Highlights The article describes the first conducted pseudorandomized comparative study of mitral valve replacement using either traditional or “valve-in-valve” techniques. Abstract Aim. To compare short-term (perioperative) and medium-term (6 months) outcomes surgical treatment bioprosthetic dysfunction methods. Methods. included 18 patients undergoing (open replacement) chosen according to fo...

Large marine foundation piles are an important part of offshore structural pile foundations, and their lifting operations have always been a major problem in the construction structures. Based on IHC’s bilateral spreader, this paper proposes scheme “internal external clamping type variable diameter spreader”. It solves poor adaptability spreaders to same specification different pipe diameters. ...

It was recently proved using graph covers (Ruozzi, 2012) that the Bethe partition function is upper bounded by the true partition function for a binary pairwise model that is attractive. Here we provide a new, arguably simpler proof from first principles. We make use of the idea of clamping a variable to a particular value. For an attractive model, we show that summing over the Bethe partition ...

The urethrogenital reflex (UGR) is used as a surrogate model of the autonomic and somatic nerve and muscle activity that accompanies ejaculation. The UGR is evoked by distension of the urethra and activation of penile afferents. The current study compares two methods of elevating urethral intraluminal pressure in spinalized, anesthetized male Sprague-Dawley rats (n = 60). The first method, peni...

We describe an optical technique using total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy to obtain simultaneous and independent recordings from numerous ion channels via imaging of single-channel Ca2+ flux. Muscle nicotinic acetylcholine (ACh) receptors made up of alphabetagammadelta subunits were expressed in Xenopus oocytes, and single channel Ca2+ fluorescence transients (SCCaFTs) wer...

Background and Purpose: We compared the incidence and severity of paraplegia following thoracic aortic cross-clamping in dogs for two anesthetic regimens. Animals were randomly assigned to receive methohexital (group M; n=9) or isoflurane (group I; n=9). We expected a better neurological outcome in animals administered methohexital because of superior neuronal protection and greater spinal cord...

This paper presents a program for structural synthesis -conception and design work-of the multiple fixture devices in the machine-tool structure. This program was created according to the principles of object-oriented programming. The program is also built upon two fundamental principles which characterize the evolution of the systems: the combination and the selection. The basic structural ele...