Presentation and attrition in complex pulmonary atresia

AbstractObjectives. This study summarized patterns of presentation and attrition in complex pulmonary atresia.Methods. We performed a retrospective review of age at presentation, referral source, pulmonary artery and collateral anatomy and surgical history of 218 patients from two institutions dealing with congenital heart disease throughout life.Results. Approximately 65% of pulmonary atresia appears in infancy, with 50% of patients severely symptomatic from cyanosis and 25% from heart failure. Compared with those presenting undiagnosed, patients referred secondarily for specialist management trend tobe older whe first seen, and cre must be taken when generalizing about the natural history of the condition from their survival experience. Overall actuarial survival, including the effects of operation, suggests that 60% (95% condifence limits [CL] 43 to 73) of patients presenting in infancy survice to their first birthday, 65% (95% CL to 51 to 74) those alive at 1 year old survive to the age of 10, and 16 (95% CL 5 to 31) of those alive at 10 years old survive to age 35.Conclusions. Novel surgical approaches habve generally been applied beyond infancy in patients selected by their survival through the period of greatest attrition for this disease. Unless successful application in symptomatic infants is demonstrated, we cannot assume that these serial and complicated operations will have a major impact on the outlook of most patients with complex pulmonary atresia

From novice to master craftsman: a study of Athol Fugard's plays

Athol Fugard was born in Middelburg, Karroo, on the 11th June; 1932, his mother an Afrikaner, his father an English-speaking South African, possibly of Irish descent. When he was three years old, the family sold the small general dealer's store in the village and moved to Port Elizabeth, which has been his home ever since, though he has lived at various times in Europe, America, and other parts of Africa. After schooling at Port Elizabeth Technical College, he went to the University of Cape Town in 1950, where he read philosophy and social anthropology, supporting himself by working in the vacations as a waiter on the South African Railways. Chapter 1, p. 1

Second harmonic generation with zero phase velocity waves

We design a dual-band nonlinear composite right-left handed transmission line with phase-matching achieved between the fundamental frequency and second harmonic when both interacting waves have zero phase velocity. Additionally, we show that such a transmission line supports a new regime where the generation of backward second harmonic waves is achieved from a backward fundamental frequency wave

A Thirteenth-Century English Charter at Brock University

In the fall of 2008, staff of the Special Collections and Archives of the James A. Gibson library at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, discovered a small, tightly folded, and clearly very old parchment document in a bag in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet. The document, which had been transferred to the Library from the President’s Office in 1976, was stored without being catalogued, probably because it fell outside the scope of the department’s collection policy. It remained unexamined for over thirty years until early in 2009, when the announcement of its ‘rediscovery’ caused considerable excitement among the Brock University and Niagara communities. Efforts to trace the provenance of the Charter prior to its arrival at Brock University have proven unsuccessful. The document, dated to the mid-thirteenth century, records a grant of land in the village of Clopton in Warwickshire (see further below) by Robert de Clopton to his son William; although some of the individuals and places named in it are known from contemporaneous records, it does not appear to be referred to in secondary sources pertaining to the family, the estate, or the county and, in fact, seems to be completely unknown. The Clopton charter now has the distinction of being the oldest item in the holdings of the James A. Gibson Library at Brock University. This paper offers a description, transcription, translation and preliminary analysis of the document

High-resolution spectroscopy of QY Sge -- An obscured RV Tauri variable?

