Fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) materials are continuing to show great promise for use in strengthening reinforced concrete (RC) structures. These materials are an excellent option for use as external reinforcing because of their light weight, resistance to corrosion, and high strength. Externally bonded FRP sheets have been used to increase moment capacity of flexural members and to improve confinement in compression members.Investigations into the use of externally bonded FRP sheets for use in shear strengthening have also been conducted and have shown this to be a viable strengthening method. The objective of this study is to review the current research on shear strengthening with FRP and propose design algorithms to compute the contribution of FRP to the shear capacity of RC flexural members. Methods for computing the shear capacity based on the stress level to cause tensile fracture of the FRP sheet (which may be less than ultimate due to stress concentrations) and based on delamination of the sheet from the concrete surface are presented. Areas which have the potential for further development are also discussed.

A collaborative framework was initiated to establish a community resource of ground truth segmentations from cardiac MRI. Multi-site, multi-vendor cardiac MRI datasets comprising 95 patients (73 men, 22 women; mean age 62.73 ± 11.24 years) with coronary artery disease and prior myocardial infarction, were randomly selected from data made available by the Cardiac Atlas Project (Fonseca et al., 2011). Three semi- and two fully-automated raters segmented the left ventricular myocardium from short-axis cardiac MR images as part of a challenge introduced at the STACOM 2011 MICCAI workshop (Suinesiaputra et al., 2012). Consensus myocardium images were generated based on the Expectation-Maximization principle implemented by the STAPLE algorithm (Warfield et al., 2004). The mean sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive and negative predictive values ranged between 0.63-0.85, 0.60-0.98, 0.56-0.94 and 0.83-0.92, respectively, against the STAPLE consensus. Spatial and temporal agreement varied in different amounts for each rater. STAPLE produced high quality consensus images if the region of interest was limited to the area of discrepancy between raters. To maintain the quality of the consensus, an objective measure based on the candidate automated rater performance distribution is proposed. The consensus segmentation based on a combination of manual and automated raters were more consistent than any particular rater, even those with manual input. The consensus is expected to improve with the addition of new automated contributions. This resource is open for future contributions, and is available as a test bed for the evaluation of new segmentation algorithms, through the Cardiac Atlas Project (www.cardiacatlas.org).

No abstract

The QOL in patients with MS is not solely determined by physical disability, but rather by the level of social support, living area, depression, level of education, employment, fatigue and religiosity. Accordingly, we suggest that these should be evaluated in every patient with MS as they may be modified by targeted interventions.

No abstract