A new emerging oral infection: Raoultella planticola in a boy with haematological malignancy

BACKGROUND: Oral mucositis is a common complication in pediatric cancer patients, affecting up to 80% of children. Due to neutropenia and disruption of the mucosal barrier, chemotherapy-induced oral mucositis is often complicated by super-infections. CASE REPORT: A 16-years old male with stage 3 Burkitt's lymphoma developed chemotherapy induced oral mucositis grade 3 (according to WHO scale). Ulcers were quickly growing (reaching a maximum diameter of 3 cm) and became greyish in colour, resulting in dysphagia and pain. A swab of the lesions was taken and microbiological tests were performed. The sample grew for Raoultella planticola, an encapsulated Gram-negative bacterium whose full pathogenic potential still needs to be defined. TREATMENT: The patient received antibiotic combination therapy with Amikacin and Ceftazidime for 8 days. Complete healing of the lesions and resolution of the symptoms were reached and he completed his antineoplastic therapy without further complications. FOLLOW-UP: Twelve months after the infection, he is alive and well, with no oral complaints. CONCLUSION: This is the first report of a Raoultella planticola infection in a patient with chemotherapy induced oral mucositis. This type of infection must be added to the list of organisms to be considered when caring for these patients

A Novel GAN-Based Anomaly Detection and Localization Method for Aerial Video Surveillance at Low Altitude

The last two decades have seen an incessant growth in the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with HD cameras for developing aerial vision-based systems to support civilian and military tasks, including land monitoring, change detection, and object classification. To perform most of these tasks, the artificial intelligence algorithms usually need to know, a priori, what to look for, identify. or recognize. Actually, in most operational scenarios, such as war zones or post-disaster situations, areas and objects of interest are not decidable a priori since their shape and visual features may have been altered by events or even intentionally disguised (e.g., improvised explosive devices (IEDs)). For these reasons, in recent years, more and more research groups are investigating the design of original anomaly detection methods, which, in short, are focused on detecting samples that differ from the others in terms of visual appearance and occurrences with respect to a given environment. In this paper, we present a novel two-branch Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)-based method for low-altitude RGB aerial video surveillance to detect and localize anomalies. We have chosen to focus on the low-altitude sequences as we are interested in complex operational scenarios where even a small object or device can represent a reason for danger or attention. The proposed model was tested on the UAV Mosaicking and Change Detection (UMCD) dataset, a one-of-a-kind collection of challenging videos whose sequences were acquired between 6 and 15 m above sea level on three types of ground (i.e., urban, dirt, and countryside). Results demonstrated the effectiveness of the model in terms of Area Under the Receiving Operating Curve (AUROC) and Structural Similarity Index (SSIM), achieving an average of 97.2% and 95.7%, respectively, thus suggesting that the system can be deployed in real-world applications

Discovery of the first maize-infecting mastrevirus in the Americas using a vector-enabled metagenomics approach.

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L2 perception and production of English consonants and vowels by Catalan speakers : the effects of attention and training task in a cross-training study /

