Towards a better understanding of how effective IT governance leads to business value : a literature review and future research directions

This paper reviews the existing literature on IT governance to assess whether IT governance has contributed to delivering business value from IT and if so, how. The conducted literature review has shown the scarce number of studies that focus on why and how effective IT governance may lead to business value. By using a structured literature review analysis, the paper has offered a number of insights to the topic of IT governance: a) provided a systematic definition of effective IT governance based on a multi-dimensional framework, b) listed benefits of effective IT governance, and c) identified mechanisms that lead effective IT governance to those benefits. This paper takes a step towards addressing the &lsquo;why&rsquo; and &lsquo;how&rsquo; knowledge gaps by synthesising the fragmented knowledge to provide the best that is known about the subject and to identify future research directions.<br /

Pattern of initiation of monomorphic ventricular tachycardia in recorded intracardiac electrograms

Background: By analyzing stored intracardiac electrograms during spontaneous monomorphic ventricular tachycardia (VT), we examined the patterns of the VT initiation in a group of patients with implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs). Methods: Stored electrograms (EGMs) were monomorphic VTs and at least 5 beats before the initiation and after the termination of VT were analyzed. Cycle length, sinus rate, and the prematurity index for each episode were noted. Results: We studied 182 episodes of VT among 50 patients with ICDs. VPC-induced (extrasystolic initiation) episode was the most frequent pattern (106; 58%) followed by 76 episodes (42%) in sudden-onset group. Among the VPC-induced group, VPCs in 85 episodes (80%) were different in morphology from subsequent VT. Sudden-onset episodes had longer cycle lengths (377±30ms) in comparison with the VPC-induced ones (349±29ms; P= 0.001). Sinus rate before VT was faster in the sudden-onset compared to that in VPC-induced one (599±227ms versus 664±213ms; P=0.005). Both of these episodes responded similarly to ICD tiered therapy. There was no statistically significant difference in coupling interval, prematurity index, underlying heart disease, ejection fraction, and antiarrhythmic drug usage between two groups (P=NS). Conclusions: Dissimilarities between VT initiation patterns could not be explained by differences in electrical (coupling interval, and prematurity index) or clinical (heart disease, ejection fraction, and antiarrhythmic drug) variables among the patients. There is no association between pattern of VT initiation and the success rate of electrical therapy

’’The Synergistic Effects of Modified Green Tea Polyphenols [GTP], Epigallocatechin-3-gallate [EGCG], Lipid-based Tea Polyphenol [LTP], Curcuminoids, and Red Algae Polysaccharides on Antibiotics against Potentially Pathogenic Bacteria.”

Green tea leaves contain many polyphenolic compounds such as (-)-epicatechin, (-)- epicatechin-3-gallate, (-)-epigallocatechin, and (-)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate(EGCG). Green tea polyphenols (GTPs) have been implicated to have distinct properties that combat the harmful effects of cell proliferation. These compounds contain certain anti-viral and antimicrobial mechanisms that inhibit growth and perhaps reverse the process in which replication occurs. In this study, varied concentrations of GTP, Lipophilic Tea Polyphenol (LTP), Curcumin, and Red Algae Polysaccharides were used separately and in synergism with the most commonly used antiseptics and antibiotics to study the effect on different species of gram positive and gram negative bacteria. The antiseptic study consisted of using the disk diffusion method. The antibiotic portion of the study utilized the Kirby-Bauer Method with an antibiotic disk dispenser consisting of twelve unique and commonly prescribed antibiotics. The zones of inhibition were measured in MDL and categorized as being resistant, intermediate, or susceptible to the chemical agent used. The results suggested that synergistic effects of EGCG and LTP varied dependent upon microorganism, strain, classification, and antibiotic used against certain strains. The most studied organisms found to have had some form of impact when EGCG and LTP were combined with the antibiotic against the growth of the organism. It was found to work efficiently against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus epidermidis. These organisms serve as an essential model for potentially pathogen strains that become pathogenic either due to plasmid exchange or developing other mechanisms to evade antibiotic resistance. It was also found that LTP had a greater synergistic effect with the antibiotics against the growth of the microorganism. The ampicillin-resistant strains of Escherichia coli were also focused upon to determine if strains that develop antibiotic resistance can still become susceptible to treatment of the antibiotic in conjunction with the polyphenol to inhibit the mechanism of antibiotic resistance. The red algae polysaccharides also shown promise to inhibit the growth of many of these potentially pathogenic microorganism models. The spore study indicated that there was a certain extent of inhibition—up to 64%. The CFU Time-Kill portion of the study also indicated that after a polyphenolic treatment, the ability to inhibit the growth of microorganism up to 2 hours became 99.99999% (almost 100%)

