A novel therapeutic approach for rectal varices: a case report of rectal varices treated with double balloon-occluded embolotherapy

We present a patient with continuous melena, diagnosed as rectal varices bleeding. She had a history of esophageal varices, which was treated by endoscopic ligation therapy. Eight years after the treatment of esophageal varices, the continuous melena began. Colonoscopic examination showed that the melena was caused by rectal varices, which were so severe that they could not be treated by either endoscopic sclerotherapy or surgical devascularization. Taking into considering the overall risk of treating rectal varices, we chose the approach of double balloon-occluded embolotherapy (DBOE) with 5% ethanolamine oleate with iopamodol as a liquid embolic material. DBOE is one of the interventional radiology techniques (Morita et al., Acta Hepatol Jpn 1994;35:109-120), but in this case was a completely new and novel clinical procedure for rectal varices. After the DBOE therapy, the condition of rectal varices was markedly improved. Thus, DBOE might be a new tool for treating inoperable rectal varices.     

The free vibration of skew plates using the hierarchical finite element method

The hierarchical finite element method is used to determine the natural frequencies and modes of flat, isotropic skew plates. A number of such plates with different boundary conditions—including free edges and point supports—are considered in this paper. The dependence of frequency on skew angle, aspect ratio and Poisson's ratio is investigated, though succinctness prohibits a complete study exploring the full interrelation of these parameters. Extensive results are presented in diagrammatic, graphical, and tabular format; these are shown to be in very good agreement with the work of other investigators, and should prove a valuable source of data for use by engineers and scientists.     

Young people's health needs in Botswana: a challenge for nursing

The health needs and problems of young people in Botswana are embedded in the sociocultural, economic and political settings in which they grow up. Recognition of young people as a unique group can help minimize the problems and meet their total needs. In Botswana they are subjected to many problems that impact negatively on their development and welfare. These problems pose a daunting challenge to such service providers as nurses, community leaders, parents and young people themselves.     

Comparative experimental investigations of low-discharge centrifugal compressors with different diffusers

Translated from Khimicheskoe i Neftyanoe Mashinostroenie, No. 8, pp. 7–8, August, 1992.     

Filtration drying kinetics of gas-permeable articles

The drying process under conditions of filtration of a drying agent through a porous structure of a moist article is considered. The existence of three dehydration stages is established: 1) mechanical displacement of water; 2) elimination of moisture in the form of a gas-liquid emulsion; 3) drying. A kinetics equation is derived for each stage. Combination of all the three stages provides a high rate of the total process exceeding the drying rate by tens of times when flowing around an object as a unit.L'vov Polytechnic Institute. Translated from Inzhenerno-fizicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 63, No. 6, pp. 708–713, December, 1992.     

Modeling of multilevel converters

In this paper, the imbricated cells multilevel converters are studied and modeled from a control viewpoint. These converters make use of several switches connected in a series, which allows using switches with reduced voltage ratings; these low voltage switches have lower conduction losses and can switch at higher frequency. In addition to this feature common to all converters using series connected switches, the control signals of multilevel converters can be phase shifted to increase the apparent switching frequency and improve the dynamic performances of the whole converter. It is shown that a multilevel inverter leg, composed of p pairs of switches and p-1 capacitors, forms a multivariable nonlinear system that cannot be properly modeled by standard methods such as state-space averaging. The transient behavior of this system depends on the current harmonics and their phase shift with the different control signals. A specific model is detailed, studied, and used to illustrate the properties of these converters. In particular, the natural balancing of the voltage across the switches is demonstrated and the time constants involved in this process are determined     

Surface wave modes of printed circuits on ferrite substrates

Surface waves due to a current source on a grounded ferrite slab are investigated. Electromagnetic fields of the structure are in terms of a continuous plane wave spectrum. The spectrum of each field component is obtained numerically through the exponential-matrix method. The surface waves of the structure are extracted from the continuous spectrum by using the residue theorem and the method of steepest descent. Two types of surface waves are found and their properties are described. The surface wave modes found include dynamic surface wave modes which are closely related to the surface waves of a grounded dielectric slab, and magnetostatic surface wave modes which are related to the solution of Laplace's equation for the magnetic potential     

On detecting the presence of fetal R-wave using the moving averagedmagnitude difference algorithm

An efficient algorithm detecting the presence of a fetal QRS complex is presented. The proposed fetal QRS detection method computes the averaged magnitude of the difference between the fetal ECG signal and the reference signal to detect the fetal QRS event. The detected fetal QRS complexes are exponentially averaged to generate the template signal which can track the slowly varying shape of the fetal ECG signal. As an effort to obtain improved detection performances, two approaches of normalizing the fetal ECG signal and the template are considered.