Pencil core granuloma is characterized by a delayed foreign-body reaction against retained fragments of pencil lead. Previous case reports presented pencil core granuloma resembling malignant melanoma, haemangioma, or soft tissue sarcoma. We present a case of pencil core granuloma arising from the palm 25 years after the initial injury. The patient presented a bluish nodule that had been presen...

Mirror therapy is an effective technique for pain relief and motor function recovery. It has been demonstrated that magnetic 20-Hz activity is induced in the primary motor cortex (M1) after median nerve stimulation and that the amount of the stimulus-induced 20-Hz activity is decreased when the M1 is activated. In the present study, we investigated how the image or the mirror reflection of a ha...

We present three cases of intracorneal pencil graphite particles following penetrating ocular injury. Slit lamp examination revealed pencil graphite particles in the corneal stroma in all cases. Although we did not remove the particles, no complications occurred during the follow-up period. We assumed that removal of the pencil graphite particles was unnecessary, and it was avoided to prevent t...

This paper presents models for graphite pencil, drawing paper, blenders, and kneaded eraser that produce realistic looking pencil marks, textures, and tones. Our models are based on an observation of how lead pencils interact with drawing paper, and on the absorptive and dispersive properties of blenders and erasers interacting with lead material deposited over drawing paper. The models conside...

We consider the distance from a (square or rectangular) matrix pencil to the nearest matrix pencil in 2-norm that has a set of specified eigenvalues. We derive a singular value optimization characterization for this problem and illustrate its usefulness for two applications. First, the characterization yields a singular value formula for determining the nearest pencil whose eigenvalues lie in a...

In this paper we present a new diagonal balancing technique for regular matrix pencils λB − A, which aims at reducing the sensitivity of the corresponding generalized eigenvalues. It is inspired from the balancing technique of a square matrix A and has a comparable complexity. Upon convergence, the diagonally scaled pencil has row and column norms that are balanced in a precise sense. We also s...

Inspired by recent reports concerning the utilisation of hand drawn pencil macroelectrodes (PDEs), we report the fabrication, characterisation (physicochemical and electrochemical) and implementation (electrochemical sensing) of various PDEs drawn upon a flexible polyester substrate. Electrochemical characterisation reveals that there are no quantifiable electrochemical responses upon utilising...

In this paper we propose a new recursive algorithm for computing the staircase form of a matrix pencil, and implicitly its Kronecker structure. The algorithm compares favorably to existing ones in terms of elegance, versatility, and complexity. In particular, the algorithm without any modiication yields the structural invari-ants associated with a generalized state{space system and its system p...

BACKGROUND Tissue microarray technology has provided a high throughput means of evaluating potential biomarkers in archival pathological specimens. This study was carried out in order to produce tissue microarray blocks using mechanical pencil tips without high cost. METHOD Conventional mechanical pencil tips (Rotring Tikky II Mechanical Pencil 1.0 mm) were used to cut out 1 mm wax cylinders ...

This study was designed to investigate the developmental progression in pencil and crayon grip. The subjects were 320 nondysfunctional children aged 3.0 to 6.11 years, with 20 boys and 20 girls at each 6-month age interval. On the basis of a review of the literature, developmental pencil and crayon grips were defined for the study, and the type of grips each child used to perform a drawing task...