Safety, Efficacy and Evidence Base for Use of the Subcutaneous Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator

The trans-venous implantable cardioverter defibrillator (TV-ICD) is effective in treating life-threatening ventricular arrhythmia and reduces mortality in high-risk patients. However, there are significant short- and long-term complications that are associated with intravascular leads. These shortcomings are mostly relevant in young patients with long life expectancy and low risk of death from non-arrhythmic causes. Drawbacks of trans-venous leads recently led to the development of the entirely subcutaneous implantable cardioverter defibrillator (S-ICD). The S-ICD does not require vascular access or permanent intravascular defibrillation leads. Therefore, it is expected to overcome many complications associated with conventional ICDs. This review highlights data on safety and efficacy of the S-ICD and is envisioned to help in identifying the role of this device in clinical practice

leave a trace - A People Tracking System Meets Anomaly Detection

Video surveillance always had a negative connotation, among others because of the loss of privacy and because it may not automatically increase public safety. If it was able to detect atypical (i.e. dangerous) situations in real time, autonomously and anonymously, this could change. A prerequisite for this is a reliable automatic detection of possibly dangerous situations from video data. This is done classically by object extraction and tracking. From the derived trajectories, we then want to determine dangerous situations by detecting atypical trajectories. However, due to ethical considerations it is better to develop such a system on data without people being threatened or even harmed, plus with having them know that there is such a tracking system installed. Another important point is that these situations do not occur very often in real, public CCTV areas and may be captured properly even less. In the artistic project leave a trace the tracked objects, people in an atrium of a institutional building, become actor and thus part of the installation. Visualisation in real-time allows interaction by these actors, which in turn creates many atypical interaction situations on which we can develop our situation detection. The data set has evolved over three years and hence, is huge. In this article we describe the tracking system and several approaches for the detection of atypical trajectories

Understanding Differential Equations Using Mathematica and Interactive Demonstrations

The solution of differential equations using the software package Mathematica is discussed in this paper. We focus on two functions, DSolve and NDSolve, and give various examples of how one can obtain symbolic or numerical results using these functions. An overview of the Wolfram Demonstrations Project (http://demonstrations.wolfram.com) is given, along with various novel user-contributed examples in the field of differential equations. The use of these Demonstrations in a classroom setting is elaborated upon to emphasize their significance for education

GIS system and livestock field survey as tools to manage the potential reducing of fuel load for fire prevention

This study would mark the potential role of grazing by Podolian cattle for reducing fuel load of fire prevention and propagation. The interconnection of Geographic Information System (GIS) and livestock field survey allowed to monitor different grazing and nograzing areas in Basilicata region. Fifteen grazing areas were monitored for five years during the summer pasture, when the Podolian cattle graze on green grazing areas. These areas were monitored by using GIS system and GPS application. The potential impact of Podolian cattle was monitored for the same time period. The cattle consistency allowed to calculate different parameters: livestock unit, dry matter intake and stocking estimation of potential amount of dry matter intake to understand the removal biomass in order to reduce the fuel load for fire prevention. The spatial analysis (GIS) showed that there were only four grazing areas burned during the time sampling, compared to the surrounding areas used as control (no-grazing area). Therefore an efficient management of grazing by Podolian cattle could be an important tool to prevent the fire propagation

Convergence Radii for Eigenvalues of Tri--diagonal Matrices

Consider a family of infinite tri--diagonal matrices of the form $L+ zB,$ where the matrix $L$ is diagonal with entries $L_{kk}= k^2,$ and the matrix $B$ is off--diagonal, with nonzero entries $B_{k,{k+1}}=B_{{k+1},k}= k^\alpha, 0 \leq \alpha < 2.$ The spectrum of $L+ zB$ is discrete. For small $|z|$ the $n$-th eigenvalue $E_n (z), E_n (0) = n^2,$ is a well--defined analytic function. Let $R_n$ be the convergence radius of its Taylor's series about $z= 0.$ It is proved that $$ R_n \leq C(\alpha) n^{2-\alpha} \quad \text{if} 0 \leq \alpha <11/6.$