Improved growth with bioabsorbable sutures in both high- and low-pressure zones.

BACKGROUND: Compromised growth after operation remains a significant problem in the cardiovascular field. Some benefit of absorbable suture materials has been demonstrated for arterial anastomoses. However, for the low-pressure zone, few data are available. METHODS: To assess growth in high- versus low-pressure zones we transected the abdominal aorta (high-pressure zone) as well as the inferior vena cava (low-pressure zone) in 10 young mongrel dogs using for reanastomosis 7-0 nonabsorbable versus absorbable running sutures in random order. RESULTS: All animals survived and were evaluated over 12 months including body weight (gain, 212% +/- 45% for nonabsorbable versus 218% +/- 8% for absorbable; not significant), angiography, and, after elective sacrifice, detailed studies of aorta and vena cava. Systematic complication of angiographic data at 12 months showed at the suture level an area of 13.8 mm2 for nonabsorbable versus 24.3 +/- 14.4 mm2 for absorbable sutures in the high-pressure zone as compared with 12.9 +/- 4.9 mm2 for nonabsorbable versus 25.3 +/- 15.4 mm2 for absorbable sutures in the low-pressure zone. Residual lumen, calculated as a function of the area above and below the suture, accounted for 35% +/- 10% for nonabsorbable versus 92% +/- 12% for absorbable sutures (p < 0.001) in the high-pressure zone as compared with 37% +/- 13% for nonabsorbable versus 75% +/- 15% for absorbable sutures (p < 0.003) in the low-pressure zone (high versus low, not significant). Poststenotic dilatation accounted for 199% +/- 22% for nonabsorbable versus 126% +/- 43% for absorbable sutures (p < 0.01) in the high-pressure zone. In the low-pressure zone, poststenotic dilatation remained below the inflow area, and the residual poststenotic lumen accounted for 52% +/- 14% for nonabsorbable versus 77% +/- 16% for absorbable sutures (p < 0.004). Macroscopic, light, and scanning electron microscopic studies confirmed different growth patterns in high- versus low-pressure zones. CONCLUSIONS: Aortic narrowing resulted in poststenotic dilatation and unrestricted outflow path (hourglass-type stenosis). Caval narrowing was followed by restriction of poststenotic outflow path (funnel-type stenosis). Absorbable suture material allows for superior growth in both high- and low-pressure zones.

The problem of nitrogen disposal in the obese

Amino-N is preserved because of the scarcity and nutritional importance of protein. Excretion requires its conversion to ammonia, later incorporated into urea. Under conditions of excess dietary energy, the body cannot easily dispose of the excess amino-N against the evolutively adapted schemes that prevent its wastage; thus ammonia and glutamine formation (and urea excretion) are decreased. High lipid (and energy) availability limits the utilisation of glucose, and high glucose spares the production of ammonium from amino acids, limiting the synthesis of glutamine and its utilisation by the intestine and kidney. The amino acid composition of the diet affects the production of ammonium depending on its composition and the individual amino acid catabolic pathways. Surplus amino acids enhance protein synthesis and growth, and the synthesis of non-protein-N-containing compounds. But these outlets are not enough; consequently, less-conventional mechanisms are activated, such as increased synthesis of NO∙ followed by higher nitrite (and nitrate) excretion and changes in the microbiota. There is also a significant production of N(2) gas, through unknown mechanisms. Health consequences of amino-N surplus are difficult to fathom because of the sparse data available, but it can be speculated that the effects may be negative, largely because the fundamental N homeostasis is stretched out of normalcy, forcing the N removal through pathways unprepared for that task. The unreliable results of hyperproteic diets, and part of the dysregulation found in the metabolic syndrome may be an unwanted consequence of this N disposal conflict.

Investigation of PCC Pavement Deterioration: A Few Facts are Worth More than 100 Opinions, Interim Report, HR-2074, 1995

Portland Cement Concrete (PCC) pavement has served the State of Iowa well for many years. The oldest Iowa pavement was placed in LeMars in 1904. Beginning in 1931, many miles of PCC pavement were built to "get out of the mud.” Many of these early pavements provided good performance without deterioration for more than 50 years. In the late 1950's, Iowa was faced with severe PCC pavement deterioration referred to as D cracking. Research identified the cause of this deterioration as crushed limestone containing a bad pore system. Selective quarrying and ledge control has alleviated this problem. In 1990, cracking deterioration was identified on a three year old pavement on us 20 in central Iowa. The coarse aggregate was a crushed limestone with an excellent history of performance in PCC pavement. Examination of cores showed very few cracks through the coarse aggregate particles. The cracks were predominately confined to the matrix. The deterioration was identified as alkali-silica reactivity (ASR) by a consultant.

