Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada Syndrome in a 10 Years Old Child

The Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada (VKH) syndrome is a rare systemic disorder of uveitis, dysacousia, vitiligo, premature graying of the hair, eyebrows and eyelashes, and meningoencephalitis. Although frequently unrecognised,VKH may affect children. We report a case of a 10 year old girl who presented with headache and dimness of vision and was diagnosed as papillitis on the basis of bilateral disc edema. However over the course of time developed skin changes (poliosis, vitiligo over lower back) and depigmented patches in inferior fundus suggesting diagnosis of VKH disease. Thus the diagnosis is difficult in the absence of extraocular manifestations. In such cases the diagnosis is based on clinical evolution of the disease

New upper bounds for spherical codes and packings

We improve the previously best known upper bounds on the sizes of $\theta$-spherical codes for every $\theta<\theta^*\approx 62.997^{\circ}$ at least by a factor of $0.4325$, in sufficiently high dimensions. Furthermore, for sphere packing densities in dimensions $n\geq 2000$ we have an improvement at least by a factor of $0.4325+\frac{51}{n}$. Our method also breaks many non-numerical sphere packing density bounds in small dimensions. Apart from Cohn and Zhao's \cite{CohnZhao} improvement on the geometric average of Levenshtein's bound \cite{Leven79} over all sufficiently high dimensions by a factor of $0.79,$ our work is the first improvement for each dimension since the work of Kabatyanskii and Levenshtein \cite{KL} and its later improvement by Levenshtein \cite{Leven79}. Moreover, we generalize Levenshtein's optimal polynomials and provide explicit formulae for them that may be of independent interest. For $0<\theta<\theta^*,$ we construct a test function for Delsarte's linear programing problem for $\theta$-spherical codes with exponentially improved factor in dimension compared to previous test functions.Comment: Comments are welcome

Sections of quadrics over AFq1\mathbb{A}^1_{\mathbb{F}_q}

Given finitely many closed points in distinct fibers of a non-degenerate quadric over $\mathbb{A}^1_{\mathbb{F}_q}$, we ask for conditions under which there is a section passing through the closed points, possibly with higher order (nilpotence) conditions. This could be thought of as a quadratic version of Lagrange interpolation, and it is equivalent to proving strong approximation for non-degenerate quadrics over $\mathbb{F}_q[t]$. We show that under mild conditions on the quadratic form $F$ over $\mathbb{F}_q[t]$ in $d$ variables, $f,g\in\mathbb{F}_q[t]$, $\boldsymbol{\lambda}\in\mathbb{F}_q[t]^d$, if $d\geq 5$ then for $\deg f\geq (4+\varepsilon)\deg g+O(1)$ we have a solution $\vec{x}\in\mathbb{F}_q[t]^d$ to $F(\vec{x})=f$ such that $\vec{x}\equiv\boldsymbol{\lambda}\bmod g$, where the the big-Oh notation does not depend on $f,g,\boldsymbol{\lambda}$. For $d=4$, we show the same is true for $\deg f\geq (6+\varepsilon)\deg g+O(1)$. This gives us a new proof (independent of the Ramanujan conjecture over function fields proved by Drinfeld) that the diameter of any $k$-regular Morgenstern Ramanujan graphs $G$ is at most $(2+\varepsilon)\log_{k-1}|G|+O_{\varepsilon}(1)$. In contrast to the $d=4$ case, our result is optimal for $d\geq 5$. Along the way, we prove a stationary phase theorem over function fields that is of independent interest.Comment: Comments are very welcome

Security in Dynamic Spectrum Access Systems: A Survey

Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) systems are being developed to improve spectrum utilization. Most of the research on DSA systems assumes that the participants involved are honest, cooperative, and that no malicious adversaries will attack or exploit the network. Some recent research efforts have focused on studying security issues in cognitive radios but there are still significant security challenges in the implementation of DSA systems that have not been addressed. In this paper we focus on security issues in DSA. We identify various attacks (e.g., DoS attacks, system penetration, repudiation, spoofing, authorization violation, malware infection, data modification, etc.) and suggest various approaches to address them. We show that significant security issues exist that should be addressed by the research community if DSA is to find its way into production systems. We also show that, in many cases, existing approaches to securing IT systems can be applied to DSA and identify other DSA specific security challenges where additional research will be required

