Combined Anterior and Posterior Decompression With Fusion for Cervical Ossification of the Posterior Longitudinal Ligament

Objective:Cervical myelopathy caused by ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament (OPLL) is not uncommon among Asian ethnic groups. Despite reports comparing the pros and cons of anterior- and posterior-only approaches, the optimal management remains debatable. This study aimed to evaluate the outcomes of patients who underwent a combined anterior and posterior approach, simultaneous circumferential decompression and fixation, for cervical OPLL.Method:The study retrospectively reviewed patients with OPLL and who underwent circumferential decompression and fixation, combined anterior corpectomy and posterior laminectomy. The clinical outcomes were evaluated by the Visual Analog Scale of neck and arm pain, the Japanese Orthopedic Association scores, Neck Disability Index, and Nurick scores at each time-point of evaluation. Radiological evaluations included plain and dynamic radiographs and computed tomography for every patient within 2 years post-operation. Subgroup analyses were further performed between the groups, with and without intra-operative cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leakage.Results:A total of 41 patients completed the follow-up for more than 2 years (mean = 39.8 months) and were analyzed. Continuous-type OPLL was the most common (44%), followed by segmental (27%), mixed (22%), and localized types (7%) in the cohort. Myelopathy and all other functional outcomes improved significantly at 2 years post-operation (all p < 0.05). There were 13 (32%) patients who had intra-operative CSF leakage. At 2 years post-operation, there were no differences in the demographics, functional outcomes, and complication rates between the CSF-leakage and no-leakage groups. The CSF-leakage group had more patients with continuous-type OPLL than the no-leakage group (77 vs. 29%, p = 0.004 < 0.05). During the follow-up, there was no secondary or revision surgery for pseudomeningocele, pseudarthrosis, or other surgery-related complications.Conclusions:Simultaneous circumferential decompression and fixation combine the surgical benefits of sufficient decompression by the posterior approach and direct decompression of OPLL by the anterior approach. It is an effective surgical option for patients with cervical myelopathy caused by OPLL, given that myelopathy unanimously improved without neurological complications in this study. The fusion rates were high, and reoperation rates were low. Despite higher rates of CSF leakage, there were no related long-term sequelae, and minimal wound complications.

A Novel Pipeline Leak Detection Technique Based on Acoustic Emission Features and Two-Sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov Test

Pipeline leakage remains a challenge in various industries. Acoustic emission (AE) technology has recently shown great potential for leak diagnosis. Many AE features, such as root mean square (RMS), peak value, standard deviation, mean value, and entropy, have been suggested to detect leaks. However, background noise in AE signals makes these features ineffective. The present paper proposes a pipeline leak detection technique based on acoustic emission event (AEE) features and a Kolmogorov–Smirnov (KS) test. The AEE features, namely, peak amplitude, energy, rise-time, decay time, and counts, are inherent properties of AE signals and therefore more suitable for recognizing leak attributes. Surprisingly, the AEE features have received negligible attention. According to the proposed technique, the AEE features are first extracted from the AE signals. For this purpose, a sliding window was used with an adaptive threshold so that the properties of both burst- and continuous-type emissions can be retained. The AEE features form distribution that change its shape when the pipeline condition changes from normal to leakage. The AEE feature distributions for leak and healthy conditions were discriminated using the two-sample KS test, and a pipeline leak indicator (PLI) was obtained. The experimental results demonstrate that the developed PLI accurately distinguishes the leak and no-leak conditions without any prior leak information and it performs better than the traditional features such as mean, variance, RMS, and kurtosis.

Signaling on the railway transport of Russia. History of origin and development

The development of humanity is impossible without means of signaling. Signaling in any sphere of human activity has always been a means of ensuring the safety of his life. One of these areas was railway transport, the development of which and, accordingly, signalling facilities began in the early 19th century.With the progress of technological progress in Russia, signaling tools have also evolved, which have gone from the simplest sound and optical signals to modern ones using satellite technologies. Naturally, this path in the technical evolution of mankind is of interest to scientists and just curious people, since knowledge of the stages of the origin and development of signaling allows contemporaries to improve it and at the same time not forget the basics of this area.As a result of this process, the signaling system on railway transport, its means have undergone serious changes. Primitive ways of giving commands - optical (disk, flag) and sound (whistle) to the participants of the movement were pushed by more modern means of signaling, which already involve microprocessor technology and satellite technologies.An example of modern signaling means is the automatic locomotive signaling of a single row of continuous type (ALS-EN). The signal of this type of signaling is more informative: it contains information about the number of free block sections ahead of the train, as well as about the permissible speed of its movement.

