Preliminary geological interpretation of long-wavelength magnetic anomalies over China and surrounding regions

Long-wavelength(>500 km)magnetic anomalies originating in the lithosphere were first found in satellite magnetic surveys.Compared to the striking magnetic anomalies around the world,the long-wavelength magnetic anomalies in China and surrounding regions are relatively weak.Specialized research on each of these anomalies has been quite inadequate;their geological origins remain unclear,in particular their connection to tectonic activity in the Chinese and surrounding regions.We focus on six magnetic high anomalies over the(1)Tarim Basin,(2)Sichuan Basin(3)Great Xing’an Range,(4)Barmer Basin,(5)Central Myanmar Basin,and(6)Sunda and Banda Arcs,and a striking magnetic low anomaly along the southern part of the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau.We have analyzed their geological origins by reviewing related research and by detailed comparison with geological results.The tectonic backgrounds for these anomalies belong to two cases:either ancient basin basement,or subduction-collision zone.However,the geological origins of large-scale regional magnetic anomalies are always subject to dispute,mainly because of limited surface exposure of sources,later tectonic destruction,and superposition of multi-phase events.

Anomaly Detection Algorithm of Power System Based on Graph Structure and Anomaly Attention

In this paper, we propose a novel anomaly detection method for data centers based on a combination of graphstructure and abnormal attention mechanism. The method leverages the sensor monitoring data from targetpower substations to construct multidimensional time series. These time series are subsequently transformed intograph structures, and corresponding adjacency matrices are obtained. By incorporating the adjacency matricesand additional weights associated with the graph structure, an aggregation matrix is derived. The aggregationmatrix is then fed into a pre-trained graph convolutional neural network (GCN) to extract graph structure features.Moreover, both themultidimensional time series segments and the graph structure features are inputted into a pretrainedanomaly detectionmodel, resulting in corresponding anomaly detection results that help identify abnormaldata. The anomaly detection model consists of a multi-level encoder-decoder module, wherein each level includesa transformer encoder and decoder based on correlation differences. The attention module in the encoding layeradopts an abnormal attention module with a dual-branch structure. Experimental results demonstrate that ourproposed method significantly improves the accuracy and stability of anomaly detection.

A VGGNet-based correction for satellite altimetry-derived gravity anomalies to improve the accuracy of bathymetry to depths of 6500 m

Understanding the topographic patterns of the seafloor is a very important part of understanding our planet.Although the science involved in bathymetric surveying has advanced much over the decades,less than 20%of the seafloor has been precisely modeled to date,and there is an urgent need to improve the accuracy and reduce the uncertainty of underwater survey data.In this study,we introduce a pretrained visual geometry group network(VGGNet)method based on deep learning.To apply this method,we input gravity anomaly data derived from ship measurements and satellite altimetry into the model and correct the latter,which has a larger spatial coverage,based on the former,which is considered the true value and is more accurate.After obtaining the corrected high-precision gravity model,it is inverted to the corresponding bathymetric model by applying the gravity-depth correlation.We choose four data pairs collected from different environments,i.e.,the Southern Ocean,Pacific Ocean,Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea,to evaluate the topographic correction results of the model.The experiments show that the coefficient of determination(R~2)reaches 0.834 among the results of the four experimental groups,signifying a high correlation.The standard deviation and normalized root mean square error are also evaluated,and the accuracy of their performance improved by up to 24.2%compared with similar research done in recent years.The evaluation of the R^(2) values at different water depths shows that our model can achieve performance results above 0.90 at certain water depths and can also significantly improve results from mid-water depths when compared to previous research.Finally,the bathymetry corrected by our model is able to show an accuracy improvement level of more than 21%within 1%of the total water depths,which is sufficient to prove that the VGGNet-based method has the ability to perform a gravity-bathymetry correction and achieve outstanding results.

