Latent Graphs for Semi-Supervised Learning on Biomedical Tabular Data

In the domain of semi-supervised learning, the current approaches insufficiently exploit the potential of considering inter-instance relationships among (un)labeled data. In this work, we address this limitation by providing an approach for inferring latent graphs that capture the intrinsic data relationships. By leveraging graph-based representations, our approach facilitates the seamless propagation of information throughout the graph, effectively incorporating global and local knowledge. Through evaluations on biomedical tabular datasets, we compare the capabilities of our approach to other contemporary methods. Our work demonstrates the significance of inter-instance relationship discovery as practical means for constructing robust latent graphs to enhance semi-supervised learning techniques. The experiments show that the proposed methodology outperforms contemporary state-of-the-art methods for (semi-)supervised learning on three biomedical datasets.Comment: Accepted at IJCLR 202

EMBEDDIA at SemEval-2022 Task 8: Investigating Sentence, Image, and Knowledge Graph Representations for Multilingual News Article Similarity

In this paper, we present the participation of the EMBEDDIA team in the SemEval-2022 Task 8 (Multilingual News Article Similarity). We cover several techniques and propose different methods for finding the multilingual news article similarity by exploring the dataset in its entirety. We take advantage of the textual content of the articles, the provided metadata (e.g., titles, keywords, topics), the translated articles, the images (those that were available), and knowledge graph-based representations for entities and relations present in the articles. We, then, compute the semantic similarity between the different features and predict through regression the similarity scores. Our findings show that, while our proposed methods obtained promising results, exploiting the semantic textual similarity with sentence representations is unbeatable. Finally, in the official SemEval-2022 Task 8, we ranked fifth in the overall team ranking cross-lingual results, and second in the English-only results.Peer reviewe

Nova Academia: ceticismo ou dogmatismo negativo

O que se segue é o conjunto de considerações a respeito das denominações que a Nova Academia recebeu ao longo da história da filosofia. Essa escola ficou conhecida como Academia cética, ao mesmo tempo em que uma das principais concepções que se formou a seu respeito é a de que ela defendia a tese de que nada pode ser conhecido, ou seja, a posição de um dogmatismo negativo. Apesar dessas terminologias não terem sido empregadas em seu próprio período, podemos dizer que o modo como essa filosofia foi interpretada por seus contemporâneos correspondia ao que posteriormente denominamos por esses termos. Atualmente, é comum a interpretação da recusa da possibilidade conhecimento como um tipo de ceticismo. No entanto, quando falamos do ceticismo antigo e do que entendemos sobre ceticismo enquanto uma escola filosófica, essas interpretações são essencialmente opostas. Meu objetivo será indicar os principais motivos que levaram à atribuição de ambas as denominações e indicar as razões que me levam a negar o dogmatismo negativo e a interpretá-la como um ceticismo

Negotiating Business Combination Agreements - The Seller\u27s Point of View

This Article discusses issues raised in business combination agreements, namely issues in provisions that create affirmative duties of each party to each other, and that allocate risk between the parties as to various post-signing events or changes. These provisions are discussed from the standpoint of a selling company. The Article reviews certain lines of cases in Delaware regarding the fiduciary duties of directors, and summarizes guidance provided by these cases in structuring investigation and decision making by the seller\u27s board. The author concludes with a discussion of certain provisions of a business combination agreement that provide risk allocation between the parties

Traumatic dissection and rupture of the abdominal aorta as a complication of the Heimlich maneuver

Although the Heimlich maneuver is considered the best intervention for relieving acute upper airway obstruction, several complications have been reported in the literature. These complications can occur as a result of an increase in abdominal pressure leading to a variety of well-documented visceral injuries, including the great vessels. Acute abdominal aortic thrombosis after the Heimlich maneuver is a rare but recognized event; however, to date no case of traumatic dissection and rupture of the abdominal aorta has been described. We report the first known case, to our knowledge, of a traumatic dissection and rupture of the abdominal aorta after a forcefully applied Heimlich maneuver

Development and Validation of the Geriatric Anxiety Inventory

Background: Anxiety symptoms and anxiety disorders are highly prevalent among elderly people, although infrequently the subject of systematic research in this age group. One important limitation is the lack of a widely accepted instrument to measure dimensional anxiety in both normal old people and old people with mental health problems seen in various settings. Accordingly, we developed and tested of a short scale to measure anxiety in older people. Methods:We generated a large number of potential items de novo and by reference to existing anxiety scales, and then reduced the number of items to 60 through consultation with a reference group consisting of psychologists, psychiatrists and normal elderly people. We then tested the psychometric properties of these 60 items in 452 normal old people and 46 patients attending a psychogeriatric service. We were able to reduce the number of items to 20. We chose a 1-week perspective and a dichotomous response scale. Results: Cronbach's alpha for the 20-item Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (GAI) was 0.91 among normal elderly people and 0.93 in the psychogeriatric sample. Concurrent validity with a variety of other measures was demonstrated in both the normal sample and the psychogeriatric sample. Inter-rater and test-retest reliability were found to be excellent. Receiver operating characteristic analysis indicated a cut-point of 10/11 for the detection of DSM-IV Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) in the psychogeriatric sample, with 83% of patients correctly classified with a specificity of 84% and a sensitivity of 75%. Conclusions: The GAI is a new 20-item self-report or nurse-administered scale that measures dimensional anxiety in elderly people. It has sound psychometric properties. Initial clinical testing indicates that it is able to discriminate between those with and without any anxiety disorder and between those with and without DSM-IV GAD

