Clinical signs, aetiology and outcome in 30 cats with recurrent seizures (2002-2018)

ΔΕΝ ΔΙΑΤΙΘΕΤΑΙ ΠΕΡΙΛΗΨΗThe purpose of the current study was to describe seizure types, aetiology, treatment response and outcome in 30cats with recurrent seizures. This retrospective case series study included the medical records of client-owned cats, admitted to the Clinic of Companion Animals for seizure disorders, from 2002 to 2018. Recorded data included history, seizure type, physical and neurological examination findings, blood pressure measurements, complete blood counts, serum biochemistry profile and urinalysis, tentative/final diagnosis, treatment, hospitalization and longterm outcome. A total of 298 feline neurology cases were examined during the study period. Of those, 38 cases were admitted for seizure disorders and 30 met the inclusion criteria. Median age on admission was 38,2 months (3,1 years) (range 2 months- 14 years old).Seizure types, as per owner description, were generalized (26 cats), focal with secondary generalization (3 cats), focal (2 cats) and complex (1 cat). Cluster seizures appeared at least once in 18/30 and status epilepticus in 7/30. Different seizure types were also recorded in individual cases. Fifteen cats (15/30) were hospitalized at least once and the duration of hospitalization ranged from 1-10 days. In most cases, in which diagnosis was established, epilepsy wassecondary (25/30), due to previous head trauma(11/30),metabolic (1/30), or inflammatory (4/30) disease, arterial hypertension (3/30), toxicosis (3/30) and intracranial neoplasia (2/30).Congenital hydrocephalus was detected in 1 cat. Tentative diagnosis could not be established in 5cats; however differential diagnosis included inflammatory or neoplastic encephalopathies.Antiepileptic drug monotherapy (phenobarbital or levetiracetam) was sufficient to control the seizures in 14 cases, while administration of combination therapy with 2 or more antiepileptic drugs was required in 5 cases (phenobarbital, levetiracetam, gabapentin). Successful control was achieved in 11/30 animals for 1-5 years. Seven cats required intensive care at least once due to status epilepticus. Until today, eighteen (18/30) cats are still alive and 11 died or were euthanized.Although in most cases epilepsy was secondary, seizure control was adequate and quality of life (QoL) was improved with antiepileptic drugs when metabolic, inflammatory and neoplastic encephalopathies were excluded.

Prior to Segment: Foreground Cues for Weakly Annotated Classes in Partially Supervised Instance Segmentation

Instance segmentation methods require large datasets with expensive and thus limited instance-level mask labels. Partially supervised instance segmentation aims to improve mask prediction with limited mask labels by utilizing the more abundant weak box labels. In this work, we show that a class agnostic mask head, commonly used in partially supervised instance segmentation, has difficulties learning a general concept of foreground for the weakly annotated classes using box supervision only. To resolve this problem we introduce an object mask prior (OMP) that provides the mask head with the general concept of foreground implicitly learned by the box classification head under the supervision of all classes. This helps the class agnostic mask head to focus on the primary object in a region of interest (RoI) and improves generalization to the weakly annotated classes. We test our approach on the COCO dataset using different splits of strongly and weakly supervised classes. Our approach significantly improves over the Mask R-CNN baseline and obtains competitive performance with the state-of-the-art, while offering a much simpler architecture

The modular tool switching problem

This article analyzes the complexity of the modular tool switching problem arising in flexible manufacturing environments. A single, numerically controlled placement machine is equipped with an online tool magazine consisting of several changeable tool feeder modules. The modules can hold a number of tools necessary for the jobs. In addition to the online modules, there is a set of offline modules which can be changed to the machine during a job change. A number of jobs are processed by the machine, each job requiring a certain set of tools. The sequence of jobs is given as part of the input and fixed. Tools between jobs can be switched individually, or by replacing a whole module containing multiple tools. We consider the complexity of the problem of arranging tools into the modules, so that the work for module and tool loading is minimized. Tools are of uniform size and have unit loading costs. We show that the general problem is NP-hard, and in the case of fixed number of modules and fixed module capacity the problem is solvable in polynomial time.</p

Does Exogenous Application of Kinetin and Spermine Mitigate the Effect of Seawater on Yield Attributes and Biochemical Aspects of Grains?

