MilkQA: a Dataset of Consumer Questions for the Task of Answer Selection

We introduce MilkQA, a question answering dataset from the dairy domain dedicated to the study of consumer questions. The dataset contains 2,657 pairs of questions and answers, written in the Portuguese language and originally collected by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa). All questions were motivated by real situations and written by thousands of authors with very different backgrounds and levels of literacy, while answers were elaborated by specialists from Embrapa's customer service. Our dataset was filtered and anonymized by three human annotators. Consumer questions are a challenging kind of question that is usually employed as a form of seeking information. Although several question answering datasets are available, most of such resources are not suitable for research on answer selection models for consumer questions. We aim to fill this gap by making MilkQA publicly available. We study the behavior of four answer selection models on MilkQA: two baseline models and two convolutional neural network archictetures. Our results show that MilkQA poses real challenges to computational models, particularly due to linguistic characteristics of its questions and to their unusually longer lengths. Only one of the experimented models gives reasonable results, at the cost of high computational requirements.Comment: 6 page

A fast algorithm for Prandtl's integro-differential equation

AbstractCollocation and quadrature methods for singular integro-differential equations of Prandtl's type are studied in weighted Sobolev spaces. A fast algorithm basing on the quadrature method is proposed. Convergence results and error estimates are given

Reference and counter-reference in everyday health care in Minas Gerais, Brazil: the support to decisions of primary care

Objective: To understand, in the perception of professionals and managers of Primary Health Care (PHC), the reference and counter-reference system in health care and the support to decisions of APS professionals. Methods: Qualitative study, outlined by Holistic Multiple Case Study, based on Comprehensive Sociology of Everyday Life with 41 participants. Results: The support to decisions of APS professionals to direct users depends on the flow and regulation of the referenced demands; the waiting time for the user service; may be harmed by unnecessary and unreadable referrals and by the professionals' view on the system. Conclusion: Health is a social process of collective construction, and it needs to win the welfare and curative paradigm, the excessive consumption of queries with a high rate of referrals

New Treatments for Myelodysplastic Syndromes

In the last decade, significant advances have been made in the treatment of patients with Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS). Although best supportive care continues to have an important role in the management of MDS, to date the therapeutic approach is diversified according to the IPSS risk group, karyotype, patient’s age, comorbidities, and compliance. Hematopoietic growth factors play a major role in lower risk MDS patients, and include high dose erithropoiesis stimulating agents and thrombopoietic receptor agonists. Standard supportive care should also include iron chelating therapy to reduce organ damage related to iron overload in transfusion-dependent patients. Biologic therapies have been introduced in MDS, as lenalidomide, which has been shown to induce transfusion independence in most lower risk MDS patients with del5q. Hypomethylating agents have shown efficacy in INT-2/high risk MDS patients, reducing the risk of leukemic transformation and increasing survival. Other agents under development for the treatment of MDS include histone deacetylase inhibitors, farnesyltransferase inhibitors, clofarabine and ezatiostat

Artisan associations and small business development in the "Third" Italy

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-139).Over the past two decades, small firms have become the main targets of policies aimed at promoting economic growth and employment in developing countries. Various projects, programs, and public policies have focused on small and micro-enterprises, as part of a more encompassing social-policy strategy of reducing poverty and unemployment. Moreover, the brilliant economic performance, over the last three decades, of small businesses in central and northeastern Italy and in other regions in Europe has showed that small and micro-enterprises can also promote 'serious' industrial and economic development. Despite this growing interest, the current debates on small business development are not completely satisfactory with respect to two instances. On the one hand, the conception of small firm assistance in terms of 'welfare' and social-policy interventions focuses on the inability of small businesses to bear the costs of formalization and observing tax, environmental, and labor standards. In order to generate employment and revenues for the poor, small businesses have to be protected, subsidized, and exempted from the labor, fiscal, and environmental legislations. On the other hand, the literature on industrial clusters and small businesses in Italy and Europe often confines itself to descriptive models of the present functioning of the clusters, and derives best-practice lessons for small businesses development that are frozen in time and space, since they ignore the development trajectories of successful small business clusters and industries. Unfortunately, this strand of the literature is usually silent on how small businesses and dynamic industrial clusters moved from a situation of low-productivity, low compliance with the regulations, and high degree of informality and achieved international competitiveness. This paper contributes to the discovery of alternative trajectories of successful small business development, by exploring how small firms in Emilia Romagna (Italy) actually grew into formality, respected labor and regulatory standards, and became internationally competitive. This study analyzes how artisan associations have supported the rise of a dynamic small-scale industry in Emilia Romagna in the aftermath of the Second World War. A central argument of this paper is that the deliberate, proactive, and persistent support of the CNA, the dominant artisan association in Emilia Romagna with a strong leftist political identity, lies at the heart of the brilliant economic performance of the Emilian small and artisan firms. The association provided political representation and, both production-targeted and administrative services to the artisan firms during a period of great political instability, economic stagnation, and social unrest. Overall, the CNA pursued a three-pronged approach to small business development. First, it provided political representation to an otherwise silent and individualist social group, such as self-employed workers and the artisans. This enabled small entrepreneurs to influence policy decisions affecting their activities and, more importantly, to pool resources so as to widen market opportunities and improve competitiveness. Second, the association buffered the impact on small businesses of the fiscal, accounting, and labor legislations. It did so both by mediating with the public authorities the interpretation and the enforcement of these regulations, and, more importantly, by providing administrative (accounting, payroll, fiscal counseling) services and production-targeted (producers' consortia, industrial sites, innovation centers) activities which enabled small businesses to comply with the formal regulations. Third, the CNA promoted the introduction of a formal system of industrial relations also for the artisan sector, thus favoring the institution of formalized labor relationships between small businesses and the labor unions. As a result of this three-pronged strategy, three developmental processes have emerged over time: the process of formalization of small businesses, the progressive upgrading and rationalization of the management of the firms, and the positive influence of solid industrial relations in both preventing the diffusion of a lowest-cost competitive strategy and fostering the respect of labor standards among small firms. In sum, the multipronged, proactive, and persistent activity of the CNA has enabled and supported over time the Emilian artisan firms to pursue the so-called 'high-road' to small business development.by Alberto M. Criscuolo.M.C.P

Clinical presentation and treatment of Wilson's disease: a single-centreexperience

Thirty patients with Wilson's disease (WD) were observed at a movement disorder clinic between 1970 and 2000. Disease onset was at the mean age (SD) of 14.5 (+/-5.9) years. Presentation with hepatic disease occurred in 12 of 30 patients and with neurologic disease in 15. Three patients were asymptomatic at the time of diagnosis. The mean (SD) delay to diagnosis was 5.9 (+/-5.7) years. Five patients diagnosed in an advanced stage of disease died before initiating treatment. Eighteen patients were followed and treated with D-penicillamine alone or in combination with zinc sulphate. Treatment improved most of neurological symptoms. Dystonic postures, behavioural disturbances and dysarthria were the most resistant neurological signs. 'Pseudo-sclerotic' neurologic involvement predicted a good outcome, whereas hepatic onset and 'classic' neurologic involvement were associated with a poorer prognosis. Two of the 18 treated patients died of hepatic failure due to voluntary discontinuation of therapy. Both D-penicillamine and zinc sulphate were well tolerated. No teratogenic effect of D-penicillamine was observed throughout 5 pregnancies. Our results suggest that D-penicillamine or a combination of D-penicillamine and zinc sulphate is a safe and effective long-term treatment in patients with WD

Analysis of oxidised and glycated aminophospholipids: complete structural characterisation by C30 liquid chromatography-high resolution tandem mass spectrometry

The aminophospholipids (APL), phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) and phosphatidylserine (PS) are widely present in cell membranes and lipoproteins. Glucose and reactive oxygen species (ROS), such as the hydroxyl radical (•OH), can react with APL leading to an array of oxidised, glycated and glycoxidised derivatives. Modified APL have been implicated in inflammatory diseases and diabetes, and were identified as signalling molecules regulating cell death. However, the biological relevance of these molecules has not been completely established, since they are present in very low amounts, and new sensitive methodologies are needed to detect them in biological systems. Few studies have focused on the characterisation of APL modifications using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), mainly using C5 or C18 reversed phase (RP) columns. In the present study, we propose a new analytical approach for the characterisation of complex mixtures of oxidised, glycated and glycoxidised PE and PS. This LC approach was based on a reversed-phase C30 column combined with high-resolution MS, and higher energy C-trap dissociation (HCD) MS/MS. C30 RP-LC separated short and long fatty acyl oxidation products, along with glycoxidised APL bearing oxidative modifications on the glucose moiety and the fatty acyl chains. Functional isomers (e.g. hydroxy-hydroperoxy-APL and tri-hydroxy-APL) and positional isomers (e.g. 9-hydroxy-APL and 13-hydroxy-APL) were also discriminated by the method. HCD fragmentation patterns allowed unequivocal structural characterisation of the modified APL, and are translatable into targeted MS/MS fingerprinting of the modified derivatives in biological samples.publishe

Cinco anos de gestão de dados espaciais na Embrapa: diagnóstico e perspectivas.

Lançado em 2018 e construído a partir do uso de softwares livres, o GeoInfo é atualmente a Infraestrutura de Dados Espaciais institucional da Embrapa. O GeoInfo é responsável tanto pela catalogação e pelo armazenamento quanto pela disponibilização/publicação desses dados, a partir dos padrões internacionais de compartilhamento de dados estabelecidos pela Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) e dos princípios Free Open Source (FOSS). Ele está disponível para diferentes públicos (interno e externo) e integra-se com a Infraestrutura Nacional de Dados Espaciais (Inde). O GeoInfo agrega dados de 26 Unidades Descentralizadas da Embrapa que são produtoras e usuárias de dados geográficos. Após cinco anos de implantação e cerca de 12.000 conjuntos de dados catalogados, o GeoInfo passa atualmente por um processo de avaliação e diagnóstico, que visa nortear o planejamento de ações futuras sobre sua evolução e manutenção. Este trabalho tem o objetivo de apresentar esse diagnóstico e suas implicações na proposição de uma nova arquitetura para o GeoInfo. Trata-se de análises feitas nos metadados dos dados catalogados na plataforma, com a finalidade de compreender seu perfil de utilização.CIIC 2023. Nº 23509

A population-based study on myelodysplastic syndromes in the Lazio Region (Italy), medical miscoding and 11-year mortality follow-up. The Gruppo Romano-Laziale Mielodisplasie experience of retrospective multicentric registry

Data on Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) are difficult to collect by cancer registries because of the lack of reporting and the use of different classifications of the disease. In the Lazio Region, data from patients with a confirmed diagnosis of MDS, treated by a hematology center, have been collected since 2002 by the Gruppo Romano-Laziale Mielodisplasie (GROM-L) registry, the second MDS registry existing in Italy. This study aimed at evaluating MDS medical miscoding during hospitalizations, and patients' survival. For these purposes, we selected 644 MDS patients enrolled in the GROM-L registry. This cohort was linked with two regional health information systems: the Hospital Information System (HIS) and the Mortality Information System (MIS) in the 2002-2012 period. Of the 442 patients who were hospitalized at least once during the study period, 92% had up to 12 hospitalizations. 28.5% of patients had no hospitalization episodes scored like MDS, code 238.7 of the International Classification of Disease, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM). The rate of death during a median follow-up of 46 months (range 0.9-130) was 45.5%. Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) was the first cause of mortality, interestingly a relevant portion of deaths is due to cerebro-cardiovascular events and second tumors. This study highlights that MDS diagnosis and treatment, which require considerable healthcare resources, tend to be under-documented in the HIS archive. Thus we need to improve the HIS to better identify information on MDS hospitalizations and outcome. Moreover, we underline the importance of comorbidity in MDS patients' survival