SUMMARY Removal of an intact, inflated tissue expander can result in uncontrolled spillage of expander contents on the drapes, surgeons, staff, or patient. The technique described has been used for the past 4 years to eliminate these spillage concerns. It is simple and inexpensive using common disposable supplies found in any operating room. An irrigating syringe is modified by cutting away its...

A series of failures of a radial inflow hot gas expander driving a centrifugal compressor in a nitric acid plant plagued the second author’s former company over a 24 year period. The 19,000 hp single-stage radial inflow expander inlet and discharge blade tips would fail in service, destroying the inlet nozzle vanes and expander wheel, and causing extensive damage to the rotor, bearings, seals, ...

BACKGROUND Immediate postmastectomy breast reconstruction in morbidly obese patients represents a challenge because neither prosthetic nor abdominal-based options may be suitable. METHODS This study compared a previously published cohort of immediate prosthetic reconstruction of 346 patients (511 breasts) of whom 49 patients (67 breasts) were morbidly obese (defined as a body mass index > 35)...

One application of graph theory is to analyze connectivity of neurons and axons in the brain. We begin with basic definitions from graph theory including the Cheeger constant, a measure of connectivity of a graph. In Section 2, we will examine expander graphs, which are very sparse yet highly connected. Surprisingly, not only do expander graphs exist, but most random graphs have the expander pr...

Expander codes count among the numerous applications of expander graphs. The term was first coined by Sipser and Spielman when they showed how expander graphs can be used to devise error-correcting codes with large blocklengths that can correct efficiently a constant fraction of errors. This approach has since proved to be a fertile avenue of research that provides insight both into modern iter...

BACKGROUND Achieving symmetry is a key goal in breast reconstruction. Anatomically shaped tabbed expanders are a new tool in the armamentarium of the breast reconstruction surgeon. Suture tabs allow for full control over the expander position and thus inframammary fold position, and, in theory, tabbed expanders mitigate many factors responsible for poor symmetry. The impact of a tabbed expander...

Comparative energy and exergy investigations are reported for a transcritical N2O refrigeration cycle with a throttling valve or with an expander when the gas cooler exit temperature varies from 30 to 55 ◦C and the evaporating temperature varies from −40 to 10 ◦C. The system performance is also compared with that of similar cycles using CO2. Results show that the N2O expander cycle exhibits a l...