Funnel chest, with its considerable sternal depression and obvious interference with the topography of the heart, has for some time been made the subject of the attractive paradox that, in the vast majority of cases, it has no effect on cardiac function. True, it is conceded that the deformity may in rare instances be responsible for decompensation severe enough to cause congestive failure but ...

In several applications, underestimation of functions has proven to be a helpful tool for global optimization. In protein-ligand docking problems as well as in protein structure prediction, single convex quadratic underestimators have been used to approximate the location of the global minimum point. While this approach has been successful for basin-shaped functions, it is not suitable for ener...

The operative correction of the funnel chest is a difficult and important problem. Quite a number of methods and modifications have been mentioned. Late results, however, do not always come up to expectation. As a seriously deformed funnel chest may lead to troubles of the functions of the lungs and heart (Wegmann and Schaub, 1953; Schaub and Wegmann, 1954) operations should be limited to such ...