A tool was developed that assists surgeons in manipulating surgical instruments more precisely than is possible manually. The tool is a telemanipulator that scales down the surgeon's hand motion and filters tremor in the motion. The signals measured from the surgeon's hand are transformed and used to drive a six-degrees-of-freedom robot to position the surgical instrument mounted on its tip. A ...

We present the timing and spectral properties of the transient Be/X-ray binary pulsar 3A 0535+262 during quiescence using three observations with the narrow field imaging instruments (NFI) of BeppoSAX. Assuming a distance of 2 kpc for this system, the 2–10 keV X-ray luminosities measured from the three observations are in the range of 1.5–4.0 × 10 33 erg s −1 , indicating a very low rate of acc...

The need for properly trained sterile processing staff members has grown with the increased sophistication of surgical procedures. In 1998, I conducted a survey of hospitals about various aspects of training sterile processing personnel, including the length of time for training employees to process general surgical and specialty surgical instruments. To evaluate trends, I conducted a second su...

Background Haemorrhoidectomy is frequently associated with significant postoperative pain and prolonged hospital stay; different techniques and devices have been developed to overcome these problems, including modifications of the technique (excision without legation) and introduction of new surgical instruments (LigasureTM, Harmonic ScalpelTM). We evaluated the surgical outcomes of Milligan Mo...

BACKGROUND Guidance on the cleaning of dental instruments in primary care has recently been published. The aims of this study are to determine if the publication of the guidance document was enough to influence decontamination best practice and to design an implementation intervention strategy, should it be required. METHODS A postal questionnaire assessing current decontamination practice an...

Spatial differences in urban environmental conditions contribute to health inequalities within cities. The purpose of the paper is to map environmental inequalities relevant for health in the City of Dortmund, Germany, in order to identify needs for planning interventions. We develop suitable indicators for mapping socioeconomically-driven environmental inequalities at the neighborhood level ba...

Urban transportation externalities are a key development challenge. Based on the existing literature, the authors illustrate the magnitudes of various external costs, review response policies, and measure and discuss their selection, particularly focusing on the context of developing countries. They find that regulatory policy instruments aimed at reducing local air pollution have been introduc...

â  regional and urban planning instruments contain an extensive range of concepts and methods. these methods are important for understanding the complex identity of cities and the prediction of their future. today majority of planners and urban planning authorities believe that the use of these methods can help us to better understand urban systems and predict their behavior. in this regard the...

Planning is generally recognised as the practice of spatial organisation. instruments, such land-use plans and zoning plans, are used to structure development, reduce building densities densify. While planning instruments themselves their interpretation, practical use implementation have been widely studied, in contrast technical its active role processes remained mostly unexplored. This paper ...