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People can often find themselves out of their depth when they face knowledge-based problems, such as faulty technology, or medical concerns. This can also happen in everyday domains that users are simply inexperienced with, like cooking. These are common exploratory search conditions, where users don’t quite know enough about the domain to know if they are submitting a good query, nor if the results directly resolve their need or can be translated to do so. In such situations, people turn to their friends for help, or to forums like StackOverflow, so that someone can explain things to them and translate information to their specific need. This short paper describes work-in-progress within a Google-funded project focusing on Search Literacy in these situations, where improved search skills will help users to learn as they search, to search better, and to better comprehend the results. Focusing on the technology-problem domain, we present initial results from a qualitative study of questions asked and answers given in StackOverflow, and present plans for designing search engine support to help searchers learn as they search. more...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE As has recently been discovered, paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (PAF) can be induced by focal extrasystoles or tachycardia. This raises the question of whether this form of atrial fibrillation can be cured by high-frequency catheter ablation of the focal trigger. PATIENTS AND METHODS Seven men and eleven women (mean age 45.6 +/- 11 years) with severe symptoms and treatment-resistant PAF underwent electrophysiological tests with the aim of high-frequency catheter ablation, if long-term ECG monitoring had demonstrated frequent atrial extrasystoles or tachycardia as pointer to a focal origin. Ablation was performed at the point of earliest excitation after the origin of the ectopic focus had been localized. The end-point was reached if the atrial ectopic rhythm had ceased for more than 60 min. RESULTS In 18 of the 20 patients an ectopic focus was found and successfully ablated (1 in the superior vena cava, 3 in the right atrium and 16 in a pulmonary vein). Atrial ectopic beats recurred within 24 hours of ablation in 6 of the 14 patients with a pulmonary vein focus: a second focus was found in two, re-emergence of the original focus in two, no re-investigation in another two. 13 of the 18 patients have had no further symptoms after a mean follow-up of 11 months without anti-arrhythmia treatment. CONCLUSION The results indicate that focally induced paroxysmal atrial fibrillation can be cured by locally applied high-frequency ablation. more...

Motivated by applications in communications, we consider linear discrete time systems over the finite ring $Z_{p^r}$. We solve the open problem of deriving a theory of row reduced representations for these systems. We introduce a less restrictive form of representation than the adapted form introduced by Fagnani and Zampieri. We call this form the ``composed form''. We define the concept of ``$p$-predictable degree property'' and ``$p$-row reduced''. We demonstrate that these concepts, coupled with the composed form, provide a natural setting that extends several classical results from the field case to the ring case. In particular, the classical rank test on the leading row coefficient matrix is generalized. We show that any annihilator of a behavior $\mathfrak{B}$ of a pre-specified degree is uniquely parametrized with finitely many coefficients in terms of a kernel representation in $p$-row-reduced composed form. The underlying theory is the theory of ``reduced $p$-basis'' for submodules of $Z^q_{p^r}[\xi]$ that is developed in this paper. We show how to construct a $p$-row reduced kernel representation in composed form by constructing a reduced $p$-basis for the module $\mathfrak{B}^{\perp}$. more...

For significant urine analysis the sample has to be devoid of contamination. Ultrasonic based puncture of the urinary bladder (cystocentesis) is a standardised procedure to collect such a sample [ref:1]. Relocation of bacteria from the lower urinary tract into the bladder as found after catheter[for full text, please go to the a.m. URL], InVeST 2015: International Veterinary Simulation in Teaching Conference more...

Fragestellung/Einleitung: Aus tierschutzrechtlichen Aspekten kann die Nahtübung der modifizierten Bühner-Naht zur Fixierung eines Vaginalprolaps (Technik nach Bickhardt 1993) [ref:1], nur von einer begrenzten Anzahl an Studierenden und nicht mehrmals am selben lebenden Tier[for full text, please go to the a.m. URL], Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Medizinische Ausbildung (GMA) more...