Djehuty : a mixed-initiative handwriting game for preschoolers

Learning to read and write is a fundamental right and a necessary skill for the personal, cultural, and economic development of people and their societies. However, children of developing countries, such as sub-Saharan areas, are currently at a greater risk of illiteracy. The current penetration of mobile technologies and the internet in sub-Saharan rural areas, however, offers a unique opportunity for tackling the challenge of literacy at a large scale. Motivated by the current shortage of preschool teachers for training handwriting in a personalised manner, this paper discusses the design of Djehuty, an educational gamified environment for preschoolers. Djehuty is equipped with an artificial intelligence module which generates a style of handwriting and suggests handwriting paths to the child in a mixed-initiative manner. The paper presents the key elements of the game prototype.peer-reviewe

XTREME-UP: A User-Centric Scarce-Data Benchmark for Under-Represented Languages

Data scarcity is a crucial issue for the development of highly multilingual NLP systems. Yet for many under-represented languages (ULs) -- languages for which NLP re-search is particularly far behind in meeting user needs -- it is feasible to annotate small amounts of data. Motivated by this, we propose XTREME-UP, a benchmark defined by: its focus on the scarce-data scenario rather than zero-shot; its focus on user-centric tasks -- tasks with broad adoption by speakers of high-resource languages; and its focus on under-represented languages where this scarce-data scenario tends to be most realistic. XTREME-UP evaluates the capabilities of language models across 88 under-represented languages over 9 key user-centric technologies including ASR, OCR, MT, and information access tasks that are of general utility. We create new datasets for OCR, autocomplete, semantic parsing, and transliteration, and build on and refine existing datasets for other tasks. XTREME-UP provides methodology for evaluating many modeling scenarios including text-only, multi-modal (vision, audio, and text),supervised parameter tuning, and in-context learning. We evaluate commonly used models on the benchmark. We release all code and scripts to train and evaluate model

Relation between Plasmodium falciparum asymptomatic infection and malaria attacks in a cohort of Senegalese children

© 2008 Le Port et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Diagnostic Accuracy of a Prototype Point-of-Care Test for Ocular Chlamydia trachomatis under Field Conditions in The Gambia and Senegal

Trachoma, caused by infection of the eye with the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis, is the leading infectious cause of blindness and is associated with poverty. Antibiotic treatment of all community members is one of the recommended control strategies for trachoma. However, in places where the prevalence of clinical signs is low, C. trachomatis eye infection is often absent. Laboratory testing for C. trachomatis infection by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is highly sensitive but expensive and requires well-trained staff. A simple point-of-care (POC) test that can be used in trachoma-affected communities could help trachoma control efforts. We evaluated a POC test for C. trachomatis eye infection. Children under 10 years of age were screened for clinical signs of trachoma and C. trachomatis eye infection. The POC test result was compared with laboratory PCR test results. The POC test detected just over half of PCR test positives correctly. However, the POC test tended to give false-positive results in hot and dry conditions, which is the typical environment of trachoma. The POC test requires high specificity since it would be used to make treatment decisions at the community level. Therefore, its present format requires improvement before it can be utilized in trachoma control

Complex data labeling with deep learning methods: Lessons from fisheries acoustics

WOS:000618971000011International audienceQuantitative and qualitative analysis of acoustic backscattered signals from the seabed bottom to the sea surface is used worldwide for fish stocks assessment and marine ecosystem monitoring. Huge amounts of raw data are collected yet require tedious expert labeling. This paper focuses on a case study where the ground truth labels are non-obvious: echograms labeling, which is time-consuming and critical for the quality of fisheries and ecological analysis. We investigate how these tasks can benefit from supervised learning algorithms and demonstrate that convolutional neural networks trained with non-stationary datasets can be used to stress parts of a new dataset needing human expert correction. Further development of this approach paves the way toward a standardization of the labeling process in fisheries acoustics and is a good case study for non-obvious data labeling processes. (C) 2020 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Complex data labeling with deep learning methods: Lessons from fisheries acoustics

