ALBERT

Beschreibung: IJERPH, Vol. 15, Pages 1711: Assessment Tools for Health Literacy among the General Population: A Systematic Review International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health doi: 10.3390/ijerph15081711 Authors: Hongyan Liu Huan Zeng Yang Shen Fan Zhang Manoj Sharma Weiyun Lai Yu Zhao Genhui Tao Jun Yuan Yong Zhao Health literacy is an important determinant of health, and is one of the key indicators of a healthy city. Developing and improving methods to measure health literacy is prudent and necessary. This review summarizes the findings of published tools for assessing health literacy among the general population to provide a reference for establishing health literacy assessment tools in the future. In this systematic review, PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science were used to search articles regarding tools for assessing health literacy among the general population published up to 10 January 2018. Two researchers independently conducted literature screening, quality assessment of methodology, and data extraction according to preset inclusion and exclusion criteria. The quality assessment of the research was examined with the use of the specifications of the reporting guidelines for survey research (SURGE). Eleven articles met the inclusion criteria. All included instruments in monitoring the health literacy of the general population were presented through the form of questionnaires. The multistage process of making all the scales generally involved the following steps: item development, pre-testing, and evaluation of readability. However, the specific methods were different. Internal consistency for all the instruments was acceptable but with weak consistency among the subscales for some instruments. Most of the identified instruments derived from the definition of health literacy or were based on existing health literacy theory. Approximately 30% of the performed studies provided no description of the important features specified in the SURGE. This review indicates a trend in the increasing tools for assessing the health literacy of the general population by using multidimensional structures and comprehensive measurement approaches. However, no clear “consensus” was observed in the dimensions of health literacy tools.

Beschreibung: Sensors, Vol. 18, Pages 1210: Multi-Fault Diagnosis of Rolling Bearings via Adaptive Projection Intrinsically Transformed Multivariate Empirical Mode Decomposition and High Order Singular Value Decomposition Sensors doi: 10.3390/s18041210 Authors: Rui Yuan Yong Lv Gangbing Song Rolling bearings are important components in rotary machinery systems. In the field of multi-fault diagnosis of rolling bearings, the vibration signal collected from single channels tends to miss some fault characteristic information. Using multiple sensors to collect signals at different locations on the machine to obtain multivariate signal can remedy this problem. The adverse effect of a power imbalance between the various channels is inevitable, and unfavorable for multivariate signal processing. As a useful, multivariate signal processing method, Adaptive-projection has intrinsically transformed multivariate empirical mode decomposition (APIT-MEMD), and exhibits better performance than MEMD by adopting adaptive projection strategy in order to alleviate power imbalances. The filter bank properties of APIT-MEMD are also adopted to enable more accurate and stable intrinsic mode functions (IMFs), and to ease mode mixing problems in multi-fault frequency extractions. By aligning IMF sets into a third order tensor, high order singular value decomposition (HOSVD) can be employed to estimate the fault number. The fault correlation factor (FCF) analysis is used to conduct correlation analysis, in order to determine effective IMFs; the characteristic frequencies of multi-faults can then be extracted. Numerical simulations and the application of multi-fault situation can demonstrate that the proposed method is promising in multi-fault diagnoses of multivariate rolling bearing signal.

Beschreibung: Sensors, Vol. 18, Pages 2218: Impact Monitoring for Aircraft Smart Composite Skins Based on a Lightweight Sensor Network and Characteristic Digital Sequences Sensors doi: 10.3390/s18072218 Authors: Lei Qiu Xiaolei Deng Shenfang Yuan YongAn Huang Yuanqiang Ren Due to the growing use of composite materials in aircraft structures, Aircraft Smart Composite Skins (ASCSs) which have the capability of impact monitoring for large-scale composite structures need to be developed. However, the impact of an aircraft composite structure is a random transient event that needs to be monitored on-line continuously. Therefore, the sensor network of an ASCS and the corresponding impact monitoring system which needs to be installed on the aircraft as an on-board device must meet the requirements of light weight, low power consumption and high reliability. To achieve this point, an Impact Region Monitor (IRM) based on piezoelectric sensors and guided wave has been proposed and developed. It converts the impact response signals output from piezoelectric sensors into Characteristic Digital Sequences (CDSs), and then uses a simple but efficient impact region localization algorithm to achieve impact monitoring with light weight and low power consumption. However, due to the large number of sensors of ASCS, the realization of lightweight sensor network is still a key problem to realize an applicable ASCS for on-line and continuous impact monitoring. In this paper, three kinds of lightweight piezoelectric sensor networks including continuous series sensor network, continuous parallel sensor network and continuous heterogeneous sensor network are proposed. They can greatly reduce the lead wires of the piezoelectric sensors of ASCS and they can also greatly reduce the monitoring channels of the IRM. Furthermore, the impact region localization methods, which are based on the CDSs and the lightweight sensor networks, are proposed as well so that the lightweight sensor networks can be applied to on-line and continuous impact monitoring of ASCS with a large number of piezoelectric sensors. The lightweight piezoelectric sensor networks and the corresponding impact region localization methods are validated on the composite wing box of an unmanned aerial vehicle. The accuracy rate of impact region localization is higher than 92%.

Beschreibung: The superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2) gene is a pivotal part of oxidative stress system, which could induce the onset of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). In this study, we quantified the influence of a SOD2exonic polymorphism (rs4880) on PAH susceptibility. We genotyped this single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) by TaqMan, and evaluated its association with PAH susceptibility in a case-control study of 460 patients and 530 controls in China. There were significant differences between PAH cases and controls in both CC and TC+CC genotypes (p = 0.013 and p = 0.010, respectively). Furthermore, the number of variant alleles followed a dose-response manner (p trend was 0.023). Besides, the mRNA level and protein expression also indicated that the C allele of this variant decreased the expression of SOD2 gene (p = 0.004 in mRNA level and p = 0.012 in protein level) after the transfection of plasmids containing the different genotype of rs4480. There is significant association between SOD rs4880 polymorphism and the PAH susceptibility, and this polymorphism influenced PAH susceptibility by altering the expression of SOD2.

Beschreibung: Surface texturing-plasma nitriding duplex treatment was conducted on AISI 316 stainless steel to improve its tribological performance. Tribological behaviors of ground 316 substrates, plasma-nitrided 316 (PN-316), surface-textured 316 (ST-316), and duplex-treated 316 (DT-316) in air and under grease lubrication were investigated using a pin-on-disc rotary tribometer against counterparts of high carbon chromium bearing steel GCr15 and silicon nitride Si3N4 balls. The variations in friction coefficient, mass loss, and worn trace morphology of the tested samples were systemically investigated and analyzed. The results showed that a textured surface was formed on 316 after electrochemical processing in a 15 wt % NaCl solution. Grooves and dimples were found on the textured surface. As plasma nitriding was conducted on a 316 substrate and ST-316, continuous and uniform nitriding layers were successfully fabricated on the surfaces of the 316 substrate and ST-316. Both of the obtained nitriding layers presented thickness values of more than 30 μm. The nitriding layers were composed of iron nitrides and chromium nitride. The 316 substrate and ST-316 received improved surface hardness after plasma nitriding. When the tribological tests were carried out under dry sliding and grease lubrication conditions, the tested samples showed different tribological behaviors. As expected, the DT-316 samples revealed the most promising tribological properties, reflected by the lowest mass loss and worn morphologies. The DT-316 received the slightest damage, and its excellent tribological performance was attributed to the following aspects: firstly, the nitriding layer had high surface hardness; secondly, the surface texture was able to capture wear debris, store up grease, and then provide continuous lubrication.