Investigating the effect of weather on punctuality of Norwegian railways： a case study of the Nordland Line

The overall punctuality of the railway system is of particular importance for customers in order to use trains as a means of public transport. Investigating the drivers of low punctuality of trains is an essential step for improving their punctuality. Severe weather conditions are assumed to be one of the drivers of delays and low punctuality of the transportation system. This paper addresses the extent to which the weather factors such as temperature, snow,precipitation and wind influence the punctuality of trains on the Norwegian railways. The data for the study are collected from the passenger trains on the Nordland Line.The study period is 10 years, from the beginning of 2007 to the end of 2016. Data are analysed on a daily and weekly basis, and correlation and regression analyses are used to perform the statistical analysis. The results show that extreme cold weather during the winters is a crucial influencing factor contributing to delays and low punctuality. We also found that the weather variable that best explains variations in punctuality of passenger trains on this line is snow depth.

Analysis of Flight Punctuality Rate Based on Complex Network

Aviation service plays an indispensable role in the process of social and economic development.In this process,the problem of flight punctuality becomes more and more serious.Flight delay will bring a variety of implicit and explicit losses to individual passengers and airlines,so it is necessary to analyze the influencing factors of flight punctuality rate.Complex network can be used to study various objects with complex relations,obtain the relations of these objects and calculate the influence of different indicators on the objects.This article mainly has carried on the three aspects:Firstly,get the flight data from the Internet,and use the knowledge of the complex network to obtain the data to build into a directed network.Secondly,to analyze the building of directed network,computing network centricity index,study the influence of different centricity index for flight punctuality.Thirdly,get the statistics of airport indicators including network indicators and calculate the correlation of different indicators and punctuality.Through the above three points,the degree of influence of different influencing factors on flight on-time rate is studied,which is the positive influence or the negative influence.The study of these factors will provide some references for the practical application of the improvement of flight punctuality.

Medical treatment of inflammatory punctual stenosis monitored by anterior segment optical coherence tomography

AIM:To evaluate the role of medical treatment in the management of inflammatory punctum stenosis guided by spectral domain anterior segment optical coherence tomography(OCT).METHODS:This prospective study included 60 patients complaining of epiphora due to inflammatory punctual stenosis.They were divided into two groups:Group A(30 patients)treated with a combination of preservative free hydrocortisone sodium phosphate 3.35 mg/m L eye drops,and preservative free artificial tears based on sodium hyaluronate,polyethylene and propylene Glycol;Group B(30 patients)treated with the same preservative free artificial tears only.Thirty normal subjects were included for comparison of pre-treatment anatomical parameters.Before starting treatment,all patients underwent anterior segment assessment including slit lamp examination,measurement of intraocular pressure(IOP),fluorescein dye disappearance test,and measurement of the outer punctum diameter(OPD)by Spectral domain anterior segment OCT.All assessments were repeated at each follow up done at 1 and 3 mo later,together with subjective evaluation of patient’s satisfaction of the treatment outcome by simple rating questionnaire.RESULTS:Punctual diameter increased significantly with treatment in both groups(P<0.0001);although the widening was more in Group A as compared to group B(16.2%vs 8%of the original punctual size,mean difference of 28.933μm,P=0.0076).Subjective satisfaction with treatment outcome was also better in group A(70%vs 40%,Chi-square P=0.0397).CONCLUSION:A combination of preservative free steroid eye drops and artificial tears causes significant widening of inflammed stenotic punctae and improvement of the associated epiphora.

The Long-Term Clinical Efficacy of Smart Plug in the Treatment of Aqueous Tear Deficiency Dry Eye: Results of a 5-Year Study

