10 research outputs found
The evaluation of liver fibrosis regression in chronic hepatitis C patients after the treatment with direct-acting antiviral agents – A review of the literature
The second-generation of direct-acting antiviral agents are the current treatment for chronic viral hepatitis C infection. To evaluate the regression of liver fibrosis in patients receiving this therapy, liver biopsy remains the most accurate method, but the invasiveness of this procedure is its major drawback. Different non-invasive tests have been used to study changes in the stage of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic viral hepatitis treated with the second-generation of direct-acting antiviral agents: liver stiffness measurements (with transient elastography or acoustic radiation force impulse elastography) or different scores that use serum markers to calculate a fibrosis score. We prepared a literature review of the available data regarding the long-term evolution of liver fibrosis after the treatment with direct-acting antiviral agents for chronic viral hepatitis C
Measuring text simplification with the crowd
Text can often be complex and difficult to read, especially for peo ple with cognitive impairments or low literacy skills. Text simplifi cation is a process that reduces the complexity of both wording and structure in a sentence, while retaining its meaning. However, this is currently a challenging task for machines, and thus, providing effective on-demand text simplification to those who need it re mains an unsolved problem. Even evaluating the simplicity of text remains a challenging problem for both computers, which cannot understand the meaning of text, and humans, who often struggle to agree on what constitutes a good simplification. This paper focuses on the evaluation of English text simplifica tion using the crowd. We show that leveraging crowds can result in a collective decision that is accurate and converges to a consen sus rating. Our results from 2,500 crowd annotations show that the crowd can effectively rate levels of simplicity. This may allow sim plification systems and system builders to get better feedback about how well content is being simplified, as compared to standard mea sures which classify content into ‘simplified ’ or ‘not simplified’ categories. Our study provides evidence that the crowd could be used to evaluate English text simplification, as well as to create simplified text in future work
Influence of pesticides on respiratory pathology - a literature review
Introduction. Pesticides are widely employed in agriculture, and the food industry is forced to combat the pests and diseases they cause. Respiratory pathology is related to occupational exposure to pesticides. Impairment of pulmonary function was observed among people professionally exposed to pesticides. Because of the marked use of pesticides in
agriculture during the last 20 years, there has been a significant increase in respiratory problems within the population, not only among people who come in direct contact with them, but even in the case of manipulators.
Objective. The aim is a review of the literature of the past 10 years on the correlation between occupational exposure to pesticides and respiratory pathology.
Materials and method. Electronic search in ‘Pub Med’ and ‘Web of Science’ was performed in September 2019 to find papers regarding the above-investigated aspects. Abstracts and full-text articles containing the targeted subject were included. Reviews and studies about the influence of pesticides on other pathologies than respiratory were excluded. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, eligible full-text articles were identified.
Conclusions. Exposure to pesticides is highly correlated with respiratory pathologies (asthma, COPD, lung cancer). Contact with these substances can occur at any time in the production, transport, preparation or application of the treatments. Numerous studies documented the association between exposure to pesticides, and therefore the increased incidence of
respiratory, cardiovascular and renal diseases, as well as the aging phenomenon
Juniper communis L. Essential Oils from Western Romanian Carpathians: Bio-Structure and Effective Antibacterial Activity
The antibacterial activity of four bacterial standard strains that are naturally encountered in humans and animals was investigated by using bioactive compounds from commercial essential oils of Juniperus communis that were collected from the Western Romanian Carpathians. The Juniper communis essential oils, volatile compounds, were recognized through the GC–MS methodology by comparing identified spectra with those held in the NIST 02, Wiley 275 library. The ratio of each component was calculated based on the peak areas of the GC, without utilizing correction factors. The CLSI standardized micro-dilution was used to determine antimicrobial activity, employing 10−3 dilutions of fresh culture, with inoculums equivalent to a standard of 0.5 McFarland being prepared for testing. Four bacterial strains, Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 25923), Escherichia coli (ATCC 25922), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (ATCC 27853), and Streptococcus pyogenes (ATCC 19615), were investigated, using 96-well micro-dilution plates. Over each micro-dilution well, the essential oils were poured, introducing gradually 2, 4, 8, and 10 µL/well, respectively. The results were expressed as ±SEM and analyzed by one-way ANOVA with Bonferroni’s multiple comparison test, considering the differences statistically provided when p < 0.05 or lower. The juniper essential oil originating from the Western Romanian Carpathians is rich in four main volatile compounds: β-pinene (34.02%), 1α-pinene (30.43%), p-cymol (20.25%), and β-myrcene (10.20%). The juniper communis essential oil reduced bacterial density for all four strains tested, but compared to Gram-negative bacteria, in our case; a considerably higher antibacterial effectiveness was detected for Gram-positives, with peak reduction of Staphylococcus aureus, recommending the Romanian essential oil as a beneficial antibacterial resource
<i>Juniper communis</i> L. Essential Oils from Western Romanian Carpathians: Bio-Structure and Effective Antibacterial Activity
The antibacterial activity of four bacterial standard strains that are naturally encountered in humans and animals was investigated by using bioactive compounds from commercial essential oils of Juniperus communis that were collected from the Western Romanian Carpathians. The Juniper communis essential oils, volatile compounds, were recognized through the GC–MS methodology by comparing identified spectra with those held in the NIST 02, Wiley 275 library. The ratio of each component was calculated based on the peak areas of the GC, without utilizing correction factors. The CLSI standardized micro-dilution was used to determine antimicrobial activity, employing 10−3 dilutions of fresh culture, with inoculums equivalent to a standard of 0.5 McFarland being prepared for testing. Four bacterial strains, Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 25923), Escherichia coli (ATCC 25922), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (ATCC 27853), and Streptococcus pyogenes (ATCC 19615), were investigated, using 96-well micro-dilution plates. Over each micro-dilution well, the essential oils were poured, introducing gradually 2, 4, 8, and 10 µL/well, respectively. The results were expressed as ±SEM and analyzed by one-way ANOVA with Bonferroni’s multiple comparison test, considering the differences statistically provided when p Staphylococcus aureus, recommending the Romanian essential oil as a beneficial antibacterial resource
The QALL-ME Framework: A Specifiable-Domain Multilingual Question Answering Architecture.
This paper presents the QALL-ME Framework, a reusable architecture for building multilingual Question Answering (QA) systems working on structured data. The framework is released as free open source software with a set of demo components and extensive documentation. As main characteristics of the QALL-ME Framework we point out: (i) the framework domain portability, achieved by an ontology modelling of the target domain; (ii) the context awareness regarding space and time of the question; (iii) the use of textual entailment engines as the core of the question interpretation; and (iv) the framework’s Service Oriented Architecture, which is realized using interchangeable web services. Furthermore we present a running example to clarify how the framework processes questions as well as a case study that successfully shows a QA application built with the QALL-ME Framework for cinema/movie events in the tourism domain