Standardizing a component metadata infrastructure

This paper describes the status of the standardization efforts of a Component Metadata approach for describing Language Resources with metadata. Different linguistic and Language & Technology communities as CLARIN, META-SHARE and NaLiDa use this component approach and see its standardization of as a matter for cooperation that has the possibility to create a large interoperable domain of joint metadata. Starting with an overview of the component metadata approach together with the related semantic interoperability tools and services as the ISOcat data category registry and the relation registry we explain the standardization plan and efforts for component metadata within ISO TC37/SC4. Finally, we present information about uptake and plans of the use of component metadata within the three mentioned linguistic and L&T communities

Automated office blood pressure measurements in primary care are misleading in more than one third of treated hypertensives: The VALENTINE-Greece Home Blood Pressure Monitoring study

Abstract Background This study assessed the diagnostic reliability of automated office blood pressure (OBP) measurements in treated hypertensive patients in primary care by evaluating the prevalence of white coat hypertension (WCH) and masked uncontrolled hypertension (MUCH) phenomena. Methods Primary care physicians, nationwide in Greece, assessed consecutive hypertensive patients on stable treatment using OBP (1 visit, triplicate measurements) and home blood pressure (HBP) measurements (7 days, duplicate morning and evening measurements). All measurements were performed using validated automated devices with bluetooth capacity (Omron M7 Intelli-IT). Uncontrolled OBP was defined as ≥140/90 mmHg, and uncontrolled HBP was defined as ≥135/85 mmHg. Results A total of 790 patients recruited by 135 doctors were analyzed (age: 64.5 ± 14.4 years, diabetics: 21.4%, smokers: 20.6%, and average number of antihypertensive drugs: 1.6 ± 0.8). OBP (137.5 ± 9.4/84.3 ± 7.7 mmHg, systolic/diastolic) was higher than HBP (130.6 ± 11.2/79.9 ± 8 mmHg; difference 6.9 ± 11.6/4.4 ± 7.6 mmHg, p Conclusions In primary care, automated OBP measurements are misleading in approximately 40% of treated hypertensive patients. HBP monitoring is mandatory to avoid overtreatment of subjects with WCH phenomenon and prevent undertreatment and subsequent excess cardiovascular disease in MUCH

Building parallel corpora for eContent professionals

This paper reports on completed work carried out in the framework of the INTERA project, and specifically, on the production of multilingual resources (LRs) for eContent purposes. The paper presents the methodology adopted for the development of the corpus (acquisition and processing of the textual data), discusses the divergence of the initial assumptions from the actual situation met during this procedure, and concludes with a summarization of the problems attested which undermine the viability of multilingual parallel corpora construction

ENABLER Thematic Network of National Projects: Technical, Strategic and Political Issues of Language Resources

In this paper we present general strategies concerning Language Resources (LRs) – Written, Spoken and, recently, Multimodal – as developed within the ENABLER Thematic Network. LRs are a central component of the so-called “linguistic infrastructure” (the other key element being Evaluation), necessary for the development of any Human Language Technology (HLT) application. They play a critical role, as horizontal technology, in different emerging areas of FP6, and have been recognized as a priority within a number of national projects around Europe and world-wide. The availability of LRs is also a “sensitive” issue, touching directly the sphere of linguistic and cultural identity, but also with economical, societal and political implications. This is going to be even more true in the new Europe with 25 languages on a par