RSM-NLP at BLP-2023 Task 2: Bangla Sentiment Analysis using Weighted and Majority Voted Fine-Tuned Transformers

This paper describes our approach to submissions made at Shared Task 2 at BLP Workshop - Sentiment Analysis of Bangla Social Media Posts. Sentiment Analysis is an action research area in the digital age. With the rapid and constant growth of online social media sites and services and the increasing amount of textual data, the application of automatic Sentiment Analysis is on the rise. However, most of the research in this domain is based on the English language. Despite being the world's sixth most widely spoken language, little work has been done in Bangla. This task aims to promote work on Bangla Sentiment Analysis while identifying the polarity of social media content by determining whether the sentiment expressed in the text is Positive, Negative, or Neutral. Our approach consists of experimenting and finetuning various multilingual and pre-trained BERT-based models on our downstream tasks and using a Majority Voting and Weighted ensemble model that outperforms individual baseline model scores. Our system scored 0.711 for the multiclass classification task and scored 10th place among the participants on the leaderboard for the shared task. Our code is available at https://github.com/ptnv-s/RSM-NLP-BLP-Task2 .Comment: Accepted at The 1st Workshop on Bangla Language Processing (BLP 2023), EMNLP 202

To study the correlation of mean macular thickness using optical coherence tomography with distant and near visual acuity in patients of diabetic maculopathy

Background: to study the correlation of mean macular thickness using optical coherence tomography with distant and near visual acuity in patients of diabetic maculopathy.Methods: A prospective, single centre study was conducted on 50 eyes of diabetic patients, with Diabetic Retinopathy with CSME in which patients macular thickness was measured on Ocular Coherence Tomography using fast macular thickness scan. The unaided and best corrected visual acuity was measured in all patients using Snellens distant vision and Jaggers near vision charts.Results: A linear correlation between the OCT measured macular thickness and both the distance visual acuity and the near visual acuity. That means that for a given level of macular thickness, we can predict visual acuity for it. In our series correlation coefficient was 0.921 for distance visual acuity and 0.899 for near visual acuity. Although the correlation value is high in our study, we did find a range of visual acuities for a given range of macular thickness. For every 100 micron change in mean macular thickness, best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) changed 0.3 LogMAR units, for distance as well as for near.Conclusions: Macular thickness and visual acuities (distance as well as near) are strongly correlated but there can be variations. And a wide range of visual acuities is possible for a given degree of macular edema. Macular thickness though a strong predictor of visual acuity; other factors might also play a role in determining visual acuity for a particular patient

Preoperative pain associated with peribulbar injection for cataract surgery

Background: Patients admitted for cataract surgery have a fear of worst pain due to peribulbar injection for anaesthesia rather than surgery itself. The aim of this study is to find out the threshold of pain associated with the anaesthetic peribulbar injection for cataract surgery.Methods: This prospective randomised study was carried out at Ophthalmology department of Maharishi Markandeshwar University from 10 January 2017 to 22 March 2017. 100 patients undergoing elective cataract surgery were administered a peribulbar block. Before injection all patients were briefed about the procedure and counselled regarding the degree of pain that they may experience. Patients were asked to grade the pain of peribulbar anaesthetic injection, using a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS).Results: Focus of the study was on the degree of pain associated with anaesthetic peribulbar injection for cataract surgery. 100 patients (60 males and 40 females) were included in the study. 90 (90%) patients were having their first surgery, they were more apprehensive especially about the injection associated pain. 10 (10%) patients with history of previous cataract surgery were calm, confident and claimed that they felt no pain at all. 92 (92%) patients had just needle prick lead to heaviness or mild pain. Only small percentage of patients i.e. 8 (8%) had injection associated moderate to severe pain.Conclusions: The study revealed that the peribulbar anaesthesia for cataract surgery is safe and highly effective. The degree of pain associated with peribulbar injection is much less than what the patients actually have in their mind and fear of. The study also shows ‘pain threshold’ and anxiety level as major factors for pain perception

Functional divergence of Heat Shock Factors (Hsfs) during heat stress and recovery at the tissue and developmental scales in C4 grain amaranth (Amaranthus hypochondriacus)

Two major future challenges are an increase in global earth temperature and a growing world population, which threaten agricultural productivity and nutritional food security. Underutilized crops have the potential to become future climate crops due to their high climate-resilience and nutritional quality. In this context, C4 pseudocereals such as grain amaranths are very important as C4 crops are more heat tolerant than C3 crops. However, the thermal sensitivity of grain amaranths remains unexplored. Here, Amaranthus hypochondriacus was exposed to heat stress at the vegetative and reproductive stages to capture heat stress and recovery responses. Heat Shock Factors (Hsfs) form the central module to impart heat tolerance, thus we sought to identify and characterize Hsf genes. Chlorophyll content and chlorophyll fluorescence (Fv/Fm) reduced significantly during heat stress, while malondialdehyde (MDA) content increased, suggesting that heat exposure caused stress in the plants. The genome-wide analysis led to the identification of thirteen AhHsfs, which were classified into A, B and C classes. Gene expression profiling at the tissue and developmental scales resolution under heat stress revealed the transient upregulation of most of the Hsfs in the leaf and inflorescence tissues, which reverted back to control levels at the recovery time point. However, a few Hsfs somewhat sustained their upregulation during recovery phase. The study reported the identification, physical location, gene/motif structure, promoter analysis and phylogenetic relationships of Hsfs in Amaranthus hypochondriacus. Also, the genes identified may be crucial for future gene functional studies and develop thermotolerant cultivars

