Perventricular device closure of muscular ventricular septal defects on the beating heart: technique and results

AbstractObjectiveBoth surgical management and percutaneous device closure of muscular ventricular septal defects have drawbacks and limitations. This report describes our initial experience with intraoperative device closure of muscular ventricular septal defects without cardiopulmonary bypass in 6 consecutive patients.MethodsA median sternotomy or a subxiphoid minimally invasive incision was performed. Under continuous transesophageal echocardiographic guidance, the right ventricle free wall was punctured, and a wire was introduced across the largest defect. The Amplatzer (AGA Medical Corporation, Golden Valley, Minn) muscular ventricular septal defect occluding device (a self-expandable double-disk device) was used. An introducer sheath was fed over the wire, with the sheath tip positioned in the left ventricle cavity. The device was then advanced inside the sheath and deployed by retracting the sheath. Associated cardiac lesions, if any, can then be repaired during cardiopulmonary bypass. A similar technique can also be applied for periatrial closure of complex atrial septal defects.ResultsThe initial 6 patients are presented. Cardiopulmonary bypass was not needed in any patient for placement of the device and needed in 4 patients for repair of concomitant malformations only (double-outlet right ventricle, aortic arch hypoplasia, pulmonary artery band removal). No complications from using this technique occurred. Discharge echocardiograms showed no significant shunting across the ventricular septum.ConclusionsPerventricular closure of multiple muscular ventricular septal defects is safe and effective. We believe that this could become the treatment of choice for any infant with muscular ventricular septal defects or any child with muscular ventricular septal defect and associated cardiac defects

SCSBRS 113 - Tio Taka: cultivar de arroz irrigado obtida através de seleção recorrente.

O objetivo deste trabalho é mostrar e discutir os principais resultados que levaram ao lançamento da SCSBRS 113 ? TioTaka para plantio em Santa Catarina e apresentar a metodologia utilizada no desenvolvimento da referida cultivar

Lipreading a naturalistic narrative in a female population : Neural characteristics shared with listening and reading

Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Brain and Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.Introduction: Few of us are skilled lipreaders while most struggle with the task. Neural substrates that enable comprehension of connected natural speech via lipreading are not yet well understood. Methods: We used a data-driven approach to identify brain areas underlying the lipreading of an 8-min narrative with participants whose lipreading skills varied extensively (range 6–100%, mean = 50.7%). The participants also listened to and read the same narrative. The similarity between individual participants’ brain activity during the whole narrative, within and between conditions, was estimated by a voxel-wise comparison of the Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) signal time courses. Results: Inter-subject correlation (ISC) of the time courses revealed that lipreading, listening to, and reading the narrative were largely supported by the same brain areas in the temporal, parietal and frontal cortices, precuneus, and cerebellum. Additionally, listening to and reading connected naturalistic speech particularly activated higher-level linguistic processing in the parietal and frontal cortices more consistently than lipreading, probably paralleling the limited understanding obtained via lip-reading. Importantly, higher lipreading test score and subjective estimate of comprehension of the lipread narrative was associated with activity in the superior and middle temporal cortex. Conclusions: Our new data illustrates that findings from prior studies using well-controlled repetitive speech stimuli and stimulus-driven data analyses are also valid for naturalistic connected speech. Our results might suggest an efficient use of brain areas dealing with phonological processing in skilled lipreaders.Peer reviewe

Political candidates in infotainment programmes and their emotional effects on Twitter: An analysis of the 2015 Spanish general elections pre-campaign season

