bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Spatiotemporal characteristics of atrial fibrillation electrograms: A novel marker for arrhythmia stability and termination
Authors: Thanigaimani Shivshankar , Brooks Anthony G. , Kuklik Pawel , Twomey Darragh J. , Franklin Samantha , Noschka Erik , Chapman Darius , Pathak Rajeev K. , Mahajan Rajiv , Sanders Prashanthan , Lau Dennis H. 
Published: July 2016

AbstractBackgroundSequentially mapped complex fractionated atrial electrograms (CFAE) and dominant frequency (DF) sites have been targeted during catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation (AF). However, these strategies have yielded variable success and have not been shown to correlate consistently with AF dynamics. Here, we evaluated whether the spatiotemporal stability of CFAE and DF may be a better marker of AF sustenance and termination.MethodsEighteen sheep with 12 weeks of “one‐kidney, one‐clip” hypertension underwent open‐chest studies. A total of 42 self‐terminating (28–100 s) and 6 sustained (>15 min) AF episodes were mapped using a custom epicardial plaque and analyzed in 4‐s epochs for CFAE, using the NavX CFE‐m algorithm, and DF, using a Fast Fourier Transform. The spatiotemporal stability index (STSI) was calculated using the intraclass correlation coefficient of consecutive AF epochs.ResultsA total of 67,733 AF epochs were analyzed. During AF initiation, mean CFE‐m and the STSI of CFE‐m/DF were similar between sustained and self‐terminating episodes, although median DF was higher in sustained AF (p=0.001). During sustained AF, the STSI of CFE‐m increased significantly (p=0.02), whereas mean CFE‐m (p=0.5), median DF (p=0.07), and the STSI of DF remained unchanged (p=0.5). Prior to AF termination, the STSI of CFE‐m was significantly lower (p<0.001), with a physiologically non‐significant decrease in median DF (−0.3 Hz, p=0.006) and no significant changes in mean CFE‐m (p=0.14) or the STSI of DF (p=0.06).ConclusionsSpatiotemporal stabilization of CFAE favors AF sustenance and its destabilization heralds AF termination. The STSI of CFE‐m is more representative of AF dynamics than are the STSI of DF, sequential mean CFE‐m, or median DF.
A multicenter study of the need of additional freezing for cryoballoon ablation in patients with atrial fibrillation: The AD‐Balloon study
Authors: Miyamoto Koji , Doi Atsushi , Amaya Naoki , Morita Yoshiaki , Noda Takashi , Asakura Masanori , Hamasaki Toshimitsu , Tada Hiroshi , Takagi Masahiko , Yasuda Satoshi , Kusano Kengo 
Published: July 2016

AbstractBackgroundPulmonary vein isolation (PVI) is a cornerstone of catheter ablation in patients with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (PAF), and balloon‐based ablation has been recently performed worldwide. Ablation using the second‐generation cryoballoon (CB2) (Arctic Front AdvanceTM, Medtronic, MN, USA) is useful for PVI; however, there is some debate concerning the optimal freezing time and number of cycles after PVI is achieved.MethodsThe AD‐Balloon study was designed as a prospective, multicenter, randomized clinical trial to evaluate the optimal strategy (freezing cycles) of CB2 ablation (UMIN Clinical Trials Registry UMIN000020130). The main objective of this study is to investigate the need for an additional freezing cycle after PVI in patients treated with CB2 ablation. Patients will be randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to treatment with additional freezing (AD group) or without additional freezing (non‐AD group). In the AD group, 3 min of additional freezing time will be applied in all pulmonary veins after PVI is confirmed at the previous freezing cycle. In the non‐AD group, no additional freezing will be applied in all pulmonary veins after PVI is confirmed. The primary endpoint of this study is the occurrence of atrial tachyarrhythmias within a 1‐year follow‐up period. We will enroll 110 consecutive patients with PAF. We will also investigate the usefulness of delayed‐enhancement magnetic resonance imaging to assess the ablation lesions caused by CB2 ablation.ResultsThe results of this study are currently under investigation.ConclusionThe AD‐Balloon study would assess the need for an additional freezing cycle after PVI is achieved. Our findings may contribute to further improvement of the CB2 ablation procedure.
L’incidence de l’hypotension post-intubation endotrachéale chez des patients en salle de réanimation: impact des définitions
Authors: Lévesque Marie-Claire , Le Sage Natalie , Berthelot Simon , Boucher Valérie , Mercier Éric , Émond Marcel 
Published: July 2016

