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A mathematical model has been developed here to calculate the temperature distribution on the surface and bulk of a steel plate under the laser hardening process. The model starts from the basic heat equation, is then developed to a volumetric form and is connected to the various solid phases existing. The model is based on two strongly influencing parameters of the laser hardening process: velocity of the laser spot and irradiation time. The results are compared to the available experimental data reported in the literature. The volumetric model provides an assessment of temperature distribution in both the vertical and horizontal axis. Laser irradiation at sufficiently high fluence can be used to create a solid state phase change on the surface. Primary calculations show that the temperature profile has a Gaussian distribution in horizontal x-and y-axis and presents an exponentially decreasing distribution in the horizontal and vertical depth directions.

Supportive robotic solutions take over mundane, but essential tasks from human workforce in biomedical research and development laboratories. The newest technologies in collaborative and mobile robotics enable the utilization in the human-centered and low-structured environment. Their adaptability, however, is hindered by the additional complexity that they introduce. In our paper we aim to entangle the convoluted laboratory robot integration architectures. We begin by hierarchically decomposing the laboratory workflows, and mapping the activity representations to layers and components of the automation control architecture. We elaborate the framework in detail on the example of pick-and-place labware transportation - a crucial supportive step, which we identified as the number one area of interest among experts of the field. Our concept proposal serves as a reference architecture model, the key principles of which were used in reference implementations, and are in line with international standardization efforts., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Adam Wolf reports financial support was provided by Baxalta Innovations GmbH. Adam Wolf reports financial support was provided by Obuda University Doctoral School of Applied Informatics and Applied Mathematics. Peter Galambos reports financial support was provided by National Research, Development and Innovation Fund of Hungary. Karoly Szell reports financial support was provided by National Research, Development and Innovation Fund of Hungary. Adam Wolf reports a relationship with Association Consortium Standardization in Lab Automation (SiLA) that includes: board membership. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The Laboratory Automation Plug & Play (LAPP) framework is an over-arching reference architecture concept for the integration of robots in life science laboratories. The plug & play nature lies in the fact that manual configuration is not required, including the teaching of the robots. In this paper a digital twin (DT) based concept is proposed that outlines the types of information that must be provided for each relevant component of the system. In particular, for the devices interfacing with the robot, the robot positions must be defined beforehand in a device-attached coordinate system (CS) by the vendor. This CS must be detectable by the vision system of the robot by means of optical markers placed on the front side of the device. With that, the robot is capable of tending the machine by performing the pick-and-place type transportation of standard sample carriers. This basic use case is the primary scope of the LAPP-DT framework. The hardware scope is limited to simple benchtop and mobile manipulators with parallel grippers at this stage. This paper first provides an overview of relevant literature and state-of-the-art solutions, after which it outlines the framework on the conceptual level, followed by the specification of the relevant DT parameters for the robot, for the devices and for the facility. Finally, appropriate technologies and strategies are identified for the implementation., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Increasing the level of automation in pharmaceutical laboratories and production facilities plays a crucial role in delivering medicine to patients. However, the particular requirements of this field make it challenging to adapt cutting-edge technologies present in other industries. This article provides an overview of relevant approaches and how they can be utilized in the pharmaceutical industry, especially in development laboratories. Recent advancements include the application of flexible mobile manipulators capable of handling complex tasks. However, integrating devices from many different vendors into an end-to-end automation system is complicated due to the diversity of interfaces. Therefore, various approaches for standardization are considered in this article, and a concept is proposed for taking them a step further. This concept enables a mobile manipulator with a vision system to "learn" the pose of each device and - utilizing a barcode - fetch interface information from a universal cloud database. This information includes control and communication protocol definitions and a representation of robot actions needed to operate the device. In order to define the movements in relation to the device, devices have to feature - besides the barcode - a fiducial marker as standard. The concept will be elaborated following appropriate research activities in follow-up papers., (Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The anticonvulsant carbamazepine is widely used to treat affective disorders and behavioural disorders in non-epileptic children. We report an elevated plasma level of carbamazepine-10,11-epoxide in a cystinuric child after daily medication with 300 mg carbamazepine while the serum level of carbamazepine was in the therapeutic range. The concentrations of carbamazepine and its epoxide derivative were determined by HPLC. The formation of a glutathione conjugate of carbamazepine-10,11-epoxide is raised as a hypothesis.

