OBJECTIVE Successful treatment of osteomyelitis is more likely with accurate diagnosis and identification of the causative pathogens. This typically requires obtaining a specimen of bone, usually by image-guided biopsy. We sought to develop a simpler bedside method for definitively diagnosing osteomyelitis. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Over 2 years, we enrolled consecutive patients presenting ...

Introduction: This study was launched to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of 99mTc-Ciprofloxacin to distinguish infection foci induced by staphylococcus aureus and inflammation lesions induced by carrageenan in the rat foot in comparison with 67Ga-Citrate scintigraphy. Methods: The labeling and quality control of 99mTc-Ciprofloxacin kits have been perfo...

Tc-99m MIBI has recently been used in the functional imaging of various tumors. This prospective study was performed to evaluate the role of Tc-99m MIBI imaging at the time of the initial staging, assessment of treatment response, follow-up studies and survaillance in Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s Iymphoma. 25 patients (14 with Hodgkin’s and 11 with non-Hodgkin’s Iymphoma) underwent 32 stud...

A Timing Analysis of Convergence to Fitness Sharing Equilibrium p. 23 Where Elitists Start Limping: Evolution Strategies at Ridge Functions p. 34 A Bit-Wise Epistasis Measure for Binary Search Spaces p. 47 Inside GA Dynamics: Ground Basis for Comparison p. 57 The Effect of Spin-Flip Symmetry on the Performance of the Simple GA p. 67 Fitness Distance Correlation and Ridge Functions p. 77 Acceler...

Gold(I)-phosphine complexes are readily encapsulated by a tetrahedral supramolecular host (Ga(4)L(6)). We have investigated the catalytic activity of the resulting complexes for the intramolecular hydroalkoxylation of allenes. The catalytic activity of Me(3)PAuBr was increased 8-fold by encapsulation, as determined by initial rate kinetics, and we observed up to 67 catalytic turnovers by Me(3)P...

OBJECTIVE The ultimate goal of minimally invasive coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) is day surgery. We evaluated the potential of a new awake CABG protocol using only epidural anesthesia in realizing day surgery. METHODS Seventy-two patients who underwent awake off-pump CABG (OPCAB) in our institute from March 2003 were studied. One day before surgery, an epidural catheter was placed at ...