AMBULATORY VITREORETINAL SURGERY

Background. To present introduction of vitreoretinal ambulatory surgery in Slovenia. To explain advantages and disadvantages of such method of work.Methods. In the last two years more than 250 ambulatory vitreoretinal operations in the Očesni kirurški center were done. The duration of the longest procedure was almost 5 hrs. Most of them were performed in local anaesthesia, only few in general anaesthesia. The organisation of daily work is described as well as indications and contraindications for ambulatory vitreoretinal procedures.Results. We found that patients relatively favourable tolerate even long operations. Rehabilitation was fast, general handicap smaller than in hospitalisation. Functional results were the same as at hospitalized patients. Ambulatory operations also have disadvantages and are not suitable for all patients.Conclusions. The introduction of ambulatory vitreoretinal surgery in Slovenia was important in shortening of waiting list and larger accessibility for vitreoretinal operations because of increased number of operations with no increase of average hospitalisation time.</p

Early IFNγ-Mediated and Late Perforin-Mediated Suppression of Pathogenic CD4 T Cell Responses Are Both Required for Inhibition of Demyelinating Disease by CNS-Specific Autoregulatory CD8 T Cells

Pathogenesis of immune-mediated demyelinating diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS) is thought to be governed by a complex cellular interplay between immunopathogenic and immunoregulatory responses. We have previously shown that central nervous system (CNS)-specific CD8 T cells have an unexpected protective role in the mouse model of MS, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). In this study, we interrogated the suppressive potential of PLP178-191-specific CD8 T cells (PLP-CD8). Here, we show that PLP-CD8, when administered post-disease onset, rapidly ameliorated EAE progression, and suppressed PLP178-191-specific CD4 T cell responses as measured by delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH). To accomplish DTH suppression, PLP-CD8 required differential production of perforin and IFNγ. Perforin was not required for the rapid suppressive action of these cells, but was critical for maintenance of optimal longer term DTH suppression. Conversely, IFNγ production by PLP-CD8 was necessary for swift DTH suppression, but was less significant for maintenance of longer term suppression. These data indicate that CNS-specific CD8 T cells employ an ordered regulatory mechanism program over a number of days in vivo during demyelinating disease and have mechanistic implications for this immunotherapeutic approach

Improving Language Model Predictions via Prompts Enriched with Knowledge Graphs

Despite advances in deep learning and knowledge graphs (KGs), using language models for natural language understanding and question answering remains a challenging task. Pre-trained language models (PLMs) have shown to be able to leverage contextual information, to complete cloze prompts, next sentence completion and question answering tasks in various domains. Unlike structured data querying in e.g. KGs, mapping an input question to data that may or may not be stored by the language model is not a simple task. Recent studies have highlighted the improvements that can be made to the quality of information retrieved from PLMs by adding auxiliary data to otherwise naive prompts. In this paper, we explore the effects of enriching prompts with additional contextual information leveraged from the Wikidata KG on language model performance. Specifically, we compare the performance of naive vs. KG-engineered cloze prompts for entity genre classification in the movie domain. Selecting a broad range of commonly available Wikidata properties, we show that enrichment of cloze-style prompts with Wikidata information can result in a significantly higher recall for the investigated BERT and RoBERTa large PLMs. However, it is also apparent that the optimum level of data enrichment differs between models

Capturing contentiousness: Constructing the contentious terms in context corpus

Recent initiatives by cultural heritage institutions in addressing outdated and offensive language used in their collections demonstrate the need for further understanding into when terms are problematic or contentious. This paper presents an annotated dataset of 2,715 unique samples of terms in context, drawn from a historical newspaper archive, collating 21,800 annotations of contentiousness from expert and crowd workers. We describe the contents of the corpus by analysing inter-rater agreement and differences between experts and crowd workers. In addition, we demonstrate the potential of the corpus for automated detection of contentiousness. We show that a simple classifier applied to the embedding representation of a target word provides a better than baseline performance in predicting contentiousness. We find that the term itself and the context play a role in whether a term is considered contentious

