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Study Objective To increase awareness of juvenile cystic adenomyoma (JCA) in patients with chronic pelvic pain. Design Retrospective case series. Setting Teaching hospital. Patients or Participants Three patients aged 16-30 years old presented with chronic pelvic pain (CPP) [2016 - 2019]. Hormonal treatment was attempted in two cases, but it failed. Cystic lesions in the myometrium (n=2), and the broad ligament (n=1) was detected on transvaginal 2D ultrasound (TV 2D US) and/ or MRI. The cyst was separated from the endometrial cavity in all the cases. The cysts were within the myometrium of the posterior wall of the uterus, within the cornual region of the myometrium and within the broad ligament near the cornual region in the three cases respectively. Interventions Laparoscopic excision of the lesions. Measurements and Main Results The cystic lesions were confirmed on laparoscopy, and laparoscopic excision of the cysts with adequate repair of the myometrial beds were performed in all cases with fertility preservation (a video to be presented). Robotic assistance was chosen in one case as the cyst was in the broad ligament, for better visualization. The endometrial cavity was entered in one case (0.5cm). Pathology report confirmed the diagnosis of JCA is all cases. All three patients reported relief of their symptoms up to 6 to 8 months after surgery. No recurrence of the JCA was reported using TV 2D US in all cases. Conclusion JCA represents a rare focal form of adenomyosis that may affect young women. Large cystic lesions, as isolate entities within the uterus were reported to be rare; less than 1%. The exact mechanism is largely unknown. Our data suggest that minimally invasive surgery for excision of the cyst is the chosen approach of management. Our data also suggest symptomatic relief with no sonographic evidence of recurrence following surgery.

Studies in urea granulation process using Top Spray Fluidized Bed Granulator (TSFBG) is still limited and requires in-depth research about the effectiveness and influence of droplets to the formation of urea granule (UG). Rate and time interval of spraying technique (Pulse) significantly influence the physical properties of urea granules. Cassava starch dissolves in water was selected as the binder released at various time interval to observe impact of spray droplet on UG size formation. Using Taguchi Method, the study had identified three leading factors contributed to the formation of droplet size namely volume of binder (VOB), time pulse of spraying (TPS) and spraying rate (SR). These factors were then evaluated in terms of the influence on response as signal-to-noise analysis (S/N ratios) from Taguchi to validate UG size in range 2 mm to 4 mm from screening process with respect to the actual experimental data. These results were useful for future experiment reference to determine pressure drop and surface contact during interaction between droplet and urea powder particles using TSFBG to obtain uniform UG size and smooth surface layer with reasonable hardness.

Travel with long hours will create discomfort feeling for passenger especially express bus passenger. Long hour travel will create physiological stress on passenger. It may due to seat space limitation, noise, vibration, seat hardness as well as seat comfort. Seat comfort is a subjective feeling that related to psychological aspect of passenger. In this project, the bus passenger seat is integrated with air-based and gel-based material. In Malaysia, most of the express coaches are using polyurethane foam based cushion in the seat padding. This type of the seat padding may cause a bus passenger who sit for long journey will feel uncomfortable and fatigue. There are two main causes which lead to seating discomfort which is vibration and pressure distribution on the seat. The new design a bus passenger seat is using air-based cushion to improve the seating comfort. The air-based seat was validated by using MatLab SimuLINK software. In the model validation process, the parameters of air cell height gave effect on the pressure change rate of air cushion model. The comfortable level of the air cushion could be improved by reducing the pressure change rate and cell height.

The convective amplification of filamentation instability (FI) of electromagnetic waves traveling along the density ramp of a magnetized plasma is investigated. The generalized amplification factor of the instability in the presence of a DC–magnetic field is derived by obtaining the governing equations of the instability and using the slow-coupling technique to obtain an analytical expression for the amplification factor in weakly magnetized plasma. The result shows enhancement of the convective FI gain by the magnetic field, where the enhancement is stronger for lower equilibrium plasma density values.

The lead trim-and-form process is important in the manufacturing of programmable logic devices, microprocessors, and memories. Normally, inspection of a chip package is performed in a lead inspection machine after the lead forming process to detect defects on the leads. One such defect is the lead intermetallic compound (IMC) crack, exhibiting itself as plating crack. In this study, IMC crack of package leads, which causes loose connection between the copper lead and the tin plating, was analyzed using the finite-element method. The simulation results were verified by matching the simulated and actual formed lead profile. Simulation results showed a strong correlation between IMC crack after forming and aging and high residual tensile strain induced during lead forming. A proposal was made to resolve the crack issue by performing design of experiment (DOE) to reduce the residual tensile strain of the lead upon forming. Three optimization parameters were chosen, namely the forming angle, the shank angle, and the pre-forming angle. It is shown that, with the optimized parameter setting, a reduction of the residual strain can be achieved, thus minimizing the risk of IMC crack.

