A Síndrome de Sjögren primária (SSp) é uma doença autoimune sistêmica de etiologia desconhecida, caracterizada principalmente, pela presença de infiltrado linfocítico nas glândulas exócrinas (salivares e lacrimais) que leva ao quadro de boca seca e olhos secos (síndrome sicca). Apesar das evidências de que o nível de atividade física e das capacidades física e funcional estarem diminuídas na maioria das doenças reumáticas, essas variáveis tem sido pouco estudadas em pacientes com SSp. Assim, o objetivo desse estudo foi avaliar objetivamente o nível de atividade física e as capacidades físicas de pacientes com SSp com baixo nível de atividade da doença, bem como, a possível associação desses fatores com a fadiga, a qualidade de vida, a artralgia e a depressão. Trinta pacientes diagnosticadas com SSp (Vitali et al., 2002) utilizaram acelerômetros por 7 dias consecutivos para avaliação do nível de atividade física, realizaram teste ergoespirométrico, testes de força, testes funcionais, exames laboratoriais, densitometria óssea e responderam a questionários de fadiga, qualidade de vida, depressão e artralgia. Os pacientes com SSp apresentaram menor tempo em atividades físicas moderadas e menor quantidade de passos por dia do que o grupo controle. Os pacientes apresentaram ainda redução da aptidão aeróbia, da força muscular de membros inferiores e superiores, da capacidade funcional e da qualidade de vida, além de fadiga aumentada em comparação com o GC. Não foram encontradas diferenças significativas para a composição corporal, artralgia e depressão entre os grupos. Pacientes com SSp mesmo em baixa atividade da doença mantêm um estilo de vida sedentário e redução das capacidades físicas e qualidade de vida. Faz-se necessária a implementação de estratégias que reduzam o tempo gasto em atividades sedentárias, bem como, a elaboração de programas de exercícios físicos sistematizados de acordo com as características dessa população / Primary Sjögren´s syndrome (PSS) is a systemic autoimune disease of unknown aetiology characterized by lymphocytic infiltration in the exocrine glands (salivary and lacrimal) hwhich leads to dry mouth and dry eyes (sicca syndrome). Despite the evidence that physical activity level and physical and functional capabilities are reduced in most rheumatic diseases, these variables have been poorly studied in patients with pSS. The objective of this study was to objectively assess the physical activity level and the physical capacities of patients with pSS with mild disease activity, as well as the possible association of these factors with fatigue, quality of life, arthralgia and depression. Thirty patients diagnosed with pSS (Vitali et al., 2002) used accelerometers for 7 consecutive days to assess the physical activity level. They performed cardiopulmonary exercise test, strength tests, functional tests, laboratory tests, bone densitometry and answered questionnaires of fatigue, quality of life, depression and arthralgia. Patients with pSS showed less time in moderate physical activities and fewer steps per day than the control group. The patients also showed reduced aerobic conditioning, muscle strength of upper and lower limbs, functional capacity and quality of life, and also increased fatigue compared to the control group. No significant differences were found for body composition, arthralgia and depression between the groups. Patients with pSS, even with mild disease activity, maintain a sedentary lifestyle and reduced physical capacity and quality of life. It is necessary to implement strategies that reduce time spent on sedentary activities, as well as to elaborate physical exercise programs in accordance to the characteristics of this population

A Síndrome de Sjögren primária (SSp) é uma doença autoimune sistêmica de etiologia desconhecida, caracterizada principalmente, pela presença de infiltrado linfocítico nas glândulas exócrinas (salivares e lacrimais) que leva ao quadro de boca seca e olhos secos (síndrome sicca). Apesar das evidências de que o nível de atividade física e das capacidades física e funcional estarem diminuídas na maioria das doenças reumáticas, essas variáveis tem sido pouco estudadas em pacientes com SSp. Assim, o objetivo desse estudo foi avaliar objetivamente o nível de atividade física e as capacidades físicas de pacientes com SSp com baixo nível de atividade da doença, bem como, a possível associação desses fatores com a fadiga, a qualidade de vida, a artralgia e a depressão. Trinta pacientes diagnosticadas com SSp (Vitali et al., 2002) utilizaram acelerômetros por 7 dias consecutivos para avaliação do nível de atividade física, realizaram teste ergoespirométrico, testes de força, testes funcionais, exames laboratoriais, densitometria