Subject-Specific Ablation of Pathologic Conduction Patterns Beyond the Pulmonary Veins: A Personalised Modelling Approach

Improving patient outcomes with ablation of non-paroxysmal AF (PsAF) has proved challenging using a population-based treatment approach due to large interindividual variability in the underlying electroanatomical substrate. Ablation of pathologic conduction patterns outside of pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) has recently shown encouraging results in PsAF patients returning for their first or second retreatment (76% freedom from AF recorded in the RECOVER AF trial). However, the optimal targets and best sequence of ablation lesions are still unknown, and testing different sequences, types, and methods of ablation cannot be performed clinically on a single patient or patient cohort. Considering the predictive potential of computational modelling, a small exploratory subset of patients (N=4) enrolled in the ongoing DISCOVER trial was used to create patient-specific models of left atrial electrophysiology. The subject-specific models displayed a high correlation between simulated targets and clinical targets. AF complexity was highest in all patients prior to therapy. PVI caused a marginal decrease in complexity across the cohort whereas PVI+PCP showed an extensive decrease in the AF complexity across the patients and resulted in AF termination in all patients

Planning and Patching Proof

Polynomial interpretations are a useful technique for proving termination of term rewrite systems. We show how polynomial interpretations with negative coefficients, like x–1 for a unary function symbol or x–y for a binary function symbol, can be used to extend the class of rewrite systems that can be automatically proved terminating.Proceedings of the 7th International Conference, AISC 2004, Linz, Austria, September 22-24, 2004

Cardiovascular Parameters in a Swine Model of Normobaric Hypoxia Treated With 5-Hydroxymethyl-2-Furfural (5-HMF)

Introduction:The consequences of low partial pressure of O2 include low arterial O2 saturations (SaO2), low blood O2 content (CaO2), elevated mean pulmonary artery pressure (PAP), and decreased O2 consumption VO2. 5-hydroxymethyl-2-furfural (5-HMF) binds to the N-terminal valine of hemoglobin (HgB) and increases its affinity to O2. We used an instrumented, sedated swine model to study the effect of 5-HMF on cardiovascular parameters during exposure to acute normobaric hypoxia (NH).MethodsTwenty-three sedated and instrumented swine were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups and received equal volume of normal saline (VEH), 20 mg/kg 5-HMF (5-HMF-20) or 40 mg/kg 5-HMF (5-HMF-40). Animals then breathed 10% FiO2 for 120 min. Parameters recorded were Cardiac Output (CO), Mean Arterial Blood Pressure (MAP), Heart Rate (HR), Mean Pulmonary Artery Pressure (PAP), SaO2 and saturation of mixed venous blood (SvO2). The P50 was measured at fixed time intervals prior to and during NH.Results5-HMF decreased P50. In the first 30 min of NH, treatment with 5-HMF-20 and 5-HMF-40 resulted in a (1) significantly smaller decrement in SaO2 and SvO2, (2) significantly lower HR and CO, and (3) smaller increase in PAP compared to VEH. In the 120 min of NH there was a trend toward improved mortality with 5-HMF treatment.Conclusion5-HMF treatment decreased P50, improved SaO2, and mitigated increases in PAP in this swine model of NH

Population variability of species can be deduced from citizen science records: a case study using British butterflies

Abundance data are the foundation for many ecological and conservation projects, but are only available for a few taxonomic groups. In contrast, distribution records (georeferenced presence records) are more widely available. Here we examine whether year-to-year changes in numbers of distribution records, collated over a large spatial scale, can provide a measure of species' population variability, and hence act as a metric of abundance changes. We used 33 British butterfly species to test this possibility, using distribution and abundance data (transect counts) from 1976 to 2012. Comparing across species, we found a strong correlation between mean year-to-year changes in total number of distribution records and mean year-to-year changes in abundance (N = 33 species; r2 = 0.66). This suggests that annual distribution data can be used to identify species with low versus high population variability. For individual species, there was considerable variation in the strength of relationships between year-to-year changes in total number of distribution records and abundance. Between-year changes in abundance can be identified from distribution records most accurately for species whose populations are most variable (i.e. have high annual variation in numbers of records). We conclude that year-to-year changes in distribution records can indicate overall population variability within a taxon, and are a reasonable proxy for year-to-year changes in abundance for some types of species. This finding opens up more opportunities to inform ecological and conservation studies about population variability, based on the wealth of citizen science distribution records that are available for other taxa

