OBJECTIVE Cutting the intersegmental plane by using a stapler during segmentectomy might interfere with the expansion of the preserved lung due to visceral pleura caught in a staple line, especially in a large regional segmentectomy, such as left upper division or basal segmentectomy. We compared the preserved lung volume after segmentectomy among the methods using stapler, sharp dissection, an...

This work reports on two related investigations of stochastic simulations which are widely used to study biodiversity and other related issues. We first deal with the behavior of the Hamming distance under the increase of the number of species and the size of the lattice, and then investigate how the mobility of the species contributes to jeopardize biodiversity. The investigations are based on...

1 Biodiversity is essential to the viability of ecological systems. Species diversity in ecosystems is promoted by cyclic, non-hierarchical interactions among competing populations. Such non-transitive relations lead to an evolution with central features represented by the 'rock-paper-scissors' game, where rock crushes scissors, scissors cut paper, and paper wraps rock. In combination with spat...

The commonly found abnormalities in endoscopic images are cancer tumors, ulcers, bleeding due to internal injuries, etc. Several methods of segmentation are employed in recent past for proper segmentation of such images. Intelligent scissors is one of the tools for segmentation. Here the segmentation of endoscopic images is presented using the intelligent scissors. This method is used to segmen...

To understand the visual analysis of biological motion, subjects viewed dynamic, stick figure renditions of a walker, car, or scissors through apertures. As a result of the aperture problem, the motion of each visible edge was ambiguous. Subjects readily identified the human figure but were unable to identify the car or scissors through invisible apertures. Recognition was orientation specific ...

L ight plays a key role in the living world. It serves as a source of energy through photosynthesis, makes sight possible, and regulates circadian rhythms. During evolution, organisms from bacteria to higher mammals elaborate various mechanisms to sense and respond to light, which manipulates their behavior. The use of light as a trigger is particularly attractive as a means of controlling biol...