, the transitive action of a Lie group on the configuration manifold enables an intrinsic description of the tracking error as an element of the state space, even in the absence of a group structure on the configuration manifold itself (e.g., for $\mathbb{S}^2$). Such an error state facilitates the design of a generalized control policy depending smoothly on state and time, which drives the geometric tracking error to a designated origin from almost every initial condition, thereby guaranteeing almost global convergence to the reference trajectory. Moreover, the proposed controller simplifies elegantly when specialized to a Lie group or the n-sphere. In summary, we propose a unified, intrinsic controller guaranteeing almost global asymptotic trajectory tracking for fully-actuated mechanical systems evolving on a broad class of manifolds. We apply the method to an axisymmetric satellite and an omnidirectional aerial robot.

Peter H. van der Kamp

We associate parametric classes of $n$-component Lotka-Volterra systems which admit $k$ additional linear Darboux polynomials, with admissible loopless hypergraphs of order $n$ and size $k$. We study the equivalence relation on admissible hypergraphs induced by linear transformations of the associated LV-systems, for $n\leq 5$. We present a new 13-parameter 5-component superintegrable Lotka-Volterra system, i.e. one that is not equivalent to a so-called tree-system. We conjecture that tree-systems associated with nonisomorphic trees are not equivalent, which we verified for $n<9$.

Eleftherios E. Vlahakis, Lars Lindemann, Pantelis Sopasakis et al.

We address an optimal control problem for linear stochastic systems with unknown noise distributions and joint chance constraints using conformal prediction. Our approach involves designing a feedback controller to maintain an error system within a prediction region (PR). We define PRs as sublevel sets of a nonconformity score over error trajectories, enabling the handling of joint chance constraints. We propose two methods to design feedback control and PRs: one through direct optimization over error trajectory samples, and the other indirectly using the $S$-procedure with a disturbance ellipsoid obtained from data. By tightening constraints with PRs, we solve a relaxed problem to synthesize a feedback policy. Our method ensures reliable probabilistic guarantees based on marginal coverage, independent of data size.

Jacopo Piccini, Elias August, Sigurdur Hafstein et al.

In this paper, we present a novel approach to determine the stability of switched linear and nonlinear systems using Sum of Squares optimisation. Particularly, we use Sum of Squares optimisation to search for a Lyapunov function that defines an absorbing set that confines solution trajectories. For linear systems, we show that this also implies global asymptotic stability. Using this approach, we can study stability for a broader range of switched systems, particularly, we can search for a global attractor for switched nonlinear systems, whose dynamics are given by polynomial vector fields and which have multiple equilibria or limit cycles.

Szabolcs Szentpéteri, Balázs Csanád Csáji

The paper suggests a generalization of the Sign-Perturbed Sums (SPS) finite sample system identification method for the identification of closed-loop observable stochastic linear systems in state-space form. The solution builds on the theory of matrix-variate regression and instrumental variable methods to construct distribution-free confidence regions for the state-space matrices. Both direct and indirect identification are studied, and the exactness as well as the strong consistency of the construction are proved. Furthermore, a new, computationally efficient ellipsoidal outer-approximation algorithm for the confidence regions is proposed. The new construction results in a semidefinite optimization problem which has an order-of-magnitude smaller number of constraints, as if one applied the ellipsoidal outer-approximation after vectorization. The effectiveness of the approach is also demonstrated empirically via a series of numerical experiments.

Jeong-Woo Seo, Hyunmin Wie, Cheol-Hyun Kim et al.

Michele da Rosa Ferreira, Cecilia Biasibetti Soster, Dinara Dornfeld et al.

O Projeto Pedagógico do Curso Técnico em Enfermagem de uma instituição pública de ensino no sul do Brasil passou por revisão durante o período de 2019 a 2021. O processo de revisão ocorreu de forma colaborativa entre as docentes do curso, que refletiram coletivamente sobre o trabalho docente e a intencionalidade desta formação. Desde a concepção deste curso, buscou-se superar os modelos tradicionais de ensino tecnicista e procedimental, à formação humanista e reflexiva com vistas a atender às necessidades dos cidadãos por um atendimento qualificado, na perspectiva da integralidade da atenção, do trabalho em equipe e dos princípios do SUS. Com o objetivo de tornar o projeto pedagógico acessível à comunidade escolar, em especial aos discentes, optou-se pelo desenvolvimento de um e-book composto por 48 páginas ilustradas. Este produto bibliográfico foi registrado e catalogado  na Biblioteca Nacional e está disponível para acesso livre no site institucional. O e-book possibilitou que os discentes do curso conhecessem e compreendessem o processo que estrutura a formação à qual estão vinculados, contribuindo para o comprometimento com o seu processo de aprendizado, pois as propostas e expectativas foram claramente compreendidas. Este produto integra uma pesquisa em desenvolvimento, submetida e aprovada pelo Comitê de Ética em Pesquisa sob o CAE: 49430621.4.0000.5530. Palavras-chave: Educação Técnica em Enfermagem. Métodos Pedagógicos. Educação Profissionalizante.

