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Correct preoperative diagnosis is one of the prime requisites of successful cardiovascular surgery. The diagnosis should be made with a minimum of cost, time-consuming diagnostic studies, and discomfort to the patient. Often simple techniques such as careful auscultation and phonocardiography will reveal characteristics of associated murmurs which in themselves may be diagnostic. An example is the classical murmur of a patent ductus arteriosus. This murmur is best heard in the first and second left intercostal spaces. It begins a short interval after the first sound, usually reaches maximal intensity in late systole, envelops the second sound, and continues well into diastole. The murmur is therefore classified as a continuous murmur . When the characteristic murmur is present and if the clinical findings are corroborative, extensive diagnostic studies may not be indicated. However, many patients with patent ductus do not exhibit such a typical murmur. Other cardiovascular defects may produce continuous murmurs

Somewhat more than three years has passed since Windaus and Hess, as well as Rosenheim and Webster, reported the remarkable antirachitic activity of irradiated ergosterol. During this short interval a considerable literature has sprung up, regarding both the theoretical and the clinical aspects of this subject. It would be to no purpose to review the numerous papers that have been published abroad and in this country treating of the clinical value of this new preparation. A complete bibliography will be found in the recent articles by Karelitz, 1 by Gyorgy 2 and by Wieland. 3 All are agreed that irradiated ergosterol is an agent of exceptional potency and reliability in the prevention or the cure of rickets. The time is past for a discussion of this point. There are, however, several questions which demand consideration at the present time. One that has been raised repeatedly concerns the safety of this

Preliminary studies by the present authors indicated that short interval fractionation of lethal doses of radiation (delivered by means of 220-kvp x-rays) increased the survival rate and mean survival time for rats within a thirty-day period of observation. In these studies, the radiation was administered in six equal fractions with intervals between fractions varying from zero to sixty minutes. The mean survival time for a total radiation dose of 786 r (an LD 90 for thirty-day survival as measured in this laboratory) ranged from 6.4 days for zero interval fractionation to 18.3 days for sixty-minute interval fractionation. The thirty-day survival rate for the sixty-minute interval studies was found to be equivalent to an LD 40. In order to determine whether the fractionation of dosage per se or the resulting increased overall period of irradiation was most important in modifying lethal radiation effects, further studies were undertaken. Experiments were set up in which the overall period of irradiation an...

The interest shown recently in the subject of juxta-articular nodules is certain to be further stimulated by the brief but excellent historical review of the literature by Drs. Kalz and Newton in the issue of theArchivesofDermatologyandSyphilologyfor December 1943. The statement that small though palpable nodules may occur frequently and most likely escape the attention of the examiner in a routine case of syphilis has left me wondering how many such cases I may have passed over. It is, however, for the small lesions that differential diagnosis becomes most difficult. The number of cases of syphilitic juxta-articular nodules seen was small, no doubt because of the short interval between onset of infection and the clinical examination, as these lesions always begin as tiny nodules and progress slowly over a period of years. From a diameter of a few millimeters they may attain to the

An unusually short interval between successive births in a non-contracepting and breast-feeding population has been reported by Dr. Mindel C. Sheps (Pop. Studies, 19, 1). Nursing practices that might affect the interval between birth and pregnancy are reported here from systematic observations made in the field. Probable factors are: (1) a maternal diet high in calories and in protein; (2) although infants are nursed for many months, each nursing period is short in a busy and highly patterned community schedule; and (3) supplementary feeding is introduced at an early age.

ULTURAL and historical geographers have long recognized that studies of population origins can contribute appreciably to the understanding of the character of a region. Differences in the economic, social, and political structures can often be related to differences in origin. In most parts of the United States the study of evolving ethnic patterns does not carry the interested scholar any farther back than the early or mid-nineteenth century; for the larger part of the country has been settled since that time. In spite of this relatively short interval, major problems exist because the historical geographer seeking to re-create the pattern of population origins is not well served by the published censuses of the United States. One might expect that in a country so ethnically diverse considerable attention would have been devoted to population origins, but this is not the case. In the censuses of 1790 through 1840, no specific questions were asked concerning origins, though occasionally there was a category for "foreigners not naturalized."' In this respect, the first six censuses are little better than tax lists.

Leveque (I955) and Mechali et al. (i957) have drawn attention to the unusual blood group frequencies of the Jews of the Tafilalet oases south of the Atlas mountains in Morocco, and especially to their extremely high frequency of blood group B. It was thought that this remarkable population merited further examination and therefore, with the cordial co-operation of Dr Leveque, the Cambridge University Expedition to Northern Africa in I962 visited the region and collected specimens for testing at the Blood Group Reference Laboratory. At the time of the investigation, the Jewish population of the Tafilalet oases was spread over an area of I0,000 sq. km of stone desert I00 km south of the Atlas Mountains. The combination of religion and geographical situation had led to a high degree of genetic isolation. To the south is the Sahara desert, to the north the Atlas Mountains. On the east side is the political boundary with Algeria, and to the west lie 200 km of stone desert before the next river bed is reached. The villages in the region are mainly centred around the dry bed of the river Ziz. In I965 Rosenbloom (I966) carried out a historical and demographic study of the same group ofJewish populations. In the short interval since I962 the situation had changed considerably and he reported that only a few hundred Jews remained in the whole area. This author gives a table of estimates of the Jewish population of the region at various dates from 1920 to I965, showing populations of many thousands up to 1949 and a catastrophic fall between then and i965, which he attributes to a declining economy as well as to uncertainty of Moroccan and Arab nationalism. After a certain point the difficulty of living a Jewish life arose in an area with so few remaining Jews. The emigration was first to the larger urban centres of northern Morocco and then to such places as France and Israel.

Emotionally arousing events can distort our sense of time. We used mixed block/event-related fMRI design to establish the neural basis for this effect. Nineteen participants were asked to judge whether angry, happy and neutral facial expressions that varied in duration (from 400 to 1,600 ms) were closer in duration to either a short or long duration they learnt previously. Time was overestimated for both angry and happy expressions compared to neutral expressions. For faces presented for 700 ms, facial emotion modulated activity in regions of the timing network Wiener et al. (NeuroImage 49(2):1728-1740, 2010) namely the right supplementary motor area (SMA) and the junction of the right inferior frontal gyrus and anterior insula (IFG/AI). Reaction times were slowest when faces were displayed for 700 ms indicating increased decision making difficulty. Taken together with existing electrophysiological evidence Ng et al. (Neuroscience, doi: 10.3389/fnint.2011.00077 , 2011), the effects are consistent with the idea that facial emotion moderates temporal decision making and that the right SMA and right IFG/AI are key neural structures responsible for this effect.