Automatic Restoration of Diacritics for Igbo Language

Igbo is a low-resource African language with orthographic and tonal diacritics, which capture distinctions between words that are important for both meaning and pronunciation, and hence of potential value for a range of language processing tasks. Such diacritics, however, are often largely absent from the electronic texts we might want to process, or assemble into corpora, and so the need arises for effective methods for automatic diacritic restoration for Igbo. In this paper, we experiment using an Igbo bible corpus, which is extensively marked for vowel distinctions, and partially for tonal distinctions, and attempt the task of reinstating these diacritics when they have been deleted. We investigate a number of word-level diacritic restoration methods, based on n-grams, under a closed-world assumption, achieving an accuracy of 98.83 % with our most effective method

Serum dioxin and PCB levels among PCB waste processing plant workers

peer reviewedA clinical investigation and a biological monitoring were carried out to evaluate the occupational exposure of workers in contact with pyralen in a PCB-transformer and capacitor decontamination plant in France. The aim of this study was to assess the body burden of polychlorinated dibenzo-p- dioxin (PCDDs), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), dioxin-like (DL) PCBs and marker PCBs for those workers. We examined 8 representative workers (34-44 years old). The subjects of this study worked from 5 years to 19 years at the plant. All workers reported daily multiple contacts with various metal and wood parts of dismantled transformers during working hours. On a yearly basis, the exposed subjects were examined by the occupational health physician for a check-up. Basic parameters such as liver function and lipid statement were performed

Early upregulation of miR-29a mediates differentiation of cardiac stem cells into cardiomyocytes through inhibition of endogenous Wnt/beta-catenin

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Influence of simulated spring frost on growth and yield of three barley cultivars

Spring barley was sown on 4 dates between 28 April and 21 May to evaluate the effect of a simulated frost at the 2-leaf stage on growth and yield. A portable field freezing chamber was used to subject the plants to a -5.6 deg C stress. The frost caused 49, 64 and 68% injury to the leaves and delayed heading by 2.4, 1.4 and 2.4 days in cv. Galt, Atlas and Olli, resp. Frost also reduced the number of tillers/plant, ripe ears/plant and plants/plot in all cv. Although the late-maturing cv. Galt had the most leaf frost resistance, the av. yield reduction (13.8%) was similar in all 3 cv. Complete defoliation by clipping resulted in no further reduction in yield than that which occurred from partial defoliation by freezing. Delayed sowing reduced yield by 8.6%. Frost reduced yield by 9.8% at the 2 early sowing dates and by 17.1% at the 2 later sowing date

Four cycles of BEP versus an alternating regime of PVB and BEP in patients with poor-prognosis metastatic testicular non-seminoma; a randomised study of the EORTC Genitourinary Tract Cancer Cooperative Group.

We have investigated whether an alternating induction chemotherapy regimen of PVB/BEP is superior to BEP in patients with poor-prognosis testicular non-seminoma. A total of 234 eligible patients were randomised to receive an alternating schedule of PVB/BEP for a total of four cycles or four cycles of BEP. Poor prognosis was defined as any of the following: lymph node metastases larger than 5 cm, lung metastases more than four in number or larger than 2 cm, haematogenic spread outside the lungs, such as in liver and bone, human chorionic gonadotrophin > 10,000 IU l-1 or alphafetoprotein > 1000 IU l-1. The complete response (CR) rates to PVB/BEP and BEP were similar, 76% and 72% respectively (P = 0.58). In addition, there was no significant difference in relapse rate, disease-free and overall survival at an average follow-up of 6 years. The 5-year progression-free and survival rates in both treatment groups were approximately 80%. The PVB/BEP regime was more toxic with regard to bone marrow function; the frequencies of leucocytes below 1000 microliters-1, leucocytopenic fever and platelets below 25,000 microliters-1, throughout four cycles were 28% vs 5% (P < 0.001), 16% vs 5% (P = 0.006), and 10% vs 1% (P = 0.001) respectively. Neuropathy also occurred more often in the PVB/BEP arm: 47% vs 25% (P = 0.001). This study shows that an alternating regimen of PVB/BEP is not superior to BEP and that it is more myelo- and neurotoxic

Frequent germ-line succinate dehydrogenase subunit D gene mutations in patients with apparently sporadic parasympathetic paraganglioma

PURPOSE: Recently, familial paraganglioma (PGL) was shown to be caused bymutations in the gene encoding succinate dehydrogenase subunit D (SDHD). However, the prevalence of SDHD mutations in apparently sporadic PGL is unknown. We studied the frequency and spectrum of germ-line and somatic SDHD mutations in patients with parasympathetic PGL. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGH: We studied 57 unselected patients who developed parasympathetic PGLs (n = 105 tumors) and who were treated between 1987 and 1999 at the Erasmus MC (Rotterdam, the Netherlands). Thirty-eight (67%) of these patients (n = 51 tumors) lacked a family history of parasympathetic PGL. We used conformation-dependent gel electrophoresis and sequence determination analysis of germ-line and tumor DNA to identify SDHD mutations. We compared the clinical and molecular characteristics of sporadic and hereditary PGLs. RESULTS: Three different SDHD germ-line mutations were identified in 32 of the 57 (56%) patients. These included 19 of 19 (100%) patients with familial PGL and also 13 of 38 (34%) patients with apparently sporadic PGL. All three mutations were characterized as missense mutations (D92Y, L95P, and L139P) in highly conserved regions of the SDHD gene and were not observed in 200 control alleles. No somatic mutations were found. CONCLUSIONS: Germ-line mutations of the SDHD gene are present in a significant number of patients with apparently sporadic parasympathetic PGL. Somatic SDHD mutations do not play a significant role in the sporadic form of this tumor. Genetic testing for SDHD germ-line mutations should be considered for every patient presenting with this tumor, even if a personal or family history of PGL is absent, to allow appropriate clinical management