,,Es gibt nicht zwei, wie der ist”.

Om ’n mens se indrukke van prof. Schulze saam te vat, is geen makliketaak nie. Sy invloed op 'n student seliterêre smaak, wetenskaplike vormingen lewensbeskouing is so omvangryk, datek maar net ’n paar daarvan sal aanroer

Learning from Samples of Variable Quality

Training labels are expensive to obtain and may be of varying quality, as some may be from trusted expert labelers while others might be from heuristics or other sources of weak supervision such as crowd-sourcing. This creates a fundamental quality-versus-quantity trade-off in the learning process. Do we learn from the small amount of high-quality data or the potentially large amount of weakly-labeled data? We argue that if the learner could somehow know and take the label-quality into account, we could get the best of both worlds. To this end, we introduce “fidelity-weighted learning” (FWL), a semi-supervised student-teacher approach for training deep neural networks using weakly-labeled data. FWL modulates the parameter updates to a student network, trained on the task we care about on a per-sample basis according to the posterior confidence of its label-quality estimated by a teacher, who has access to limited samples with high-quality labels

Learning from Samples of Variable Quality

Training labels are expensive to obtain and may be of varying quality, as some may be from trusted expert labelers while others might be from heuristics or other sources of weak supervision such as crowd-sourcing. This creates a fundamental quality-versus-quantity trade-off in the learning process. Do we learn from the small amount of high-quality data or the potentially large amount of weakly-labeled data? We argue that if the learner could somehow know and take the label-quality into account, we could get the best of both worlds. To this end, we introduce “fidelity-weighted learning” (FWL), a semi-supervised student-teacher approach for training deep neural networks using weakly-labeled data. FWL modulates the parameter updates to a student network, trained on the task we care about on a per-sample basis according to the posterior confidence of its label-quality estimated by a teacher, who has access to limited samples with high-quality labels

Patient Satisfaction with a Pilot Chronic Pain Management Programme in Cape Town, South Africa

Background: The goals of a chronic pain management clinic includeincreasing patient knowledge about pain, developing pain management skillsand increasing patients’ confidence in their pain management abilities.A Chronic Pain Management Programme (CPMP) based on evidence basedguidelines was developed at a chronic pain management clinic to facilitatepatient discharge to a primary healthcare level. Aim: The aim of this study was to explore patient satisfaction with, acceptability of and the perceived success which could be due to the CPMP developed at the Chronic Pain Management Clinic of Groote Schuur Hospital,Cape Town.Methods: Patients (n=14) were referred to the pilot study from the Chronic Pain Management Clinic. A s a pilot, four courses were run over a period ofone year. In order to reach the research aim, an eleven-question, structuredopen-ended interview was conducted with all participants. Results: Fourteen patients enrolled in the CPMP. Responses were favourable with participants emphasising the roleof increased knowledge about pain, the role of exercise and of stress management techniques. Participants also recog-nised a positive change in behaviours and attitudes following participation in the CPMP.Conclusions: Findings suggest that participants found the format of the course acceptable as regards course content,structure and delivery. Participant responses suggest that the course was acceptable and perceived as useful. However,future courses would benefit from refresher courses or structured support groups

Commission des Communautes Europeennes: Groupe du Porte-Parole = Commission of European Communities: Spokesman Group. Spokesman Service Note to National Offices Bio No. (81) 276, 8 July 1981

This paper presents a novel approach for multi-lingual sentiment classification in short texts. This is a challenging task as the amount of training data in languages other than English is very limited. Previously proposed multi-lingual approaches typically require to establish a correspondence to English for which powerful classifiers are already available. In contrast, our method does not require such supervision. We leverage large amounts of weakly-supervised data in various languages to train a multi-layer convolutional network and demonstrate the importance of using pre-training of such networks. We thoroughly evaluate our approach on various multi-lingual datasets, including the recent SemEval-2016 sentiment prediction benchmark (Task 4), where we achieved state-of-the-art performance. We also compare the performance of our model trained individually for each language to a variant trained for all languages at once. We show that the latter model reaches slightly worse – but still acceptable – performance when compared to the single language model, while benefiting from better generalization properties across languages