Although the cousience and character of a good doctor are sufficient on their own to allow us to discuss and make decisions regarding very difficult ethical subjects in transplantation, basic ethical principles commonly used in medicine must also be applied to various aspects of organ donation. Some system has to be adopted that assesses the weight that must be given to various possible solutions. For example, would live donor transplantation still be acceptable if there were a surfeit of cadaveric organs? If animal organs can be transplanted successfully, is that more desirable than using human organs: particularly if human donation involves interventional ventilation or non-heart beating donors? Is interventional ventilation more "ethical" than live donor liver or lung transplantation? No doubt future developments in transplantation, opening more opportunities for the successful treatment of more patients, are likely to produce increasingly difficult ethical issues. Discussions of these issues must be firmly based on principles of medical ethics, although accepting that whilst absolute principles may be available, absolute answers are more difficult to come by.

The authors present the surgical treatment of gallstones with special instruments and technique through a mini laparotomy, as developed in Kaposvár (Hungary). Despite the fact that the widespread use of laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) has succeeded over open cholecystectomy (OC), in their opinion, there are some instances where cholecystectomy through a mini laparotomy (MLC) would be advantageous. Last year (1996), in the authors' department, 32 MLCs were performed in addition to 72 OCs and 176 LCs. Due to unspecified techniques and differing criteria used to define MLC, it is difficult to find any data related to this subject in the literature available. In Hungary, there are two cities--Kaposvár and Szolnok--where only MLCs are performed for the surgical treatment of gallstones. Conversely, the University hospital of Szeged and the County hospital of Békéscsaba use all three procedures i.e. OC, LC and MLC; as is the case in the authors' hospital. In the article, the pros and cons of MLC are compared to those of LC. (The MLC being more cost effective, enables quick conversion to an OC if required, and provides the surgeon with a three dimensional picture, it is also suitable for the surgical treatment of common bile duct stones. However, it is cosmetically worse, obesity can cause technical difficulties, the incidence of hernia formation is higher, and wound healing is affected.) In the authors' opinion, it would be important to establish set criteria in order to screen patients that are unsuitable for LC, and they attempt to do so in this article.

The authors present the use of ROMICRO set (originally developed for mini laparotomy) for thoracic and lumbar sympathectomy. They review 3 thoracic and 2 lumbar sympathectomy operations that had good effects and uneventful recoveries. The advantage of the method is that no special instruments are needed and it can be done as a conventional operation.

The author reviews the rules of conduct to be followed in lectures and he identifies a number of advices, useful for young colleagues. The fundamental ethical goal of lectures is to serve the audience as well as possible. The author touches upon the most important general rules of oral communications such as punctuality, discipline of remaining within time limitations, but he also describes advices how to work and deliver talks lectures. In conclusion he elaborates on his own view regarding the lecture opportunities that grow in our days, the effectiveness of which, however, leaves much to be desired.

Two patients undergoing inguinal herniorrhaphy developed transient quadriceps paresis after local inguinal nerve block. One sustained a compound fracture of the distal tibia and fibula. The importance of warning the patient and of increasing the awareness of nursing staff to the possibility of quadriceps weakness after use of local anaesthetic is emphasised.

The author discusses some ideas concerning the sharing of scientific informations. The fundamental goal of the latter is to serve the readers as perfectly as possible. A physician of research ambitions may valuable contribute to the progress of applied sciences but this must not jeopardize the medical care of the patients. Reading relevant literature is one of the prime obligations of all doctors. The author raises some dilemmas and question concerning how to write publications while he attempts to clarify matters. He emphasizes that the importance of correctness of a publication is second to none. The problem of fragmentation and that of "double publication" is also briefly discussed. The author elaborates on how to identify the co-authors and the sequence they appear in the publication. He provides some hands- on advice as to the concise language and abbreviations. He enters the list for the qualitative improvement rather than quantitative increase of publications in Hungary.