Emotion expression in body action and posture

Emotion communication research strongly focuses on the face and voice as expressive modalities, leaving the rest of the body relatively understudied. Contrary to the early assumption that body movement only indicates emotional intensity, recent studies show that body movement and posture also convey emotion specific information. However, a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms is hampered by a lack of production studies informed by a theoretical framework. In this research we adopted the Body Action and Posture (BAP) coding system to examine the types and patterns of body movement that are employed by 10 professional actors to portray a set of 12 emotions. We investigated to what extent these expression patterns support explicit or implicit predictions from basic emotion theory, bi-dimensional theory, and componential appraisal theory. The overall results showed partial support for the different theoretical approaches. They revealed that several patterns of body movement systematically occur in portrayals of specific emotions, allowing emotion differentiation. While a few emotions were prototypically encoded by one particular pattern, most emotions were variably expressed by multiple patterns, many of which can be explained as reflecting functional components of emotion such as modes of appraisal and action readiness. It is concluded that further work in this largely underdeveloped area should be guided by an appropriate theoretical framework to allow a more systematic design of experiments and clear hypothesis testing.

Drumming in immersive virtual reality: the body shapes the way we play

It has been shown that it is possible to generate perceptual illusions of ownership in immersive virtual reality (IVR) over a virtual body seen from first person perspective, in other words over a body that visually substitutes the person's real body. This can occur even when the virtual body is quite different in appearance from the person's real body. However, investigation of the psychological, behavioral and attitudinal consequences of such body transformations remains an interesting problem with much to be discovered. Thirty six Caucasian people participated in a between-groups experiment where they played a West-African Djembe hand drum while immersed in IVR and with a virtual body that substituted their own. The virtual hand drum was registered with a physical drum. They were alongside a virtual character that played a drum in a supporting, accompanying role. In a baseline condition participants were represented only by plainly shaded white hands, so that they were able merely to play. In the experimental condition they were represented either by a casually dressed dark-skinned virtual body (Casual Dark-Skinned - CD) or by a formal suited light-skinned body (Formal Light-Skinned - FL). Although participants of both groups experienced a strong body ownership illusion towards the virtual body, only those with the CD representation showed significant increases in their movement patterns for drumming compared to the baseline condition and compared with those embodied in the FL body. Moreover, the stronger the illusion of body ownership in the CD condition, the greater this behavioral change. A path analysis showed that the observed behavioral changes were a function of the strength of the illusion of body ownership towards the virtual body and its perceived appropriateness for the drumming task. These results demonstrate that full body ownership illusions can lead to substantial behavioral and possibly cognitive changes depending on the appearance of the virtual body. This could be important for many applications such as learning, education, training, psychotherapy and rehabilitation using IVR.

Association of PCK1 with Body Mass Index and Other Metabolic Features in Patients With Psychotropic Treatments.

Weight gain is a major health problem among psychiatric populations. It implicates several receptors and hormones involved in energy balance and metabolism. Phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase 1 is a rate-controlling enzyme involved in gluconeogenesis, glyceroneogenesis and cataplerosis and has been related to obesity and diabetes phenotypes in animals and humans. The aim of this study was to investigate the association of phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase 1 polymorphisms with metabolic traits in psychiatric patients treated with psychotropic drugs inducing weight gain and in general population samples. One polymorphism (rs11552145G > A) significantly associated with body mass index in the psychiatric discovery sample (n = 478) was replicated in 2 other psychiatric samples (n1 = 168, n2 = 188), with AA-genotype carriers having lower body mass index as compared to G-allele carriers. Stronger associations were found among women younger than 45 years carrying AA-genotype as compared to G-allele carriers (-2.25 kg/m, n = 151, P = 0.009) and in the discovery sample (-2.20 kg/m, n = 423, P = 0.0004). In the discovery sample for which metabolic parameters were available, AA-genotype showed lower waist circumference (-6.86 cm, P = 0.008) and triglycerides levels (-5.58 mg/100 mL, P < 0.002) when compared to G-allele carriers. Finally, waist-to-hip ratio was associated with rs6070157 (proxy of rs11552145, r = 0.99) in a population-based sample (N = 123,865, P = 0.022). Our results suggest an association of rs11552145G > A polymorphism with metabolic-related traits, especially in psychiatric populations and in women younger than 45 years.

Association of PCK1 with Body Mass Index and Other Metabolic Features in Patients With Psychotropic Treatments.

