Confusion Modelling - An Estimation by Semantic Embeddings

Approaching the task of coherence assessment of a conversation from its negative perspective ‘confusion’ rather than coherence itself, has been attempted by very few research works. Influencing Embeddings to learn from similarity/dissimilarity measures such as distance, cosine similarity between two utterances will equip them with the semantics to differentiate a coherent and an incoherent conversation through the detection of negative entity, ‘confusion’. This research attempts to measure coherence of conversation between a human and a conversational agent by means of such semantic embeddings trained from scratch by an architecture centralising the learning from the distance between the embeddings. State of the art performance of general BERT’s embeddings and state of the art performance of ConveRT’s conversation specific embeddings in addition to the GLOVE embeddings are also tested upon the laid architecture. Confusion, being a more sensible entity, real human labelling performance is set as the baseline to evaluate the models. The base design resulted in not such a good performance against the human score but the pre-trained embeddings when plugged into the base architecture had performance boosts in a particular order from lowest to highest, through BERT, GLOVE and ConveRT. The intuition and the efficiency of the base conceptual design is proved of its success when the variant having the ConveRT embeddings plugged into the base design, outperformed the original ConveRT’s state of art performance on generating similarity scores. Though a performance comparable to real human performance was not achieved by the models, there witnessed a considerable overlapping between the ConveRT variant and the human scores which is really a great positive inference to be enjoyed as achieving human performance is always the state of art in any research domain. Also, from the results, this research joins the group of works claiming BERT to be unsuitable for conversation specific modelling and embedding works

Catalytic conversion of glycerol and sugar alcohols to value-added products

The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file.Title from title screen of research.pdf file (July 18, 2008)Vita.Includes bibliographical references.Thesis (Ph. D.) University of Missouri-Columbia 2006.Dissertations, Academic -- University of Missouri--Columbia -- Chemical engineering.The current research is based on developing an improved and fundamental understanding of technology that will allow the conversion of this crude glycerin to a propylene glycol based antifreeze product. Hydrogenolysis of glycerol to propylene glycol was performed using copper chromite catalyst. At temperatures above 200C̕ and hydrogen pressure of 200 psi, the selectivity to propylene glycol decreased due to excessive hydrogenolysis of the propylene glycol. The yield of propylene glycol increased with decreasing water content. The main causes for the deactivation were reduction of the cuprous chromium active species into metallic copper species, metal leaching, and blocking of sites by strongly adsorbed inorganic and organic species present in the feed or generated during the reaction. A new reaction pathway for converting glycerol to propylene glycol via an intermediate was validated by isolating the acetol intermediate. In the first step involves dehydration of glycerol to acetol with subsequent hydrogenation of acetol to propylene glycol. High acetol selectivities ([greater than] 90%) were achieved using copper-chromite catalyst and operating in semi-batch reactive distillation mode. The acetol from this reaction readily hydrogenates to from propylene glycol with selectivities exceeding 95%

Genomic instability and tumor-specific alterations in oral squamous cell carcinomas assessed by inter- (simple sequence repeat) PCR

Purpose: Genomic instability plays a major role in the genesis and progression of tumors, and in the evolution of tumor heterogeneity. To determine the role of genomic instability in the genesis and progression of oral cancer, we assessed the extent of genomic alterations in oral squamous cell carcinomas (OSCCs). Experimental Design: We used the recently developed inter-(simple sequence repeat) PCR technique to quantitate genomic instability using matched tumor and normal OSCC samples (n = 25). The inter-repeat region bands of similar molecular size observed to be altered in more than one case were sequenced and analyzed to identify probable OSSC-associated specific genetic lesions. Results: Of the four base-anchored, dinucleotide repeat-based primers used for the study, the most informative profile in OSCCs was generated by the (CA)8RG primer. Measurement of genomic instability index using the (CA)8RG primer revealed a high incidence of genomic instability in OSCCs. No significant correlation between the extent of alterations and stage or location of the tumor was observed. Sequencing analysis of the altered bands revealed gains/losses in several chromosomal regions. Of the matched tumor and corresponding normal tissue DNA studied, hitherto unreported losses were seen in 11p15 and 17q25 chromosomal regions. Sequencing of some of the tumor-specific altered regions indicated that they code for regions of UDP-GalNAc and hRAD 17 genes, which were lost (deleted) in oral cancer. Conclusions: Our results indicate that the extent of genomic instability in OSCC is not correlated to the tumor stage or location. For the first time, we have shown that chromosomal alterations detected by inter-(simple sequence repeat) PCR could be correlated to genes associated with cancer development

