Dutch parallel corpus: a balanced parallel corpus for Dutch-English and Dutch-French

status: publishe

HappyHier: hoe gelukkig is men waar? : Gegevensverzameling en bepaling van de invloed van het type grondgebruik, deel I

This study set out to measure what influence the type of environment has on how happy people say they feel at a certain moment in time, with the aim of formulating rules for quantifying the effect of spatial changes on wellbeing. A smartphone app was developed for use by a broad sample population in the Netherlands, with push notifications prompting people to report how they felt at a certain moment. From 1 May to 28 July of 2016, 4318 unique participants made use of this HappyHier app, filling in at least one questionnaire on location. The results show that people are happier outdoors than indoors. And when they are outdoors, they are happier in predominantly natural surroundings than in more built-up areas. Moreover, from the ratings given to the surroundings, it can be concluded that they have a more positive effect when the participants found them more restful or stimulating. People’s impressions of the beauty of their surroundings had less influenc

A Cross-Lingual Similarity Measure for Detecting Biomedical Term Translations

Bilingual dictionaries for technical terms such as biomedical terms are an important resource for machine translation systems as well as for humans who would like to understand a concept described in a foreign language. Often a biomedical term is first proposed in English and later it is manually translated to other languages. Despite the fact that there are large monolingual lexicons of biomedical terms, only a fraction of those term lexicons are translated to other languages. Manually compiling large-scale bilingual dictionaries for technical domains is a challenging task because it is difficult to find a sufficiently large number of bilingual experts. We propose a cross-lingual similarity measure for detecting most similar translation candidates for a biomedical term specified in one language (source) from another language (target). Specifically, a biomedical term in a language is represented using two types of features: (a) intrinsic features that consist of character n-grams extracted from the term under consideration, and (b) extrinsic features that consist of unigrams and bigrams extracted from the contextual windows surrounding the term under consideration. We propose a cross-lingual similarity measure using each of those feature types. First, to reduce the dimensionality of the feature space in each language, we propose prototype vector projection (PVP)—a non-negative lower-dimensional vector projection method. Second, we propose a method to learn a mapping between the feature spaces in the source and target language using partial least squares regression (PLSR). The proposed method requires only a small number of training instances to learn a cross-lingual similarity measure. The proposed PVP method outperforms popular dimensionality reduction methods such as the singular value decomposition (SVD) and non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) in a nearest neighbor prediction task. Moreover, our experimental results covering several language pairs such as English–French, English–Spanish, English–Greek, and English–Japanese show that the proposed method outperforms several other feature projection methods in biomedical term translation prediction tasks

Weaning practices in phenylketonuria vary between health professionals in Europe

Background: In phenylketonuria (PKU), weaning is considered more challenging when compared to feeding healthy infants. The primary aim of weaning is to gradually replace natural protein from breast milk or standard infant formula with solids containing equivalent phenylalanine (Phe). In addition, a Phe-free second stage L-amino acid supplement is usually recommended from around 6 months to replace Phe-free infant formula. Our aim was to assess different weaning approaches used by health professionals across Europe. Methods: A cross sectional questionnaire (survey monkey (R)) composed of 31 multiple and single choice questions was sent to European colleagues caring for inherited metabolic disorders (IMD). Centres were grouped into geographical regions for analysis. Results: Weaning started at 17-26 weeks in 85% (n=81/95) of centres, > 26 weeks in 12% (n=11/95) and 26 weeks. First solids were mainly low Phe vegetables (59%, n=56/95) and fruit (34%, n=32/95). A Phe exchange system to allocate dietary Phe was used by 52% (n=49/95) of centres predominantly from Northern and Southern Europe and 48% (n=46/95) calculated most Phe containing food sources (all centres in Eastern Europe and the majority from Germany and Austria). Some centres used a combination of both methods. A second stage Phe-free L-amino acid supplement containing a higher protein equivalent was introduced by 41% (n=39/95) of centres at infant age 26-36 weeks (mainly from Germany, Austria, Northern and Eastern Europe) and 37% (n=35/95) at infant age > 1y mainly from Southern Europe. 53% (n=50/95) of centres recommended a second stage Phe-free L-amino acid supplement in a spoonable or semi-solid form. Conclusions: Weaning strategies vary throughout European PKU centres. There is evidence to suggest that different infant weaning strategies may influence longer term adherence to the PKU diet or acceptance of Phe-free L-amino acid supplements; rendering prospective long-term studies important. It is essential to identify an effective weaning strategy that reduces caregiver burden but is associated with acceptable dietary adherence and optimal infant feeding development.Peer reviewe

Early feeding practices in infants with phenylketonuria across Europe

Background: In infants with phenylketonuria (PKU), dietary management is based on lowering and titrating phenylalanine (Phe) intake from breast milk or standard infant formula in combination with a Phe-free infant formula in order to maintain blood Phe levels within target range. Professionals use different methods to feed infants with PKU and our survey aimed to document practices across Europe. Methods: We sent a cross sectional, survey monkey (R) questionnaire to European health professionals working in IMD. It contained 31 open and multiple-choice questions. The results were analysed according to different geographical regions. Results: Ninety-five centres from 21 countries responded. Over 60% of centres commenced diet in infants by age 10 days, with 58% of centres implementing newborn screening by day 3 post birth. At diagnosis, infant hospital admission occurred in 61% of metabolic centres, mainly in Eastern, Western and Southern Europe. Breastfeeding fell sharply following diagnosis with only 30% of women still breast feeding at 6 months. 53% of centres gave pre-measured Phe-free infant formula before each breast feed and 23% alternated breast feeds with Phe-free infant formula. With standard infant formula feeds, measured amounts were followed by Phe-free infant formula to satiety in 37% of centres (n = 35/95), whereas 44% (n = 42/95) advised mixing both formulas together. Weaning commenced between 17 and 26 weeks in 85% centres, >= 26 weeks in 12% and <17 weeks in 3%. Discussion: This is the largest European survey completed on PKU infant feeding practices. It is evident that practices varied widely across Europe, and the practicalities of infant feeding in PKU received little focus in the PKU European Guidelines (2017). There are few reports comparing different feeding techniques with blood Phe control, Phe fluctuations and growth. Controlled prospective studies are necessary to assess how different infant feeding practices may influence longer term feeding development.Peer reviewe

Early Palaeozoic ocean anoxia and global warming driven by the evolution of shallow burrowing

The evolution of burrowing animals forms a defining event in the history of the Earth. It has been hypothesised that the expansion of seafloor burrowing during the Palaeozoic altered the biogeochemistry of the oceans and atmosphere. However, whilst potential impacts of bioturbation on the individual phosphorus, oxygen and sulphur cycles have been considered, combined effects have not been investigated, leading to major uncertainty over the timing and magnitude of the Earth system response to the evolution of bioturbation. Here we integrate the evolution of bioturbation into the COPSE model of global biogeochemical cycling, and compare quantitative model predictions to multiple geochemical proxies. Our results suggest that the advent of shallow burrowing in the early Cambrian contributed to a global low-oxygen state, which prevailed for ~100 million years. This impact of bioturbation on global biogeochemistry likely affected animal evolution through expanded ocean anoxia, high atmospheric CO2 levels and global warming

The climatic significance of Late Ordovician-early Silurian black

The Ordovician-Silurian transition (455-430 Ma) is characterized by repeated climatic perturbations, concomitant with major changes in the global oceanic redox state best exemplified by the periodic deposition of black shales. The relationship between the climatic evolution and the oceanic redox cycles, however, remains largely debated. Here, using an ocean-atmosphere general circulation model accounting for ocean biogeochemistry (MITgcm), we investigate the mechanisms responsible for the burial of organic carbon immediately before, during and right after the latest Ordovician Hirnantian (445-444 Ma) glacial peak. Our results are compared with recent sedimentological and geochemical data. We show that the late Katian time slice (445 Ma), typified by the deposition of black shales at tropical latitudes, represents an unperturbed oceanic state, with regional organic carbon burial driven by the surface primary productivity. During the Hirnantian, our experiments predict a global oxygenation event, in agreement with the disappearance of the black shales in the sedimentary record. This suggests that deep-water burial of organic matter may not be a tenable triggering factor for the positive carbon excursion reported at that time. Our simulations indicate that the perturbation of the ocean circulation induced by the release of freshwater, in the context of the post-Hirnantian deglaciation, does not sustain over sufficiently long geological periods to cause the Rhuddanian (444 Ma) oceanic anoxic event. Input of nutrients to the ocean, through increased continental weathering and the leaching of newly-exposed glaciogenic sediments, may instead constitute the dominant control on the spread of anoxia in the early Silurian