Renal Cell Carcinoma with IVC Thrombi; Current Concepts and Future Perspectives

The incidence of venous extension to the inferior vena cava (IVC) in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is markedly increased recently mostly due to the advances in diagnostic modalities. Such vascular invasion implies a heightened biologic behavior and a surgical challenge during the course of treatment. In this study, we reviewed the classification guidelines, recent diagnostic tools and up-to-date therapeutic modalities for RCC with IVC tumor thrombi added to the prognostic significance regarding the pathologic nature of vascular invasion; cephalad extent of thrombi and any associated distant metastasis. Also, we are providing our suggestion regarding the use of angioscopy for removal of IVC thrombi in a relatively bloodless field without aggressive surgical manipulations or shunt techniques for maintenance of hemodynamic stability

Empirical Investigation of Neural Symbolic Reasoning Strategies

Neural reasoning accuracy improves when generating intermediate reasoning steps. However, the source of this improvement is yet unclear. Here, we investigate and factorize the benefit of generating intermediate steps for symbolic reasoning. Specifically, we decompose the reasoning strategy w.r.t. step granularity and chaining strategy. With a purely symbolic numerical reasoning dataset (e.g., A=1, B=3, C=A+3, C?), we found that the choice of reasoning strategies significantly affects the performance, with the gap becoming even larger as the extrapolation length becomes longer. Surprisingly, we also found that certain configurations lead to nearly perfect performance, even in the case of length extrapolation. Our results indicate the importance of further exploring effective strategies for neural reasoning models.Comment: This paper is accepted as the findings at EACL 2023, and the earlier version (non-archival) of this work got the Best Paper Award in the Student Research Workshop of AACL 202

Do Deep Neural Networks Capture Compositionality in Arithmetic Reasoning?

Compositionality is a pivotal property of symbolic reasoning. However, how well recent neural models capture compositionality remains underexplored in the symbolic reasoning tasks. This study empirically addresses this question by systematically examining recently published pre-trained seq2seq models with a carefully controlled dataset of multi-hop arithmetic symbolic reasoning. We introduce a skill tree on compositionality in arithmetic symbolic reasoning that defines the hierarchical levels of complexity along with three compositionality dimensions: systematicity, productivity, and substitutivity. Our experiments revealed that among the three types of composition, the models struggled most with systematicity, performing poorly even with relatively simple compositions. That difficulty was not resolved even after training the models with intermediate reasoning steps.Comment: accepted by EACL 202

evelopment of "SDGs Shiny Mudball (dorodango)" for teaching "Sustainable and contribution" and achievement of SDGs 4.7

There are few learning materials that can read the history (archive) carved in the soil and mud, look over disaster prevention education and geo-environmental problems in a single relationship diagram, and feel the feeling of the palm. Recognizing geo-environmental problems, experiencing soil and mud, revering soil and mud, and cultivating a "heart that cherishes the earth" means a skill necessary to achieve sustainable development involving SDGs. The authors conducted research and development using industrially adjusted pottery clay to make a learning material for visiting lecture using Shiny Mud Ball to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). "SDGs Shiny Mud Balls" certainly enable everyone to get excitement and pleasure that shine or polish is obtained in a short period of time. "Contribution" of the SDGs can be understood by "SDGs Shiny Mud Balls"

Robotic Renal Autotransplantation: First Case Outside of North America

A 38-year-old woman with a 2.7-cm left ureteral stenosis requiring chronic ureteral stent exchange elected to undergo robotic renal autotransplantation. Left ureteropelvic junction obstruction (UPJO) was also suspected. Robotic donor nephrectomy contributed to the fine dissection for desmoplastic changes. The kidney was removed through a Gelport and examined on ice. UPJO was not seen. An end-to-side robotic anastomosis was created between the renal and external iliac vessels. The console time was 507 min, and the warm ischemia time was 4 min 5 sec. She became stent-free. Robotic renal autotransplantation is a new, minimally invasive approach to renal preservation

A System for Worldwide COVID-19 Information Aggregation

The global pandemic of COVID-19 has made the public pay close attention to related news, covering various domains, such as sanitation, treatment, and effects on education. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 condition is very different among the countries (e.g., policies and development of the epidemic), and thus citizens would be interested in news in foreign countries. We build a system for worldwide COVID-19 information aggregation (http://lotus.kuee.kyoto-u.ac.jp/NLPforCOVID-19 ) containing reliable articles from 10 regions in 7 languages sorted by topics for Japanese citizens. Our reliable COVID-19 related website dataset collected through crowdsourcing ensures the quality of the articles. A neural machine translation module translates articles in other languages into Japanese. A BERT-based topic-classifier trained on an article-topic pair dataset helps users find their interested information efficiently by putting articles into different categories.Comment: Poster on NLP COVID-19 Workshop at ACL 2020, 4 pages, 3 figures, 7 table