Background: Dry eye syndrome, which affects 10% to 20% of adults, is a disorder of the tear film and is associated with symptoms of ocular discomfort. Smart Plug is a mechanical treatment in which the tear drainage system is blocked in order to aid in the preservation of natural tears on the ocular surface. Purpose: To evaluate the long-term clinical efficacy of Smart Plug in the treatment of aqueous tear deficiency dry eye. Patients and Methods: Retrospective study. Three hundred and two patients with aqueous tear deficiency dry eye were enrolled and all the patients accepted the punctual plug of Smart plug from Jan. 2011 to Jan. 2016. The clinical symptoms, Schirmer’s I test, Fluorescein staining (FL), tear break up time (TBUT), and complications were observed and analyzed. Results: Three hundred and two patients (604 eyes) were treated with Smart Plug (22 cases accepted upper and lower punctual plug, 280 cases only lower punctual plug). There were 109 males (36.1%) and 193 females (63.9%) with a mean age of 44.54 years old (Range from 25 to 83 years). Ten cases required the upper Smart Plug after lower punctual plug insertion because of no significantly improved symptoms. Smart plug was removed in 3 patients (1%) due to tearing. Six patients had mild postoperative tearing and no special treatment was required. Lacrimal canaliculitis occurred postoperatively in 8 cases (2.6%) (6 lower and 2 upper), and the affected plug was removed and treated with topical antibiotic eye drops. The BUT, SIT and FL scores of all patients were significantly improved from (2.11 ± 1.01, 4.20 ± 1.07, 6.06 ± 1.97) to (4.34 ± 1.22, 9.01 ± 1.56, 2.33 ± 1.28) respectively after at least 36 months of follow-up (All P P Conclusion: During a mean follow-up of 4.3 years, Smart plug is an effective method for the treatment of aqueous tear deficiency dry eye in spite of its postoperative complications such as canaliculitis and tearing.

Punctal Stenosis a Rare Complication of Dupilumab Therapy for Atopic Dermatitis: A New Case Report

Background: Dupilumab is the biological drug approved for the treatment of moderate to severe atopic dermatitis (AD) and has demonstrated impressive clinical effect and quality of life-enhancing capacity in clinical trials. The most commonly observed adverse effects of dupilumab therapy included upper respiratory tract infection, headache, nasopharyngitis, injection-site reaction, herpes viral infection, and conjunctivitis. Lacrimal duct obstruction or punctal stenosis is rarely reported side effect of dupilumab therapy and not fully documented. Aim: To document a new case presentation of a young female with a history of AD without previous significant ocular manifestations who developed right eye punctal stenosis while she was on Dupilumab therapy for a one-year duration. Case Report: A 19-year-old female with a long-standing history of AD and on dupilumab therapy for one year duration who developed severe punctal stenosis and continued tearing from her right eye in the last two months not responded to conservative ophthalmological medications but completely improved on discontinuation dupilumab injection over 6 months followed-up. Conclusions: Conjunctivitis is a well-known adverse effect of Dupilumab injection of a patient with AD. However, persistent conjunctivitis and tearing from the eye not improving on ophthalmology treatment might rule out punctal stenosis and discontinuation of dupilumab should be considered.

Spatially Adaptive Image Restoration Using Fuzzy Punctual Kriging

We present a general formulation based on punctual kriging and fuzzy concepts for image restoration in spatial domain. Gray-level images degraded with Gaussian white noise have been considered. Based on the pixel local neighborhood, fuzzy logic has been employed intelligently to avoid unnecessary estimation of a pixel. The intensity estimation of the selected pixels is then carried out by employing punctual kriging in conjunction with the method of Lagrange multipliers and estimates of local semi-variances. Application of such a hybrid technique performing both selection and intensity estimation of a pixel demonstrates substantial improvement in the image quality as compared to the adaptive Wiener filter and existing fuzzykriging approaches. It has been found that these filters achieve noise reduction without loss of structural detail information, as indicated by their higher structure similarity indices, peak signal to noise ratios and the new variogram based quality measures.

Nonlinear dynamic analysis of a punctual charge in the electric field of a charged ring via modified frequency-amplitude formulation

In this paper,two types of frequency amplitude fomulation method are initially utilized to obtain frequency-amplitude relationship of nonlinear vibration of a punctual charge in the electric field of a charged ring.In order to obtain the nonlinear natural frequency of the considered system,Reng-Gui and Geng-Cai modified methods are implemented.A table is also prepared to provide a brief review of recent development of nonlinear differential equations.The coectness of the obtained results is compared with those obtained from harmonic balance method(HBM)and energy balance method(EBM).A numerical simulation is caied out to investigate the accuracy of the used methods.In accordance with it,the relative errors of the employed approaches are numerically and analytically found based on the exact numerical solutions.It is exposed that the exerted approaches are very reliable and applicable for solving the nonlinear differential equations.