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Nutritional and inflammatory marker ratios are known to predict response to chemotherapy in breast cancer, but whether they predict adverse effects caused by chemotherapy remains unclear. We investigated whether nutritional and inflammatory marker ratios before starting FEC therapy (5-fluorouracil, epirubicin, and cyclophosphamide) predict grade 4 neutropenia as a serious adverse effect.61 patients with breast cancer who started FEC therapy for the first time as preoperative or postoperative chemotherapy were studied. Relevant nutritional and inflammatory marker ratios were compared between patients who developed grade 4 neutropenia (n = 44) and those who did not (n = 17).In univariate analysis, occurrence of neutropenia was related significantly (p 0.05) to pre-FEC-therapy white blood cell count, platelet count, neutrophil count, lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR), neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), and modified Glasgow prognostic score. Analysis using cutoff values obtained from receiver operating characteristic curves showed that LMR, NLR, and PLR predicted grade 4 neutropenia. However, multivariate logistic regression analysis identified no independent factor associated with grade 4 neutropenia. A post-hoc power analysis revealed an inadequate sample size.Inflammatory marker ratios, especially PLR, may predict grade 4 neutropenia caused by FEC therapy for breast cancer. Although multivariate analysis identified no independent predictive markers in this study due to inadequate sample size, further prospective large-scale research is needed to examine the usefulness of nutritional and inflammatory marker ratios for predicting adverse effects.

A 66-year-old woman was diagnosed with stage IVb sigmoid colon cancer. Modified FOLFOX-6 (mFOLFOX-6; levofolinate‒fluorouracil‒oxaliplatin) plus panitumumab was selected as the chemotherapeutic regimen, but she was administered a regimen without oxaliplatin (L-OHP) or bolus 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) because of her general condition and concern about adverse effects. The patient had impaired consciousness on day 3 of chemotherapy. Computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain showed no findings of hemorrhage, infarction, brain metastasis, and leukoencephalopathy. Except for high blood ammonia concentration (353 µg/dL), there were no other findings that could have caused her condition. Impaired consciousness due to hyperammonemia was diagnosed. We started an intravenous drip supplemented with branched chain amino acids for liver protection. Approximately 6 hours later, blood ammonia level improved to 88 µg/dL, which approached the reference value. Consciousness level improved over time, reaching a level of alertness on day 5 after starting chemotherapy. 5-FU was suspected to be the cause of impaired consciousness due to hyperammonemia, but the exact cause could not be identified because most of the previously reported cases were given L-OHP, bolus 5-FU, and other concomitant medications. In this case, since there were no other concomitant medications, it is highly probable that continuous infusion of 5-FU alone caused impaired consciousness due to hyperammonemia. This is an important case that indicates the need to monitor carefully for the occurrence of hyperammonemia when 5-FU is administered continuously; it also proposes future issues for investigation.

Background During pandemic situations, many guidelines recommend that surgical masks be worn by both healthcare professionals and infected patients in healthcare settings. The purpose of this study was to clarify the levels and changes of oxygen concentration over time while oxygen was administered over a surgical mask. Methods Patients scheduled to undergo general anesthesia (n = 99) were enrolled in this study. First, patients were administered oxygen at 6 L/min via an oxygen mask over a surgical mask for 5 min. The patients removed the surgical mask and then took a 3-min break; thereafter, the same amount of oxygen was administered for another 5 min via the oxygen mask. We measured the fraction of inspired oxygen (FiO2), the end-tidal CO2 (EtCO2), and respiratory frequency every minute for 5 min, both while administering oxygen with and without a surgical mask. The FiO2 was measured at the beginning of inspiration and the EtCO2 was measured at the end of expiration. Results The FiO2 at 5 min was significantly lower when breathing with a surgical mask than that without it (mean difference: 0.08 [95% CI: 0.067–0.10]; p 2 at 5 min was significantly higher when breathing with a surgical mask than that without it (mean difference: 11.9 mmHg [95% CI: 10.9–12.9]; p Conclusion The FiO2 was lower when oxygen was administered over surgical masks than when patients did not wear surgical masks. Oxygen flow may need to be adjusted in moderately ill patients requiring oxygen administration.