Departament responsable de la tesi: Departament de Filologia Anglesa i de GermanísticaEste estudio compara el efecto de dos métodos de entrenamiento de alta variabilidad fonética o 'high variability phonetic training' (HVPT) sobre sonidos específicamente entrenados y sobre sonidos no entrenados pero implícitamente presentados. Con este fin, se implementan diversos regímenes de entrenamiento fonético cuyo objetivo es mejorar la percepción y la producción de 5 vocales del inglés británico (/i ɪ æ ʌ ɜː/) y de las consonantes oclusivas en posición inicial y final de palabra por hablantes bilingües de catalán y castellano. Así, este estudio investiga: (a) si el entrenamiento fonético recibido puede mejorar la percepción y la producción de segmentos entrenados y no entrenados, (b) si la mejora se generaliza a nuevos estímulos y hablantes, (c) si la mejora se mantiene un tiempo después, (d) qué método de entrenamiento, identificación (ID) o discriminación categórica (DIS) es más eficaz, y (e) cuáles son las impresiones de los participantes sobre el entrenamiento fonético como una herramienta de instrucción fonética. Cien estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera fueron divididos en cuatro grupos experimentales y un grupo de control. Los grupos entrenados diferían tanto en método de entrenamiento (ID, DIS) como en el enfoque del entrenamiento (consonantes, vocales) dando lugar a cuatro grupos diferentes. Crucialmente, los cuatro grupos fueron entrenados con los mismos estímulos CVC (por ejemplo, zat, zut, zad, zud), exponiendo a los participantes a los contrastes fonéticos entrenados y a los contrastes fonéticos no entrenados. Los resultados revelan que todos los grupos experimentales superaron significativamente al grupo de control en su identificación de sonidos entrenados (vocales y consonantes oclusivas en posición inicial), mostrando la eficacia de ambas metodologías de entrenamiento fonético (ID y AX DIS). Sin embargo, mientras que ambos grupos experimentales mejoran su percepción de las oclusivas iniciales de manera similar, los aprendices de ID superan a los aprendices de DIS en la percepción de vocales específicamente entrenadas después del entrenamiento fonético. Estos resultados sugieren que la modificación de la percepción de los diferentes tipos de segmentos (vocales, consonantes) puede requerir diferentes procedimientos y duraciones de entrenamiento distintas. Curiosamente, sólo los aprendices de DIS mostraron una mejora significativa en la percepción de los sonidos no específicamente entrenados, lo que indica que este método de entrenamiento puede proporcionar mejoras en la percepción de sonidos entrenados y sonidos no entrenados pero implícitamente presentados. En cuanto a la generalización y a la retención de los efectos del entrenamiento, los resultados con sonidos vocálicos apuntan a la superioridad de la tarea de ID sobre la tarea categórica de DIS. Además, ambos métodos son adecuados para entrenar consonantes iniciales de manera similar. Con respecto a la producción, sólo los aprendices de ID entrenados en vocales fueron capaces de mejorar significativamente su producción de los sonidos vocálicos. Por último, las opiniones de los estudiantes acerca del entrenamiento fonético como una herramienta de enseñanza de L2 fueron en general positivas, e ID fue más valorado que DIS como un método de formación. Globalmente, estos resultados sugieren que ambos métodos son efectivos para entrenar la percepción de una L2. Sin embargo, los métodos pueden promover mejoras, generalización y retención de los distintos segmentos en diferentes grados. Los mejores resultados obtenidos con el método ID, en particular con las vocales, y el hecho de que sólo el método DIS proporcione la mejora de sonidos no entrenados pueden estar relacionados con la naturaleza y el fin de cada metodología y/o con las propiedades acústicas de cada segmento. Las consecuencias teóricas y prácticas de estos resultados pueden ser de utilidad para futuros trabajos de investigación y aplicaciones prácticas de aprendizaje de la pronunciación.This study compares the effect of two high variability phonetic training (HVPT) methods on specifically attended sounds and on implicitly exposed but unattended sounds. Several training regimes are implemented aimed at improving the perception and production of a subset of English vowels (/i ɪ æ ʌ ɜː/) and initial and final stops by Spanish/Catalan bilingual learners of English. Thus this study addresses the following questions: (a) whether training can improve the perception and production of trained as well as untrained segments, (b) whether improvement generalizes to novel stimuli and talkers, (c) if improvement is retained over time, (d) which training method (Identification (ID) or categorical Discrimination (DIS)) is more effective, and (e) what are the participants' impressions of phonetic training as a L2 training tool. A total of 100 bilingual Catalan/Spanish learners of English were divided into four experimental groups and a control group and were tested on their identification of English sounds presented in CVC non-words before and after a five-week training period, and two months later. L2 production was assessed before and immediately after training through a picture naming task and analysed by means of native speaker judgments. The trained groups differed either in terms of training method (ID, DIS) or focus of training (consonants, vowels), resulting in four different groups. Crucially, all four groups were trained with the same sets of CVC non-words (e.g. zat, zut, zad, zud), exposing learners to attended contrasts within trials and to unattended contrasts across trials. The results reveal that all experimental groups significantly outperform the controls in their identification of trained sounds (vowels and initial stops), showing the efficacy of both phonetic training methodologies (ID and categorical AX DIS). However, while both experimental groups perform similarly when modifying initial stop perception, the ID trainees outperform the DIS trainees on trained vowel perception. These results suggest that modifying the perception of different types of segments might require different training procedures and amounts of training time. Interestingly, only the DIS trainees show a significant improvement in the perception of untrained/unattended L2 sounds, indicating that this training method may be more suited to enhance learners' perception of attended as well as unattended target sounds. Regarding generalization and retention, the results point to the superiority of the ID task over a categorical DIS task when training vowel sounds. Moreover, the results indicate that both methods are well suited for training initial consonants to the same extent. With respect to production, only the vowel ID trainees are able to significantly improve their production of trained sounds, which shows that pronunciation improvement might take place as a result of an identification perceptual training regime, even in the absence of production training. Finally, students' opinions of phonetic training as an EFL tool are overall positive and ID is favoured over DIS as a training method. Globally, these findings suggest that while both methods are effective for training L2 perception, ID and DIS methods may promote improvement, generalization and retention for vowels and for consonants to different degrees. The better results obtained with ID training, particularly for vowels, and the fact that only DIS promoted improvement with untrained sounds (cross-training effects) may be related to the nature and focus of the tasks and/or to the acoustic characteristics of the target sounds. These results may have implications for future research on phonetic training and practical applications in the teaching of L2 pronunciation

