Arrhythmias After Tetralogy of Fallot Repair

Tetralogy of Fallot is the most common cyanotic congenital heart disease, with a good outcome after total surgical correction. In spite of a low perioperative mortality and a good quality of life, late sudden death remains a significant clinical problem, mainly related to episodes of sustained ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation. Fibro-fatty substitution around infundibular resection, intraventricular septal scar, and patchy myocardial fibrosis, may provide anatomical substrates of abnormal depolarization and repolarization causing reentrant ventricular arrhythmias. Several non-invasive indices based on classical examination such as ECG, signal-averaging ECG, and echocardiography have been proposed to identify patients at high risk of sudden death, with hopeful results. In the last years other more sophisticated invasive and non-invasive tools, such as heart rate variability, electroanatomic mapping and cardiac magnetic resonance added a relevant contribution to risk stratification. Even if each method per se is affected by some limitations, a comprehensive multifactorial clinical and investigative examination can provide an accurate risk evaluation for every patien

Semi-Supervised Discovery of DNN-Based Outcome Predictors from Scarcely-Labeled Process Logs

Predicting the final outcome of an ongoing process instance is a key problem in many real-life contexts. This problem has been addressed mainly by discovering a prediction model by using traditional machine learning methods and, more recently, deep learning methods, exploiting the supervision coming from outcome-class labels associated with historical log traces. However, a supervised learning strategy is unsuitable for important application scenarios where the outcome labels are known only for a small fraction of log traces. In order to address these challenging scenarios, a semi-supervised learning approach is proposed here, which leverages a multi-target DNN model supporting both outcome prediction and the additional auxiliary task of next-activity prediction. The latter task helps the DNN model avoid spurious trace embeddings and overfitting behaviors. In extensive experimentation, this approach is shown to outperform both fully-supervised and semi-supervised discovery methods using similar DNN architectures across different real-life datasets and label-scarce settings

(The) Spanish romantic theatre ..

Typewritten sheets in cover. Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University This item was digitized by the Internet Archive. Bibliography: p. 79-80

The dynamics of a nudibranch-hydroid predator-prey association: Cuthona nana and Hydractinia echinata

The purpose of this study was to document the biological interactions in a predator-prey relationship involving a nudibranch and hydroid, respectively. The predator is a hermaphroditic opisthobranch mollusc with direct development, Cuthona nana. Cuthona nana feeds specifically on the colonial hydroid Hydractinia echinata. Population patterns of predator and prey were documented by collecting hermit crabs with hydroid-covered shells. Results indicate a subannual life cycle for C. nana with juveniles and egg masses present throughout the year. Hydractinia echinata colonies reproduce in the spring and are more abundant in late summer and early fall. Field and laboratory observations indicate that adult nudibranchs leave hydroid colonies to lay egg masses. Adults moved on and off of colonies while juveniles did not leave the colonies on which they were originally placed. The crab seems to play a part in bringing food to newly hatched juvenile or adult nudibranchs on the bottom. The maintenance of this species-specific association can be explained by partial predation of the colonies. Spines prevent complete removal of tissue. Hydroid colonies are capable of regeneration and can withstand cropping by nudibranchs. Hermit crab movement may be positive for both the nudibranch and hydroid. The hydroid obtains food from the sandy bottom as the crab moves about and is also moved away from predators. Nudibranchs can be dispersed by crab movement and also obtain food if a crab has a hydroid colony on its shell. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)

Eficacia predictora de los instrumentos de evaluación del riesgo de violencia en Latinoamérica

In Latin America, violence risk assessment used to be based in the non-structured clinical approach. An Argentinian cohort study that included violence risk assessment tools changed the tradition. The objective of this study is to inform of the observed predictive efficacy of these tools in the follow-up until March 2012. One hundred and fifty three consecutive pre-released convicted males were recruited from September 2001 through September 2004 in La Plata, Argentina. The pre-release assessment measures included the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, Assessing Risk for Violence V2, Structured Professional Judgment, and Violence Risk Appraisal Guide. The mean follow-up time was 1,290 days. Ninety-nine (64.7%) subjects had at least one general relapse, and 91 (59.5%) had at least one violent relapse. The incidence rate of violent recidivism was 16.8 per 100 person-years. While some indicators of predictive validity had no clinical significance, the time-dependent indicators did have clinical significance.En Latinoamérica, la evaluación del riesgo de violencia se basaba en la aproximación clínica no estructurada. A comienzos del presente siglo un estudio de cohorte argentino cambió la tendencia. El propósito de este estudio es informar sobre la eficacia predictiva de esos instrumentos en el seguimiento hasta marzo de 2012 de la cohorte de penados liberados. Se reclutó a 153 varones penados, candidatos a ser liberados consecutivamente bajo condiciones entre septiembre de 2001 y septiembre de 2004. Las medidas basales estaban constituidas por el Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, Assessing Risk for Violence V2, Violence Risk Appraisal Guide y el juicio profesional estructurado. El período promedio de seguimiento fue de 1.290 días. Noventa y nueve (64.7%) sujetos tuvieron, por lo menos, una recidiva general y 91 (59.5%) tuvieron, por lo menos, una recidiva violenta. La tasa de incidencia de recidiva violenta fue de 16.8 por 100 persona-anos. Algunos indicadores de validez predictiva no alcanzaron significación clínica, pero sí los estimadores tiempo-dependientes.Facultad de Ciencias Médica