Cadmium (Cd) is as an extremely toxic metal that can contaminate agricultural soils. To reduce the risk of Cd intake in food cereals, the development of cultivars with low grain Cd concentration (GCC) is an effective countermeasure. We analyzed quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for GCC in a doubled haploid (DH) common wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) population derived from ‘Chugoku 165’ (low GCC) × ‘Chukei 10-22’ (high GCC). We found novel loci for low GCC on the short arm of chromosome 4B and on the long arm of chromosome 6B. These QTLs accounted for 9.4%–25.4% (4B) and 9.0%–17.8% (6B) of the phenotypic variance in the DH population. An association analysis with 43 cultivars identified 3 loci at these QTLs: QCdc.4B-kita, QCdc.6B-kita1, and QCdc.6B-kita2. In contrast to durum wheat and barley, no QTL was detected on the chromosomes of homeologous group 5 for heavy metal P1B-type ATPase 3. These results will contribute to marker-assisted selection for low GCC in breeding of common wheat.

Amylose (AM) and amylopectin (AP) functionality during bread making was unravelled with a temperature-controlled time domain proton nuclear magnetic resonance (TD 1H NMR) toolbox. Fermented doughs from wheat flour containing starches with atypical AP chain length distribution and/or AM to AP ratio, or supplemented with Bacillus stearothermophilus α-amylase (BStA) were analyzed in situ during baking and cooling. The gelatinization temperature of starch logically depended on AP crystal stability. It was lower when starch contained a higher portion of short AP branches and higher when starch had higher AP content. During cooling, the onset temperature and extent of AM crystallization were positively related to starch AM content. BStA use resulted in slightly weakened starch networks and increased the starch polymers' mobility at the end of baking. That proton distributions evolved in a way corresponding to starch characteristics supports the suggested interpretation of NMR profiles during baking and cooling. ispartof: FOOD CHEMISTRY vol:295 pages:110-119 ispartof: location:England status: published

This paper proposes Value-Aware solid-state drive (SSD) with fast access speed and low power consumption by eliminating error-correcting code (ECC). Value-Aware SSD utilizes the error tolerance of image recognition application using a deep neural network (DNN) to enhance reliability. In a previous paper, which proposes Value-Aware SSD, fast ECC decoder is implemented and SSD is evaluated with the 32-bit floating-point data format. On the other hand, in this paper, the proposed Value-Aware SSD is analyzed with 32-bit and 8-bit fixed-point data format and achieves the higher reliability even without ECC by newly proposed two techniques, Critical Bit Error Reduction (CBER) and Middle & Lower Page Error Reduction (M&L-PER). CBER and M&L-PER are proposed for 32-bit and 8-bit data format of application, respectively. These techniques modulate the threshold voltage ( $V_{\mathrm {TH}}$ ) distribution of memory cells by recognizing the importance of each stored bit. By proposed CBER, as much as 15% bit error rate (BER) of NAND flash is allowed while the application provides high image recognition accuracy. Even if bit precision is truncated to 8 bit, 3.9% BER is accepted by M&L-PER. The fast read access and low power consumption are realized because ECC is not required. Finally, this paper analyzes the Value-Aware techniques with 3-D multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash to compare the effects for 3D-MLC and triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash.

Adaptive artificial neural network (ANN)-coupled low-density parity-check (LDPC) error-correcting code (ECC) (ANN-LDPC ECC) is proposed to increase acceptable errors for various NAND flash memories. The proposed ANN-LDPC ECC can be the universal solutions for 3-D and 2-D, charge-trap and floating-gate NAND flash memories. In 3-D NAND flash, lateral charge migration, vertical charge de-trap, inter floating-gate capacitive coupling noise, and inter word-line variations cause errors. On the other hand, in 2-D NAND flash, the charge de-trap and the harsh inter floating-gate capacitive coupling of adjacent word-lines and bit-lines cause errors. To solve these reliability problems, the proposed ANN automatically and adaptively compensates for complex memory cell errors. Moreover, the proposed ANN-LDPC can reproduce the dynamic endurance and data-retention time dependence of errors. In addition, this paper evaluates the impacts of the chip-to-chip variations on the proposed ANN-LDPC. The proposed ANN-LDPC is implemented in the storage controller and can precisely and adaptively estimate bit-error rate (BER) and log-likelihood ratio (LLR). By using the precise LLR, LDPC decoder effectively corrects errors. As a result, ANN-LDPC extends the acceptable data-retention time by over 76 $\times $ and 45 $\times $ compared with conventional Bose–Chaudhuri–Hocquenghem (BCH) ECC in 3-D and 2-D triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memories, respectively.

