Terms Of Success Rate Research Articles

Comparative analysis of ureteroscopic laser lithotripsy and extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy in the treatment of childhood proximal ureteral stones

This study aims to make a comparative analysis of the superiority of ESWL and URS in proximal ureteral stones in children. A total of 155 patients under the age of 15 were included in the study. The patients were divided into two groups as Group 1 (n = 80, ESWL) and Group 2 (n = 75, URS) according to the type of procedure performed. The patients in both groups were evaluated in terms of age, gender, lateralization, stone size, stone volüme, stone density, and preoperative hydronephrosis. In addition, both methods used were compared in terms of success rate, time, cost, hospitalization and complications. The mean age were 7.4 ± 2.1 in Group-1 and 8.1 ± 1.8 in Group-2. Demographic, clinical and laboratory data of both groups were similar. The hospitalization time, procedure time, success rate and cost were significantly higher in Group-2. The complication rate was significantly higher in Group-2 (p < 0.001). There was a significant negative correlation between ESWL success and stone volume (ρ -0.375, p = 0.001) and stone density (ρ -0.283, p = 0.011). ESWL can be performed as the first line treatment of proximal ureteral stones in children due to its daily use, low cost, short procedure time and low complication rate. Increasing stone volume and density reduces the success of ESWL.

Comparison of the effect of miniaturized and standard percutaneous nephrolithotomy on renal function assessed with DMSA scintigraphy

Introduction and objectivesWe aimed to present a clinical study that compares standard and miniaturized percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PNL) effects on kidney function with scintigraphic imaging in primary kidney stone patients. Materials and methodsOne hundred four patients were included in this prospective study between May 2014 and February 2017. Eligible patients were divided into two groups miniaturized PNL (mPNL) and standard PNL (sPNL) with matched-pair analysis (1:1 scenario). Technetium-99m Dimercaptosuccinic Acid cortical scintigraphy imaging was performed before and after the operation. ResultsThere were no differences between the two groups in terms of success rate (mPNL (63.5%) vs. sPNL (71.2%), p=0.403), serum creatinine, glomerular filtration rate, split renal functions pre- and postoperatively (p≥0.05). There was no relationship between the type of operation and new scar formation (p=0.780). The rates of serious complication (grades 3 and 4 according to modified Clavien–Dindo Classification) were higher in sPNL (p=0.034). Stone burden, duration of operation, hemoglobin drop, multiple access, blood transfusion, and angioembolization were higher in patients with scarred kidneys (p<0.001, p=0.008, p=0.004, p<0.001, p=0.003, p=0.001, respectively). In multivariate analysis, only multiple access was found statistically significant for predicting new scar formation (p<0.001, OR: 24.28). ConclusionsMiniaturized and standard PNL are reliable and successful operations for treating large kidney stones. No significant difference was found between the operation types regarding a decrease in renal function.

Antibiotics as Adjunctive Therapy in the Non-Surgical Treatment of Peri-Implantitis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

The role of antibiotics as adjunctive therapy in the non-surgical treatment of peri-implantitis is uncertain. The aim of this systematic review of randomized controlled trials was to assess the efficacy of antibiotic therapy, local or systemic, as an adjunctive to the non-surgical therapy of peri-implantitis. Primary outcomes were: implant success rate and complications, changes in radiographic bone level, probing pocket depth (PPD), probing attachment level (PAL), bleeding on probing (BOP) and peri-implantitis resolution. Six studies were included: two using topical and four systemic antibiotics. Adjunctive local antibiotics improved PPD (mean difference (MD) = 0.6 mm; 95% CI 0.42-0.78), BOP (MD = 0.15% (95% CI 0.10, 0.19)) and the success rate (risk ratio = 9.89; 95% CI 2.39-40.84). No significant difference in bone level and success rate were found with the use of systemic antibiotics, although they appeared to improve PPD (MD = 1.15 mm; 95% CI 0.31-1.99) and PAL (MD = 1.10 mm; 95% CI 0.13-2.08). Within the limitations of this review, the adjunctive local antibiotics showed improved outcomes in terms of success rate, PPD and BOP, while adjunctive systemic antibiotics improved PPD and PAL only. Peri-implantitis resolution was about 20-30% using adjunctive local antibiotics, whilst it ranged from 2% to 65% with adjunctive systemic antibiotics. Findings are still controversial, since they are based on few studies with high heterogeneity, at the uncertain or high risk of bias and involve few patients. Non-surgical debridement and maintenance periodontal support therapy remain pivotal and the adjunctive use of antibiotics for peri-implantitis cannot be routinely recommended, even considering the increasing concern on antibiotic resistance.