Prevalence of Dental Anomalies among Patients Who Report to the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital’s Orthodontic Clinic

BACKGROUND: Dental anomalies are variations from the established well-known general anatomy and morphology of the tooth as a result of disturbances during tooth formation. They can be developmental, congenital, or acquired and may be localized to a single tooth or involve systemic conditions. AIM: To evaluate the prevalence of dental anomalies in patients who report to the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) dental clinics. METHOD: A descriptive cross-sectional design was used with a sample size of 92 patients aged 18 or older, obtained through convenience sampling. Data analysis was performed using SPSS version 26.0. RESULTS: The study included 92 patients aged 18 to 72 years, with 47.8% males and 52.2% females. Dental anomalies were observed in 51.1% of participants, with a higher prevalence in females (55.3%). The most common anomalies were diastema (48.3%), impacted teeth (22.0%), dilaceration (11.9%), and peg-shaped lateral teeth (6.8%). CONCLUSION: This study highlights the importance of conducting thorough dental examinations to identify and address dental anomalies, which may have implications for treatment. Early detection and correction of these anomalies are crucial to prevent future complications.

An Efficient Modelling of Oversampling with Optimal Deep Learning Enabled Anomaly Detection in Streaming Data

Recently,anomaly detection(AD)in streaming data gained significant attention among research communities due to its applicability in finance,business,healthcare,education,etc.The recent developments of deep learning(DL)models find helpful in the detection and classification of anomalies.This article designs an oversampling with an optimal deep learning-based streaming data classification(OS-ODLSDC)model.The aim of the OSODLSDC model is to recognize and classify the presence of anomalies in the streaming data.The proposed OS-ODLSDC model initially undergoes preprocessing step.Since streaming data is unbalanced,support vector machine(SVM)-Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique(SVM-SMOTE)is applied for oversampling process.Besides,the OS-ODLSDC model employs bidirectional long short-term memory(Bi LSTM)for AD and classification.Finally,the root means square propagation(RMSProp)optimizer is applied for optimal hyperparameter tuning of the Bi LSTM model.For ensuring the promising performance of the OS-ODLSDC model,a wide-ranging experimental analysis is performed using three benchmark datasets such as CICIDS 2018,KDD-Cup 1999,and NSL-KDD datasets.

Multivariate Time Series Anomaly Detection Based on Spatial-Temporal Network and Transformer in Industrial Internet of Things

In the Industrial Internet of Things(IIoT),sensors generate time series data to reflect the working state.When the systems are attacked,timely identification of outliers in time series is critical to ensure security.Although many anomaly detection methods have been proposed,the temporal correlation of the time series over the same sensor and the state(spatial)correlation between different sensors are rarely considered simultaneously in these methods.Owing to the superior capability of Transformer in learning time series features.This paper proposes a time series anomaly detection method based on a spatial-temporal network and an improved Transformer.Additionally,the methods based on graph neural networks typically include a graph structure learning module and an anomaly detection module,which are interdependent.However,in the initial phase of training,since neither of the modules has reached an optimal state,their performance may influence each other.This scenario makes the end-to-end training approach hard to effectively direct the learning trajectory of each module.This interdependence between the modules,coupled with the initial instability,may cause the model to find it hard to find the optimal solution during the training process,resulting in unsatisfactory results.We introduce an adaptive graph structure learning method to obtain the optimal model parameters and graph structure.Experiments on two publicly available datasets demonstrate that the proposed method attains higher anomaly detection results than other methods.

Challenging situation of coronary artery anomaly associated with ischemia and/or risk of sudden death

Coronary artery anomaly is known as one of the causes of angina pectoris and sudden death and is an important clinical entity that cannot be overlooked.The incidence of coronary artery anomalies is as low as 1%-2%of the general population,even when the various types are combined.Coronary anomalies are practically challenging when the left and right coronary ostium are not found around their normal positions during coronary angiography with a catheter.If there is atherosclerotic stenosis of the coronary artery with an anomaly and percutaneous coronary intervention(PCI)is required,the suitability of the guiding catheter at the entrance and the adequate back up force of the guiding catheter are issues.The level of PCI risk itself should also be considered on a caseby-case basis.In this case,emission computed tomography in the R-1 subtype single coronary artery proved that ischemia occurred in an area where the coronary artery was not visible to the naked eye.Meticulous follow-up would be crucial,because sudden death may occur in single coronary arteries.To prevent atherosclerosis with full efforts is also important,as the authors indicated admirably.