Conscientização do uso protetor solar por meio da análise biofísica

Trabalho apresentado no II Congresso Nacional do PROJETO RONDON, realizado em Florianópolis, SC, no período de 23 a 25 de setembro de 2015 - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina.Segundo os dados do Instituto Nacional do Câncer, INCA (2014), o número de câncer não melanoma supera número de cânceres de próstata, mama e colo de útero. O câncer não melanoma ocorre quase exclusivamente em pele fotoenvelhecida (CASTRO, 2007). Uma das principais causas relacionadas às doenças de pele é a exposição excessiva às radiações UV-A e UV-B, as quais não são filtradas pela camada de ozônio e são capazes de lesionar a pele. Os raios UV-A podem atingir a derme, sendo, portanto, os principais responsáveis pelo fotoenvelhecimento enquanto que os raios UV-B possuem pequena penetração na pele, mas devido a sua alta energia, são os maiores responsáveis pelos danos imediatos da radiação solar e por boa parte dos danos tardios. O fotoenvelhecimento é o termo utilizado para descrever os achados clínicos e histopatológicos pela exposição crônica aos raios solares. Está relacionado com as peles com a menor capacidade de se bronzear, ou seja, os fototipos I e II segundo a classificação de Fitzpatrick (OLIVEIRA, 2009). O objetivo é propor um potencial de utilização em novas operações para Projeto Rondon para verificar o efeito do protetor solar sobre os parâmetros biofísicos da pele para determinar o grau de eritema, medida da cor (melanina) e perda de água transepidérmica. A biometria cutânea é uma técnica que nasceu da aplicação de métodos biofísicos, permitindo o estudo das características biológicas, mecânicas e funcionais da pele através da medição objetiva e rigorosa de determinadas variáveis, por métodos cientificamente comprovados e não invasivos (FERREIRA, 2008). Para avaliar hidratação cutânea, perda transepidérmica de água e cor da pele serão utilizados, respectivamente, Corneometer, Tewameter e Mexameter da empresa Courage & Khazaka. Na primeira fase os participantes voluntários responderão um questionário que contemplará as seguintes questões: hábitos, consumo, estilo de vida e saúde. Na segunda fase a análise biofísica. Com o resultado obtido a proposta da ação é compartilhar e esclarecer sobre o benefício do uso do protetor solar e evidenciar que o uso regular deste produto efetivamente melhora a saúde da pele. Para a equipe é realizar levantamento local das condições da pele da população com a proposta de mapear nacionalmente. Palavras-chave: protetor solar, métodos biofísicos e pele

Validation of the Rome III criteria for the diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome in secondary care

BACKGROUND & AIMS: There are few validation studies of existing diagnostic criteria for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). We conducted a validation study of the Rome and Manning criteria in secondary care. METHODS: We collected complete symptom, colonoscopy, and histology data from 1848 consecutive adult patients with gastrointestinal symptoms at 2 hospitals in Hamilton, Ontario; the subjects then underwent colonoscopy. Assessors were blinded to symptom status. Individuals with normal colonoscopy and histopathology results, and no evidence of celiac disease, were classified as having no organic gastrointestinal disease. The reference standard used to define the presence of true IBS was lower abdominal pain or discomfort in association with a change in bowel habit and no organic gastrointestinal disease. Sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative likelihood ratios, with 95% confidence intervals, were calculated for each diagnostic criteria. RESULTS: In identifying patients with IBS, sensitivities of the criteria ranged from 61.9% (Manning) to 95.8% (Rome I), and specificities from 70.6% (Rome I) to 81.8% (Manning). Positive likelihood ratios ranged from 3.19 (Rome II) to 3.39 (Manning), and negative likelihood ratios from 0.06 (Rome I) to 0.47 (Manning). The level of agreement between diagnostic criteria was greatest for Rome I and Rome II (κ = 0.95), and lowest for Manning and Rome III (κ = 0.59). CONCLUSIONS: Existing diagnostic criteria perform modestly in distinguishing IBS from organic disease. There appears to be little difference in terms of accuracy. More accurate ways of diagnosing IBS, avoiding the need for investigation, are required