Composite materials have been known for its low density, ease in fabrication, high structural rigidity, and wide range applications, i.e. aeronautic applications and automotive industry. Due to this, extensive studies had been conducted to evaluate its axial crushing ability to replace metallic materials. In this paper, it reviewed the usage of fibre reinforced plastic composite (FRP) as an energy absorption application device. Failure modes and geometrical designs such as shapes, geometry and triggering effect have been studied where these factors affected on peak load and specific energy absorption significantly. Accordingly, numerical analysis for axial crushing of affected factors had been simulated to predict the failure mechanisms of FRP composites.

Soil burial tests were carried out to evaluate the effect of biodegradation on the mechanical properties (tensile, flexural, and impact) and the mass loss of OPT fiber-filled RPP composites, as compared to control samples (virgin PP and RPP without filler). The composite samples were prepared using 30% w/w of OPT filler with a size of 100 µm. Compounding was carried out using a Haake Rheodrive 500 twin-screw compounder operating at 190°C and 8 MPa for 30 min. The effect of biodegradation was performed in a perspex plastic apparatus for 12 months. Assessments of the mechanical properties and the percentage of mass loss were carried out at 3, 6, and 12 months of exposure in soil. The mechanical properties (tensile, flexural, and impact) of materials deteriorate with an increase in exposure time. The effects of biodegradation increase with burial period, i.e., from 0 to 12 months. The tensile properties, flexural properties, and impact strength of the composites decrease by about 38—47%, 37—50%, and 47%, respectively, as compared to the value before the biological test. In contrast, the mass of the composite samples increased by ∼12.7%, whereas for PP and RPP, it increased by around 10.7 and 9.2%, respectively. SEM analysis was conducted to analyze the deterioration and the poor fiber—matrix bonding of composites.

The mechanical properties (tensile, flexural, and impact properties) and water absorption of oil palm empty fruit bunches (OPEFB) reinforced in new unsaturated polyester composites were studied. New OPEFB reinforced polyester composite derived from new unsaturated polyester resin containing bis-(2-hydroxylethyl) fumarate (monomer I) which was synthesized from ethylene glycol with fumaric acid in the presence of P-toluene sulfonic acid as catalyst was prepared. The chemical structure was confirmed by CHN analysis, FT-IR, and 1H-NMR spectroscopy. New unsaturated polyester was carried out by the condensation reaction between terepthaloyl chloride and monomer I. The chemical structure of this polymer was confirmed by CHN analyses, FT-IR, 1H-NMR, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC).

Agro-wastes, oil palm trunk core or sap was utilized for the production of new palm-wood material using phenol formaldehyde resin as a matrix. The kiln-dried (moisture content 10%) oil palm trunk was impregnated with phenol formaldehyde resin using a high power vacuum pump. The oil palm trunk core lumber (OPTCL) was loaded with different percentages of phenol formaldehyde (PF) resin. The mechanical properties (tensile, flexural, and impact) and physical properties (water absorption and density) were studied and compared with rubberwood. Testing of mechanical and physical properties was done according to the ASTM standard. The morphology of the resin loaded OPTCL was analyzed by using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). In general, the result showed that impregnated OPTCL exhibited good mechanical and physical properties when compared with untreated oil palm trunk core (OPTCL with 0% resin content) and rubberwood. Tensile and flexural strength of OPTCL increased with the increase in the resin content up to 15% and showed a decreasing trend with the increase in the loading percentage beyond 15%.The impact strength also increased with the increase in the resin content from 5% to 15%. However, impregnated OPTCL with 15% resin loading showed lower water absorption uptake as compared with the other composite materials and rubberwood. SEM micrograph confirmed that the resin was impregnated efficiently within the pores of OPTCL fibers. POLYM. COMPOS., 31:638–644, 2010. a 2009 Society of Plastics Engineers

This paper explores the use of randomized sampling in implementing convolution in discrete-time with application to the areas of approximate filtering, low-power filter design, and hardware failure modeling. Three distinct randomized sampling methods are presented and additive error models as well as second-order error statistics are derived for these for both white and semi-correlated sampling processes. Discrete-time randomized sampling (RS) is then considered as a filter approximation method and conditions are derived under which RS-based approximations to the Wiener filter lead to a smaller mean-square estimation error than the best constrained LTI approximation. The tradeoff between power savings and output quality is also investigated for low-power applications. In addition, the RS framework is used to model a class of random hardware failures and algorithms are presented to improve the output SNR.