ABSTRACTObjectifNotre objectif primaire est de mesurer l’incidence d’HPI selon quatre définitions différentes retrouvées dans la littérature. Notre principal objectif secondaire est d’évaluer l’impact de la présence d’instabilité hémodynamique avant l’intubation sur l’incidence d’HPI. Le deuxième objectif secondaire consiste à déterminer l’incidence de l’HPI en fonction de l’intervalle de temps durant lequel la première hypotension survient.MéthodeUne cohorte prospective a été constituée par les patients intubés en salle de réanimation à l’hôpital de l’Enfant-Jésus entre le 28/06/2011 et le 12/07/2012. L’HPI était globalement définie comme ≥1 mesure de tension artérielle systolique <90 mmHg suivant l’intubation. Les différentes définitions étudiées faisaient varier le temps de mesure de la tension artérielle (TA) après l’intubation, soit 1) jusqu’à 5 minutes, 2) jusqu’à 15 minutes, 3) jusqu’à 30 minutes et 4) en tout temps lors du séjour en salle de réanimation.RésultatAu cours de la période à l’étude, 155 patients ont été intubés sur place dont 81 patients qui répondaient aux critères d’inclusion. L’incidence de l’HPI pour chaque définition est respectivement de 9.9%, 18.5%, 24.7% et 28.4%. La comparaison entre chacune de ces incidences révèle une différence statistiquement significative (p<0.05), à l’exception des deux dernières. L’incidence cumulative d’HPI à tout moment suivant l’intubation chez les patients présentant une hypotension pré-intubation est de 62.5% (IC 95% 28.5-87.5) en opposition aux patients hémodynamiquement stables en pré-intubation qui présentaient une incidence d’HPI de 24.7% (IC 95% 16.1-35.8).ConclusionL’hypotension post-intubation est un effet indésirable fréquent chez les patients au département d’urgence et son incidence varie de façon significative en fonction de la définition temporelle utilisée au sein d’une même cohorte de patients.
South Africa's Strategic Vulnerabilities: The ‘Citadel Assumption’
Authors: Baker Pauline H. 
Published: July 2016

In assessing the patterns of conflict in southern Africa, it is commonplace to stress the theme of South Africa's overwhelming strengths against the threat of black nationalist forces. Most observers support this thesis of South African invulnerability by citing the country's enormous mineral resources, impressive military capabilities, continuing strategic importance and economic links with the west. Leonard Thompson (in Thompson and Butler, 1975: 408) ably summarized this popular view, citing other noteworthy domestic and international variables to buttress the point:In resisting “terrorists” South Africa's government has the ardent support of four million Whites who consider their very survival is at stake. South Africa has a far more powerful industrial base and far more formidable military equipment than any government that has been overthrown by guerrilla forces. It has the capacity to produce atomic weapons; the terrain in the vicinity of its borders is treeless or sparsely wooded savanna, which affords guerrillas scant opportunity for concealment. Moreover, the South African revolutionaries in exile are divided into rival factions; the capacity of Black African states to launch military expeditions against the Republic is limited by domestic economic and political weaknesses, interstate rivalries, and serious logistic problems; and neither the Soviet Union nor the People's Republic of China seems prepared to make a major commitment in southern Africa in the near future. Consequently, although guerrilla groups launched across South Africa's land frontiers may become a continual irritant to the regime, they do not seem likely to be able to overthrow it.
Challenges Facing African Universities: Selected Issues
Authors: Sawyerr Akilagpa 
Published: July 2016

