Consideration of pyloric stenosis as a cause of feeding dysfunction in children with cyanotic heart disease

Feeding difficulty has been reported at a higher incidence in infants with cyanotic heart disease and single ventricle physiology necessitating specialized feeding strategies. However, structural causes of feed intolerance in this subset of patients should not be ignored. This case series highlights three recent cases of pyloric stenosis in infants with left-sided obstructive lesions at our institution. In all three cases, the initial presumed diagnosis was feeding intolerance related to heart disease, and there was significant clinical improvement following identification and correction of pyloric stenosis

The Joint European Compound Library:boosting precompetitive research

The Joint European Compound Library (JECL) is a new high-throughput screening collection aimed at driving precompetitive drug discovery and target validation. The JECL has been established with a core of over 321000 compounds from the proprietary collections of seven pharmaceutical companies and will expand to around 500000 compounds. Here, we analyse the physicochemical profile and chemical diversity of the core collection, showing that the collection is diverse and has a broad spectrum of predicted biological activity. We also describe a model for sharing compound information from multiple proprietary collections, enabling diversity and quality analysis without disclosing structures. The JECL is available for screening at no cost to European academic laboratories and SMEs through the IMI European Lead Factory (http://www.europeanleadfactory.eu/)

Noncompaction cardiomyopathy and heterotaxy syndrome

Left ventricular noncompaction cardiomyopathy (LVNC) is characterized by compact and trabecular layers of the left ventricular myocardium. This cardiomyopathy may occur with congenital heart disease (CHD). Single cases document co-occurrence of LVNC and heterotaxy, but no data exist regarding the prevalence of this association. This study sought to determine whether a non-random association of LVNC and heterotaxy exists by evaluating the prevalence of LVNC in patients with heterotaxy. In a retrospective review of the Indiana Network for Patient Care, we identified 172 patients with heterotaxy (69 male, 103 female). Echocardiography and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging results were independently reviewed by two cardiologists to ensure reproducibility of LVNC. A total of 13/172 (7.5%) patients met imaging criteria for LVNC. The CHD identified in this subgroup included atrioventricular septal defects [11], dextrocardia [10], systemic and pulmonary venous return abnormalities [7], and transposition of the great arteries [5]. From this subgroup, 61% (n = 8) of the patients developed arrhythmias; and 61% (n = 8) required medical management for chronic heart failure. This study indicates that LVNC has increased prevalence among patients with heterotaxy when compared to the general population (0.014–1.3%) suggesting possible common genetic mechanisms. Interestingly, mice with a loss of function of Scrib or Vangl2 genes showed abnormal compaction of the ventricles, anomalies in cardiac looping, and septation defects in previous studies. Recognition of the association between LVNC and heterotaxy is important for various reasons. First, the increased risk of arrhythmias demonstrated in our population. Secondly, theoretical risk of thromboembolic events remains in any LVNC population. Finally, many patients with heterotaxy undergo cardiac surgery (corrective and palliative) and when this is associated with LVNC, patients should be presumed to incur a higher peri-operative morbidity based on previous studies. Further research will continue to determine long-term and to corroborate genetic pathways

Parallel, Adaptive Grid Computing of Multiphase Flows in Spacecraft Fuel Tanks

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/97138/1/AIAA2012-761.pd

Colour-Octet Effects in Radiative Υ\Upsilon Decays

We investigate the effects of colour-octet contributions to the radiative $\Upsilon$ decay within the Bodwin, Braaten and Lepage NRQCD factorization framework. Photons coming both from the coupling to hard processes (`direct') and by collinear emission from light quarks (`fragmentation') are consistently included at next-to-leading order (NLO) in $\alpha_s$. An estimate for the non-perturbative matrix elements which enter in the final result is then obtained. By comparing the NRQCD prediction at NLO for total decay rates with the experimental data, it is found that the non-perturbative parameters must be smaller than expected from the na\"\i ve scaling rules of NRQCD. Nevertheless, colour-octet contributions to the shape of the photon spectrum turn out to be significant.Comment: 25 pages, Latex, 8 figure

Factorization and Scaling in Hadronic Diffraction

In standard Regge theory with a pomeron intercept a(0)=1+\epsilon, the contribution of the tripe-pomeron amplitude to the t=0 differential cross section for single diffraction dissociation has the form d\sigma/dM^2(t=0) \sim s^{2\epsilon}/(M^2)^{1+\epsilon}. For \epsilon>0, this form, which is based on factorization, does not scale with energy. From an analysis of p-p and p-pbar data from fixed target to collider energies, we find that such scaling actually holds, signaling a breakdown of factorization. Phenomenologically, this result can be obtained from a scaling law in diffraction, which is embedded in the hypothesis of pomeron flux renormalization introduced to unitarize the triple pomeron amplitude.Comment: 39 pages, Latex, 16 figure

Kinematic Effects in Radiative Quarkonia Decays

Non-relativistic QCD (NRQCD) predicts colour octet contributions to be significant not only in many production processes of heavy quarkonia but also in their radiative decays. We investigate the photon energy distributions in these processes in the endpoint region. There the velocity expansion of NRQCD breaks down which requires a resummation of an infinite class of colour octet operators to so-called shape functions. We model these non-perturbative functions by the emission of a soft gluon cluster in the initial state. We found that the spectrum in the endpoint region is poorly understood if the values for the colour octet matrix elements are taken as large as indicated from NRQCD scaling rules. Therefore the endpoint region should not be taken into account for a fit of the strong coupling constant at the scale of the heavy quark mass.Comment: LaTeX, 17 pages, 5 figures. The complete paper is also available via the www at http://www-ttp.physik.uni-karlsruhe.de/Preprints

Measurement of the leptonic decay widths of the phi-meson with the KLOE detector

The phi-meson leptonic widths, Gee and Gmm, are obtained, respectively, from the e+e- forward-backward asymmetry and the muon cross section around the phi-mass energy. We find Gee=1.32⊕0.05⊕0.03 kev and sqrt(GeeGmm)= 1.320⊕0.018⊕0.017 kev. These results, compatible with Gee=Gmm, provide a precise test of lepton universality. Combining the two results gives G_lept=1.320⊕0.023 kev.Comment: 10 pages and 8 figures to be submitted to Phys.Lett.

Diffractive Dissociation In The Interacting Gluon Model

We have extended the Interacting Gluon Model (IGM) to calculate diffractive mass spectra generated in hadronic collisions. We show that it is possible to treat both diffractive and non-diffractive events on the same footing, in terms of gluon-gluon collisions. A systematic analysis of available data is performed. The energy dependence of diffractive mass spectra is addressed. They show a moderate narrowing at increasing energies. Predictions for LHC energies are presented.Comment: 12 pages, latex, 14 figures (PostScript Files included); accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D (Feb.97