Passive control of a biventricular assist device with compliant inflow cannulae

Rotary ventricular assist device (VAD) support of the cardiovascular system is susceptible to suction events due to the limited preload sensitivity of these devices. This may be of particular concern with rotary biventricular support (BiVAD) where the native, flow-balancing Starling response is diminished in both ventricles. The reliability of sensor and sensor-less based control systems which aim to control VAD flow based on preload have limitations and thus an alternative solution is desired. This study introduces a compliant inflow cannula (CIC) which could improve the preload sensitivity of a rotary VAD by passively altering VAD flow depending on preload. To evaluate the design, both the CIC and a standard rigid inflow cannula were inserted into a mock circulation loop to enable biventricular heart failure support using configurations of atrial and ventricular inflow, and arterial outflow cannulation. A range of left (LVAD) and right VAD (RVAD) rotational speeds were tested as well as step changes in systemic/pulmonary vascular resistance to alter relative preloads, with resulting flow rates recorded. Simulated suction events were observed, particularly at higher VAD speeds, during support with the rigid inflow cannula, while the CIC prevented suction events under all circumstances. The compliant section passively restricted its internal diameter as preload was reduced, which increased the VAD circuit resistance and thus reduced VAD flow. Therefore, a compliant inflow cannula could potentially be used as a passive control system to prevent suction events in rotary left, right and biventricular support.

Anatomic fitting of total artificial hearts for in vivo evaluation

Successful anatomic fitting of a total artificial heart (TAH) is vital to achieve optimal pump hemodynamics after device implantation. Although many anatomic fitting studies have been completed in humans prior to clinical trials, few reports exist that detail the experience in animals for in vivo device evaluation. Optimal hemodynamics are crucial throughout the in vivo phase to direct design iterations and ultimately validate device performance prior to pivotal human trials. In vivo evaluation in a sheep model allows a realistically sized representation of a smaller patient, for which smaller third-generation TAHs have the potential to treat. Our study aimed to assess the anatomic fit of a single device rotary TAH in sheep prior to animal trials and to use the data to develop a threedimensional, computer-aided design (CAD)-operated anatomic fitting tool for future TAH development. Following excision of the native ventricles above the atrio-ventricular groove, a prototype TAH was inserted within the chest cavity of six sheep (28–40 kg).Adjustable rods representing inlet and outlet conduits were oriented toward the center of each atrial chamber and the great vessels, with conduit lengths and angles recorded for future analysis. A threedimensional, CAD-operated anatomic fitting tool was then developed, based on the results of this study, and used to determine the inflow and outflow conduit orientation of the TAH. The mean diameters of the sheep left atrium, right atrium, aorta, and pulmonary artery were 39, 33, 12, and 11 mm, respectively. The center-to-center distance and outer-edge-to-outer-edge distance between the atria, found to be 39 ± 9 mm and 72 ± 17 mm in this study, were identified as the most critical geometries for successful TAH connection. This geometric constraint restricts the maximum separation allowable between left and right inlet ports of a TAH to ensure successful alignment within the available atrial circumference.

No right to live? Malaysia’s Islam and implications for its sexual minority storytellers

This paper discusses the fast emerging challenges for Malay and Muslim sexual minority storytellers in the face of an aggressive state-sponsored Islamisation of a constitutionally secular Malaysia. I examine the case of Azwan Ismail, a gay Malay and Muslim Malaysian who took part in the local ‘It Gets Better’ Project, initiated in December 2010 by Seksualiti Merdeka (an annual sexuality rights festival) and who suffered an onslaught of hostile comments from fellow Malay Muslims. In this paper, I ask how a message aimed at discouraging suicidal tendencies among sexual minority teenagers can go so wrong. In discussing the contradictions between Azwan’s constructions of self and the expectations others have of him, I highlight the challenges for Azwan’s existential self. For storytellers who are vulnerable if visible, the inevitable sharing of a personal story with unintended and hostile audiences when placed online, can have significant repercussions. The purist Sunni Islam agenda in Malaysia not only rejects the human rights of the sexual minority in Malaysia but has influenced and is often a leading hostile voice in both regional and international blocs. This self-righteous and supremacist political Islam fosters a more disabling environment for vulnerable, minority communities and their human rights. It creates a harsher reality for the sexual minority that manifests in State-endorsed discrimination, compulsory counselling, forced rehabilitation and their criminalisation. It places the right of the sexual minority to live within such a community in doubt. I draw on existing literature on how personal stories have historically been used to advance human rights. Included too, is the signifance and implications of the work by social psychologists in explaining this loss of credibility of personal stories. I then advance an analytical framework that will allow storytelling as a very individual form of witnessing to reclaim and regain its ‘truth to power’.

