L3Cube-MahaSBERT and HindSBERT: Sentence BERT Models and Benchmarking BERT Sentence Representations for Hindi and Marathi

Sentence representation from vanilla BERT models does not work well on sentence similarity tasks. Sentence-BERT models specifically trained on STS or NLI datasets are shown to provide state-of-the-art performance. However, building these models for low-resource languages is not straightforward due to the lack of these specialized datasets. This work focuses on two low-resource Indian languages, Hindi and Marathi. We train sentence-BERT models for these languages using synthetic NLI and STS datasets prepared using machine translation. We show that the strategy of NLI pre-training followed by STSb fine-tuning is effective in generating high-performance sentence-similarity models for Hindi and Marathi. The vanilla BERT models trained using this simple strategy outperform the multilingual LaBSE trained using a complex training strategy. These models are evaluated on downstream text classification and similarity tasks. We evaluate these models on real text classification datasets to show embeddings obtained from synthetic data training are generalizable to real datasets as well and thus represent an effective training strategy for low-resource languages. We also provide a comparative analysis of sentence embeddings from fast text models, multilingual BERT models (mBERT, IndicBERT, xlm-RoBERTa, MuRIL), multilingual sentence embedding models (LASER, LaBSE), and monolingual BERT models based on L3Cube-MahaBERT and HindBERT. We release L3Cube-MahaSBERT and HindSBERT, the state-of-the-art sentence-BERT models for Marathi and Hindi respectively. Our work also serves as a guide to building low-resource sentence embedding models.Comment: Accepted at Computing Conference 202

Changing trends in pseudoretinoblastoma diagnoses: A 10 year review from the United Kingdom

AIM:To study the different types and frequency of pseudoretinoblastoma (pseudoRB) lesions who present to a retinoblastoma centre due to concern that the condition may be retinoblastoma. METHODS: A retrospective chart review of 341 patients presenting sporadically to the Royal London Hospital from January 2009 to December 2018. RESULTS: 220 patients (65%) were confirmed to have retinoblastoma, while 121 (35%) had pseudoRB. There were 23 differential diagnoses in total. The top 3 differential diagnoses were Coats’ disease (34%), Persistent Foetal Vasculature (PFV) (17%) and Combined Hamartoma of Retina and Retinal Pigment Epithelium (CHR-RPE) (13%). PseudoRBs differed with age at presentation. Under the age of 1 (n = 42), the most likely pseudoRB conditions were PFV (36%), Coats’ disease (17%) and CHR-RPE (12%). These conditions were also the most common simulating conditions between the ages of 1 and 2 (n = 21), but Coats’ disease was the most common in this age group (52%), followed by CHR-RPE (19%) and PFV (14%). Between the ages of 2 and 5 (n = 32), Coats’ disease remained the most common (44%) pseudoRB lesion followed by CHR-RPE (13%), or PFV, Retinal Astrocytic Hamartoma (RAH), familial exudative vitreoretinopathy (FEVR) (all 6.3%). Over the age of 5 (n = 26), pseudoRBs were most likely to be Coats’ disease (35%), RAH (12%), Uveitis, CHR-RPE, FEVR (all 7.7%). CONCLUSION: 35% of suspected retinoblastoma cases are pseudoRB conditions. Overall, Coats’ disease is the most common pseudoRB condition, followed by PFV. Hamartomas (CHR-RPE & RAH) are more prevalent in this cohort, reflecting improvements in diagnostic accuracy from referring ophthalmologists

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Not AvailableAn outbreak of keratoconjunctivitis was reported in a dairy farm at north Goa district, of Goa State, where a herd of bulls was showing conjunctivitis, lachrymal discharge, corneal opacity in single or both eyes. Animals were emaciated due to blindness and hence the inability to move and feed. Injuries due to sudden falling and collisions were also noticed. Preliminary clinical examination revealed that the animals had infectious bovine keratoconjunctivitis. Isolation and identification of the pathogen from the ocular swab revealed the presence of Moraxella spp. Multiplex PCR identified the causative agent as M. bovoculi. The isolate was confirmed as M.bovoculi by sequence analysis of the 16srRNA gene. Treatment using Streptomycin and Penicillin antibiotics and dexamethasone was started in affected animals, which yielded good results and complete recovery. Phylogenetic analysis showed clustering of the isolate with isolates from India and United States.Not Availabl

Attitude and knowledge of physiotherapy students toward mental health and patients with psychiatric illnesses

Background: Stigma and violations of human rights directed toward people with psychiatric disorders hinder their care and rehabilitation. The role of physiotherapists in mental illness is to facilitate motivation, emphasize strengths, and offer positive feedback through cognitive therapy, guided imagery, body and movement awareness, relaxation and breathing techniques, yoga therapy, and aerobic exercises. It is important to understand the beliefs, knowledge, and attitude of physiotherapists toward psychiatric illness which in turn helps in better rehabilitation of such patients. Hence, the purpose of this study is to assess the attitude and knowledge of physiotherapy students toward mental health and patients with psychiatric illnesses and also to identify the barrier faced by them. Methods: Overall 191 physiotherapy students participated in this observational study, where students were assessed for their attitude toward patients having psychiatric disorders and knowledge regarding the same. The attitude was assessed using the Mental Illness Clinicians' Attitude version 4 whereas knowledge was assessed using a prevalidated questionnaire. Both self-reported questionnaires were filled online by physiotherapy students. Data were analyzed using the SPSS software version 20. The correlation between attitude and knowledge was done using Spearman's coefficient of rank correlation. Results: The majority of students had a moderately positive attitude with little room for improvement (57.07%) followed by 40.31% having a negative attitude. Good knowledge was found in 59.69% of students followed by 22.51% of students having moderate and 14.14% excellent knowledge. It was observed a negative significant correlation between attitude and knowledge (r = −0.369, P < 0.001). Gender, year of study, and age have a considerable impact on one's knowledge and attitude. Conclusion: This study concludes that knowledge and attitude are negatively correlated indicating the need to change the attitude of physiotherapy students and to make them understand their role in the rehabilitation of patients with psychiatric disorders