David Harrison

Arrhythmia and survival in patients>18 years of age after the Mustard procedure for complete transposition of the great arteries

Increasing numbers of patients who underwent Mustard repair as children are now adults. Loss of sinus rhythm, supraventricular arrhythmias, and sudden death have been described in pediatric series. However, little is known about the clinical course of adult patients. This retrospective cohort study examined 86 consecutive adults (age >18 years) who had undergone the Mustard procedure and were referred to an adult congenital cardiac clinic for ongoing follow-up. The incidence and predictors of arrhythmia, congestive heart failure, and death were determined. The median follow-up period was 8 years after age 18 or 23 years after Mustard repair. There were 8 deaths (9%), 2 were sudden. Congestive heart failure (CHF) requiring hospital admission occurred in 9 patients (10%). Pulmonary hypertension and systemic ventricular dysfunction were independent risk factors for death or CHF. Only 29 patients (34%) remained arrhythmia-free. Forty-one patients (48%) had at least 1 episode of supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), with most patients (30, 73%) having atrial flutter. SVT after the age of 18 was associated with CHF. Pulmonary hypertension, systemic ventricular dysfunction, and junctional rhythm before age 18 were independent risk factors for SVT. Pacemakers were implanted in 19 patients (22%); 13 of those were beyond age 18. Thus, adult survivors of the Mustard procedure continue to be at risk for premature death, CHF and supraventricular tachyarrhythmia.

The Uncertainty in Physical Measurements

This article reviews The Uncertainty in Physical Measurements by Paolo Fornasini . 289 pp. , New York, 2008. Price:

Textbook Use in the Sciences and Its Relation to Course Performance

89.95(hardback). ISBN 978-0-387-78649-0.

Compressed-format compared to regular-format in a first-year university physics course

There are limited studies with conflicting results examining textbook use and student performance at the university level. To learn more, we surveyed instructors and over one thousand students in 12 undergraduate introductory science courses. The majority (77%) of the students reported reading the textbook either “often” (>75% of the assigned reading) or “sometimes” (25%–75% of the assigned reading). Those who read “often” had better final marks those who read “sometimes,” but surprisingly, those who reported “rarely” reading the textbook did as well as those who read “often.” Perceptions of the usefulness of the textbook were generally more favorable in courses in which some marks were based solely on the readings. We conclude that there appears to be different types of learners: some may need to read the textbook “often” to do well, while others do not.

Teaching The Tao of Physics

We compare student performance in two sessions of a large first-year university physics course, one with a normal 12-week term and the other with a compressed 6-week term. Student performance is measured by the normalized gain on the Force Concept Inventory. We find that the gains for the regular-format course are better than the gains for the compressed-format course, and while the differences in gains are small they are statistically significant. Not accounted for are the differences in effectiveness of the different instructors in the two versions of the course.

Computers in a teaching laboratory: just another piece of apparatus

A course in modern physics and Eastern mystical philosophy is described.A course in modern physics and Eastern mystical philosophy is described.

Bell’s inequality and quantum correlations

Abstract The Undergraduate Physics Laboratory at Toronto has been using computers as a laboratory aid to our 1400 students for over 10 years. During this time, we have evolved some definite ideas about the use of this technology for our application. For example, one goal of our operation is for students to realise that a computer is just a tool, like an oscilloscope or vernier caliper, which is useful in some experiments and (perhaps more important) not useful in some other applications. This “useful tool” approach has programming implications, such as having a single dataset on which all applications such as fitters, graphers, etc. operate. It also emphasises that it is important that this dataset is easily accessible from any of the workstations which are scattered around our laboratory. Finally, since our students typically “log in” for only a half an hour or so every couple of weeks, we have put a large effort into a simple consistent user-interfaces, so our system runs with virtually no instruction or manuals. One measure of the success of our efforts is the amount of voluntary access to our system by the students: two-thirds of our students access the computer when not required and these log in an average of 8 times during the academic year.

What you see is what you get

The conflict between quantum predictions and some ’’common sense’’ assumptions is explored at a level suitable for undergraduates with an elementary knowledge of quantum mechanics. The current status of experimental tests of the conflict is reviewed, and the implications are briefly discussed.

The physical pendulum in an advanced undergraduate course in mechanics

The issue of observability and the relative roles of the senses and reason in understanding the world is reviewed. Eastern ’’mystical’’ philosophy is used as a focus in which interpretations of quantum mechanics, as well as the current bootstrap‐quark controversy, can be seen in some slightly different contexts than usual.

Correlating student interest and high school preparation with learning and performance in an introductory university physics course

The physical pendulum treated with a Hamiltonian formulation is a natural topic for study in a course in advanced classical mechanics. For the past three years, we have been offering a series of problem sets studying this system numerically in our third-year undergraduate courses in mechanics. The problem sets investigate the physics of the pendulum in ways not easily accessible without computer technology and explore various algorithms for solving mechanics problems. Our computational physics is based on Mathematica with some C communicating with Mathematica, although nothing in this paper is dependent on that choice. We have nonetheless found this system, and particularly its graphics, to be a good one for use with undergraduates.