Creating efficiencies in teaching : where are the right resources when you need them?

Early career engineering academics are encouraged to join and contribute to established research groups at the leading edge of their discipline. This is often facilitated by various staff development and support programs. Given that academics are often appointed primarily on the basis of their research skills and outputs, such an approach is justified and is likely to result in advancing the individual academic’s career. It also enhances their capacity to attract competitive research funding, while contributing to the overall research performance of their institution, with further potential for an increased share of government funding. In contrast, there is much less clarity of direction or availability of support mechanisms for those academics in their role as teachers. Following a general induction to teaching and learning at their institution, they would commonly think about preparing some lecture materials, whether for delivery in a face-to-face or on-line modality. Typically they would look for new references and textbooks to act as a guide for preparing the content. They would probably find out how the course has been taught before, and what laboratory facilities and experiments have been used. In all of these and other related tasks, the majority of newly appointed academics are guided strongly by their own experiences as students, rather than any firm knowledge of pedagogical principles. At a time of increased demands on academics’ time, and high expectations of performance and productivity in both research and teaching, it is essential to examine possible actions to support academics in enhancing their teaching performance in effective and efficient ways. Many resources have been produced over the years in engineering schools around the world, with very high intellectual and monetary costs. In Australia, the last few years have seen a surge in the number of ALTC/OLT projects and fellowships addressing a range of engineering education issues and providing many resources. There are concerns however regarding the extent to which these resources are being effectively utilised. Why are academics still re-inventing the wheel and creating their own version of teaching resources and pedagogical practice? Why do they spend so much of their precious time in such an inefficient way? A symposium examining the above issues was conducted at the AAEE2012 conference, and some pointers to possible responses to the above questions were obtained. These are explored in this paper and supplemented by the responses to a survey of a group of engineering education leaders on some of the aspects of these research questions. The outcomes of the workshop and survey results have been analysed in view of the literature and the ALTC/OLT sponsored learning and teaching projects and resources. Other factors are discussed, including how such resources can be found, how their quality might be evaluated, and how assessment may be appropriately incorporated, again using readily available resources. This study found a strong resonance between resources reuse with work on technology acceptance (Davis, 1989), suggesting that technology adoption models could be used to encourage resource sharing. Efficient use of outstanding learning materials is an enabling approach. The paper provides some insights on the factors affecting the re-use of available resources, and makes some recommendations and suggestions on how the issue of resources re-use might be incorporated in the process of applying and completing engineering education projects.

Nicklinson v Ministry of Justice [2012] 304 (QB) : further UK developments regarding a person's right to choose when and how to die : assisted termination of life

UK High Court decision - application for declarations legitimising third party assistance in voluntary termination of life - facts - moral, social and ethical issues - analysis.

Statutory right of user - its impact in practice?

Scenario 1 A buys a two storey commercial building built along the only street frontage to the property. Vehicles cannot reach the rear of the property as the building extends across the entire width of the land. A bought the building with full knowledge that vehicular access to the rest of the property had been compromised by a desire to obtain maximum street frontage for the building which was occupied by a commercial tenant. On street parking is scarce in the surrounding area. A (to the knowledge of the adjoining owner B) constructs a carpark at the rear of the building. The employees of A’s tenant have been using the carpark obtaining access via a driveway on B’s land. To formalise this arrangement, A seeks a right of way for vehicles to travel down B’s driveway to access the carpark...

Getting the right words right

Oscar Wilde once complained that having spent an entire morning putting a comma into one of his poems, he spent the afternoon removing it. Peter Selgin calls this revisionitis: the inability of a writer to part with their work, the compulsion to go on fiddling and picking until there is nothing left to fret about. There can be real danger, Selgin warns, in fussing with things. The question then of how much to revise or how little to rewrite is one without certain answer and writers themselves hold differing views...

