OBJECTIVE To identify and resolve procedural issues during transgastric access for the Natural Orifice Translumenal Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES), where feasibility and safety is established in animals and humans. However, several technical problems during viscerotomy result in considerable delay or procedure failure. METHODS Gastrotomy was performed under general anaesthesia in survival canine ...

When logs of three 4iaineter classes and two specific gravity classes were sheared with a 3/8-inch-thick knife travelling at 2 inches per minute, shearing force and work averaged greatest for dense 13.6-inch logs cut with a knife having a 45" sharpness angle (73,517 pounds; 49,838 footpounds). Force and work averaged least for 5.1-inch bolts of low density when cut with a knife having 22-1/2" s...

Mr L was a 59-year-old man with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer. He was brought to the hospital for progressive lower extremity weakness and gait instability that had developed over several weeks and worsened in the preceding 2 or 3 days. His partner, Ms P, was having difficulty caring for him at home because Mr L continually fell when attempting to get out of bed on his own. She found th...

Calvarial reconstruction following resection of tumors involving the skull is often followed by stereotactic radiosurgery. Prior studies have addressed the effects of various cranioplasty materials on dose distributions in linac-based radiosurgery. We aim to determine the effects of titanium mesh implants on Gamma Knife dose. Radiation backscatter and transmission were measured for eight types ...

BACKGROUND Radiation-induced meningiomas present a unique clinical dilemma given the fact that patients with these tumors have often received a prior full course of radiotherapy. As such, traditional radiotherapy is limited by lifetime tissue tolerances to radiation, leaving surgery and radiosurgery as attractive treatment options. OBJECTIVES To ascertain the safety and efficacy of Gamma Knif...

The knife change minimisation problem is a special case of the Generalised Travelling Salesman Problem arising in the paper industry as a sub-problem to the one-dimensional cutting stock problem. In the knife change minimisation problem a sequence of cutting patterns needs to be produced at a paper machine winder. Each of the patterns consists of a list of reels, the relative position of which ...

The origin of the cholinergic innervation to the amygdaloid complex was investigated with the use of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) histochemistry and choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) assay of microdissected nuclei. Visualization of AChE-positive neurones in the ventral forebrain was facilitated by pretreatment of rats with 1.5 mg/kg di-isopropyl phosphofluoridate (DFP). The AChE-positive neurones...