With a high risk to time ratio, the advent of cardiopulmonary bypass has facilitated greater advances in technical procedures in cardiac surgery. This, however, has not come without its own complication risk and previous near misses have been reported with regard to various technical aspects of the cardiopulmonary bypass circuit. We present a case of a failed membrane oxygenator and discuss the...

One of the weak aspects of the parallel robots is ratio between the workspace and the dimension of the mechanical structure, if compared with the serial one. Hence the shape of the workspace of a parallel manipulator is one of the most important aspects to reflect its working capacity. This paper introduces two innovative methods to analyze the workspace of some family of parallel robots, with ...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether the extent, distribution, and duration of vitiligo are associated with impairment of specific aspects of quality of life. DESIGN A prospective questionnaire-based study of 1541 adults with vitiligo. SETTING Online questionnaire. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Affected body surface area (BSA), distribution and duration of vitiligo, associated symptoms, and quality of ...

Southern rockhopper penguins (Eudyptes chrysocome chrysocome) have a strongly synchronised breeding cycle with a fixed pattern of nest attendance for males and females. We studied leucocyte profiles and the development of granulocyte/lymphocyte (G/L) ratios as an indicator of stress. Variation in G/L ratios were related to sex and breeding stage, but not individual body condition. G/L ratios we...

Understanding reproductive rates of wild animal populations is crucially important for management and conservation. Assessing pregnancy status of free-ranging cetaceans has historically been difficult; however, recent advances in analytical techniques have allowed the diagnosis of pregnancy from small samples of blubber tissue. The primary objectives of this study were as follows: (i) to test t...

The stoichiometric light:nutrient hypothesis (LNH) links the relative supplies of key resources with the nutrient content of tissues of producers. This resource-driven variation in producer stoichiometry, in turn, can mediate the efficiency of grazing. Typically, discussions of the LNH attribute this resource-stoichiometry link to bottom-up effects of light and phosphorus, which are mediated th...

Physiology is often considered a challenging course for students. It is up to teachers to structure courses and create learning opportunities that will increase the chance of student success. In an undergraduate exercise physiology course, concept maps are assigned to help students actively process and organize information into manageable and meaningful chunks and to teach them to recognize the...