Bingrui Xu, Zimengwei Ye, Tian Tian et al.

Objective: We aimed to observe the effects of loganin (Log) on serum glycolipid levels and probe the mechanisms focusing on intestinal flora and AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) signaling in obese mice. Methods: A high-fat diet was given for 12 consecutive weeks to generate the obesity model in institute of cancer research (ICR) mice. Body weight was measured weekly and fasting blood glucose (FBG) was determined every 2 weeks. Both the oral glucose tolerance test and the intraperitoneal insulin tolerance test were performed. The serum levels of total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride, high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C), and free fatty acids (FFA) were measured. The expression of key proteins in the AMPK signaling pathway in skeletal muscle tissue was detected by immunoblotting, and gut microbiota were characterized using 16S rDNA sequencing. Results: Log significantly decreased the body weight and the FBG in obese mice (P < .05), and it could restore FBG to normal levels. The total cholesterol, LDL-C, and FFA levels were significantly reduced by Log compared with the obese controls (TC: P = .0020; LDL-C: P = .0233; FFA: P = .0127), and the glucose tolerance of animals was significantly improved (P = .0477). The western blot results showed that Log could upregulate the protein expression of Adenosine 5‘-monophosphate (AMP)-activated protein kinase (AMPKα), Sirtuin 1 (SIRT1), and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma coactivator -1alpha (PGC1α) in skeletal muscle tissue of obese mice. 16S rDNA sequencing indicated that Log reduced the diversity of the gut flora in feces and altered the floral composition of obese mice. Conclusions: Log was effective in reducing body weight and improving glucolipid metabolism in obese mice, probably through activating AMPK signaling and regulating intestinal microbial diversity.

Seoyoung Choi, Jisun Lee, Seunghoon Lee et al.

The objective was to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of acupuncture for patients with rotator cuff diseases. There were 12 electronic databases and 3 trial registries searched up to November 30th, 2019. All randomized trials were eligible, regardless of language, date of publication, or settings. The primary outcomes were pain, shoulder function, and proportion of improved participants assessed within 12 weeks of randomization of the trial. The Cochrane risk of bias for the studies was assessed. Effects sizes were presented as a risk ratio, mean difference, or standardized mean difference with a 95% confidence intervals. Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach was adopted to rate certainty of evidence. Of the 3,686 records screened, 28 randomized trials (2,216 participants) were included in this review. The types of acupuncture included manual acupuncture, dry needling, electroacupuncture, acupotomy, warm needle acupuncture, and fire needle acupuncture. All of the studies had an unclear or high risk of bias related to more than 1 domain. Significant benefits of acupuncture in terms of pain and shoulder function were observed in all comparisons, however, the proportion of improved participants was not described in 2 comparisons. There was substantial heterogeneity among meta-analyzed trials. No serious harm was observed. For primary outcomes, the overall certainty of evidence was very low. There was very low certainty of evidence for the benefits of acupuncture for patients with rotator cuff diseases. The safety of acupuncture remains unclear due to the incompleteness of reporting. Future well-designed randomized trials with transparent reporting are required.

Kensuke Morris, Osamu Sugiyama, Goshiro Yamamoto et al.

The use of social network service (SNS) applications for health communication has revolutionized communication between physicians in recent years. We performed an unrestricted retrospective study focusing on emergency physicians (EPs) in Kyoto University Hospital (KUHP) since timely communication is important during emergencies. EPs used LINE, a popular SNS application in Japan. EPs (n = 22) sent 1752 messages from April 2017 to March 2018. Most messages sent contained text data (82.1%), the remaining contained media (17.9%); media included images (72.6%), LINE stamps (22.9%), LINE albums (2.3%) and les (1.6%). Content analysis by two coders produced 13 categories (n = 1438); these were ‘miscellaneous’, ‘patient’, ‘team’, ‘treatment’, ‘event’, ‘situation’, ‘reference’, ‘announcement’, ‘schedule’, ‘resource’, ‘policy’, ‘transport’ and ‘unknown’. The top ve message categories were related to miscellaneous chat (22.5%), patient (19.1%), team (14.3%), treatment (11.8%) and event (6.6%). The largest number of messages among EPs were sent on Monday and Friday. The numbers of messages sent among EPs during day-shift and night-shift were similar. The categories identi ed in uenced our proposal of medical oriented SNS platform features: structured tagging system for messages related to relevant categories (F1); inquiry broadcast system for speci c inquiries using structured tagging (F2); image tagging system for images shared within groups (F3) and summarized noti cations (F4). Features that need consideration are (1) an opt-in location sharing system between physicians and (2) physicians’ access to patient records from the SNS application. In this study, messages discussed by EPs were categorized and the resulting categories in uenced our proposal of a physician-centered SNS platform customized to EPs’ roles. Since physicians prefer using SNS applications compared to traditional mobile phones, their information needs should be considered. Designing a medical oriented SNS platform that is physician-centered should rst include an understanding of topics discussed by physicians. Based on the categories classi ed, the proposal of physician-centered features for designing a medical oriented SNS platform is also discussed in this paper.

