The role of apical support and rectal mucosal prolapse excision in successful treatment of rectocele combined with perineum descending: short-term and follow-up results

The aim of the research was to improve the results of surgery treatment of posterior compartment of pelvic floor using abdominal sacrocolpopexy and stapled trance-anal resection (STARR

The advantages of the abdominal sacral colpopexy combined with stapled trance-anal resection of the rectal mucosal prolapse (STARR) for the surgical treament of perineum descending syndrome

The problem of pelvic organ prolapse in women is still actual, because of high frequency of this pathology. Several surgical techniques have been suggested for pelvic descending syndrome treatment. But a large number of complications, unsatisfactory anatomical and functional results of suggested methods force to look for other solutions of the proble

Spontaneous Branching of Anode-Directed Streamers between Planar Electrodes

Non-ionized media subject to strong fields can become locally ionized by penetration of finger-shaped streamers. We study negative streamers between planar electrodes in a simple deterministic continuum approximation. We observe that for sufficiently large fields, the streamer tip can split. This happens close to Firsov's limit of `ideal conductivity'. Qualitatively the tip splitting is due to a Laplacian instability quite like in viscous fingering. For future quantitative analytical progress, our stability analysis of planar fronts identifies the screening length as a regularization mechanism.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, submitted to PRL on Nov. 16, 2001, revised version of March 10, 200

Spawning Induction in the Carp: Past Experience and Future Prospects - A Review

Most fish in aquaculture either fail to breed in captivity or their spawning occurs sporadically and late in the season. This is mainly due to the lack of natural cues in captivity, which leads to dysfunction of the endocrine axis regulating oocyte maturation and ovulation. Hypophysation as a remedy for this situation in fish has been employed in aquaculture since the 1930s and is still widely practiced. However, using crude pituitary homogenates in local hatcheries has frequently ended in failures that were attributed to the incon- sistent potency of the injected material and the unknown ovarian stage of the recipient fish. Since the mid 1980s, hypophysation has improved through the introduction of a standardized dry carp pituitary extract in which the luteinizing hormone (LH) content and activity have been calibrated (cal- ibrated carp pituitary extract = CCPE). Induction of spawning, however, is successful mainly in female cohorts in which 65% or more of the oocytes in an ovarian biopsy have migrating germinal vesicles. Further, due to decreasing quantities of industry-processed common carp and the expan- sion of ornamental carp production (koi and goldfish), the growing demand for CCPE could not be met, and an alternative had to be found. A hypo- thalamic approach, introduced into Israeli aquaculture in 1993 (called Dagin), combines a superactive analog of sGnRH (10 μg/kg), with the water-soluble dopamine (D2) receptor antagonist, metoclopramide (20 mg/kg). The progress of oocyte maturation in ovarian biopsies has been studied in parallel with changes in levels of LH, estradiol, and the matura- tion-inducing steroid (MIS; 17α, 20β, dihydroxy-4-pregnene-3-one). The hormone profile indicated that the gradual increases in LH and MIS follow- ing a single administration of Dagin were similar to those in fish treated with priming and resolving doses of CCPE. This would explain why Dagin is effective even when only a single injection is given, saving labor and reduc- ing handling stress. CCPE and Dagin were tested in parallel on common carp in a commercial hatchery. The spawning ratio and embryo viability were similar, although the latency between injection and ovulation was con- siderably longer and more variable in Dagin-treated than in CCPE-treated carp. It is recommended to use CCPE at the beginning and end of the spawning season when the LH content in the pituitary is low, and Dagin in mid-season and in field spawning. Future prospects raise the possibility that by employing molecular tools, a recombinant carp LH will be produced that will have the regular and expected potency of the hypophyseal approach without the risk of spreading pathogens from donor fish to broodstock. Work along this line is currently in progress

Positive and negative streamers in ambient air: modeling evolution and velocities

