Improvements of Virtual and Augmented Reality for Advanced Treatments in Urology

Present signs of development in virtual and augmented reality have offered an important amount of inventive outfits into the customer market. Virtual reality (VR) technology has now affected the optimistic features of treatment. Surgeries in especially urology are constantly emerging, and the virtual reality model has become an important supplement in urologist teaching and training lists. This chapter provides a summary of the significance and varieties of virtual reality methods, their present applications in the area of urology (surgery), and upcoming implications.

Machine Learning Predictive Models to Estimate the Minimum Miscibility Pressure of CO2-Oil System

One of the most critical parameters of the CO2 injection (for EOR purposes) is the Minimum Miscibility Pressure MMP. The determination of this parameter is crucial for the success of the operation. Different experimental, analytical, and statistical technics are used to predict the MMP. Nevertheless, experimental technics are costly and tedious, while correlations are used for specific reservoir conditions. Based on that, the purpose of this paper is to build machine learning models aiming to predict the MMP efficiently and in broad-based reservoir conditions. Two ML models are proposed for both pure CO2 and non-pure CO2 injection. An important amount of data collected from literature is used in this work. The ANN and SVR-GA models have shown enhanced performance comparing to existing correlations in literature for both the pure and non-pure models, with a coefficient of R2 0.98, 0.93 and 0.96, 0.93 respectively, which confirms that the proposed models are reliable and ready to use.

Volatolomics of Three South African Helichrysum Species Grown in Pot under Protected Environment

Helichrysum decorum DC, Helichrysum lepidissimum S. Moore, and Helichrysum umbraculigerum are three species traditionally used in the South African medicine. The present work deals with the investigation of the spontaneous emission and the essential oils obtained from these plants cultivated in open field under uniform conditions. Fractions of the volatile organic compounds of the three species were rich in monoterpene hydrocarbons, representing more than 70% of the total composition. Pinene isomers were the most representative compounds: β-pinene in H. decorum (53.0%), and α-pinene in H. lepidissimum (67.9%) and H. umbraculigerum (54.8%). These latter two species evidenced an important amount of sesquiterpene hydrocarbons (SH) especially represented by γ-curcumene (H. lepidissimum) and α- and β-selinene (H. umbraculigerum). On the contrary, in the EOs, sesquiterpenes compounds prevailed, representing more than 64% of the identified fraction to reach more than 82 and 87% in H. umbraculigerum and H. lepidissimum, respectively. Although the chemical classes and their relative abundances were comparable among the three species, the individual compounds of EOs showed large differences. In fact, caryophyllene oxide (26.7%) and γ-curcumene (17.4%) were the main constituents in H. decorum, and H. lepidissimum respectively, while neo-intermedeol (11.2%) and viridiflorol (10.6%) characterized H. umbraculigerum.

Impact of vaccine hesitancy on secondary COVID-19 outbreaks in the US

The COVID-19 outbreak has become the worst pandemic in at least a century. To fight this disease, a global effort led to the development of several vaccines at an unprecedented rate. There have been, however, several logistic issues with its deployment, from their production and transport, to the hesitancy of the population to be vaccinated. For different reasons, an important amount of individuals is reluctant to get the vaccine, something that hinders our ability to control and - eventually - eradicate the disease. In this work, we analyze the impact that this hesitancy might have in a context in which a more transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern spreads through a partially vaccinated population. We use age-stratified data from surveys on vaccination acceptance, together with age-contact matrices to inform an age-structured SIR model set in the US. Our results clearly show that higher vaccine hesitancy ratios led to larger outbreaks. A closer inspection of the stratified infection rates also reveals the important role played by the youngest groups. Our results could shed some light on the role that hesitancy will play in the near future and inform policy-makers and the general public of the importance of reducing it.