The first high-resolution optical spectra of QY Sge are presented and discussed. Menzies & Whitelock (1988) on the basis of photometry and low-resolution spectra suggested that this G0I supergiant was obscured by dust and seen only by scattered light from a circumstellar reflection nebula. The new spectra confirm and extend this picture. Photospheric lines are unusually broad indicating scattering of photons from dust in the stellar wind. Presence of very broad Na D emission lines is confirmed. Sharp emission lines from low levels of abundant neutral metal atoms are reported for the first time. An abundance analysis of photospheric lines shows that the stellar atmosphere is of approximately solar composition but with highly condensible (e.g., Sc and Ti) elements depleted by factors of 5 to 10.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

The relationship between galaxy and dark matter halo size from z ∼ 3 to the present

We explore empirical constraints on the statistical relationship between the radial size of galaxies and the radius of their host dark matter haloes from z similar to 0.1-3 using the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) and Cosmic Assembly Near Infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) surveys. We map dark matter halo mass to galaxy stellar mass using relationships from abundance matching, applied to the Bolshoi-Planck dissipationless N-body simulation. We define SRHR equivalent to r(e)/R-h as the ratio of galaxy radius to halo virial radius, and SRHR lambda equivalent to r(e)/(lambda R-h) as the ratio of galaxy radius to halo spin parameter times halo radius. At z similar to 0.1, we find an average value of SRHR similar or equal to 0.018 and SRHR. similar or equal to 0.5 with very little dependence on stellar mass. Stellar radius-halo radius (SRHR) and SRHR lambda have a weak dependence on cosmic time since z similar to 3. SRHR shows a mild decrease over cosmic time for low-mass galaxies, but increases slightly or does not evolve formoremassive galaxies. We find hints that at high redshift (z similar to 2-3), SRHR. is lower for more massive galaxies, while it shows no significant dependence on stellar mass at z less than or similar to 0.5. We find that for both the GAMA and CANDELS samples, at all redshifts from z similar to 0.1-3, the observed conditional size distribution in stellar mass bins is remarkably similar to the conditional distribution of lambda R-h. We discuss the physical interpretation and implications of these results

The effect of school-based creative expression group therapy on the self-concept of female adolescents

Adolescents face a wide array of social, emotional, and academic problems in today’s world during what is often described as a challenging and complicated stage of development (Perryman, Moss, & Cochran, 2015). During adolescence, the peer group becomes more important as teens begin to search for and establish their identities. Therefore, group work can be an advantageous way of reaching the adolescent population. Creative and expressive art techniques allow a safe way for adolescent girls to express themselves and relate to others around them. They learn in a group setting that they are not alone in the world and that others struggle with similar challenges. Together, they are able to learn healthy coping skills and a positive sense of self in a setting and manner that is developmentally appropriate. Additionally, social-emotional health has been strongly correlated with academics in the literature: the better a teen’s social-emotional health is, the better their grades will be. Although the use of creative mediums in working with adolescents has been relatively well-established, many teens are intimidated by the idea of creating art work. The researchers propose a manual of creative expressive interventions designed to allow clients to create art with easy-to-assemble projects, thereby decreasing stress and anxiety related to art, while still allowing a creative process (Spangler, 2015). In this single-case research design, researchers utilized the Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale 2 to measure the effects of a creative art expression group on adolescent females at a high school in the Midwest. Participants provided responses before the intervention for 3 weeks to establish a baseline (A), for 8 weeks during treatment (B), and for 3 weeks following the completion of the study (A). Preliminary results of the pilot project are presented along with application-based materials

Guest editorial: Promoting cultural competency in the nursing care of LGBT patients

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.none- editoria

Exploring the NRO Opportunity for a Hubble-sized Wide-field Near-IR Space Telescope -- NEW WFIRST

We discuss scientific, technical and programmatic issues related to the use of an NRO 2.4m telescope for the WFIRST initiative of the 2010 Decadal Survey. We show that this implementation of WFIRST, which we call "NEW WFIRST," would achieve the goals of the NWNH Decadal Survey for the WFIRST core programs of Dark Energy and Microlensing Planet Finding, with the crucial benefit of deeper and/or wider near-IR surveys for GO science and a potentially Hubble-like Guest Observer program. NEW WFIRST could also include a coronagraphic imager for direct detection of dust disks and planets around neighboring stars, a high-priority science and technology precursor for future ambitious programs to image Earth-like planets around neighboring stars.Comment: 76 pages, 26 figures -- associated with the Princeton "New Telescope Meeting