óssea e responderam a questionários de fadiga, qualidade de vida, depressão e artralgia. Os pacientes com SSp apresentaram menor tempo em atividades físicas moderadas e menor quantidade de passos por dia do que o grupo controle. Os pacientes apresentaram ainda redução da aptidão aeróbia, da força muscular de membros inferiores e superiores, da capacidade funcional e da qualidade de vida, além de fadiga aumentada em comparação com o GC. Não foram encontradas diferenças significativas para a composição corporal, artralgia e depressão entre os grupos. Pacientes com SSp mesmo em baixa atividade da doença mantêm um estilo de vida sedentário e redução das capacidades físicas e qualidade de vida. Faz-se necessária a implementação de estratégias que reduzam o tempo gasto em atividades sedentárias, bem como, a elaboração de programas de exercícios físicos sistematizados de acordo com as características dessa população / Primary Sjögren´s syndrome (PSS) is a systemic autoimune disease of unknown aetiology characterized by lymphocytic infiltration in the exocrine glands (salivary and lacrimal) hwhich leads to dry mouth and dry eyes (sicca syndrome). Despite the evidence that physical activity level and physical and functional capabilities are reduced in most rheumatic diseases, these variables have been poorly studied in patients with pSS. The objective of this study was to objectively assess the physical activity level and the physical capacities of patients with pSS with mild disease activity, as well as the possible association of these factors with fatigue, quality of life, arthralgia and depression. Thirty patients diagnosed with pSS (Vitali et al., 2002) used accelerometers for 7 consecutive days to assess the physical activity level. They performed cardiopulmonary exercise test, strength tests, functional tests, laboratory tests, bone densitometry and answered questionnaires of fatigue, quality of life, depression and arthralgia. Patients with pSS showed less time in moderate physical activities and fewer steps per day than the control group. The patients also showed reduced aerobic conditioning, muscle strength of upper and lower limbs, functional capacity and quality of life, and also increased fatigue compared to the control group. No significant differences were found for body composition, arthralgia and depression between the groups. Patients with pSS, even with mild disease activity, maintain a sedentary lifestyle and reduced physical capacity and quality of life. It is necessary to implement strategies that reduce time spent on sedentary activities, as well as to elaborate physical exercise programs in accordance to the characteristics of this population

With the rapid somatic growth and development in infants, simultaneous accurate measurements of lung volume and airway function are essential. Raised volume rapid thoracoabdominal compression (RTC) is widely used to generate forced expiration from an airway opening pressure of 30 cmH2O (V30). The (dynamic) functional residual capacity (FRCdyn) remains the lung volume most routinely measured. The aim of this study was to develop comprehensive integrated spirometry that included all subdivisions of lung volume at V30 or total lung capacity (TLC30). Measurements were performed on 17 healthy infants aged 8.6-119.7 weeks. A commercial system for multiple-breath nitrogen washout (MBNW) to measure lung volumes and a custom made system to perform RTC were used in unison. A refined automated raised volume RTC and the following two novel single maneuvers with dual volume measurements were performed from V30 during a brief post-hyperventilation apneic pause: (1) the passive expiratory flow was integrated to produce the inspiratory capacity (IC) and the static (passive) FRC (FRCst) was estimated by initiating MBNW after end-passive expiration; (2) RTC was initiated late during passive expiration, flow was integrated to produce the slow vital capacity (jSVC) and the residual volume (RV) was measured by initiating MBNW after end-expiration while the jacket (j) was inflated. Intrasubject FRCdyn and FRCst measurements overlapped (p = 0.6420) but neither did with the RV (p < 0.0001). Means (95% confidence interval) of FRCdyn, IC, FRCst, jSVC, RV, forced vital capacity and tidal volume were 21.2 (19.7-22.7), 36.7 (33.0-40.4), 21.2 (19.6-22.8), 40.7 (37.2-44.2), 18.1 (16.6-19.7), 40.7 (37.1-44.2) and 10.2 (9.6-10.7) ml/kg, respectively. Static lung volumes and capacities at V30 and variables from the best forced expiratory flow-volume curve were dependent on age, body length and weight. In conclusion, we developed a comprehensive physiologically integrated approach for in-depth investigation of lung function at V30 in infants.