A recently developed wheat variety, known as 5-5 wheat, which has inactive GBSSI-B1, GBSSI-D1, SSIIa-B1, and SSIIa-D1 isozymes, accumulates a novel type of starch, affecting bread texture and leading to reduction in bread staling. These properties are potentially useful for commercial bakery products; thus, the 5-5 genotype represents a new resource for wheat breeding. In this study, the 5-5 alleles were backcrossed into the hard wheat variety "Minaminokaori" and the soft wheat variety "Shirogane-Komugi", which are both leading Japanese wheat varieties. In comparison to their parental varieties, the two 5-5 near-isogenic lines (NILs) showed a decrease in amylose levels, an increase in the proportion of short chains of amylopectin, a lower gelatinization temperature and enthalpy change, a higher peak viscosity and breakdown viscosity as measured by a Rapid Visco Analyzer, a reduced retrogradation rate, and an increase in grain hardness. Importantly, the 5-5 NILs also showed lower bread crumb firmness and reduced hardening after storage for 2 days at either 20 °C or 7 °C. Considering the results obtained here along with those from the original line, it is clear that the 5-5 genotype can generate specific changes in starch characteristics and staling regardless of its genetic background. Thus, we renamed the 5-5 wheat lines "Slow Staling" (SS) wheat. As expected, our results indicated that the hard wheat SS NIL was more suitable for bread-making. On the other hand, we found that white salted noodle made with the SS NIL of the soft wheat variety had a relatively shorter cooking time, a softer texture, and a reduction in textural changes during storage, all of which are potentially useful for noodle manufacturers.

15 Pags.- 5 Figs.- 3 TAbls.- Supp. Mat. Copyright Owner, the Authors. Under LicenceCC BY 4.0., One option to achieving greater resiliency for barley production in the face of climate change is to explore the potential of winter and facultative growth habits: for both types, low temperature tolerance (LTT) and vernalization sensitivity are key traits. Sensitivity to short-day photoperiod is a desirable attribute for facultative types. In order to broaden our understanding of the genetics of these phenotypes, we mapped quantitative trait loci (QTLs) and identified candidate genes using a genome-wide association studies (GWAS) panel composed of 882 barley accessions that was genotyped with the Illumina 9K single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) chip. Fifteen loci including 5 known and 10 novel QTL/genes were identified for LTT—assessed as winter survival in 10 field tests and mapped using a GWAS meta-analysis. FR-H1, FR-H2, and FR-H3 were major drivers of LTT, and candidate genes were identified for FR-H3. The principal determinants of vernalization sensitivity were VRN-H1, VRN-H2, and PPD-H1. VRN-H2 deletions conferred insensitive or intermediate sensitivity to vernalization. A subset of accessions with maximum LTT were identified as a resource for allele mining and further characterization. Facultative types comprised a small portion of the GWAS panel but may be useful for developing germplasm with this growth habit., Support was provided by the USDA-NIFA TCAP Project no. 2011-68002-30029.

A 33-year-old man presented with slowly progressive weakness in the lower extremities over 8 years. At the age of 16 years, the elevation of serum creatine kinase level was detected. Physical examination revealed scapular winging, exaggerated lumbar lordosis and tendoachilles contracture. Gowers sign was positive and proximal dominant limb weakness was noted. Hypertrophy was observed in the upper limbs such as the biceps brachii and forearm flexor muscles. Muscle biopsy showed distinct differences in size of muscle fibers and regenerating and necrotic muscle fibers. A histological study revealed decreased calpain3 expression. Gene analysis of CAPN3 revealed two known gene mutations, leading to a diagnosis of calpainopathy (limb girdle muscular dystrophy 2A; LGMD2A). We here report our patient to discuss findings of upper limb hypertrophy, which are frequently missed compared to the lower limb, but important clinical findings.

A 68-year-old woman was referred to our hospital for progressive dizziness, gait disturbances and weight loss for 18 months. The patient was alert and showed dysphagia and a marked tendency to fall backward. Electronystagmography showed bilateral vestibular dysfunction and audiometry showed right sensorineural hearing disturbance. Cerebrospinal fluid exam showed mononuclear pleocytosis and elevated protein levels. On 18F-FDG PET/CT, abnormal uptake was observed in the mediastinal lymph nodes, from which biopsy specimens were obtained. Histological findings showed non-caseous granuloma and a diagnosis of bilateral vestibulocochlear, glossopharyngeal and vagal nerve palsies due to neurosarcoidosis was made. Steroid therapy resulted in improvement in her clinical symptoms. Neurosarcoidosis should be included in the differential diagnosis of patients showing progressive easy falling and dysphagia.