Abstract:With notable exceptions, modern university education in Africa is a phenomenon of the last half century. Universities were established either immediately before or within a decade after political independence in most African countries. Since then, both the number of institutions and enrollment have expanded rapidly and continuously across the continent. The coverage of university education, nevertheless, remains inadequate for the needs of the knowledge society. With the relative decline of state support during the severe economic crisis of the 1980s, Africa's universities suffered substantial deterioration: overcrowding, infrastructure deficiencies, and inadequate access to international knowledge resources. These deficiencies led to problems of access, equity, quality, and relevance, and to an aging faculty. At the same time, higher education systems were complicated by the diversification of categories of student, types of institutions, and the kinds of knowledge demanded. In the resulting situation of institutional complexity and policy dynamism, Africa's universities were compelled to develop strategies for coping and innovation. The result has been a halt in the decline in many instances, and revival and growth in several others. Accompanying these positive results, however, have been new forms of social exclusion as well as a loss of focus on the public purpose of universities as institutions concentrate mainly on increasing institutional incomes and producing graduates for the labor market. To address these and other problems, it is necessary to insist on the irreducible responsibility of the state for the maintenance of the higher education system and the need for a proper focus on the public purposes of higher education. Systems-level policy frameworks need to be negotiated and established to guide the strategic choices that have to be made by all players in the education sector.
The Promise of Partnership and Continuities of Dependence: External Support to Higher Education in Africa
Authors: Samoff Joel , Carrol Bidemi 
Published: July 2016

Abstract:After a period of conscious neglect and dramatic deterioration, higher education in Africa is again attracting external attention, with an emphasis now on “partnerships” rather than “aid.” This report is based on an extensive survey of links between African institutions of higher education and foreign governments, foundations, and universities, with particular emphasis on links with the United States. In it, we explore the evolution, characteristics, promise, and problems of external support. Earlier, most African universities were linked to European institutions. With independence, they asserted their sovereignty and autonomy. By the 1980s, however, resources were inadequate nearly everywhere. Today, renewed attention may bring new funds, yet it also may bring new problems. Academic partnerships are often one-sided, and external support commonly carries conditions. By framing, organizing, and orienting the academic enterprise and thus ways of knowing and validating knowledge, partnerships threaten to reintroduce, in both explicit and subtle ways, the external direction of the earlier era. A consideration of these and other issues is followed by several appendixes, which contain a thorough cataloging of this material and may be used as a resource for future research.
Juju and Justice at the Movies: Vigilantes in Nigerian Popular Videos
Authors: McCall John C. 
Published: July 2016

Abstract:This article examines the rise of vigilantism in southeastern Nigeria. Two opposing discourses on Nigerian vigilantism are examined. The first is characterized by the valorization of vigilantes as heroes in popular Nigerian video movies. The second is represented by a recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report denouncing die vigilantes as criminals. My research utilizes ethnographic research to contextualize the video movies as a means toward understanding the ideological gap between these discourses. A close analysis of theIssakabavideo series reveals a subtle treatment of the vigilante phenomenon designed to appeal to an indigenous perspective that is cognizant of the inherent risks of vigilante justice but also aware of the limitations of reform strategies such as those proposed by the HRW report.
Media Accountability and Democracy in Nigeria, 1999–2003
Authors: Olukoyun Ayo 
Published: July 2016

Abstract:This article discusses the role of the media in Nigeria's Fourth Republic between 1999 and 2003. Employing a case study approach, it highlights as well as analyzes the media's role in insisting on accountability and decency in Nigeria's notoriously corrupt public life. The media's crusade ran against the country's geopolitical divisions and revived the debate on the national question as well as the media's own morality. The article draws on both primary and secondary data to examine the media's role in an emergent democracy.
Documentation on the Afro-American: Familiar and Less Familiar Sources
Authors: Porter Dorothy 
Published: July 2016