Corrosion damage reduces the load-carrying capacity of bridges which poses a threat to passenger safety. The objective of this research was to reduce the resources involved in conventional bridge inspections which are an important tool in the condition assessment of bridges and to help in determining if live load testing is necessary. This research proposes a framework to link semi-automated damage detection on prestressed concrete bridge girders with the estimation of their residual flexural capacity. The framework was implemented on four full-scale corrosion damaged girders from decommissioned bridges in Virginia. 3D point clouds of the girders reconstructed from images using Structure from Motion (SfM) approach were textured with images containing cracks detected at pixel level using a U-Net (Fully Convolutional Network). Spalls were detected by identifying the locations where normals associated with the points in the 3D point cloud deviated from being perpendicular to the reference directions chosen, by an amount greater than a threshold angle. 3D textured mesh models, overlaid with the detected cracks and spalls were used as 3D damage maps to determine reduced cross-sectional areas of prestressing strands to account for the corrosion damage as per the recommendations of Naito, Jones, and Hodgson (2011). Scaling them to real-world dimensions enabled the measurement of any required dimension, eliminating the need for physical contact. The flexural capacities of a box beam and an I-beam estimated using strain compatibility analysis were validated with the actual capacities at failure sections determined from four destructive tests conducted by Al Rufaydah (2020). Along with the reduction in the cross-sectional areas of strands, limiting the ultimate strain that heavily corroded strands can develop was explored as a possible way to improve the results of the analysis. Strain compatibility analysis was used to estimate the ultimate rupture strain, in the heavily corroded bottommost layer prestressing strands exposed before the box beam was tested. More research is required to associate each level of strand corrosion with an average ultimate strain at which the corroded strands rupture. This framework was found to give satisfactory estimates of the residual strength. Reduction in resources involved in current visual inspection practices and eliminating the need for physical access, make this approach worthwhile to be explored further to improve the output of each step in the proposed framework. / Master of Science / Corrosion damage is a major concern for bridges as it reduces their load carrying capacity. Bridge failures in the past have been attributed to corrosion damage. The risk associated with corrosion damage caused failures increases as the infrastructure ages. Many bridges across the world built forty to fifty years ago are now in a deteriorated condition and need to be repaired and retrofitted. Visual inspections to identify damage or deterioration on a bridge are very important to assess the condition of the bridge and determine the need for repairing or for posting weight restrictions for the vehicles that use the bridge. These inspections require close physical access to the hard-to-reach areas of the bridge for physically measuring the damage which involves many resources in the form of experienced engineers, skilled labor, equipment, time, and money. The safety of the personnel involved in the inspections is also a major concern. Nowadays, a lot of research is being done in using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) like drones for bridge inspections and in using artificial intelligence for the detection of cracks on the images of concrete and steel members. Girders or beams in a bridge are the primary longitudinal load carrying members. Concrete inherently is weak in tension. To address this problem, High Strength steel reinforcement (called prestressing steel or prestressing strands) in prestressed concrete beams is pre-loaded with a tensile force before the application of any loads so that the regions which will experience tension under the service loads would be subjected to a pre-compression to improve the performance of the beam and delay cracking. Spalls are a type of corrosion damage on concrete members where portions of concrete fall off (section loss) due to corrosion in the steel reinforcement, exposing the reinforcement to the environment which leads to accelerated corrosion causing a loss of cross-sectional area and ultimately, a rupture in the steel. If the process of detecting the damage (cracks, spalls, exposed or severed reinforcement, etc.) is automated, the next logical step that would add great value would be, to quantify the effect of the damage detected on the load carrying capacity of the bridges. Using a quantified estimate of the remaining capacity of a bridge, determined after accounting for the corrosion damage, informed decisions can be made about the measures to be taken. This research proposes a stepwise framework to forge a link between a semi-automated visual inspection and residual capacity evaluation of actual prestressed concrete bridge girders obtained from two bridges that have been removed from service in Virginia due to extensive deterioration. 3D point clouds represent an object as a set of points on its surface in three dimensional space. These point clouds can be constructed either using laser scanning or using Photogrammetry from images of the girders captured with a digital camera. In this research, 3D point clouds are reconstructed from sequences of overlapping images of the girders using an approach called Structure from Motion (SfM) which locates matched pixels present between consecutive images in the 3D space. Crack-like features were automatically detected and highlighted on the images of the girders that were used to build the 3D point clouds using artificial intelligence (Neural Network). The images with cracks highlighted were applied as texture to the surface mesh on the point cloud to transfer the detail, color, and realism present in the images to the 3D model. Spalls were detected on 3D point clouds based on the orientation of the normals associated with the points with respect to the reference directions. Point clouds and textured meshes of the girders were scaled to real-world dimensions facilitating the measurement of any required dimension on the point clouds, eliminating the need for physical contact in condition assessment. Any cracks or spalls that went unidentified in the damage detection were visible on the textured meshes of the girders improving the performance of the approach. 3D textured mesh models of the girders overlaid with the detected cracks and spalls were used as 3D damage maps in residual strength estimation. Cross-sectional slices were extracted from the dense point clouds at various sections along the length of each girder. The slices were overlaid on the cross-section drawings of the girders, and the prestressing strands affected due to the corrosion damage were identified. They were reduced in cross-sectional area to account for the corrosion damage as per the recommendations of Naito, Jones, and Hodgson (2011) and were used in the calculation of the ultimate moment capacity of the girders using an approach called strain compatibility analysis. Estimated residual capacities were compared to the actual capacities of the girders found from destructive tests conducted by Al Rufaydah (2020). Comparisons are presented for the failure sections in these tests and the results were analyzed to evaluate the effectiveness of this framework. More research is to be done to determine the factors causing rupture in prestressing strands with different degrees of corrosion. This framework was found to give satisfactory estimates of the residual strength. Reduction in resources involved in current visual inspection practices and eliminating the need for physical access, make this approach worthwhile to be explored further to improve the output of each step in the proposed framework.

