Microincision Vitrectomy Trocars – Redefining Surgical Practices Through a New Range of Applications

Transconjunctival microincision vitrectomy surgery (MIVS) has grown increasingly popular among vitreoretinal surgeons over the last few years. Technical advances have led to the development of cutting-edge vitrectomy systems and instruments that significantly contributed to the success of MIVS. Trocar evolution has added extra safeness and effectiveness to the technique. In the hands of an experienced surgeon, microincision vitrectomy trocars offer a new range of applications that can redefine surgical practices and facilitate otherwise complex surgical techniques.

Microincision Vitrectomy Trocars – Redefining Surgical Practices Through a New Range of Applications

Transconjunctival microincision vitrectomy surgery (MIVS) has grown increasingly popular among vitreoretinal surgeons over the last few years. Technical advances have led to the development of cutting-edge vitrectomy systems and instruments that significantly contributed to the success of MIVS. Trocar evolution has added extra safeness and effectiveness to the technique. In the hands of an experienced surgeon, microincision vitrectomy trocars offer a new range of applications that can redefine surgical practices and facilitate otherwise complex surgical techniques.

Some results on open-edge and open mobile guarding of polygons and triangulations

This paper focuses on a variation of the Art Gallery problem that considers open-edge guards and open mobile-guards. A mobile guard can be placed on edges and diagonals of a polygon, and the ‘open’ prefix means that the endpoints of such an edge or diagonal are not taken into account for visibility purposes. This paper studies the number of guards that are sufficient and sometimes necessary to guard some classes of simple polygons for both open-edge and open mobile-guards. A wide range of polygons is studied, which include orthogonal polygons with or without holes, spirals, orthogonal spirals and monotone polygons. Moreover, this problem is also considered for planar triangulation graphs using open-edge guards.

Being on the edge of a shipwreck in planning decision-making: design as an anchor and future maker

This paper investigates recent attempts to Masterplan tourism planning and landscape development of the town of Port Campbell based on the concept of community-driven tourism planning. The Masterplan process generally sought to upgrade tourism facilities and to re-plan a core part of the Great Ocean Road corridor the proposed scheme little engendered community confidence nor encouraged the use of local community public resources of the Masterplan proposed outcomes. While analyzing broad range of aspects of the township and the national park, this design thesis attempted to identify the possible initiatives and landscape development models and also applied landscape narrative theory to focus on tourism experience making and landscape with layers of content embedded such as local history, environmental stories that would enrich the experience. The need for this paper is to articulate an alternate and more robust approach to designing on the fragile coastal edge whilst engendering community engagement and ensuring their aspirations are addressed. It is main contribution is both offering an alternate process but also demonstrating the use of design as a vehicle to reach this outcome. The research gap addressed is to challenge a conventional planning practice that was very much constrained by upper-level Melbourne-based parochial and managerial imperatives than lower-level community aspirations and perspectives.

Tuning the valence of the cerium center in (Na)phthalocyaninato and porphyrinato cerium double-deckers by changing the nature of the tetrapyrrole ligands

A series of 7 cerium double-decker complexes with various tetrapyrrole ligands including porphyrinates, phthalocyaninates, and 2,3-naphthalocyaninates have been prepared by previously described methodologies and characterized with elemental analysis and a range of spectroscopic methods. The molecular structures of two heteroleptic \[(na)phthalocyaninato](porphyrinato) complexes have also been determined by X-ray diffraction analysis which exhibit a slightly distorted square antiprismatic geometry with two domed ligands. Having a range of tetrapyrrole ligands with very different electronic properties, these compounds have been systematically investigated for the effects of ligands on the valence of the cerium center. On the basis of the spectroscopic (UV−vis, near-IR, IR, and Raman), electrochemical, and structural data of these compounds and compared with those of the other rare earth(III) counterparts reported earlier, it has been found that the cerium center adopts an intermediate valence in these complexes. It assumes a virtually trivalent state in cerium bis(tetra-tert-butylnaphthalocyaninate) as a result of the two electron rich naphthalocyaninato ligands, which facilitate the delocalization of electron from the ligands to the metal center. For the rest of the cerium double-deckers, the cerium center is predominantly tetravalent. The valences (3.59−3.68) have been quantified according to their LIII-edge X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) profiles.

