Effect of annual road safety publicity and enforcement campaign on road fatalities in Japan: a time series study from 1949 to 2019

BackgroundIn 1948, Japan started a short-term publicity and enforcement campaign for traffic safety nationwide, and since 1952, the campaign has been conducted twice a year for 10 days. We aimed to quantify the short-term effect of the spring sessions of the campaign, which were conducted in different months in different years, on road fatalities in Japan using data from 1949 to 2019.MethodsWe obtained national police data on the monthly number of road deaths and conducted a time series regression analysis with three steps: smoothing the long-term patterns with the natural cubic spline function, calculating the ratio of the monthly number of deaths to the corresponding smoothed value, and regressing the ratio on the number of months from January 1949 and the binary variable for the conduct of spring sessions. We repeated the analysis for four subperiods (1949–1964, 1965–1989, 1990–2004 and 2005–2019).ResultsDuring the study period, there were 632577 road deaths. Our analysis revealed that the spring sessions changed the number of deaths per day by −2.5% (95% CI −4.1% to −0.9%) in the months when they were conducted. In the four subperiods, the estimated changes were −4.5% (95% CI −8.9% to −0.1%), −2.6% (95% CI −5.0% to −0.1%), −0.1% (95% CI −2.9 to 2.7) and −3.5% (95% CI −7.9 to 0.9).ConclusionsRoad fatalities were reduced in the months when the spring sessions of the campaign were conducted, but the reduction was modest. The effect might have been somewhat larger until 1964, when Japan was a middle-income country.

Relationship Between Pre-operative Blood Glucose Level and Length of Hospital Stay in Patients With Renal Cell Carcinoma Undergoing Laparoscopic Nephrectomy

Purpose: The aim of this study was to assess the effect of pre-operative blood glucose (POBG) levels on the length of stay (LOS) in patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) undergoing laparoscopic nephrectomy.Methods: We collected clinical data on 338 patients with RCC who underwent laparoscopic nephrectomy between 2014 and 2019. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression and dose-response analysis curves of restricted cubic spline function were used to investigate the relationship between POBG and LOS.Results: According to the level of POBG, we divided the patients into three groups: <4.94 mmol/L group, 4.94 to <7.11 mmol/L group, and ≥7.11 mmol/L group. According to the dose-response analysis curves, we found that the adjusted risk of LOS > 2 weeks and LOS > 3 weeks gradually increased with increasing POBG. In addition, we found that among all patients, patients with POBG levels ≥ 7.11 mmol/L had a 115% higher risk of LOS > 2 weeks than patients with POBG levels <4.94 mmol/L [adjusted odds risk (aOR) 2.15; 95% CI 1.11-4.20; p = 0.024] and patients with POBG levels ≥ 7.11 mmol/L had a 129% higher risk of LOS > 3 weeks than patients with POBG levels <4.94 mmol/L (aOR 2.29; 95% CI 1.16-4.52; p = 0.017). Moreover, similar results were observed in the most subgroups analysis.Conclusion: We found that in patients with RCC undergoing laparoscopic nephrectomy, higher POBG levels were significantly associated with prolonged LOS.

A Novel Approach for Solving Fuzzy Differential Equations Using Cubic Spline Method

Ambiguity in real-world problems can be modeled into fuzzy differential equations. The main objective of this work is to introduce a new class of cubic spline function approach to solve fuzzy initial value problems efficiently. Further, the convergence of this method is shown. As it is a single-step method that converges faster, the complexity of the proposed method is too low. Finally, a numerical example is illustrated in order to validate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method, and the results are compared with the exact as well as Taylor’s method of order two.

Development and validation of an improved pathologic nodal classification system for cutaneous melanoma.

e21563 Background: Given recent therapeutic advances and evolving patterns of lymph node (LN) evaluation for cutaneous melanoma, accurate and precise LN staging is needed to guide adjuvant treatment and future investigations. Current staging was developed primarily for patients undergoing completion LN dissection (CLND) for node-positive disease and do not produce LN classification groups with continuously increasing mortality. Thus, we developed and validated an improved LN classification system for cutaneous melanoma. Methods: Retrospective cohort analysis of 105,785 patients with cutaneous melanoma who underwent surgery from 2004 to 2015 in the National Cancer Database. Extent of LN dissection (sentinel LN biopsy [SLNB] and/or CLND) was available for patients diagnosed 2012 onward. Multivariable models were generated with number of positive LNs modeled using a non-linear restricted cubic spline function. Recursive partitioning analysis (RPA) was used to derive a modified LN classification system based on LN variables independently associated with overall survival (OS). The proposed LN classification system was validated in 85,499 patients from SEER-18. Results: Number of positive LNs (1-2 LN+: hazard ratio [HR] 2.48 per LN, 95% CI, 2.37-2.61, P< 0.001; ≥3 LN+: HR 1.10 per LN, 95% CI, 1.07-1.13, P< 0.001), clinically detected metastases (HR 1.35, 95% CI 1.27-1.42; P< 0.001), and in-transit metastases (HR 1.48; 95% CI 1.34-1.65; P< 0.001) were associated with OS. An RPA-derived LN classification system using these variables demonstrated continuously increasing mortality risk for each proposed LN classification group (HR: 1.83, 2.72, 3.79, 4.56, 6.15, and 8.25 for the proposed N1a-N3b groups, Table, P< 0.001). By contrast, AJCC 8E produced a more haphazard mortality profile (HR: 1.83, 3.81, 2.59, 2.71, 4.51, 3.44, 6.06, 8.15, and 6.90 for N1a-N3c). As a sensitivity analysis, the proposed system continued to accurately predict outcomes when we excluded patients undergoing CLND for microscopic LN metastases. Lastly, we validated this system for OS and cause-specific mortality in SEER-18 ( P< 0.001). Conclusions: A modified and simplified LN classification system can accurately predict mortality in cutaneous melanoma in an era of increasing use of SLNB without CLND and should be considered for future staging systems.[Table: see text]