A pot experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of grain presoaking in kinetin ( 0.1 mM), spermine (0.3 mM) and their interaction on yield components and biochemical aspects of yielded grains of wheat plants irrigated with 25% seawater . Seawater induced marked reduction in biochemical aspects of yielded grains especially carbohydrates content, nitrogenous constituents, total protein and nucleic acids contents as well as proline and organic acids (citric and keto-acids) content. Conversely, seawater stress increased phosphorus and ions (Na+, K+ and Cl-) content. Application of kinetin or spermine appeared to mitigate the effect of seawater stress on wheat yield and the biochemical aspects of yielded grains. The effect was more pronounced with kinetin + spermine treatment

Genotyping by sequencing provides new insights into the diversity of Napier grass (Cenchrus purpureus) and reveals variation in genome-wide LD patterns between collections

peer-reviewedNapier grass is an important tropical forage-grass and of growing potential as an energy crop. One-hundred-five Napier grass accessions, encompassing two independent collections, were subjected to genotyping by sequencing which generated a set of high-density genome-wide markers together with short sequence reads. The reads, averaging 54 nucleotides, were mapped to the pearl millet genome and the closest genes and annotation information were used to select candidate genes linked to key forage traits. 980 highly polymorphic SNP markers, distributed across the genome, were used to assess population structure and diversity with seven-subgroups identified. A few representative accessions were selected with the objective of distributing subsets of a manageable size for further evaluation. Genome-wide linkage disequilibrium (LD) analyses revealed a fast LD-decay, on average 2.54 kbp, in the combined population with a slower LD-decay in the ILRI collection compared with the EMBRAPA collection, the significance of which is discussed. This initiative generated high-density markers with a good distribution across the genome. The diversity analysis revealed the existence of a substantial amount of variation in the ILRI collection and identified some unique materials from the EMBRAPA collection, demonstrating the potential of the overall population for further genetic and marker-trait-association studies

Wheat can acclimate to seawater by pretreatment with kinetin and spermine through osmotic adjustment and solutes allocation

A key issue in salt adaptation is the osmotic adjustment, therefore, during ear emergence the effect of exogenous application of kinetin and spermine on osmotic pressure (OP) and solutes allocation (total soluble sugars, total soluble nitrogen, proline, organic acids and inorganic ions (Na+, K+, Ca2+, Mg2+ and Cl-) were quantified in flag leaf of wheat plants irrigated by seawater at 25%. Seawater salinity induced significant increase in osmotic pressure. Furthermore, seawater stress induced marked increase in total soluble sugars, total soluble nitrogen, proline, organic acids, as well as Na+, K+, Ca++, Mg++, Cl- and P+++ in wheat flag leaf. On the other hand, seawater decreased SPR, SAR and PAR in flag leaves of wheat plants. Grain priming with kinetin, spermine or their interaction appeared to mitigate the ill effect of seawater on wheat plants by increasing its own capability to be more tolerant against seawater salinity by inducing additional increase in osmotic pressure and the osmolytes concentrations in flag leaf during ear emergence. Moreover, the effect was more pronounced with the interaction of kinetin and spermine treatment

Increasing Skin Pigmentation Following Severe Head Trauma: All That Glitters Is Not Gold!

We report the case of a 67-year-old man who was admitted to our Intensive Care Unit because of traumatic brain injury. During his prolonged hospitalization, gradual darkening of the skin all over his body was observed. An excess corticotropin (ACTH) production syndrome was considered. The patient’s hormone study showed high levels of ACTH (978 pg/ml) with normal cortisol levels. Extensive clinical and laboratory investigations revealed adenocarcinoma of the colon, which was likely the site of the ectopic ACTH production. This is a very rare manifestation of paraneoplastic syndrome during the course of colon adenocarcinoma. The most important feature of this case report is that this rare syndrome was accidentally discovered, in a patient hospitalized for unrelated reasons, by simple clinical investigation

The Impact of the Gold Mining on the Social, Economic, Andcultural in the Bombana District Southeast Sulawesi Province

The phenomenon of a gold mine brings a lot of changes in people's daily life in the Bombana District. This study aims to: (a) Aware of the social and cultural changes in society before and after the gold mining business, and (b) Knowing the changes in people's income before and after the gold mining business. The study population is the people who are in the gold mining sites. This study result, namely: (a) Gold mining have negative impact on social, economic, and cultural of communities around the gold mining area. Social, economic, and cultural societies tend to be in better shape before the gold mining. Average income communities after the gold mining increase by Rp 755.392 per month. (c) Gold mining do not increase the welfare of society, especially for farmers. The implication of this study is the government should strictly supervise and tighten even a moratorium against IUP, and gold mining companies should have corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the form of incentives to the affected communities of the businesses under their management in the fields of education, health, agriculture, economics, and culture as well as other aspects relating to the welfare of society