OCT in Glaucoma Diagnosis, Detection and Screening

Glaucoma is a chronic and progressive optic neuropathy in which increased intraocular pressure is the most important risk factor in the etiopathogenesis. The basic pathology is the progressive loss of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) especially the death of the axons of ganglion cells initially (apoptosis), followed by peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) defects. Since optical coherence tomography (OCT)’s first demonstration in 1991 by Huang et al. and introduction commercially in 1996, it began gaining popularity in 2000s for retinal evaluation and the detection, diagnosis, and follow-up of glaucoma. Previously available OCT instruments used a technique referred to as time-domain (TD-) OCT, followed by spectral-domain (SD-) OCT, which has an increased scan acquisition rate, allowing for a more detailed sampling of the area of interest. Recently, swept-source OCT (SS-OCT), a newer generation of OCT, has been introduced. Clinical assessment using multiple parameters, including peripapillary RNFL, ganglion cells, optic nerve head, and macular parameters, has proven useful for managing and diagnosing glaucoma as well as for evaluating risk in glaucoma suspects. In this chapter, we aim to evaluate the use of OCT and its modalities in diagnosis, screening, and progression of glaucoma

Editor’s Note. Special Issue Algebraic Coding Theory: New Trends and Its Connections

Dear Colleagues The purpose of this special issue of Journal of Algebra,Combinatorics, Discrete Structures and Applications was to collect a sample of papers in active areas of research in algebraic coding theory and its connections to other areas. A number of researchers submitted manuscripts to the special issue. After a thorough review process, six articles have been selected to appear in the special issue. We thank all researchers who submitted an article. Their contributions are sincerely appreciated, regardless of whether they have been accepted for publication or not. We are particularly grateful to our small number of dedicated reviewers who did a meticulous job of reviewing in a short period of time. The articles selected for this special issue are a representative sample of the current research trends in algebraic coding theory. In their article "Construction of quasi-twisted codes and enumeration of defining polynomials", Gulliver and Venkaiah enumerate all twistulant matrices of a given size and use that information to construct quasi-twisted (QT) codes with better parameters and they start new databases over $GF(17)$ and $GF(19)$. QT codes have been studied extensively in coding theory and they continue to yield useful results. In the article "Locally recoverable codes from planar graphs" Haymaker and O’Pella construct codes that are locally recoverable from 3-connected regular and almost regular graphs. Furthermore, they present methods of constructing regular and almost regular planar graphs. In the paper "Constructions of MDS convolutional codes using superregular matrices", Lieb and Pinto show how to obtain MDS convolutional codes from superregular matrices with certain properties. They provide explicit ways of constructing generator matrices of MDS convolutional codes from superregular matrices. In the paper titled "G-codes over formal power series rings", Korban et al. introduce G-codes over an infinite ring, using tools from group rings. They study the duality properties of these codes and show that their projections are G-codes over finite chain rings. They prove similar results for the lifts of codes over finite chain rings as well. In "$Z_q(Z_q+uZ_q)$-linear skew constacyclic codes", Melakhessou et al. consider Zq(Zq+uZq) skew constacyclic codes where q is a prime power and $u^2=0$. They describe the generator polynomials, the minimal spanning sets, and sizes of these codes. They also obtain some new $Z_4$-codes from the Gray images of these codes. In "Weight distributions of some constacyclic codes over a finite field and isodual constacyclic codes", Singh describes the weight distribution of a family of constacyclic codes over $F_q$. Singh also constructs a family of non-binary isodual-constacyclic codes of a special length and gives specific examples of the constructions. Algebraic Coding Theory continues to be an active area of research with many theoretical and applied aspects. We believe that this special issue will help disseminate recent results to a broad audience in an open access journal and promote further research

Foreign institutional ownership and demand for accounting conservatism: evidence from an emerging market