On the evening of March 20, 1828, a group of free men of color organized a society that had as its purpose “the mental improvement of the people of color in the neighborhood of Philadelphia.” This organization was to be known as the “Reading Room Society.” Immediately a library was established and the librarian instructed to lend books to members for no longer than a week. Books were to be withdrawn or returned at the society's weekly meeting. Freedoms Journal, the earliest Negro newspaper, the first issue of which appeared in March, 1827, and Lundy's Genius of Universal Emancipation, an antislavery publication, were among the first works circulated. In May, 1833, the Philadelphia Library Company of Colored Persons appealed for “such books and other donations as will facilitate the object of this institution.” By 1838, this library had 600 volumes. Since Negroes could not enjoy the same privileges as whites in libraries, they established for themselves some 45 literary societies between 1828 and 1846 in several large cities, mainly in the East, most of which maintained reading rooms and circulating libraries.
As a consequence of these activities many Negroes were stimulated to assemble private libraries. In 1838, in Philadelphia and nearby cities, there were 8333 volumes in private libraries. In New York City, David Ruggles, a Negro abolitionist, pamphleteer, and printer, was probably the first Negro book collector. He maintained a circulating library and made antislavery and colonization publications available to many readers. He charged a fee of less than twenty-five cents a month for renting books relating to the Negro and slavery.
New African Studies Centers: A UCLA/Hew Pilot Program
Authors: Povey John F. 
Published: July 2016

There has been considerable discussion recently in recognition of the need to develop African studies in this country on a far wider basis than at present, where it is concentrated too narrowly in a few major centers of great academic strength. Such discussion has been exacerbated by the demands of Afro-Americans whose concern for African studies is not less significant for the debatable academic basis upon which it is posited.
The problem with all previous programs to inaugurate new African programs has been that they focused totally upon the training of faculty. There have been a series of summer courses, many of which have in themselves been of high quality and substantially imaginative. Yet they did little to innovate new programs on the campus, owing to the sluggishness of the administrative machinery or the relative indifference to the new faculty interest. The program which the African Studies Center at the University of California at Los Angeles planned for the summers of 1968 and 1969 attempted to remedy this deficiency. The project was financed by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare under National Defense Education Act funds and was organized and administered by Michael F. Lofchie and John F. Povey, themselves joint assistant directors of the UCLA African Studies Center.
Further Additions to Materials for West African History in the Archives of Belgium and Holland by Patricia Carson
Authors: Feinberg H. M. 
Published: July 2016

This article is a supplement to a previous article on the same subject published in the African Studies Bulletin. Before I list further citations omitted from Materials for West African History in the Archives of Belgium and Holland, I will discuss, in some detail, the nature of the archival material deposited in the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague. I will attempt to enhance the brief discussions of Miss Carson while avoiding repetition of statements which seem clear and/or are adequately discussed in her book.
The General State Archives, The Hague, includes two major collections of interest to the West African historian: the Archives of the West India Companies and the Archives of the Netherlands Settlements on the Guinea Coast. Initially, one must realize that most of the seventeenth-century papers of both collections have been lost or destroyed, and that as a consequence there are many gaps among the existing manuscripts. For example, volume 81 (1658-1709) of the Archives of the Netherlands Settlements on the Guinea Coast includes only manuscripts for the following times: December 25, 1658-June 12, 1660; August, 1693; and October 12-December 31, 1709. Also, most of the seventeenth-century material is written in script, whereas the eighteenth-century manuscripts, with some exceptions, are in more conventional hand-writings.
Theses on Africa Accepted by Howard University Washington, D.C.
Authors: Garlick Peter C. 
Published: July 2016