Background: This work presents a generalized technique to estimate pulmonary ventilation-to-volume (v/V) distributions using the multiple-breath nitrogen washout, in which both tidal volume (VT) and the end-expiratory lung volume (EELV) are allowed to vary during the maneuver. In addition, the volume of the series dead space (vd), unlike the classical model, is considered a common series unit connected to a set of parallel alveolar units. Methods: The numerical solution for simulated data, either error-free or with the N2 measurement contaminated with the addition of Gaussian random noise of 3 or 5 % standard deviation was tested under several conditions in a computational model constituted by 50 alveolar units with unimodal and bimodal distributions of v/V. Non-negative least squares regression with Tikhonov regularization was employed for parameter retrieval. The solution was obtained with either unconstrained or constrained (VT, EELV and vd) conditions. The Tikhonov gain was fixed or estimated and a weighting matrix (WM) was considered. The quality of estimation was evaluated by the sum of the squared errors (SSE) (between reference and recovered distributions) and by the deviations of the first three moments calculated for both distributions. Additionally, a shape classification method was tested to identify the solution as unimodal or bimodal, by counting the number of shape agreements after 1000 repetitions. Results: The accuracy of the results showed a high dependence on the noise amplitude. The best algorithm for SSE and moments included the constrained and the WM solvers, whereas shape agreement improved without WM, resulting in 97.2 % for unimodal and 90.0 % for bimodal distributions in the highest noise condition. Conclusions: In conclusion this generalized method was able to identify v/V distributions from a lung model with a common series dead space even with variable VT. Although limitations remain in presence of experimental noise, appropriate combination of processing steps were also found to reduce estimation errors.

Background: This work presents a generalized technique to estimate pulmonary ventilation-to-volume (v/V) distributions using the multiple-breath nitrogen washout, in which both tidal volume (VT) and the end-expiratory lung volume (EELV) are allowed to vary during the maneuver. In addition, the volume of the series dead space (vd), unlike the classical model, is considered a common series unit connected to a set of parallel alveolar units. Methods: The numerical solution for simulated data, either error-free or with the N2 measurement contaminated with the addition of Gaussian random noise of 3 or 5 % standard deviation was tested under several conditions in a computational model constituted by 50 alveolar units with unimodal and bimodal distributions of v/V. Non-negative least squares regression with Tikhonov regularization was employed for parameter retrieval. The solution was obtained with either unconstrained or constrained (VT, EELV and vd) conditions. The Tikhonov gain was fixed or estimated and a weighting matrix (WM) was considered. The quality of estimation was evaluated by the sum of the squared errors (SSE) (between reference and recovered distributions) and by the deviations of the first three moments calculated for both distributions. Additionally, a shape classification method was tested to identify the solution as unimodal or bimodal, by counting the number of shape agreements after 1000 repetitions. Results: The accuracy of the results showed a high dependence on the noise amplitude. The best algorithm for SSE and moments included the constrained and the WM solvers, whereas shape agreement improved without WM, resulting in 97.2 % for unimodal and 90.0 % for bimodal distributions in the highest noise condition. Conclusions: In conclusion this generalized method was able to identify v/V distributions from a lung model with a common series dead space even with variable VT. Although limitations remain in presence of experimental noise, appropriate combination of processing steps were also found to reduce estimation errors.