The effect of topical anesthesia on vocal fold motion

The objective of this study was to determine if topical anesthesia to the larynx and pharynx affects vocal fold motion during dynamic voice evaluation with transnasal flexible endoscopy. Transnasal dynamic laryngeal examinations of 10 patients with no voice complaints were evaluated by five blinded fellowship-trained laryngologists. Each patient was examined before and after application of topical anesthetic. Reviewers rated briskness of right and left vocal fold movement and longitudinal tension on a visual analogue scale. Statistical comparisons were made between individual subject scores before and after anesthetic application. Inter-rater reliability was also assessed. No statistical difference was observed between subject scores before and after anesthetic application. Average intraclass correlation coefficients were 0.643 and 0.591 for pre- and postanesthesia scores, respectively. Application of topical anesthesia to the larynx and pharynx does not affect vocal fold motion.     

Implications of Shield’s inverse deformation theorem for compressible finite elasticity

Some properties of the Shield transformation on elastic strain energy functions are established. It is reflexive, it preserves objectivity and material symmetry for isotropic materials, and it also preserves infinitesimal strain response, ellipticity and Hadamard stability, and the Baker–Ericksen condition. Two new classes of strain energies for compressible isotropic materials are introduced, one of them being the image under the Shield transformation of the class of harmonic strain energies. In view of Shield’s Inverse Deformation Theorem, these new classes of strain energies will allow solution in closed form of a variety of problems in finite elastostatics. Received: January 30, 2002     

The diethyldithiocarbamate of titanium

The diethyldithiocarbamate complex of titanium has not been previously reported, in the literature. Conditions for its formation and extraction have been examined, together with some interferences. An absorption spectrum has been plotted, and the possibility of determining titanium by means of this reaction investigated.     

Robust partial least squares regression: Part I,algorithmic developments

The work summarized in this paper presents the first part of a three‐paper series on robust partial least squares (RPLS) regression. Motivated by recent research activities in this area, this part provides a detailed algorithmic analysis of associated techniques, showing that existing work (i) may not represent a true robust formulation of partial least squares (PLS), (ii) may lead to convergence problems or (iii) may be insensitive to a certain type of outlier. On the basis of this analysis, Part I introduces a new conceptual RPLS algorithm that overcomes the deficiencies of existing work. The second part of this work details this new RPLS technique, compares its peformance with existing RPLS methods and provides an analysis on the computational efficiency and sensitivity of these algorithms. Whilst the first two parts of this work discuss algorithmic developments of RPLS, the final part concentrates on practical issues of RPLS implementations. This third part is devoted to practitioners of chemistry and chemical engineering covering a wide range of applications involving a calibration experiment, the analysis of recorded data from an industrial debutanizer process and data from a number of Raman spectroscopy experiments. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.