Automated ICF Coding of Rehabilitation Notes for Low-Resource Languages via Continual Training of Language Models

: The coding of medical documents and in particular of rehabilitation notes using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) is a difficult task showing low agreement among experts. Such difficulty is mainly caused by the specific terminology that needs to be used for the task. In this paper, we address the task developing a model based on a large language model, BERT. By leveraging continual training of such a model using ICF textual descriptions, we are able to effectively encode rehabilitation notes expressed in Italian, an under-resourced language

Effectiveness of rehabilitation intervention in persons with Friedreich ataxia

IntroductionThe relevance of rehabilitation in progressive neurological disorders, such as Friedreich’s Ataxia (FRDA), has yet to be convincingly proven. FRDA is characterized by ataxia, loss of gait, scoliosis, cardiomyopathy, dysarthria and dysphagia, with reduced life expectancy. The disease onset is usually in adolescence, leading to progressive disability. Omaveloxolone has been recently approved as the first pharmacological treatment for FRDA in adults and adolescents aged 16 years and older. Regarding non-pharmacological therapies, neurorehabilitation is a valuable aid in addressing the symptoms and in maintaining the residual functioning. We performed a prospective observational cohort study to evaluate the efficacy of inpatient rehabilitation (IR) for people with FRDA.MethodsA total of 42 individuals (29 adults and 13 children) with FRDA were recruited. There were 27 ambulant and 15 non-ambulant participants. The patients underwent IR of 3 and 4 weeks in children and adults, respectively. The IR treatment was designed to be applied within a multidisciplinary setting, so FRDA patients underwent, in addition to physiotherapy, also occupational therapy, practical manual activities and psychological support aiming to enhance transferable skills useful in the activities of daily living. The primary outcome was the Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia (SARA). Other measures were: Friedreich Ataxia Rating Scale (FARS) and Nine Hole Peg Test (NHPT). Furthermore, we used the 6 Minute Walk Test (6MWT), the Timed Up and Go (TUG) and the Berg Balance Scale (BBS) only on ambulant subjects. Outcomes were evaluated at baseline and at the end of the treatment.ResultsWe report that the IR significantly improves motor performance and ataxia symptoms in patients with FRDA. Our study shows significant functional improvement in all the outcome measures used, except for NHPT bilaterally. FARS and SARA scores post-IR are significatively reduced when compared (p < 0.001).DiscussionWe demonstrate that IR programs in FRDA can provide a meaningful clinical improvement in terms of outcome measures. These findings could be useful when approaching progressive neurological disorders

Functional and Structural Brain Damage in Friedreich's Ataxia

Friedreich's ataxia (FRDA) is a rare hereditary neurodegenerative disorder caused by a GAA repeat expansion in the FXN gene. There is still no cure or quantitative biomarkers reliaby correlating with the progression rate and disease severity. Investigation of functional and structural alterations characterizing white (WM) and gray matter (GM) in FRDA are needed prerequisite to monitor progression and response to treatment. Here we report the results of a multimodal cross-sectional MRI study of FRDA including Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM), diffusion-tensor imaging (DTI), functional MRI (fMRI), and a correlation analysis with clinical severity scores. Twenty-one early-onset FRDA patients and 18 age-matched healthy controls (HCs) were imaged at 3T. All patients underwent a complete cognitive and clinical assessment with ataxia scales. VBM analysis showed GM volume reduction in FRDA compared to HCs bilaterally in lobules V, VI, VIII (L>R), as well as in the crus of cerebellum, posterior lobe of the vermis, in the flocculi and in the left tonsil. Voxel-wise DTI analysis showed a diffuse fractional anisotropy reduction and mean, radial, axial (AD) diffusivity increase in both infratentorial and supratentorial WM. ROI-based analysis confirmed the results showing differences of the same DTI metrics in cortico-spinal-tracts, forceps major, corpus callosum, posterior thalamic radiations, cerebellar penduncles. Additionally, we observed increased AD in superior (SCP) and middle cerebellar peduncles. The WM findings correlated with age at onset (AAO), short-allelle GAA, and disease severity. The intragroup analysis of fMRI data from right-handed 14 FRDA and 15 HCs showed similar findings in both groups, including activation in M1, insula and superior cerebellar hemisphere (lobules V–VIII). Significant differences emerged only during the non-dominant hand movement, with HCs showing a stronger activation in the left superior cerebellar hemisphere compared to FRDA. Significant correlations were found between AAO and the fMRI activation in cerebellar anterior and posterior lobes, insula and temporal lobe. Our multimodal neuroimaging protocol suggests that MRI is a useful tool to document the extension of the neurological impairment in FRDA

Towards a muon collider

A muon collider would enable the big jump ahead in energy reach that is needed for a fruitful exploration of fundamental interactions. The challenges of producing muon collisions at high luminosity and 10 TeV centre of mass energy are being investigated by the recently-formed International Muon Collider Collaboration. This Review summarises the status and the recent advances on muon colliders design, physics and detector studies. The aim is to provide a global perspective of the field and to outline directions for future work