Patient satisfaction with a pilot chronic pain management programme in Cape Town, South Africa

Background: The goals of a chronic pain management clinic includeincreasing patient knowledge about pain, developing pain management skillsand increasing patients’ confidence in their pain management abilities.A  Chronic Pain Management Programme (CPMP) based on evidence basedguidelines was developed at a chronic pain management clinic to facilitatepatient discharge to a primary healthcare level. Aim: The aim of this study was to explore patient satisfaction with, acceptability of and the perceived success which could be due to the CPMP developed at the Chronic Pain Management Clinic of Groote Schuur Hospital,Cape Town.Methods: Patients (n=14) were referred to the pilot study from the Chronic Pain Management Clinic. A s a pilot, four courses were run over a period ofone year. In order to reach the research aim, an eleven-question, structuredopen-ended interview was conducted with all participants. Results: Fourteen patients enrolled in the CPMP. Responses were favourable with participants emphasising the roleof increased knowledge about pain, the role of exercise and of stress management techniques. Participants also recog-nised a positive change in behaviours and attitudes following participation in the CPMP.Conclusions: Findings suggest that participants found the format of the course acceptable as regards course content,structure and delivery. Participant responses suggest that the course was acceptable and perceived as useful. However,future courses would benefit from refresher courses or structured support groups

Global challenges with scale-up of the integrated management of childhood illness strategy: results of a multi-country survey

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Integrated Management of Childhood Illness Strategy (IMCI), developed by WHO/UNICEF, aims to contribute to reducing childhood morbidity and mortality (MDG4) in resource-limited settings. Since 1996 more than 100 countries have adopted IMCI. IMCI case management training (ICMT) is one of three IMCI components and training is usually residential over 11 consecutive days. Follow-up after ICMT is an essential part of training. We describe the barriers to rapid acceleration of ICMT and review country perspectives on how to address these barriers.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A multi-country exploratory cross-sectional questionnaire survey of in-service ICMT approaches, using quantitative and qualitative methods, was conducted in 2006-7: 27 countries were purposively selected from all six WHO regions. Data for this paper are from three questionnaires (QA, QB and QC), distributed to selected national focal IMCI persons/programme officers, course directors/facilitators and IMCI trainees respectively. QC only gathered data on experiences with IMCI follow-up.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>33 QA, 163 QB and 272 QC were received. The commonest challenges to ICMT scale-up relate to funding (high cost and long duration of the residential ICMT), poor literacy of health workers, differing opinions about the role of IMCI in improving child health, lack of political support, frequent changes in staff or rules at Ministries of Health and lack of skilled facilitators. Countries addressed these challenges in several ways including increased advocacy, developing strategic linkages with other priorities, intensifying pre-service training, re-distribution of funds and shortening course duration. The commonest challenges to <it>follow-up </it>after ICMT were lack of funding (93.1% of respondents), inadequate funds for travelling or planning (75.9% and 44.8% respectively), lack of gas for travelling (41.4%), inadequately trained or few supervisors (41.4%) and inadequate job aids for follow-up (27.6%). Countries addressed these by piggy backing IMCI follow-up with routine supervisory visits.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Financial challenges to ICMT scale-up and follow-up after training are common. As IMCI is accepted globally as one of the key strategies to meet MDG4 several steps need to be taken to facilitate rapid acceleration of ICMT, including reviewing core competencies followed by competency-driven shortened training duration or 'on the job' training, 'distance learning' or training using mobile phones. Linkages with other 'better-funded' programmes e.g. HIV or malaria need to be improved. Routine Primary Health Care (PHC) supervision needs to include follow-up after ICMT.</p

