BACKGROUND Funnel technique is a method used for the insertion of screw into thoracic pedicle. AIM To evaluate the biomechanical characteristics of thoracic pedicle screw placement using the Funnel technique, trying to provide biomechanical basis for clinical application of this technology. METHODS 14 functional spinal units (T6 to T10) were selected from thoracic spine specimens of 14 fres...

The p7 membrane protein encoded by hepatitis C virus (HCV) assembles into a homo-hexamer that selectively conducts cations. An earlier solution NMR structure of the hexameric complex revealed a funnel-like architecture and suggests that a ring of conserved asparagines near the narrow end of the funnel are important for cation interaction. NMR based drug-binding experiments also suggest that rim...

results the data showed that vital signs and physical examination findings are useful screening parameters for predicting chest radiograph findings in outpatient settings. therefore, by implementing a prediction rule, we would be able to determine which patients would benefit from a chest x-ray (sensitivity, 94% and specificity, 57%). conclusion this study's findings suggest that requesting che...

A common shortcoming in the Evolutionary Computation (EC) community is that the publication of many search heuristics is not accompanied by rigorous benchmarks on a balanced set of test problems. A welcome effort to promote such test suites are the IEEE CEC competitions on real-valued black-box optimization. These competitions prescribe carefully designed synthetic test functions and benchmarki...

We have carried out fully relativistic numerical simulations of accretion disks in the Kerr metric. In this paper we focus on the unbound outflows that emerge self-consistently from the accretion flow. These outflows are found in the axial funnel region and consist of two components: a hot, fast, tenuous outflow in the axial funnel proper, and a colder, slower, denser jet along the funnel wall....

Tracking—by the system output—of a reference signal (assumed bounded with essentially bounded derivative) is considered in the context of a class of nonlinear, single-input, single-output systems modelled by functional differential equations and subject to input saturation. Prespecified is a parameterized performance funnel within which the tracking error is required to evolve; transient and as...

Breast radiotherapy is a technical challenge in women with pectus excavatum. We aim to assess isocentric lateral decubitus (ILD) technique as a means to irradiate breasts for patients with pectus excavatum. Four women presenting with left-sided breast cancers and found to have pectus excavatum were offered breast-conserving treatments. Post-operative breast radiotherapy was indicated (50 Gy) in...

Meta-analyses are increasingly used for synthesis of evidence from biomedical research, and often include an assessment of publication bias based on visual or analytical detection of asymmetry in funnel plots. We studied the influence of different normalisation approaches, sample size and intervention effects on funnel plot asymmetry, using empirical datasets and illustrative simulations. We fo...

The speed of a sorting algorithm is often measured based on the sheer number of calculations required to sort an n element array. However, in practice the sheer number of calcualtions is not the only factor in determining the running time of the sorting algorithm. For the purposes of the paper, we analyze the affect of cache/main memory memory transfers on the “Wall-clock running time” of a sor...