Improved Survival of HIV-1-Infected Patients with Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy Receiving Early 5-Drug Combination Antiretroviral Therapy

Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), a rare devastating demyelinating disease caused by the polyomavirus JC (JCV), occurs in severely immunocompromised patients, most of whom have advanced-stage HIV infection. Despite combination antiretroviral therapy (cART), 50% of patients die within 6 months of PML onset. We conducted a multicenter, open-label pilot trial evaluating the survival benefit of a five-drug cART designed to accelerate HIV replication decay and JCV-specific immune recovery.All the patients received an optimized cART with three or more drugs for 12 months, plus the fusion inhibitor enfuvirtide during the first 6 months. The main endpoint was the one-year survival rate. A total of 28 patients were enrolled. At entry, median CD4+ T-cell count was 53 per microliter and 86% of patients had detectable plasma HIV RNA and CSF JCV DNA levels. Seven patients died, all before month 4. The one-year survival estimate was 0.75 (95% confidence interval, 0.61 to 0.93). At month 6, JCV DNA was undetectable in the CSF of 81% of survivors. At month 12, 81% of patients had undetectable plasma HIV RNA, and the median CD4+ T-cell increment was 105 per microliter. In univariate analysis, higher total and naive CD4+ T-cell counts and lower CSF JCV DNA level at baseline were associated with better survival. JCV-specific functional memory CD4+ T-cell responses, based on a proliferation assay, were detected in 4% of patients at baseline and 43% at M12 (P = 0.008).The early use of five-drug cART after PML diagnosis appears to improve survival. This is associated with recovery of anti-JCV T-cell responses and JCV clearance from CSF. A low CD4+ T-cell count (particularly naive subset) and high JCV DNA copies in CSF at PML diagnosis appear to be risk factors for death.ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00120367

Interactive translation prediction versus conventional post-editing in practice: a study with the CasMaCat workbench

[EN] We conducted a field trial in computer-assisted professional translation to compare interactive translation prediction (ITP) against conventional post-editing (PE) of machine translation (MT) output. In contrast to the conventional PE set-up, where an MT system first produces a static translation hypothesis that is then edited by a professional (hence "post-editing"), ITP constantly updates the translation hypothesis in real time in response to user edits. Our study involved nine professional translators and four reviewers working with the web-based CasMaCat workbench. Various new interactive features aiming to assist the post-editor/translator were also tested in this trial. Our results show that even with little training, ITP can be as productive as conventional PE in terms of the total time required to produce the final translation. Moreover, translation editors working with ITP require fewer key strokes to arrive at the final version of their translation.This work was supported by the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement No 287576 (CasMaCat ).Sanchis Trilles, G.; Alabau, V.; Buck, C.; Carl, M.; Casacuberta Nolla, F.; Garcia Martinez, MM.; Germann, U.... (2014). Interactive translation prediction versus conventional post-editing in practice: a study with the CasMaCat workbench. Machine Translation. 28(3-4):217-235. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10590-014-9157-9S217235283-4Alabau V, Leiva LA, Ortiz-Martínez D, Casacuberta F (2012) User evaluation of interactive machine translation systems. In: Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation, pp 20–23Alabau V, Buck C, Carl M, Casacuberta F, García-Martínez M, Germann U, González-Rubio J, Hill R, Koehn P, Leiva L, Mesa-Lao B, Ortiz-Martínez D, Saint-Amand H, Sanchis-Trilles G, Tsoukala C (2014) Casmacat: A computer-assisted translation workbench. In: Proceedings of the 14th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pp 25–28Alves F, Vale D (2009) Probing the unit of translation in time: aspects of the design and development of a web application for storing, annotating, and querying translation process data. Across Lang Cultures 10(2):251–273Bach N, Huang F, Al-Onaizan Y (2011) Goodness: A method for measuring machine translation confidence. In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pp 211–219Barrachina S, Bender O, Casacuberta F, Civera J, Cubel E, Khadivi S, Lagarda AL, Ney H, Tomás J, Vidal E, Vilar JM (2009) Statistical approaches to computer-assisted translation. Comput Linguist 35(1):3–28Brown PF, Della Pietra SA, Della Pietra VJ (1993) The mathematics of statistical machine translation: parameter estimation. Comput Linguist 19(2):263–311Callison-Burch C, Koehn P, Monz C, Post M, Soricut R, Specia L (2012) Findings of the 2012 workshop on statistical machine translation. In: Proceedings of the Seventh Workshop on Statistical Machine Translation, pp 10–51Carl M (2012a) The CRITT TPR-DB 1.0: A database for empirical human translation process research. In: Proceedings of the AMTA 2012 Workshop on Post-Editing Technology and Practice, pp 1–10Carl M (2012b) Translog-II: a program for recording user activity data for empirical reading and writing research. In: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, pp 4108–4112Carl M (2014) Produkt- und Prozesseinheiten in der CRITT Translation Process Research Database. In: Ahrens B (ed) Translationswissenschaftliches Kolloquium III: Beiträge zur Übersetzungs- und Dolmetschwissenschaft (Köln/Germersheim). Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, pp 247–266Carl M, Kay M (2011) Gazing and typing activities during translation : a comparative study of translation units of professional and student translators. Meta 56(4):952–975Doherty S, O’Brien S, Carl M (2010) Eye tracking as an MT evaluation technique. Mach Transl 24(1):1–13Elming J, Carl M, Balling LW (2014) Investigating user behaviour in post-editing and translation using the Casmacat workbench. In: O’Brien S, Winther Balling L, Carl M, Simard M, Specia L (eds) Post-editing of machine translation: processes and applications. Cambridge Scholar Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, pp 147–169Federico M, Cattelan A, Trombetti M (2012) Measuring user productivity in machine translation enhanced computer assisted translation. In: Proceedings of the Tenth Biennial Conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the AmericasFlournoy R, Duran C (2009) Machine translation and document localization at adobe: From pilot to production. In: Proceedings of MT Summit XIIGreen S, Heer J, Manning CD (2013) The efficacy of human post-editing for language translation. In: Proceedings of SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp 439–448Guerberof A (2009) Productivity and quality in mt post-editing. In: Proceedings of MT Summit XII-Workshop: Beyond Translation Memories: New Tools for Translators MTGuerberof A (2012) Productivity and quality in the post-editing of outputs from translation memories and machine translation. 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Search for Charged Higgs Bosons in e+e- Collisions at \sqrt{s} = 189 GeV