Lauretta Ngcobo’s And They Didn’t Die (1990) in post-apartheid South Africa – a critical rereading

Rereading Lauretta Ngcobo’s And They Didn’t Die nearly thirty years after it was first published in 1990 proved to be a complex, rewarding experience. Setting her story of the lives of rural African women in KwaZulu-Natal during the turbulent times that include the Cato Manor protests of 1959, Ngcobo creates a world of nearly unrelieved deprivation and suffering – in a text that also offers pleasure to the reader. Such pleasure is due to the quality of the writing; Ngcobo took her craft seriously. At the centre of the tale is Jezile, a young woman. She endures much suffering, and yet the novel closes with words of defiance that are hers. Since some of her travails stem from patriarchal beliefs as well as class and race practices, the novel is an example of the intersectionality focused on by contemporary feminist scholarship. Finally, I argue that Ngcobo’s stance in this novel on the retention or otherwise of traditional cultural practices is just one manifestation among others, such as interviews, of the knowledge of politics she can contribute to present day readers

Structural changes to primary visual cortex in the congenital absence of cone input in achromatopsia

Autosomal recessive Achromatopsia (ACHM) is a rare inherited disorder associated with dysfunctional cone photoreceptors resulting in a congenital absence of cone input to visual cortex. This might lead to distinct changes in cortical architecture with a negative impact on the success of gene augmentation therapies. To investigate the status of the visual cortex in these patients, we performed a multi-centre study focusing on the cortical structure of regions that normally receive predominantly cone input. Using high-resolution T1-weighted MRI scans and surface-based morphometry, we compared cortical thickness, surface area and grey matter volume in foveal, parafoveal and paracentral representations of primary visual cortex in 15 individuals with ACHM and 42 normally sighted, healthy controls (HC). In ACHM, surface area was reduced in all tested representations, while thickening of the cortex was found highly localized to the most central representation. These results were comparable to more widespread changes in brain structure reported in congenitally blind individuals, suggesting similar developmental processes, i.e., irrespective of the underlying cause and extent of vision loss. The cortical differences we report here could limit the success of treatment of ACHM in adulthood. Interventions earlier in life when cortical structure is not different from normal would likely offer better visual outcomes for those with ACHM

A novel role for CRIM1 in the corneal response to UV and pterygium development

Pterygium is a pathological proliferative condition of the ocular surface, characterised by formation of a highly vascularised, fibrous tissue arising from the limbus that invades the central cornea leading to visual disturbance and, if untreated, blindness. Whilst chronic ultraviolet (UV) light exposure plays a major role in its pathogenesis, higher susceptibility to pterygium is observed in some families, suggesting a genetic component. In this study, a Northern Irish family affected by pterygium but reporting little direct exposure to UV was identified carrying a missense variant in CRIM1 NM_016441.2: c.1235 A &gt; C (H412P) through whole-exome sequencing and subsequent analysis. CRIM1 is expressed in the developing eye, adult cornea and conjunctiva, having a role in cell differentiation and migration but also in angiogenesis, all processes involved in pterygium formation. We demonstrate elevated CRIM1 expression in pterygium tissue from additional individual Northern Irish patients compared to unaffected conjunctival controls. UV irradiation of HCE-S cells resulted in an increase in ERK phosphorylation and CRIM1 expression, the latter further elevated by the addition of the MEK1/2 inhibitor, U0126. Conversely, siRNA knockdown of CRIM1 led to decreased UV-induced ERK phosphorylation and increased BCL2 expression. Transient expression of the mutant H412P CRIM1 in corneal epithelial HCE-S cells showed that, unlike wild-type CRIM1, it was unable to reduce the cell proliferation, increased ERK phosphorylation and apoptosis induced through a decrease of BCL2 expression levels. We propose here a series of intracellular events where CRIM1 regulation of the ERK pathway prevents UV-induced cell proliferation and may play an important role in the in the pathogenesis of pterygium