A Novel Range Test

In a range test, one party holds a ciphertext and needs to test whether the message encrypted in the ciphertext is within a certain interval range. In this paper, a range test protocol is proposed, where the party holding the ciphertext asks another party holding the private key of the encryption algorithm to help him. These two parties run the protocol to implement the test. The test returns TRUE if and only if the encrypted message is within the certain interval range. If the two parties do not conspire, no information about the encrypted message is revealed from the test except what can be deduced from the test result. Advantages of the new protocol over the existing related techniques are that it achieves correctness, soundness, °exibility, high e±ciency and privacy simultaneously.

Components of learning and assessment in linear algebra

Linear algebra provides theory and technology that are the cornerstones of a range of cutting edge mathematical applications, from designing computer games to complex industrial problems, as well as more traditional applications in statistics and mathematical modelling. Once past introductions to matrices and vectors, the challenges of balancing theory, applications and computational work across mathematical and statistical topics and problems are considerable, particularly given the diversity of abilities and interests in typical cohorts. This paper considers two such cohorts in a second level linear algebra course in different years. The course objectives and materials were almost the same, but some changes were made in the assessment package. In addition to considering effects of these changes, the links with achievement in first year courses are analysed, together with achievement in a following computational mathematics course. Some results that may initially appear surprising provide insight into the components of student learning in linear algebra.

At-the-edge-of-the-forest

This exhibition was the outcome of a personal arts-based exploration of the meaning of interiority. Through the process it was found that existentially the architectural wall differentiating inside from outside does not exist but operates as a space of overlap, a groundless ground providing for dwelling in the real existential sense of the word.

Sound radiation characteristics of a box-type structure

The finite element and boundary element methods are employed in this study to investigate the sound radiation characteristics of a box-type structure. It has been shown [T.R. Lin, J. Pan, Vibration characteristics of a box-type structure, Journal of Vibration and Acoustics, Transactions of ASME 131 (2009) 031004-1–031004-9] that modes of natural vibration of a box-type structure can be classified into six groups according to the symmetry properties of the three panel pairs forming the box. In this paper, we demonstrate that such properties also reveal information about sound radiation effectiveness of each group of modes. The changes of radiation efficiencies and directivity patterns with the wavenumber ratio (the ratio between the acoustic and the plate bending wavenumbers) are examined for typical modes from each group. Similar characteristics of modal radiation efficiencies between a box structure and a corresponding simply supported panel are observed. The change of sound radiation patterns as a function of the wavenumber ratio is also illustrated. It is found that the sound radiation directivity of each box mode can be correlated to that of elementary sound sources (monopole, dipole, etc.) at frequencies well below the critical frequency of the plates of the box. The sound radiation pattern on the box surface also closely related to the vibration amplitude distribution of the box structure at frequencies above the critical frequency. In the medium frequency range, the radiated sound field is dominated by the edge vibration pattern of the box. The radiation efficiency of all box modes reaches a peak at frequencies above the critical frequency, and gradually approaches unity at higher frequencies.

Maintaining your career “edge” in a global world of work

The world of work in the 21st century has been described by many as globalised (Peiperl & Jonsen, 2007; Levy, 2007; Bhagat, 2006; Czinkota & Ronkainen, 2005). Globalisation is generally understood as a greater awareness of the world as a whole; an integrated stage where the countries of the world are seen to be players on the one playing field. This notion is driven by a perception of the world as being occupied by global citizens who are affiliated not with the country in which they are born but whose loyalties lie with planet Earth. They strive to live and work with this focus foremost in their consciousness. Indeed, many of these global citizens will enjoy global careers during their lifetime whereby they work in more than one region of the world during the course of their employment. The present chapter will present a discussion on globalisation and its impact on the world of work, in particular the changes on particular demographic groups in both developed and developing economies. It will then discuss implications for workers and their careers, specifically focusing on changing relationships between workers and organisations and the need for individuals to maintain their competitive edge in the market place through an ongoing focus on relevant career management competencies.

A multi-hypothesis topological SLAM approach for loop closing on edge-ordered graphs

We present a method for topological SLAM that specifically targets loop closing for edge-ordered graphs. Instead of using a heuristic approach to accept or reject loop closing, we propose a probabilistically grounded multi-hypothesis technique that relies on the incremental construction of a map/state hypothesis tree. Loop closing is introduced automatically within the tree expansion, and likely hypotheses are chosen based on their posterior probability after a sequence of sensor measurements. Careful pruning of the hypothesis tree keeps the growing number of hypotheses under control and a recursive formulation reduces storage and computational costs. Experiments are used to validate the approach.