DutchSemCor: Building a semantically annotated corpus for Dutch

State of the art Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) systems require large sense-tagged corpora along with lexical databases to reach satisfactory results. The number of English language resources for developed WSD increased in the past years, while most other languages are still under-resourced. The situation is no different for Dutch. In order to overcome this data bottleneck, the DutchSemCor project will deliver a Dutch corpus that is sense-tagged with senses from the Cornetto lexical database. Part of this corpus (circa 300K examples) is manually tagged. The remainder is automatically tagged using different WSD systems and validated by human annotators. The project uses existing corpora compiled in other projects; these are extended with Internet examples for word senses that are less frequent and do not (sufficiently) appear in the corpora. We report on the status of the project and the evaluations of the WSD systems with the current training data

Are there Correleations among histologic radiologic and cytopathologic findings in non-allergic Chronic rinosinusitis without nasal polyposis

Purpose: To investigate any correlations among cytopathologic, radiologic, and historic findings in non-allergic chronic rhinosinusitis without nasal polyposis. Materials and Methods: This prospective study was done on 40 adult patients who had undergone functional endoscopic sinus surgery due to chronic rhinosinusitis. Symptom, nasal smear, paranasal computed tomography, as well as histopathologic findings of uncinate process, anterior ethmoid cells, and ethmoidal infundibulum were scored. Correlations were analysed among symptom, radiologic, and cytopathologic scores. Results: While the symptom scores of patients with chronic rhinosinusitis were positively correlated with only nasal smear scores, it was not correlated with computed tomography and histopathologic scores. On the other hand, radiologic scores were correlated with tissue eosinophils scores of uncinate process, anterior ethmoidal cells, and ethmoidal infundibulum Conclusions: The correlation of symptom score to nasal smear score in chronic sinusitis may be an evidence for the positive relationship symptoms and acute inflammation. The correlation of radiologic score to eosinophilia scores of uncinate process, anterior ethmoidal cells, and infundibulum may signify the importance of tissue eosinophils in chronic sinusitis. Keywords: Rhinosinusitits, nasal polyposis, non-allergic rhinosinusitis. Nigerian Journal of Otorhinolaryngology Vol. 3 (2) 2006: pp. 45-5

Clinical characteristics and genetic screening of an extended family with MEN2A

MEN-2A is characterized by medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) with pheochromocytoma and sometimes parathyroid adenoma. In affected members of the family, the risk of MTC is about 100%. Biochemical screening allows tumors to be detected early but even at this stage treatment is not always curative. Missense mutations in exon 10 and 11 of the RET proto-oncogene are associated with MEN2A. Early detection of this mutation by DNA analysis allows the identification of the carriers of the gene. We performed genetic screening in 88 members of an extended family with MEN2A and found 18 members positive for RET mutation (Cys634Gly). Only three of these 18 RET positive cases had a previous diagnosis of medullary cancer and/or pheochromocytoma. Up to now, 12 of the RET positive cases have undergone thyroidectomy. There was extended disease with cervical lymph node metastasis in 6 of them, bilateral medullary microcancer in 3 and c-cell hyperplasia in the remaining 3. Three of the 18 RET positive patients had also pheochromocytoma. Primary hyperparathyroidism was present in only one patient. The mean age of diagnosis of medullary cancer was between 25-50 yr and mean age of death was between 35-95 yr in affected members of the family. The family had many other affected members in other cities in Turkey and in other countries throughout the world from Australia to the Netherlands. So this family is perhaps one of the most extended families with MEN2A. (C) 2002, Editrice Kurtis

Prevalence of cervical cytological abnormalities in Turkey

Objective: To evaluate retrospectively the prevalence of cervical cytological abnormalities in patient records obtained from healthcare centers in Turkey. Method: Demographic characteristics and data on cervical cytological abnormalities were evaluated from patients who underwent flap tests in healthcare centers in 2007. Results: Data were collected from 33 healthcare centers totaling 140 334 patients. Overall, the prevalence of cervical cytological abnormalities was 1.8%; the prevalence of ASCUS, ASC-H, LSIL, HSIL, and AGC was 1.07%, 0.07%, 0.3%, 0.17%, and 0.08%, respectively. The prevalence of preinvasive cervical neoplasia was 1.7% and the prevalence of cytologically diagnosed invasive neoplasia was 0.06%. Conclusion: The abnormal cervical cytological prevalence rate in Turkey is lower than in Europe and North America. This might be due to sociocultural differences, lack of population-based screening programs, or a lower HPV prevalence rate in Turkey. (C) 2009 International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved