On medical treatment for ureteral stone expulsion.

There is evidence that α-adrenoceptor (α-AR) antagonists facilitate the passage of ureteric stones, but the mechanism behind this effect has not been established. If one accepts that it is the friction between a ureteral stone and the mucosa that hampers the passage of the stone, and that the passage traumatizes the mucosa, the aim of treatment must be to reduce this friction. Elevated pressure above an obstructing stone results in an increase in tension in the wall of the upper urinary tract, including the tension at stone level, which causes an increase in friction and ureteric colic.

Alternative input devices for efficient navigation of large CT angiography data sets.

Purpose: To compare devices for the task of navigating through large computed tomographic (CT) data sets at a picture archiving and communication system workstation.

Materials And Methods: The institutional review board approved this study, and all subjects provided informed consent. Five radiologists were asked to find 25 different vascular targets in three CT angiography data sets (average number of sections, 1025) by using several devices (trackball, tablet, jog-shuttle wheel, and mouse).

Preparation of a crystallizable mRNA-binding fragment of Moorella thermoacetica elongation factor SelB.

SelB is a bacterial elongation factor required for the decoding of a UGA stop codon together with a specific mRNA hairpin to selenocysteine. In attempts to crystallize Moorella thermoacetica SelB, a proteolysis process occurred and crystals of a proteolytic fragment were observed. The crystals, which appeared after a year, contained a C-terminal 30 kDa fragment containing the mRNA-binding domain.