The Libyan civil conflict : selected case series of orthopaedic trauma managed in Malta in 2014

Aim: The purpose of this series of cases was to analyse our management of orthopaedic trauma casualties in the Libyan civil war crisis in the European summer of 2014. We looked at both damage control orthopaedics and for case variety of war trauma at a civilian hospital. Due to our geographical proximity to Libya, Malta was the closest European tertiary referral centre. Having only one Level 1 trauma care hospital in our country, our Trauma and Orthopaedics department played a pivotal role in the management of Libyan battlefield injuries. Our aims were to assess acute outcomes and short term mortality of surgery within the perspective of a damage control orthopaedic strategy whereby aggressive wound management, early fixation using relative stability principles, antibiotic cover with adequate soft tissue cover are paramount. We also aim to describe the variety of war injuries we came across, with a goal for future improvement in regards to service providing.Methods: Prospective collection of six interesting cases with severe limb and spinal injuries sustained in Libya during the Libyan civil war between June and November 2014.Conclusions: We applied current trends in the treatment of war injuries, specifically in damage control orthopaedic strategy and converting to definitive treatment where permissible. The majority of our cases were classified as most severe (Type IIIB/C) according to the Gustilo-Anderson classification of open fractures. The injuries treated reflected the type of standard and improved weaponry available in modern warfare affecting both militants and civilians alike with increasing severity and extent of damage. Due to this fact, multidisciplinary team approach to patient centred care was utilised with an ultimate aim of swift recovery and early mobilisation. It also highlighted the difficulties and complex issues required on a hospital management level as a neighbouring country to war zone countries in transforming care of civil trauma to military trauma.peer-reviewe

Quantization Design for Distributed Optimization

We consider the problem of solving a distributed optimization problem using a distributed computing platform, where the communication in the network is limited: each node can only communicate with its neighbours and the channel has a limited data-rate. A common technique to address the latter limitation is to apply quantization to the exchanged information. We propose two distributed optimization algorithms with an iteratively refining quantization design based on the inexact proximal gradient method and its accelerated variant. We show that if the parameters of the quantizers, i.e. the number of bits and the initial quantization intervals, satisfy certain conditions, then the quantization error is bounded by a linearly decreasing function and the convergence of the distributed algorithms is guaranteed. Furthermore, we prove that after imposing the quantization scheme, the distributed algorithms still exhibit a linear convergence rate, and show complexity upper-bounds on the number of iterations to achieve a given accuracy. Finally, we demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithms and the theoretical findings for solving a distributed optimal control problem

A Parametric Multi-Convex Splitting Technique with Application to Real-Time NMPC

A novel splitting scheme to solve parametric multiconvex programs is presented. It consists of a fixed number of proximal alternating minimisations and a dual update per time step, which makes it attractive in a real-time Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) framework and for distributed computing environments. Assuming that the parametric program is semi-algebraic and that its KKT points are strongly regular, a contraction estimate is derived and it is proven that the sub-optimality error remains stable if two key parameters are tuned properly. Efficacy of the method is demonstrated by solving a bilinear NMPC problem to control a DC motor.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the 53rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control 201

Nature and timing of Late Mississippian to Mid-Pennsylvanian glacio-eustatic sea-level changes of the Pennine Basin, UK

The Pennine Basin of northern England contains a comparatively complete Serpukhovian– Moscovian succession characterized by high-resolution ammonoid zonation and cyclic paralic sedimentation. Two new isotope dilution thermal ionization mass spectrometry zircon ages from a bentonite deposited during the Arnsbergian (mid-Serpukhovian) regional substage and tonstein of earliest Bolsovian (early Moscovian) regional substage have been determined. The weighted mean 206Pb/238U ages of 328.34 ± 0.55 and 314.37 ± 0.53 Ma (total uncertainty), respectively, require modification of the time scale for the Western Europe regional chronostratigraphy. The areal extent of acme ammonoid facies is used as a proxy for the magnitude of 47 discrete flooding events. Incised valleys (major sequence boundaries) are used as a proxy for the magnitude of sea-level falls. The frequency of these events, in the light of the new radiometric dating, indicates the following: (1) there is temporal coincidence between major glaciations in Gondwana and phases of increased frequency of sequence boundaries in the Pennine Basin; (2) high-amplitude flooding surfaces have an average frequency of c. 400 ka; (3) average cycle durations during the Pendleian–early Arnsbergian and Chokierian–Bolsovian, of c. 111 and c. 150 ka, respectively, reflect short-duration eccentricities; (4) multiple flooding surfaces with the same ammonoid assemblages may equate with sub-100 ka precession or obliquity frequencies