Abstract: Allergic contact dermatitis to various components of toilet seats is being recognized and reported with increasing frequency. This report details the case of an young girl who was found to be allergic to plastic found in both a toilet seat and a school chair. It highlights particular problems with patch testing young children and the difficulty in confirming allergy to plastics.
David Adams: Formey's Continuation of the Encyclopédie. J.H.S. Formey's plan of publishing a reduced version of the Encyclopédie which would remove all heterodox tendencies is well known, but scholars have concluded that the long-standing project never came to fruition. However this article, based on an extremely rare copy owned by the author, presents and studies Formey's Dictionnaire instructif, dedicated to Prince Henry of Prussia, published in 1767. The Préface, which claims that the project was Henry's idea, explains that the work, based mainly on Furetière and on the first ten volumes of the Encyclopédie was intended to provide the basic knowledge of use to a cultivated man. An analysis of certain articles indicates that Formey was concerned to eradicate what might undermine religion and morality, with the result that while he is open to new scientific discoveries, he is conservative in politics and religion. His Dictionnaire thus bears witness to the 18th Century's contradictions and uncertainties.
To describe the relationships between foveal structure and visual function in a cohort of individuals with foveal hypoplasia (FH) and to estimate FH grade and visual acuity using a deep learning classifier.Retrospective cohort study and experimental study.A total of 201 patients with FH were evaluated at the National Eye Institute from 2004 to 2018.Structural components of foveal OCT scans and corresponding clinical data were analyzed to assess their contributions to visual acuity. To automate FH scoring and visual acuity correlations, we evaluated the following 3 inputs for training a neural network predictor: (1) OCT scans, (2) OCT scans and metadata, and (3) real OCT scans and fake OCT scans created from a generative adversarial network.The relationships between visual acuity outcomes and determinants, such as foveal morphology, nystagmus, and refractive error.The mean subject age was 24.4 years (range, 1-73 years; standard deviation = 18.25 years) at the time of OCT imaging. The mean best-corrected visual acuity (n = 398 eyes) was equivalent to a logarithm of the minimal angle of resolution (LogMAR) value of 0.75 (Snellen 20/115). Spherical equivalent refractive error (SER) ranged from -20.25 diopters (D) to +13.63 D with a median of +0.50 D. The presence of nystagmus and a high-LogMAR value showed a statistically significant relationship (P < 0.0001). The participants whose SER values were farther from plano demonstrated higher LogMAR values (n = 382 eyes). The proportion of patients with nystagmus increased with a higher FH grade. Variability in SER with grade 4 (range, -20.25 D to +13.00 D) compared with grade 1 (range, -8.88 D to +8.50 D) was statistically significant (P < 0.0001). Our neural network predictors reliably estimated the FH grading and visual acuity (correlation to true value > 0.85 and > 0.70, respectively) for a test cohort of 37 individuals (98 OCT scans). Training the predictor on real OCT scans with metadata and fake OCT scans improved the accuracy over the model trained on real OCT scans alone.Nystagmus and foveal anatomy impact visual outcomes in patients with FH, and computational algorithms reliably estimate FH grading and visual acuity.
Abstract Background Short tandem repeats (STRs) are widely distributed across the human genome and are associated with numerous neurological disorders. However, the extent that STRs contribute to disease is likely under-estimated because of the challenges calling these variants in short read next generation sequencing data. Several computational tools have been developed for STR variant calling, but none fully address all of the complexities associated with this variant class. Results Here we introduce LUSTR which is designed to address some of the challenges associated with STR variant calling by enabling more flexibility in defining STR loci, allowing for customizable modules to tailor analyses, and expanding the capability to call somatic and multiallelic STR variants. LUSTR is a user-friendly and easily customizable tool for targeted or unbiased genome-wide STR variant screening that can use either predefined or novel genome builds. Using both simulated and real data sets, we demonstrated that LUSTR accurately infers germline and somatic STR expansions in individuals with and without diseases. Conclusions LUSTR offers a powerful and user-friendly approach that allows for the identification of STR variants and can facilitate more comprehensive studies evaluating the role of pathogenic STR variants across human diseases.
We study 22 systems of variational inequalities which are only weakly elliptic; in particular, these systems are not necessarily monotone. The prototype dierential operator is the (vector-valued) p-Laplacian. We prove, under certain conditions, the existence of solutions to the unilateral obstacle problem. This work extends the results by the authors in [Annali di Mat. Pura ed Appl., 169(1995), 183{201] to nonlinear operators. In addition, we address the question of determining function spaces on which the p-Laplacian is a bounded nonlinear operator. This question arises naturally when studying existence for these systems.