Role of cyanoacrylate glue therapy in enteral SEMS bleeding - A nightmare

Over the past century, the use of stents has evolved to a point where they are now used extensively throughout the gastrointestinal tract. Endoscopic stenting has become widely used for treatment of gastrointestinal and hepatobiliary strictures. Metallic stents are deployed in malignant strictures as a palliative procedure. Adverse events of stenting include perforation, migration, bleeding, occlusion, and pain. Finally, the use of multidisciplinary teams which include endoscopists, interventional radiologists, and surgeons allows for the exchange of ideas and procedural planning necessary for successful innovation. We present a case of successful cessation of bleeding by using cyanoacrylate glue therapy in post-enteral self-expandable metallic stent bleeding. In conclusion, glue therapy may also be considered as a mode of treatment other than conservative approach and angiographic coil embolization

Review of clinical and endoscopic features of metastatic tumors of the gastrointestinal tract

Aim: The aim was to determine the utility of capsule endoscopy (CE) in patients with obscure gastrointestinal bleeding (OGIB). Materials and Methods: A prospective study of patients who underwent CE at our institution from 2002 to 2010. Results: A total of 259 patients were included in this study (mean age 52.3 years; 200 male and 59 female), including 175 with overt OGIB, and 20 with occult OGIB, underwent CE. One hundred eighty-nine of 195 patients (96%) with OGIB had positive findings. Gastric erosions (23%), duodenal erosions (13%) and ileal erosions (11%) were the most frequent findings. Conclusion: Capsule endoscopy is a useful diagnostic technique in patients with OGIB

Mutational analysis of the candidate tumor suppressor gene ING1 in Indian oral squamous cell carcinoma

ING1, a recently identified candidate tumor suppressor gene, involved in the p53 signaling pathway is mapped at chromosome 13q34. Since loss of heterozygosity at 13q34 has been reported in squamous cell carcinoma of head and neck, we screened for mutations in ING1 by polymerase chain reaction-single strand conformation polymorphism in 71 oral squamous cell carcinomas (OSCC) from India, 15 of which were known to harbor p53 mutations. A single polymorphism (G to A) was detected in 14 (19.7%) of the tumors analyzed. No mutation was observed in any of the 71 OSCCs analyzed. These results suggest that ING1 is not a target for mutational inactivation in OSCC of Indians

FHIT Gene mutations and single nucleotide polymorphism in Indian oral and cervical squamous cell carcinomas

Genetic alterations at the FHIT (fragile histidine triad) tumor suppressor gene have been found in various human cancers. We have made an attempt to find point mutations of this gene in two different cancers from India, with entirely different etiologic factors: oral cancer (55 samples) caused by chewing tobacco and cervical cancer (43 samples) caused mainly by HPV (human papilloma virus) infection. Analysis of tumor DNA by the polymerase chain reaction-single strand conformation polymorphism (PCR-SSCP) method was performed on each of FHIT exons 5-9 individually, using exon-flanking primers. Two different mutations were identified in both oral and cervical tumors: one at the second nucleotide 3' to the termination codon (TGA) in exon 9 and the other at the ninth nucleotide upstream to the beginning of exon 9. These results indicate that mutations in the FHIT gene are rare events in these tumors in India (approximately 4%). In addition, we found a single nucleotide FHIT gene polymorphism which is due to T/A replacement at 17 nucleotides upstream to exon 9 where the A allele is 0.6 of the population