Tympanic membrane retraction the nose with laser or balloon dilatation is being evaluated as a potential treatment for tympanic membrane retraction. Excision of the retracted segment of an eardrum, with or without placement of a tympanostomy tube has been advocated. Healing of the area can result in a more normal eardrum. Laser therapy has been used to shrink and stiffen retraction pockets. Tympanoplasty is the surgical technique of removal of the retracted area from the middle ear and reconstruction of the tympanic membrane. Some surgeons use cartilage (taken from the outer ear) to stiffen the eardrum with the aim of preventing further retraction.
Dirac membrane Dirac membrane A model of a charged membrane introduced by Paul Dirac in 1962. Dirac's original motivation was to explain the mass of the muon as an excitation of the ground state corresponding to an electron. Anticipating the birth of string theory by almost a decade, he was the first to introduce what is now called a type of Nambu–Goto action for membranes. In the Dirac membrane model the repulsive electromagnetic forces on the membrane are balanced by the contracting ones coming from the positive tension. In the case of the spherical membrane, classical equations of motion imply that the