Concomitant CIS on TURBT does not impact oncological outcomes in patients treated with neoadjuvant or induction chemotherapy followed by radical cystectomy

© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018Background: Cisplatin-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) for muscle invasive bladder cancer improves all-cause and cancer specific survival. We aimed to evaluate whether the detection of carcinoma in situ (CIS) at the time of initial transurethral resection of bladder tumor (TURBT) has an oncological impact on the response to NAC prior to radical cystectomy. Patients and methods: Patients were identified retrospectively from 19 centers who received at least three cycles of NAC or induction chemotherapy for cT2-T4aN0-3M0 urothelial carcinoma of the bladder followed by radical cystectomy between 2000 and 2013. The primary and secondary outcomes were pathological response and overall survival, respectively. Multivariable analysis was performed to determine the independent predictive value of CIS on these outcomes. Results: Of 1213 patients included in the analysis, 21.8% had concomitant CIS. Baseline clinical and pathologic characteristics of the ‘CIS’ versus ‘no-CIS’ groups were similar. The pathological response did not differ between the two arms when response was defined as pT0N0 (17.9% with CIS vs 21.9% without CIS; p = 0.16) which may indicate that patients with CIS may be less sensitive to NAC or ≤ pT1N0 (42.8% with CIS vs 37.8% without CIS; p = 0.15). On Cox regression model for overall survival for the cN0 cohort, the presence of CIS was not associated with survival (HR 0.86 (95% CI 0.63–1.18; p = 0.35). The presence of LVI (HR 1.41, 95% CI 1.01–1.96; p = 0.04), hydronephrosis (HR 1.63, 95% CI 1.23–2.16; p = 0.001) and use of chemotherapy other than ddMVAC (HR 0.57, 95% CI 0.34–0.94; p = 0.03) were associated with shorter overall survival. For the whole cohort, the presence of CIS was also not associated with survival (HR 1.05 (95% CI 0.82–1.35; p = 0.70). Conclusion: In this multicenter, real-world cohort, CIS status at TURBT did not affect pathologic response to neoadjuvant or induction chemotherapy. This study is limited by its retrospective nature as well as variability in chemotherapy regimens and surveillance regimens.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

The burden of diabetes mellitus during pregnancy in low- and middle-income countries : a systematic review

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Educational Evaluation, Assessment, & Effectiveness Glossary: A Claremont Graduate University EDUC 445 Fall 2021 Course Publication

This glossary is intended to support professionals who are seeking to understand evaluation, assessment, and effectiveness in the context of K-12 and higher education. The definitions in this e-book represent the shared meanings that were co-created by education professionals in EDUC 445 at the Claremont Graduate University during Fall 2021 under the guidance of Dr. Gwen Garrison, PhD

Chemoinformatic-guided engineering of polyketide synthases

Polyketide synthase (PKS) engineering is an attractive method to generate new molecules such as commodity, fine and specialty chemicals. A central challenge in PKS design is replacing a partially reductive module with a fully reductive module through a reductive loop exchange, thereby generating a saturated β-carbon. In this work, we sought to establish an engineering strategy for reductive loop exchanges based on chemoinformatics, a field traditionally used in drug discovery. We first introduced a set of donor reductive loops of diverse genetic origin and chemical substrate structures into the first extension module of the lipomycin PKS (LipPKS1). These results demonstrated that chemical similarity between the substrate of the donor loops and recipient LipPKS1 correlated with product titers. Consequently, we identified donor loops with substrates chemically similar to LipPKS1 for further reductive loop exchanges, and we observed a statistically significant correlation with production. Reductive loops with the highest chemical similarity resulted in production of branched, short-chain fatty acids reaching a titer of 165 mg/L in Streptomyces albus J1074. Collectively, our work formulizes a new chemoinformatic paradigm for de novo PKS biosynthesis which may accelerate the production of valuable bioproducts