Clinical examination of the sacroiliac joint

Introduction: Sacroiliac joint (SIJ) can be a nociceptive source of the pain in lower back. Clinical diagnosis of SIJ pain remains yet problematic. The cause of SIJ pain is multifactorial. The pain may be a result of an inflammatory disease, arthrosis, traumatic injury, infectious process or overload. The potential role in SIJ examination have pain provocation tests. Objective: To review and further discuss the validity of some of the mostly used clinical provocation tests such as Distraction test, Thigh Thrust test, Compression test, Sacral Thrust test, Patrick’s (FABER), Gaenslen’s test, Standing Flexion Test, Gillet Test and Shimpi Prone test. Method: A literature search was conducted using PubMed. Reviewed were studies between 2005 and 2020 in English, Slovak and Czech with keywords: sacroiliac joint, sacroiliac assessment, provocation tests. The methodology of studies was not considered. Discussion: It is challenging to determine whether SIJ is the actual source of the pain by using only one of the provocation tests. Therefore, it is beneficial to combine more compression tests, what will also increase the validity of testing. Other widely used SIJ tests are palpation test, however their validity is poor.

On Debugging Intermittent Chain Hold-time Failures Caused by Process Variations for FinFET Technology

Scan-based test has been the industrial standard method for screening manufacturing defects. Scan chains are vulnerable to most manufacturing defects and process variations. Therefore, chain failures diagnosis is critical for successful yield learning. However, traditional chain diagnosis requires failing masking patterns to identify faulty chains and their fault types for designs with test compression. In other words, it cannot diagnose the chain failures which don't fail the masking chain patterns. Unfortunately, advanced FinFET technologies with more manufacturing challenges and higher process variations may result in more subtle chain timing failures which can't be detected by chain masking patterns. In this work, we present a new debugging methodology, which combines chain diagnosis and tester-based test to effectively diagnose such intermittent chain failures. The proposed methodology is validated on silicon data for one modern large SOC design and successfully identified all scan cells with hold-time issues, which were validated by STA with corrected models. The subsequent mask fixes for these identified hold-time violations resolved this yield issue and dramatically improve the yield.

Effect of Tackifier Addition on Cushion Compound Formulation for Tire Retreading Application

Tire retreading is a prospective industry. Old tires are repaired and retreaded with suitable tread compounds to fulfill the requirement as the new ones. One of the important components in tire retreading process is cushion compound. Cushion compound consists of unsaturated rubber, in this case natural rubber Hevea brasiliensis was used, less phr of filler compared to the retread compound, and additives such as peptizer, tackifier, processing oil, antioxidant, activator, accelerator and curatives. Tackifier is an important component in cushion compound since its role to make a bonding between different layer, the initial tire after buffing and new retread layer. Tackifier should has good resistance, good compatibility and does not affect the rheological and dynamical properties of bonded rubber. The general tackifier that used in industries are hexamethyl tetramine as methylene donor and resorcinol as methylene acceptor. There is certain reaction between those two additives that determine how good the performance of cushion compound and its effect to retreading process. To obtain optimum reaction, comparison between resorcinol and hexamethyl tetramine were varied as 1:1 (FRR1), 1:2 (FRR2) and 1:3 (FRR3). Hardness test, compression test, rebound resilience, tensile and tear strength, and FTIR were done to observe the optimum variation for retread application. Compared to the control with no tackifier at all, FRR2 showed the optimum result with 21.75 MPa (min. 19 Mpa) and 454,54% elongation at break (min. 450%). The most interesting result was observation by using FTIR, it was detected that the crosslink density was significantly higher than other formulation. It is a new breakthrough which is minimum tackifier with certain treatment could give better performance.

EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF SELF-CURING CONCRETE

The study aim was to make comparison between self-curing and traditional concrete qualities in terms of hardiness and water absorption. The study was experimental in nature and made use of material including Portland Pozzolana cement, fine aggregate, and angular coarse aggregate. The three grades of concrete were used in the experiment including M10, M20, and M30 based on cube and cylinder format. The tests involved in the study included non-destructive test, compression and split tensile strength test, and water absorption test. The findings show that overall, self-curing concrete shows better performance compare to the sprinkler or fully cured concrete. Thus, the study makes recommendation that traditional concrete may be replaced with the self-curing concrete.