Idiopathic Submitral Left Ventricular Aneurysm: an Unusual Substrate for Ventricular Tachycardia in Caucasians

Annular submitral aneurysms have been rarely reported in Caucasians. They are typically diagnosed in non-white adults who present with severe mitral regurgitation, heart failure, systemic embolism, ventricular arrhythmias, and sudden cardiac death. In this article, we describe the case of a white woman, presenting with ventricular tachycardia, who had a large submitral left ventricular aneurysm diagnosed incidentally during coronary angiography

Changing QRS Morphology: What is the mechanism?

ECG in sinus rhythm with ventricular preexcitation and changing QRS morphology was seen that was initially interpreted as the multiple accessory pathway from elsewhere. (Figure 1A). The following mechanisms are potentially involved in the electrogenesis of changing QRS morphology in WPW syndrome: 1) multiple accessory pathways1; 2) simultaneous occurrence of aberrant atrioventricular conduction with accessory pathway conduction 2; 3) ventricular fusion of preexcited sinus impulse with ectopic impulse. Electrophysiologic study showed short PR (75 ms) interval with wide QRS (152 ms) and negative HV (-12 ms) interval. No change in delta wave polarity was observed during HRA and CS pacing. In full preexcitation, no breakthrough was seen in the CS. During incremental ventricular pacing, atrial breakthrough site is initially recorded on the HRA catheter and then changed to distal pole of CS catheter with progressive decrease in pacing cycle length. During ventricular pacing at cycle length of 500 ms (S1), earliest atrial activity is recorded on HRA catheter. Changing QRS could not be explained by presence of multiple APs because only right-sided AP had bidirectional conduction and no distal CS breakthrough was seen simultaneous with changing QRS morphology. The possibility of aberrant conduction is excluded by presence of negative HV interval in the beats with differing QRS morphology. No sinus cycle length variation before and after the beats with different morphologies are against the occurrence of functional LBBB. The prematurity of ventricular electrogram in His recording catheter with variable HV (H-electrogram is recorded after V-electrogram in second beat and before V-electrogram in third beat) and fixed V-RB intervals (interval from ventricular electrogram in His to the RB potential) are compatible with ventricular fusion of preexcited sinus impulse with ectopic ventricular impulse originating from parahissian area (explaining LBBB and inferior axis morphology of the beats with changing QRS) but not from the His bundle or RBB itself (because H-electrogram and RB potential is recorded after V-electrogram in the second beat with greater degree of ventricular fusion)(Figure 1B)

A Model to Overcome Integrity Challenges of an Untrusted DSMS Server

Despite the fact that using the services of outsourced data stream servers has been welcomed extremely, still the problem of obtaining assurance about the received results from these untrusted servers in unsecure environment is one of the basic challenges. In this paper, we present a probabilistic model for auditing received results from an outsourced data stream server through unsecure communication channels. In our architecture, the server is considered as a black box and the auditing process is fulfilled by cooperation between the data stream owner and users. Our method imposes an ignorable overhead on the user and needs no change in the structure of the server. The probabilistic modeling of the system proves algorithms convergence and the experimental evaluations show very acceptable results