Anomaly Detection in Imbalanced Encrypted Traffic with Few Packet Metadata-Based Feature Extraction

In the IoT(Internet of Things)domain,the increased use of encryption protocols such as SSL/TLS,VPN(Virtual Private Network),and Tor has led to a rise in attacks leveraging encrypted traffic.While research on anomaly detection using AI(Artificial Intelligence)is actively progressing,the encrypted nature of the data poses challenges for labeling,resulting in data imbalance and biased feature extraction toward specific nodes.This study proposes a reconstruction error-based anomaly detection method using an autoencoder(AE)that utilizes packet metadata excluding specific node information.The proposed method omits biased packet metadata such as IP and Port and trains the detection model using only normal data,leveraging a small amount of packet metadata.This makes it well-suited for direct application in IoT environments due to its low resource consumption.In experiments comparing feature extraction methods for AE-based anomaly detection,we found that using flowbased features significantly improves accuracy,precision,F1 score,and AUC(Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve)score compared to packet-based features.Additionally,for flow-based features,the proposed method showed a 30.17%increase in F1 score and improved false positive rates compared to Isolation Forest and OneClassSVM.Furthermore,the proposedmethod demonstrated a 32.43%higherAUCwhen using packet features and a 111.39%higher AUC when using flow features,compared to previously proposed oversampling methods.This study highlights the impact of feature extraction methods on attack detection in imbalanced,encrypted traffic environments and emphasizes that the one-class method using AE is more effective for attack detection and reducing false positives compared to traditional oversampling methods.

A Dual-Task Learning Approach for Bearing Anomaly Detection and State Evaluation of Safe Region

Predictive maintenance has emerged as an effective tool for curbing maintenance costs,yet prevailing research predominantly concentrates on the abnormal phases.Within the ostensibly stable healthy phase,the reliance on anomaly detection to preempt equipment malfunctions faces the challenge of sudden anomaly discernment.To address this challenge,this paper proposes a dual-task learning approach for bearing anomaly detection and state evaluation of safe regions.The proposed method transforms the execution of the two tasks into an optimization issue of the hypersphere center.By leveraging the monotonicity and distinguishability pertinent to the tasks as the foundation for optimization,it reconstructs the SVDD model to ensure equilibrium in the model’s performance across the two tasks.Subsequent experiments verify the proposed method’s effectiveness,which is interpreted from the perspectives of parameter adjustment and enveloping trade-offs.In the meantime,experimental results also show two deficiencies in anomaly detection accuracy and state evaluation metrics.Their theoretical analysis inspires us to focus on feature extraction and data collection to achieve improvements.The proposed method lays the foundation for realizing predictive maintenance in a healthy stage by improving condition awareness in safe regions.

A Security Trade-Off Scheme of Anomaly Detection System in IoT to Defend against Data-Tampering Attacks

Internet of Things(IoT)is vulnerable to data-tampering(DT)attacks.Due to resource limitations,many anomaly detection systems(ADSs)for IoT have high false positive rates when detecting DT attacks.This leads to the misreporting of normal data,which will impact the normal operation of IoT.To mitigate the impact caused by the high false positive rate of ADS,this paper proposes an ADS management scheme for clustered IoT.First,we model the data transmission and anomaly detection in clustered IoT.Then,the operation strategy of the clustered IoT is formulated as the running probabilities of all ADSs deployed on every IoT device.In the presence of a high false positive rate in ADSs,to deal with the trade-off between the security and availability of data,we develop a linear programming model referred to as a security trade-off(ST)model.Next,we develop an analysis framework for the ST model,and solve the ST model on an IoT simulation platform.Last,we reveal the effect of some factors on the maximum combined detection rate through theoretical analysis.Simulations show that the ADS management scheme can mitigate the data unavailability loss caused by the high false positive rates in ADS.

A Power Data Anomaly Detection Model Based on Deep Learning with Adaptive Feature Fusion

With the popularisation of intelligent power,power devices have different shapes,numbers and specifications.This means that the power data has distributional variability,the model learning process cannot achieve sufficient extraction of data features,which seriously affects the accuracy and performance of anomaly detection.Therefore,this paper proposes a deep learning-based anomaly detection model for power data,which integrates a data alignment enhancement technique based on random sampling and an adaptive feature fusion method leveraging dimension reduction.Aiming at the distribution variability of power data,this paper developed a sliding window-based data adjustment method for this model,which solves the problem of high-dimensional feature noise and low-dimensional missing data.To address the problem of insufficient feature fusion,an adaptive feature fusion method based on feature dimension reduction and dictionary learning is proposed to improve the anomaly data detection accuracy of the model.In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method,we conducted effectiveness comparisons through elimination experiments.The experimental results show that compared with the traditional anomaly detection methods,the method proposed in this paper not only has an advantage in model accuracy,but also reduces the amount of parameter calculation of the model in the process of feature matching and improves the detection speed.