カン サイボウガン ニ タイスル ラジオハ ショウシャク リョウホウ ゴ ノ キョクショ サイハツ ヨソク インシ ニ ツイテノ ケントウ

肝細胞癌(HCC)に対する経皮的ラジオ波焼灼療法(RFA)後の局所再発因子について検討した.対象はHCC43例,45結節,平均年齢66.5±10.3歳,男性29例,女性14例であった.病因はHBV4例,HCV38例,原因不明1例.平均腫瘍径は2.2±0.7(1.0～4.5)cm,単発例が14例,多発例が29例であった.RFA単独治療群が20結節,他の内科的治療併用群が25結節.治療後にダイナミックCTを施行し,遺残なしと判定された結節について多変量解析にて局所再発因子を検討した.局所再発率の算出にはKaplan-Meier法を用いた.効果判定のCTは43例45結節中,腎不全合併例2例2結節を除く43結節に施行し,39結節(90.7%)が遺残なしと判定された.遺残が疑われた4例は,他疾患合併などの理由から追加治療は施行されなかった.遺残なし群(39例)の1年,2年,3年の局所再発率は,20.5%,27.5%,27.5%,これらのうち単発例14結節の局所再発率は1,2,3年ともに16.3%であった.39例における多変量解析の結果,年齢,性差,腫瘍径,臨床病期,併用療法の有無,治療前のAFP値はいずれも統計学的には局所再発に寄与せず,治療前のPIVKA-II値のみに統計学的な有意差を認め,HCCの局所再発への関与が示唆された.We have investigated the factors underlying the local recurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after percutaneous radiofrequency ablation (RFA). Forty-five nodules in 43 HCC patients, consisting of 29 men and 14 women with a mean age of 66.5±10.3 years, were studied. The cause of HCC was HBV in 4 patients, HCV in 40, and cryptogenic in 1. The mean tumor diameter was 2.2±0.7cm (1.0-4.5). Fourteen patients had single HCC nodule and 29 patients had multiple HCC nodules. Two treatment groups were set up: the RFA alone group of 20 nodules and the combined group of 25 nodules that were treated with another medical therapy together with RFA. After treatment, all nodules were evaluated by dynamic CT, and those judged as having "no residual tumor" were examined for local recurrence factors using multivariate analysis. The recurrence rate was calculated by the Kaplan-Meier method. CT for outcome assessment, carried out in 43 nodules in 41 patients excluding 2 patients (2 nodules) with renal failure revealed that 39 nodules (90.7%) had no residual tumor. The 4 nodules, suspected of having a residual tumor, were not additionally treated because of the presence of complications. The local recurrence rates at 1, 2 and 3 years after treatment in the "no residual tumor" group (n=39) were 20.5, 27.5 and 27.5%, respectively. The multivariate analysis revealed that neither of age, sex, tumor diameter, clinical stage, combined therapy, nor AFP value statistically contributed to local recurrence. Only PIVKA-II value was a statistically independent factor for local recurrence of HCC. In conclusion, detailed examination with dynamic CT appears necessary for the assessment of RFA treatment for HCC. PIVKA-II value is likely the most important factor to predict the local recurrence of HCC after RFA

A SIMPLIFIED IMAGE ANALYSIS METHOD TO STUDY LNAPL MIGRATION IN POROUS MEDIA

本文データは地盤工学会の許諾に基づき登録したものであるA novel Simplified Image Analysis Method was developed and tested to assess the saturation distribution values for water and LNAPLs (Light Non-Aqueous Phase Liquids) in granular soils subjected to fluctuating groundwater conditions. This method, based on the Beer-Lambert Law of transmissivity, determines the saturation of water (Sw) and LNAPLs (So) by comparing the average optical densities (Di) for each matrix element of the tested domain to the corresponding average optical densities for three base pictures of the same domain taken with two digital cameras attached to two different band-pass filters (λ=450 nm and 640 nm). Two equations with two unknowns (Sw and So) are defined for each mesh element, which enables the saturation distribution to be calculated under dynamic conditions. The three base conditions for the domain are: (i) fully saturated with water (Di10), (ii) fully saturated with LNAPL (Di01), and (iii) completely dry (Di00). The Simplified Image Analysis Method was then applied to analyze the behavior of two fluctuating groundwater systems, namely, two-phase air-water and three-phase air-water-LNAPL, in a one-dimensional column, 3.5×3.5×50 cm, filled with Toyoura sand. The mass balance of the drainage-imbibition three-phase air-water-LNAPL system showed a difference of just 4.7% in LNAPL, demonstrating that this non-intrusive and non-destructive method is reliable for providing water and LNAPL saturation distributions throughout the domain when studying the effects of porous soil contamination by LNAPLs subjected to dynamic conditions