Rare case of coronary to pulmonary vein fistula with coronary steal phenomenon

Coronary artery fistulas are abnormal connections between coronary artery territories and cardiac chambers or major vessels, most of them are congenital. Patients with coronary artery fistula can be asymptomatic or present with different symptoms like angina. Cardiac computed tomography (CT) is one of the best modalities for diagnosis. We present an elderly patient that presented with angina symptoms, non invasive stress test was positive for ischemic heart disease, coronary angiogram could not reveal any obstructive lesions, but an abnormal branch of the left descending coronary artery (LAD), cardiac CT showed fistula that connect left anterior descending coronary artery to left superior pulmonary vein. Our case is extremely rare as most of the reported cases were fistulas between LAD and pulmonary artery, but in our case the fistula between LAD and left superior pulmonary vein. In addition, our patients\u27 symptoms resolved with anti-ischemic medical treatment without any surgical intervention

Antiferromagnetic interlayer exchange coupling across an amorphous metallic spacer layer

By means of magneto-optical Kerr effect we observe for the first time antiferromagnetic coupling between ferromagnetic layers across an amorphous metallic spacer layer. Biquadratic coupling occurs at the transition from a ferromagnetically to an antiferromagnetically coupled region. Scanning tunneling microscopy images of all involved layers are used to extract thickness fluctuations and to verify the amorphous state of the spacer. The observed antiferromagnetic coupling behavior is explained by RKKY interaction taking into account the amorphous structure of the spacer material.Comment: Typset using RevTex, 4 pages with 4 figures (.eps

Health-Related Quality of Life of Rural Clients Seeking Telepsychology Services

Sixty million US residents live in rural areas, but health policies and interventions developed from an urban mindset often fail to address the significant barriers to health experienced by these local communities. Telepsychology, or psychological services delivered by distance via technology, is an emerging treatment modality with special implications for underserved rural areas. This study found that a sample of rural residents seeking telepsychology services (n=94) had low health-related quality of life (HRQOL), often due to cooccurring physical and mental health diagnoses including high rates of depression. However, a brief telepsychology treatment delivered to rural clients (n=40) was associated with an improvement in mental health-related quality of life (d = 0.70,  P<.001). These results indicate that despite the complex health needs of these underserved communities, telepsychology interventions may help offset the disparities in health service access in rural areas

Seminar Users in the Arabic Twitter Sphere

We introduce the notion of "seminar users", who are social media users engaged in propaganda in support of a political entity. We develop a framework that can identify such users with 84.4% precision and 76.1% recall. While our dataset is from the Arab region, omitting language-specific features has only a minor impact on classification performance, and thus, our approach could work for detecting seminar users in other parts of the world and in other languages. We further explored a controversial political topic to observe the prevalence and potential potency of such users. In our case study, we found that 25% of the users engaged in the topic are in fact seminar users and their tweets make nearly a third of the on-topic tweets. Moreover, they are often successful in affecting mainstream discourse with coordinated hashtag campaigns.Comment: to appear in SocInfo 201

Saturn's icy satellites and rings investigated by Cassini - VIMS. III. Radial compositional variability

In the last few years Cassini-VIMS, the Visible and Infared Mapping Spectrometer, returned to us a comprehensive view of the Saturn's icy satellites and rings. After having analyzed the satellites' spectral properties (Filacchione et al. (2007a)) and their distribution across the satellites' hemispheres (Filacchione et al. (2010)), we proceed in this paper to investigate the radial variability of icy satellites (principal and minor) and main rings average spectral properties. This analysis is done by using 2,264 disk-integrated observations of the satellites and a 12x700 pixels-wide rings radial mosaic acquired with a spatial resolution of about 125 km/pixel. The comparative analysis of these data allows us to retrieve the amount of both water ice and red contaminant materials distributed across Saturn's system and the typical surface regolith grain sizes. These measurements highlight very striking differences in the population here analyzed, which vary from the almost uncontaminated and water ice-rich surfaces of Enceladus and Calypso to the metal/organic-rich and red surfaces of Iapetus' leading hemisphere and Phoebe. Rings spectra appear more red than the icy satellites in the visible range but show more intense 1.5-2.0 micron band depths. The correlations among spectral slopes, band depths, visual albedo and phase permit us to cluster the saturnian population in different spectral classes which are detected not only among the principal satellites and rings but among co-orbital minor moons as well. Finally, we have applied Hapke's theory to retrieve the best spectral fits to Saturn's inner regular satellites using the same methodology applied previously for Rhea data discussed in Ciarniello et al. (2011).Comment: 44 pages, 27 figures, 7 tables. Submitted to Icaru