Microwave‐Assisted Condensation of Benzylic Alcohols and Alkynes Promoted by Zinc Halides: Concise Access to Alkenyl Halides

A simple Lewis acid-mediated route for the synthesis of alkenyl halides are described under microwave-assisted conditions. The reaction proceeds through the condensation between secondary alcohols and terminal acetylenes and regioselective hydrohalogenation across the triple bond in the presence of simple and commercially available zinc halides. Unlike earlier reports, this methodology is successfully exemplified with three halide sources. As a result, a diverse range of alkenyl halide products has been accomplished. Further, indenes were obtained as the end products when tertiary alcohols and arylacetylenes were used, wherein the Thorpe–Ingold and electronic effects, would be dominant. Furthermore, when an electron-rich arylacetylene was employed, the reaction directed to yield carbonyl products. © 2021 Wiley-VCH Gmb

An Access to Benzo[a]fluorenes, Benzo[b]fluorenes, and Indenes Triggered by Simple Lewis Acid

This report illustrates BF3·OEt2 promoted intramolecular cascade cycloaromatization of 1,7-ynones toward synthesizing structurally diverse benzofluorene scaffolds. Remarkably, the present protocol promotes the formation of two consecutive C-C bonds intramolecularly and undergoes aromatization under mild reaction conditions to afford the tetracyclic benzo[a]fluorene frameworks. Besides, the formation of indenes was observed when 1-bromo-2-iodoarenes are relatively more electron-rich when compared with the one originating from the terminal arylacetylenes, under controlled conditions, wherein triple bond polarity has been just reversed due to the change of electronic effects exerted by the strong +M group of 1-bromo-2-iodoarenes, which is in conjugation to the connected triple bond. The same concept to generate indenes has also been extended by using aliphatic alkyne tethered ynones. Further, it was noticed that 1,7-ynones bearing the more electron-rich 1-bromo-2-iodoarenes than the arene ring arriving from the terminal arylacetylenes lead to benzo[b]fluorenes, under thermodynamic conditions, instead of delivering the benzo[a]fluorenes. In addition, this method features metal-free conditions, easily accessible starting materials, operational simplicity, gram-scale synthesis, and a wide range of substrate scopes. © 2022 American Chemical Societ

To study the correlation of mean macular thickness using optical coherence tomography with distant and near visual acuity in patients of diabetic maculopathy

Background: to study the correlation of mean macular thickness using optical coherence tomography with distant and near visual acuity in patients of diabetic maculopathy.Methods: A prospective, single centre study was conducted on 50 eyes of diabetic patients, with Diabetic Retinopathy with CSME in which patients macular thickness was measured on Ocular Coherence Tomography using fast macular thickness scan. The unaided and best corrected visual acuity was measured in all patients using Snellens distant vision and Jaggers near vision charts.Results: A linear correlation between the OCT measured macular thickness and both the distance visual acuity and the near visual acuity. That means that for a given level of macular thickness, we can predict visual acuity for it. In our series correlation coefficient was 0.921 for distance visual acuity and 0.899 for near visual acuity. Although the correlation value is high in our study, we did find a range of visual acuities for a given range of macular thickness. For every 100 micron change in mean macular thickness, best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) changed 0.3 LogMAR units, for distance as well as for near.Conclusions: Macular thickness and visual acuities (distance as well as near) are strongly correlated but there can be variations. And a wide range of visual acuities is possible for a given degree of macular edema. Macular thickness though a strong predictor of visual acuity; other factors might also play a role in determining visual acuity for a particular patient

In vitro physicochemical characterization of nanocarriers: a road to optimization

Today's drug delivery scientists and pharmaceutical technologists own unprecedented variety of characterization techniques at their disposal not only to assign precise numerical values to the particle parameters but also to probe their developmental phases as well as their internal environment. Therefore, mechanistic understanding of structure-function relationships of nanotherapeutic systems seems to be a dynamic avowal considering the optimization of final nanoformulation system intended for biodistribution and targeting. This chapter aims to decipher the key in vitro physicochemical parameters in dry state, liquid state, as well as in both dry and liquid states, with the perspective of nanoparticle technology, and the diverse physical and experimental means in which these parameters can be demarcated. Further, an attempt has been made to introduce some best suited specialized techniques that enable to expand the accessible range of information to gain deeper insights into specific nanoplatform properties

In vitro physicochemical characterization of nanocarriers: a road to optimization

Today's drug delivery scientists and pharmaceutical technologists own unprecedented variety of characterization techniques at their disposal not only to assign precise numerical values to the particle parameters but also to probe their developmental phases as well as their internal environment. Therefore, mechanistic understanding of structure-function relationships of nanotherapeutic systems seems to be a dynamic avowal considering the optimization of final nanoformulation system intended for biodistribution and targeting. This chapter aims to decipher the key in vitro physicochemical parameters in dry state, liquid state, as well as in both dry and liquid states, with the perspective of nanoparticle technology, and the diverse physical and experimental means in which these parameters can be demarcated. Further, an attempt has been made to introduce some best suited specialized techniques that enable to expand the accessible range of information to gain deeper insights into specific nanoplatform properties