Capsulorrhaphy through an anterior approach for the treatment of atraumatic posterior glenohumeral instability with multidirectional laxity of the shoulder

Between June 1983 and March 1992, we performed a capsular reconstruction procedure through an anterior approach in ten patients (ten shoulders) who had multidirectional laxity of the shoulder and symptomatic atraumatic posterior glenohumeral instability. The procedure included closure of the capsule in the rotator interval and imbrication of the anterior, inferior, and posteroinferior aspects of the capsule by a double-breasting technique that decreases the overall capsular volume. The mean duration of follow-up was sixty months (range, twenty-four to 103 months). According to the system of Rowe and Zarins, the result was graded as excellent for five shoulders, good for four, and poor for one. On the basis of our results, we recommend capsular reconstruction through an anterior approach only in patients who have persistent multidirectional laxity and symptomatic atraumatic posterior instability of the shoulder despite participation in an intensive rehabilitation program.     

A comparison of some approaches to classification problems,and possibilities to construct optimal solutions efficiently

We consider sequential linear (binary) classifiers for the case of many classes along with the linear classifiers based on determining the maximum discriminant function. It is shown that the capabilities of sequential binary classifiers are wider than those of linear classifiers. For the case of linearly non-separable training samples there are considered approaches based on minimizing the margin of misclassification and minimizing empirical risk. It is shown that problem of minimizing the margin of misclassification is polynomially solvable for a certain choice of the norm in the feature space. A refined model of the empirical risk minimization problem and its continuous relaxation are considered, a comparison with the mathematical model of SVM is done. The results of numerical experiments comparing different approaches are discussed.     

Improvement in the sociomedical support for the urban family under current conditions

Medico-demographic processes and socio-hygienic characteristics of the population of a large city, both at an individual and familial levels, as well as territorial characteristics of residence, should be taken into consideration when developing measures for medicosocial care of the population. Analysis of the attitude of 380 city families to the activities, personality, and professional skills of local therapists and pediatricians and to the idea of primary health care rendered by a physician of a general profile demonstrated an increased activity of the families in the "physician-patient" system and confirmed the necessity of improving medicosocial care of a city family, expansion of prophylactic work with the population with due consideration for factors which have an impact on population health.     

Strategic questions for consumer-based health communications

Using the consumer-oriented approach of social and commercial marketers, this article presents a process for crafting messages designed to improve people's health behaviors. The process, termed consumer-based health communications (CHC), transforms scientific recommendations into message strategies that are relevant to the consumer. The core of CHC is consumer research conducted to understand the consumer's reality, and thereby allowing six strategic questions to be answered. The immediate result of the CHC process is a strategy statement--a few pages that lay out who the target consumer is, what action should be taken, what to promise and how to make the promise credible, how and when to reach him or her, and what image to convey. The strategy statement then guides the execution of all communication efforts, be they public relations, mass media, direct marketing, media advocacy, or interpersonal influence. It identifies the most important "levers" for contact with the consumer. Everyone from creative specialists through management and program personnel can use the strategy statement as a touchstone to guide and judge the effectiveness of their efforts. The article provides a step by step illustration of the CHC process using the 5 A Day campaign as an example.     

Limit Superheating of Stretched Liquid

Investigation of explosive vaporization with pulse heating of an extended liquid in a pressure range of from–10 tо +0.1 МPа revealed regimes when bubbles occur by the homogeneous fluctuation nucleation mechanism. These regimes are distinguished by a great phase transformation rate and a nucleation concentration at the moment of the attainment of a certain liquid temperature. This metastable liquid temperature is found to be the highest and is estimated by coordinates of the liquid–vapor spinodal. The kinetics of cavitation and boiling is investigated by disturbance of the heat flux of a miniature, fast-heated wire sensor. The extended liquid pressure near the sensor was set by the method of the positive pressure pulse inversion. Experimental results are generalized with application of explosive vaporization theory for the impact boiling regime at positive pressures.     

A method for automatic calibration of 3D vision systems by means of high-resolution data

Calibration of the digital projector is a necessary procedure for many 3D scanners. The proposed method for automatic calibration of a projector uses binary color templates and searches for the most stable points for minimization of decoding errors. The camera resolution must significantly exceed the projector’s resolution. The method can be easily adapted for operation with black-and-white templates.