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Objective: To assess the rate of positivity of Toxoplasma gondii, Rubella, Cytomegalovirus, Herpes simplex (TORCH) pathogens in patients suffering from congenital cataract in Pakistan. Study Design: Cross sectional comparative study. Place and Duration of Study: Armed Forces Institute of Ophthalmology, Rawalpindi, from Jun 2017 to Mar 2018. Methodology: Cataract group included sixty children already diagnosed with congenital cataract and control group included 60 children not suffering from congenital cataract. Serum samples of all children were collected to test against IgG and IgM antibodies of Toxoplasma gondii, Rubella, Cytomegalo, Herpes simplex pathogens using enzyme linked immune essay (ELISA) technique. Data were analyzed observe in difference between unilateral and bilateral cataract and between cataract and control group. Results: Out of 60 children in cataract group, 29 were tested positive for Toxoplasma gondii, Rubella, Cytomegalo (CMV), Herpes simplex infections. CMV IgG antibodies were identified in 21 (35%) children followed by Rubella IgG 13 (21.7%), Toxoplasmosis IgG 8 (13.3%), CMV IgM 7 (11.7%), HSV I IgG 5 (8.3%), HSV II IgG 2 (3.3%) and HSV I IgM 1 (1.7%) antibodies. None of the children was positive for Toxoplasmosis, Rubella and HSV II IgM antibodies. There was no statistical difference in rate of positivity of Toxoplasma gondii, Rubella, Cytomegalovirus, Herpes simplex pathogens between unilateral and bilateral cataract and between cataract and control group. Conclusion: Toxoplasma gondii, Rubella, Cytomegalovirus, Herpes simplex pathogens are an important cause of congenital cataract with Cytomegalovirus and Rubella virus being most common respectively. In order to prevent paediatric complications, we need........

Objective: To compare the corneal epithelium healing time and post-operative pain after pterygium surgery with and without he use of autologous serum drops. Study Design: Comparative cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Eye Department, Combined Military Hospital Quetta, from Jan to Aug 2019. Methodology: Twenty patients were included in this study and divided into two groups. All patients underwent pterygium excision with conjunctival autograft. Fourteen of them were instilled with autologous serum drops while 14 were given lubricants postoperatively until corneal epithelium healed completely. Corneal epithelium healing time, visual analog scale for postoperative pain assessment, conjunctival inflammation and recurrences were evaluated. Patients were followed up for 6 months. Results: For corneal epithelial healing, 1 (7.14%) patient showed complete healing on day 2 while 7 (50%) showed healing on day 3 and 6 (42.86%) on day 4. While in non-autologous serum drops group 7 (50%) showed complete healing on day 4 while 4 (28.57%) showed healing on day 5 and 3 (21.43%) on day 6. The mean corneal healing time of autologous serum drops group was 3.36 ± 0.63 days and that of non-autologous serum drops group was 4.71 ± 0.83 days. Patients of autologous serum drops group also experienced significantly less pain as compared to the non-autologous serum drops group. While the recurrence rate and conjunctival inflammation in the two groups was found to be of equal degree. Conclusion: Patients who used autologous serum eye drops post operatively experienced less pain and their corneal epithelium healed earlier than the.......

Objective: To study the spectrum of optic neuropathies in patient’s presenting at AFIO Rawalpindi. Study Design: Descriptive study/retrospective study. Place and Duration of Study: Armed Forces Institute of Ophthalmology, Rawalpindi, from Jan 2017 to Dec 2017. Methodology: Retrospective analysis of hospital record of patients coming to neuro-ophthalmic clinic of Armed Forces Institute of Ophthalmology (AFIO), Rawalpindi, from Jan to Dec 2017 was done. Only patients with clear final diagnosis of neurophthalmic disease were included. Those with vague diagnosis were excluded. Data was entered in SPSS version 22 and grouped into variables before analysis. Chi-square test was used for statistical analysis. The p

Objective: To compare the efficacy of tacrolimus 0.03% ointment to olopatadine 0.2% eye drops in the treatment of vernal keratoconjunctivitis. Study Design: Prospective cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Eye Department Combined Military Hospital Quetta, from Feb to Jul 2019. Methodology: A total of 69 patients with active vernal keratoconjunctivitis (VKC) were included in this study. Thirty six (52.17%) patients were randomized in tacrolimus group and 33 (47.83%) in olopatadine group B. Baseline values of the subjective symptom score (SSS) and the objective sign score (OSS) were noted. Patients were reviewed on weeks 2, 4, 8 and 12 and the scores at each visit were summed. These scores were used for comparison between groups. Results: At the start of the study, the mean subjective symptoms score and objective sign score of group A was 9.0 ± 2.04 and 3.93 ± 1.93 respectively, while that of group B was 8.88 ± 2.18 and 4.36 ± 1.90 respectively. At the end of 12-weeks, the mean subjective symptoms score and objective sign score of group A reduced to 0.11 ± 0.32 and 0.08 ± 0.28 respectively, while that of group B reduced to 1.70 ± 0.77 and 0.64 ± 0.55 respectively. Total improvement of scores (as a percentage of baselines) among tacrolimus group was 98.3% and olopatadine group was 83%. Conclusion: Although both 0.03% tacrolimus and 0.2% olopatadine were effective in improving the signs and symptoms of VKC, 0.03% tacrolimus was significantly superior.

AbstractPre-trained Transformer-based models have achieved state-of-the-art performance for various Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. However, these models often have billions of parameters, and thus are too resource- hungry and computation-intensive to suit low- capability devices or applications with strict latency requirements. One potential remedy for this is model compression, which has attracted considerable research attention. Here, we summarize the research in compressing Transformers, focusing on the especially popular BERT model. In particular, we survey the state of the art in compression for BERT, we clarify the current best practices for compressing large-scale Transformer models, and we provide insights into the workings of various methods. Our categorization and analysis also shed light on promising future research directions for achieving lightweight, accurate, and generic NLP models.

The main purpose of this work is to solve the problem of electromagnetic scattering from a chiral cylinder of arbitrary cross-section above an infinite perfect electric conducting (PEC) plane. Using image theory, this problem is reduced to two chiral cylinders in free-space. Surface equivalence principle is used to obtain three different equivalent problems for this two-cylinder problem. Then, the method of moments is used to solve these equivalent problems numerically. It is known that the image of a chiral body through a ground plane is another chiral body with the same permittivity and permeability but opposite chirality. Using this property, the two-body problem in the moment method may be reduced to a one-body problem with a complicated moment matrix. Computed numerical results include scattered fields and equivalent surface currents on the cylinder.

Wolfram disease is a rare genetic disease which mainly presents as diabetes mellitus and optic atrophy. Presence of maculopathy in a case of wolfram disease is rarely reported in literature. We present here two cases/siblings with age of 12 and 14 years. They had diabetes mellitus, deafness and disc palor. Ocular examination also revealed atrophic maculopathy in both siblings, supported by depressed response on ERG. Assosiation of maculopathy with wolfram syndrome is rare and worth reporting.

We present a generative model that efficiently mines transliteration pairs in a consistent fashion in three different settings: unsupervised, semi-supervised, and supervised transliteration mining. The model interpolates two sub-models, one for the generation of transliteration pairs and one for the generation of non-transliteration pairs (i.e., noise). The model is trained on noisy unlabeled data using the EM algorithm. During training the transliteration sub-model learns to generate transliteration pairs and the fixed non-transliteration model generates the noise pairs. After training, the unlabeled data is disambiguated based on the posterior probabilities of the two sub-models. We evaluate our transliteration mining system on data from a transliteration mining shared task and on parallel corpora. For three out of four language pairs, our system outperforms all semi-supervised and supervised systems that participated in the NEWS 2010 shared task. On word pairs extracted from parallel corpora with fewer than 2% transliteration pairs, our system achieves up to 86.7% F-measure with 77.9% precision and 97.8% recall.

This study was carried out to explore the mechanism underlying antidiarrheal and antispasmodic activities of Vincetoxicum stocksii. The crude extract of V. stocksii provided 12-24% protection from castor oil-induced diarrhea at the dose of 300-1,000 mg/kg, similar to loperamide. In isolated rabbit jejunum preparations, V. stocksii caused inhibition of the spontaneous and high K+ (80 mM)-induced contractions, with respective EC50 values of 2.53 (1.65-3.90) and 0.95 mg/mL (0.63-1.42), similar to that caused by verapamil, suggesting the calcium channel blocking effect. Loperamide caused inhibition of spontaneous and high K+-induced contraction, with respective EC50 values of 8.59 (6.33-10.11) and 9.12 µM (7.33-12.81). The calcium channel blocking activity was further confirmed when pretreatment of the tissues with V. stocksii (1-3 mg/mL) caused a rightward displacement of the Ca++ concentrations response curves, similar to that produced by verapamil; constructed in Ca++ free medium. These data indicate that the crude extract of V. stocksii contains calcium channel blocking constituents that may possibly explain its medicinal use in hyperactive states of gut, such as, diarrhea and spasms.