Exploring Category Structure with Contextual Language Models and Lexical Semantic Networks

Recent work on predicting category structure with distributional models, using either static word embeddings (Heyman and Heyman, 2019) or contextualized language models (CLMs) (Misra et al., 2021), report low correlations with human ratings, thus calling into question their plausibility as models of human semantic memory. In this work, we revisit this question testing a wider array of methods for probing CLMs for predicting typicality scores. Our experiments, using BERT (Devlin et al., 2018), show the importance of using the right type of CLM probes, as our best BERT-based typicality prediction methods substantially improve over previous works. Second, our results highlight the importance of polysemy in this task: our best results are obtained when using a disambiguation mechanism. Finally, additional experiments reveal that Information Contentbased WordNet (Miller, 1995), also endowed with disambiguation, match the performance of the best BERT-based method, and in fact capture complementary information, which can be combined with BERT to achieve enhanced typicality predictions

Diffuse laser illumination for Maxwellian view Doppler holography of the retina

We describe the advantages of diffuse illumination in laser holography for ophthalmology. The presence of a diffusing element introduces an angular diversity of the optical radiation and reduces its spatial coherence, which spreads out the energy distribution of the illumination beam in the focal plane of the eyepiece. The field of view of digitally computed retinal images can easily be increased as the eyepiece can be moved closer to the cornea to obtain a Maxwellian view of the retina without compromising ocular safety. Compliance with American and European safety standards for ophthalmic devices is more easily obtained by preventing the presence of a laser hot spot observed in front of the cornea in the absence of a scattering element. Diffuse laser illumination does not introduce any adverse effects on digitally computed laser Doppler images.Comment: 9 page

The C-terminal half of the colicin A pore-forming domain is active in vivo and in vitro11Edited by I. B. Holland

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L’exigence démocratique de la planification participative : le cas de la santé publique au Québec

Au cours des trente dernières années, la transformation des pratiques planificatrices dans la sphère publique s’est appuyée sur la critique du paradigme rationaliste, articulée par les courants pragmatique et communicationnel. Dans le champ de la santé publique, l’ouverture de la planification à la participation donne lieu à un important débat sur la place des citoyens et des communautés dans les programmes publics. Au Québec, trois grandes opérations témoignent du chemin parcouru. Elles permettent aussi d’envisager les potentialités encore inexplorées de la participation comme instrument de démocratisation et d’efficacité de la planification publique.Over the last thirty years, transformations to planning practices in the public sector have been based on a critique of the rationalist paradigm, articulated through pragmatic and communicational streams. In the field of public health, a major debate on the place of citizens and communities has arisen from opening up planning practices to participation. In Quebec, three major actions attest to the headway that has been made. These actions also allow us to consider unexplored opportunities for participation as an instrument of democratisation and effectiveness in public planning

Contribution a l’amelioration des techniques de diagnostic des fievres recurrentes a Borrelia: utilisation d’antigenes issus des souches locales en remplacement d’antigenes consensus d’origines diverses

En médecine humaine, les borrélioses s’inscrivent dans le cadre d’infection par des spirochètes, bactéries spiralées mobiles du genre Borrelia, qui, à partir d’une porte d’entrée cutanée se répandent par voie sanguine. En fonction du vecteur, on distingue la « récurrente cosmopolite » à poux et la « récurrente à tiques » présentes en Afrique de l’Ouest et de l’Est, respectivement. Ces vecteurs transmettent à l’homme des maladies bactériennes, telles que les borrélioses. La borréliose se manifeste par une fièvre élevée avec des céphalées, des vomissements, de la fatigue et une sensation de froid. Ces symptômes la font soit confondre avec le paludisme soit ranger parmi les fièvres non paludiques d’origine inconnue. L’objet de ce travail est de décrire une technique de confection et de fixation d’antigène soluble total, issu de souches locales de Borrelia, sur microplaque en polystyrène en vue du diagnostic sérologique des borrélioses en zones endémiques du paludisme et des borrélioses.Mots clés: récurrente, tique, Borrelia, malariaEnglish Title: Contributing to the improvement of diagnosis of relapsing fever due to Borrelia: interrest on etiological diagnosis of unknown origin feverEnglish AbstractIn human medicine, the relapsing fever forms part of infection by spirochetes. They are moving spiral bacteria of the genus Borrelia. They penetrate through the skin and spread through the bloodstream. Depending on the vector, there are the "relapsing" to lice and "tick-borne relapsing" present in West Africa and East, respectively. These vectors transmit to humans bacterial diseases such as borreliosis. Recurring fever is manifested by high fever with headache, vomiting, fatigue and feeling cold. These symptoms make recurring fever be confused either with malaria or with fever of unknown etiology. The purpose of this work is to make available to research laboratories in endemic areas of malaria and relapsing fever method to prepare and fix on polystyrene plate soluble antigen made from local strains of Borrelia. Such plate can be used for serological diagnosis of relapsing fever.Keywords: Borrelia, relapsing fever, tick, malari

Long-term follow-up for childhood cancer survivors: the Geneva experience

Aims of the study: Although the 5-year survival for pediatric cancer in Switzerland today is over 85%, two thirds of the survivors will develop chronic health conditions due to the disease or to the toxicity of treatments. In this context, a long-term personalized follow-up program (LTFU program), was set up at the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) since 2015. We aimed to describe this program, more particularly the specialized follow-ups set up, the cumulative burden of the chronic health conditions, and finally assess the satisfaction of patients and/or their parents with it. Methods: A monocentric retrospective study was performed where data on follow-ups and chronic health conditions were collected from medical charts of people who had childhood cancer and who participated in the LTFU program. Chronic health conditions were classified and graded in severity with the Common Terminology Criteria of Adverse Events (CTCAE) classification, version 5.0. This study was completed by a satisfaction survey among patients and/or their parents. Results: Out of 83 eligible patients, 51 (61.4%) accepted to participate, with an average age of 17.4 years (range, 10 to 35) at the time of study. Mean delay since end of treatment was 9.8 years (range: 4.5-31). The prevalence of any chronic health condition is 82.3%, 43.1% for having 1 or 2 chronic health conditions and 39.2% for having more than 3 chronic health conditions. The total number of Grade CTCAE 1-4 chronic health conditions was 118 for the 51 participants, with a mean of 2.3 (range, 0 to 7) disorders per patient. The most frequently affected systems were neurological (14.4%), musculoskeletal (13.6%), endocrine (9.3%) and renal (9.3%) systems. Sarcoma, central nervous system tumors and neuroblastoma were the diagnoses associated with the highest average number of chronic health conditions. Among the 118 questionnaires sent to patients and/or parents, we received 82 (69.5%) responses. The level of satisfaction was good to excellent for more than 90% of the participants, for all the items evaluated. Conclusions: Childhood cancer survivors present a significant number of chronic health conditions, confirming the need for appropriate long-term, multidisciplinary and patient-specific medical follow-up based on the primary diagnosis and therapies received. Moreover, the LTFU program at the HUG was highly appreciated by patients and/or their parents and this motivates its permanent conduct.</p