Search for neutrino oscillations on a long base-line at the CHOOZ nuclear power station

This final article about the CHOOZ experiment presents a complete description of the electron antineutrino source and detector, the calibration methods and stability checks, the event reconstruction procedures and the Monte Carlo simulation. The data analysis, systematic effects and the methods used to reach our conclusions are fully discussed. Some new remarks are presented on the deduction of the confidence limits and on the correct treatment of systematic errors.Comment: 41 pages, 59 figures, Latex file, accepted for publication by Eur.Phys.J.

Forward pi^0 Production and Associated Transverse Energy Flow in Deep-Inelastic Scattering at HERA

Deep-inelastic positron-proton interactions at low values of Bjorken-x down to x \approx 4.10^-5 which give rise to high transverse momentum pi^0 mesons are studied with the H1 experiment at HERA. The inclusive cross section for pi^0 mesons produced at small angles with respect to the proton remnant (the forward region) is presented as a function of the transverse momentum and energy of the pi^0 and of the four-momentum transfer Q^2 and Bjorken-x. Measurements are also presented of the transverse energy flow in events containing a forward pi^0 meson. Hadronic final state calculations based on QCD models implementing different parton evolution schemes are confronted with the data.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures and 3 table

Deep-Inelastic Inclusive ep Scattering at Low x and a Determination of alpha_s

A precise measurement of the inclusive deep-inelastic e^+p scattering cross section is reported in the kinematic range 1.5<= Q^2 <=150 GeV^2 and 3*10^(-5)<= x <=0.2. The data were recorded with the H1 detector at HERA in 1996 and 1997, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 20 pb^(-1). The double differential cross section, from which the proton structure function F_2(x,Q^2) and the longitudinal structure function F_L(x,Q^2) are extracted, is measured with typically 1% statistical and 3% systematic uncertainties. The measured partial derivative (dF_2(x,Q^2)/dln Q^2)_x is observed to rise continuously towards small x for fixed Q^2. The cross section data are combined with published H1 measurements at high Q^2 for a next-to-leading order DGLAP QCD analysis.The H1 data determine the gluon momentum distribution in the range 3*10^(-4)<= x <=0.1 to within an experimental accuracy of about 3% for Q^2 =20 GeV^2. A fit of the H1 measurements and the mu p data of the BCDMS collaboration allows the strong coupling constant alpha_s and the gluon distribution to be simultaneously determined. A value of alpha _s(M_Z^2)=0.1150+-0.0017 (exp) +0.0009-0.0005 (model) is obtained in NLO, with an additional theoretical uncertainty of about +-0.005, mainly due to the uncertainty of the renormalisation scale.Comment: 68 pages, 24 figures and 18 table

Searches at HERA for Squarks in R-Parity Violating Supersymmetry

A search for squarks in R-parity violating supersymmetry is performed in e^+p collisions at HERA at a centre of mass energy of 300 GeV, using H1 data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 37 pb^(-1). The direct production of single squarks of any generation in positron-quark fusion via a Yukawa coupling lambda' is considered, taking into account R-parity violating and conserving decays of the squarks. No significant deviation from the Standard Model expectation is found. The results are interpreted in terms of constraints within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), the constrained MSSM and the minimal Supergravity model, and their sensitivity to the model parameters is studied in detail. For a Yukawa coupling of electromagnetic strength, squark masses below 260 GeV are excluded at 95% confidence level in a large part of the parameter space. For a 100 times smaller coupling strength masses up to 182 GeV are excluded.Comment: 32 pages, 14 figures, 3 table