Newborn with congenital arteriovenous fistulas of the abdominal wall complicated by a ductus arteriosus aneurysm

A case of congestive heart failure in a neonate resulting from a congenital abdominal arteriovenous fistula is described; an aneurysm of the ductus arteriosus was also found in the patient. Abdominal aortography was performed and demonstrated dilated feeding arteries, including the hypogastric arteries, which communicated with a dilated umbilical vein. Ligation of the feeding arteries and the umbilical vein led to resolution of the heart failure. Transient liver dysfunction occurred, however. Symptoms improved dramatically upon removal of the ligature from the umbilical vein. Although there is one previous report of an arteriovenous fistula involving the umbilical vein, we know of no prior report of a congenital arteriovenous fistula in association with a ductus arteriosus aneurysm.     

An information-theoretic approach to consumer preference and product planning

Marketing managers should develop various marketing approaches in order to satisfy the needs of consumers. It is important for industries to succeed to analyze the data from consumers and to apply the quantitative analyses to marketing research. In this paper, a procedure for measuring the preferences weights of consumers for attribute levels of prototype products is proposed using paired comparison with scores. An information-theoretic procedure for measuring the consumer preference for each prototype product and the importance or utility of each attribute is presented, considering the preference weights for attribute levels as prior information. Furthermore, optimal product planning to maximize the total expected profit is discussed through numerical experiments.     

A new six-port microwave network; six-port magic junction

A six-port junction is proposed that consists of an H-plane symmetrical waveguide Y-junction with a coaxial line on one side of its axis and a circular waveguide on its other. The scattering matrix of the junction in an ideal case is derived using the symmetry properties of the structure. If both the coaxial and the circular waveguide arm are matched without destroying the symmetry, the arms of the junction are automatically matched and isolated as well, similar to the side arms of a conventional magic T. Therefore, the proposed device is called a six-port magic junction. These properties are confirmed experimentally in X-band. Some interesting applications based on the properties of the six-port junction are discussed     

Thickness measurements on transparent substrates based on reflection ellipsometry. I. Optical effects of high-refractive-index additional layers

Theoretical studies were conducted for thickness measurements using transparent substrates on the external and internal reflection configurations. For three-phase systems consisting of ambient, film, and substrate, the refractive index of the substrate could be optimized to obtain the high sensitivity of an ellipsometric quantity delta to the film thickness and the small susceptibility of delta to errors in the incident angle. It was shown that the combination of an ordinary glass substrate and an additional dielectric layer with an appropriate layer thickness works as a synthetic high-index single substrate (SHIS). The optical effect of the combination was approximately described by use of the effective refractive index of SHIS. A method to select the refractive index of the additional layer was also given.