A search for pair-produced charged Higgs bosons is performed with the L3 detector at LEP using data collected at a centre-of-mass energy of 188.6 GeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 176.4 pb^-1. Higgs decays into a charm and a strange quark or into a tau lepton and its associated neutrino are considered. The observed events are consistent with the expectations from Standard Model background processes. A lower limit of 65.5 GeV on the charged Higgs mass is derived at 95 % confidence level, independent of the decay branching ratio Br(H^{+/-} -> tau nu)

Search for Branons at LEP

We search, in the context of extra-dimension scenarios, for the possible existence of brane fluctuations, called branons. Events with a single photon or a single Z-boson and missing energy and momentum collected with the L3 detector in e^+ e^- collisions at centre-of-mass energies sqrt{s}=189-209$ GeV are analysed. No excess over the Standard Model expectations is found and a lower limit at 95% confidence level of 103 GeV is derived for the mass of branons, for a scenario with small brane tensions. Alternatively, under the assumption of a light branon, brane tensions below 180 GeV are excluded

Search for Charginos with a Small Mass Difference with the Lightest Supersymmetric Particle at \sqrt{s} = 189 GeV

A search for charginos nearly mass-degenerate with the lightest supersymmetric particle is performed using the 176 pb^-1 of data collected at 189 GeV in 1998 with the L3 detector. Mass differences between the chargino and the lightest supersymmetric particle below 4 GeV are considered. The presence of a high transverse momentum photon is required to single out the signal from the photon-photon interaction background. No evidence for charginos is found and upper limits on the cross section for chargino pair production are set. For the first time, in the case of heavy scalar leptons, chargino mass limits are obtained for any \tilde{\chi}^{+-}_1 - \tilde{\chi}^0_1 mass difference

Search for Low Scale Gravity Effects in e+e- Collisions at LEP

Recent theories propose that quantum gravity effects may be observable at LEP energies via gravitons that couple to Standard Model particles and propagate into extra spatial dimensions. The associated production of a graviton and a photon is searched for as well as the effects of virtual graviton exchange in the processes: e+e- -> gamma gamma, ZZ, WW, mu mu, tau tau, qq and ee No evidence for this new interaction is found in the data sample collected by the L3 detector at LEP at centre-of-mass energies up to 183 GeV. Limits close to 1 TeV on the scale of this new scenario of quantum gravity are set

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium. The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO