DALILA: The Dialectal Arabic Linguistic Learning Assistant

International audienceDialectal Arabic (DA) poses serious challenges for Natural Language Processing (NLP). The number and sophistication of tools and datasets in DA are very limited in comparison to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and other languages. MSA tools do not effectively model DA which makes the direct use of MSA NLP tools for handling dialects impractical. This is particularly a challenge for the creation of tools to support learning Arabic as a living language on the web, where authentic material can be found in both MSA and DA. In this paper, we present the Dialectal Arabic Linguistic Learning Assistant (DALILA), a Chrome extension that utilizes cutting-edge Arabic dialect NLP research to assist learners and non-native speakers in understanding text written in either MSA or DA. DALILA provides dialectal word analysis and English gloss corresponding to each word

COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN PERIOSTIN AND OSTEOCALCIN AS BIOMARKERS FOR OSTEOPOROSIS AND FRACTURE RISK IN EGYPTIAN POSTMENOPAUSAL WOMEN

Objective: This study aimed to compare between periostin and osteocalcin as biomarkers in Egyptian postmenopausal women with osteoporosis and to explore their possible relationship with fracture risk. Methods: This study included 90 postmenopausal females recruited from Al-Hussein University Hospital, Cairo, Egypt; divided into three groups; 35 postmenopausal osteoporotic females with low fracture risk (group I), 35 postmenopausal osteoporotic females with high fracture risk (group II), and 20 apparently healthy controls. Serum periostin, osteocalcin, and estrogen were measured by Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). Fracture risk assessment was calculated. Alkaline phosphatase (ALP), total and ionized calcium, Aspartate transaminase (AST), and Alanine transaminase (ALT) were measured spectrophotometrically. Results: The diagnostic performance of periostin for discriminating high fracture risk from low fracture risk groups showed the specificity of (68.6 %) and sensitivity of (100 %), while for osteocalcin the specificity was (51.4 %) and the sensitivity was (68.6 %) respectively. Moreover, the multi Receiver Operating Characteristics (multi-ROC) curve for periostin and osteocalcin together revealed improved specificity and sensitivity of (100 %) each. Conclusion: Periostin was superior to osteocalcin in discriminating high fracture risk from low fracture risk postmenopausal osteoporotic groups. Moreover, dual use of both markers gave the highest discriminative power between low and high fracture risk groups with 100 % specificity and sensitivity

Role of nucleated red blood cells in diagnosis of neonatal asphyxia in neonate with meconium stained and clear amniotic fluid

Background: Perinatal asphyxia has been defined as the lack of oxygen that occurs either before, during, or after birth. Many studies in recent past have suggested that an increased number of nucleated red blood cells (NRBC) in umbilical cord blood may be a useful marker to identify birth asphyxia.Objective: To find out the relationship between meconium-stained amniotic fluid and NRBC in umbilical cord blood.Patients and Methods: This was a comparative cross-section study, which was carried out at Obstetrics and Gynecology Department, Zagazig University Hospitals on 54 cases divided into 2 groups: (Group 1): included 27 pregnant females with meconium-stained amniotic fluid who gave birth to neonates (male 15 and female12) showing criteria of perinatal asphyxia, (Group 2): included 27 pregnant females with clear amniotic fluid who gave birth to neonate's apparently healthy full-term (male17 and female10) as control group with no obstetrical problems.Results: There was no statistically significant difference between case and control groups in basic characteristics or obstetric history. NRBC’s/100 WBCs and lactate were highly significantly increased in group 1. The mean value of lactate was increasing in relation to stage of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE).Conclusion: There was a strong correlation between markers of acute asphyxia (i.e., umbilical artery blood nucleated red blood cells and lactate,) and meconium-stained liquor cases. These markers were significantly elevated in newborns with meconium-stained amniotic fluid

Investigation of physiological pulsatile flow in a model arterial stenosis using large-eddy and direct numerical simulations

Physiologicalpulsatileflow in a 3D model of arterialstenosis is investigated by using largeeddysimulation (LES) technique. The computational domain chosen is a simple channel with a biological type stenosis formed eccentrically on the top wall. The physiological pulsation is generated at the inlet using the first harmonic of the Fourier series of pressure pulse. In LES, the large scale flows are resolved fully while the unresolved subgrid scale (SGS) motions are modelled using a localized dynamic model. Due to the narrowing of artery the pulsatileflow becomes transition-to-turbulent in the downstream region of the stenosis, where a high level of turbulent fluctuations is achieved, and some detailed information about the nature of these fluctuations are revealed through the investigation of the turbulent energy spectra. Transition-to-turbulent of the pulsatileflow in the post stenosis is examined through the various numerical results such as velocity, streamlines, velocity vectors, vortices, wall pressure and shear stresses, turbulent kinetic energy, and pressure gradient. A comparison of the LES results with the coarse DNS are given for the Reynolds number of 2000 in terms of the mean pressure, wall shear stress as well as the turbulent characteristics. The results show that the shear stress at the upper wall is low just prior to the centre of the stenosis, while it is maximum in the throat of the stenosis. But, at the immediate post stenotic region, the wall shear stress takes the oscillating form which is quite harmful to the blood cells and vessels. In addition, the pressure drops at the throat of the stenosis where the re-circulated flow region is created due to the adverse pressure gradient. The maximum turbulent kinetic energy is located at the post stenosis with the presence of the inertial sub-range region of slope −5/3

Geometry of tubular surfaces and their focal surfaces in Euclidean 3-space

In this study, we examined the focal surfaces of tubular surfaces in Euclidean 3-space $E^{3}$. We achieved some significant results for these surfaces in accordance with the modified orthogonal frame. Additionally, we proposed a few geometric invariants that illustrated the geometric characteristics of these surfaces, such as flat, minimal, Weingarten, and linear-Weingarten surfaces, using the traditional methods of differential geometry. Additionally, the asymptotic and geodesic curves of these surfaces have been researched. At last, we presented an example as an instance of use to validate our theoretical findings

SIGMORPHON 2021 Shared Task on Morphological Reinflection: Generalization Across Languages

This year's iteration of the SIGMORPHON Shared Task on morphological reinflection focuses on typological diversity and cross-lingual variation of morphosyntactic features. In terms of the task, we enrich UniMorph with new data for 32 languages from 13 language families, with most of them being under-resourced: Kunwinjku, Classical Syriac, Arabic (Modern Standard, Egyptian, Gulf), Hebrew, Amharic, Aymara, Magahi, Braj, Kurdish (Central, Northern, Southern), Polish, Karelian, Livvi, Ludic, Veps, Võro, Evenki, Xibe, Tuvan, Sakha, Turkish, Indonesian, Kodi, Seneca, Asháninka, Yanesha, Chukchi, Itelmen, Eibela. We evaluate six systems on the new data and conduct an extensive error analysis of the systems' predictions. Transformer-based models generally demonstrate superior performance on the majority of languages, achieving >90% accuracy on 65% of them. The languages on which systems yielded low accuracy are mainly under-resourced, with a limited amount of data. Most errors made by the systems are due to allomorphy, honorificity, and form variation. In addition, we observe that systems especially struggle to inflect multiword lemmas. The systems also produce misspelled forms or end up in repetitive loops (e.g., RNN-based models). Finally, we report a large drop in systems' performance on previously unseen lemmas.Peer reviewe