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CASA, the Common Astronomy Software Applications, is the primary data processing software for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), and is frequently used also for other radio telescopes. The CASA software can handle data from single-dish, aperture-synthesis, and Very Long Baseline Interferometery (VLBI) telescopes. One of its core functionalities is to support the calibration and imaging pipelines for ALMA, VLA, VLA Sky Survey (VLASS), and the Nobeyama 45m telescope. This paper presents a high-level overview of the basic structure of the CASA software, as well as procedures for calibrating and imaging astronomical radio data in CASA. CASA is being developed by an international consortium of scientists and software engineers based at the National Radio Astronomical Observatory (NRAO), the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), and the Joint Institute for VLBI European Research Infrastructure Consortium (JIV-ERIC), under the guidance of NRAO., Comment: Accepted for publication in PASP (20 pages, 4 figures). Joint publication with CASA-VLBI paper

Introduction Left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) play a fundamental role in treating end-stage heart failure. Outflow graft stenosis (OGS) represents a serious complication that can occur at a variable time point after the implantation, although typically of the order of months to years. Different types of OGS, both intrinsic and external, were described. Notwithstanding the etiology, this clinical scenario poses a life and health-threatening complication requiring timely and precise diagnosis followed by appropriate intervention. Case Report We present a case of a 72-years-old woman on LVAD HeartMate II (HM II) support. Three years after the index implantation, she presented with clinical symptoms of outflow graft stenosis. The patient was admitted to the hospital due to”low-flow“ alarms of HMII. The CT scan revealed distal outflow graft stenosis suggestive of kinking of the graft. Subsequent percutaneous transluminal stenting of the graft was performed. However, after the intervention, signs of hemodynamic compromise persisted. Both angiography and repeated CT scans verified peculiar pattern of the proximal shift of the stenotic segment relative to the implanted stent. Given this specific feature, a diagnosis was reclassified as a previously reported pattern of the outflow graft twist scenario, and surgical subxiphoid approach reexploration was indicated. On inspection, after disconnecting the bend relief from the pump body massive”gelly mass“ plasma transudate located in the interspace between the graft and the bend relief was observed. Immediately after removing compressing gelly mass, hemodynamic and pump parameters promptly resolved, and the bend relief was re-attached. Further patient follow-up remains uneventful to the date. Summary Our observation suggests that the diagnostic assessment of the outflow graft stenosis may be confusing and challenging. As plasma transudate likely develops over an extended period of time once a distal orifice of the bend relief already gets entrapped within the adjacent adhesion, the outflow graft may become contained within incompressible interspace while limited by tight connection to the pump body. That said, the graft constriction migration upon stenting can easily get misdiagnosed as a pattern suggestive of the intrinsic twist instead of correct”pseudotwist“ diagnosis associated with the external contained compartment compression.

We describe a new protocol deployed at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to support the distribution of data in support of commensal data analysis. The protocol, vys, is designed to provide access to a high time resolution data stream while a primary observation continues with the typical (lower) time resolution data stream. This form of dual time resolution, commensal observing has been implemented to enable the search for millisecond astrophysical transient events by a new, dedicated compute cluster located at the VLA. The fast transient detection system, realfast, performs real-time analysis in situ to detect events of interest and record relatively short duration data “cut-outs” of those events. By selectively recording high time resolution data, provided by vys at rates of up to 1.4[Formula: see text]GB[Formula: see text]s[Formula: see text], realfast will reduce the recorded data volume by an estimated factor of up to 1000. This makes it possible to search for transients commensally in a high data rate stream over the thousands of hours needed to find the rarest events.

Radio interferometers have the ability to precisely localize and better characterize the properties of sources. This ability is having a powerful impact on the study of fast radio transients, where a few milliseconds of data is enough to pinpoint a source at cosmological distances. However, recording interferometric data at millisecond cadence produces a terabyte-per-hour data stream that strains networks, computing systems, and archives. This challenge mirrors that of other domains of science, where the science scope is limited by the computational architecture as much as the physical processes at play. Here, we present a solution to this problem in the context of radio transients: realfast, a commensal, fast transient search system at the Jansky Very Large Array. Realfast uses a novel architecture to distribute fast-sampled interferometric data to a 32-node, 64-GPU cluster for real-time imaging and transient detection. By detecting transients in situ, we can trigger the recording of data for those rare, brief instants when the event occurs and reduce the recorded data volume by a factor of 1000. This makes it possible to commensally search a data stream that would otherwise be impossible to record. This system will search for millisecond transients in more than 1000 hours of data per year, potentially localizing several Fast Radio Bursts, pulsars, and other sources of impulsive radio emission. We describe the science scope for realfast, the system design, expected outcomes, and ways real-time analysis can help in other fields of astrophysics., Comment: Accepted to ApJS Special Issue on Data; 11 pages, 4 figures

