Righting and turning in mid-air using appendage inertia: reptile tails, analytical models and bio-inspired robots.

Unlike the falling cat, lizards can right themselves in mid-air by a swing of their large tails in one direction causing the body to rotate in the other. Here, we developed a new three-dimensional analytical model to investigate the effectiveness of tails as inertial appendages that change body orientation. We anchored our model using the morphological parameters of the flat-tailed house gecko Hemidactylus platyurus. The degree of roll in air righting and the amount of yaw in mid-air turning directly measured in house geckos matched the model's results. Our model predicted an increase in body roll and turning as tails increase in length relative to the body. Tails that swung from a near orthogonal plane relative to the body (i.e. 0-30° from vertical) were the most effective at generating body roll, whereas tails operating at steeper angles (i.e. 45-60°) produced only half the rotation. To further test our analytical model's predictions, we built a bio-inspired robot prototype. The robot reinforced how effective attitude control can be attained with simple movements of an inertial appendage.

A pulmonary sclerosing hemagioma with an increasing uptake on PET.

Pulmonary sclerosing hemangioma is a relatively rare neoplasm of the lung. Although there have been five previous case reports that address the 18-fluoro-2-deoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) findings in a sclerosing hemangioma of the lung, no report has demonstrated an interval change in the FDG-PET findings. This report describes a case of pulmonary sclerosing hemangioma which presented with an increase of uptake of FDG-PET after about one years' follow-up.

[Primary nodular pulmonary amyloidosis].

A 58-year-old woman presented with nodule in the upper lung field on chest roentgenography. Computed tomography (CT) showed irregular nodule in the right upper lobe. The nodule was no accumulation on fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET). Video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) was done to be distinguished from primary lung cancer. Histologic examination showed that pulmonary nodule was consisted of amyloid protein.

[Usefulness of preadmission autologous blood donation and intraoperative autotransfusion using the "cell saver" for the patients with abdominal aortic aneurysm repair].

To evaluate the effectiveness of preadmission autologous blood donation (PABD) and intraoperative autotransfusion (IAT) in reducing the homologous transfusion requirement of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) resection, we retrospectively reviewed 232 AAA cases from January 1991 to December 1999. The patients were separated into three groups. The group I (n = 101) received no PAPD and IAT. The group II (n = 58) received only IAT. The group III (n = 73) received both PAPD and IAT. Surgical data indicating operative time and intraoperative blood loss did not differ among the three groups. However, the incidence of requirement for homologous transfusion in group III (19.2%) is significantly less than those of group I (63.4%) or group II (51.7%), although there was no significant difference between group I and group II. We concluded that the combination of PAPD and IAT are useful for reducing the incidence of requirement for homologous transfusion in the patients with aneurysmal resection.