High-density mapping improves detection of conduction gaps after pulmonary vein isolation ablation with a circular mapping catheter.

High-density (HD) mapping of the pulmonary vein (PVs) has been hypothesized to improve the detection of conduction gaps in the radiofrequency ablation lesions set after pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) for the treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF). We aimed to compare the incidence of gaps after PVI with a standard 20-pole circumferential mapping catheter (CMC-20) and an HD mapping catheter (HD Grid). This prospective study included patients scheduled for high-power short-duration PVI. Acute PVI was defined as an entrance and exit block using the CMC-20 after ≥ 20min waiting period. The left atrium was then remapped using the HD Grid high-density mapping catheter to identify residual conduction gaps in the PVI lines by voltage and activation criteria. The primary endpoint was the number of gaps identified per patient by the HD Grid catheter. A total of 20 patients were included (mean age 59.9 ± 10.8years, 15% female, 70% paroxysmal AF). The new map with the HD Grid identified 6 gaps in 4 patients (20%) or 0.3 ± 0.7 gaps per patient (p = 0.055 when compared to CMC-20). Five gaps (83%) were located at the right PVs. There was no difference in mapping time (CMC-20 12.2 ± 2.6min vs HD Grid 11.7 ± 3.4min, p = 0.452); however, the number of points was significantly higher in the HD Grid map (1662.7 ± 366.1 vs 1171.6 ± 313.6, p < 0.001). HD mapping during AF ablation identified PVI gaps in 1 out of 5 patients. Therefore, HD mapping may have the potential to improve AF ablation success rates in the long term. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04850508 on April 20, 2021.

Erectile and voiding function outcomes after buccal mucosa graft urethroplasty for long-segment bulbar urethral stricture: ventral versus dorsal onlay technique.

To compare the impact of dorsal versus ventral onlay buccal mucosa graft bulbar urethroplasty on postoperative erectile function status. We retrospectively reviewed the records for 232 patients who underwent dorsal and ventral onlay buccal mucosa graft bulbar urethroplasty from March 2012 to April 2021. Outcomes were urinary and erectile function status as assessed by IIEF5-15 score at preoperative, three months, and 12months post-urethroplasty. We compared the dorsal and ventral only techniques at the different follow-up visits using difference-in-differences analysis. 165 patients met our inclusion criteria; the overall success rate was 87.9% after a mean follow-up of 52.3 ± 18.5months. Of the patients, 17.6% experienced a 90-day complication. When comparing dorsal and ventral only techniques, there were no significant differences in terms of success rate (88.3% vs. 87.1%, Mantel-Cox test p = 0.68) or postoperative complications (15.5% Vs. 19.4%, p = 0.3). Likewise, there was no significant difference between both techniques regarding postoperative erectile function as assessed by IIEF5-15 score after three months (26.28 ± 2.53 Vs. 26.37 ± 2.41; p = 0.836) and twelve months (26.88 ± 2.45 Vs. 26.48 ± 1.98; p = 0.532). We detected a post-urethroplasty transient ED in (3.9% vs. 1.6%; p = 0.41), and permanent ED in (1.9% vs. 3.2%; p = 0.6) for dorsal and ventral onlay, respectively. Onlay Buccal mucosa graft urethroplasty is a highly effective surgery in treating long-segment bulbar urethral stricture. The dorsal and ventral only techniques were comparable regarding urinary and erectile function outcomes. Additionally, both techniques have no significant negative impact on post-urethroplasty erectile function status.

Adaptive Emergency Call Service for Disaster Management

Reliable and efficient transmission of emergency calls during a massive network failure is both an indispensable and challenging task. In this paper, we propose a novel fully 3GPP and 5G compatible emergency call protocol named 5G StandalOne Service (5G-SOS). A 5G-SOS-enabled emergency service provides potential out-of-coverage victims’ devices with a way to contact the 4G/5G core network through D2D multi-hop relaying protocol. The objective of 5G-SOS is to maintain this connection even when a large fraction of the network infrastructure is destroyed. 5G-SOS is a fully distributed protocol designed to generate zero additional control traffic and to adapt its parameters based on the local emergency call congestion. Therefore, devices behave as an ad-hoc network with the common purpose to ensure the best chances for emergency call transfer within a reasonable delay. A densely populated Traverse city of Michigan, USA, with a 15,000 population, is used to evaluate 5G-SOS under extreme emergency scenarios. The performance of 5G-SOS is shown to be significant when compared with existing protocols, namely, M-HELP and FINDER, in terms of transmission success rate, end-to-end latency, network traffic control, and energy management. 5G-SOS provides satisfactory performance (success rate of 50%) even when the number of simultaneous emergency calls is very high (5000 calls over 10 min). On average, 5G-SOS performs 24.9% better than M-HELP and 73.9% than FINDER in terms of success rate. Additionally, 5G-SOS reduces the average end-end latency of the emergency calls transfer by 20.8% compared to M-HELP and 61.7% compared to FINDER.

Current concepts in the diagnosis and treatment of adhesive capsulitis: role of diagnostic imaging and ultrasound-guided interventional procedures.

Adhesive capsulitis is a common cause of painful shoulder, characterized by pain and restricted range of motion of the glenohumeral joint. With a well-known clinical presentation, and an increasing understanding of its clinical and radiologic features, early diagnosis of adhesive capsulitis is becoming a reality. Although often treated conservatively, for refractory cases arthroscopic release and open capsulotomy have been the only therapeutic option for a long time. Therefore, in the last years, a particular effort was put into the development of novel minimal-invasive techniques capable of pain relief and functional range improvement of the glenohumeral joint. The purpose of this literature review is to report the main updates on diagnosis and treatment for adhesive capsulitis with a focus on imaging diagnosis techniques and novel minimally invasive ultrasound-guided treatments. Results showed that ultrasound-guided procedures come with a high success rate in terms of pain reduction and improved range of motion, thus making the ultrasound a unique tool capable of giving the operator real-time diagnostic information confirming the clinical suspicion, and subsequently performing an interventional procedure.

Enhancement of airway epithelial cell differentiation by pulmonary endothelial cell co-culture

Cross-talk between lung epithelial cells and their microenvironment has an important physiological role in development. Using an in vitro model of differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to air–liquid interface (ALI)-cultured lung epithelial cells, we investigated the contribution of the microenvironment to maintenance of the lung progenitor cell state. Our protocol modeled in vivo cell-to-matrix and cell-to-cell interactions. These included growth of iPSCs on inserts coated with different basement membrane proteins (collagen I, IV, fibronectin, heparan sulfate or Matrigel plus collagen IV) and co-culture with human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells (HPMECs). Marker gene expression was measured by RT-qPCR and protein expression and localization was confirmed by immunocytochemistry. The results showed that iPSCs grown on collagen IV had the highest success rate in terms of differentiation to robust ALI-cultured lung epithelial cells, followed by fibronectin, collagen I and heparan sulfate. Coating with Matrigel mixed with collagen IV further increased the success rate to > 97 %. Co-culture of iPSCs with HPMECs enhanced the expression of key airway lineage markers (NKX2.1, KRT5, TP63, MUC5AC, MUC16, FOXJ1, CFTR and SCGB1A1) during ALI culture. Cross-talk between iPSCs and their microenvironment during cell differentiation had a significant effect on lung epithelial cell differentiation in these 3D in vitro models. Both matrix proteins and endothelial cells play critical roles in the differentiation of lung progenitor cells.

Non-Invasive Preimplantation Genetic Testing: a Laboratory Review

Since the presence of cell free DNA (cfDNA) was reported in blastocoel fluid and spent culture medium the possibility to introduce a non-invasive preimplantation genetic testing (niPGT) as a new tool in assisted reproductive technology (ART) has been investigated by different groups.A variety of different approaches have been used until now to collect, extract, amplify and analyse embryonic DNA from BF, SCM and eventually both together. However, success rates in term of amplification, ploidy concordance, specificity and sensitivity vary widely among different papers.This review aims at summarizing those different methodologies.niPTG offers many advantages compared to the traditional biopsy method especially regarding safety of embryos and future children, nevertheless despite the growing amount of data, optimized and high reproducibility protocols are as for now, missing and clinical replacement is still not possible, and it should still be only classified as a screening method for optimizing noninvasive embryo prioritization.

The use of a modified tanagho flap in the repair of posterior urethral stricture after primary exstrophy closure

In patients with classic bladder exstrophy (CBE), posterior urethral strictures after primary bladder closure can be difficult to manage and therefore necessitate alternative techniques in reconstruction of the proximal urethra. There is a paucity of literature describing treatment and management of posterior urethral stricture arising after repair of classic bladder exstrophy. To describe the technique of a bladder neck reconstruction (BNR) with a modified Tanagho anterior detrusor flap in the treatment of posterior urethral stricture arising after repair of classic bladder exstrophy. A prospectively maintained, IRB-approved database of 1401 exstrophy-epispadias patients was reviewed for patients who underwent bladder neck or proximal urethral reconstruction with modified Tanagho flap for proximal urethral stricture disease from the time period of 1975-2021. A total of 5 patients (1 female and 4 males) with classic bladder exstrophy who underwent proximal urethral reconstruction with modified Tanagho flap were identified. Of these 5 patients, the 1 female patient was treated for ongoing incontinence, not posterior urethral stricture, and was thus excluded from this report. Outcomes measured included post operative bladder capacity, post-operative continence status, upper urinary tract status, and stricture recurrence. Four male patients with CBE were treated for posterior urethral strictures and are reviewed here. Three patients underwent successful primary closure (1 via modern staged repair of exstrophy (MSRE) and 2 via complete primary repair of exstrophy (CPRE)), and 1 patient (MSRE) required repeat closure at the time of stricture repair. Mean age at BNR Tanagho flap was 3.8 (range 2.3-5.0) years. All patients remained stricture free with post-operative urinary incontinence; 2 patients underwent subsequent elective bladder neck transection to achieve continence. Mean follow up 9.9 (range 2.1-15.6) years. All 4 patients had excellent long term success rates, comparable to results reported in several adult studies utilizing a modified Tanagho flap in women with post-traumatic bladder neck contractures. In addition, our technique described here shares similarities with both the originally described Tanagho flap as well as with a dorsal onlay graft urethroplasty. In this limited series, modified Tanagho flap reconstruction is effective in treating posterior urethral stricture disease in CBE. This technique adds a valuable adjunct to the armamentarium of surgical options for this difficult to manage condition.

Land subsidence susceptibility assessment using advanced artificial intelligence models

Land subsidence poses one of the major natural hazards around the globe that cause damage to life and property. Although several advanced models have been applied to model land subsidence susceptibility, no consensus has been reached on the most accurate models to study this phenomenon. In this work, we propose the use of the following five state-of-the-art models to calculate the susceptibility to land subsidence across a region in Iran: artificial neural network – satin bowerbird optimization (ANN-SBO), artificial neural network-water cycle algorithm (ANN-WCA), artificial neural network-chimp optimization algorithm (ANN-ChoA) and artificial neural network-crow search algorithm (ANN-CSA). We used 12 land subsidence predictors and 93 land subsidence locations as input data in the algorithms. The land subsidence locations were divided into training (65 locations or 70%) and validating (28 locations or 30%) samples. As per the importance factor analysis, the Groundwater Withdraw variable was found the most important factor among all input factors and the slope was found the least important factor among all. According to the validation procedure the most performing model, in terms of Success Rate, was WCA-ANN (AUC = 0.953), followed by ChOA-ANN (AUC = 0.944), SBO-ANN (AUC = 0.924), CSA-ANN (AUC = 0.915) and ANN (AUC = 0.913). For the Prediction Rate, the highest performance was achieved by WCA-ANN (AUC = 0.974), followed by ChOA-ANN (AUC = 0.958), SBO-ANN (AUC = 0.942), CSA-ANN (AUC = 0.931) and ANN (AUC = 0.927). The present work of such higher accuracy can be useful for the policymakers of govt. of Iran during operation work of any mega projects and implementation.