NODE-INDEPENDENT METHOD FOR GASTROENTEROLOGICAL SIGNAL PROCESSING BASED ON CUBIC SPLINES

This paper discusses a local cubic spline function built independently of node points using basic functions. the size of the calculations required to find the parameters to be determined during the construction of the spline function does not depend on the number of node points. Local-based splines are used to build such spline functions. Restoration of the gastroenterological signal was performed on the basis of the spline-function model discussed in the article. The result of a cubic spline-function error independent of the node points was compared with the result of the Lagrange classical polynomial error (Table 2).

Exposure to 2,4-dichlorophenol, 2,4,6-trichlorophenol, pentachlorophenol and risk of thyroid cancer: a case-control study in China

Background: Thyroid cancer (TC) has inflicted huge threats to the health of mankind. Chlorophenols (CPs) were persistent organic pollutant and can lead to adverse effects in human health, especially in thyroid. However, epidemiological studies have revealed a rare and inconsistent relationship between internal exposure to CPs and TC risk. This study was designed to examine the association between urinary CPs and risk of TC in Chinese population.Methods: From June 2017 to September 2019, a total of 297 histologically confirmed TC cases were recruited. Age and gender matched controls were enrolled at the same time. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was used to determine the levels of three CPs in urine. Conditional logistic regression models were adopted to assess the potential association. Restricted cubic spline function was used to explore the non-liner association.Results: After adjusting for confounding factors, multivariate analysis showed that, compared with the first quartile, the fourth quartile concentrations of 2,4-dichlorophenol (2,4-DCP), 2,4,6-trichlorophenol (2,4,6-TCP) and pentachlorophenol(PCP) were associated with TC risk [odds ratio (OR)2,4-DCP =2.28, 95%confidence interval (CI): 1.24-4.18; OR2,4,6-TCP =3.09, 95% CI: 1.66-5.77; ORPCP =3.30, 95% CI: 1.71-6.36, respectively]. When CPs were included in the multivariate model and restricted cubic spline function as continuous variables, presenting significant dose-response relationships. Meanwhile, whether in the TC group with tumor diameter > 1 cm or metastatic TC, the changes of 2,4,6 TCP and PCP concentrations were positively correlated with the risk of TC. Conclusions: Our study suggests that higher concentrations of urinary CPs are associated with increased TC risks. Moreover, 2,4,6-TCP and PCP have certain effects on the invasiveness of thyroid cancer. Targeted public health policies should be formulated to reduce the CPs pollution. These findings need further in-depth studies to confirm and relevant mechanism also needed to be clarified.

Analytical modeling and numerical analysis of the effect of mosaic patterns on composite pressure vessels with dome

The aim of this work is to provide an analytical tool and numerical analysis for the optimum design of composite pressure vessels with the dome, incorporating triangular mosaic patterns. This article presents the analytical modeling involving kinematic constraints based on geodesic trajectory: the helical angle and dome thickness. The structural analysis is performed using a commercial finite element analysis tool. The results show that this new analytical method gives more accurate dome thickness than cubic spline function and Gramoll and Namiki’s methods. The incorporation of mosaic patterns based on winding kinematics provides more realistic modeling of the real stress distribution and the stress values compared to the vessel without mosaic patterns and vessels with mosaic patterns based on nongeodesic trajectories. The results have been validated and are quite promising with regard to better accuracy and safety.

Trajectory planning and optimization of the bionic mantis robot front leg

In this paper, a manipulator of the bionic mantis robot is designed inspired by the anatomical structure of the mantis front leg. A geometrical method is utilized to calculate the forward kinemics. Then, by analyzing the mantis motion video frame by frame, each of the front leg joints angles is measured in crawling and preying motion, which are used as interpolation conditions to solve the planned trajectory for manipulator by cubic spline interpolation. In some circumstance, the planned joint angles may exceed its limitation. By undermining the interpolation conditions, the problem is transformed from solving a cubic spline function to optimization. Finally, particle swarm optimization with variable inertia weight is introduced to optimize the planned trajectory. The result indicates that the trajectory, smoother after optimization could effectively imitate the motion of mantis front leg within the joint rotation range, which lays the basis for further research on the motion control.