Tai Chi to Preserve General Health of Elderly during the COVID-19 Pandemic

SARS-CoV-2 virus is more severe in the elderly and contributes to most death cases. This is postulated due to the presence of multiple comorbidities and age-related immunological changes like immunosenescence and inflameaging. Immunesenescence causes impaired viral clearance, while inflameaging causes exaggerated response inappropriate to stimuli that triggers life-threatening cytokine storm. Hence, home-isolation prevents infection among the elderly and this limits their physical activity. Sedentary lifestyle eventually worsens pre-existing chronic disease and increases the risk of acquiring a new one. Tai Chi is one of the exercises recommended for the elderly during home-isolation. This literature review aims to provide information regarding the groups suggested for Tai Chi, its benefits, as an exercise to be practiced by elderly to maintain general health during COVID-19 and adverse effects. Tai Chi is for those aged 50 years and above or individuals with certain chronic, degenerative or psychological conditions. The systemic benefits are reduction in blood pressure, improves lipid profile, reduction in bone loss and musculoskeletal improvements; whereas neurologically, it reduces cortical shrinkage and improves depression, anxiety and insomnia. Moreover, it induces immune-regulation, which leads to enhancement of the immune system and inhibition of age-related chronic inflammatory condition, inflameaging. These may be protective against severe COVID-19 illness yet further studies are warranted. The adverse effect includes minor musculoskeletal pain and aches. In conclusion, Tai Chi is an ideal exercise for the elderly to maintain health during this challenging pandemic. However, the elderly need to be guided for the proper technique to perform this exercise at home.

An experimental analysis of a GP hyperheuristic approach for evolving low-cost heuristics for profile reductions

Researchers used graph-theory approaches to design the state-of-theart low-cost heuristics for profile reduction. This paper evolves and selects four low-cost heuristics for profile reduction using a genetic programming hyperheuristic approach. This paper evaluates the resulting heuristics for profile reduction from the genetic programming hyperheuristic approach in two application areas against the low-cost heuristics for solving the problem. The results obtained on a set of standard benchmark matrices taken from the SuiteSparse sparse matrix collection indicate that the resulting heuristics from the genetic programming hyperheuristic approach does not compare favorably with a high-quality heuristics for profile reduction.

Techno Economic Evaluation of a Hybrid Energy System

Use of renewable electricity resources has proved to be a more reliable and cleaner solution now-a-days. Photovoltaic units, wind turbine units have been considered as these are the most commonly used renewable energy generators today, but these generators involve high values of losses and are highly expensive. This paper presents a multi objective optimization using the Matlab GAtool. The algorithm is executed on a test system of 69 buses. The results of the case study show that proper positioning of renewable energy generators and sizing can lead to improvement in voltage profile, reduction in power losses and reduction in cost. Cost analysis of this framework is performed using Homer Pro3.8.1 which shows that this hybrid energy system is more efficient and economical than using of a single renewable electricity generator or combinations of renewable electricity generators of different sizes for a variable load profile. The advantages of this algorithm include its accuracy, calculation speed and the reduced values.

Molding Recipe Study for MUF Solder Crack Improvement

In recent years, flip chip technology becomes more and more important with benefits of thin package profile, reduction of package outline, and excellent electrical and thermal performance by connection of copper pillar bumps (CuP) or C4 solder bumps. In order to fill the die gap to prevent voids problem, two encapsulated solutions could be applied: capillary underfill (CUF) and molded underfill (MUF). In general comparison, CUF means to dispense underfill first to fill in die gap then proceed over-molding afterward; and MUF is directly fill under and above die by mold compound. The advantages of MUF solution are low cost and high throughput, however, it will suffer other assembly issues such as solder extrusion and solder crack, and might result in potential function failure. To form these kinds of defects, we suspected that solder will plastically deform under thermal stress treatment, which comes from unbalance mold transfer pressure and material expansion stress during thermal process. In this article, we have tried to investigate the mechanism of solder crack through molding recipe DOE (Design of Experiment) and mold flow simulation. The test vehicle is 12 × 12 mm2 FCCSP, with 6 × 5 mm2 die size. The bump type is copper pillar bump and pitch/size are 126 um and 35 × 60 um2, respectively. The molding recipe has been evaluated by cross section, and it revealed that molding transfer time and molding temperature are directions toward improvement of solder crack issue.

Analysis of obese patients' medical conditions in the pre and postoperative periods of bariatric surgery

ABSTRACT Objective: to compare the clinical conditions of obese patients in the pre and postoperative period of bariatric surgery. Methods: we carried out a descriptive, retrospective, quantitative study by consulting the charts of 134 patients who underwent bariatric surgery in the period from 2009 to 2014. We collected the data between September and November 2015. We performed a descriptive statistical analysis and comparative analysis of anthropometric, metabolic, biochemical and clinical variables, considering six months before and after surgery. Results: the majority of the patients were female (91.8%), with a higher prevalence (35%) in the age group 18-29 years old, complete high-school education (65.6%) and grade III obesity (60.4%). Six months after surgery, weight and lipid profile reduction were significant in both genders, but the impact on biochemical, anthropometric, metabolic and clinical parameters was significant only in female subjects, with a reduction in morbidities associated with obesity, such as arterial hypertension, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia and metabolic syndrome and in the use of drugs to control them. Conclusion: bariatric surgery was effective in weight loss, with improvements in anthropometric, metabolic and biochemical parameters and in the reduction of morbidities associated with obesity.