English

This paper is concerned with the use of digital fundus imaging to detect, quantify, and follow up macular angiographic leakage due to retinal vein occlusions. Images were matched automatically. We detected those pixels with a high increment in gray level within the closest area to the foveal center. Binary images displaying leakage were obtained. The procedure was checked against two observers' agreement. Twenty-one angiographic studies were collected. Two images of each sequence were selected for digitalization. Numerical descriptors of the leakage were proposed and quantification plots were designed for each pair of images. Interobserver concordance ranged between 82 and 98% when manually detected leakage was compared with computer segmented areas. The detection and quantification of leakage areas may serve as a guide for severity evaluation and treatment planning. Moreover, they permit a precise follow-up of macular edema.

AbstractÐThis paper proposes new descriptors for binary and gray-scale images based on newly defined spatial size distributions (SSD). The main idea consists of combining a granulometric analysis of the image with a comparison between the geometric covariograms for binary images or the auto-correlation function for gray-scale images of the original image and its granulometric transformation; the usual granulometric size distribution then arises as a particular case of this formulation. Examples are given to show that in those cases in which a finer description of the image is required, the more complex descriptors generated from the SSD could be advantageously used. It is also shown that the new descriptors are probability distributions so their intuitive interpretation and properties can be appropriately studied from the probabilistic point of view. The usefulness of these descriptors in shape analysis is illustrated by some synthetic examples and their use in texture analysis is studied by doing an experiment of texture classification on a standard texture database. A comparison is perfomed among various cases of the SSD and several former methods for texture classification in terms of percentages of correct classification and the number of features used.

We describe a transputer-based system suitable for accurate measurements of single-fiber electromyographic jitter. It consists of a conventional electromyograph, a home-made interface and a commercially available transputer-based board installed within a PC/AT compatible. Taking advantage of the concurrent operation of two transputer modules, the system features simultaneous data acquisition and statistical signal processing: while data are acquired and analyzed, a real-time visualization of the signal latency and its variability is provided. In the present configuration, the system can acquire and analyze up to 40,000 consecutive action potentials, which can be grouped into up to eight sets at different stimulation rates programmable up to 16 Hz. Since the determination of the electromyographic signal latency relies on least-squares smoothing and interpolation of the acquired data rather than on amplitude-threshold triggering, a low value (0.7 μs) of so called technical jitter is achieved. Computing power and memory can be easily extended by addition of transputer-based modules. Typical results of data acquisition and on-line analysis are reported.

Phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate [PI(4,5)P2], a phosphoinositide concentrated predominantly in the plasma membrane, binds endocytic clathrin adaptors, many of their accessory factors, and a variety of actin-regulatory proteins. Here we have used fluorescent fusion proteins and total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy to investigate the effect of acute PI(4,5)P 2 breakdown on the dynamics of endocytic clathrin-coated pit components and of the actin regulatory complex, Arp2/3. PI(4,5)P 2 breakdown was achieved by the inducible recruitment to the plasma membrane of an inositol 5phosphatase module through the rapamycin/FRB/FKBP system or by treatment with ionomycin. PI(4,5)P 2 depletion resulted in a dramatic loss of clathrin puncta, which correlated with a massive dissociation of endocytic adaptors from the plasma membrane. Remaining clathrin spots at the cell surface had only weak fluorescence and were static over time. Dynamin and the p20 subunit of the Arp2/3 actin regulatory complex, which were concentrated at late-stage clathrincoated pits and in lamellipodia, also dissociated from the plasma membrane, and these changes correlated with an arrest of motility at the cell edge. These findings demonstrate the critical importance of PI(4,5)P 2 in clathrin coat dynamics and Arp2/3-dependent actin regulation.

Phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate [PI(4,5)P2], a phosphoinositide concentrated predominantly in the plasma membrane, binds endocytic clathrin adaptors, many of their accessory factors, and a variety of actin-regulatory proteins. Here we have used fluorescent fusion proteins and total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy to investigate the effect of acute PI(4,5)P 2 breakdown on the dynamics of endocytic clathrin-coated pit components and of the actin regulatory complex, Arp2/3. PI(4,5)P 2 breakdown was achieved by the inducible recruitment to the plasma membrane of an inositol 5phosphatase module through the rapamycin/FRB/FKBP system or by treatment with ionomycin. PI(4,5)P 2 depletion resulted in a dramatic loss of clathrin puncta, which correlated with a massive dissociation of endocytic adaptors from the plasma membrane. Remaining clathrin spots at the cell surface had only weak fluorescence and were static over time. Dynamin and the p20 subunit of the Arp2/3 actin regulatory complex, which were concentrated at late-stage clathrincoated pits and in lamellipodia, also dissociated from the plasma membrane, and these changes correlated with an arrest of motility at the cell edge. These findings demonstrate the critical importance of PI(4,5)P 2 in clathrin coat dynamics and Arp2/3-dependent actin regulation.

Counting spatially and temporally overlapping events in image sequences and estimating their shape-size and duration features are important issues in some applications. We propose a stochastic model, a particular case of the nonisotropic 3D Boolean model, for performing this analysis: the temporal Boolean model. Some probabilistic properties are derived and a methodology for parameter estimation from time-lapse image sequences is proposed using an explicit treatment of the temporal dimension. We estimate the mean number of germs per unit area and time, the mean grain size and the duration distribution. A wide simulation study in order to assess the proposed estimators showed promising results. The model was applied on biological image sequences of invivo cells in order to estimate new parameters such as the mean number and duration distribution of endocytic events. Our results show that the proposed temporal Boolean model is effective for obtaining information about dynamic processes which exhibit short-lived, but spatially and temporally overlapping events.

Counting spatially and temporally overlapping events in image sequences and estimating their shape-size and duration features are important issues in some applications. We propose a stochastic model, a particular case of the nonisotropic 3D Boolean model, for performing this analysis: the temporal Boolean model. Some probabilistic properties are derived and a methodology for parameter estimation from time-lapse image sequences is proposed using an explicit treatment of the temporal dimension. We estimate the mean number of germs per unit area and time, the mean grain size and the duration distribution. A wide simulation study in order to assess the proposed estimators showed promising results. The model was applied on biological image sequences of invivo cells in order to estimate new parameters such as the mean number and duration distribution of endocytic events. Our results show that the proposed temporal Boolean model is effective for obtaining information about dynamic processes which exhibit short-lived, but spatially and temporally overlapping events

Raven Johnston -Failed Scholars 1 The Failed Scholars in Jude the Obscure and Damnation of Theron Ware The stereotype of the failed scholar -initially impassioned with his studies, optimistic about his future academic goals and achievements while eventually disillusioned with himself and living in obscurity -is exemplified in the main characters of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure and Harold Frederic's Damnation of Theron Ware. The difference in characterization of these two failed scholars, Jude and Theron, characterize essential differences in British and American educational history, class views and attitudes of community.

The pseudonymous Edogawa Ranpo, an important figure in the early twentieth century blurring of "high" and "low" brow literature in Japan, was insatiably aware of his own status – most obviously through self-mollifying allusions to Western detective fiction and his conspicuous pen name. From the start, modern Japanese literature was seen in light of the cultural imitation it often imposed on itself – especially with such new genres such as tantei shosetsu, or Japanese detective fiction. Ranpo secured these influences and reflected them back upon world literature and cultural imitation as a whole—a distorted reflection which encompasses Yumeno Kyusaku, his fellow detective fiction author’s, description of the genre: "nonsense, humor, adventure, grotesque, mystery." The monstrosities and bizarre creations in his stories show an oeuvre self-aware of itself as a mutation—a self-awareness then reflected back into the work in the form of elaborate, fantastic and enormous lairs, where the wrongdoers in his stories work their evil. These constructions, such as the uncanny distortions on Panorama Island, the zoo-like museum of the Black Lizard and the sensual basement owned by Moju, the Blind Beast, are architectural representations of Ranpo's awareness and self-placement into the genre. A mind always concerned with his own literary status and relevance in his chosen genres, Ranpo similarly housed his villains in exact Expressionist lairs.