Model-independent Analysis of Lepton Flavour Violating Tau Decays

Many models for physics beyond the Standard Model predict lepton-flavour violating decays of charged leptons at a level which may become observable very soon. In the present paper we investigate the decays of a Tau into three charged leptons in a generic way, based on effective-field-theory methods, where the relevant operators are classified according to their chirality structure. We work out the decay distributions and discuss phenomenological implications.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, references and comments adde

Status Report of the DPHEP Study Group: Towards a Global Effort for Sustainable Data Preservation in High Energy Physics

Data from high-energy physics (HEP) experiments are collected with significant financial and human effort and are mostly unique. An inter-experimental study group on HEP data preservation and long-term analysis was convened as a panel of the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA). The group was formed by large collider-based experiments and investigated the technical and organisational aspects of HEP data preservation. An intermediate report was released in November 2009 addressing the general issues of data preservation in HEP. This paper includes and extends the intermediate report. It provides an analysis of the research case for data preservation and a detailed description of the various projects at experiment, laboratory and international levels. In addition, the paper provides a concrete proposal for an international organisation in charge of the data management and policies in high-energy physics

Measurement of triple gauge boson couplings from WW production at LEP energies up to 189 GeV

A measurement of triple gauge boson couplings is presented, based on W-pair data recorded by the OPAL detector at LEP during 1998 at a centre-of-mass energy of 189 GeV with an integrated luminosity of 183 pb^-1. After combining with our previous measurements at centre-of-mass energies of 161-183 GeV we obtain k_g=0.97 +0.20 -0.16, g_1^z=0.991 +0.060 -0.057 and lambda_g=-0.110 +0.058 -0.055, where the errors include both statistical and systematic uncertainties and each coupling is determined by setting the other two couplings to their SM values. These results are consistent with the Standard Model expectations.Comment: 28 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Eur. Phys. J.

A measurement of the tau mass and the first CPT test with tau leptons

We measure the mass of the tau lepton to be 1775.1+-1.6(stat)+-1.0(syst.) MeV using tau pairs from Z0 decays. To test CPT invariance we compare the masses of the positively and negatively charged tau leptons. The relative mass difference is found to be smaller than 3.0 10^-3 at the 90% confidence level.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, Submitted to Phys. Letts.

Search for Neutral Higgs Bosons in e+e- Collisions at sqrt(s) ~189GeV

A search for neutral Higgs bosons has been performed with the OPAL detector at LEP, using approximately 170 pb-1 of e+e- collision data collected at sqrt(s)~189GeV. Searches have been performed for the Standard Model (SM) process e+e- to H0Z0 and the MSSM processes e+e- to H0Z0, A0h0. The searches are sensitive to the b b-bar and tau antitau decay modes of the Higgs bosons, and also to the MSSM decay mode h0 to A0A0. OPAL search results at lower centre-of-mass energies have been incorporated in the limits we set, which are valid at the 95% confidence level. For the SM Higgs boson, we obtain a lower mass bound of 91.0 GeV. In the MSSM, our limits are mh>74.8GeV and mA>76.5GeV, assuming tan(beta)>1, that the mixing of the scalar top quarks is either zero or maximal, and that the soft SUSY-breaking masses are 1 TeV. For the case of zero scalar top mixing, we exclude values of tan(beta) between 0.72 and 2.19.Comment: 38 pages, 15 figures, submitted Euro. Phys. J.