We simulate short positive and negative streamers in air at standard temperature and pressure. They evolve in homogeneous electric fields or emerge from needle electrodes with voltages of 10 to 20 kV. The streamer velocity at given streamer length depends only weakly on the initial ionization seed, except in the case of negative streamers in homogeneous fields. We characterize the streamers by length, head radius, head charge and field enhancement. We show that the velocity of positive streamers is mainly determined by their radius and in quantitative agreement with recent experimental results both for radius and velocity. The velocity of negative streamers is dominated by electron drift in the enhanced field; in the low local fields of the present simulations, it is little influenced by photo-ionization. Though negative streamer fronts always move at least with the electron drift velocity in the local field, this drift motion broadens the streamer head, decreases the field enhancement and ultimately leads to slower propagation or even extinction of the negative streamer.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure

Comparative exergy analysis of direct alcohol fuel cells using fuel mixtures

Within the last years there has been increasing interest in direct liquid fuel cells as power sources for portable devices and, in the future, power plants for electric vehicles and other transport media as ships will join those applications. Methanol is considerably more convenient and easy to use than gaseous hydrogen and a considerable work is devoted to the development of direct methanol fuel cells. But ethanol has much lower toxicity and from an ecological viewpoint ethanol is exceptional among all other types of fuel as is the only chemical fuel in renewable supply. The aim of this study is to investigate the possibility of using direct alcohol fuel cells fed with alcohol mixtures. For this purpose, a comparative exergy analysis of a direct alcohol fuel cell fed with alcohol mixtures against the same fuel cell fed with single alcohols is performed. The exergetic efficiency and the exergy loss and destruction are calculated and compared in each case. When alcohol mixtures are fed to the fuel cell, the contribution of each fuel to the fuel cell performance is weighted attending to their relative proportion in the aqueous solution. The optimum alcohol composition for methanol/ethanol mixtures has been determined

Insilico test of functional role of rs8068318 polymorphism of arterial hypertension-associated TBX2 candidate gene

In the course of this study, the functional role of rs8068318 polymorphism of the TBX2 candidate gene associated with the development of arterial hypertension was studied. The selection of the polymorphic locus was based on the data of the catalog of genome-wide association study (GWAS) of the National Human Genome Research Institute. The functional role was evaluated using online software: HaploReg (v4.1), GTExportal, and PolyPhen-

The role of polymorphism of hereditary thrombophilia candidate genes in the development of arterial hypertension in women with preeclampsia

Preeclampsia is a severe pregnancy complication that has long been one of the leading causes of maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidity worldwide. Despite the achievements of modern medicine, the etiology of this pathology is not known. Multiple risk factors for the development of PE have been identified: arterial hypertension, diabetes mellitus, obesity, a hereditary history of preeclampsia, thrombophilia, etc., but recently, special attention has been paid to genetic determinants, namely, the contribution of individual polymorphic loci of various gene

Coronal Shock Waves, EUV waves, and their Relation to CMEs. II. Modeling MHD Shock Wave Propagation Along the Solar Surface, Using Nonlinear Geometrical Acoustics

We model the propagation of a coronal shock wave, using nonlinear geometrical acoustics. The method is based on the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) approach and takes into account the main properties of nonlinear waves: i) dependence of the wave front velocity on the wave amplitude, ii) nonlinear dissipation of the wave energy, and iii) progressive increase in the duration of solitary shock waves. We address the method in detail and present results of the modeling of the propagation of shock-associated extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) waves as well as Moreton waves along the solar surface in the simplest solar corona model. The calculations reveal deceleration and lengthening of the waves. In contrast, waves considered in the linear approximation keep their length unchanged and slightly accelerate.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Solar Physic

Stability of negative ionization fronts: regularization by electric screening?

We recently have proposed that a reduced interfacial model for streamer propagation is able to explain spontaneous branching. Such models require regularization. In the present paper we investigate how transversal Fourier modes of a planar ionization front are regularized by the electric screening length. For a fixed value of the electric field ahead of the front we calculate the dispersion relation numerically. These results guide the derivation of analytical asymptotes for arbitrary fields: for small wave-vector k, the growth rate s(k) grows linearly with k, for large k, it saturates at some positive plateau value. We give a physical interpretation of these results.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure