Search

Aims and objectives To assess the effects of three different bowel preparation methods on the incidence of infectious complications in patients who underwent transrectal ultrasonography-guided prostate biopsy. Background The standard bowel preparation protocol for prostate biopsy has not been established. Design A retrospective study in a single centre. Methods From January 2013–December 2015, the clinical records of 1,130 patients who underwent prostate biopsy were, respectively, reviewed. All the patients received metronidazole prophylaxis before biopsy. The patients were divided into three groups according to the bowel preparation methods: patients in Group A (n = 402) received only soapy enema; patients in Group B (n = 413) received polyethylene glycol; while patients in Group C (n = 315) received polyethylene glycol plus povidone–iodine enema. Infectious complications were classified as fever (>37.5°C), urinary tract infection and sepsis. The postoperative adverse events were also observed. Results The overall postbiopsy infectious complications were observed in 48 (4.25%) patients of all the cases, including 23 (5.72%) cases in Group A, 20 (4.84%) cases in Group B and five patients (1.59%) in Group C. There was significant difference among the groups (p = .018). In detail, these infectious complications included 22 (1.95%) cases of fever and 26 (2.30%) cases of urinary tract infection. No sepsis was observed among the total patients. The incidence of adverse events was 14.43% (58/402) occurred in Group A, 25.91% (107/413) in Group B and 26.67% (84/315) in Group C. The difference was statistically significant. Conclusions Our study confirmed that combined preparation regimens of polyethylene glycol with povidone–iodine enema could significantly reduce the postbiopsy infection rate. Conventional soapy enema is associated with less adverse events. Relevance to clinical practice Findings of this study provide useful evidence-based information for healthcare professionals. The application of combined preparation regimens of polyethylene glycol with povidone–iodine enema resulted in better improvement in the prevention of postbiopsy infection.

Bolted connections with slotted-in steel plates are commonly used to connect beams and columns in heavy timber structures. While due to the low tensile strength of wood in the perpendicular-to-grain direction, these connections are usually not able to present satisfying rotational performance. In order to solve this problem, a relatively new type of bolted connection, reinforced with section steel, was designed and tested in this paper. Two groups of total six specimens were tested under monotonic loading to investigate their rotational behavior. Tests showed that the brittle failure mode of wood splitting in the perpendicular-to-grain direction was fully restrained. Only slight cracks were observed in most specimens, except one that underwent bending failure in the beam member. Test results indicated an average increase of 78.7% in moment resistance and a 54.8% increase in ductility ratio for middle-storey connections, compared with conventional connections simply using slotted-in steel plates. Top-storey connections, without previous test results as comparison, also presented high moment-bearing capacity and reliable deformability. As a result, such connection may receive a broad application, especially in multi-storey heavy timber structures.

This paper has proposed a laser scanning point cloud mosaic scheme on the basis of 2D images matching and 3D correspondence feature points refining. This scheme is aimed to solve existing problems in laser scanning point cloud mosaic technology, such as low efficiency,poor accuracy and low automation. Firstly, the 2D images were generated from the derivative information by an interpolation algorithm. Then 2D correspondence feature points were obtained through GPU acceleration SIFT image matching and eliminates gross errors. In order to improve the accuracy of mosaic,the correspondence feature points must be refined through further constraint. Secondly, the 3D correspondence feature points were acquired based on an inversion algorithm using the 2D correspondence feature points.

Laser point set has a massive quantity of data, which not only increases system load, but greatly reduces the follow-up processing efficiency as well. Considering the difficulty of mass point cloud data organization and management, grid index of point cloud data based on the decimal linear quadtree is proposed in this paper, point cloud data is segmented and encoded by means of linear quadtree based on decimal system, which will be stored in SQL Server, then, we can block and index point cloud in terms of Morton code or rectangular region, combine with the advantages of both spatial index and database to manage point cloud efficiently and safely. The results show that the proposed method ideally solves the problem of point cloud data organization and management.

Monodisperse polyethylene glycol (PEG) microspheres were prepared using microfluidic chips coupled with photopolymerization technique. Based on sheath effect in T-junction microfluidic channels, dispersions of uniform PEG prepolymer droplets in silicon oil are formed. The diameters of the formed PEG prepolymer droplets in the dispersions were controlled very well by altering the relative sheath/sample flow rate ratios. After photopolymerization under UV exposure, the uniform PEG prepolymer droplets isolated by silicon oil underwent photocrosslinking and became monodisperse PEG microspheres.

Monodisperse polystyrene nanospheres with different diameters and functional groups were synthesized by soap-free emulsion polymerization. Capillary electrophoresis (CE) was applied to the separation and detection of the nanospheres. Baseline separation was achieved for carboxylic and sulfonic functionalized colloids due to their difference in diameter and surface charge. The electrophoretic mobility of the sulfonic functionalized colloids decreased with increasing of particle size, and three sulfonic functionalized nanosphere samples with diameters of 190, 250 and 330 nm were separated successfully by CE.

Based on coupled quantum dots, we present an interesting optical effect in a four-level loop coupled system. Both the two upper levels and the two lower levels are designed to be almost degenerate, which induces a considerable dipole moment. The terahertz wave is obtained from the low-frequency component of the photon emission spectrum. The frequency of the terahertz wave can be controlled by tuning the energy levels via designing the nanostructure appropriately or tuning the driving laser field. A terahertz wave with adjustable frequency and considerable intensity (100 times higher than that of the Rayleigh line) can be obtained. It provides an effective scheme for a terahertz source.