The editorial content of Cardiology Rounds is determined solely by the Cardiovascular Division of Brigham and Women’s Hospital. This publication is made possible by an educational grant. of the heart and recognized by a characteristic pattern of hemodynamic, renal, neural, and hormonal responses. 7 And, in 1988, Professor Jay Cohn suggested that HF should be defined as “a syndrome in which cardiac dysfunction is associated with reduced exercise tolerance, a high incidence of ventricular arrhythmias, and shortened life expectancy. 8” The Task Force of the European Society of Cardiology defined HF “as a condition when symptoms of HF, objective evidence of cardiac dysfunction, and response to treatment directed towards HF exist. 9” The definitions above were proposed to recognize systolic HF, since diastolic HF was only appreciated rather recently. The contemporary clinical definition of systolic HF is “a clinical syndrome associated with congestive symptoms and/or symptoms of low cardiac output due to impaired ventricular pump function (reduced EF).”

A simplified design method for a group delay equalizer with multiple poles has been developed, which replaces the conventional approach of cascading several C- and D-type equalizers by one equalizer with multiple poles. A prototype 4-pole equalizer has been designed and tested with satisfactory performance.

An equivalent network for a multiple screen bandpass filter with an obliquely incident plane wave has been developed. Based upon this network, the design formulation for this type of filter is derived. Such quasi-optical filter may be used as a diplexer or a multiplexer.

A simplified equivalent network for a quasi-optical bandpass filter consisting of several wire-grid polarizers has been developed based upon the concept of local coordinates. Various modes of loss are evaluated, and the equivalent unloaded Q is computed.

This paper describes a filter tuning method based upon the match of measured and computed input impedances for a short-circuited filter. Two singly terminated filters, an 8-pole Chebychev filter and a 6-pole pseudo-elliptic function filter, tuned by using this method have demonstrated excellent performance.

2 whereas genetic syndromes of high HDL-C are often associated with decreased risk of CHD. These observations led to the recommendation for the inclusion of HDL-C in routine screening of all adults 3 and as an independent risk factor in the assessment of

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) accounts for over 40% of all deaths in women in the United States and is the leading killer of women in most developed countries. For many years, nearly all studies of coronary artery disease (CAD) excluded women. This was likely due to age bias, rather than gender bias, as men present with CVD at a younger age. The problem of CVD in women has therefore been masked by the protective effect from cardiac death in young premenopausal women. This issue of Cardiology Rounds reviews the role of gender in CAD with specific emphasis on the current understanding of the role that ovarian function and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) plays in atherosclerosis.