INTRODUCTION Few means exist to provide quantitative and reproducible assessment of vaginal conditions from biomechanical and functional standpoints. AIM To develop a new approach for quantitative biomechanical characterization of the vagina. METHODS Vaginal tactile imaging (VTI) allows biomechanical assessment of soft tissue and function along the entire length of the anterior, posterior, ...

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS We expanded our prior work with transnasal robotic surgery (TNRS) in this study with the following aims: 1) use a cadaveric model to evaluate the feasibility of laryngoplasty with TNRS, 2) measure robot insertion times and forces, and 3) identify operational challenges to further guide the development of a flexible robotic system. STUDY DESIGN Cadaveric study. METHODS ...

Two subjects are addressed. A series of mass distributions is explicitly presented, that generate zero gravitation …eld in an open set in E. Second, an explicit reconstruction formula in E from data of spherical means with centers in an algebraic set. For both constructions, the same geometric method is applied based on properties of a special class of polynomials. Key words oscillatory set hyp...

AIM To determine the force needed to extract a drop from a range of current prostaglandin monotherapy eye droppers and how this related to the comfortable and maximum pressure subjects could exert. METHODS The comfortable and maximum pressure subjects could apply to an eye dropper constructed around a set of cantilevered pressure sensors and mounted above their eye was assessed in 102 subject...

PURPOSE To evaluate the effects of acute alcohol intoxication on healing of colonic anastomosis. METHODS Thirty-six rats were allocated into two groups. Animals in the alcohol (A) were given 2 mL of ethanol diluted in 0.9% saline solution to a concentration of 40% by gavage immediately before anesthesia, whereas control (C) animals received 2 mL of 0.9% saline solution via the same route. A c...

The present work deals with an improved back-propagation algorithm based on Gauss-Newton numerical optimization method for fast convergence. The steepest descent method is used for the back-propagation. The algorithm is tested using various datasets and compared with the steepest descent back-propagation algorithm. In the system, optimization is carried out using multilayer neural network. The ...

DIME is a programming environment for manipulation of irregular triangular meshes with a distributed memory machine. We have added a software layer DIMEFEM which manipulates Finite Element representations of functions and allows the stating and solving of variational statements. An application of DIMEFEM is an incompressible Navier-Stokes solver with a three-stage implicit time step, using quas...

Abstract The basic requirement of Newtons method in solving systems of nonlinear equations is, the Jacobian must be non-singular. Violating this condition, i.e. the Jacobian to be singular the convergence is too slow and may even be lost. This condition restricts to some extent the application of Newton method. In this paper we suggest a new approach for solving fuzzy nonlinear equations where ...

The ability to measure extremely low thrust levels with unusual precision is becoming more critical as attempts are made to characterize the performance of emerging micropropulsion systems. Many new attitude control concepts for nanospacecraft involve the production of thrust below 1 μN. A simple, but uniquely successful thrust stand has been developed and used to measure thrust levels as low a...