The Artificial Intelligence of Things Sensing System of Real-Time Bridge Scour Monitoring for Early Warning during Floods

Scour around bridge piers remains the leading cause of bridge failure induced in flood. Floods and torrential rains erode riverbeds and damage cross-river structures, causing bridge collapse and a severe threat to property and life. Reductions in bridge-safety capacity need to be monitored during flood periods to protect the traveling public. In the present study, a scour monitoring system designed with vibration-based arrayed sensors consisting of a combination of Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) is developed and implemented to obtain real-time scour depth measurements. These vibration-based micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) sensors are packaged in a waterproof stainless steel ball within a rebar cage to resist a harsh environment in floods. The floodwater-level changes around the bridge pier are performed using real-time CCTV images by the Mask R-CNN deep learning model. The scour-depth evolution is simulated using the hydrodynamic model with the selected local scour formulas and the sediment transport equation. The laboratory and field measurement results demonstrated the success of the early warning system for monitoring the real-time bridge scour-depth evolution.

Natural killer cell activity in hepatocellular carcinoma patients

Twenty-four hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients, 35 asymptomatic hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) carriers and 30 normal healthy individuals, were included in this study to evaluate the natural killer (NK) cell population and NK cell activity, particularly before and after surgery for HCC patients. The NK cell population was stained with fluorescent labelled monoclonal antibody (leu 11b) and counted under fluorescent microscope. The NK cell activity was evaluated by Cr51 release assay and K562 cells line serving as target cells. The result indicated that there is no significant difference in NK cell population in HCC patients as compared with either the normal control or asymptomatic HBsAg carriers. (p greater than 0.05) However, significantly depressed NK cell activity was observed in asymptomatic HBsAg carriers and HCC patients as compared with that of the normal control. The NK cell activity of HCC patients was significantly depressed further after surgical removal of the tumor on the 1st postoperative week. Though the NK cell activity showed signs of recovery on the 2nd and the 4th postoperative week, it still did not return to the preoperative level even on the 4th postoperative week.