Weight gain is a major health problem among psychiatric populations. It implicates several receptors and hormones involved in energy balance and metabolism. Phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase 1 is a rate-controlling enzyme involved in gluconeogenesis, glyceroneogenesis and cataplerosis and has been related to obesity and diabetes phenotypes in animals and humans. The aim of this study was to investigate the association of phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase 1 polymorphisms with metabolic traits in psychiatric patients treated with psychotropic drugs inducing weight gain and in general population samples. One polymorphism (rs11552145G > A) significantly associated with body mass index in the psychiatric discovery sample (n = 478) was replicated in 2 other psychiatric samples (n1 = 168, n2 = 188), with AA-genotype carriers having lower body mass index as compared to G-allele carriers. Stronger associations were found among women younger than 45 years carrying AA-genotype as compared to G-allele carriers (-2.25 kg/m, n = 151, P = 0.009) and in the discovery sample (-2.20 kg/m, n = 423, P = 0.0004). In the discovery sample for which metabolic parameters were available, AA-genotype showed lower waist circumference (-6.86 cm, P = 0.008) and triglycerides levels (-5.58 mg/100 mL, P < 0.002) when compared to G-allele carriers. Finally, waist-to-hip ratio was associated with rs6070157 (proxy of rs11552145, r = 0.99) in a population-based sample (N = 123,865, P = 0.022). Our results suggest an association of rs11552145G > A polymorphism with metabolic-related traits, especially in psychiatric populations and in women younger than 45 years.

Body donations today and tomorrow: What is best practice and why?

There is considerable agreement that the use of human bodies for teaching and research remains important, yet not all universities use dissection to teach human gross anatomy. The concept of body donation has evolved over centuries and there are still considerable discrepancies among countries regarding the means by which human bodies are acquired and used for education and research. Many countries have well-established donation programs and use body dissection to teach most if not all human gross anatomy. In contrast, there are countries without donation programs that use unclaimed bodies or perhaps a few donated bodies instead. In several countries, use of cadavers for dissection is unthinkable for cultural or religious reasons. Against this background, successful donation programs are highlighted in the present review, emphasizing those aspects of the programs that make them successful. Looking to the future, we consider what best practice could look like and how the use of unclaimed bodies for anatomy teaching could be replaced. From an ethical point of view, countries that depend upon unclaimed bodies of dubious provenance are encouraged to use these reports and adopt strategies for developing successful donation programs. In many countries, the act of body donation has been guided by laws and ethical frameworks and has evolved alongside the needs for medical knowledge and for improved teaching of human anatomy. There will also be a future need for human bodies to ensure optimal pre- and post-graduate training and for use in biomedical research. Good body donation practice should be adopted wherever possible, moving away from the use of unclaimed bodies of dubious provenance and adopting strategies to favor the establishment of successful donation programs. Clin. Anat. 29:11-18, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A survey on coverage path planning for robotics

Coverage Path Planning (CPP) is the task of determining a path that passes over all points of an area or volume of interest while avoiding obstacles. This task is integral to many robotic applications, such as vacuum cleaning robots, painter robots, autonomous underwater vehicles creating image mosaics, demining robots, lawn mowers, automated harvesters, window cleaners and inspection of complex structures, just to name a few. A considerable body of research has addressed the CPP problem. However, no updated surveys on CPP reflecting recent advances in the field have been presented in the past ten years. In this paper, we present a review of the most successful CPP methods, focusing on the achievements made in the past decade. Furthermore, we discuss reported field applications of the described CPP methods. This work aims to become a starting point for researchers who are initiating their endeavors in CPP. Likewise, this work aims to present a comprehensive review of the recent breakthroughs in the field, providing links to the most interesting and successful works

The Problem of Invasive Species in River Ecosystems

Invasive nonnative species are a major problem in river ecosystems, and have large ecological and economic costs. Few ecosystems can resist invasions. The species that tend to invade most readily are those that humans. Introduce the most, and the ecosystems they invade are those with the most human activity. Most invasions are irreversible, and control is expensive, so efforts should be focused on prevention of future invasions

The Problematic Internet Entertainment Use Scale for Adolescents: Prevalence of Problem Internet Use in Spanish High School Students

Many researchers and professionals have reported nonsubstance addiction to online entertainments in adolescents. However, very few scales have been designed to assess problem Internet use in this population, in spite of their high exposure and obvious vulnerability. The aim of this study was to review the currently available scales for assessing problematic Internet use and to validate a new scale of this kind for use, specifically in this age group, the Problematic Internet Entertainment Use Scale for Adolescents. The research was carried out in Spain in a gender-balanced sample of 1131 high school students aged between 12 and 18 years. Psychometric analyses showed the scale to be unidimensional, with excellent internal consistency (Cronbach"s alpha of 0.92), good construct validity, and positive associations with alternative measures of maladaptive Internet use. This selfadministered scale can rapidly measure the presence of symptoms of behavioral addiction to online videogames and social networking sites, as well as their degree of severity. The results estimate the prevalence of this problematic behavior in Spanish adolescents to be around 5 percent.