Haiyan Hu, Xin Zhou

In order to treat and utilize urban fecal wastewater more effectively, a process for biochemical treatment of fecal wastewater from urban settlements was established in this study. After treating the fecal wastewater collected, solid and liquid organic fertilizers can be obtained. Compared to the commercially available urea, the solid organic fertilizer can increase the yield of okra by 12.89% at podding stage, while the liquid organic fertilizer can prolong the flowering period of Chinese orchid by 3 - 4 days compared to the untreated urine. Gases generated by various processing units are all collected to the biological deodorization system for treatment, which have no significant odor after treating through the system. The water outlet from the water reclamation system meets the national quality standards for urban miscellaneous water under urban wastewater reclamation and reuse.

Ju-ran Kim, Yun Kyu Lee, Hyun-Jong Lee et al.

Round Acupuncture having blunt end has developed from acupotomy. This case report is to find out that Round Acupuncture is effective in treating patients with recurrent carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), which has not improved by steroid injection or acupotomy. Round Acupuncture was inserted into the distal fibers of transverse carpal ligament and released toward the proximal fibers. Treatment was performed three times in total. T ingling, numbn ess, night pain and swelling sensation were assessed, and provocative maneuvers were also used. After treat ment, all symptoms completely disappeared and the patient had no recurrence until 3 months after treatment. Round Acupuncture co uld be an effective treatment for recurrent CTS.

Afaf A. M. Shaheen, Hajar Alhajri, Noura Alrajeeb et al.

Abstract Background Physiotherapy (PT) is a distinguished developing profession. It has a crucial role in treating temporomandibular disorders (TMD) as an effective intervention to reduce pain and improve TMD symptoms. Not all dentists are aware of the importance of collaboration with physiotherapists (PTs).Therefore, this study aimed to assess the level of dentists’ awareness about the role of PT in treating TMD, identify dentists’ willingness to collaborate with PTs, and create collaboration awareness. This cross-sectional study included Saudi dentists in Riyadh. An online survey was used to assess dentist’s awareness and their readiness to collaborate with PTs. Results Out of 1500 dentists, only 162 participated in the survey. About 46.9% of dentists were aware that PT can treat TMD. Generally, there was lack of awareness about the benefits of PT among dentists (61.8%), and 59.9% was not aware that the evidence suggested that PT can improve TMD symptoms. Only 29% referred patients to PT. Upon the completion of the survey, almost all dentists (97.5%) were likely to refer patients with TMD to PT, and 90.7% of them showed interest to learn more about collaborating with PTs. Conclusion The study concluded that, although 46.9% of the dentists are aware about the role of PT in treating TMD, there is a lack of awareness about the benefits of PT among the majority of them. The study helped to extend the awareness of surveyed dentists about the collaboration and multidisciplinary approach.

Bin Wang, Le Xie, Slava Maslennikov et al.

This paper proposes a novel approach to estimate the steady-state angle stability limit (SSASL) by using the nonlinear power system dynamic model in the modal space. Through two linear changes of coordinates and a simplification introduced by the steady-state condition, the nonlinear power system dynamic model is transformed into a number of single-machine-like power systems whose power-angle curves can be derived and used for estimating the SSASL. The proposed approach estimates the SSASL of angles at all machines and all buses without the need for manually specifying the scenario, i.e. setting sink and source areas, and also without the need for solving multiple nonlinear power flows. Case studies on 9-bus and 39-bus power systems demonstrate that the proposed approach is always able to capture the aperiodic instability in an online environment, showing promising performance in the online monitoring of the steady-state angle stability over the traditional power flow-based analysis.

Yoshihiko Susuki, Alexandre Mauroy, Igor Mezic

The motivation of our research is to establish a Laplace-domain theory that provides principles and methodology to analyze and synthesize systems with nonlinear dynamics. A semigroup of composition operators defined for nonlinear autonomous dynamical systems -- the Koopman semigroup and its associated Koopman generator -- plays a central role in this study. We introduce the resolvent of the Koopman generator, which we call the Koopman resolvent, and provide its spectral characterization for three types of nonlinear dynamics: ergodic evolution on an attractor, convergence to a stable equilibrium point, and convergence to a (quasi-)stable limit cycle. This shows that the Koopman resolvent provides the Laplace-domain representation of such nonlinear autonomous dynamics. A computational aspect of the Laplace-domain representation is also discussed with emphasis on non-stationary Koopman modes.