Normal left ventricular (LV) filling occurs rapidly early in diastole caused by a progressive pressure gradient within the ventricle and with a low left atrial pressure. This normal diastolic function is altered in patients with heart failure. Such impairment of diastolic filling is manifested as an abrupt deceleration of the early filling wave velocity. Although variations within the early fil...

Unobserved heterogeneity in mortality risk is pervasive and consequential. Mortality deceleration-the slowing of mortality's rise with age-has been considered an important window into heterogeneity that otherwise might be impossible to explore. In this article, I argue that deceleration patterns may reveal surprisingly little about the heterogeneity that putatively produces them. I show that ev...

Received ; accepted – 2 – ABSTRACT We study numerically the evolution of an adiabatic relativistic fireball expanding into a cold uniform medium. We follow the stages of initial free expansion and acceleration, coasting and then deceleration and slowing down to a non-relativistic velocity. We compare the numerical results with simplified analytical estimates. We show that the relativistic self ...