OBJECTIVES Transcatheter closure of a secundum atrial septal defect (ASD II) has become an effective alternative for surgical treatment. In this study we evaluated the correlation between the two-dimensional transoesophageal echocardiographic (2D TEE) sizing of ASDs and the actual diameter of occluders in patients undergoing device closure. METHODS The records of 54 patients who underwent tra...

Background There have been no previous attempts to undertake a national burden of disease (BoD) study in South Africa. Only about 35 countries worldwide have initiated or completed BoD studies. Analyses of SA’s existing mortality data highlighted deficiencies in the death statistics, with under-registration and misclassification. In 1996, the latest year for which full cause of death data are a...

Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) is a widely used index of water-quality assessment. Since bioelectrochemical BOD biosensors require anaerobic conditions for anodic reactions, they are not directly used in aerobic environments such as aeration tanks. Normally, the BOD biosensors are closed-type, where the anode is packed inside a closed chamber to avoid exposure to oxygen. In this study, a novel...

OBJECTIVES We aimed to assess the burden of disease (BOD) of the residents living in contaminated coastal area with oil spill and also analysed the BOD attributable to the oil spill by disease, age, sex and subregion. DESIGN Health impact assessment by measuring years lived with disability (YLD) due to an oil spill. SETTING A whole population of a community affected by an anthropogenic envi...

The debate between hierarchical versus sequential structure in language acquisition has recently flared up again (cf. Frank, Bod & Christiansen 2012; Pesetsky 2013). Roughly, the nativist view on language endorses that human language acquisition is guided by innate rules that operate on hierarchical structures. The empiricist view assumes that language acquisition is the product of abstractions...

Design is an essential part of all games and narratives, yet designing and implementing believable game strategies can be time consuming and error-prone. This motivates the development and application of systems AI methodologies. Here we demonstrate for the first time the iterative development of agent behaviour for a real-time strategy game (here StarCraft) utilising Behaviour Oriented Design ...

Bimbo – Ricolino candy manufacturing plant in Mexico City was discharging wastewater with high amount of fats oil and grease and dissolved sugars. Local regulatory agency requested that suspended solids, oil and grease and dissolved BOD be almost completely removed prior to discharge to municipal plant. The available real estate in Mexico City was very limited. A multistep treatment system was ...

Organic pollution of rivers by wastewater discharge from human activities negatively impacts people and ecosystems. Without treatment, pollution control relies on a combination of natural degradation and dilution by natural runoff to reduce downstream effects. We quantify here for the first time the global sanitation crisis through its impact on organic river pollution from the threats of (1) i...

Since the demand for more bandwidth, agile infrastructures and services grows, it becomes challenging for Service Providers like GÉANT to manage the proprietary underlay, while keeping costs low. In such a scenario, Software Defined Networking (SDN), open hardware and open source software prove to be key components to address those challenges. After one year of development, SDX-L2 and BoD, the ...

The demand for efficient, scalable and cost effective mobile information access systems is rapidly growing. Radio frequency broadcast plays a major role in mobile computing, and there is a need to provide service models for broadcasting information according to mobile users’ needs. In this paper we present a model called Broadcast on Demand (BoD), which provides timely broadcasts according to r...