Akinari Ueda's collection of supernatural stories, Tales of Moonlight and Rain, was published in 1776 during the Edo period of Japan, a period known for its isolationist practices, but which still received an ooze of Western ideas through the Dutch trading island of Dejima, as well as visits from Chinese and Korean emissaries and traders. Akinari, after an unsuccessful decade as a merchant, later trained as a doctor; Tales of Moonlight and Rain was published the year he became a practicing physician in the culture-and merchant-rich city of Osaka, where Western ideas filtered in through popular culture and "practical" applications like medicine. Though identified with the kokugaku school of thought (rejecting foreign influence on Japan), reflected in these supernatural stories are the strange and fearful results of contact with detached pieces of learning and advancement from an unseen, little-known world. This paper examines the reflection of Western science and technology (mainly from the Dutch, with rangaku) in Japan during the Edo period in Akinari's supernatural stories—from the new Western concept of timekeeping (minutely and equally divided portions of time versus the Japanese method with varying " hour " lengths) affecting the pacing and build-up of anxiety to his exposure to a Western physician's understanding of the human body and illness lending realism to the unnatural—in terms of their gothic and grotesque nature as "otherworldly " curiosities.

The destruction that the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 unleashed on Tokyo left nearly half of its population homeless. Compounded on the earthquake’s destruction were floods, landslides, tornados of fire: a scene of Hell on earth. This widespread experience of disaster produced a strain of attraction towards the grotesque in the tastes of the Tokyo reading public—popular periodicals appealing to a need for “curiosity hunting” (ryoki) sprung up in the subsequent years, producing stories which focused on the long roam of the city streets in search of "curiosities."

Yumeno Kyusaku, the progenitor of Japanese speculative fiction, took an especial interest in ryoki. In his book of poetry, Songs of Curiosity Hunting, the city is portrayed as an avenue for anxiety, an endless source of curiosities both welcome and unwelcome--macabre worries of death on false electric train lines, images of bicycles piled up like discarded corpses, an inexplicably bloody face or hand around the corner of every alleyway. Collecting previous submissions to magazines like Bizarre (猟奇) and Detective Hobby (探偵趣味), this book of "songs" reflected the post-disaster preponderance for seeking out the strange, inviting encounters with the unsavory. I propose that in magazines such as these—and with works such as those of Kyusaku—the “disaster as spectacle” of the great earthquake lent further anxiety to Tokyo's labyrinthine unknowns as readers began to crave these meandering walks to encounter the uncanny mysteries of their endlessly curious, recently mutilated city.

In this dissertation, I consider the rhetorical ecology of architectural ruins, specifically those of natural disaster, as actors in a system of human and nonhuman intra-action that has rhetorical potential for material intimacy. I argue that ruins address the human in ways that elicit a response. The human response enacts a paratactic praxis, which I explore in my first chapter as a practice that creates series or lists that call on the reader or the listener to fill the gaps between entities and make meaning out of the resulting juxtaposition of words, phrases, or collections. In the second, third, and fourth chapters, I locate paratactic praxis in accounts of ruins following natural disasters by drawing on a new materialist rhetorical methodology via three specific moves toward material intimacy: witnessing, listening, and wandering. I have chosen ruins as a focus of study precisely because of the need in our digital age to become more intimate with the spaces that we create, protect, and destroy as a means of understanding humanity’s place in the world. The language we use to describe ruins and the effects they have on us contain keys to uncovering the hidden rhetoricity of ruins. I use a combination of new materialist developments in rhetorical theory based on a phenomenological foundation to explore the human experience of
ruin and ruins as material bodies engaged in that experience.