Introduction: Numerous studies have indicated the superiority of enteral nutrition compared to parenteral nutrition. The frequency of enteral nutrition-related gastrointestinal complications in critically ill patients is high. Enteral nutrition (gavage) has complications such as diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and gavage intolerance (the residual volume of that which is aspirated from stomach is greater than 50% of the volume that is infused), which may cause fluid and electrolyte imbalance. The goal of this study was to compare the above complications between bolus, intermittent and continuous methods of gavage in surgical intensive care unit (SICU) patients.Materials and methods: After approval of the proposal by the Ethics Committee and obtaining the patients' informed consent, this clinical trial was conducted on 63 SICU patients. Patients were randomly divided into three groups. The methods of gavage used in the three groups were bolus, intermittent and continuous. Data collection was conducted using a checklist on the gavage method and complication data. Statistical analysis was performed with ANOVA and Pearson correlation coefficient was determined.Results: The study showed that the incidence of diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting was not significantly different between the three groups. This study shows that the incidence of diarrhea, nausea and vomiting was not significant between the three groups. Mean+SD durations of gavage tolerance in bolus, intermittent and continuous groups were 13.71+2.19, 13.95+1.35, and 14.85+0.47, respectively. The tolerance of gavage was significantly higher in the continuous groups compared to the bolus group (P<0.05).Conclusions: This study showed that the continuous method of gavage in SICU patients is better tolerated than the bolus method.

In this paper, the semi continuum method is developed for analysis of skew bridges with arbitrary number of longitudinal girders. In this study, two assumptions are considered and in the second assumption, a larger region of the deck contributes in load distribution. Therefore, the load distribution becomes more smooth. Results are compared with the grillage analysis method. The grillage method is considered as an accurate method in OHBDC Code. This comparison shows that the error of the first assumption is 37% with respect to grillage method and for second assumption, it is 4%.

Recently, it has been observed that a new method for generating continuous distributions, T 􀀀 X family, can be quite effectively used to analyze the data in one dimension. The aim of this study is to generalize this method to two dimensional space so that the marginals would have T 􀀀 X distributions. So, several examples and properties of this family have been presented. As an application, a special distribution of this family, called bivariate Weibull-Rayleigh-Rayleigh, is fitted to a data set and is shown to have a better fit.

In this paper, we present an efficient method to solve linear time-delay optimal control problems with a quadratic cost function. In this regard, first, by employing the Pontryagin maximum principle to time-delay systems, the original problem is converted into a sequence of two-point boundary value problems (TPBVPs) that have both advance and delay terms. Then, using the continuous Runge–Kutta (CRK) method, the resulting sequences are recursively solved by the shooting method to obtain an optimal control law. This obtained optimal control consists of a linear feedback term, which is obtained by solving a Riccati matrix differential equation, and a forward term, which is an infinite sum of adjoint vectors, that can be obtained by solving sequences of delay TPBVPs by the shooting CRK method. Finally, numerical results and their comparison with other available results illustrate the high accuracy and efficiency of our proposed method.

Background: Entonox (N2O2) for decreasing labor pain is generally used intermittently. As continuous method is easier to use, we compared two methods in point of labor progression.Objectives: As entonox is used in numerous centers intermittently and it seems that continuous method has benefits such as more analgesic effect and easier usage, we decided to compare the effects of two methods on labor progress.Patients and Methods: This randomized clinical trial was performed in Mobini Hospital, Sabzevar, Iran. One hundred admitted women for vaginal delivery were included in this study. Fitted patients were randomly divided into equal groups. Fifty parturients used it intermittently and 50 persons used it continuously. Then labor progression, maternal and fetal conditions and satisfaction were registered and compared in two groups. Statistical analyses were performed by SPSS-17 software, t-test and c2 test.Results: The duration of three stages of labor was not different significantly. The mothers were more satisfied by continuous method meaningfully (P<0.0001).Conclusions: Our study showed continuous method had no adverse effects on labor progression and the satisfaction rate was more compared with intermittent method.

Evaluating the reliability of trenches against sliding failure is complicated since most alluvial deposits are heterogeneous and spatially variable. This means that rather than perfectly circular or linear failure surfaces, trench failure tends to be more complex, following the weakest path or zones through the material; thereby, a new method called Continuous Slip-Surface (CSS) was adopted to calculate the critical excavation depth. CSS runs an algorithm to seek a continuous slip surface. The Finite Difference Method (FDM) coupled with random  field theory and CSS method is well suited for calculating slope stability since it allows the failure surface to seek out the weakest path through the soil. For an unsupported vertical cut, it was shown that the critical excavation depth acquired from CSS method was indeed an upper bound solution. In terms of numerical and analytical terms, an idealized variation model was used to illustrate that increasing the un-drained shear strength density attenuated the effect of shear strength variability. Correlation structure of the input variable was shown to in fluence the results, although its behavior varied on low and high scales of fluctuation.

The damage detection (DD) of the bridge has always been major concerns for engineers. This paper attempts to detect damage in the continuous deck bridges by providing a new method based on acceleration responses and their instantaneous amplitudes. The DD in this paper has two steps: firstly, determining the vicinity of damage in global DD. Secondly, determining the location of damage in local DD. Then by acceleration signals, the instantaneous amplitude values of healthy and damaged structural responses extracted via HHT. Further, for accurate evaluation of the proposed method, damage locations are determined by the cross-correlation damage index (DICC). To assess the feasibility and reliability of proposed methods, several analytical models of concrete bridges of one to three-spans, as well as experimental model a simply supported steel beam, have been used. In order to consider noise pollution during data acquisition, a certain amount of noise is added to the response. The results in the analytical and experimental models showed that the proposed methods can determine the damage locations with appropriate accuracy for different damage scenarios and it could provide more exact results with a rapid estimation.

We propose a two-phase algorithm for solving continuous rank-one quadratic knapsack problems (R1QKPs). In particular, we study the solution structure of the problem without the knapsack constraint. In fact, an $O(n\log n)$ algorithm is suggested in this case. We then use the solution structure to propose an $O(n^2\log n)$ algorithm that finds an interval containing the optimal value of the Lagrangian dual of R1QKP. In the second phase, we solve the Lagrangian dual problem using a traditional single-variable optimization method. We perform a computational test on random instances and compare our algorithm with the general solver CPLEX.