Among our population of sarcoid patients with nonspecific symptoms, the presence of myocardial scar indicated by LGE was the best independent predictor of potentially lethal events, as well as other adverse events, yielding a Cox HR of 31.6 and of 33.9, respectively. These data support the necessity for future large, longitudinal follow-up studies to definitely establish LGE as an independent predictor of cardiac death in sarcoidosis, as well as to evaluate the incremental prognostic value of additional parameters.

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The influence of changes in spatial and temporal resolutions on functional parameters in the left ventricle (LV) were investigated with magnetic resonance (MR) imaging with a modified true fast imaging with steady-state precession, or FISP, two-dimensional sequence that provided temporal resolution of 21-90 msec and spatial resolution of 1-3 mm. MR imaging in the heart was performed in 15 healthy volunteers. A decrease in LV functional parameters was observed with reduced spatial and temporal resolutions. The influence of temporal resolution was more relevant.

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When expressed using volumetric concentrations (as is industry practice), the addition of relatively small amounts of ethanol or methanol (e.g., 10% by volume) to gasoline appears to result in disproportionately large, nonlinear increases in research octane number (RON) and motor octane number (MON). As a result, volumetric "blending octane numbers" are of limited value for estimating the octane number of alcohol-gasoline blends because they vary with alcohol content and base gasoline composition. We show that RON and MON increases with alcohol content are approximately linear when expressed using molar concentrations. Moreover, molar-based blending octane numbers are effectively equal to the octane numbers of the pure alcohols for most base gasolines. A limited dependence on gasoline composition was observed, namely, greater-than-predicted octane numbers for ethanol-gasoline blends with unusually high isoparaffin content. We suggest that octane numbers of methanol-gasoline and ethanol-gasoline blends can be estimated conveniently and more accurately from their molar composition by linear interpolation between the octane numbers of the base gasoline and the pure alcohol.