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Background: Tear of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is a common ligamentous injury of the knee. Reconstruction of this ligament is often required to restore functional stability of the knee. Outcome of ACL reconstruction is significantly affected by how the graft is fixed to the bone. This study is to determine if there is a different clinical outcome after cortical versus cortical-cancellous suspension femoral fixation in hamstring based anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction. Materials and Methods: This is a retrospective comparative study conducted between 2006 and 2010. We enrolled patients who underwent arthroscopic ACL reconstruction. Sixty two patients met inclusion criteria and 41 agreed to come for followup assessment. Median age was of 28 years (range 18–39 years). Demographic baseline profile of both groups was similar. The femoral fixation devices were cortical (n = 16) and cortical-cancellous suspension techniques (n = 25). The average period of evolution at the time of assessment was 40 months (range 12-72 months). The patients were examined according to Lachman test (using Rolimeter knee tester), anterior drawer test, pivot shift test, International Knee Documentation Committee questionnaire, and Tegner-Lysholm knee scoring scale. Results: The objective evaluation of the patients (Lachman test) showed better results in terms of stability in the group of patients who underwent the cortical-cancellous suspension method. These differences were not reflected in the assessment of activity level (Tegner-Lysholm), where both groups showed the same results. Conclusions: ACL reconstruction with both cortical and cortical-cancellous suspension femoral fixation techniques show the same clinical results at medium long followup. However, cortical-cancellous fixations seem to provide greater stability to the reconstruction.

CARMENES (Calar Alto high-Resolution search for M dwarfs with Exo-earths with Near-infrared and optical Echelle Spectrographs) is a next-generation instrument for the 3.5m telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory, built by a consortium of eleven Spanish and German institutions. The CARMENES instrument consists of two separate echelle spectrographs covering the wavelength range from 0.55 μm to 1.7 μm at a spectral resolution of R = 82, 000, fed by fibers from the Cassegrain focus of the telescope. Both spectrographs are housed in temperature-stabilized vacuum tanks, to enable a long-term 1 m/s radial velocity precision employing a simultaneous calibration with Th-Ne and U-Ne emission line lamps. CARMENES has been optimized for a search for terrestrial planets in the habitable zones (HZs) of low-mass stars, which may well provide our first chance to study environments capable of supporting the development of life outside the Solar System. With its unique combination of optical and near-infrared ´echelle spectrographs, CARMENES will provide better sensitivity for the detection of low-mass planets than any comparable instrument, and a powerful tool for discriminating between genuine planet detections and false positives caused by stellar activity. The CARMENES survey will target 300 M dwarfs in the 2014 to 2018 time frame.

The overall purpose of the CARMENES instrument is to perform high-precision measurements of radial velocities of late-type stars with long-term stability. CARMENES will be installed in 2014 at the 3.5 m telescope in the German- Spanish Astronomical Center at Calar Alto observatory (CAHA, Spain) and will be equipped with two spectrographs in the near-infrared and visible windows. The technology involved in such instrument represents a challenge at all levels. The instrument coordination and management is handled by the Instrument Control System (ICS), which is responsible of carrying out the operations of the different subsystems and providing a tool to operate the instrument from low to high user interaction level. The main goal of the ICS and the CARMENES control layer architecture is to maximize the instrument efficiency by reducing time overheads and by operating it in an integrated manner. The ICS implements the CARMENES operational design. A description of the ICS architecture and the application programming interfaces for low- and high-level communication is given. Internet Communications Engine is the technology selected to implement most of the interface protocols.

This paper examines the reasons for building a compiled language embedded on an instrument software. Starting from scratch and step by step, all the compiler stages of an ANSI-C like language are analyzed, simplified and implemented. The result is a compiler and a runner with a small footprint that can be easily transferable and embedded into an instrument software. Both have about 75 KBytes when similar solutions have hundreds. Finally, the possibilities that arise from embedding the runner inside an instrument software are explored.

CARMENES (Calar Alto high-Resolution search for M dwarfs with Exo-earths with Near-infrared and optical Echelle Spectrographs) is a next-generation instrument for the 3.5 m telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory. CARMENES will conduct a five-year exoplanet survey targeting ~300 M stars. The CARMENES instrument consists of two separate fiber-fed spectrographs covering the wavelength range from 0.52 to 1.7 μm at a spectral resolution of R = 85,000. The spectrographs are housed in a temperature-stabilized environment in vacuum tanks, to enable a 1 m/s radial velocity precision employing a simultaneous emission-line calibration.