Influences of magnesium content on the actions of tellurium to graphite nodule count and chilling tendency in spheroidal graphite cast iron are investigated. Casting samples 30 mm in diameter were prepared by lab size induction furnace melting. On castings with two levels (0.020 mass% and 0.035 mass%) of magnesium content, tellurium content was changed from 0 to 45 mass ppm. With additions of a small amount of tellurium, the graphite nodule count increases and the chill ratio decreases. In the 0.020 mass% Mg samples, the deterioration of the spheroidal shape is intensified with excess content of tellurium, and the critical amount is 20 mass ppm. In the 0.035 mass% Mg samples, the chilling tendency become pronounced as the tellurium content is larger than the critical content of 24 mass ppm, even though the degree of spheroidization is sufficiently large. The cooling rate of the 0.035 mass% Mg sample with 10ppm Te decreases at the beginning of the eutectic reaction, and there was no chill in the microstructure with the maximum graphite nodule count. Although it is rarely found by electron probe microanalyzer (EPMA) analysis, inclusions in the center of a spheroidal graphite consist of Mg, Ca, S, and Te.

Influenza encephalopathy is characterized by high fever, disturbance of consciousness following influenza virus infection. We encountered 2 adult patients with influenza-associated acute necrotizing encephalopathy (Case 1, a 70-year-old woman with diabetes; Case 2, a 49-year-old woman with multiple myeloma), showing hemorrhagic lesions in the bilateral thalamus. Case 1 presented with fever and disturbance of consciousness followed by status epilepticus, and Case 2 developed fever and drowsiness as initial manifestation. Influenza type A was positive in Case 1 and influenza type B was positive in Case 2. In the acute phase, 2 patients required respiratory ventilation and were treated with anti-influenza drug, steroid and immunoglobulin. Cognitive impairment remained in the both patients in the chronic phase. When acute necrotizing encephalopathy is suspected, intensive treatment should be started as early as possible to improve clinical outcome of patients.

This paper proposes Privacy-aware Data-Lifetime Control NAND Flash System (PDLCS), which changes the data-lifetime flexibly for the right to be forgotten. This system realizes both short and long term data-lifetime by In-3D Vertical Cell Processing. Furthermore, data-lifetime can be extended or shortened at any time. This system secures privacy data and thus is a universal solution for future secure storage, which is not resolved by software techniques.

Background Hypothalamic lesions, such as tumors and demyelinating diseases, reportedly cause abnormal sleepiness. However, stroke involving the hypothalamus has rarely been described. Here, we report a patient with infarction restricted to the hypothalamus who presented with sudden onset of sleep. Case presentation A 42-year-old woman with a history of migraine without aura presented with irresistible sleepiness and developed several episodes of sudden onset of sleep. Neurological examinations were unremarkable except for partial left Horner syndrome. Brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed a high-intensity lesion restricted to the left hypothalamus on diffusion-weighted and fluid-attenuated inversion recovery MRI images. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) orexin-A levels obtained on hospital day 3 after her sleepiness had resolved were normal (337 pg/mL; normal > 200 pg/mL). Serum anti-nuclear and anti-aquaporin 4 (AQP4) antibodies and CSF myelin basic protein and oligoclonal band were negative. A small hypothalamic infarction was suspected, and the patient was treated with intravenous edaravone and argatroban, as well as oral clopidogrel. Three months later, there had been no clinical relapse, and the hypothalamic lesion had almost disappeared on follow-up MRI. No new lesion suggestive of demyelinating disease or tumor was observed. Conclusion Hypothalamic stroke should be considered a cause of sudden onset of sleep.

Scene text magnifier aims to magnify text in natural scene images without recognition. It could help the special groups, who have myopia or dyslexia to better understand the scene. In this paper, we design the scene text magnifier through interacted four CNN-based networks: character erasing, character extraction, character magnify, and image synthesis. The architecture of the networks are extended based on the hourglass encoder-decoders. It inputs the original scene text image and outputs the text magnified image while keeps the background unchange. Intermediately, we can get the side-output results of text erasing and text extraction. The four sub-networks are first trained independently and fine-tuned in end-to-end mode. The training samples for each stage are processed through a flow with original image and text annotation in ICDAR2013 and Flickr dataset as input, and corresponding text erased image, magnified text annotation, and text magnified scene image as output. To evaluate the performance of text magnifier, the Structural Similarity is used to measure the regional changes in each character region. The experimental results demonstrate our method can magnify scene text effectively without effecting the background., to appear at the International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR) 2019

This paper proposes 2 neural network (NN) techniques for 3D-TLC (Triple-Level Cell) NAND flash memory. 1) Predict data-retention/read-disturb lifetime for chip sorting during preshipment test. 2) Detect and correct errors in aftermarket. First, in pre-shipment test, Neural Network-based Lifetime Prediction (NNLP) predicts ECC decoding fail rate (EDFR) and estimates data-retention/read-disturb lifetime. Based on predicted lifetime, NNLP sorts NAND flash. Second, in aftermarket, Neural Network-based Error Detection (NNED) detects and corrects errors. NNED decreases bit-error rate (BER) by 81.4%.

