OBJECTIVE To examine the effect of previous-day excessive alcohol consumption on laparoscopic surgical performance. DESIGN Study 1 was a randomized controlled trial. Study 2 was a cohort study. SETTING Surgical skills laboratory. PARTICIPANTS Sixteen science students (laparoscopic novices) participated in study 1. Eight laparoscopic experts participated in study 2. INTERVENTIONS All par...

Results Octogenarians more frequently had impaired renal function (P = .05). We did not observe intraoperative mortality; the 30-day mortality rate was 8.5% (3/35) vs 1.5% (3/ 200) in the younger group (P = .03). The early complications were higher in aged patients 25.7% vs 13.5% (P = .006), as was the length of stay 7.7 ± 5.6 vs 5.7 ± 4 days (P = .05). The follow-up period was shorter in octog...

With the proliferation of embedded sensors, the number of data streams and the volume of streamed data has increased enormously. This has strongly influenced both our business and our private life and has brought forward a large variety of monitoring applications in different domains. In all these applications, the analysis of data streams in real-time is essential. One of the main challenges i...

We report the tissue distribution and clinical monitoring of the novel macrolide immunosuppressant SDZ-RAD ¿40-O-(2-hydroxyethyl)-rapamycin and its metabolites in monkey lung transplant recipients as well as its interaction with cyclosporine as the Neoral formulation. After left unilateral lung transplantation, cynomolgus monkeys received by oral administration either 1) 1.5 mg/kg/day SDZ-RAD (...

This lecture begins with a discussion on secret-key and public-key cryptography, and then discusses One-Way Functions (OWF), and their importance in cryptography. Essentially, an OWF is easy to compute, but difficult to invert. A One-Way Permutation (OWP) is an OWF that permutes elements from a set. A Trap-Door Permutation (TDP) is essentially an OWP with certain information, that if disclosed,...

The Krüppel-like factor 4 (KLF4) gene is related to various biological processes including stem cell reprogramming and tumorigenesis. In this study, we identified and characterized a non-coding transcript of KLF4, which was designated KLF4‑003, in human liver tissue samples. KLF4‑003 was identified in a number of cell lines by reverse transcription PCR and DNA sequencing. Its expression levels ...