First mineralogical maps of 4 Vesta

Before Dawn arrived at 4 Vesta only very low spatial resolution (~50 km) albedo and color maps were available from HST data. Also ground-based color and spectroscopic data were utilized as a first attempt to map Vesta’s mineralogical diversity [1-4]. The VIR spectrometer [5] onboard Dawn has ac-quired hyperspectral data while the FC camera [6] ob-tained multi-color data of the Vestan surface at very high spatial resolutions, allowing us to map complex geologic, morphologic units and features. We here re-port about the results obtained from a preliminary global mineralogical map of Vesta, based on data from the Survey orbit. This map is part of an iterative map-ping effort; the map is refined with each improvement in resolution

Magnetic Quantum Dot: A Magnetic Transmission Barrier and Resonator

We study the ballistic edge-channel transport in quantum wires with a magnetic quantum dot, which is formed by two different magnetic fields B^* and B_0 inside and outside the dot, respectively. We find that the electron states located near the dot and the scattering of edge channels by the dot strongly depend on whether B^* is parallel or antiparallel to B_0. For parallel fields, two-terminal conductance as a function of channel energy is quantized except for resonances, while, for antiparallel fields, it is not quantized and all channels can be completely reflected in some energy ranges. All these features are attributed to the characteristic magnetic confinements caused by nonuniform fields.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Physical Review Letter

The impact of training non-physician clinicians in Malawi on maternal and perinatal mortality : a cluster randomised controlled evaluation of the enhancing training and appropriate technologies for mothers and babies in Africa (ETATMBA) project

Background: Maternal mortality in much of sub-Saharan Africa is very high whereas there has been a steady decline in over the past 60 years in Europe. Perinatal mortality is 12 times higher than maternal mortality accounting for about 7 million neonatal deaths; many of these in sub-Saharan countries. Many of these deaths are preventable. Countries, like Malawi, do not have the resources nor highly trained medical specialists using complex technologies within their healthcare system. Much of the burden falls on healthcare staff other than doctors including non-physician clinicians (NPCs) such as clinical officers, midwives and community health-workers. The aim of this trial is to evaluate a project which is training NPCs as advanced leaders by providing them with skills and knowledge in advanced neonatal and obstetric care. Training that will hopefully be cascaded to their colleagues (other NPCs, midwives, nurses). Methods/design: This is a cluster randomised controlled trial with the unit of randomisation being the 14 districts of central and northern Malawi (one large district was divided into two giving an overall total of 15). Eight districts will be randomly allocated the intervention. Within these eight districts 50 NPCs will be selected and will be enrolled on the training programme (the intervention). Primary outcome will be maternal and perinatal (defined as until discharge from health facility) mortality. Data will be harvested from all facilities in both intervention and control districts for the lifetime of the project (3–4 years) and comparisons made. In addition a process evaluation using both quantitative and qualitative (e.g. interviews) will be undertaken to evaluate the intervention implementation. Discussion: Education and training of NPCs is a key to improving healthcare for mothers and babies in countries like Malawi. Some of the challenges faced are discussed as are the potential limitations. It is hoped that the findings from this trial will lead to a sustainable improvement in healthcare and workforce development and training. Trial registration: ISRCTN6329415

Reducing Baylisascaris procyonis Roundworm Larvae in Raccoon Latrines

Baylisascaris procyonis roundworms, a parasite of raccoons, can infect humans, sometimes fatally. Parasite eggs can remain viable in raccoon latrines for years. To develop a management technique for parasite eggs, we tested anthelmintic baiting. The prevalence of eggs decreased at latrines, and larval infections decreased among intermediate hosts, indicating that baiting is effective

Analysis of Temperature Maps of Selected Dawn Data Over the Surface of Vesta

The thermal behavior of areas of unusual albedo at the surface of Vesta can be related to physical properties that may provide some information about the origin of those materials. Dawn s Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIR) [1] hyperspectral cubes can be used to retrieve surface temperatures. Due to instrumental constraints, high accuracy is obtained only if temperatures are greater than 180 K. Bright and dark surface materials on Vesta are currently investigated by the Dawn team [e.g., 2 and 3 respectively]. Here we present temperature maps of several local-scale features that were observed by Dawn under different illumination conditions and different local solar times