Collodictyon—An Ancient Lineage in the Tree of Eukaryotes

The current consensus for the eukaryote tree of life consists of several large assemblages (supergroups) that are hypothesized to describe the existing diversity. Phylogenomic analyses have shed light on the evolutionary relationships within and between supergroups as well as placed newly sequenced enigmatic species close to known lineages. Yet, a few eukaryote species remain of unknown origin and could represent key evolutionary forms for inferring ancient genomic and cellular characteristics of eukaryotes. Here, we investigate the evolutionary origin of the poorly studied protist Collodictyon (subphylum Diphyllatia) by sequencing a cDNA library as well as the 18S and 28S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) genes. Phylogenomic trees inferred from 124 genes placed Collodictyon close to the bifurcation of the “unikont” and “bikont” groups, either alone or as sister to the potentially contentious excavate Malawimonas. Phylogenies based on rDNA genes confirmed that Collodictyon is closely related to another genus, Diphylleia, and revealed a very low diversity in environmental DNA samples. The early and distinct origin of Collodictyon suggests that it constitutes a new lineage in the global eukaryote phylogeny. Collodictyon shares cellular characteristics with Excavata and Amoebozoa, such as ventral feeding groove supported by microtubular structures and the ability to form thin and broad pseudopods. These may therefore be ancient morphological features among eukaryotes. Overall, this shows that Collodictyon is a key lineage to understand early eukaryote evolution

Eukaryotic richness in the abyss: insights from pyrotag sequencing

Background: The deep sea floor is considered one of the most diverse ecosystems on Earth. Recent environmental DNA surveys based on clone libraries of rRNA genes confirm this observation and reveal a high diversity of eukaryotes present in deep-sea sediment samples. However, environmental clone-library surveys yield only a modest number of sequences with which to evaluate the diversity of abyssal eukaryotes. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here, we examined the richness of eukaryotic DNA in deep Arctic and Southern Ocean samples using massively parallel sequencing of the 18S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) V9 hypervariable region. In very small volumes of sediments, ranging from 0.35 to 0.7 g, we recovered up to 7,499 unique sequences per sample. By clustering sequences having up to 3 differences, we observed from 942 to 1756 Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) per sample. Taxonomic analyses of these OTUs showed that DNA of all major groups of eukaryotes is represented at the deep-sea floor. The dinoflagellates, cercozoans, ciliates, and euglenozoans predominate, contributing to 17%, 16%, 10%, and 8% of all assigned OTUs, respectively. Interestingly, many sequences represent photosynthetic taxa or are similar to those reported from the environmental surveys of surface waters. Moreover, each sample contained from 31 to 71 different metazoan OTUs despite the small sample volume collected. This indicates that a significant faction of the eukaryotic DNA sequences likely do not belong to living organisms, but represent either free, extracellular DNA or remains and resting stages of planktonic species. Conclusions/Significance: In view of our study, the deep-sea floor appears as a global DNA repository, which preserves genetic information about organisms living in the sediment, as well as in the water column above it. This information can be used for future monitoring of past and present environmental changes.French ANR Aquaparadox; ANR DeepOases; Swiss National Science Foundation [31003A-125372]; WM Keck foundationinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Study on a solution for condition monitoring of process, process equipment and control loops, and efficient system identification for retuning

Master's thesis in Cybernetics and signal processingThe presented thesis serves as part of a technology development program by Statoil ASA. The idea behind the technology seeds back several years, and is a product of hands- on- practical experience. Extensive experience has indicated feasibility of more work toward understanding the principles in action and approaching a practical solution for use on physical plants. The idea is registered internally at Statoil with Statoil reference K4064, and the current intellectual property strategy requires all information relating this idea, including this master thesis, to be qualified as ‘Confidential’. Introduction to the technology plan [1] defines the prime motivation of the technology development: There is a growing motivation for monitoring control loop performance and for a change in maintenance strategy towards more condition based maintenance. Monitoring control loop performance and equipment condition enables for early action when deterioration of a control function starts developing, i.e. before the developing fault(s) or changes in process characteristics has had a significant negative effect on business. The proposed technology is a practical method for superficial system identification and technical/operational state detection, with the goal of optimizing process component maintenance, and control loop retuning. The vital components of the plan will be properly detailed in the thesis outline, 1.3, with the associated deliverables and constraints. A description of the proposed test mechanism will be provided under the theory chapter, 2.3. Also as part of the same Statoil Technology Development program, a bachelor thesis [2] was conducted in 2010, by Espen Svandalsflona and Frode Tuen associated with the University of Stavanger, concluding among other topics that more study on the results criteria for making the maintenance decisions would have to be made and review changing several process parameters in combination. Additionally it would need to be proved that oscillations induced by the proposed test mechanism would not upset other parts of the process to such a degree that the de-sire for increase of product quality, effectiveness and the cost advantages, would be overshadowed by the potential performance loss associated during the testing. The latter topic will not be discussed in this thesis due to the time constraint