Repair of anomalous origin of the left coronary artery in the infant and small child

Anomalous origin of the left coronary artery from the pulmonary artery is associated with myocardial infarction, left ventricular dysfunction, mitral valve dysfunction and, occasionally, intracardiac congenital abnormalities. A technique that utilizes a flap of the anterior wall of the pulmonary artery to serve as a neocoronary artery to direct aortic flow from a created aortopulinonary window to the pulmonary artery orifice of the anomalous left coronary artery was used in five patients aged 2.5 months to 4.75 years. Two patients were less than 4 months of age at operation. There was one death 2 days after operation and one late death. The two youngest patients required mitral valve replacement. Two of the three surviving patients are well at follow-up at 7 to 44 months. One patient has been lost to follow-up study. One patient had postoperative catheterization which showed an intact repair. The pulmonary artery neocor-onary procedure is applicable to infants and small patients with anomalous origin of the left coronary artery from the pulmonary artery

A Multi-Channel DART algorithm

Tomography deals with the reconstruction of objects from their projections, acquired along a range of angles. Discrete tomography is concerned with objects that consist of a small number of materials, which makes it possible to compute accurate reconstructions from highly limited projection data. For cases where the allowed intensity values in the reconstruction are known a priori, the discrete algebraic reconstruction technique (DART) has shown to yield accurate reconstructions from few projections. However, a key limitation is that the benefit of DART diminishes as the number of different materials increases. Many tomographic imaging techniques can simultaneously record tomographic data at multiple channels, each corresponding to a different weighting of the materials in the object. Whenever projection data from more than one channel is available, this additional information can potentially be exploited by the reconstruction algorithm. In this paper we present Multi-Channel DART (MC-DART), which deals effectively with multi-channel data. This class of algorithms is a generalization of DART to multiple channels and combines the information for each separate channel-reconstruction in a multi-channel segmentation step. We demonstrate that in a range of simulation experiments, MC-DART is capable of producing more accurate reconstructions compared to single-channel DART

Teaching Mindfulness to Teachers: a Systematic Review and Narrative Synthesis

School teachers report high levels of stress which impact on their engagement with pupils and effectiveness as a teacher. Early intervention or prevention approaches may support teachers to develop positive coping and reduce the experience and impact of stress. This article reviews research on one such approach: mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) for school teachers. A systematic review and narrative synthesis were conducted for quantitative and qualitative studies that report the effects of MBIs for teachers of children aged 5– 18 years on symptoms of stress and emotion regulation and self-efficacy. Twelve independent publications were identified meeting the inclusion criteria and these gave a total of 13 samples. Quality appraisal of the identified articles was carried out. The effect sizes and proportion of significant findings are reported for relevant outcomes. The quality of the literature varied, with main strengths in reporting study details, and weaknesses including sample size considerations. A range of MBIs were employed across the literature, ranging in contact hours and aims. MBIs showed strongest promise for intermediary effects on teacher emotion regulation. The results of the review are discussed in the context of a model of teacher stress. Teacher social and emotional competence has implications for pupil wellbeing through teacher–pupil relationships and effective management of the classroom. The implications for practice and research are considered

Ethics and the choice of animal advocacy campaigns

This paper examines how different ethical positions view various types of animal advocacy campaigns concerning a product made using animals as an input. The ethical positions represent common company, society, and animal advocate viewpoints. We adopt an industrial economics approach, modelling a market with a monopolistic supplier and subject to consumer-oriented, technological, collaborative, and direct action campaigns. We determine whether the ethical positions support or oppose each campaign, and in what conditions. We find that animal welfare and rights goals are simultaneously satisfied by three campaigns: negotiation, targeted direct action, and awareness raising that condemns low welfare standards

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016

A suppression hierarchy among competing motor programs drives sequential grooming in Drosophila.

Motor sequences are formed through the serial execution of different movements, but how nervous systems implement this process remains largely unknown. We determined the organizational principles governing how dirty fruit flies groom their bodies with sequential movements. Using genetically targeted activation of neural subsets, we drove distinct motor programs that clean individual body parts. This enabled competition experiments revealing that the motor programs are organized into a suppression hierarchy; motor programs that occur first suppress those that occur later. Cleaning one body part reduces the sensory drive to its motor program, which relieves suppression of the next movement, allowing the grooming sequence to progress down the hierarchy. A model featuring independently evoked cleaning movements activated in parallel, but selected serially through hierarchical suppression, was successful in reproducing the grooming sequence. This provides the first example of an innate motor sequence implemented by the prevailing model for generating human action sequences

A suppression hierarchy among competing motor programs drives sequential grooming in Drosophila.

Motor sequences are formed through the serial execution of different movements, but how nervous systems implement this process remains largely unknown. We determined the organizational principles governing how dirty fruit flies groom their bodies with sequential movements. Using genetically targeted activation of neural subsets, we drove distinct motor programs that clean individual body parts. This enabled competition experiments revealing that the motor programs are organized into a suppression hierarchy; motor programs that occur first suppress those that occur later. Cleaning one body part reduces the sensory drive to its motor program, which relieves suppression of the next movement, allowing the grooming sequence to progress down the hierarchy. A model featuring independently evoked cleaning movements activated in parallel, but selected serially through hierarchical suppression, was successful in reproducing the grooming sequence. This provides the first example of an innate motor sequence implemented by the prevailing model for generating human action sequences