Management of Complex Fistula-in-ano by Interception of Fistula Track with Application of Ksharasutra (IFTAK): A Novel Technique

Abstract Objective Despite all the technological advances, successful management of complex fistula-in-ano is still a challenge due to recurrence and incontinence. The present study evaluates the outcomes of a novel technique, Interception of Fistula Track with Application of Ksharasutra (IFTAK) in terms of success rate and degree of incontinence. Methods In the present prospective study, 300 patients with complex fistula-in-ano were treated by the IFTAK technique, whose surgical steps include: incision at the anterior or posterior midline perianal area, identification and interception of the fistulous track at the level of the external sphincter, rerouting the track (and extensions) at the site of interception, and application of a ksharasutra (medicated seton) in the proximal track (from the site of interception to the internal opening) that is laid open gradually, with the resulting wound healing with minimum scarring. The distal track is allowed to heal spontaneously. Results There were 227 trans-sphincteric and 73 intersphincteric varieties of fistula with supralevator extension in 23 cases, of which 130 were recurrent fistulas, 29 had horseshoe track, while 25 had blind fistula with no cutaneous opening. The mean duration of the ksharasutra application was 8.11 ± 3.86 weeks with an overall success rate of 93.33% at the 1-year follow-up. A total of 3.67% of the cases reported with a mild impairment of continence on the Wexner incontinence scoring system. Pre- and postoperative anal manometry evaluation showed minimal reduction in median basal and squeeze pressures. Conclusion The IFTAK technique is a minimally invasive, daycare surgical procedure for the management of complex fistula-in-ano with low recurrence and minimal sphincter damage.

Outcome in Cardiac Electrophysiology and Radiofrequency Ablation of Atrioventricular Reciprocating Tachycardia - A Single Center Experience

Background: Radiofrequency catheter ablation is a curative modality of treatment for paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia. The aim of our study was to evaluate our experience of electrophysiology procedures and radiofrequency ablation in atrioventricular reciprocating tachycardia (AVRT). Methods: All patients undergoing cardiac electrophysiology and radiofrequency ablation procedures during the period from July, 2019 to July, 2021 at Department of Cardiology, Evercare Hospital, Dhaka were included in this study. The study analyzed 141 patients of among them 75(53.2%) patients were male and 66(46.8%) were female. Results: Patients who came with AVRT, 91 (65%) had concealed and 50 (35%) had manifested. The overall short term success rate was 99 %. There was no difference in the success rates between the younger and older patients. Complication rate is lower side of the spectrum, which is 1.4% (four patients). Conclusion: Radiofrequency ablation is a safe and successful treatment modality for patients with atrioventricular reciprocating tachycardia in this real - world study. Cardiovasc j 2022; 15(1): 20-25

Augmented reality material management system based on post-processing of aero-engine blade code recognition

The efficient management of aero-engine blades plays a vital role in improving material turnover and productivity, while the automatic recognition of blade code provides support for digital production. However, there is a lack of discussion about intelligent recognition, result correction, and effective solutions to material management methods for aero-engine blades. There is still a lot of manual work. Therefore, we developed an augmented reality (AR) material management system based on the post-processing of aero-engine blade code recognition, which not only supports the semi-automatic recognition of blade codes but also provides users with guidance on efficient storage and selection. Firstly, we proposed a line classification method of code Optical Character Recognition (OCR) recognition results to determine the structural relationship of discrete characters. Secondly, we constructed a Bayes error correction model which fuses the noise channel model to achieve the post-processing correction of wrong codes. Lastly, we developed the AR auxiliary guidance module to guide users on warehousing. The results show that the proposed line classification algorithm outperforms the baseline method, achieving a high success rate in terms of line classification. Post-processing error correction is effective in improving the accuracy of OCR results. In addition, AR visualization guidance can lead to a significant improvement in efficiency in material entry and out for aero-engine blades. In conclusion, the system proposed in this paper provides an effective solution to material management for the aero-engine blade.

