One-and-a-half syndrome : its presentation, causes and neuroanatomy

BACKGROUND: One-and-a-half syndrome involves a combination of an ipsilateral horizontal gaze palsy and an ipsilateral internuclear ophthalmoplegia. This condition is easily missed due to its presentation, but can be the first sign of serious disease. We aim to increase awareness of this syndrome’s presentation and give an insight into the intricate neuroanatomical connections that are affected in it.CASE PRESENTATION: We present a case of a 39-year-old previously healthy female who presented with a one-week history of diplopia and non-vertiginous dizziness. On examination, a left horizontal gaze palsy with deficits in left abduction and right adduction was noted, accompanied by left adduction weakness and right horizontal disconjugate jerk nystagmus in abduction. A diagnosis of OAHS was made, and she was admitted for further tests. An MRI of her brain revealed multiple hyperintensities throughout, along with an enhancing lesion in keeping with active disease. A diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis was made and she was given a five-day course of methylprednisolone, with which her vision, and ultimately her gait, improved. She was discharged with outpatient follow-up, to further discuss treatment options for her new diagnosis.CONCLUSION: Diplopia and vertigo are symptoms that should prompt careful clinical examination with proper attention to ocular motility testing, and subsequent referral to neurology if required. Unnecessary delays in diagnosis and management could ultimately be detrimental to the patient, and being aware of uncommon presentations would go a long way in enhancing patient safety.peer-reviewe

An online educational portal for teachers and students in a subject department

Teachers are against duplication of efforts and dislike the sideway clerical duties that use up their resources for doing the proper job — enriching their knowledge and giving pastoral care for their students. The duty of marking attendance, entering marks and subsequently producing a global grade is an important link in the chain of school ad- ministration and hence a necessary evil. Today we are in an era enriched by useful technologies and tools that can help in the learning environment. In this paper, an already-existing open-source e-learning software platform is used and manipulated to accommodate the exigencies and specific needs of running a subject department at a post-secondary level in Malta.peer-reviewe

Semantic eBroker

The world of e-commerce presents ample opportunity to fully utilise the capability of intelligent Agents. The highly dynamic, fast- moving and information-rich environment can often be overwhelming for the human participant. Agents can intelligently assist users by mimicking human behaviour and adapting themselves to their client’s specification. This thesis presents an e-commerce framework that would introduce negotiation techniques which allows sellers and buyers to trade using Case Base Reasoning techniques as well as being proactive in remembering users’ requests and autonomously monitoring vendor sites for new items that might match the users’ needs and preferences. It observes the users whilst shopping and learns their preferences with respect to various features that characterise shopping items.peer-reviewe

Improving conversational dynamics with reactive speech synthesis

The active exchange of ideas and/or information is a crucial feature of human-human conversation. Yet it is a skill that present-day ‘conversational’ interfaces are lacking, which effectively hampers the dynamics of interaction and makes it feel artificial. In this paper, we present a reactive speech synthesis system that can handle user’s interruptions. Initial results of evaluation of our interactive experiment indicate that participants prefer a reactive system to a non-reactive one. Based on participants’ feedback, we suggest potential applications for reactive speech synthesis systems (i.e. interactive tutor and adventure game) and propose further interactive user experiments to evaluate them. We anticipate that the reactive system can offer more engaging and dynamic interaction and improve user experience by making it feel more like a natural human-human conversation

Minimally invasive resection of a marijuana-associated giant bulla : a case report

BACKGROUND: Smoking is known to be a causative factor for emphysema. Literature also supports the possibility that marijuana abuse increases the probability of giant apical bullae in young individuals. Surgical resection is the only cure for giant bullae, whilst also having a prophylactic role. Video-assisted Thoracoscopic Surgery (VATS) bullectomy is thenew gold standard replacing thoracotomy.CASE PRESENTATION: We present a 31-year old marijuana smoker with a history of multiple pneumothoraces who was found to have a large emphysematous bulla in the left upper lobe accompanied by a smaller bulla in the superior lingular segment. Even though he was asymptomatic at the time, VATS bullectomy was carried out in view of his multiple previous pneumothoraces. The patient recovered well after surgery, and a follow-up chest x-ray 2 weeks post-operatively showed a fully inflated lung.CONCLUSION: This is the first case of giant bulla being removed via minimally invasive VATS in Malta. Apart from continuing to show the effectiveness and suitability of VATS in the treatment of this condition, we highlight the important link between marijuana and giant emphysematous bullae.peer-reviewe

The Nature of the Red Giant Branches in the Ursa Minor and Draco Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies

Spectra for stars located redward of the fiducial red giant branches of the Ursa Minor and Draco dwarf spheroidal galaxies have been obtained with the Hobby-Eberly telescope and the Marcario Low Resolution Spectrometer. From a comparison of our radial velocities with those reported in previous medium-resolution studies, we find an average difference of 10 km/s with a standard deviation of 11 km/s. On the basis of these radial velocities, we confirm the membership of five stars in Ursa Minor, and find two others to be nonmembers. One of the confirmed members is a known carbon star which lies redward of RGB; three others are previously unidentified carbon stars. The fifth star is a red giant which was found previously by Shetrone et al. (2001) to have [Fe/H] =-1.68+/-0.11 dex. In Draco, we find eight nonmembers, confirm the membership of one known carbon star, and find two new members. One of these stars is a carbon star, while the other shows no evidence for C2 bands or strong atomic bands, although the signal-to-noise ratio of the spectrum is low. Thus, we find no evidence for a population of stars more metal-rich than [Fe/H] \~ -1.45 dex in either of these galaxies. Indeed, our spectroscopic survey suggests that every candidate suspected of having a metallicity in excess of this value based on its position in the color-magnitude diagram is, in actuality, a carbon star. Based on the census of 13 known carbon stars in these two galaxies, we estimate of the carbon star specific frequency to be e(dSph) ~ 2.4E-5/Lsolarv, 25-100 times higher than that of Galactic globular clusters.Comment: 8 pages including 3 figures accepted in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. This work is based on observations obtained with the Hobby-Eberly Telescop