Left ventricular assist devices (LVAD), currently used in treatment of terminal heart failure, are working on principle of rotary pump, which generates continuous blood flow. Non-pulsatile flow is supposed to expose endothelial cells to high stress and potential damage. Therefore, we investigated longitudinal changes in concentration of circulating endothelial microparticles (EMP) as a possible marker of endothelial damage before and after implantation of LVAD. Study population comprised 30 patients with end-stage heart failure indicated for implantation of the Heart Mate II LVAD. Concentrations of microparticles were measured as nanomoles per liter relative to phosphatidylserine before and 3 months after implantation. At 3 months after implantation we observed significant decrease in concentration of EMP [5.89 (95 % CI 4.31-8.03) vs. 3.69 (95 % CI 2.70-5.03), p=0.03] in the whole group; there was no difference observed between patients with ischemic etiology of heart failure (n=18) and with heart failure of non-ischemic etiology (n=12). In addition, heart failure etiology had no effect on the rate of EMP concentration decrease with time. These results indicate possibility that LVAD do not cause vascular damage 3 months after implantation. Whether these results suggest improvement of vascular wall function and of endothelium is to be proved in long-term studies.

This paper aims on a quality estimation of voice services in converged corporate networks. Besides the techno-centric Quality of Service (QoS) metrics a research area called Quality of Experience (QoE) provides metrics and methods for quality evaluation from the end-user's perspective. This contribution focuses on a QoE estimation of Voice over IP (VoIP) calls. Existing methods of voice quality estimation are compared on different voice codecs tested on a network topology suffering from distortions of real network. Finally, a regression analysis is employed to provide better understanding of impact of network conditions (delay, jitter, packet loss) on the VoIP service quality. The results can improve the voice quality monitoring systems in corporate networks.

In this paper, an overview of scheduling mechanisms constructed to enhance availability of services an embedded real-time system delivers is introduced along with the concept of a framework for comparison of the mechanisms. The framework expects that XML-based descriptions of the following parts of the system are available at its input: target device, operating system, application, scheduler and specification of experiments. On basis of the inputs, the framework is able to produce source-codes for a given platform and an operating system and after their compilation and programming by third-party tools, to perform and evaluate the experiments according to their specification. The applicability of the framework has been shown on selected component-of-the-shelf components such as a microcontroller, an operating system and on several sets of artificial as well as real-world applications running under limiting conditions such as insufficient amount of power and/or computational (re)sources. At the end of the paper, several mechanisms are evaluated on basis of the framework in order to show its practical applicability and kind of results achievable at its output.

We describe a very rare case of outflow cannula obstruction with fungal infectious thrombus formation. Discussion includes the etiology, diagnosis, and management of fungal infection complications related with long-term mechanical circulatory support. Left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) are increasingly used as bridge to transplant and permanent long-term therapy in the population with end-stage heart failure. Even though better clinical outcomes have been achieved with the newer-generation continuous-flow devices, infection complications are still a major risk for patients with continuous-flow LVAD implantation in long-term follow-up [Ann Thorac Surg 90:1270-1277, 2010]. Device-related infections can be categorized as driveline infections, pump-pocket infections, and LVAD-associated endocarditis [Expert Rev Med Devices 8: 627-634, 2011]. The microbiological profile is very heterogeneous; the most common pathogens are Staphylococcus, Pseudomonas, Streptococcus species, and Candida. Severe fungal infection may lead to dysfunction of the LVAD due to obstructive mass formation within the device. Due to the only anecdotal reports in the current literature, we present a very rare case of outflow fungal infectious thrombus formation leading to outflow cannula obstruction in patient with LVAD.

For the quantum mechanical Ising model in a strong transverse field we show that the convergence of the ground-state energy per site as the volume goes to infinity has an Ornstein-Zernicke behavior. That is, if the diameter of thed-dimensional lattice is given byL, the absolute value of the difference of the ground-state energy per site and its limit is asymptotically exp(-ξL)L−d/2 for some positive constantξ. We also show that the correlation function has the same behavior. Our results are derived by cluster expansions, using a method of Bricmont and Frohlich which we extend to the quantum mechanical case.

We show that in the ground states of the infinite-volume limits of both the spin-1/2 anisotropic antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model (in dimensions d⩾2), and the ferromagnetic Ising model in a strong transverse field (in dimensions d⩾1) there is an interval in the spectrum above the mass gap which contains a continuous band of energy levels. We use the methods of Bricmont and Frohlich to develop our expansions, as well as a method of Kennedy and Tasaki to do the expansions in the quantum mechanical limit. Where the expansions converge, they are then shown to have spectral measures which have absolutely continuous parts on intervals above the mass gaps.

The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) will, when it is completed in 2012, be the world's largest millimeter & sub-millimeter radio telescope. It will consist of 64 antennas, each one 12 meters in diameter, connected as an interferometer. The ALMA Test Interferometer Control System (TICS) was developed as a prototype for the ALMA control system. Its initial task was to provide sufficient functionality for the evaluation of the prototype antennas. The main antenna evaluation tasks include surface measurements via holography and pointing accuracy, measured at both optical and millimeter wavelengths. In this paper we will present the design of TICS, which is a distributed computing environment. In the test facility there are four computers: three real-time computers running VxWorks (one on each antenna and a central one) and a master computer running Linux. These computers communicate via Ethernet, and each of the real-time computers is connected to the hardware devices via an extension of the CAN bus. We will also discuss our experience with this system and outline changes we are making in light of our experiences.