Arabic Dialect Texts Classification

This study investigates how to classify Arabic dialects in text by extracting features which show the differences between dialects. There has been a lack of research about classification of Arabic dialect texts, in comparison to English and some other languages, due to the lack of Arabic dialect text corpora in comparison with what is available for dialects of English and some other languages. What is more, there is an increasing use of Arabic dialects in social media, so this text is now considered quite appropriate as a medium of communication and as a source of a corpus. We collected tweets from Twitter, comments from Facebook and online newspapers from five groups of Arabic dialects: Gulf, Iraqi, Egyptian, Levantine, and North African. The research sought to: 1) create a dataset of Arabic dialect texts to use in training and testing the system of classification, 2) find appropriate features to classify Arabic dialects: lexical (word and multi-word-unit) and grammatical variation across dialects, 3) build a more sophisticated filter to extract features from Arabic-character written dialect text files. In this thesis, the first part describes the research motivation to show the reason for choosing the Arabic dialects as a research topic. The second part presents some background information about the Arabic language and its dialects, and the literature review shows previous research about this subject. The research methodology part shows the initial experiment to classify Arabic dialects. The results of this experiment showed the need to create an Arabic dialect text corpus, by exploring Twitter and online newspaper. The corpus used to train the ensemble classifier and to improve the accuracy of classification the corpus was extended by collecting tweets from Twitter based on the spatial coordinate points and comments from Facebook posts. The corpus was annotated with dialect labels and used in automatic dialect classification experiments. The last part of this thesis presents the results of classification, conclusions and future work

La diversité génétique des bananiers plantains cultivés dans la zone Ouest de la Région des Plateaux au Togo

Le bananier représente l’une des cultures les plus importantes dans le monde. Au Togo, la culture de bananiers plantains se fait surtout dans la Région des Plateaux à l’Ouest dans de petites exploitations agricoles ; ce qui a entrainé une faible productivité. Cependant, les variétés de bananiers plantains cultivées ne sont pas bien connues. Un inventaire a été entrepris dans le but de dénombrer les variétés de bananiers plantains cultivés grâce à des paramètres agromorphologiques et aussi de montrer l’intérêt que suscite la valorisation de la culture de cette plante. Au terme de cette étude, cinq (5) variétés de bananiers plantains ont été recensées. La variété ‘Apim’ est la plus productive suivie de la variété ‘Abladzo’. Contrairement aux autres, la variété ‘Taévé’ produit 2 régimes par pied au lieu d’un régime. Le cycle végétatif des bananiers plantains varie de 11 à 15 mois sauf pour la variété ‘Apim’ qui est de 18 mois. Des études de propagation rapide doivent être envisagées pour la sélection des variétés hautement performantes et la production massive du plantain pour les populations locales.© 2013 International Formulae Group. All rights reserved.Mots clés : Togo, bananier plantain, diversité génétique

The Symptom Burden and Quality of Life in Cancer Patients in the Gaza Strip, Palestine: A Cross-Sectional Study

Objectives Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, but there is an absence of evidence systematically assessing symptom burden and quality of life (QoL) using validated tools. Our objective was to assess associations between socio-demographic and disease-related characteristics, symptom burden and QoL in a sample of cancer patients accessing outpatient services in the Gaza Strip. Design A cross-sectional, descriptive survey using interviews and medical record review involving patients with cancer accessing oncology outpatient services at Al Rantisi Hospital and European Gaza Hospital (EGH) in the Gaza Strip was employed. Socio-demographic and disease-related data, the Lebanese version of the Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale (MSAS-Leb), and the Arabic version of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire-C30 (EORTC QLQ-C30) were collected. Multiple linear regression was used to judge the relative influence of determinants of QoL. Results Of 414 cancer patients approached, 385 patients consented to participation. The majority were women (64.7%) with a mean age of 52 years (SD = 16.7). Common cancer diagnoses were breast (32.2%), haematological (17.9%) and colorectal (9.1%). The median number of symptoms was 10 (IQR 1.5–18.5). Mean overall QoL was 70.5 (SD 19.9) with common physical and psychological symptoms identified. A higher burden of symptoms was associated with marital status, education and income. Limited access to both opioids and psychological support were reported. Conclusions A high symptom burden was identified in outpatients with cancer. Increasing provision and access to supportive care for physical and psychological symptoms should be prioritised alongside exploring routine assessment of symptom burden and QoL

Postrenal transplant anemia and its effects on patients and graft outcomes: Seven years follow-up

Introduction: Post-transplant anemia (PTA) is a common serious complication following kidney transplantation. It affects graft and patient survival. Anemia that presents within six months post-transplantation is defined as an early PTA. Late PTA is when anemia occurs more than six months following transplantation. Despite this, there are limited studies on the long-term impact of anemia on patient survival and graft function in kidney transplants. We conducted a retrospective study with long-term follow-up to investigate the effect of early and late PTA on patient and graft function within seven years and to estimate the prevalence of PTA at six months, two, four, and seven years postrenal transplantation along with the associated risk factors. Method: A retrospective chart review of 145 adult patients who had kidney transplants from January 1 to December 31, 2015, and were followed up until December 31, 2022. Anemia was defined according to the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria of hemoglobin<12 gm/dl in females and<13 mg/dl in males. Pretransplant, six months, two, four, and seven years postrenal transplantation medications and laboratory data were obtained. Patients were excluded if they were pediatrics or had missing data. Result: 180 patients were screened, and 145 patients met the inclusion criteria. The prevalence of early PTA was 8.3%. Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole was significantly associated with anemia within six months. The prevalence of anemia increased at two, four-, and seven-years post-transplant (24.8%, 24.8%, and 27.6%, respectively). Graft failure was significantly associated with late PTA at four and seven years (p-value < 0.001). P < 0.005, respectively). Death was reported for 3 patients, and it was significantly associated with late transplant anemia (p-value < 0.005), Cytomegalovirus was associated with anemia at 6 months and 2 years post-transplant and significantly associated with graft failure (p-value < 0.037). Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that post-transplant anemia is associated with graft failure and patient mortality. Therefore, managing anemia post-transplant should be addressed more carefully