The following is a list of all known theses on African subjects accepted by Howard University up to and including June 1968. The earliest is dated 1936. The main sources of information were Howard University Library, whose lists are incomplete, and individual departments, most of which have inadequate records. There may, therefore, be omissions and inaccuracies. The arrangement here follows as closely as possible that in United States and Canadian Publications on Africa in 1965, Hoover Institution, Bibliographical Series, XXXIV, Stanford University, 1967. Theses are listed in alphabetical order by country, and, under each country, in alphabetical order of the writers'names.
It is hoped that other African Studies Centers will follow the lead of this article and make available lists of theses produced by their graduate students.
Political Change in Colonial Malawi: A Bibliographical Essay
Authors: Tangri Roger K. 
Published: July 2016

The literature and documentation relating to the study of colonial Malawi (formerly Nyasaland) is quite considerable, and is increasingly being augmented by the annual output of monographs and articles, by the continuous unearthing of private collections and papers, and by governmental archival records gradually becoming available for public inspection. The purpose of this essay is to provide a guide to some of the more important works and material concerning selected aspects of Malawi's political history during the colonial period, presenting the literature in terms of the comparative analysis of political change in colonial Africa. Research work in progress is also cited, and some of the various gaps that require to be filled are mentioned.
The study of political and social change in colonial Malawi must take into account both the indigenous society and the external forces that have stimulated change, as well as the actual process of development. It is therefore necessary to have, first, some understanding of those features of the traditional environment and historical setting of precolonial Malawi which have a bearing on subsequent developments. Two useful discussions of the patterns of intertribal relations before colonization are offered by M. G. MARWICK (1963) and J. G. PIKE (1965). CLYDE MITCHELL (1960) provides a good general sketch of the African peoples and cultures, while another brief account of the tribal background appears in MARY TEW (1950). More detailed ethnographical studies relating to specific tribal groups are contained in the writings of J. CLYDE MITCHELL (1956), MARGARET READ (1956), J. M. SCHOFFELEERS (1966), J. VAN VELSEN (1964), and GODFREY WILSON (1939). These last five works also provide brief discussions of intertribal relations, the slave trade, and the early contacts of European explorers and missionaries with the African peoples. Two further important treatments of early race relations in Central Africa are the industrious volumes of A. J. HANNA (1956) and H. ALAN C. CAIRNS (1965), which are based on a vast variety of well known and obscure published sources. But, in the absence of African-derived records the story remains European centered, although the collection and assessment of African oral tradition should do much to redress the balance. For a critical analysis of Dr. Hanna's approach and interpretations, including a wealth of further material and insight, see the fine long essay by GEORGE SHEPPERSON (1958).
Report on the Activities of the Archives-Libraries Committee for the Year 1967
Authors: Taylor Alan R. 
Published: July 2016

The Archives-Libraries Committee of the African Studies Association, in accordance with tradition, held its annual meeting in New York prior to the annual meeting of the Association, on November 1, 1967. This report reviews some of the most important points discussed at that meeting, and attempts to assess some of the achievements of the year 1967.
The Committee continues to enjoy a particularly happy relationship with the African Section of the Library of Congress. Dr. Julian W. Witherell, the present Head, was on tour in Africa in November, so that the Acting Head, Dr. Samir M. Zoghby, submitted a detailed report to the Committee in his place. Since the African Section of the Library of Congress was established as the result of representations made by the A.S.A., it seems appropriate to mention, and so to bring to the attention of the Board in this way, some of the most significant developments in the Section.
The program of compiling and publishing guides to official publications of African countries is being continued. Volumes dealing with French-speaking West Africa, and the overseas provinces of Portugal in Africa will be published very shortly. A similar volume for Ghana is in preparation, and plans are being formulated to provide guides to the official publications of the Congo, Liberia, Ethiopia, the former High Commission territories, and Spanish Africa. It is hoped in time to prepare a special volume dealing with United States official publications concerning Africa.