Received January 2009 Accepted November 2010 INTRODUCTION Ureteropelvic-junction-obstruction (UPJO) occurs in 22% to 37% of ectopic kidneys.(1) Laparoscopic dismembered pyeloplasty (LDP) is an acceptable treatment for UPJO in pediatric patients with orthotropic kidneys.(2,3) Laparoscopic flap techniques have less favorable results than LDP in adult patients with orthotropic kidneys.(3) To our b...

The weakness of existing relationships correlating off-axis modulus of elasticity E� to shear mod­ ulus G12 for wood composite panels is demonstrated through presentation of extensive experimental data. A new relationship is proposed that performs better than existing equations found in the literature. This relationship can be manipulated to calculate the shear modulus G12 of orthotropic specim...

In this paper, a new methodology for identifying numerous elastic parameters of an orthotropic material from a single structural test is presented. At the heart of the methodology is the self-learning algorithm which is to extract various stress-strain relationships from a single structural test and train a neural network with the relationships in finite element framework. The constitutive matr...

The interaction of a 2 MeV proton beam with an ultrathin unbent Si crystal was studied through simulation and experiment. Crystal thickness along the beam was set at 92 nm, i.e., at half the oscillation wavelength of the protons in the crystal under planar channeling condition. As the nominal beam direction is inclined by less than the critical angle for planar channeling with respect to the cr...

In this paper, we consider the problem of computing the minimum area triangle that circumscribes a given n-sided convex polygon touching edge-to-edge. In other words, we compute the minimum area triangle that is the intersection of 3 half-planes out of n half-planes defined by a given convex polygon. Previously, O(n logn) time algorithms were known which are based on the technique for computing...

The Ag/Bi-Sr-Ca-Cu-0 (BSCCO) interface in Ag-clad Bi-2212 tapes was investigated by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. The interface was found to be well bonded and free of nonsuperconducting second phases. However, a one-half-unit-cell-thick layer of the Bi-2201 phase was observed between the Bi-2212 phase and the Ag-cladding. A very strong texturing of the (00 1) planes of the ...

Let G be a weighted, complete, directed acyclic graph whose edge weights obey the concave Monge condition. We give an efficient algorithm for finding the minimum weight k-link path between a given pair of vertices for any given k. The log k log log n ' O Ž . Ž . algorithm runs in n2 time, for k s V log n . Our algorithm can be applied to get efficient solutions for the following problems, impro...