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Catheter ablation is the treatment of choice for patients with symptomatic accessory pathways (APs) causing recurrent atrioventricular reciprocating tachycardia or in situations where APs conduct rapidly, posing a risk of sudden cardiac death. Conventional AP mapping relies on point-by-point assessment of local electrograms looking closely for pathway electrograms or early atrial or ventricular electrograms, which may be challenging and time consuming. Recently, open window mapping (OWM) using 3D navigational systems has emerged as a novel technique to help localise and ablate APs. OWM has significant advantages over conventional point-by-point mapping techniques. The purpose of this review is to summarise the currently available literature on the OWM technique and to highlight the technical aspects and mapping considerations for OWM, including specific cases demonstrating its utility.

Introduction Pulmonary vein (PV) isolation has been shown to reduce atrial fibrillation (AF) burden and symptoms in patients. However, to date previous studies have been unblinded raising the possibility of a placebo effect to account for differences in outcomes. Hypothesis & Methods The objective of this study is to compare PV isolation to a sham procedure in patients with symptomatic AF. The SHAM‐PVI study is a double blind randomized controlled clinical trial. 140 patients with symptomatic paroxysmal or persistent AF will be randomized to either PV isolation (with cryoballoon ablation) or a sham procedure (with phrenic nerve pacing). All patients will receive an implantable loop recorder. The primary outcome is total AF burden at 6 months postrandomisation (excluding the 3 month blanking period). Key secondary outcomes include (1) time to symptomatic and asymptomatic atrial tachyarrhythmia (2) total atrial tachyarrhythmia episodes and (3) patient reported outcome measures. Results Enrollment was initiated in January 2020. Through April 2023 119 patients have been recruited. Results are expected to be disseminated in 2024. Conclusion This study compares PV isolation using cryoablation to a sham procedure. The study will estimate the effect of PV isolation on AF burden. The SHAM‐PVI study timeline. One hundred forty patients will be enrolled and randomized in a 1:1 ratio to receive cryoablation or a sham procedure. All patients will receive an implantable loop recorder. Outcomes will be assessed at 3 and 6 months post‐randomisation with the first 3 months constituting the blanking period.

A computerized system has been developed for the preparation and dispatch of telegrams by the Amnesty International USA Urgent Action Network. The system includes automation of billing procedures, funds receipt management, and membership management for a 2000 volunteer database. The system currently produces and sends an average of 1000 telegrams, world-wide, each month. This paper describes the decision tasks and the tools created to aid decision-making for the Telegram Pledge Program.

Abstract This paper focuses on an important step in the creation of a system of meaning representation and the development of semantically annotated parallel corpora, for use in applications such as machine translation, question answering, text summarization, and information retrieval. The work described below constitutes the first effort of any kind to annotate multiple translations of foreign-language texts with interlingual content. Three levels of representation are introduced: deep syntactic dependencies (IL0), intermediate semantic representations (IL1), and a normalized representation that unifies conversives, nonliteral language, and paraphrase (IL2). The resulting annotated, multilingually induced, parallel corpora will be useful as an empirical basis for a wide range of research, including the development and evaluation of interlingual NLP systems and paraphrase-extraction systems as well as a host of other research and development efforts in theoretical and applied linguistics, foreign language pedagogy, translation studies, and other related disciplines. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

The building of a decision support system (dss) calls for a balance to be struck between the computer's calculation and logic capabilities and the freewheeling judgment of its human operator. This paper reports on a survey which was conducted to determine how dss builders create this balance. The survey results confirm definition of five mechanisms employed by dss builders in the construction of fifteen different dss: process dependence, total passthrough, model functional reversal, model judgmental, and trial and error. The paper documents these mechanisms and reports on the survey.

For a Decision Support System (DSS) to be process independent, it must be flexible. That is, it must be possible to enter and use it at any point in the decision process. Process flexibility can be obtained by reversing (inverting) model functions. Using a DSS for ski area design, we implement functional reversal and deal with further operational issues such as model choice and decision intent. A trade-off among logic design, model code, and dialog code is faced in building this flexible DSS for ski area design.

One of the more significant problems facing the Management Scientist is the difference between the data required for a model and the data available from existing information systems. This is a particularly acute problem when one is cost-modeling government operations. Government general accounting systems are established to keep tabs on the obligation of monies appropriated and do not lend themselves to the definitional forms required for operations costing. To redefine this accounting data is a research task in itself which must be accomplished prior to model building. This is the story of one such effort; it shows that redefinition can be successfully accomplished, but that the research to normalize the data may very well account for the majority of the modeling task.

This paper examines differences between two professional translations into English of the same Spanish newspaper article. Among other explanations for these differences, such as outright errors and free variation, we find a significant number of differences are due to differing beliefs on the part of the translators about the subject matter and about what the author wished to say. Furthermore, these differences are consistent with divergent global views of the translators about the likelihood of future events (earthquakes and tidal waves) and about (rational or irrational) reactions of people to such likelihood. We discuss the requirements for a pragmatics-based model of translation that would account for these differences.

A computerized system has been developed for the preparation and dispatch of telegrams by the Amnesty International USA Urgent Action Network. The system includes automation of billing procedures, funds receipt management, and membership management for a 2,000 volunteer database. The system currently produces and sends an average of 1,000 telegrams, world-wide, each month. The Telegram Pledge Program decision support system pulls together files, data, and decision actions from 2 personal computer databases, a number of document files, a wall chart of pledges used, and a manual ledger. It automates the telegram production process, debits the appropriate pledge account, records pledge status, and sets up automatic billing and funds control. Both system use and system management have been streamlined to free time for the critical telegram production process.