An Analysis of Metaphoric Symbol “Tree” in Myanmar Poem “Pyin Ma Ngote Toe” and Russian Poem “The White Birch”

This paper compares two poems each describing a “tree” which endured the strike of the war and revived again when an appropriate time came. Myanmar national poet Min Thu Won's poem “Pyin Ma Ngote Toe” (the Old Stump) and Russian poet Alexandrovich Vasilyev's poem (The White Birch) are selected for analysis and comparison as they are similar in a way that both were composed after World War II and, the miserable images of the war and the appearance of each tree before and after the war are perfectly described. The descriptive method is used to compare how the salient features of these two trees in the respective poems symbolize the hard time during the war and the revival of nature as they came about to life again. The students of Russian specialization can be expected to appreciate the aesthetic value of nature and life thereby being able to embrace the historic and cultural beauties of the two countries through their learning and enjoyment of such a genre of literature as poetry

UCSY-SC1: A Myanmar speech corpus for automatic speech recognition

This paper introduces a speech corpus which is developed for Myanmar Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) research. Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) research has been conducted by the researchers around the world to improve their language technologies. Speech corpora are important in developing the ASR and the creation of the corpora is necessary especially for low-resourced languages. Myanmar language can be regarded as a low-resourced language because of lack of pre-created resources for speech processing research. In this work, a speech corpus named UCSY-SC1 (University of Computer Studies Yangon - Speech Corpus1) is created for Myanmar ASR research. The corpus consists of two types of domain: news and daily conversations. The total size of the speech corpus is over 42 hrs. There are 25 hrs of web news and 17 hrs of conversational recorded data.The corpus was collected from 177 females and 84 males for the news data and 42 females and 4 males for conversational domain. This corpus was used as training data for developing Myanmar ASR. Three different types of acoustic models  such as Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) - Hidden Markov Model (HMM), Deep Neural Network (DNN), and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models were built and compared their results. Experiments were conducted on different data  sizes and evaluation is done by two test sets: TestSet1, web news and TestSet2, recorded conversational data. It showed that the performance of Myanmar ASRs using this corpus gave satisfiable results on both test sets. The Myanmar ASR  using this corpus leading to word error rates of 15.61% on TestSet1 and 24.43% on TestSet2

Qualitative Study on Domestic Violence Among Married 18-49 Years Men and Women in Hlaingtharyar Township, Yangon Region

Violence against men and women is now widely recognized as a violation of human rights and a major public health concerns. It can cause physical, mental, social and reproductive health problems. Violence against men and women now become a growing public health problem. But, there is no research for violence against men in Myanmar and only limited number of research for domestic violence against women in Myanmar. Aim of this study is to explore the reasons of domestic violence among married 18 to 49 years old men and women in Hlaingtharyar township, Yangon region. A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted by using qualitative approach. This resarch was conducted in Hlaingtharyar Township, Yangon

Alcohol consumption among adult males in urban area of Thanlyin Township, Yangon Region, Myanmar

Background: Alcohol consumption is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. It is frequently related to health and behavioural problems as well as socio-economic hardship. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine the prevalence and risk factors of alcohol consumption among adult males residing in urban area of Thanlyin Township, Yangon Region.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 380 adult males. Multi-stage random sampling was applied. Data entry and analysis was done using Stata 11.0 statistical package.Results: The prevalence of current alcohol drinking, ex-drinking and never drinking were 20.5%, 9.0% and 70.5%, respectively. There was a significant decreasing trend of alcohol consumption across the levels of age-group. Age, education status and practicing other health-risk behaviours such as smoking and betel chewing were detected as significant risk factors of alcohol consumption. Ever smokers and ever betel chewers were about 4 times more likely to be ever alcohol user compared to their counterparts even if age and education level were adjusted. By controlling smoking and betel chewing habits, 79.2% and 76.6% of existing prevalence of alcohol consumption among respondents would be reduced, respectively.Conclusions: There is an urgent need to curb the habit of alcohol consumption among adult males living in urban area, especially young adults. Alcohol and tobacco control policies in Myanmar should be strengthened or reinforced. Tobacco control program also needs to be intensified. Health education and health promotion activities should be enhanced in order to reduce alcohol consumption in the country.

Improving the Performance of Low-resourced Speaker Identification with Data Preprocessing

Automatic speaker identification is done to tackle daily security problems. Speech data collection is an essential but very challenging task for under-resourced languages like Burmese. The speech quality is crucial to accurately recognize the speaker’s identity. This work attempted to find the optimal speech quality appropriate for Burmese tone to enhance identification compared with other more richy resourced languages on Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs). A Burmese speech dataset was created as part of our work because no appropriate dataset available for use. In order to achieve better performance, we preprocessed the foremost recording quality proper for not only Burmese tone but also for nine other Asian languages to achieve multilingual speaker identification. The performance of the preprocessed data was evaluated by comparing with the original data, using a time delay neural network (TDNN) together with a subsampling technique that can reduce time complexity in model training. The experiments were investigated and analyzed on speech datasets of ten Asian languages to reveal the effectiveness of the data preprocessing. The dataset outperformed the original dataset with improvements in terms of  equal error rate (EER). The evaluation pointed out that the performance of the system with the preprocessed dataset improved that of the original dataset