Anomaly-Based Intrusion DetectionModel Using Deep Learning for IoT Networks

The rapid growth of Internet of Things(IoT)devices has brought numerous benefits to the interconnected world.However,the ubiquitous nature of IoT networks exposes them to various security threats,including anomaly intrusion attacks.In addition,IoT devices generate a high volume of unstructured data.Traditional intrusion detection systems often struggle to cope with the unique characteristics of IoT networks,such as resource constraints and heterogeneous data sources.Given the unpredictable nature of network technologies and diverse intrusion methods,conventional machine-learning approaches seem to lack efficiency.Across numerous research domains,deep learning techniques have demonstrated their capability to precisely detect anomalies.This study designs and enhances a novel anomaly-based intrusion detection system(AIDS)for IoT networks.Firstly,a Sparse Autoencoder(SAE)is applied to reduce the high dimension and get a significant data representation by calculating the reconstructed error.Secondly,the Convolutional Neural Network(CNN)technique is employed to create a binary classification approach.The proposed SAE-CNN approach is validated using the Bot-IoT dataset.The proposed models exceed the performance of the existing deep learning approach in the literature with an accuracy of 99.9%,precision of 99.9%,recall of 100%,F1 of 99.9%,False Positive Rate(FPR)of 0.0003,and True Positive Rate(TPR)of 0.9992.In addition,alternative metrics,such as training and testing durations,indicated that SAE-CNN performs better.

Comparative Analysis of ARIMA and LSTM Model-Based Anomaly Detection for Unannotated Structural Health Monitoring Data in an Immersed Tunnel

Structural Health Monitoring(SHM)systems have become a crucial tool for the operational management of long tunnels.For immersed tunnels exposed to both traffic loads and the effects of the marine environment,efficiently identifying abnormal conditions from the extensive unannotated SHM data presents a significant challenge.This study proposed amodel-based approach for anomaly detection and conducted validation and comparative analysis of two distinct temporal predictive models using SHM data from a real immersed tunnel.Firstly,a dynamic predictive model-based anomaly detectionmethod is proposed,which utilizes a rolling time window for modeling to achieve dynamic prediction.Leveraging the assumption of temporal data similarity,an interval prediction value deviation was employed to determine the abnormality of the data.Subsequently,dynamic predictive models were constructed based on the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average(ARIMA)and Long Short-Term Memory(LSTM)models.The hyperparameters of these models were optimized and selected using monitoring data from the immersed tunnel,yielding viable static and dynamic predictive models.Finally,the models were applied within the same segment of SHM data,to validate the effectiveness of the anomaly detection approach based on dynamic predictive modeling.A detailed comparative analysis discusses the discrepancies in temporal anomaly detection between the ARIMA-and LSTM-based models.The results demonstrated that the dynamic predictive modelbased anomaly detection approach was effective for dealing with unannotated SHM data.In a comparison between ARIMA and LSTM,it was found that ARIMA demonstrated higher modeling efficiency,rendering it suitable for short-term predictions.In contrast,the LSTM model exhibited greater capacity to capture long-term performance trends and enhanced early warning capabilities,thereby resulting in superior overall performance.

High Prevalence of Anatomical Variations and Anomalies of the Coronary Arteries Detected by CT Angiography in Symptomatic Patients

Objective:Coronary artery anatomical variations and anomalies are an important topic due to their potential clinical manifestations.This study aims to investigate the prevalence of coronary artery anatomical variations and anomalies in symptomatic patients with coronary computed tomography angiography(CCTA).Methods:This is a retrospective study that included all symptomatic patients who had CCTA in a tertiary care hospital in Saudi Arabia during a period of seven years.Results:The total number of included patients was 507(60%males)with a mean age of 57.4 years.Approximately 41%had luminal stenoses,averaging 49.7%.The total num-ber of patients with coronary anatomical variations(CAV)and coronary artery anomalies(CAA)was 217(43%).CAV prevalence was 26%,which included 14%non-right coronary dominance,5%short left main coronary artery(LMCA),and 7%division variations(trifurcation and quadrifurcarion)of the LMCA.The prevalence of CAA was 29%,which included 5%origin anomalies,22%myocardial bridge,and 2%course anomalies.Conclusions:A high prevalence of coronary artery anatomic variations and anomalies in symptomatic patients is reported in this study.Systematic reviews,meta-analyses,reporting guidelines,and unified definitions and classifications of cor-onary variations and anomalies are lacking in the literature,presenting potential opportunities for future research and publications.

