Ambulatory subcutaneous internal sphincterectomy]

The internal anal sphincterotomy operation represents the best therapy for the treatment of those anal lesions, above all anal fissures, which cause hypertrophy and spasms of the internal anal sphincter. The Authors report their experience of 253 operations of internal subcutaneous sphincterotomy carried out between 1989 and 1995 under local anaesthesia in the outpatient clinic. The excellent results achieved prove that the procedure can easily be carried out under local anaesthesia in an outpatient clinic and, therefore, it is preferable to the surgical technique of isolation of the internal sphincter, not only for its practicality but also for the improved results.     

The Ultrawideband Leaky Lens Antenna

A novel directive and nondispersive antenna is presented: the ultrawideband (UWB) leaky lens. It is based on the broad band Cherenkov radiation occurring at a slot printed between different infinite homogeneous dielectrics. The first part of the paper presents the antenna concept and the UWB design. The issues that are specifically addressed include the impedance matching, the radiation pattern and the phase purity. Subsequently the hardware demonstrator and the results of the measurement campaign are shown. The results fully validate the antenna concept. The antenna presents decade bandwidth impedance matching, directive and frequency independent patterns in the H-plane over two octaves, negligible cross-polarization levels, weak amplitude dispersivity and, according to the authors, the most stable phase center for a directive antenna over an ultra wide frequency range.     

Absorption and distribution of arachidonate in rats receiving lysophospholipids by oral route

Absorption and distribution of polyunsaturated fatty acids was investigated in rats receiving lysophospholipids per os (30 mg kg-1). Lysophosphatidylcholine (lysoPC) increased [3H]arachidonate absorption and its incorporation into mucosal phosphatidylcholine. Transport of [3H]arachidonate by the phospholipid fraction of lymph lipoproteins and the level of [3H]arachidonate in plasma and liver lipids was also increased by lyso PC. Lysophosphatidylserine also increased [3H]arachidonate absorption but channeled the fatty acids into the aminophospholipid fraction of mucosal phospholipids, thus decreasing its efflux in lymph lipoproteins. As a consequence, lysophosphatidylserine caused [3H]arachidonate accumulation in mucosa. As similar results were obtained with [14C]linoleate, the data suggest that the addition of an appropriate lysophospholipid to the diet may direct absorption and distribution of polyunsaturated fatty acids.     

Proinflammatory Interleukin-33 Induces Dichotomic Effects on Cell Proliferation in Normal Gastric Epithelium and Gastric Cancer

Interleukin (IL)-33 is a member of the interleukin (IL)-1 family of cytokines linked to the development of inflammatory conditions and cancer in the gastrointestinal tract. This study is designed to investigate whether IL-33 has a direct effect on human gastric epithelial cells (GES-1), the human gastric adenocarcinoma cell line (AGS), and the gastric carcinoma cell line (NCI-N87) by assessing its role in the regulation of cell proliferation, migration, cell cycle, and apoptosis. Cell cycle regulation was also determined in ex vivo gastric cancer samples obtained during endoscopy and surgical procedures. Cell lines and tissue samples underwent stimulation with rhIL-33. Proliferation was assessed by XTT and CFSE assays, migration by wound healing assay, and apoptosis by caspase 3/7 activity assay and annexin V assay. Cell cycle was analyzed by means of propidium iodine assay, and gene expression regulation was assessed by RT-PCR profiling. We found that IL-33 has an antiproliferative and proapoptotic effect on cancer cell lines, and it can stimulate proliferation and reduce apoptosis in normal epithelial cell lines. These effects were also confirmed by the analysis of cell cycle gene expression, which showed a reduced expression of pro-proliferative genes in cancer cells, particularly in genes involved in G0/G1 and G2/M checkpoints. These results were confirmed by gene expression analysis on bioptic and surgical specimens. The aforementioned results indicate that IL-33 may be involved in cell proliferation in an environment- and cell-type-dependent manner.     

On Approximate Majority and Probabilistic Time

We prove new results on the circuit complexity of approximate majority, which is the problem of computing the majority of a given bit string whose fraction of 1’s is bounded away from 1/2 (by a constant). We then apply these results to obtain new relationships between probabilistic time, BPTime (t), and alternating time, ∑_O(1)Time (t). Our main results are the following:

Markerless human articulated tracking using hierarchical particle swarm optimisation

In this paper, we address markerless full-body articulated human motion tracking from multi-view video sequences acquired in a studio environment. The tracking is formulated as a multi-dimensional non-linear optimisation and solved using particle swarm optimisation (PSO), a swarm-intelligence algorithm which has gained popularity in recent years due to its ability to solve difficult non-linear optimisation problems. We show that a small number of particles achieves accuracy levels comparable with several recent algorithms. PSO initialises automatically, does not need a sequence-specific motion model and recovers from temporary tracking divergence through the use of a powerful hierarchical search algorithm (HPSO). We compare experimentally HPSO with particle filter (PF), annealed particle filter (APF) and partitioned sampling annealed particle filter (PSAPF) using the computational framework provided by Balan et al. HPSO accuracy and consistency are better than PF and compare favourably with those of APF and PSAPF, outperforming it in sequences with sudden and fast motion. We also report an extensive experimental study of HPSO over ranges of values of its parameters.     

An enhanced exact procedure for the absolute robust shortest path problem

The aim of this paper is to investigate the use of heuristic information to efficiently solve to optimality the robust shortest path problem. Starting from the exact algorithm proposed by Murty and Her, we describe how this algorithm can be enhanced by using heuristic rules and evaluation functions to guide the search. The efficiency of the proposed enhanced approach is tested over a range of random generated instances. Our computational results indicate that the use of heuristic criteria is able to speed up considerably the search and that the enhanced exact solution method outperforms the state‐of‐the‐art algorithm proposed by Murty and Her in most of the instances.