Reinforcement corrosion is a concern in the structural engineering domain, since it triggers several pathological manifestations, reducing the structural service life. Chloride diffusion has been considered one of main causes of reinforcements' corrosion in reinforced concrete. Corrosion starts when the chloride concentration at the reinforcements interface reaches the threshold content, leading to depassivation, whose assessment of its time of starts is a major challenge. This study applied the transient Boundary Element Method (BEM) approach for modelling chloride diffusion in concrete pores. The subregion BEM technique effectively represented the cracks inherent to the material domain, and environmental effects were also considered. Because of the inherent randomness of the problem, the service life was evaluated within the probabilistic context; therefore, Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) assessed the probabilistic corrosion time initiation. Three applications demonstrated the accuracy and robustness of the model, in which the numerical results achieved by BEM were compared against numerical, analytical, and experimental responses from the literature. The probabilistic modelling substantially reduced the structural service life when the cracks length was longer than half of concrete cover thickness in highly aggressive environments.
Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and polygenic risk scores (PRS) are multistep analytical tools to identify genetic variants and to assess their contribution to phenotypes/diseases. These analyses are evolving and becoming instrumental to understand the genetic architecture of complex phenotypes/diseases. Nevertheless, to date, there is no single solution incorporating all major steps related to those analyses combined with robust populational bias correction. Here, we describe a semi-automated pipeline unifying steps involved in GWAS and PRS including widely used software. Our pipeline handles quality control (QC), GWAS, and PRS steps, managing different types of input/output files. Furthermore, it includes robust bias correction steps , such as inference of kinship matrix with correction for population structure, use of principal component analysis (PCA) with detection and removal of outlier variant followed by re-projection of related individuals (if desired), generation of PCA figures that assist in setting the best number of principal components (PCs) for association analysis, availability of mixed models, use of recommended software for GWAS based on population size, and a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method to estimate best set of PRS parameters. Finally, we tested GARSA pipeline in a family-based Brazilian admixed population and demonstrated that the corrections implemented indeed mitigate bias in downstream analysis. The pipeline can be implemented on personal or server-side environments.
Objectives: Despite its low sensitivity for the interstitial syndrome, chests X-Ray (XR) have been used on COVID-19 patients to exclude alternative diagnoses. Computed tomography (CT) scans can both exclude other pathological conditions and display a high level of sensitivity for the COVID-19 pneumonia. We therefore decided to compare the performance of lung ultrasonography (LUS) with that of lung CT scans in suspect or confirmed COVID-19 patients for the presence of interstitial pneumonia and the degree of lung injury. Methods: In a cross-sectional clinical study, LUS an CT were compared for the presence of interstitial pneumonia and the degree of lung injury in COVID-19 patients. Pearson’s and Spearman correlations analysis were performed to measure the degree of association between two methods. Bland–Altman plot was generated to provide a graphical visualization of the agreement between the two measurement methods. All statistical tests in this study were two-sided and p-values ≤ 0.05 were considered as statistically significant. Results: A good correlation between LUS and CT scan was obtained for estimates of lung injury in pneumonia in a group of COVID-19 suspect and diagnosed patients (R = 0.7613; p <0.01). Agreement between LUS and CT values is assessed by constructing Bland-Altman plot. Conclusions: LUS, as compared to CT scans, is an effective method to estimate degrees of lung injury in COVID-19 patients in the emergency department.
Cherubism is a rare genetic condition characterized by a bone nonneoplastic disease. We aimed to report a 6-year-old girl with cherubism presenting similar cases in the maternal family. However, her mother and grandmother seemed to be asymptomatic. The patient had an enlarged and asymmetric jaw with multiple enlarged cervical lymph nodes that increased in size with time. Sanger sequencing revealed a heterozygous mutation in exon 9 of SH3BP2 not only in the patient but also in her mother. Thus, we observed a variable expression and a probably reduced penetrance within the family, as well as unusual characteristics of the patient (in this case, the asymmetrical involvement of the jaw).
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