Mars manned fusion spaceship

Fusion Propulsion has an enormous potential for space exploration in the near future. In the twenty-first century, a usable and efficient fusion rocket will be developed and in use. Because of the great distance between other planets and Earth, efficient use of time, fuel, and payload is essential. A nuclear spaceship would provide greater fuel efficiency, less travel time, and a larger payload. Extended missions would give more time for research, experiments, and data acquisition. With the extended mission time, a need for an artificial environment exists. The topics of magnetic fusion propulsion, living modules, artificial gravity, mass distribution, space connection, and orbital transfer to Mars are discussed. The propulsion system is a magnetic fusion reactor based on a tandem mirror design. This allows a faster, shorter trip time and a large thrust to weight ratio. The fuel proposed is a mixture of deuterium and helium-3. Helium-3 can be obtained from lunar mining. There will be minimal external radiation from the reactor resulting in a safe, efficient propulsion system

Assigning Backbone NMR Resonances for Full Length Tau Isoforms: Efficient Compromise between Manual Assignments and Reduced Dimensionality

Tau protein is the longest disordered protein for which nearly complete backbone NMR resonance assignments have been reported. Full-length tau protein was initially assigned using a laborious combination of bootstrapping assignments from shorter tau fragments and conventional triple resonance NMR experiments. Subsequently it was reported that assignments of comparable quality could be obtained in a fully automated fashion from data obtained using reduced dimensionality NMR (RDNMR) experiments employing a large number of indirect dimensions. Although the latter strategy offers many advantages, it presents some difficulties if manual intervention, confirmation, or correction of the assignments is desirable, as may often be the case for long disordered and degenerate polypeptide sequences. Here we demonstrate that nearly complete backbone resonance assignments for full-length tau isoforms can be obtained without resorting either to bootstrapping from smaller fragments or to very high dimensionality experiments and automation. Instead, a set of RDNMR triple resonance experiments of modest dimensionality lend themselves readily to efficient and unambiguous manual assignments. An analysis of the backbone chemical shifts obtained in this fashion indicates several regions in full length tau with a notable propensity for helical or strand-like structure that are in good agreement with previous observations

Single stage surgery for Blepharophimosis syndrome

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to report the functional and cosmetic outcome of single stage surgical procedure for correction of the classic components of Blepharophimosis syndrome. Materials and Methods: We report a retrospective case file review of 11 patients with Blepharophimosis syndrome operated between July 2004 and April 2008. Each patient had undergone the correction of epicanthus inversus, telecanthus, palpebral phimosis, and bilateral ptosis as a single-stage surgical procedure. Patients were examined and photographed before and after surgery. The mean follow-up was 3 years (range 2-6 years). Results: A total of 11 patients (8 males, 3 females) with a mean age of 9 years (range 6--22 years) were reviewed. The surgical outcome was assessed both functionally and cosmetically. The mean preoperative visual acuity was 0.729 ± 0.316 SD and the mean postoperative visual acuity was 0.856 ± 0.277 SD (P <0.0428). There was a statistically significant decrease of astigmatism following ptosis correction (P<0.05), improvement of telecanthus (P<0.0001) in terms of IICD (inner intercanthal distance), and HPFL (horizontal palpebral fissure length) (P=0.019) along with improvement of the superior visual field. The mean preoperative and postoperative IICD was 3±0.33 SD and 2.418 ± 0.189 SD, respectively. There was also a significant postoperative improvement of ptosis (P< 0.01), as measured by IPFH (vertical interpalpebral fissure height). All the patients had a stable functional and cosmetic result after a mean follow-up period of 3 years. Conclusion: Single-stage surgical correction of the classic anomalies of Blepharophimosis syndrome provides stable and successful long-term results

Comparative study of the subjective and objective grading of ptosis surgery outcomes.

Aims To assess the results of blepharoptosis surgery in our hospital by subjective and objective grading of the outcome and comparing them to determine their degree of correlation. Methods Retrospective interventional case series report supplemented by postal questionnaires and telephonic patient surveys. The study included 107 eyelids of 78 patients. Using a simple grading system, surgical outcome was objectively graded as good, suboptimal, or poor. Outcome was also defined according to the patients' perspective as good, suboptimal, or poor. Level of agreement between the subjective and objective grading of the outcome was measured using a weighted kappa analysis. Results The objective results were classed as good¿68/107 (63.5%), suboptimal¿18 eyelids (16.8%), and poor¿21 eyelids (19.6%). The subjective results were obtainable in 91 eyelids and were good¿54/91 (59.3%), suboptimal¿8/91 (8.7%), and poor¿29/91 (32%). A mismatch between objective and subjective outcomes was seen in 16 eyelids. We saw a statistically significant correlation between the objective grading and the patients' perspective (P<0.001). Conclusion Our overall ptosis surgery results are comparable with rates previously reported. The subjective and objective outcomes of ptosis surgery may sometimes vary, but nevertheless exhibit substantive agreement when measured by this simple grading system