The infrequent case of gallbladder torsion and accompanying Meckel's diverticulum in a 3-year-old girl, is described. Detorquation, cholecystectomy and resection of the diverticulum were performed. Condition of the development of the disease as well as its clinical aspects and therapy are discussed. It is suggested to explore the abdominal cavity for other developmental anomalies in the course of the operation. The patient recovered without complications and left the hospital 14 days after the operation.

Authors assessed the process of healing of 161 polytraumatized patients from 1976- to 1987, treated intersively, using the ISS system. Mortality was 27 per cent. Independently from the ISS system the concomittant shock foretold invariably a bad prognosis, although this was also joined generally to a big point number. The ISS system is simple and characterized the degree of the injury well. Through it, it will be possible to measure the gravity of the injury, to estimate statistically the prognosis and to compare the different materials. The number of points in the ISS system shows a good correlation with the survival (death) and the length of the intensive treatment. No patient was lost below 28 points whereas over 49 only 2 have survived. The point value may give information only up to the level of statistical probability concerning the prognosis (or the activity of the treatment) of the single patients. Because of its simplicity, its wide spreading and good practical use the general introduction of the ISS point system, as basic system, is thought to be advisable. For a more accurate judging a further making better and completing of the system (age, conjoined diseases, factors influencing each other mutually) further of the use, if necessary, of the scores applied in accident surgery and intensive therapy seems to be suggested.

Morphological alterations of the lung in respiratory distress syndrome of adults (ARDS) were analyzed in 10 cases with traumatic-and septic shock, laryngitis subglottica descendens and bronchopneumonia. For the better understanding of the pathomechanism of the disease in addition to the standard methods, first of all ultrastructural alterations were studied. Two phases of the morphologic alterations could be distinguished, the phase of the destruction and the phase of the repair. These two processes are not sharply distinguishable. Genesis of the characteristic histological alterations (damage to the epithelial and endothelial cells, formation of hyaline membranes, microcoagulation, proliferation of the type II pneumocytes and fibroblasts, fibrosis) is discussed, with regard to the data of the literature.

The pathological role of megakaryocytes has been studied during adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARD) in the formation of intraalveolar oedema, microthrombi and hyaline membranes. The giant cells of the bone marrow are also thought to be involved in the development of peribronchial, perivascular and interalveolar oedemas. Heparin produced by tissue mast cells appears to counteract the clotting disturbances and to promote fibrinolysis in the acute phase of ARD. Vasoactive substances liberated from mast cells enhance oedema formation. Heparin has an influence on the lipid metabolism of type II pneumocytes. During regeneration the stimulating effect of heparin on fibrosis becomes predominant in the connective tissue ground substance. No fundamental morphological difference was found between ARD and the infantile respiratory distress syndrome.

Ten minutes of exposure to increasing concentrations of sucrose caused a proportional decrease in the volume of sheep late morulae, their relative volume changed as a linear function of the reciprocal of the osmolality of the medium. Day 6 sheep and Day 7 cattle embryos responded to the addition of permeating cryoprotectants by an initial shrinkage which was followed by gradual reexpansion. After 1.25 min exposure the relative volumes of sheep and cattle embryos respectively were 20 and 25% smaller in glycerol than in ethylene glycol. The volumes of cattle and sheep embryos remained smaller in glycerol than in ethylene glycol up to the final observation at 30 min. The osmotic response of sheep late morulae to 2.0 M propylene glycol was intermediate between their response to 2.0 M glycerol and to 2.0 M ethylene glycol. These results indicate that Day 6 sheep and Day 7 cattle embryos are more permeable to ethylene glycol than to glycerol.