Mechanical wear and defective bearings can cause machinery to reduce its reliability, safety and efficiency. Therefore it is very important to take care of bearings during maintenance and detect their faults in an early stage in order to assure safe and efficient operation. We present a new technique for an early fault detection and diagnosis in rolling-element bearings based on vibration signal analysis. After normalization and the wavelet transform of vibration signals, the logarithmic energy entropy as a measure of the degree of order/disorder is extracted in a few sub-bands of interest. Then the feature space dimension is optimally reduced to two using scatter matrices. In the reduced two-dimensional feature space the fault detection is performed by a quadratic classifier and the fault diagnosis by another two quadratic classifiers. Accuracy of the new technique was tested on the ball bearing data recorded at the Case Western Reserve University Bearing Data Center. In total four classes of the vibrations signals were studied, i.e. normal, with the fault of inner race, outer race and balls operation. An overall accuracy of 100% was achieved. The new technique can be used to increase productivity and energy efficiency by preventing unexpected faulty operation of machinery bearings.

BackgroundThere is relevant between individual variability in paracetamol clearance in young women. In this pooled study, we focused on the population pharmacokinetic profile of intravenous paracetamol metabolism and its covariates in young women.MethodsPopulation PK parameters using non-linear mixed effect modelling were estimated in a pooled dataset of plasma and urine PK studies in 69 young women [47 at delivery, 8/47 again 10–15 weeks after delivery (early postpartum), and 7/8 again 1 year after delivery (late postpartum), 22 healthy female volunteers with or without oral contraceptives].ResultsPopulation PK parameters were estimated based on 815 plasma samples and 101 urine collections. Compared to healthy female volunteers (reference group) not on oral contraceptives, being at delivery was the most significant covariate for clearance to paracetamol glucuronide (Factor = 2.03), while women in early postpartum had decreased paracetamol glucuronidation clearance (Factor = 0.55). Women on contraceptives showed increased paracetamol glucuronidation clearance (Factor = 1.46). The oestradiol level did not further affect this model. Being at delivery did not prove significant for clearance to paracetamol sulphate, but was higher in pregnant women who delivered preterm (<37 weeks, Factor = 1.34) compared to term delivery and non-pregnant women. Finally, clearance of unchanged paracetamol was dependent on urine flow rate.ConclusionsCompared to healthy female volunteers not on oral contraceptives, urine paracetamol glucuronidation elimination in young women is affected by pregnancy (higher), early postpartum (lower) or exposure to oral contraceptives (higher), resulting in at least a two fold variability in paracetamol clearance in young women.

European guidelines recommend the routine offer of an HIV test in patients with a number of AIDS-defining and non-AIDS conditions believed to share an association with HIV; so called indicator conditions (IC). Adherence with this guidance across Europe is not known. We audited HIV testing behaviour in patients accessing care for a number of ICs. Participating centres reviewed the case notes of either 100 patients or of all consecutive patients in one year, presenting for each of the following ICs: tuberculosis, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, anal and cervical cancer, hepatitis B and C and oesophageal candidiasis. Observed HIV-positive rates were applied by region and IC to estimate the number of HIV diagnoses potentially missed. Outcomes examined were: HIV test rate (% of total patients with IC), HIV test accepted (% of tests performed/% of tests offered) and new HIV diagnosis rate (%). There were 49 audits from 23 centres, representing 7037 patients. The median test rate across audits was 72% (IQR 32–97), lowest in Northern Europe (median 44%, IQR 22–68%) and highest in Eastern Europe (median 99%, IQR 86–100). Uptake of testing was close to 100% in all regions. The median HIV+ rate was 0.9% (IQR 0.0–4.9), with 29 audits (60.4%) having an HIV+ rate >0.1%. After adjustment, there were no differences between regions of Europe in the proportion with >0.1% testing positive (global p = 0.14). A total of 113 patients tested HIV+. Applying the observed rates of testing HIV+ within individual ICs and regions to all persons presenting with an IC suggested that 105 diagnoses were potentially missed. Testing rates in well-established HIV ICs remained low across Europe, despite high prevalence rates, reflecting missed opportunities for earlier HIV diagnosis and care. Significant numbers may have had an opportunity for HIV diagnosis if all persons included in IC audits had been tested.

Development of new technologies, particularly the Internet and Sensor Networks, creates a completely new paradigm of the Internet utilization, commonly known as “The Internet of Things (IoT)”. The IoT can be defined as a worldwide network of “smart things” enabled to interact and communicate to each other, as well as with the environment, empowering better understanding of the “real/physical world” and discovering and extracting information about objects and actions that drive that world. Sensor nodes today can be looked as smart objects and therefore they can produce significant computational power which can be used for manipulating and processing collected information. Energy and power efficiency are essential factors in the design and operation of sensor nodes and there are a number of initiatives and tendencies to improve the power efficiency in variety of areas. Relying on the fact that the choice of control algorithm and location of the computational logic may strongly influence power efficiency, in this paper a prototype sensor node, empowered by using fuzzy logic in decision making process, is built and tested in real case environment scenario. Used fuzzy logic processing algorithm is based on predefined rules and can detect a temperature changes in order to ensure accurate and timely response in the case of fire presence. Comparative analysis of power efficiency has been done, and was carried out for best, worst and average case of timely depended temperature changes. The aim of the experiment is to show which solution is the optimal in the sense of energy consumption – implementation of computational logic on sensor node or on a remote host.

Introduction: The 2013 ACC/AHA and the 2012 European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines recommend lipid-lowering treatment for primary prevention based on cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. Randomized clinical trials for statin use in primary prevention, however, included participants with specific risk factor profiles. Hypothesis: For most individuals in the general population recommended for primary prevention of CVD with statins direct trial evidence is available. Evidence of benefit may be available for persons currently not recommended treatment. Methods: We used data from 8925 participants (57% women), aged 45-79, free of CVD from the population-based Rotterdam Study to compare treatment recommendations by the ACC/AHA and ESC guidelines, with eligibility for any of 10 major statin trials. Results: The ACC/AHA guidelines recommend statin use in 3196 (83.2%) men and 2611 (51.4%) women; the ESC guidelines in 1992 (51.8%) men and 1702 (33.4%) women (95.3% overlap with ACC/AHA). A total of 2243 (58.4%) men and 2438 (48.0%) women met the eligibility criteria for at the least one trial. Guideline recommendations and trial eligibility overlapped for 2245 (25.2%) participants (Figure). A total of 2480 (27.8%) participants would be considered for statin initiation solely by the ACC/AHA and/or ESC guidelines, while 1180 (13.2%) would have been eligible for at the least one trial and would not be recommended for statin therapy based on the guidelines (Figure). Correspondence of guideline recommendations with trial eligibility varied greatly by trial, with virtual complete alignment for trials done in individuals with diabetes, while for trials done in individuals with hypercholesterolemia alignment was poor. Conclusions: For the majority of persons recommended for lipid-lowering therapy in primary prevention, efficacy of statins has been established. Statins have been proven efficacious in many persons currently not recommended for treatment.

BackgroundLiver disease is rare in the course of mixed connective tissue disease. Most commonly liver steatosis or elevated liver function tests are reported and only a few cases of mixed connective tissue disease associated with autoimmune hepatitis were described.Case presentationWe report a case of an 11-year old boy with hepatitis on admission to the hospital and symptoms and signs of mixed connective tissue disease. Autoimmune hepatitis has been confirmed by liver biopsy.ConclusionTo the best of our knowledge this is the youngest patient with autoimmune hepatitis as a presenting manifestation of mixed connective tissue disease.