BACKGROUND: The study investigated whether 3D vision and haptic feedback in combination in a virtual reality environment leads to more efficient learning of laparoscopic skills in novices.MATERIAL AND METHODS: Twenty novices were allocated to two groups. All completed a training course in the LapSim(®) virtual reality trainer consisting of four tasks: 'instrument navigation', 'grasping', 'fine dis

Plastics are versatile, cheap and durable materials that are omnipresent in modern society. Since most of them are derived from crude oil and are not biodegradable, their production leads to the depletion of fossil fuels and the accumulation of enormous amounts of plastic waste that pollutes ecosystems worldwide. For this reason, the European Union and other organisations are investing in research

As a queen, a woman in the pre-modern period could interact with the learned society in several ways, either as a learned woman, or - like Hedwig Eleonora - by patronizing and participating actively in the intellectual culture of her time as a donor, an employer, and a foundress of learned institutions. In doing this, she sometimes accentuated her personal sympathies, be they in history, theology,

Using a data set of 370 bioscience professors in Japan, this chapter investigates the effect of PhD training, early career job transition, and international mobility on a professor's probability of both placement at a highly ranked institution and promotion. We found that the prestige of the PhD institution is the best predictor for initial placement and that inbreeding is more common at prestigio

This study examines the determinants of exit from academic research that occurs when academic researchers move into positions in academe that concentrate on nonresearch activities such as teaching or administration or when researchers leave academia and move into industry. Drawing on career data for 14,000 Japanese PhD graduates in hard sciences (all scientific fields except social sciences and hu

The docking protein p140Cap negatively regulates tumour cell features. Its relevance on breast cancer patient survival, as well as its ability to counteract relevant cancer signalling pathways, are not fully understood. Here we report that in patients with ERBB2-amplified breast cancer, a p140Cap-positive status associates with a significantly lower probability of developing a distant event, and a

Approximately 1-5% of breast cancers are attributed to inherited mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2 and are selectively sensitive to poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors. In other cancer types, germline and/or somatic mutations in BRCA1 and/or BRCA2 (BRCA1/BRCA2) also confer selective sensitivity to PARP inhibitors. Thus, assays to detect BRCA1/BRCA2-deficient tumors have been sought. Recently,

In general, melanoma can be considered as a UV-driven disease with an aggressive metastatic course and high mutational load, with only few tumors (acral, mucosal, and uveal melanomas) not induced by sunlight and possessing a lower mutational load. The most commonly activated pathway in melanoma is the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway. However, the prognostic significance of mutation