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Background: The disease burden of active tuberculosis (TB) is considerable, but systematic reviews of economic evaluations of active TB treatments are scarce.Methods: PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library databases were used to search for articles on cost-effectiveness analysis or cost-utility analysis that economically evaluated active TB treatments, which were then systematically reviewed by two independent reviewers. We extracted vital components of the included studies, such as country, population, intervention/comparator, primary outcome, values of outcomes, thresholds, model type, time horizon, and health states included in the model.Results: Seventeen studies were included in this systematic review. Thirteen dealt with interventions of medications, and the remaining four compared care strategies. The Markov model was the most commonly used tool to compare medications, whereas studies on care plans mainly used decision trees. The most commonly used primary outcome was disability-adjusted life years, followed by quality-adjusted life years. For treatment-naïve TB, the 4-month regimen was more cost-effective than the 6-month regimen mainly in low- and middle-income countries. For multidrug-resistant TB, a bedaquiline-based regimen was cost-effective. For multidrug-resistant TB, decentralized care that employed the use of home or mobile devices was more cost-effective than hospital-based centralized care in low- and middle-income countries.Conclusion: New treatment strategies to improve therapeutic outcomes by enhancing treatment adherence, such as regimens with shorter durations (2 or 4 months) and decentralized care, or new anti-TB agents (e.g., bedaquiline) have been suggested as cost-effective interventions for active TB. This review provides information on the economic evaluation of active TB from good-quality studies, thus aiding the future economic evaluation of active TB.

Description of the model for the hydroelasticity analysis of a bottom-mounted vertical circular cylinder by considering sloshing effect.

In this paper the problem of the global hydroelastic response of the ships carrying the liquid cargo (LNG ships, tankers, FPSO-s, dry cargo ships in ballast conditions...) is considered. The potential flow assumptions are adopted for the hydrodynamic part and the resulting Boudary Value Problems (BVP) are solved using the classical Boundary Integral Equation Method (BIEM) and that both for the external (seakeeping) and the internal (sloshing) fluid flow. The dynamic equation is solved in a fully coupled sense using the generalizd modal approach. For the time being the linear frequency domain appraoch is considered only.

Hydroelasticity is actual branch of science dealing with ships and offshore structure dynamics, simultaneously considering their motions and elastic deformations. During the last decade the above mentioned problem has been also investigated at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture (FAMENA), University of Zagreb. This paper brings an overview of the main research goals and results of hydroelasticity investigation within the projects funded by South Korean Government through the Global Core Research Center for Ships and Offshore Plants (GCRC-SOP). Among others, project participants are the Pusan National University, Busan, Korea, Bureau Veritas (BV), Paris, France as well as FAMENA Zagreb. All projects, funded through GCRC-SOP are presented, with emphasis to those related to investigation of hydroelasticity. Detailed description of the considered problems is given: development of sophisticated beam structural model and its application in the hydroelastic analysis of large container ships ; formulation of restoring stiffness and its role in the response of tension leg platforms (TLP) ; analytical solution for second order hydroelastic vibrations of vertical circular cylinder.

The Spectral Ocean Wave Model (SOWM) is a numerical wave prediction model which calculates directional wave spectra from input wind fields. As do the majority of wave models, it uses a point spectral growth mechanism, i.e., it applies the energy balance equation in a directionally integrated form. The directionality of its growth is obtained from an assumed spreading function on the wind direction. In this study, the energy balance equation is applied in directional form using directional atmospheric energy source functions. The B function of Miles’ instability mechanism is derived following the analysis of Phillips and it is tuned to the directionally integrated form used in the SOWM. Two infinite ocean wave models are used to compare the behavior of the point and directional growth mechanisms under various wind conditions. The directional form shows more flexibility in responding to directionally varying winds while the point spectral form creates excess energy spread widely over direction when operating in the presence of swell. Ph. D. incomplete_metadata