Cross-Dimension Attentive Feature Fusion Network for Unsupervised Time-Series Anomaly Detection

Time series anomaly detection is crucial in various industrial applications to identify unusual behaviors within the time series data.Due to the challenges associated with annotating anomaly events,time series reconstruction has become a prevalent approach for unsupervised anomaly detection.However,effectively learning representations and achieving accurate detection results remain challenging due to the intricate temporal patterns and dependencies in real-world time series.In this paper,we propose a cross-dimension attentive feature fusion network for time series anomaly detection,referred to as CAFFN.Specifically,a series and feature mixing block is introduced to learn representations in 1D space.Additionally,a fast Fourier transform is employed to convert the time series into 2D space,providing the capability for 2D feature extraction.Finally,a cross-dimension attentive feature fusion mechanism is designed that adaptively integrates features across different dimensions for anomaly detection.Experimental results on real-world time series datasets demonstrate that CAFFN performs better than other competing methods in time series anomaly detection.

Advanced Optimized Anomaly Detection System for IoT Cyberattacks Using Artificial Intelligence

While emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things(IoT)have many benefits,they also pose considerable security challenges that require innovative solutions,including those based on artificial intelligence(AI),given that these techniques are increasingly being used by malicious actors to compromise IoT systems.Although an ample body of research focusing on conventional AI methods exists,there is a paucity of studies related to advanced statistical and optimization approaches aimed at enhancing security measures.To contribute to this nascent research stream,a novel AI-driven security system denoted as“AI2AI”is presented in this work.AI2AI employs AI techniques to enhance the performance and optimize security mechanisms within the IoT framework.We also introduce the Genetic Algorithm Anomaly Detection and Prevention Deep Neural Networks(GAADPSDNN)sys-tem that can be implemented to effectively identify,detect,and prevent cyberattacks targeting IoT devices.Notably,this system demonstrates adaptability to both federated and centralized learning environments,accommodating a wide array of IoT devices.Our evaluation of the GAADPSDNN system using the recently complied WUSTL-IIoT and Edge-IIoT datasets underscores its efficacy.Achieving an impressive overall accuracy of 98.18%on the Edge-IIoT dataset,the GAADPSDNN outperforms the standard deep neural network(DNN)classifier with 94.11%accuracy.Furthermore,with the proposed enhancements,the accuracy of the unoptimized random forest classifier(80.89%)is improved to 93.51%,while the overall accuracy(98.18%)surpasses the results(93.91%,94.67%,94.94%,and 94.96%)achieved when alternative systems based on diverse optimization techniques and the same dataset are employed.The proposed optimization techniques increase the effectiveness of the anomaly detection system by efficiently achieving high accuracy and reducing the computational load on IoT devices through the adaptive selection of active features.

U-Net Models for Representing Wind Stress Anomalies over the Tropical Pacific and Their Integrations with an Intermediate Coupled Model for ENSO Studies

El Niño-Southern Oscillation(ENSO)is the strongest interannual climate mode influencing the coupled ocean-atmosphere system in the tropical Pacific,and numerous dynamical and statistical models have been developed to simulate and predict it.In some simplified coupled ocean-atmosphere models,the relationship between sea surface temperature(SST)anomalies and wind stress(τ)anomalies can be constructed by statistical methods,such as singular value decomposition(SVD).In recent years,the applications of artificial intelligence(AI)to climate modeling have shown promising prospects,and the integrations of AI-based models with dynamical models are active areas of research.This study constructs U-Net models for representing the relationship between SSTAs andτanomalies in the tropical Pacific;the UNet-derivedτmodel,denoted asτUNet,is then used to replace the original SVD-basedτmodel of an intermediate coupled model(ICM),forming a newly AI-integrated ICM,referred to as ICM-UNet.The simulation results obtained from ICM-UNet demonstrate their ability to represent the spatiotemporal variability of oceanic and atmospheric anomaly fields in the equatorial Pacific.In the ocean-only case study,theτUNet-derived wind stress anomaly fields are used to force the ocean component of the ICM,the results of which also indicate reasonable simulations of typical ENSO events.These results demonstrate the feasibility of integrating an AI-derived model with a physics-based dynamical model for ENSO modeling studies.Furthermore,the successful integration of the dynamical ocean models with the AI-based atmospheric wind model provides a novel approach to ocean-atmosphere interaction modeling studies.

