HYPOTHESIS Prosthetic crural closure does not adversely influence esophageal body motility. In most patients, postoperative increased dysphagia resolves spontaneously during the first months after surgery. DESIGN Prospective randomized trial. We compared patients who underwent laparoscopic Nissen fundoplication with simple sutured hiatal closure and those who underwent laparoscopic Nissen fun...

We show that transitive closure logic (FO + TC) is strictly more powerful than deterministic transitive closure logic (FO + DTC) on nite (unordered) structures. In fact, on certain classes of graphs, such as hypercubes or regular graphs of large degree and girth, every DTC-query is bounded and therefore rst order expressible. On the other hand there are simple (FO + pos TC) queries on these cla...

We address the problem of the development of representations and their relationship to the environment. We study a software agent which develops in a network a representation of its simple environment which captures and integrates the relationships between agent and environment through a closure mechanism. The inclusion of a variable behavior modifier allows better representation development. T...

In this paper we define and investigate basic logical closure properties of propositional proof systems such as closure of arbitrary proof systems under modus ponens or substitutions. As our main result we obtain a purely logical characterization of the degrees of schematic extensions of EF in terms of a simple combination of these properties. This result underlines the empirical evidence that ...

Our main result describes how to extend a matroid so that its ground set is a modular hyperplane of the larger matroid. This result yields a new way to view Dowling lattices and new results about line-closed geometries. We complement these topics by showing that line-closure gives simple geometric proofs of the (mostly known) basic results about Dowling lattices. We pursue the topic of line-clo...

Laparoscopic closure of an acutely perforated duodenal ulcer is an alternative procedure to open surgery. With proper training and experience this procedure might overtake laparotomy and simple closure thereby reducing the post operative morbidity in terms of reduced wound pain, short hospital stay, likely reduced wound sepsis and hernia occurrence and post operative chest complications. This a...

BACKGROUND Angle closure glaucoma is emerging as a leading cause of blindness in Asia. OBJECTIVE To compare the ocular axial length of normal individuals and the subjects with primary angle closure glaucoma. This study has been conducted to determine axial length of eye as a risk factor of primary angle closure glaucoma. MATERIALS AND METHODS A cross-sectional comparative study was carried ...

background: there is some evidence indicating improvement in myocardial performance after atrial septal defect closure, either device closure or surgical, but ventricular dyssynchrony has not been evaluated before and after surgical closure. the aim of this study was to evaluate ventricular mechanical dyssynchrony in patients with atrial septal defect before and after surgical closure. methods:...