Mass-Radius relationships of small, highly irradiated exoplanets with small water mass fractions

<p>This work aims to determine the mass-radius rela-tionships of highly irradiated (500< Tirr<2000K)small planets (0.2<M<2.3M⊕) with water con-tents up to 5%. To do so, we coupled an internalmodel of small terrestrial planets (Brugger et al.,2017) to the atmosphere model elaborated by Marcqet al. (2017, 2019), following the approach depictedin Aguichine et al. (2021) and Mousis et al. (2020).</p> <p>We show that these planets, even with smallwater contents, can become strongly inflated andproduce large radii for small masses.We alsoshow that strongly irradiated small planets cannotsustain their atmospheres due to the lack of hy-drostatic stability, implying they cannot preserveany hydrosphere. The temperature and the watermass fraction are the key parameters controllingthe extent of inflation and the thickness of thesupercritical layer. An important amount of wateralso leads to the contraction of the rocky interior.However, the composition of the rocky interioronly has a limited impact on the final mass-radiusrelationship, and barely impacts the behavior of thehydrosphere.</p>

Simulating Extraocular Muscle Dynamics. A Comparison between Dynamic Implicit and Explicit Finite Element Methods

The finite element method has been widely used to investigate the mechanical behavior of biological tissues. When analyzing these particular materials subjected to dynamic requests, time integration algorithms should be considered to incorporate the inertial effects. These algorithms can be classified as implicit or explicit. Although both algorithms have been used in different scenarios, a comparative study of the outcomes of both methods is important to determine the performance of a model used to simulate the active contraction of the skeletal muscle tissue. In this work, dynamic implicit and dynamic explicit solutions are presented for the movement of the eye ball induced by the extraocular muscles. Aspects such as stability, computational time and the influence of mass-scaling for the explicit formulation were assessed using ABAQUS software. Both strategies produced similar results regarding range of movement of the eye ball, total deformation and kinetic energy. Using the implicit dynamic formulation, an important amount of computational time reduction is achieved. Although mass-scaling can reduce the simulation time, the dynamic contraction of the muscle is drastically altered.

The Effect of Heat Removal during Thermophilic Phase on Energetic Aspects of Biowaste Composting Process

Composting is the natural, exothermic process where the huge amount of heat that is created is an issue of organic matter decomposition. However, too high temperature can reduce the microbial activity during the thermophilic composting phase. The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of heat excess removal from composted materials on the process dynamic. The experiment was performed in two parallel bioreactors. One of them was equipped with a heat removal system from the bed of the composted material. Three experiments were carried out with mixtures of different proportions: biological waste, wheat straw, and spent coffee grounds. The content of each option was determined based on a previous study of substrates to maintain the C/N ratio for the right composting process, provide adequate porosity composted material, and enable a proper degree of aeration. The study showed the possibility of receiving part of the heat from the bed of composted material during the thermophilic phase of the process without harm both to the course of composting and the quality of the final product. This shows that at a real scale, it can be possible to recover an important amount of heat from composted materials as a low-temperature heat source.

Mapping and Timing the (Healthy) Emotional Brain: A Review

The study of the emotional processing in the brain began from a psychological point of view in the last decades of the 19th century. However, since the discovery of the electrical background of mental activity around 1930, a new scientific way of observing and measuring the functioning of the living brain has opened up. In addition, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) has given neuroscientists a (literally) deeper instrument to perform such measurements. With all this technological background, the last decades have produced an important amount of information about how the brain works. In this chapter, we review the latest results on the emotional response of the brain, a growing field in neuroscience.

Identification of Adducts between Oxidized Rosmarinic Acid and Glutathione Compounds by Electrochemistry, Liquid Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry

Natural polyphenols are omnipresent and are an integral part of the human diet as well as quinones. Glutathione (GSH) is present in an important amount inside the cell and consequently,...

Regulation of Cholesterol Metabolism by Bioactive Components of Soy Proteins: Novel Translational Evidence

Hypercholesterolemia represents one key pathophysiological factor predisposing to increasing risk of developing cardiovascular disease worldwide. Controlling plasma cholesterol levels and other metabolic risk factors is of paramount importance to prevent the overall burden of disease emerging from cardiovascular-disease-related morbidity and mortality. Dietary cholesterol undergoes micellization and absorption in the small intestine, transport via blood, and uptake in the liver. An important amount of cholesterol originates from hepatic synthesis, and is secreted by the liver into bile together with bile acids (BA) and phospholipids, with all forming micelles and vesicles. In clinical medicine, dietary recommendations play a key role together with pharmacological interventions to counteract the adverse effects of chronic hypercholesterolemia. Bioactive compounds may also be part of initial dietary plans. Specifically, soybean contains proteins and peptides with biological activity on plasma cholesterol levels and this property makes soy proteins a functional food. Here, we discuss how soy proteins modulate lipid metabolism and reduce plasma cholesterol concentrations in humans, with potential outcomes in improving metabolic- and dyslipidemia-related conditions.