PURPOSE The minimally invasive transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion procedure with percutaneous pedicle screws was adopted in clinical practice, but the choice between a unilateral pedicle screw (UPS) or bilateral pedicle screw (BPS) fixation after lumbar fusion remains controversial. The purpose of the present retrospective study was to compare the clinical outcomes and radiological results ...

Digital mock-ups (DMU) are the platform for Virtual Prototyping (VP). Therefore, questions concerning VP are focused on the integration of computer-based tools and methods for DMU. Which reliability concerning the assessment of product characteristics do digital mock-ups have? What kind of representation/visualization is necessary to achieve a high reliability [4] concerning the assessment of p...

n this issue of Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, Xu et al present findings from a search of US patents related to bare-metal coronary stents in an effort to gain insight on how medical device innovation starts and how policies in the United States might help to promote more innovation. 1 Of the 245 patents identified by their search strategy for the years 1984 to 1994, the auth...

Operations research specialists at UPS and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created a system to optimize the design of service networks for delivering express packages. The system simultaneously determines aircraft routes, fleet assignments, and package routings to ensure overnight delivery at minimal cost. It has become central to the UPS planning process, fundamentally transfor...

We propose a novel method for mitigating erroneous wake-ups that are commonly associated with ultra-low power wake-up receivers. Recent research in low-power protocols has demonstrated significant improvements in energy-efficiency by employing ultralow power wake-up receivers. However, due to the low-complexity receiver structures adopted, wake-up receivers are susceptible to external interfere...

BACKGROUND Little evidence exists on the efficacy and safety of the different surgical techniques used in the treatment of postpartum haemorrhage (PPH). We aimed to compare uterus preserving surgery (UPS) versus hysterectomy for refractory PPH in terms of perioperative outcomes in a sub-Saharan African country with a known high maternal mortality ratio due to PPH. METHODS This was a retrospec...

Ubiquitination is a post-translational modification that plays a role in several cellular processes including cell cycle progression, cell proliferation, DNA replication and apoptosis. Ubiquitin-mediated signaling is frequently altered in cancer cells. Several tumor suppressors and oncogenes interact with enzymes of the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway that function in ubiquitin conjugation and dec...

The ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) is one of the major protein degradation pathways, where abnormal UPS function has been observed in cancer and neurological diseases. Many neurodegenerative diseases share a common pathological feature, namely intracellular ubiquitin-positive inclusions formed by aggregate-prone neurotoxic proteins. This suggests that dysfunction of the UPS in neurodegenerat...

Since proteins play crucial roles in all biological processes, the finely tuned equilibrium between their synthesis and degradation regulates cellular homeostasis. Controlling the quality of proteome informational content is essential for cell survival and function. After initial synthesis, membrane and secretory proteins are modified, folded, and assembled in the endoplasmic reticulum, whereas...

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