Explainable Hierarchical Imitation Learning for Robotic Drink Pouring

To accurately pour drinks into various containers is an essential skill for service robots. However, drink pouring is a dynamic process and difficult to model. Traditional deep imitation learning techniques for implementing autonomous robotic pouring have an inherent black-box effect and require a large amount of demonstration data for model training. To address these issues, an Explainable Hierarchical Imitation Learning (EHIL) method is proposed in this paper such that a robot can learn high-level general knowledge and execute low-level actions across multiple drink pouring scenarios. Moreover, with the EHIL method, a logical graph can be constructed for task execution, through which the decision-making process for action generation can be made explainable to users and the causes of failure can be traced out. Based on the logical graph, the framework is manipulable to achieve different targets while the adaptability to unseen scenarios can be achieved in an explainable manner. A series of experiments have been conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Results indicate that EHIL outperforms the traditional behavior cloning method in terms of success rate, adaptability, manipulability, and explainability. Note to Practitioners—Pouring liquids is a common activity in people’s daily lives and all wet-lab industries. Drink pouring dynamic control is difficult to model, while the accurate perception of flow is challenging. To enable the robot to learn under unknown dynamics via observing the human demonstration, deep imitation learning can be used. To address the limitations of traditional deep neural networks, an Explainable Hierarchical Imitation Learning (EHIL) method is proposed in this paper. The proposed method enables the robot to learn a sequence of reasonable pouring phases for performing the task rather than simply execute the task via traditional behavior cloning. In this way, explainability and safety can be ensured. Manipulability can be achieved by reconstructing the logical graph. The target of this research is to obtain pouring dynamics via the learning method and realize the precise and quick pouring of drink from the source containers to various targeted containers with reliable performance, adaptability, manipulability, and explainability.

A Target-Guided Telemanipulation Architecture for Assisted Grasping

Teleoperation offers the possibility to combine human intelligence with robot power and endurance, making it a perfect solution for hostile-for-human environments. Nonetheless, when it concerns prolonged and repetitive operations, classical teleoperation interfaces that replicate one-to-one human commands can be quite demanding in terms of physical and mental efforts. Shared-autonomy approaches, which foresee the combination of direct teleoperation with autonomous control, can help the operator in overcoming such issues without sacrificing the task execution efficiency. Following this philosophy, in this letter we propose a novel technique to assist the operators in reaching and manipulation of objects with one or two arms, combining local visual perception and operator’s action monitoring. In more details, the reaching intention of an operator towards a target object is detected, which is used to adapt robot trajectories autonomously towards a successful grasping pose. In addition, based on the detected size of a target object, single- or dual-arm coordinated movements are autonomously generated without the need for additional human interventions. The experimental results on thirteen participants confirm the potential of the proposed framework in terms of success rate and operator effort.

Perceived Information Revisited

In this study, we present new analytical metrics for evaluating the performance of side-channel attacks (SCAs) by revisiting the perceived information (PI), which is defined using cross-entropy (CE). PI represents the amount of information utilized by a probability distribution that determines a distinguishing rule in SCA. Our analysis partially solves an important open problem in the performance evaluation of deep-learning based SCAs (DL-SCAs) that the relationship between neural network (NN) model evaluation metrics (such as accuracy, loss, and recall) and guessing entropy (GE)/success rate (SR) is unclear. We first theoretically show that the conventional CE/PI is non-calibrated and insufficient for evaluating the SCA performance, as it contains uncertainty in terms of SR. More precisely, we show that an infinite number of probability distributions with different CE/PI can achieve an identical SR. With the above analysis result, we present a modification of CE/PI, named effective CE/PI (ECE/EPI), to eliminate the above uncertainty. The ECE/EPI can be easily calculated for a given probability distribution and dataset, which would be suitable for DL-SCA. Using the ECE/EPI, we can accurately evaluate the SR hrough the validation loss in the training phase, and can measure the generalization of the NN model in terms of SR in the attack phase. We then analyze and discuss the proposed metrics regarding their relationship to SR, conditions of successful attacks for a distinguishing rule with a probability distribution, a statistic/asymptotic aspect, and the order of key ranks in SCA. Finally, we validate the proposed metrics through experimental attacks on masked AES implementations using DL-SCA.

