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BackgroundTo quantify changes in metamorphopsia and retinal contraction in eyes with idiopathic epiretinal membrane (ERM) before and after a spontaneous separation of ERM.MethodsAmong 92 eyes of 92 patients with idiopathic ERM who were followed up at our hospital, 5 eyes of 5 patients had experienced a spontaneous separation of ERM during the follow-up period. Patient's metamorphopsia was assessed horizontally and vertically by a metamorphopsia chart developed by our group, M-CHARTS, to obtain the horizontal (MH) and vertical (MV) metamorphopsia scores. Difference in the scores before and after the membrane separation represents change in patient's metamorphopsia. Changes in retinal contraction were also evaluated horizontally and vertically with our original software for fundus image analysis. The difference between M-CHARTS scores and distances of retinal vessel movements with before and after membrane separation were measured.ResultsAll five subjects showed a decrease in the retinal contraction. Improved visual acuity was observed in three subjects, and no change was seen in the other two. Four subjects obtained better metamorphopsia scores after the membrane separation, while the other one was not detected with metamorphopsia by M-CHARTS either before or after the separation. In subjects with an improved MV, horizontal retinal movement was seen larger than the vertical movement. Similarly, the subjects with an improved MH indicated a larger vertical retinal movement than the horizontal movement.ConclusionsThe direction of patient's metamorphopsia closely associated with the direction of retinal contraction before and after a spontaneous separation of ERM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long lived charged particles are predicted by many models of physics beyond the standard model (SM). The common signature of such models is a heavy long-lived charged particle with velocity smaller than the speed of light, β<1. This unique signature makes the search for it model independent. This paper presents methods we developed as part of the ATLAS trigger and reconstruction chain for identifying slow particles and measuring their mass. The efficacy of these methods is demonstrated using two models that are different in every aspect except for the existence of long lived charged particles; a GMSB model that includes sleptons with a mass of 100 GeV, and R-Hadrons with a mass of 300 GeV produced in a split SUSY model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary. The benzodiazepine receptor (peripheral) (BZRP) mainly localized on glial cells plays a role in neurosteroid synthesis, and increases with glial proliferation. We have recently reported a significant decrease in the density of BZRP labeled by [3H] PK 11195 in the postmortem brain of chronic schizophrenics, suggesting that dysfunctions of the BZRP are involved in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. We screened 11 patients with schizophrenia and 10 controls, which were used in a previous postmortem study, for their genomic sequences of the BZRP gene in order to find DNA sequence variations. One novel missense polymorphism (His162Arg) and another previously reported missense mutation (Ala147Thr) were detected. An association study of the identified variations was then performed in an extended Japanese sample of 304 schizophrenic patients and 369 controls. While there was an increased tendency in the frequency of the 162Arg allele of schizophrenics compared to that of the controls (p = 0.0603), no statistically significant association with schizophrenia was observed in the Ala147Thr allele (p = 0.1016). These results do not suggest that the two missense polymorphisms play a major role in the genetic predisposition of schizophrenia in the Japanese sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]