PURPOSE Our goal was to assess outcomes of a selective drain placement strategy during laparoscopic radical prostatectomy (LRP) with a running urethrovesical anastomosis (RUVA) using cystographic imaging in all patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS A retrospective chart review was performed for all patients undergoing LRP between January 2003 and December 2004. The anastomosis was performed using a...

In restored peatlands, recovery of carbon assimilation by peat-forming plants is a prerequisite for the recovery of ecosystem functioning. Restoration by rewetting may affect moss photosynthesis and respiration directly and/or through species successional turnover. To quantify the importance of the direct effects and the effects mediated by species change in boreal spruce swamp forests, we used...

In recent years, reliability-based design (RBD) has gradually gained popularity in geotechnical engineering. Several RBD codes have been developed and implemented around the world that calibrate ultimate limit state (ULS) designs for a target ULS reliability index (βuls). However, the serviceability limit state (SLS) design still is considered using conventional deterministic approaches with an...

Materials such as waste tire chips were widely used to improve the strength of soil. The objective of this study is to discuss the residual strength or steady-state behavior of sand-waste tire chip mixtures. A series of undrained monotonic triaxial compression tests were conducted on reconstituted saturated specimens of sand and sand-tire chip mixtures with variation in the tire-chip contents f...

series of undrained monotonic triaxial tests and cone penetration tests were conducted on loose silty sand samples to study correlation between undrained shear strength of silty sands (sus) and piezocone test results. cpt tests were conducted at 27 silty sand samples in calibration chamber. the results indicate that, in low percent of silt (0-30%), as the silt content increases, the undrained s...

The mechanical properties of dewatered, anaerobically digested sewage sludge were determined from soil laboratory tests. The sludge material is largely composed of organic clay sized-particles, a sizable fraction of which is in an active state of biological digestion which can continue over many years under field conditions. Moderately digested sludge material was found to have a typical specif...

Triaxial experiments show that samples of fault gouge deform distinctly differently than those from the adjacent fault damage zone (e.g., Chester and Logan, 1986). Rock samples in the damage zone follow a characteristic elastic-brittle behavior, whereas fault gouge readily compacts and deforms in a more ductile manner. In order to explain the apparent weakness of large plate bounding faults suc...

Exploiting form invariance of a class of elastic – plastic constitutive relations for drained and undrained deformation makes it possible to compare predictions for localization under these limiting conditions. Results are shown to depend strongly on poroelastic constants reflecting the compressibility of solid and fluid constituents and parameters describing inelastic volume strain and the dep...

The routine use of surgical drains in total hip arthroplasty remains controversial. They have not been shown to decrease the rate of wound infection significantly and can provide a retrograde route for it. Their use does not reduce the size or incidence of post-operative wound haematomas. This prospective, randomised study was designed to evaluate the role of drains in routine total hip arthrop...

[1] Pore pressure changes are rigorously included in Coulomb stress calculations for fault interaction studies. These are considered changes under undrained conditions for analyzing very short term postseismic response. The assumption that pore pressure is proportional to faultnormal stress leads to the widely used concept of an effective friction coefficient. We provide an exact expression for...