Laparoscopic ureteric reimplantation versus robotic-assisted laparoscopic ureteric reimplantation for lower ureter pathology: Single-institutional comparative study.

To compare and analyze the results of laparoscopic ureteric reimplantation and robotic-assisted ureteric reimplantation at our tertiary institute. We retrospectively reviewed data of adult patients who underwent laparoscopic ureteric reimplantation and robotic-assisted ureteric reimplantation between January 2000 and December 2020. Data were analyzed for 19 patients in the laparoscopic group and 47 patients in the robotic group. The data were compared in both the groups. The most common presentation was flank pain (67.89%) followed by recurrent UTI (21.05%) in both the groups. The baseline characteristics and demographic data including age, gender, laterality, Charlson comorbidity index, and BMI were comparable in both the groups. The time range from previous surgeries to presentation varied from 7 days to 5 years. There is statistically significant difference between the operative time in the laparoscopic (224.23 ± 76.61 min) and robotic groups (187.06 ± 52.81 min) (p = 0.027). There is statistically significant difference between the hospital stay also between the two groups (9.07 ± 2.75 vs. 6 ± 1.65 days p-0.001). There were no differences in the complication rate and postoperative outcomes in both the groups. Mean length of follow-up was 28 ± 25.5 (2-108) months and 20.57 ± 19.91 (2-96) months in both the groups, respectively. The success rates in terms of symptomatic improvement, decrease in hydronephrosis, and improved drainage in the laparoscopic and robotic groups were 94.73% and 95.45%, respectively, which were statistically not significant. Robotic ureteric reimplantation and laparoscopic ureteric reimplantation are comparable in clinical outcomes. Robotic-assisted laparoscopic ureteric reimplantation is feasible, safe, and faster with excellent outcomes, decreased hospital stay, and minimal complications.

Numerical cognition in black-handed spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi)

We assessed two aspects of numerical cognition in a group of nine captive spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi). Petri dishes with varying amounts of food were used to assess relative quantity discrimination, and boxes fitted with dotted cards were used to assess discrete number discrimination with equally-sized dots and various-sized dots, respectively. We found that all animals succeeded in all three tasks and, as a group, reached the learning criterion of 70% correct responses within 110 trials in the quantity discrimination task, 160 trials in the numerosity task with equally-sized dots, and 30 trials in the numerosity task with various-sized dots. In all three tasks, the animals displayed a significant correlation between performance in terms of success rate and task difficulty in terms of numerical similarity of the stimuli and thus a ratio effect. The spider monkeys performed clearly better compared to strepsirrhine, catarrhine, and other platyrrhine primates tested previously on both types of numerical cognition tasks and at the same level as chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans. Our results support the notion that ecological traits such as a high degree of frugivory and/or social traits such as a high degree of fission-fusion dynamics may underlie between-species differences in cognitive abilities.

Energy Efficient Ant Colony System for Packet Routing in Wireless Sensor Network

Routing packets in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is challenging due to the distribution of sensor nodes with different ability. Inefficient routing may lead to higher failure rate, higher latency and higher energy consumption. One of the common approaches to solve this problem is by using bio-inspired routing algorithms due to their abilities to adapt with dynamic environment. This paper proposed an improved ant colony system for packing routing in WSN that focuses on exploration and exploitation techniques. In the proposed routing algorithm, the best path to be used for packet transmission will be determined by considering the remaining energy of each sensor node to reduce the hotspot problem. Local pheromone update and global pheromone update are used with the aim to prevent imbalanced energy depletion of sensor nodes and to balance the packet distribution. The proposed routing algorithm was validated against several bio-inspired routing algorithms in medium and large sized networks. The results suggested that it has outperformed in terms of success rate, packet loss rate, latency and energy efficiency.