A Karyological Study of Tenualosa Ilisha (Hamilton, 1822) From the Confluence of Padma and Meghna River of Bangladesh

Tenualosa ilisha (Hamilton, 1822), commonly known as Hilsha shad is a valuable and highly acceptable species in terms of their high flavored properties. Hilsha shad has striking morpho-genetical adaptation to heterogeneous habitats across their migratory routes. Cytogenetic analysis demonstrates the changes in chromosomes. But none was focused on the cytogenetic analysis of T. ilisha in Bangladesh. T. ilisha was found to possess 2n = 42 number of chromosomes along with a karyotype formula: 1M + 31m + 8sm + 2st using giemsa staining technique. The results demonstrated ‘diffuse type of interphase nuclei, co-existence of continuous type and interstitial type of prophase chromosomes respectively. No heteromorphic sex chromosomes were determined cytologically. The presence of diverse types of chromosomes based on centromeric position, gradual decrease in total haploid chromosome complement, mean centromeric asymmetry, coefficient of variation of chromosome length and Stebbins’s classification highlighted its asymmetry in karyotype with advance nature. Therefore, the elemental karyological data will offer information for the proper identification, cytotaxonomical classification, expanding productivity and preservation of genetic resources ofT. ilisha. Bangladesh J. Zool. 49 (2): 243-255, 2021

Investigation of the rupture of a synthetic tape within the framework of the percolation theory

Within the framework of the percolation theory (bond problem), a new model of breaking a complex synthetic tape is proposed as a continuous-type phase transition when the state jump is zero. The percolation threshold and accompanying characteristics are calculated for the model of rupture of a synthetic reinforced tape when flowing along the first and second neighbours. The knots of the tape form a strip of a square lattice, the width of which is fixed. All nodes are intact and cannot be damaged, links (tape threads) can be intact and broken (blocked). The dependences of the percolation threshold in the bond problem and the relative deviation of the threshold from the ribbon length are calculated. It is proved that for the simplest model of one-dimensional percolation with percolation along the nearest neighbours (the problem of nodes), the percolation threshold in the thermodynamic limit is equal to unity. It is shown that, with an accuracy of 10%, the percolation threshold for a sufficiently long ribbon is equal to unity. This indicates that the system is quasi-one-dimensional. Thus, using the method of computer simulation, the percolation threshold, root-mean-square and relative threshold deviations were calculated. The critical susceptibility index was also calculated. In contrast to the usual percolation problem, in the proposed model it makes sense to consider only the region above the percolation threshold. The proposed model can be generalized to the case when nodes are also damaged (blocked), then we come to a mixed percolation model, which is supposed to be considered in the future.

Histopath Salpingo-oophorectomy Cervical Moderate Dysplasia: A Case Report

Introduction: Cervical dysplasia is a term used to describe a condition that is on the verge of becoming malignant where aberrant cell proliferation takes place on the cervix or endocervical canals surface lining. Another name for it is cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) can occur at any age. It has a strong relationship to human papillomavirus (HPV) infection spread through sexual contact. Case History: A case of 34 year old woman admitted in gynecology unit on date June 3, 2021, a month ago when she started experiencing pain in abdomen. It was insidious in onset, continuous type, not associated with bleeding per vaginal. Patient has previous history of five abortions. Patient underwent investigations like complete blood count, kidney function test, liver function test, radiographic investigations and colposcopy where she was found to have moderate dysplasia and chronic cervicitis. Histopathology report also indicated moderate dysplasia with chronic cervicitis. Interventions: Primarily, the pain management is necessary for such patients. Later on all further investigations and procedures performed to confirm the diagnosis and treat the patient accordingly. The aim during the treatment is to safeguard the life and further complications. Outcomes: Over this period of long course treatment, the patient significantly reduced the severity of infection and pain. Improved the daily activities, appetite and sleep. Progress of patient towards her goal of recovering as early as possible. Discussion: The patients response was quite good to treatment, however additional interventions could be used in the future for her greater improvements in disease.

Testing for goodness rather than lack of fit of continuous probability distributions

The vast majority of testing procedures presented in the literature as goodness-of-fit tests fail to accomplish what the term is promising. Actually, a significant result of such a test indicates that the true distribution underlying the data differs substantially from the assumed model, whereas the true objective is usually to establish that the model fits the data sufficiently well. Meeting that objective requires to carry out a testing procedure for a problem in which the statement that the deviations between model and true distribution are small, plays the role of the alternative hypothesis. Testing procedures of this kind, for which the term tests for equivalence has been coined in statistical usage, are available for establishing goodness-of-fit of discrete distributions. We show how this methodology can be extended to settings where interest is in establishing goodness-of-fit of distributions of the continuous type.

The Truncated Burr X-G Family of Distributions: Properties and Applications to Actuarial and Financial Data

In this article, the “truncated-composed” scheme was applied to the Burr X distribution to motivate a new family of univariate continuous-type distributions, called the truncated Burr X generated family. It is mathematically simple and provides more modeling freedom for any parental distribution. Additional functionality is conferred on the probability density and hazard rate functions, improving their peak, asymmetry, tail, and flatness levels. These characteristics are represented analytically and graphically with three special distributions of the family derived from the exponential, Rayleigh, and Lindley distributions. Subsequently, we conducted asymptotic, first-order stochastic dominance, series expansion, Tsallis entropy, and moment studies. Useful risk measures were also investigated. The remainder of the study was devoted to the statistical use of the associated models. In particular, we developed an adapted maximum likelihood methodology aiming to efficiently estimate the model parameters. The special distribution extending the exponential distribution was applied as a statistical model to fit two sets of actuarial and financial data. It performed better than a wide variety of selected competing non-nested models. Numerical applications for risk measures are also given.