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Contemporary Social Science on 2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/21582041.2017.1367833.[EN] The infotainment format offers candidates an informal setting to show a more personal side of themselves to the electorate, opening themselves up to potential voters. An example of media hybridisation, social networks users can immediately comment on infotainment television programmes, a process known as second screening. These second screeners tend to be especially active in politics. This paper analyses the immediate emotional reaction of these users as they watch infotainment programmes that air during the campaign or pre-campaign seasons and feature political candidates as guests. We have confirmed that second screeners react more emotionally towards the candidate when his or her party is mentioned, and less emotionally when the host displays an aggressive attitude through his or her non-verbal communication. When issues related to the candidate¿s personal lives are discussed, users¿ emotional reactions improve slightly. The relevance of this research stems from the fact that we are witnessing the consolidation of a politics that increasingly strays from ideological questions, and instead focuses on more emotional and personal issues.This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad under Grants CSO2013-43960-R and CSO2016-77331-C2-1-R.Baviera, T.; Peris, À.; Cano-Orón, L. (2019). Political candidates in infotainment programmes and their emotional effects on Twitter: An analysis of the 2015 Spanish general elections pre-campaign season. Contemporary Social Science. 14(1):144-156. https://doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2017.1367833S144156141Baum, M. A., & Jamison, A. S. (2006). TheOprahEffect: How Soft News Helps Inattentive Citizens Vote Consistently. The Journal of Politics, 68(4), 946-959. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2508.2006.00482.xBravo-Marquez, F., Mendoza, M., & Poblete, B. (2014). Meta-level sentiment models for big social data analysis. Knowledge-Based Systems, 69, 86-99. doi:10.1016/j.knosys.2014.05.016Casero-Ripollés, A., Feenstra, R. A., & Tormey, S. (2016). Old and New Media Logics in an Electoral Campaign. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 21(3), 378-397. doi:10.1177/1940161216645340Ceron, A., & Splendore, S. (2016). From contents to comments: Social TV and perceived pluralism in political talk shows. New Media & Society, 20(2), 659-675. doi:10.1177/1461444816668187Chadwick, A. (2013). The Hybrid Media System. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199759477.001.0001Dang-Xuan, L., Stieglitz, S., Wladarsch, J., & Neuberger, C. (2013). AN INVESTIGATION OF INFLUENTIALS AND THE ROLE OF SENTIMENT IN POLITICAL COMMUNICATION ON TWITTER DURING ELECTION PERIODS. Information, Communication & Society, 16(5), 795-825. doi:10.1080/1369118x.2013.783608Giglietto, F., & Selva, D. (2014). Second Screen and Participation: A Content Analysis on a Full Season Dataset of Tweets. Journal of Communication, 64(2), 260-277. doi:10.1111/jcom.12085Grabe, M. E., & Bucy, E. P. (2009). Image Bite Politics. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372076.001.0001Guo, L., & Vargo, C. (2015). The Power of Message Networks: A Big-Data Analysis of the Network Agenda Setting Model and Issue Ownership. Mass Communication and Society, 18(5), 557-576. doi:10.1080/15205436.2015.1045300Harrington, S. (2008). Popular news in the 21st century Time for a new critical approach? Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, 9(3), 266-284. doi:10.1177/1464884907089008López-Rico, C.-M., & Peris-Blanes, À. (2017). Agenda e imagen de los candidatos de las elecciones generales de 2015 en España en programas televisivos de infoentretenimiento. El Profesional de la Información, 26(4), 611. doi:10.3145/epi.2017.jul.05Maruyama, M., Robertson, S. P., Douglas, S., Raine, R., & Semaan, B. (2017). Social Watching a Civic Broadcast. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. doi:10.1145/2998181.2998340Medhat, W., Hassan, A., & Korashy, H. (2014). Sentiment analysis algorithms and applications: A survey. Ain Shams Engineering Journal, 5(4), 1093-1113. doi:10.1016/j.asej.2014.04.011Saif, H., He, Y., & Alani, H. (2012). Semantic Sentiment Analysis of Twitter. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 508-524. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-35176-1_32Shah, D. V., Hanna, A., Bucy, E. P., Lassen, D. S., Van Thomme, J., Bialik, K., … Pevehouse, J. C. W. (2016). Dual Screening During Presidential Debates. American Behavioral Scientist, 60(14), 1816-1843. doi:10.1177/0002764216676245Sullivan, D. G., & Masters, R. D. (1988). «Happy Warriors»: Leaders’ Facial Displays, Viewers’ Emotions, and Political Support. American Journal of Political Science, 32(2), 345. doi:10.2307/2111127Thelwall, M., Buckley, K., Paltoglou, G., Cai, D., & Kappas, A. (2010). Sentiment strength detection in short informal text. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(12), 2544-2558. doi:10.1002/asi.21416Vergeer, M., & Franses, P. H. (2015). Live audience responses to live televised election debates: time series analysis of issue salience and party salience on audience behavior. Information, Communication & Society, 19(10), 1390-1410. doi:10.1080/1369118x.2015.1093526Vilares, D., Thelwall, M., & Alonso, M. A. (2015). The megaphone of the people? Spanish SentiStrength for real-time analysis of political tweets. Journal of Information Science, 41(6), 799-813. doi:10.1177/0165551515598926Wohn, D. Y., & Na, E.-K. (2011). Tweeting about TV: Sharing television viewing experiences via social media message streams. First Monday. doi:10.5210/fm.v16i3.336

