INTRODUCTION Video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) has become routine and widely accepted for the removal of solitary pulmonary nodules of unknown etiology. Thoracosopic techniques continue to evolve with better instruments, robotic applications, and increased patient acceptance and awareness. Several techniques have been described to localize peripheral pulmonary nodules, including pre-operat...

Th e publication of scientifi c literature and textbooks is probably one of the last stages in the development of a serious and mature university. Th is does not mean that universities after this phase do not continue to develop further, but rather that this phase is the completion of the internal structure. Th is is probably because publishing is a mature and developed academic activity associ...

Efficient generation of tunable femtosecond pulses in the blue is reported in the nonlinear crystal BiB3O6. By use of fundamental pulses from a mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser at 76 MHz, single-pass second-harmonic average powers of as much as 830 mW have been generated at 50% conversion efficiency, and a tunable range of 375-435 nm in the blue is demonstrated. Temporal measurements using cross c...

Iodine-129, the long-lived radioisotope of iodine, occurs naturally, but anthropogenic generated 129 I has dominated the environment in the past 60 years. Due to active chemical and environmental properties of iodine and the enhanced analytical capacity for 129 I measurement, the application of 129 I as an environmental tracer has highly increased in the past 10 years. Neutron activation analys...

Hyperpolarized (129)Xe can be used as a sensor to indirectly detect NMR spectra of heteronuclei that are neither covalently bound nor necessarily in direct contact with the Xe atoms, but coupled through long-range intermolecular dipole-dipole interactions. To reintroduce long-range dipolar couplings the sample symmetry has to be broken. This can be done either by using an asymmetric sample arra...

Driven by foreign investment, tourism in the archipelago of Zanzibar has experienced substantial growth over the last thirty years. Even though it was meant to promote local employment and economic development, foreigners – and Europeans in particular – remained the largest investors as well as the primary benefi ciaries. Tourism development has created new employment opportunities, but it has ...

It was found that a slide centrifuge (Cytospin) preparation of a cell suspension allowed a reliable assessment of not only cell structure but also the percentage of non-viable cells. The non-viable cells appeared as "smear" cells and paralleled in number the cells taking up trypan blue. Direct experiment showed the unstained viable cells in a trypan blue cell suspension remained intact in a Cyt...