Primary bilateral iliopsoas abscesses in the elderly are very rare in Europe. We report a case of an elderly male misdiagnosed with rheumatic low back pain. The delay in accurate diagnosis and therapy led to severe worsening of his general condition and septic shock. The diagnosis was established by multi-slice computed tomography (MSCT) and the patient was successfully treated by MSCT-guided percutaneous drainage of both psoas muscles. Septic shock and miscellaneous complications required continuous intensive care. The patient was discharged after 42 days of hospital treatment. Antibiotic therapy continued for the next six weeks until his complete recovery. Pain remains the most frequent and predominant symptom of spinal pathology regardless of the etiology. Immunocompromised patients or signs suggestive of bacterial infection require caution and a more comprehensive diagnostic work-up.

Head movements can greatly affect swallowing accelerometry signals. In this paper, we implement a spline-based approach to remove low frequency components associated with these motions. Our approach was tested using both synthetic and real data. Synthetic signals were used to perform a comparative analysis of the spline-based approach with other similar techniques. Real data, obtained data from 408 healthy participants during various swallowing tasks, was used to analyze the processing accuracy with and without the spline-based head motions removal scheme. Specifically, we analyzed the segmentation accuracy and the effects of the scheme on statistical properties of these signals, as measured by the scaling analysis. The results of the numerical analysis showed that the spline-based technique achieves a superior performance in comparison to other existing techniques. Additionally, when applied to real data, we improved the accuracy of the segmentation process by achieving a 27% drop in the number of false negatives and a 30% drop in the number of false positives. Furthermore, the anthropometric trends in the statistical properties of these signals remained unaltered as shown by the scaling analysis, but the strength of statistical persistence was significantly reduced. These results clearly indicate that any future medical devices based on swallowing accelerometry signals should remove head motions from these signals in order to increase segmentation accuracy.

Nitrogen is a necessary ingredient in soil for agriculturalists to produce high-yielding crops. Europe is one of the world’s largest and most productive suppliers of food and fiber (Olesen & BIndi, 2002).These authors provide information that in 2004 Europe produced 21% of global meat production and 20% of global cereal production. About 80% of these global productions have occurred in Europe, defined here as the 25 European countries, EU25 (IPCC, 2007).The productivity of European agriculture is generally high, in particular in Western Europe: average cereal yields in the EU are more than 60% higher than the global average (EFMA, 2010). Some plants (legumes in appropriate conditions) produce their own nitrogen (Dorn, 2011) and some nitrogen is contributed to the soil by rainfall, but these natural sources of nitrogen do not occur in high enough levels for prolific crop production. Many agriculturalists add nitrogen to the soil without regarding the plant needs or nutrient soil status. Addition of nitrogen to the soil helps in the rapid and healthy growth of the plants and thus improves the yields of the crops. It also increases the protein content in the crops as well and food value of crop. However, when N inputs to the soil system exceed crop needs, there is a possibility that excessive amounts of nitrate (NO3-) may enter either ground or surface water (O'Leary et al., 2002). Managing N inputs to achieve a balance between profitable crop production and environmentally tolerable levels of NO3in water supplies should be every grower's goal. A recent estimate of the current human population supported by synthetic fertilizer is 48%, 100 years after the invention of the synthesis of ammonia from its elements (Erisman et al., 2008). To maximize crop production, the availability of cheap fertilizer in the industrialized world led to excessive use of nitrogen, resulting in a large nitrogen surplus and increased nitrogen losses. The behavior of N in the soil system is complex, yet an understanding of basic processes (mineralization) is essential for a more efficient N management program. Nitrogen, present or added to the soil is subject to several changes (transformations) that dictate the availability of N to plants and influence the potential movement of NO3to water supplies. Nitrogen can be lost from the soil system in several ways: leaching, denitrification, volatilization, crop removal, soil erosion and runoff. And these ways of N losses from agriculture or industry through the global environment system can cause a numbers of different environmental effects: loss of biodiversity, eutrophication of waters and soils, drinking water pollution, acidify cation,

The FV method was originally developed for fluid flow, heat and mass transfer calculations (Patankar, 1980), and later generalized for stress analysis in isotropic linear and non-linear bodies (Demirdžic & Muzaferija, 1994; Demirdžic et al., 1997; Demirdžic & Martinovic, 1993). For the purpose of the stress analysis in the wood, the method is modified to take into account the anisotropic nature of the wood and influence of the moisture content and the temperature on the deformation and stresses (Horman, 1999). Also, performance of the wood is found to be very sensitive to the moisture content and the temperature. Thus, it is of a great importance to be able to predict behavior of such materials under different hygrothermo-mechanical loads. In order to demonstrate the methods capabilities, a transient analysis of fields of temperature, moisture, and stresses and displacement in the wood subjected to hygro-thermal or mechanical loads is performed.

In this work, effect of Tamsulosin hydrochloride as antagonist of alpha1A and alpha1B- adrenergic receptor in patients with bronchial hyper-reactibility was studied. Parameters of the lung function are determined by Body plethysmography. Raw and ITGV were registered and specific resistance (SRaw) was also calculated. Tamsulosin was administered in per os way as a preparation in the form of the capsules with a brand name of “Prolosin”, producer: Niche Generics Limited, Hitchin, Herts SG4 OTW, United Kingdom. Results gained by this research shows that blockage of alpha1A and alpha1B- adrenergic receptor with Tamsulosin hydrochloride (0.4 mg in per os way) has not changed significantly (p > 0.1) the bronchomotor tonus of tracheobronchial tree in comparison to the inhalation of Salbutamol (2 inh. x 0.2 mg), (p < 0.01). This suggests that the activity of alpha1A and alpha1B- adrenergic receptor in the smooth musculature is not a primary mechanism which causes reaction in patients with increased bronchial reactibility, in comparison to agonists of beta2 – adrenergic receptor which emphasizes their significant action in the reduction of specific resistance of airways.

Approximately, 15% of the total textile colorant production is estimated to be lost during dyeing and processing of textile fibres. If left untreated, these wastewaters can represent a serious environmental threat. In the present paper a combination of photocatalytic and biological degradation of prepared textile wastewaters (simulation of real textile effluent) is presented. Samples have been monitored through the course of photocatalytic experiments: change in UV-VIS absorbance spectra and complete decolouration were achieved for all three tested dyed wastewaters; however, only partial COD removal was achieved with photocatalytic oxidation (PCOx) and photocatalytic ozonation (PCOz). Toxicity test (Vibrio fischeri) of untreated and pretreated (constructed wetland, CW) samples showed a decrease in toxicity values only for the red-dyed wastewater. Comparison of efficiency of PCOx and PCOz for decolouration and mineralization of three structurally different dyes (anthraquinone and two azo dyes) has been done. CW pretreatment caused faster decolouration and substantial COD removal in PCOx (up to 45%). Pretreatment also accelerated decolouration during PCOz, but it accelerated COD removal only in the case of red-dyed wastewater due to short irradiation times applied.