Towards a Muon Collider

A muon collider would enable the big jump ahead in energy reach that is needed for a fruitful exploration of fundamental interactions. The challenges of producing muon collisions at high luminosity and 10 TeV centre of mass energy are being investigated by the recently-formed International Muon Collider Collaboration. This Review summarises the status and the recent advances on muon colliders design, physics and detector studies. The aim is to provide a global perspective of the field and to outline directions for future work.Comment: 118 pages, 103 figure

AI is a viable alternative to high throughput screening: a 318-target study

: High throughput screening (HTS) is routinely used to identify bioactive small molecules. This requires physical compounds, which limits coverage of accessible chemical space. Computational approaches combined with vast on-demand chemical libraries can access far greater chemical space, provided that the predictive accuracy is sufficient to identify useful molecules. Through the largest and most diverse virtual HTS campaign reported to date, comprising 318 individual projects, we demonstrate that our AtomNet® convolutional neural network successfully finds novel hits across every major therapeutic area and protein class. We address historical limitations of computational screening by demonstrating success for target proteins without known binders, high-quality X-ray crystal structures, or manual cherry-picking of compounds. We show that the molecules selected by the AtomNet® model are novel drug-like scaffolds rather than minor modifications to known bioactive compounds. Our empirical results suggest that computational methods can substantially replace HTS as the first step of small-molecule drug discovery

Towards a muon collider

A muon collider would enable the big jump ahead in energy reach that is needed for a fruitful exploration of fundamental interactions. The challenges of producing muon collisions at high luminosity and 10 TeV centre of mass energy are being investigated by the recently-formed International Muon Collider Collaboration. This Review summarises the status and the recent advances on muon colliders design, physics and detector studies. The aim is to provide a global perspective of the field and to outline directions for future work

Erratum: Towards a muon collider

The original online version of this article was revised: The additional reference [139] has been added. Tao Han’s ORICD ID has been incorrectly assigned to Chengcheng Han and Chengcheng Han’s ORCID ID to Tao Han. Yang Ma’s ORCID ID has been incorrectly assigned to Lianliang Ma, and Lianliang Ma’s ORCID ID to Yang Ma. The original article has been corrected

Valutazione delle cariche microbiche su superfici a contatto con gli alimenti in macellerie abruzzesi dopo sanificazione

Lo scopo di questo studio è stato quello di valutare le cariche microbiche di diverse superfici a contatto con gli alimenti presenti in 5 macellerie (nominate da A a E) situate nella regione Abruzzo. Il campionamento è stato eseguito immediatamente dopo le operazioni di pulizia e disinfezione per la ricerca di mesofili aerobi (MA), enterobatteri e Salmonella. Le superfici prese in considerazione sono state: affettatrice, sega a nastro, lama del coltello, piano di lavoro in teflon per carne e ossa, corpo del tritacarne, superficie interna della macchina per hamburger, vassoio per carne macinata, ganci in acciaio e maniglia della cella refrigerata. Il campionamento delle superfici è stato effettuato con tamponi con punta in cotone inumiditi in 10 mL di soluzione fisiologica sterile (SRK, Copan Italia, Brescia), strisciati sulla superficie da campionare previa delimitazione di un’area variabile da 20 a 100 cm2 mediante mascherine sterili in polipropilene. I tamponi sono stati stemperati in 10 mL di soluzione salina contenente 0,1% di peptone (p/v), trasferiti in laboratorio a 4°C e analizzati entro 1 ora. Tutte le analisi sono state condotte in triplicato. Tra le superfici esaminate nelle 5 macellerie oggetto dell’indagine, considerate singolarmente, non è stata osservata alcuna differenza statisticamente significativa (p>0,05), mentre è stata osservata una differenza statisticamente significativa (p<0,05) tra le macellerie B e D valutando tutte le superfici complessivamente. In relazione alla carica dei MA, le superfici venivano classificate in 3 categorie: i) conforme, se i risultati erano compresi tra inferiori al limite di rilevazione del metodo e 29 UFC/cm2; ii) migliorabile, se compresi tra 30 e 99 UFC/cm2; non conforme qualora pari o superiori a 100 UFC/cm2. I risultati di MA hanno evidenziato che le superfici maggiormente contaminate erano la sega a nastro, la superficie interna della macchina per hamburger e il corpo del tritacarne con valori massimi di 350, 150 e 780 UFC/cm2, rispettivamente. Si può ipotizzare che tali risultati siano dovuti alla difficoltà di eseguire una corretta sanificazione per alcune superfici o alla necessità di smontare per la pulizia le macchine composte da più componenti, come il tritacarne. Riguardo alle superfici facili da pulire, quali affettatrice e lama del coltello, cariche relativamente alte di MA erano presumibilmente dovute al loro continuo utilizzo giornaliero. Enterobatteri e Salmonella sono risultati inferiori a 10 UFC/cm2 e inferiori al limite di rilevazione di 1 UFC/cm2, rispettivamente. Sebbene non siano stati ancora stabiliti limiti normativi per le superfici a contatto con gli alimenti, è auspicabile la definizione di valori di riferimento al fine di monitorare le procedure di sanificazione. Sulla base dei risultati ottenuti, valori inferiori a 29 e 10 UFC/cm2 per MA ed enterobatteri, rispettivamente, possono essere suggeriti come possibili criteri da adottare per le industrie alimentari nel settore delle carni