Search

Objective. To observe and compare the effects and complications of endoscope-assisted transoral approach and lateral cervical approach in the resection of parapharyngeal space (PSS) tumors. Methods. From January 2013 to September 2021, 69 patients with parapharyngeal space tumors in the Affiliated Hospital of Jiangnan University were divided into the control group (n = 37) and the observation group (n = 32) according to the mode of operation. The tumors in the parapharyngeal space were resected by the lateral cervical approach in the control group, and the tumors in the parapharyngeal space were removed by endoscopy-assisted transoral approach in the observation group. The general clinical data and operation conditions of the two groups, including operative blood loss, operation time, drainage volume and drainage time, hospital stay, perioperative pain degree, and tumor resection rate were collected and analyzed statistically. The patients were followed up for 6 months, and the complications of the two groups were recorded. Results. Compared with the control group, the operation time in the observation group was significantly shorter, and the amount of intraoperative bleeding in the observation group was significantly less than that in the control group, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). The postoperative drainage was less and the hospital stay in the observation group was shorter than that in the control group, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in tumor resection rate between the two groups. The visual analog scale (VAS) score on the 1st and 3rd day after operation in the observation group was lower than that in the control group. After treatment, some patients in the two groups had complications such as nerve injury, dysphagia, difficulty in mouth opening, massive hemorrhage, and parotid fistula. The total incidence of complications in the observation group was lower than that in the control group, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). Conclusions. The effect of the endoscope-assisted transoral approach is similar to that of the lateral cervical approach in the resection of tumors in parapharyngeal space, but the endoscope-assisted transoral approach has shorter operation time, less intraoperative bleeding, and less postoperative drainage. The indwelling time and hospital stay of the drainage device were shorter than those of the patients with transcervical approach, and the perioperative stress response of patients with endoscope-assisted transoral approach is mild, which is beneficial to the physical and mental recovery of the patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This study aims to investigate the efficacy and safety of local lauromacrogol injection in the treatment of hypopharyngeal hemangioma. Methods: From Aug 2015 to May 2021, 13 consecutive patients suffering from hypopharyngeal hemangioma underwent local lauromacrogol injection assisted by endoscope in this prospective clinical series. All patients were followed up regularly and the therapeutic effects and complications were observed. Results: A total 13 of patients were enrolled, including 11 men and 2 women, with an average age of 48.5 years (range 25–76 years). The sizes of the hemangioma ranged from 0.5 × 1.0 cm to 3.5 × 3.5 cm. After 1 to 40 months of follow-up, 12 patients were cured and 1 was significantly effective after 1 to 4 (mean 1.8) injections. All patients suffered varying degrees of postoperative pain or foreign body sensation. 3 patients were significantly affected by local swelling of the injection site, 2 of which underwent prophylactic tracheostomy postoperatively and 1 patient returned to the ward with endotracheal intubation postoperatively. No complications such as mucosal ulceration, fever, and allergies occurred. Conclusions: Lauromacrogol injection is a safe and effective method to treat hypopharyngeal hemangioma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from alternating-time temporal logic, many logics for reasoning about strategies in a system of agents have been proposed. Some of them consider the strategies that agents can play when they have partial information about the state of the system. A T L K irF is such a logic to reason about uniform strategies under unconditional fairness constraints. While this kind of logics has been extensively studied, practical approaches for solving their model-checking problem appeared only recently. This paper considers three approaches for model-checking strategies under partial observability of the agents, applied to A T L K irF . These three approaches have been implemented in PyNuSMV, a Python library based on the state-of-the-art model checker NuSMV. Thanks to the experimental results obtained with this library and thanks to the comparison of the relative performance of the approaches, this paper provides indications and guidelines for the use of these verification techniques, showing that different approaches are needed in different situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boolean networks is a well-established formalism for modelling biological systems. A vital challenge for analyzing a Boolean network is to identify all the attractors. This becomes more challenging for large asynchronous Boolean networks, due to the asynchronous scheme. Existing methods are prohibited due to the well-known state-space explosion problem in large Boolean networks. In this paper, we tackle this challenge by proposing a SCC-based decomposition method. We prove the correctness of our proposed method and demonstrate its efficiency with two real-life biological networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperative games-based robot cooperation is analysed for reoccurring scenarios. It is shown that potential games can be used for robot coordination when the robots have a shared objective. By observing each others' behaviour in similar scenarios, they estimate each other's expected actions, which they use for their own choice of action. The resulting learning scheme can enable "tuning" of smooth cooperation by task allocation in teams of robots for various goals and in reoccurring scenarios of their environment. The theoretical results and methods are illustrated in simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present MCMAS, a model checker for the verification of multi-agent systems. MCMAS supports efficient symbolic techniques for the verification of multi-agent systems against specifications representing temporal, epistemic and strategic properties. We present the underlying semantics of the specification language supported and the algorithms implemented in MCMAS, including its fairness and counterexample generation features. We provide a detailed description of the implementation. We illustrate its use by discussing a number of examples and evaluate its performance by comparing it against other model checkers for multi-agent systems on a common case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing and implementing a model checker dedicated to conditional logic with the user interface are urgent requirements for determining whether agents comply with their commitment protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We report on a novel approach to (semi-)automatically compile and verify contract-regulated service compositions implemented as multi-agent systems. We model web service behaviours and the contracts governing them as WSBPEL specification. We use the formalism of temporal-epistemic logic, suitably extended to deal with compliance/violations of contracts, to specify properties of service compositions. We compile the WSBPEL behaviours into a specialised system description language ISPL, to be used with the model checker MCMAS to verify the behaviours automatically. We illustrate these concepts using a motivating example whose state space is approximately 10 and discuss experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of driving technology has recently progressed from active safety features and ADAS systems to fully sensor-guided autonomous driving. Bringing such a vehicle to market requires not only simulation and testing but formal verification to account for all possible traffic scenarios. A new verification approach, which combines the use of two well-known model checkers: model checker for multi-agent systems (MCMAS) and probabilistic model checker (PRISM), is presented for this purpose. The overall structure of our autonomous vehicle (AV) system consists of: (1) A perception system of sensors that feeds data into (2) a rational agent (RA) based on a belief–desire–intention (BDI) architecture, which uses a model of the environment and is connected to the RA for verification of decision-making, and (3) a feedback control systems for following a self-planned path. MCMAS is used to check the consistency and stability of the BDI agent logic during design-time. PRISM is used to provide the RA with the probability of success while it decides to take action during run-time operation. This allows the RA to select movements of the highest probability of success from several generated alternatives. This framework has been tested on a new AV software platform built using the robot operating system (ROS) and virtual reality (VR) Gazebo Simulator. It also includes a parking lot scenario to test the feasibility of this approach in a realistic environment. A practical implementation of the AV system was also carried out on the experimental testbed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]