In this note we show that the moduli space M(Sg,n) of surface Sg,n of genus g with n punctures, satisfying 3g + n ≥ 5, admits no complete Riemannian metric of nonpositive sectional curvature such that the Teichmüler space T(Sg,n) is a mapping class group Mod(Sg,n)-invariant visibility manifold.

Sleeve gastrectomy (SG) is a surgical weight-loss procedure. Splenic abscess is a rare complication of SG. Four cases of splenic abscess after SG have been reported, all managed by surgical intervention. We report the first documented case of multiple splenic abscesses following SG managed conservatively by an integrated medical treatment.

BACKGROUND Legionnaires' disease continues to be a public health concern in passenger ships. This study was scheduled in order to investigate Legionella spp. colonization of water distribution systems (WDS), recreational pools, and air-conditioning systems on board ferries and cruise ships in an attempt to identify risk factors for Legionella spp. colonization associated with ship water systems...

OBJECTIVES The goal of this work was to evaluate the accuracy of a new heart failure (HF) sensor (HFS) (Heart Failure Sensor, CardioMEMS Inc., Atlanta, Georgia) pulmonary artery pressure (PAP) monitoring compared with Swan-Ganz (SG) (Hospira, Inc., Lake Forest, Illinois) catheterization and echocardiography (ECHO) in ambulatory HF patients. BACKGROUND There is an increasing interest in the de...

Recently the distributive equations involving various classes of aggregation operators have aroused widespread attention because of their importance in the theoretic and applied communities of fuzzy set theory. 2-uninorms and semi-t-operators are two special classes of aggregation operators and have been proved to be useful in many areas such as fuzzy decision making, approximate reasoning and ...

Let $L$ be an integral and commutative quantale. In this paper, by fuzzifying the notion of generalized neighborhood systems, the notion of $L$-fuzzy generalized neighborhoodsystem is introduced and then a pair of lower and upperapproximation operators based on it are defined and discussed. It is proved that these approximation operators include generalized neighborhood system...

INTRODUCTION The Short Form-12 version 2 (SF-12v2) is a shorter version of the Short Form-36 version 2 (SF-36v2) for assessing health-related quality of life. As the SF-12v2 could not be resolved into the physical- and mental-component summary score (PCS and MCS, respectively) in the general population of Singapore, this study aims to determine and validate the Singapore SF-12 version 2 (SG-12v...

Slow cycling is a common feature shared among several stem cells (SCs) identified in adult tissues including hair follicle and cornea. Recently, existence of unipotent SCs in basal and lumenal layers of sweat gland (SG) has been described and label retaining cells (LRCs) have also been localized in SGs; however, whether these LRCs possess SCs characteristic has not been investigated further. He...