The evaluation of morphology of renal pelvicalyceal system's and infundibulopelvic anatomy of kidney's lower pole in post-mortem series.

BACKGROUND: Urinary system stones are frequently encountered in the community. Together with technological developments, introduction of new treatment procedures such as extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy, percutaneous nephrolithotomy and retrograde intrarenal surgery has further reduced morbidity, mortality and hospitalisation time of patients. In order to maximise success and to reduce complications of these procedures, it is necessary to evaluate anatomy and morphological differences of kidney collector system before the procedure. This study was conducted for the purpose of determining the morphology of the kidney collector system and the negative anatomic factors of the lower pole in autopsy cases performed in our institution. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Eighty two kidney units obtained from 41 autopsy cases conducted in Faculty of Medicine Department of Forensic Medicine, Sivas Cumhuriyet University between September 2017 and September 2018 were included in the study. Percentages were found as 78% for intrarenal pelvis, 13.4% for borderline pelvis, 6.1% for extrarenal pelvis and 2.4% for pelvic nonexistence. When pelvicalyceal anatomy was evaluated, percentages were found as 32.9% for bicalyceal, 26.8% for tricalyceal, 20.7% for multicalyceal, and 19.5% for unclassified calyceality. When it was evaluated according to opening of calyces into the renal pelvis based on Sampaio classification, percentages were found as 30.5% for AI, 17.1% for type II, 28% for BI, 18.3% for BII, and 6.1% for unevaluated part. Infundibular lengths of kidney's lower pole were detected as under 3 cm in 39% and over 3 cm in 61% of all cases. Infundibulopelvic angles of kidney's lower pole were measured as under 70o in 42.7% and over 70o in 57.3% of all cases. RESULTS: In our study, there was no statistically significant difference between the right and left kidneys in terms of collecting system morphology and lower pole's negative anatomical factors. Only infundibular length which is one of the collecting system morphology and lower pole's negative anatomical factors were statistically shorter in females than males. There was no difference in terms of other parameters. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, the findings of this study are largely consistent with the results of similar studies. This reveals that renal collecting system morphology and negative anatomic factors in the lower pole collecting system in human are roughly similar. In clinical practice, pre-treatment computed tomography and, if necessary, magnetic resonance urography evaluation of the lower pole negative anatomic factors may contribute to gain preliminary information about both the clearance of stone fragments especially after shock wave lithotripsy and retrograde intrarenal surgery procedures and perioperative complications proactively.

Gold-on-glass microwave split-ring resonators with PDMS microchannels for differential measurement in microfluidic sensing.

This paper describes a microwave resonator incorporating microfluidic lab-on-chip sensor system capable of performing simultaneous differential measurement based sensing of liquid samples. The resonators are split-ring resonator shapes made of gold on glass substrates. Directly bonded on glass substrates are polydimethylsiloxane microchannels. Sensor system design incorporates a pair of identical resonators, one of which performs reference reading from the background. Tracking the difference of the responses of both resonators simultaneously, rather than a single one, is used to obtain a more linear and noise-free reading. The sensor system was produced with conventional fabrication techniques. It is compatible with low-cost, simple, easy to handle sensing applications. Results indicate that reliable differential measurement was possible owing to a well-matched pair of sensors with a response error as low as 0.1%. It was also demonstrated that differential measurement capability enables sensing with improved linearity. Measurements were performed with glucose solutions in the range of 3.2-16.1 mM, achieving a sensitivity of 0.16 MHz/mM.

[Gastritis localization and GERD incidence in patients with Cag A(+) and Cag A(-) Helicobacter pylori infection]. / Gastritislokalisation und gastroösophageale Refluxinzidenz bei der Helicobacter-pylori-Infektion mit Cag-A-positiven und Cag-A-negativen Stämmen.

The relationship between Helicobacter pylori (HP) and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is very complex and still not well understood. However, many issues, even those as basic as whether HP induces or protects against GERD, are still controversial. The gastritis location could play also a role in the induction of GERD. Some investigators suggested that infection by the Cag A strain of HP seems to have a positive association with reflux esophagitis. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between GERD, gastritis location, HP infection and Cag A positivity.

Effects of nonlinear synapses on the performance of multilayer neural networks.

The problems arising from the use of nonlinear multipliers in multilayer neural network synapse structures are discussed. The errors arising from the neglect of nonlinearities are shown and the effect of training in eliminating these errors is discussed. A method for predicting the final errors resulting from nonlinearities is described. Our approximate results are compared with the results from circuit simulations of an actual multiplier circuit.

The effects of quantization on multilayer neural networks.

The effect of weight quantization in multilayer neural networks is discussed. A method is derived by which one can predict the performance degradation at the output given the properties of the network and number of bits of quantization. Predictions from this method are evaluated against simulation results. An algorithm to decrease the noise at the output is presented and the results are compared with those above.