Read-disturb Modeled Artificial Neural Network Coupled LDPC ECC (RDNN-LDPC) is proposed to correct errors of read-hot data for 3D-TLC NAND flash. Conventional ANN-LDPC is optimized to correct errors of read-cold data. However, ANN-LDPC does not correct errors of read-hot data. To correct errors of read-hot data, this paper analyzes how input parameter and model change. As a result, measured results of proposed RDNN-LDPC extend acceptable read cycle of 3D-TLC NAND flash by 10-times.

This paper proposes fine-grained ECC optimized by Neural Network (NN) for 3D-TLC NAND flash memories. Among 48 combinations of 8 reliability enhancement techniques (RETs) and 6 BCH ECCs, proposed NN automatically selects the optimal combination of RET and BCH ECC. Errors with complicated data pattern dependence and memory variations are adaptively compensated. In addition, the design trade-off between the high reliability and parity overhead (cost) is resolved. As a result, both high reliability and small parity overhead are realized simultaneously. The acceptable data-retention time increases by 2.0-times and the data overhead decreases by 30%.

Amylose (AM) and amylopectin (AP) functionality during bread making was unravelled with a temperature-controlled time domain proton nuclear magnetic resonance (TD

Time-evolving tactile sensations are important in communication between animals as well as humans. In recent years, this research area has been defined as “tactileology,” and various studies have been conducted. This study utilized the tactile Gestalt theory to investigate these sensations. Since humans recognize shapes with their visual sense and melodies with their auditory sense based on the Prägnanz principle in the Gestalt theory, this study assumed that a time-evolving texture sensation is induced by a tactile Gestalt. Therefore, the operation of such a tactile Gestalt was investigated. Two psychophysical experiments were conducted to clarify the operation of a tactile Gestalt using a tactile illusion phenomenon called the velvet hand illusion (VHI). It was confirmed that the VHI is induced in a tactile Gestalt when the laws of closure and common fate are satisfied. Furthermore, it was clarified that the tactile Gestalt could be formulated using the proposed factors, which included the laws of elasticity and translation, and it had the same properties as a visual Gestalt. For example, the strongest Gestalt factor had the highest priority among multiple competing factors.

Wheat flours are used to produce bread, pasta, breakfast cereals, and biscuits; the various properties of these end-products are attributed to the gluten content, produced as seed storage proteins in the wheat endosperm. Thus, genes encoding gluten protein are major targets of wheat breeders aiming to improve the various properties of wheat flour. Here, we describe a novel compensating wheat-Thinopyrum elongatum Robertsonian translocation (T1AS.1EL) line involving the short arm of wheat chromosome 1A (1AS) and the long arm of Th. elongatum chromosome 1E (1EL); we developed this line through centric breakage-fusion. Compared to the common wheat cultivars Chinese Spring and Norin 61, we detected two additional 1EL-derived high-molecular-weight glutenin subunits (HMW-GSs) in the T1AS.1EL plants. Based on the results of an SDS-sedimentation volume to estimate the gluten strength of T1AS.1EL-derived flour, we predict that T1AS.1EL-derived flour is better suited to bread-making than Chinese Spring- and Norin 61-derived flour and that this is because of its greater gluten diversity. Also, we were able to assign 33 of 121 wheat PCR-based Landmark Unique Gene markers to chromosome 1E of Th. elongatum. These markers can now be used for further chromosome engineering of the Th. elongatum segment of T1AS.1EL.

A 70-year-old woman noticed difficulty in speech and weakness of the left upper and lower limb upon awakening. Neurological examination showed dysarthria and left hemiparesis. No sensory disturbance was observed. Brain MRI revealed acute infarction in the right posterior limb of the internal capsule. On the hospital day 1, she developed the abnormal sensations restricted to the bilateral shoulders, resulting in difficulty initiating sleep. On laboratory data, renal function and serum hemoglobin and ferritin levels were normal. When four essential features of restless legs syndrome (RLS) were applied to her shoulders, the patient met RLS criteria. Following low dose pramipexole treatment, the abnormal sensation of the shoulders and insomnia significantly improved. We should be aware of the possibility of RLS or its variant, including "restless shoulder" of our patient, for the cause of insomnia following acute ischemic infarction.

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Bread crumb firming is largely determined by the properties of gluten and starch, and the transformations they undergo during bread making and storage. Amylose (AM) and amylopectin (AP) functionality in fresh and stored bread was investigated with NMR relaxometry. Bread was prepared from flours containing normal and atypical starches, e.g., flour from wheat line 5-5, with or without the inclusion of Bacillus stearothermophilus α-amylase. Initial crumb firmness increased with higher levels of AM or shorter AM chains. Both less extended AM and gluten networks and too rigid AM networks led to low crumb resilience. AP retrogradation during storage increased when crumb contained more AP or longer AP branch chains. Shorter AP branch chains, which were present at higher levels in 5-5 than in regular bread, were less prone to retrogradation, thereby limiting gluten network dehydration due to gluten to starch moisture migration. Correspondingly, crumb firming in 5-5 bread was restricted.

