OBJECTIVE By maintaining native coronary blood flow in on-pump beating heart surgery (OnP-BH) and comparing with OPCAB strategy pump-related effects on myocardial injury and cardiac dysfunction could be specifically differentiated from ischemia/reperfusion-related consequences of surgical coronary revascularization. METHODS In a randomized-prospective design, 40 elective patients with normal ...

Functional constitutive nitric oxide synthase (NOS) is required for full expression of reflex cutaneous vasodilation that is attenuated in aged skin. Both the essential cofactor tetrahydrobiopterin (BH(4)) and adequate substrate concentrations are necessary for the functional synthesis of nitric oxide (NO) through NOS, both of which are reduced in aged vasculature through increased oxidant stre...

Effects of post-sintering annealing treatment between 300 and 1000ºC for up to 8 hrs time periods followed by either furnace cooling (FC) or air-cooling (AC) on the hard magnetic properties of some Nd-Fe-B based sintered magnets was investigated. It was shown that the intrinsic coercivity (Hci), second quadrant demagnetization loop shape and thus the energy density (BH)max varied considerably a...

AIMS The Authors examine the employement of a new anaesthetic agent, levobupivacaine 0.50% (S - enantiomer of racemic mixture of bupivacaine), for peribulbar anaesthesia in a randomized double blind study vs. racemic bupivacaine 0.50% alone or in association with hyaluronidase 10 IU x ml(-1). MATERIALS AND METHODS 120 patients were divided into four groups of 30 each: group L (levobupivacaine...

Uncoupling of nitric oxide synthase (NOS) has been implicated in left ventricular (LV) remodeling and dysfunction after myocardial infarction (MI). We hypothesized that inducible NOS (iNOS) plays a crucial role in LV remodeling after MI, depending on its coupling status. MI was created in wild-type, iNOS-knockout (iNOS(-/-)), endothelial NOS-knockout (eNOS(-/-)), and neuronal NOS-knockout (nNOS...

Repetitive breath-hold (BH) diving can lead to accumulation of nitrogen (N2) in blood and tissues, which may give rise to decompression illness (DCI). An unusual condition is "Taravana", the diving syndrome reported by Cross in the 1960s. That report generated wide discussion as to whether BH diving can cause DCI. Paulev was the first person to suggest the link between DCI and BH diving. He, a ...

PURPOSE The objectives of this study are (1) to measure concordance of tumor position on breath-hold (BH) computed tomography (CT) scans relative to the natural tumor path during free breathing (FB) and (2) to evaluate the benefits of the breathing monitoring device Abches (Apex Medical, Tokyo) for stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) treatment planning. METHODS In 53 lung cancer patient...

Digital beamforming (DBF) techniques are capable of improving the performance of communications systems significantly. However, if the transmitted signals are conflicted with strong interference especially in the direction of the transmitted beams, these directional jamming signals will severely degrade the system performance. In order to efficiently mitigate the interference of the directional...

The production rate of compact objects, i.e., neutron stars (NSs) and black holes (BHs), in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and quasars (QSOs), where frequent supernova explosions are used to explain the high metallicity, is very high because of the interaction between the accretion disk and main-sequence stars in the nucleus of the quasar. The compact object red giant (RG) star binaries can be e...

We consider the implications of the presence of ∼ 1 stellar-mass black hole (BH) at the center of a dense globular cluster. We show that BH X-ray binaries formed through exchange interactions are likely to have extremely low duty cycles (< 10−3), consistent with the absence of BH X-ray transients in Galactic globular clusters. In contrast, we find that BH X-ray binaries formed through tidal cap...