Malignant Metastatic Insulinoma in a Dog

Background: Insulinomas are tumors of the pancreatic islet beta cells that secreting insulin. They are malignant neoplasms and rarely seen in dogs. Because insulinomas secrete excessive insulin and hypoglycemia occur. The most common clinical symptoms are seizures, extreme weakness, and other neurological abnormalities. The tumors typically release insulin episodically, with clinical signs being seen intermittently as a result. These are most often associated with prolonged starvation or prolonged periods of exertion. Insulinoma occurs most often in middle-aged and older dogs, averaging nine years in age. They affect both sexes and are more likely in larger breeds. The most commonly afflicted breeds are German Shepherds, Irish Setters, Boxers, Golden Retrievers and Terriers. Case: In this study, a case of malignant insulinoma with multiorgan metastasis in a 7-year-old hunting dog that brought to the clinic with complaints of constipation and inappetence were evaluated by clinical, cytological, histopathological and immunohistochemical fndings. Owner stated that the animal suffers from constipation for 4 days, but no vomitus or nervous symptoms were present. Clinical efforts not solved the constipation. For to the defnitive diagnosis the dog decided to underwent laparotomy. After a midline abdominal approach multiple whitish, hard and irregular metastatic tumoral masses were observed in different abdominal organs. Because of the poor prognosis and according to owner’s acceptance the dog euthanatized at the same time. At necropsy, a bloody serous fluid approximately 500 mL was found in the abdominal cavity. The intestines were hyperemic and hemorrhagic in some areas. A hemorrhagic 9x5x3 cm in diameter mass was observed on the pancreas. Mesenterial adhesions were formed due to mass between duodenum and jejunum. The mass was moderately hard and cut surface was bloody, necrosis was observed in some areas. At the gross examination, whitish color, various sized and multiple metastatic masses were noted in spleen, liver, lymph nodes and lungs. Before formalin fxation, impression smears were made from the pancreatic mass. In cytological preparations of the lesion, epithelial cells in different shapes and sizes were observed. At the histopathological examination, the tumor mass consisted of anaplastic, pleomorphic cells that have pale cytoplasm, vesicular nucleus and prominent nucleolus. Diffuse necrotic areas were noted in the mass. Similar metastatic masses were seen in liver, spleen, lungs and kidneys. The tumor cells were positive for insulin and negative for glucagon immunohistochemically. Discussion: Insulinomas generally caused nervous symptoms due to hypoglycemia. Metastasis may occur in some cases and generally lymph node metastasis occurs. Spleen metastasis are very rare in insulinoma cases. The mean age of the occurrence of insulinoma is generally older than 9-year-old. In this case, a case of malignant insulinoma with multiorgan metastasis and caused constipation due to intestinal adhesions in a dog was presented with clinical and pathological fndings. Best of the author’s knowledge insulinoma as a cause of constipation not previously reported in a dog. The aim of this study was to report a case of metastatic insulinoma without neurological symptoms but constipation in a 7 years old hunting dog by clinical, pathological, cytological and immunohistochemical fndings. Keywords: Malignant insulinoma, constipation, cytology, histopathology, immunohistochemistry, dog

Through a fair looking-glass: mitigating bias in image datasets

With the recent growth in computer vision applications, the question of how fair and unbiased they are has yet to be explored. There is abundant evidence that the bias present in training data is reflected in the models, or even amplified. Many previous methods for image dataset de-biasing, including models based on augmenting datasets, are computationally expensive to implement. In this study, we present a fast and effective model to de-bias an image dataset through reconstruction and minimizing the statistical dependence between intended variables. Our architecture includes a U-net to reconstruct images, combined with a pre-trained classifier which penalizes the statistical dependence between target attribute and the protected attribute. We evaluate our proposed model on CelebA dataset, compare the results with a state-of-the-art de-biasing method, and show that the model achieves a promising fairness-accuracy combination

Computer science qualifying exam: a case study on improving student success and program quality

Las instituciones de educación superior tradicionalmente miden el éxito de los estudiantes y la calidad de un programa académico mediante métricas estándar, como el tiempo que tarda un estudiante en obtener un título, las tasas de graduación y las tasas de retención. Además, algunos programas han instituido un "examen de calificación" como una forma alternativa de medir la calidad de un programa académico y evaluar el dominio del estudiante en los conceptos básicos. El programa de Ciencias de la Computación (CS) de la Universidad de Florida Central implementó un examen de calificación "Examen básico" en 1998 con el propósito de evaluar el dominio de los estudiantes de los conceptos básicos de CS y controlar la calidad del programa. Sin embargo, las tasas de aprobación de los estudiantes que tomaron este examen de calificación fueron significativamente bajas a lo largo de los años. Además, algunos estudiantes retrasaron sistemáticamente la realización de este examen por temor a reprobar. Para reflejar las credenciales de conocimiento que necesita la industria, promover el dominio de los conceptos básicos de informática y ayudar a los estudiantes a graduarse de manera oportuna, se implementaron recomendaciones de mejora basadas en datos en 2016. Después de que se realizaron las mejoras, muchos más estudiantes intentaron el examen a tiempo y progresaron en su título en los años 2016-2018. Los detalles de estas mejoras y su impacto se presentan en este documento. &nbsp

Necrolytic Migratory Erythema in a Cat with Glucagonoma Syndrome

Background: Glucagonomas are very rare neuroendocrine tumors of pancreatic endocrine islets alpha cells and they produced excessive amount of glucagon hormone. Necrolytic migratory erythema (NME) is a rare dermatosis that characterized by erosive, ulcerative and crusted lesions in different sites of the skin and the common cause of this situation related to glucagon secreted tumors. NME can occur commonly in man but some rare and recent reports available the occurrence of this situation in pet animals especially dogs. Both gross and histological findings in both human and animals are similar. This paper reports a NME case with glucagonoma and diabetes mellitus (DM) by clinical, histopathological and immunohistochemical examinations.Case: A 12-year-old, cat presented with complaints of skin lesions in neck region, hyperglycemia, weight loss and history of anorexia during the 2 months. Biochemical analysis results revealed high glucose, aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and creatinine levels but decreased blood urea nitrogen (BUN), total protein and potassium levels. After 2 weeks of anti-diabetic drug treatment, the blood glucose level became normal and skin lesions ameliorated but anorexia and weight loss continued. The cat exhibited general weakness and pain in abdominal area. Although the clinical sings ameliorated and skin lesions and serum biochemical findings returned the relatively normal levels compared the admission, the cat died after 2 weeks of treatment and necropsy performed. At necropsy, marked cachexia, loss of skin elasticity and decreased skin thickness were observed. During the examination of abdominal cavity of the cat, there was a mass 0.5x0.5 cm in diameter, hard and grayish color was diagnosed at the pancreas. In addition, numerous whitish foci were also present the pancreatic tissue. Additionally, enlargement and paleness were noticed at the liver. Hemorrhages were observed at the liver, stomach and gut. Histopathologically pancreatic mass composed of polygonal neoplastic cells supported by thin, fibrovascular stroma characteristic for neuroendocrine tumor. But type of the cells undistinguished by histopathology for that reason immunohistochemistry performed for to evaluated insulin and glucagon secreting cells. Immunohistochemical examination revealed that only small number of insulin secreting but numerous glucagon secreting cells in the tumoral tissue and the tumor diagnosed as glucagonoma. Marked decrease were also noticed in insulin secretin cells in pancreas and together with high serum glucose levels diabetes mellitus (DM) also diagnosed to the cat. Histopathological examination of the skin revealed that decreased skin thickness, alopecia, slight inflammatory reaction and necrosis of the spinous layer.Discussion: Glucagonomas are rare tumors of pancreas even in human, and the incidence of this tumor is very rare in cat. They are usually silent tumors and they generally caused by paraneoplastic phenomena than primary clinical symptoms. The most prominent features of the “glucagonoma syndrome” are NME and DM. In human NME is commonly diagnosed in patient with glucagonoma syndrome. Very rare NME reports available in cats and dogs. The present cat had obvious clinical symptoms and typical skin lesions for NME. This report includes the very characteristic case of NME in a cat due to glucagonoma and DM, closely resembling the glucagonoma syndrome occurred in humans. Possible cause of the liver damage was also related the DM characterized high serum glucose level. We thought that liver lesions were also supported the occurrence of characteristic skin lesions