Adaptation of TRIZ Method for Problem Solving in Process Engineering

TRIZ is one of the well-known tools, based on analytical methods for creative problem solving. This thesis suggests adapted version of contradiction matrix, a powerful tool of TRIZ and few principles based on concept of original TRIZ. It is believed that the proposed version would aid in problem solving, especially those encountered in chemical process industries with unit operations. In addition, this thesis would help fresh process engineers to recognize importance of various available methods for creative problem solving and learn TRIZ method of creative problem solving. This thesis work mainly provides idea on how to modify TRIZ based method according to ones requirements to fit in particular niche area and solve problems efficiently in creative way. Here in this case, the contradiction matrix developed is based on review of common problems encountered in chemical process industry, particularly in unit operations and resolutions are based on approaches used in past to handle those issues.

A direct contact between astrocyte and vitreous body is possible in the rabbit eye due to discontinuities in the basement membrane of the retinal inner limiting membrane

Different from most mammalian species, the optic nerve of the rabbit eye is initially formed inside the retina where myelination of the axons of the ganglion cells starts and vascularization occurs. Astrocytes are confined to these regions. The aforementioned nerve fibers known as medullated nerve fibers form two bundles that may be identified with the naked eye. The blood vessels run on the inner surface of these nerve fiber bundles (epivascularization) and, accordingly, the accompanying astrocytes lie mostly facing the vitreous body from which they are separated only by the inner limiting membrane of the retina. The arrangement of the astrocytes around blood vessels leads to the formation of structures known as glial tufts. Fragments (N = 3) or whole pieces (N = 3) of the medullated nerve fiber region of three-month-old male rabbits (Orictolagus cuniculus) were fixed in glutaraldehyde followed by osmium tetroxide, and their thin sections were examined with a transmission electron microscope. Randomly located discontinuities (up to a few micrometers long) of the basement membrane of the inner limiting membrane of the retina were observed in the glial tufts. As a consequence, a direct contact between the astrocyte plasma membrane and vitreous elements was demonstrated, making possible functional interactions such as macromolecular exchanges between this glial cell type and the components of the vitreous body.

Body fat and cholecalciferol supplementation in elderly homebound individuals

Vitamin D deficiency, observed mainly in the geriatric population, is responsible for loss of bone mass and increased risk of bone fractures. Currently, recommended doses of cholecalciferol are advised, but since there are few studies evaluating the factors that influence the serum levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) following supplementation, we analyzed the relationship between the increase in serum 25(OH)D after supplementation and body fat. We studied a group of 42 homebound elderly subjects over 65 years old (31 women) in order to assess whether there is a need for adjustment of the doses of cholecalciferol administered to this group according to their adipose mass. Baseline measurements of 25(OH)D, intact parathyroid hormone and bone remodeling markers (osteocalcin and carboxy-terminal fraction of type 1 collagen) were performed. Percent body fat was measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. The patients were divided into three groups according to their percent body fat index and were treated with cholecalciferol, 7,000 IU a week, for 12 weeks. The increases in serum levels of 25(OH)D were similar for all groups, averaging 7.46 ng/mL (P < 0.05). It is noteworthy that this increase only shifted these patients from the insufficiency category to hypovitaminosis. Peak levels of 25(OH)D were attained after only 6 weeks of treatment. This study demonstrated that adipose tissue mass does not influence the elevation of 25(OH)D levels following vitamin D supplementation, suggesting that there is no need to adjust vitamin D dose according to body fat in elderly homebound individuals.

Fetal development of regulatory mechanisms for body fluid homeostasis

The balance of body fluids is critical to health and the development of diseases. Although quite a few review papers have shown that several mechanisms, including hormonal and behavioral regulation, play an important role in body fluid homeostasis in adults, there is limited information on the development of regulatory mechanisms for fetal body fluid balance. Hormonal, renal, and behavioral control of body fluids function to some extent in utero. Hormonal mechanisms including the renin-angiotensin system, aldosterone, and vasopressin are involved in modifying fetal renal excretion, reabsorption of sodium and water, and regulation of vascular volume. In utero behavioral changes, such as fetal swallowing, have been suggested to be early functional development in response to dipsogens. Since diseases, such as hypertension, can be traced to fetal origin, it is important to understand the development of fetal regulatory mechanisms for body fluid homeostasis in this early stage of life. This review focuses on fetal hormonal, behavioral, and renal development related to regulation of body fluids in utero.