Baidu’s perfect paradox : free speech and the right to censor

China’s biggest search engine has a constitutional right to filter its search results, a US court found last month. But that’s just the start of the story. Eight New York-based pro-democracy activists sued Baidu Inc in 2011, seeking damages because Baidu prevents their work from showing up in search results. Baidu follows Chinese law that requires it to censor politically sensitive results. But in what the plaintiffs’ lawyer has dubbed a “perfect paradox”, US District Judge Jesse Furman has dismissed the challenge, explaining that to hold Baidu liable for its decisions to censor pro-democracy content would itself infringe the right to free speech.

Do left and right asymmetries of hemispheric preference interact with attention to predict local and global performance in applied tasks?

Many cognitive neuroscience studies show that the ability to attend to and identify global or local information is lateralised between the two hemispheres in the human brain; the left hemisphere is biased towards the local level, whereas the right hemisphere is biased towards the global level. Results of two studies show attention-focused people with a right ear preference (biased towards the left hemisphere) are better at local tasks, whereas people with a left ear preference (biased towards the right hemisphere) are better at more global tasks. In a third study we determined if right hemisphere-biased followers who attend to global stimuli are likely to have a stronger relationship between attention and globally based supervisor ratings of performance. Results provide evidence in support of this hypothesis. Our research supports our model and suggests that the interaction between attention and lateral preference is an important and novel predictor of work-related outcomes.

Right to trial by jury - construction of Uniform Civil Procedure r474

In Smit v Chan [2001] QSC 493 (Supreme Court of Queensland, S1233 of 1995, Mullins J, 21.12.2001) the sixth defendant successfully obtained an order that a complex medical negligence action be tried without a jury. This was the first application to be decided under r474 of UCPR 1999, and the decision is a significant precedent for defendants in similar cases who want to avoid the unpredictability of outcome and the inflated damages awards sometimes associated with jury trials.

Reproductive Health as a Human Right: A Matter of Access or Provision?

This article seeks to understand why, despite over three decades of claiming women's reproductive health as a human right, we have seen little progress in reducing their health inequalities and poor health outcomes. I argue that one reason for this lack of progress may be due to a failure to clearly articulate the responsibilities of key actors, crucially states, in ensuring that women have access to, and provision of, services required to realize their reproductive rights. What is needed, this article suggests, is a framework that can translate decades of rights language into action and specifically identify the provisions required to address women's health.

Who selects the 'right' directors? An examination of the association between board selection, gender diversity and outcomes

Using a sample of companies from the top 500 listed firms in Australia, we investigate whether the presence of a designated nomination committee and female representation on the nomination committee affect board gender diversity. We also examine whether gender diversity on the board affects firm risk and financial performance. We find that board gender diversity is significantly and positively associated with the presence of a designated nomination committee and that female representation on the nomination committee is a significant explanatory factor of increasing board gender diversity following the release of the 2010 Australian Securities Exchange Corporate Governance Council (ASXCGC) recommendations. Further, our results support the business case for board gender diversity as we find greater gender diversity moderates excessive firm risk which in turn improves firms’ financial performance. Our results are robust after correcting for selection bias and controlling for other board, firm and industry characteristics.

Disentangling the cognitive components supporting Austin Maze performance in left versus right temporal lobe epilepsy

Neuropsychological tests requiring patients to find a path through a maze can be used to assess visuospatial memory performance in temporal lobe pathology, particularly in the hippocampus. Alternatively, they have been used as a task sensitive to executive function in patients with frontal lobe damage. We measured performance on the Austin Maze in patients with unilateral left and right temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), with and without hippocampal sclerosis, compared to healthy controls. Performance was correlated with a number of other neuropsychological tests to identify the cognitive components that may be associated with poor Austin Maze performance. Patients with right TLE were significantly impaired on the Austin Maze task relative to patients with left TLE and controls, and error scores correlated with their performance on the Block Design task. The performance of patients with left TLE was also impaired relative to controls; however, errors correlated with performance on tests of executive function and delayed recall. The presence of hippocampal sclerosis did not have an impact on maze performance. A discriminant function analysis indicated that the Austin Maze alone correctly classified 73.5% of patients as having right TLE. In summary, impaired performance on the Austin Maze task is more suggestive of right than left TLE; however, impaired performance on this visuospatial task does not necessarily involve the hippocampus. The relationship of the Austin Maze task with other neuropsychological tests suggests that differential cognitive components may underlie performance decrements in right versus left TLE.