Milling properties and flour color are essential selection criteria in soft wheat breeding. However, high phenotypic screening costs restrict selection to relatively few breeding lines in late generations. To achieve marker-based selection of these traits in early generations, we performed genetic dissection of quality traits using three doubled haploid populations that shared the high-quality soft wheat variety Kitahonami as the paternal parent. An amplicon sequencing approach allowed effective construction of well-saturated linkage maps of the populations. Marker-based heritability estimates revealed that target quality traits had relatively high values, indicating the possibility of selection in early generations. Taking advantage of Chinese Spring reference sequences, joint linkage maps of the three populations were generated. Based on the maps, multifamily quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis revealed a total of 86 QTLs for ten traits investigated. In terms of target quality traits, 12 QTLs were detected for flour yield, and 12 were detected for flour redness (a* value). Among these QTLs, six for flour yield and nine for flour a* were segregating in more than two populations. Some relationships among traits were explained by QTL collocations on chromosomes, especially group 7 chromosomes. Ten different ideotypes with various combinations of favorable alleles for the flour yield and flour a* QTLs were generated. Phenotypes of derivatives from these ideotypes were predicted to design ideal genotypes for high-quality wheat. Simulations revealed the possibility of breeding varieties with better quality than Kitahonami.

A 57-year-old man developed rapidly progressive dementia and a gait disturbance over 4 months. The patient had a slowly progressive executive dysfunction and speech problems for 4 years and was previously monitored in our outpatient clinic following a diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia. Diffusion-weighted MRI revealed high signal intensities in the right caudate nucleus and the bilateral cortices. Cerebrospinal fluid analysis showed increased levels of the 14-3-3 and total tau proteins. Periodic synchronous discharge was not evident on an electroencephalogram. Prion protein gene analysis identified a glutamate-to-lysine substitution at codon 219 (E219K) in the presence of the E200K mutation, leading to a genetic diagnosis of genetic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). The E219K polymorphism found on the allele of the E200K mutation may have influenced the characteristic clinical course of our patient that differed from that of typical E200K genetic CJD.

A 57-year-old woman had been suffered from insomnia due to restlessness and abnormal sensation of the left side of the body for 33 years. Since the preceding year of the first visit frequency of the symptoms increased, and the abnormal sensation was spread to the right leg. Her daughter had restless legs syndrome (RLS) since age 20. Neurological examination showed no abnormality. Laboratory test results showed normal ferritin levels. There was no renal dysfunction or anemia. A diagnosis of RLS was made, and her symptoms responded well to pramipexole treatment. However, the patient developed right shoulder pain and right-hand tremor one year and one and a half year after the first visit, respectively. Based on clinical findings and the findings of dopamine transporter scan and cardiac 123I-MIBG scintigraphy, the patient was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease (PD). Careful observation of changes in RLS symptoms is required as an increased frequency and spread of symptoms of RLS could be the early manifestation of PD.

Lateral charge migration and vertical charge detrap degrade the reliability of 3D-Triple-Level Cell (TLC) NAND flash. Lateral charge migration is dominant at the low write/erase (W/E) endurance and vertical charge de-trap is dominant at the high endurance. Conventional techniques address only one of these problems. This paper proposes Endurance-based Dynamic V TH Distribution Shaping (DVDS) to suppress both errors at a wide range of the endurance. At low (1) and high (2k) endurance, measured errors decrease by 27% and 20% and measured acceptable data-retention time increases by 1.7x and 2.7x, respectively.

An 87-year old female presented with unsteady gait and occasional subcutaneous hematomas. Blood examination findings revealed pancytopenia and mild coagulopathy. Both the histopathological evaluation of bone marrow smears and bone marrow biopsy revealed a hypocellular bone marrow. However, APL cells were observed and PML-RARA fusion gene was detected. On the basis of these findings, the patient was diagnosed with hypoplastic acute promyelocytic leukemia. She received ATRA treatment and achieved complete remission (CR) 29 days from the commencement of therapy. After the first CR, she received two courses of ATO as a consolidation therapy. Following the latter treatments, she maintained CR, but a hypoplastic bone marrow was still observed. Hypoplastic AML is defined as AML with a low bone marrow cellularity. It is clinically important to distinguish it from aplastic anemia and hypoplastic MDS. It has been suggested that both cytogenetic and morphological diagnosis are imperative to the differential diagnosis of hypocellular bone marrow.