Role of inclusive self-help groups in prevention and management of diabetes and hypertension in Myanmar:a qualitative study

Background: Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are a growing public health concern in Myanmar. Community-based self-help groups are essential for participating in health-related activities. However, little is known about the role of inclusive self-help groups (ISHG) in hypertension and diabetes management. This study aimed to assess knowledge and perception of health-related activities of ISHG and explore challenges ISHG group members encountered in performing hypertension and diabetes prevention and management activities.Methods: The study included six townships from three different regions of Myanmar, where ISHG existed. Two focus group discussions (FGDs) were held in each township. A total of twelve FGDs were conducted. All discussions were conducted, audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim in Myanmar language. A thematic analysis was performed using inductive and deductive approaches.Results: The findings revealed that ISHG members provided advice and counselling on behavioural risk factors for hypertension and diabetes prevention and screenings for those diseases. They also offered home care for the elderly and stroke patients who required their assistance. Community members regarded ISHG as a valuable community structure. Members of the ISHG identified a number of challenges, including lack of resources (funding, manpower, and time), lack of confidence, and lack of recognition and acceptance. Support and strengthening activities by local authorities and the government were critical to sustain ISHG's activities and efforts.Conclusions: Hypertension and diabetes management activities of ISHG are appreciative. The public and government should recognize and support ISHG to strengthen their community activities

KRAS-mutation status in relation to colorectal cancer survival: the joint impact of correlated tumour markers.

Background:Mutations in the Kirsten Ras (KRAS) oncogene are common in colorectal cancer (CRC). The role of KRAS-mutation status as a prognostic factor, however, is unclear. We evaluated the relationship between KRAS-mutation status and CRC survival, considering heterogeneity in this association by tumour and patient characteristics.Methods:The population-based study included individuals diagnosed with CRC between 1998-2007 in Western Washington State. Tumour specimens were tested for KRAS exon 2 mutations, the BRAF p.V600E mutation, and microsatellite instability (MSI). We used Cox regression to estimate hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for the association between KRAS-mutation status and disease-specific and overall survival. Stratified analyses were conducted by age, sex, tumour site, stage, and MSI. We conducted additional analyses combining KRAS-mutation, BRAF-mutation, and MSI status.Results:Among 1989 cases, 31% had KRAS-mutated CRC. Kirsten Ras (KRAS)-mutated CRC was associated with poorer disease-specific survival (HR=1.37, 95% CI: 1.13-1.66). This association was not evident in cases who presented with distant-stage CRC. Cases with KRAS-wild-type/BRAF-wild-type/MSI-high CRC had the most favourable prognosis; those with CRC exhibiting a KRAS- or BRAF-mutation and no MSI had the poorest prognosis. Patterns were similar for overall survival.Conclusion:Kirsten Ras (KRAS)-mutated CRC was associated with statistically significantly poorer survival after diagnosis than KRAS-wild-type CRC

Germline mutations in PMS2 and MLH1 in individuals with solitary loss of PMS2 expression in colorectal carcinomas from the colon cancer family registry cohort

Objectives: Immunohistochemistry for DNA mismatch repair proteins is used to screen for Lynch syndrome in individuals with colorectal carcinoma (CRC). Although solitary loss of PMS2 expression is indicative of carrying a germline mutation in PMS2, previous studies reported MLH1 mutation in some cases. We determined the prevalence of MLH1 germline mutations in a large cohort of individuals with a CRC demonstrating solitary loss of PMS2 expression. Design: This cohort study included 88 individuals affected with a PMS2-deficient CRC from the Colon Cancer Family Registry Cohort. Germline PMS2 mutation analysis (long-range PCR and multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification) was followed by MLH1 mutation testing (Sanger sequencing and multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification). Results: Of the 66 individuals with complete mutation screening, we identified a pathogenic PMS2 mutation in 49 (74%), a pathogenic MLH1 mutation in 8 (12%) and a MLH1 variant of uncertain clinical significance predicted to be damaging by in silico analysis in 3 (4%); 6 (9%) carried variants likely to have no clinical significance. Missense point mutations accounted for most alterations (83%; 9/11) in MLH1. The MLH1 c.113A> G p.Asn38Ser mutation was found in 2 related individuals. One individual who carried the MLH1 intronic mutation c.677+3A>G p.Gln197Argfs*8 leading to the skipping of exon 8, developed 2 tumours, both of which retained MLH1 expression. Conclusions: A substantial proportion of CRCs with solitary loss of PMS2 expression are associated with a deleterious MLH1 germline mutation supporting the screening for MLH1 in individuals with tumours of this immunophenotype, when no PMS2 mutation has been identified.Christophe Rosty, Mark Clendenning, Michael D Walsh, Stine V Eriksen … Nicola Poplawski … Joanne Young … et al

Glucuronidation by UGT1A1 Is the Dominant Pathway of the Metabolic Disposition of Belinostat in Liver Cancer Patients

10.1371/journal.pone.0054522PLoS ONE81