Atypical vitelliform macular dystrophy misdiagnosed as chronic central serous chorioretinopathy: case reports

BACKGROUND: To report two cases of atypical vitelliform macular dystrophy misdiagnosed as chronic central serous chorioretinopathy. CASE PRESENTATION: Two patients with incidentally discovered abnormalities of the retina without specific symptoms were referred to our hospital for consultation. Bilateral macula atrophic lesions were observed and optical coherence tomography revealed serous retinal detachment in the macula. Fluorescein angiography showed multiple leakages around the central hypofluorescent area and indocyanine green angiography showed partially dilated choroidal vessels. Fundus autofluorescence (FAF) showed a decreasing pattern of autofluorescence in the subretinal fluid area, and increasing autofluorescence at the border of the serous retinal detachment. Both patients were diagnosed with chronic central serous chorioretinopathy. Photodynamic therapy and intravitreal bevacizumab injection were administered for engorged choroidal vessels during follow-up, but neither patient showed improvement in symptoms or ophthalmologic findings. Based on re-evaluation by fundus photography, optical coherence tomography, fluorescein angiography, and comparison of the results of FAF with the first visit, vitelliform macular dystrophy was suspected and a definite diagnosis was made by electrooculography and genetic testing. CONCLUSION: In patients with continuous serous retinal detachment without response to photodynamic therapy or intravitreal bevacizumab injection, careful fundus exam and FAF can be used to diagnose atypical vitelliform macular dystrophy

Effects of Gas on Formation and Evolution of Stellar Bars and Nuclear Rings in Disk Galaxies

We run self-consistent simulations of Milky Way-sized, isolated disk galaxies to study formation and evolution of a stellar bar as well as a nuclear ring in the presence of gas. We consider two sets of models with cold or warm disks that differ in the radial velocity dispersions, and vary the gas fraction $f_{\rm gas}$ by fixing the total disk mass. A bar forms earlier and more strongly in the cold disks with larger $f_{\rm gas}$, while gas progressively delays the bar formation in the warm disks . The bar formation enhances a central mass concentration which in turn makes the bar decay temporarily, after which it regrows in size and strength, eventually becoming stronger in models with smaller $f_{\rm gas}$. Although all bars rotate fast in the beginning, they rapidly turn to slow rotators. In our models, only the gas-free, warm disk undergoes rapid buckling instability, while other disks thicken more gradually via vertical heating. The gas driven inward by the bar potential readily forms a star-forming nuclear ring. The ring is very small when it first forms and grows in size over time. The ring star formation rate is episodic and bursty due to feedback, and well correlated with the mass inflow rate to the ring. Some expanding shells produced by star formation feedback are sheared out in the bar regions and collide with dust lanes to appear as filamentary interbar spurs. The bars and nuclear rings formed in our simulations have properties similar to those in the Milky Way

Scaling Law for Recommendation Models: Towards General-purpose User Representations

Recent advancement of large-scale pretrained models such as BERT, GPT-3, CLIP, and Gopher, has shown astonishing achievements across various task domains. Unlike vision recognition and language models, studies on general-purpose user representation at scale still remain underexplored. Here we explore the possibility of general-purpose user representation learning by training a universal user encoder at large scales. We demonstrate that the scaling law is present in user representation learning areas, where the training error scales as a power-law with the amount of computation. Our Contrastive Learning User Encoder (CLUE), optimizes task-agnostic objectives, and the resulting user embeddings stretch our expectation of what is possible to do in various downstream tasks. CLUE also shows great transferability to other domains and companies, as performances on an online experiment shows significant improvements in Click-Through-Rate (CTR). Furthermore, we also investigate how the model performance is influenced by the scale factors, such as training data size, model capacity, sequence length, and batch size. Finally, we discuss the broader impacts of CLUE in general.Comment: Accepted at AAAI 2023. This version includes the technical appendi

The Effect of Milrinone on the Right Ventriclular Function in Patients with Reduced Right Ventricular Function Undergoing Off-pump Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery

This investigation evaluated the effect of continuous milrinone infusion on right ventriclular (RV) function during off-pump coronary artery bypass graft (OPCAB) surgery in patients with reduced RV function. Fifty patients scheduled for OPCAB, with thermodilution RV ejection fraction (RVEF) <35% after anesthesia induction, were randomly allocated to either milrinone (0.5 µg/kg/min) or control (saline) group. Hemodynamic variables and RV volumetric data measured by thermodilution method were collected as follows: after anesthesia induction (T1); 10 min after heart displacement for obtuse marginal artery anastomosis (T2); after pericardial closure (T3). Cardiac index and heart rate increased and systemic vascular resistance significantly decreased in milrinone group at T2. Initially lower RVEF of milrinone group was eventually comparable to control group after milrinone infusion. RVEF did not significantly change at T2 and T3 in both groups. RV end-diastolic volume in milrinone group consistently decreased from the baseline at T2 and T3. Continuous infusion of milrinone without a bolus demonstrated potentially beneficial effect on cardiac output and RV afterload in patients with reduced RV function during OPCAB. However, aggressive augmentation of intravascular volume seems to be necessary to maximize the effect of the milrinone in these patients

Evaluation for Damaged Degree of Vegetation by Forest Fire Using LiDAR and Digital Aerial Photograph

The amount of vegetation physically damaged by forest fire can be evaluated using lidar (Light Detection And Ranging) data because the loss of canopy height and width by forest fire can be relevant to the number of points transmitted to the ground through the canopy of the damaged forest. On the other hand, the biological damage of vegetation caused by forest fire can be obtained from the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), which determines the vegetation vitality. In this study, the degree of physical damage from the lidar data was classified into serious physical damage (SPD) and light physical damage (LPD). The degree of biological damage using NDVI was likewise classified into serious biological damage (SBD) and light biological damage (LBD). Finally, the damaged area was graded into four categories: (a) SPD and SBD, (b) LPD and SBD, (c) SPD and LBD, and (d) LPD and LBD. The accuracy assessment for the area classified into four grades showed an overall accuracy of 0.74, and a kappa value of 0.61 which provides improvement over previous works

Evaluation of ITU-R Recommendation P.1546 and Consideration for New Correction Factor

ITU-R recommendation P.1546 models is representative path loss model in the frequency range 30~3000MHz over expended area (1~1000 km). It is mainly based on the propagation curves and correction factors are added on that. In this paper, we compare measurements and prediction and propose several considerations to enhance the prediction accuracy of ITU-R P.1546 model