© 2019, The Author(s). This study investigates how foreign institutional ownership interacts with accounting conservatism in an emerging market setting. We posit that weak investor protection and a high degree of information asymmetry between insiders and outside investors increase demand for conservative reporting in firms operating in emerging markets. Foreign investors in this setting have informational disadvantages relative to their domestic peers and have difficulties in getting access to data. Using a sample of Turkish firms, we find that foreign institutions (particularly foreign corporate investors) demand more conservative reporting in the investee firms. Moreover, we show that this association is more pronounced among firms with greater asymmetric information problems and growth opportunities. Our additional tests reveal that the direction of causality flows from foreign institutional ownership to conservatism, and not vice versa

Compact Measurement Station for Low Energy Proton Beams

A compact, remote controlled, cost efficient diagnostic station has been developed to measure the charge, the profile and the emittance for low energy proton beams. It has been installed and tested in the proton beam line of the Project Prometheus at SANAEM of the Turkish Atomic Energy Authority.Comment: 7 pages 2 column

Determination of Serum Adenosine Deaminase and Xanthine Oxidase Levels in Patients with Crimean–Congo Hemorrhagic Fever

OBJECTIVE: Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic fever with a high mortality rate. Despite increasing knowledge about hemorrhagic fever viruses, little is known about the pathogenesis of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. In this study, we measured serum adenosine deaminase and xanthine oxidase levels in Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever patients. METHODS: Serum adenosine deaminase levels were measured with a sensitive colorimetric method described by Giusti and xanthine oxidase levels by the method of Worthington in 30 consecutive hospitalized patients (mean age 42.6 ± 21.0). Laboratory tests confirmed their diagnoses of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. Thirty-five subjects (mean age 42.9 ± 19.1) served as the control group. RESULTS: There was a significant difference in adenosine deaminase and xanthine oxidase levels between cases and controls (p<0.05). However, neither adenosine deaminase nor xanthine oxidase levels varied with the severity of disease in the cases assessed (p>0.05). CONCLUSION: Adenosine deaminase and xanthine oxidase levels were increased in patients with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. Elevated serum xanthine oxidase activity in patients with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever may be associated with reactive oxygen species generated by the xanthine/xanthine oxidase system during inflammatory responses. In addition, elevated lipid peroxidation may contribute to cell damage and hemorrhage. The association of cell damage and hemorrhage with xanthine oxidase activity should be further investigated in large-scale studies

Relationship between intracellular pathogens Toxoplasma gondii and Borrelia burgdorferi infections and migraine

Aim: In this study, the serological values of our patients followed up with a diagnosis of migraine were compared with the results of healthy controls in terms of possible association with intracellular pathogens, Toxoplasma gondii and Borrelia burgdorferi. Methods: Fifty patients with migraine, randomly selected among migraine patients without any additional disease, who applied to Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal Training and Research Hospital between January 1, 2015 and August 31, 2019 were included in the study. Fifty subjects without headache were included as control group. The history of infectious diseases of the patient and control groups (Toxoplasma gondii, Borrelia burgdorferi- causing Lyme disease) was determined by serological diagnostic methods. Results: The study group consisted of 64 women with a mean age of 45.5±13.1 (15-76) years. Migraine and control groups were found to be similar in terms of age (p=0.059) and gender (p=0.211) distributions. The frequency of Toxoplasma gondii positivity in the migraine group was 28% (n=14) and 10% (n=5) in the control group. The frequency of Lyme was 19.6% (n=11) in the migraine group and 14.3% (n=8) in the control group. The frequency of Toxoplasma gondii positivity was statistically significantly higher in the migraine group (p=0.022), while the frequency of Lyme was found to be similar in the migraine and control groups (p=0.450). Conclusion: The results of our study suggest that there are statistically significant differences between migraine and control groups only in terms of Toxoplasma gondii positivity rates, not Lyme. However, we believe that larger sample studies are needed to determine the detailed relationship between migraine and Toxoplasma gondii infection