Analysis of online news coverage on earthquakes through text mining

News agencies work around the clock to report critical news such as earthquakes. We investigate the relationship between online news articles and seismic events that happen around the world in real time. We utilize computer text mining tools to automatically harvest, identify, cluster and extract information from earthquake-related reports, and carry out cross-validation on the mined information. Earthquake parameters retrieved from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Application Programming Interface (API) are organized into earthquake events, with each event consisting of daily earthquake readings taking place in a particular geographical location. The results are then visualized on a user-friendly dashboard. 268,182 news reports published by 23 news agencies from different parts of the world and 14,717 earthquakes of magnitude ranging from 4 to 8.2 listed in the bulletin were processed during a 1-year study between 2018 and 2019. 1.25% of the analyzed articles had the word “quake” and 0.4% were clustered and then mapped to an earthquake event. The use of multilingual news sources from 16 countries (6 languages) gives the advantage of reducing potential news bias originating from English-written reports only. The mapping of articles with an earthquake catalog helps verify earthquake reports and determine relationships. We find that the distribution of the reported seismicity is from earthquakes that occur on or very close to land. We propose a general relationship between the number of news agencies, the earthquake magnitude and the anticipated number of published articles. News reports tend to mention higher earthquake magnitudes than those in the USGS earthquake catalog, and the reports on earthquakes can last from a few days to a couple of weeks following the earthquake.peer-reviewe

Feasibility study of a PocketQube platform to host an ionospheric impedance probe

Since the advent of CubeSat spacecraft, universities and private entities have been successfully designing and launching satellites at a fraction of the traditional cost. These satellites still accommodate useful scientific payloads. Another recently established satellite format is the PocketQube (PQ) - one eighth the size of a CubeSat – with the aim of further reducing launching costs. However, this brings with it the challenge of working with substantially smaller power, mass and volume budgets. Accurate ionospheric modelling requires the use of electron density measurements at the topside of the ionosphere which could be obtained via distributed in-situ sensing. This makes a low cost PQ constellation ideal for this application. In order to assess the feasibility of the PQ format, a preliminary study was conducted about the design of a PQ technology demonstrator capable of carrying a scientific payload. In this paper, the design approaches are discussed, keeping in mind the design budget restrictions as well as the constraints imposed by the ionospheric sensor.The research work disclosed in this publication is funded by the ENDEAVOUR Scholarship Scheme (Malta). The scholarship is part-financed by the European Union – European Social Fund (ESF) under Operational Programme II – Cohesion Policy 2014-2020, “Investing in human capital to create more opportunities and promote the well-being of societypeer-reviewe

Feasibility study of a PocketQube platform to host an ionospheric impedance probe

Since the advent of CubeSat spacecraft, universities and private entities have been successfully designing and launching satellites at a fraction of the traditional cost. These satellites still accommodate useful scientific payloads. Another recently established satellite format is the PocketQube (PQ) - one eighth the size of a CubeSat – with the aim of further reducing launching costs. However, this brings with it the challenge of working with substantially smaller power, mass and volume budgets. Accurate ionospheric modelling requires the use of electron density measurements at the topside of the ionosphere which could be obtained via distributed in-situ sensing. This makes a low cost PQ constellation ideal for this application. In order to assess the feasibility of the PQ format, a preliminary study was conducted about the design of a PQ technology demonstrator capable of carrying a scientific payload. In this paper, the design approaches are discussed, keeping in mind the design budget restrictions as well as the constraints imposed by the ionospheric sensor.The research work disclosed in this publication is funded by the ENDEAVOUR Scholarship Scheme (Malta). The scholarship is part-financed by the European Union – European Social Fund (ESF) under Operational Programme II – Cohesion Policy 2014-2020, “Investing in human capital to create more opportunities and promote the well-being of societypeer-reviewe

Clinical Applications of Anterior Segment Optical Coherence Tomography:An Updated Review

Since its introduction, optical coherence tomography (OCT) has revolutionized the field of ophthalmology and has now become an indispensable, noninvasive tool in daily practice. Most ophthalmologists are familiar with its use in the assessment and monitoring of retinal and optic nerve diseases. However, it also has important applications in the assessment of anterior segment structures, including the cornea, conjunctiva, sclera, anterior chamber, and iris, and has the potential to transform the clinical examination of these structures. In this review, we aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the potential clinical utility of anterior segment OCT (AS-OCT) for a wide range of anterior segment pathologies, such as conjunctival neoplasia, pterygium, scleritis, keratoconus, corneal dystrophies, and infectious/noninfectious keratitis. In addition, the clinical applications of AS-OCT (including epithelial mapping) in preoperative planning and postoperative monitoring for corneal and refractive surgeries are discussed