An intelligent active probing and trace-back scheme for IoT anomaly detection

Due to their simple hardware,sensor nodes in IoT are vulnerable to attack,leading to data routing blockages or malicious tampering,which significantly disrupts secure data collection.An Intelligent Active Probing and Trace-back Scheme for IoT Anomaly Detection(APTAD)is proposed to collect integrated IoT data by recruiting Mobile Edge Users(MEUs).(a)An intelligent unsupervised learning approach is used to identify anomalous data from the collected data by MEUs and help to identify anomalous nodes.(b)Recruit MEUs to trace back and propose a series of trust calculation methods to determine the trust of nodes.(c)The last,the number of active detection packets and detection paths are designed,so as to accurately identify the trust of nodes in IoT at the minimum cost of the network.A large number of experimental results show that the recruiting cost and average anomaly detection time are reduced by 6.5 times and 34.33%respectively,while the accuracy of trust identification is improved by 20%.

FusionNN:A Semantic Feature Fusion Model Based on Multimodal for Web Anomaly Detection

With the rapid development of the mobile communication and the Internet,the previous web anomaly detectionand identificationmodels were built relying on security experts’empirical knowledge and attack features.Althoughthis approach can achieve higher detection performance,it requires huge human labor and resources to maintainthe feature library.In contrast,semantic feature engineering can dynamically discover new semantic featuresand optimize feature selection by automatically analyzing the semantic information contained in the data itself,thus reducing dependence on prior knowledge.However,current semantic features still have the problem ofsemantic expression singularity,as they are extracted from a single semantic mode such as word segmentation,character segmentation,or arbitrary semantic feature extraction.This paper extracts features of web requestsfrom dual semantic granularity,and proposes a semantic feature fusion method to solve the above problems.Themethod first preprocesses web requests,and extracts word-level and character-level semantic features of URLs viaconvolutional neural network(CNN),respectively.By constructing three loss functions to reduce losses betweenfeatures,labels and categories.Experiments on the HTTP CSIC 2010,Malicious URLs and HttpParams datasetsverify the proposedmethod.Results show that compared withmachine learning,deep learningmethods and BERTmodel,the proposed method has better detection performance.And it achieved the best detection rate of 99.16%in the dataset HttpParams.

Optimal timing for plastic surgical procedures for common congenital anomalies:A review

Apart from listening to the cry of a healthy newborn,it is the declaration by the attending paediatrician in the labour room that the child is normal which brings utmost joy to parents.The global incidence of children born with congenital anomalies has been reported to be 3%-6%with more than 90%of these occurring in low-and middle-income group countries.The exact percentages/total numbers of children requiring surgical treatment cannot be estimated for several reasons.These children are operated under several surgical disciplines,viz,paediatric-,plastic reconstructive,neuro-,cardiothoracic-,orthopaedic surgery etc.These conditions may be life-threatening,e.g.,trachea-oesophageal fistula,critical pulmonary stenosis,etc.and require immediate surgical intervention.Some,e.g.,hydrocephalus,may need intervention as soon as the patient is fit for surgery.Some,e.g.,patent ductus arteriosus need‘wait and watch’policy up to a certain age in the hope of spontaneous recovery.Another extremely important category is that of patients where the operative intervention is done based on their age.Almost all the congenital anomalies coming under care of a plastic surgeon are operated as elective surgery(many as multiple stages of correction)at appropriate ages.There are advantages and disadvantages of intervention at different ages.In this article,we present a review of optimal timings,along with reasoning,for surgery of many of the common congenital anomalies which are treated by plastic surgeons.Obstetricians,paediatricians and general practitioners/family physicians,who most often are the first ones to come across such children,must know to guide the parents appropriately and convincingly impress upon the them as to why their child should not be operated immediately and also the consequences of too soon or too late.