Impending anterior ischemic optic neuropathy with elements of retinal vein occlusion in a patient on interferon for polycythemia vera.

We describe the course and likely pathophysiology of impending anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (AION) and retinal vein occlusion in a 56-year-old man with polycythemia vera managed with interferon alpha for 2 years. Our patient presented with decreased vision, scintillating scotomata, and floaters. Fundus examination findings and results of a fluorescein angiogram led to the diagnosis of impending AION and retinal vein occlusion. Considering that both polycythemia vera and interferon have possible influences on vascular occlusion and optic disc edema, we stopped interferon treatment and immediately attempted to treat the polycythemia vera empirically with pentoxifylline and any interferon-associated inflammation with prednisone. Our patient experienced complete resolution of fundus abnormalities and return of normal vision within 3 weeks, which may be attributed to our successful treatment of both etiologies. Thus, further study is warranted to elucidate the treatment of both polycythemia vera and interferon-induced impending AION

Event Rate for Extreme Mass Ratio Burst Signals in the LISA Band

Stellar mass compact objects in short period orbits about a $10^{4.5}$--$10^{7.5}$ solar mass massive black hole (MBH) are thought to be a significant continuous-wave source of gravitational radiation for the ESA/NASA Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) gravitational wave detector. However, these extreme mass-ratio inspiral sources began in long-period, nearly parabolic orbits that have multiple close encounters with the MBH. The gravitational radiation emitted during these close encounters may be detectable by LISA as a gravitational wave burst if the characteristic passage timescale is less than $10^5$ seconds. Scaling a static, spherical model to the size and mass of the Milky Way bulge we estimate an event rate of ~ 15 per year for such burst signals, detectable by LISA with signal-to-noise greater than five, originating in our galaxy. When extended to include Virgo cluster galaxies our estimate increases to a gravitational wave burst rate of ~ 18. We conclude that these extreme mass-ratio burst sources may be a steady and significant source of gravitational radiation in the LISA data streams.Comment: 4 pages, minor revisions. Accepted for ApJ Letter

Bartholomew Clerke's Castiglione: Can a pedant be a gentleman?

From the early fourteenth century until well into the sixteenth, Italy was setting the tone in the arts of graceful living, in sophistication, good manners and general culture, much to the somewhat reluctant gratitude of other parts of Europe. Baldassare Castiglione's " Cortegiano (1528) was one of the majar books that taught Italian manners and the arts of sophistication to the rest of Europe. His Cortegiano was more than the modern "courtier": he was a statesman who added his social savoir-faire to statecraft, ethics and all the virtues he could put at the service of his sovereign, his friends and, at times, his inferiors. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries " Cortegiano was translated into four languages, and each of these translations had a fair market. The first of these versions was the French of Jean Colin revised by Etienne Dolet, published in 1538 and reprinted in 1540 and 1545. The Spanish of Juan Boscán appeared in 1540, and was reprinted until 1569. The 1561 English version by Sir Thomas Hoby had only one printing, being superseded in 1571 by the Latin of Bartholomew Clerke. This had several reprints in England, and in Germany it was reprinted up to 1713. Finally there was a second French version by Gabriel Chapuis (ca 1580), reprinted in 1585

The Other Dryden

John Dryden (1631-1700) needs no introduction as one of the finest English translators of poetry in an age famous for its translatíon. His relations with the Stuart kings placed him at the centre of the controversies over religion and kingship in England. His two major prose translations were done in obedience to Royal Comman

High dose multiple micronutrient supplementation improves villous morphology in environmental enteropathy without HIV enteropathy: results from a double-blind randomised placebo controlled trial in Zambian adults

PMCID: PMC3897937This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated

Relativistic Effects in Extreme Mass Ratio Gravitational Wave Bursts

Extreme mass ratio bursts (EMRBs) have been proposed as a possible source for future space-borne gravitational wave detectors, such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). These events are characterized by long-period, nearly-radial orbits of compact objects around a central massive black hole. The gravitational radiation emitted during such events consists of a short burst, corresponding to periapse passage, followed by a longer, silent interval. In this paper we investigate the impact of including relativistic corrections to the description of the compact object's trajectory via a geodesic treatment, as well as including higher-order multipole corrections in the waveform calculation. The degree to which the relativistic corrections are important depends on the EMRB's orbital parameters. We find that relativistic EMRBs (v_{max}}/c > 0.25) are not rare and actually account for approximately half of the events in our astrophysical model. The relativistic corrections tend to significantly change the waveform amplitude and phase relative to a Newtonian description, although some of this dephasing could be mimicked by parameter errors. The dephasing over several bursts could be of particular importance not only to gravitational wave detection, but also to parameter estimation, since it is highly correlated to the spin of the massive black hole. Consequently, we postulate that if a relativistic EMRB is detected, such dephasing might be used to probe the relativistic character of the massive black hole and obtain information about its spin.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Replaced with version accepted for publication in the Ap.

Notes of the Ecology of the Fresh-Water Mussels of Dallas County

The late John K. Strecker of the Baylor University Museum catalogued the Naiades of Texas in 1931. Since then, but little has been added to our knowledge of these mollusks in Texas. We need now, especially, studies on the general ecology of Texan species, with a modern revision of names, careful comparison of the synonymy, and close identification of Texas specimens in the museums. Last summer (1951) we made an ecological study of Parson\u27s Slough in the southeastern part of Dallas County. In our work we gathered much information on the bivalve mollusks. Other data later gathered from this locality and other parts of the county, have been incorporated in this report

GMF: A Model Migration Case for the Transformation Tool Contest

Using a real-life evolution taken from the Graphical Modeling Framework, we invite submissions to explore ways in which model transformation and migration tools can be used to migrate models in response to metamodel adaptation.Comment: In Proceedings TTC 2011, arXiv:1111.440

Developing an Argument for Def Stan 00-56 from Existing Qualification Evidence

International audienceCommonly-used civil guidance and standards in the safety-critical software industry (IEC 61508, EN 50128, DO-178B) constrain development activity and generate process and product evidence. However, procurements for UK defence systems must be supported with a safety case assessed against Def Stan 00-56 Issue 4. This paper studies the use of evidence from civil guidance and standards in arguments towards DS 00-56. The approach is centred on a particular application, the KCG qualified code generator, and is based on a generic software contribution argumentation approach. The results show that issues arise in substantiating failure conditions, choosing a suitable level of detail in the argumentand relating detailed explanations to the structure of the evidence. Explicit argumentation was found to be useful in addressing each of these issues