Layer-by-layer Adaptively Optimized Error Correcting Code (ECC) is proposed to improve the reliability of triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash-based SSD for the scene recognition using convolutional neural network (CNN) of IoT edge devices. Layer-by-layer Adaptively Optimized ECC is composed of Layer-by-layer Iteration-Optimized Low Density Parity-Check (LBL-LDPC) and Layer-by-layer Code-length Adjusted Asymmetric Coding (LBL-AC). The conventional techniques like LDPC ECC and Asymmetric Coding (AC) improve the reliability. However, they require large overheads of the ECC decoding time and the flag/parity cell. Proposed LBL-LDPC and LBL-AC decrease the ECC decoding time by 14% and the data overhead by 26%, respectively, without recognition accuracy degradation. In addition, the data-retention time extends by 230%.

This paper proposes the ReRAM controller with three ReRAM error-reduction techniques for Deep Neural Network (DNN). The proposed ReRAM system stores the weights of DNN. The first technique, short codeword error-correcting code (ECC), reduces more errors than conventional long codeword ECC when the bit error rate (BER) is high such as over 10-2. The second technique, One Way Error Correction (OWEC), reduces miscorrection of short codeword ECC by considering data-retention characteristics of ReRAM. The third technique, One-Bit Error Correction (OBEC), is the shortest codeword ECC which reduces errors of the most significant bit of DNN weights effectively. These techniques realize high image recognition accuracy by utilizing error tolerance of DNN even for an extremely long data-retention time. As a result, the acceptable data-retention time is extended by over 1700-times compared with BCH ECC.

Adaptive Artificial Neural Network coupled (ANN) LDPC ECC (ANN-LDPC ECC) is proposed to increase acceptable errors by 9.1-times and to extend the data-retention lifetime by 76-times for charge-trap and floating-gate 3D-NAND flash memories. Adaptive ANN automatically compensates for complex memory cell errors such as lateral charge migration, vertical charge de-trap, inter floating-gate capacitive coupling noise and inter word-line variations. In addition, proposed ANN-LDPC can reproduce the dynamic endurance and data-retention time dependence of errors. Proposed ANN-LDPC is implemented in the storage controller and can precisely and adaptively estimate BER. As a result, memory cell errors are corrected without read time penalty or storage controller size increase.

A 69-year-old woman with a previous history of migraine without aura developed throbbing headache in the right frontal region accompanied by nausea, lasting more than 4 hours a day. The headache intensity was more severe than that of usual her migraine headaches. Administration of eletriptan in the previous hospital improved her headaches. However, one month later the patient experienced more intense headaches in the same region and then was referred to our hospital. MR angiography showed abnormal signal intensities in the cavernous sinus. Cerebral angiography revealed blood reflux to the cavernous sinus, leading to diagnosis of cavernous sinus dural arteriovenous fistula. Transvenous embolization of cavernous sinus dural arteriovenous fistula was performed, which resulted in resolution of the patient's headache. We should be aware that patients with cavernous sinus dural arteriovenous fistula can manifest migraine-like headaches without being accompanied by cranial nerve palsies.

Cross Error Elimination (XEE) ECC with Horizontal Error Detection (HED) and Vertical-LDPC (V-LDPC) is proposed to extend the data-retention lifetime of 3D-TLC NAND flash-based SSD. HED improves the error correction capability of LDPC ECC by evaluating the error bits in the horizontal direction which means the column direction. Moreover, V-LDPC improves the worst reliability in each WL in the vertical row direction through three (Upper/Middle/Lower) pages. This paper investigates the reliability improvement of 3D-TLC NAND flash memory by XEE ECC. As a result, the data-retention lifetime and the acceptable bit-error rate (BER) are extended by 230% and 90%, respectively.

Durum wheat (L.) cultivars can benefit from having some level of seed dormancy to help reduce seed damage and lower grain quality caused by preharvest sprouting (PHS) occurring during wet harvesting conditions. Previously, a single chromosome substitution line carrying chromosome 2B of wild emmer [ L. subsp. (Korn. ex Asch. & Graebn.) Thell.] in the durum cultivar Langdon background was found to have higher levels of seed dormancy and PHS tolerance. In this study, a population of recombinant substitution lines was developed and used to construct a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-based high-density genetic linkage map. Seed germination tests were used to evaluate seed dormancy levels. Multiple interval mapping analysis revealed four quantitative trait loci (QTL) regions affecting seed dormancy. Two regions containing major-effect QTL contributed by wild emmer were consistently expressed in four environments and explained 5.89 to 11.14% of the phenotypic variation. One QTL region was located near the centromere and the other on the long arm of chromosome 2B in Bayes credible intervals of 4 and 7 cM, respectively. Recombinant inbred lines (RILs) carrying both QTL had an average of 35% reduced rate of germination measured by weighted germination index compared with RILs carrying neither QTL. The two QTL regions identified in this study should be useful for improving PHS tolerance in wheat. Efforts to transfer the two QTL into elite durum cultivars are in progress to examine the effects of genetic background and environment on QTL expression and to evaluate the performance of other agronomic traits in the presence of the QTL.

In posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome, isolated involvement of the brainstem is rare. In addition, there have been a few reports describing a concomitant occurrence of stroke and a brainstem variant of posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome. We here report a patient with isolated pontine involvement of posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome accompanied by fresh ischemic cerebral infarction in the left corona radiata detected by brain magnetic resonance imaging. Follow-up brain magnetic resonance imaging on hospital day 14 showed a marked improvement of signal changes in the pons; however, cerebral infarction in the left corona radiata enlarged despite medical treatment. Although rare, clinicians should be aware of the co-occurrence of posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome and ischemic infarctions, especially in patients with untreated/uncontrolled hypertension and chronic kidney disease. We discuss the possible mechanism related to brainstem posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome and stroke, reviewing the previous case reports.

Yellow mosaic disease, caused by wheat yellow mosaic virus (WYMV), is one of the most serious diseases of winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) in Japan. The three pathotypes of WYMV are distributed in different geographical areas: pathotype I is found mainly in western and central Japan (Kanto), pathotype II in northern Japan (Tohoku and Hokkaido) and pathotype III on the southern island of Japan (Kyushu). A total of 246 doubled-haploid (DH) lines, derived from a cross between ‘Yumechikara’ (resistant) and ‘Kitahonami’ (susceptible), were evaluated for 2 years for their resistance to WYMV pathotype I. A single major quantitative trait locus, Q.Ymym, mapping to chromosome 2D was associated with resistance to pathotype I in ‘Yumechikara’. This is the first time a QTL responsible for pathotype I resistance has been identified. Fine mapping of Q.Ymym indicated that it was on a tight linkage block originating from ‘Yumechikara’, and the markers associated with this block will accelerate the development of varieties resistant to WYMV pathotype I.

In common wheat, the development of genotyping platforms has been hampered by the large size of the genome, its highly repetitive elements and its allohexaploid nature. However, recent advances in sequencing technology provide opportunities to resolve these difficulties. Using next-generation sequencing and gene-targeting sequence capture, 12,551 nucleotide polymorphisms were detected in the common wheat varieties ‘Hatsumochi’ and ‘Kitahonami’ and were assigned to chromosome arms using International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium survey sequences. Because the number of markers for D genome chromosomes in commercially available wheat single nucleotide polymorphism arrays is insufficient, we developed markers using a genome-specific amplicon sequencing strategy. Approximately 80% of the designed primers successfully amplified D genome-specific products, suggesting that by concentrating on a specific subgenome, we were able to design successful markers as efficiently as could be done in a diploid species. The newly developed markers were uniformly distributed across the D genome and greatly extended the total coverage. Polymorphisms were surveyed in six varieties, and 31,542 polymorphic sites and 5,986 potential marker sites were detected in the D genome. The marker development and genotyping strategies are cost effective, robust and flexible and may enhance multi-sample studies in the post-genomic era in wheat.

We report here that the mutation causing fractured starch granules in the barley line “Franubet” results from a point mutation in the barley gene corresponding to the rice FLO6 gene. The “fra” mutation in barley, which was originally isolated and characterized over 30 years ago, results in fractured starch granules and an opaque phenotype. This mutation has been used in breeding programs, since it appears to be useful in the production of pearled barley for human consumption. However, selection for this phenotype is difficult, since wild-type and heterozygous kernels cannot be distinguished phenotypically, and until now, the gene involved in this mutation has not been determined. Here, we used a map-based cloning approach using nanopore sequencing to obtain long reads from a BAC clone carrying markers on either side of the fra locus. By fine mapping followed by aligning RNA-seq reads to four genes within the mapped region, we were able to determine that the fra mutation is caused by the introduction of a stop codon in the barley homologue of the rice FLOURY ENDOSPERM 6 (FLO6) gene. This gene has a CBM48 domain that binds to starch, and may act through interactions with isoamylase1 (ISA1), assisting in the binding of ISA1 to starch granules. Perfect markers able to distinguish all genotypes were designed and tested in several large populations; in all cases, the markers were able to distinguish wild-type, heterozygous, and mutant genotypes.