A qualitative emancipatory inquiry into relationships between people with mental disorders and health professionals

Introduction: A therapeutic alliance with people is essential for the efficacy of treatments. However, the traditional paternalistic values of the Mediterranean society may be incompatible with patient autonomy. Aim: To explore the therapeutic relationship from the perspective of people diagnosed with mental disorders with health professionals, including nurses. Methods: This emancipatory research was performed through focus groups, with people with mental disorders who had a variety of diagnoses and experiences of acute and community‐based mental health services and other healthcare services. Data were analysed using the content analysis method. Results: Four main themes emerged: stereotypes and prejudice; quality of interactions and treatment; emotional and behavioural impacts; and demands. Discussion: According to the participants' descriptions, health professionals are not exempt from prejudice against persons with psychiatric diagnoses. They reported experiencing abuse of power, malpractice, and overmedication. Thus, in the Mediterranean culture, professional attitudes may represent a barrier for an appropriate therapeutic alliance, and people with mental disorders do not feel involved in making decisions about their health. Implications for practice: Knowing how people with mental disorders perceive their interactions with health professionals and the effects is necessary to move the care model towards more symmetric relationships that facilitate a therapeutic alliance

Holonomic functions of several complex variables and singularities of anisotropic Ising n-fold integrals

Lattice statistical mechanics, often provides a natural (holonomic) framework to perform singularity analysis with several complex variables that would, in a general mathematical framework, be too complex, or could not be defined. Considering several Picard-Fuchs systems of two-variables "above" Calabi-Yau ODEs, associated with double hypergeometric series, we show that holonomic functions are actually a good framework for actually finding the singular manifolds. We, then, analyse the singular algebraic varieties of the n-fold integrals $\chi^{(n)}$, corresponding to the decomposition of the magnetic susceptibility of the anisotropic square Ising model. We revisit a set of Nickelian singularities that turns out to be a two-parameter family of elliptic curves. We then find a first set of non-Nickelian singularities for $\chi^{(3)}$ and $\chi^{(4)}$, that also turns out to be rational or ellipic curves. We underline the fact that these singular curves depend on the anisotropy of the Ising model. We address, from a birational viewpoint, the emergence of families of elliptic curves, and of Calabi-Yau manifolds on such problems. We discuss the accumulation of these singular curves for the non-holonomic anisotropic full susceptibility.Comment: 36 page

Mitochondrial Bioenergetic Alterations in Mouse Neuroblastoma Cells Infected with Sindbis Virus: Implications to Viral Replication and Neuronal Death

The metabolic resources crucial for viral replication are provided by the host. Details of the mechanisms by which viruses interact with host metabolism, altering and recruiting high free-energy molecules for their own replication, remain unknown. Sindbis virus, the prototype of and most widespread alphavirus, causes outbreaks of arthritis in humans and serves as a model for the study of the pathogenesis of neurological diseases induced by alphaviruses in mice. In this work, respirometric analysis was used to evaluate the effects of Sindbis virus infection on mitochondrial bioenergetics of a mouse neuroblastoma cell lineage, Neuro 2a. The modulation of mitochondrial functions affected cellular ATP content and this was synchronous with Sindbis virus replication cycle and cell death. At 15 h, irrespective of effects on cell viability, viral replication induced a decrease in oxygen consumption uncoupled to ATP synthesis and a 36% decrease in maximum uncoupled respiration, which led to an increase of 30% in the fraction of oxygen consumption used for ATP synthesis. Decreased proton leak associated to complex I respiration contributed to the apparent improvement of mitochondrial function. Cellular ATP content was not affected by infection. After 24 h, mitochondria dysfunction was clearly observed as maximum uncoupled respiration reduced 65%, along with a decrease in the fraction of oxygen consumption used for ATP synthesis. Suppressed respiration driven by complexes I- and II-related substrates seemed to play a role in mitochondrial dysfunction. Despite the increase in glucose uptake and glycolytic flux, these changes were followed by a 30% decrease in ATP content and neuronal death. Taken together, mitochondrial bioenergetics is modulated during Sindbis virus infection in such a way as to favor ATP synthesis required to support active viral replication. These early changes in metabolism of Neuro 2a cells may form the molecular basis of neuronal dysfunction and Sindbis virus-induced encephalitis