WOS:000618971000011International audienceQuantitative and qualitative analysis of acoustic backscattered signals from the seabed bottom to the sea surface is used worldwide for fish stocks assessment and marine ecosystem monitoring. Huge amounts of raw data are collected yet require tedious expert labeling. This paper focuses on a case study where the ground truth labels are non-obvious: echograms labeling, which is time-consuming and critical for the quality of fisheries and ecological analysis. We investigate how these tasks can benefit from supervised learning algorithms and demonstrate that convolutional neural networks trained with non-stationary datasets can be used to stress parts of a new dataset needing human expert correction. Further development of this approach paves the way toward a standardization of the labeling process in fisheries acoustics and is a good case study for non-obvious data labeling processes. (C) 2020 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Immunologic and virologic response after tetanus toxoid booster among HIV-1- and HIV-2-infected Senegalese individuals

Twelve HIV-1-infected, nine HIV-2-infected patients and eight HIV-negative subjects were given a 40IU booster dose of tetanus toxoid (TT). Blood was collected on days 0, 7 and 30 after immunization. Changes in HIV-1 or HIV-2 RNA load were evaluated by nested PCR. TT-IgG antibody levels were quantified by ELISA. CD4 cell counts as well as activation, memory and maturation markers of T lymphocyte subsets were determined by flow cytometry. The induction of apoptosis was investigated using 7-aminoactinomycin D (AAD) and propidium iodide (PI) staining. Proliferative responses to TT and pokeweed mitogen (PWM) were determined by the level of [3H] thymidine incorporation. Seven and 30 days after immunization, there was no detectable increase in HIV-1 or HIV-2 plasma load. There were also no changes in CD4 cell counts, CD69, HLA-DR and memory CD45RO or naive CD45RA antigens. Immunization did not increase the spontaneous apoptosis of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), CD4+ and CD8+ T cells subsets neither in controls nor in HIV-infected patients. Similarly, apoptosis induced in vitro by PWM or by the specific TT recall antigen did not vary during the study period. The proliferative response to PWM and to the TT recall antigen was decreased both in HIV-1- and HIV-2-infected patients compared to HIV-negative controls. Immunization significantly increased the TT-IgG levels in healthy controls and in HIV-infected patients. However, the anti-TT-IgG response, as measured by the fold-increase index between days 0 and 30, was significantly higher in healthy controls than in HIV-1- (P = 0.036) and HIV-2-infected patients (P = 0.003). In conclusion, we found no deleterious immunologic or virologic effect was detected in healthy HIV-1- and HIV-2-infected individuals after antigenic challenge with a TT booster. However, the response to TT vaccination was lower in HIV-1- and in HIV-2-infected individuals than in healthy HIV-negative controls. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Describing Peripancreatic Collections According to the Revised Atlanta Classification of Acute Pancreatitis: An International Interobserver Agreement Study

OBJECTIVES: Severe acute pancreatitis is associated with peripancreatic morphologic changes as seen on imaging. Uniform communication regarding these morphologic findings is crucial for accurate diagnosis and treatment. For the original 1992 Atlanta classification, interobserver agreement is poor. We hypothesized that for the revised Atlanta classification, interobserver agreement will be better. METHODS: An international, interobserver agreement study was performed among expert and nonexpert radiologists (n = 14), surgeons (n = 15), and gastroenterologists (n = 8). Representative computed tomographies of all stages of acute pancreatitis were selected from 55 patients and were assessed according to the revised Atlanta classification. The interobserver agreement was calculated among all reviewers and subgroups, that is, expert and nonexpert reviewers; interobserver agreement was defined as poor (</=0.20), fair (0.21-0.40), moderate (0.41-0.60), good (0.61-0.80), or very good (0.81-1.00). RESULTS: Interobserver agreement among all reviewers was good (0.75 [standard deviation, 0.21]) for describing the type of acute pancreatitis and good (0.62 [standard deviation, 0.19]) for the type of peripancreatic collection. Expert radiologists showed the best and nonexpert clinicians the lowest interobserver agreement. CONCLUSIONS: Interobserver agreement was good for the revised Atlanta classification, supporting the importance for widespread adaption of this revised classification for clinical and research communications

Modelling dynamic change of malaria transmission in holoendemic setting (Dielmo, Senegal) using longitudinal measures of antibody prevalence to Plasmodium falciparum crude schizonts extract

International audienceBACKGROUND: Evaluation of local Plasmodium falciparum malaria transmission has been investigated previously using the reversible catalytic model based on prevalence of antibody responses to single antigen to estimate seroconversion rates. High correlations were observed between seroconversion rates and entomological inoculation rates (EIR). However, in this model, the effects of malaria control interventions and clinical episodes on serological measurements were not assessed. This study monitors the use of antibody responses to P. falciparum crude extracts for assessing malaria transmission, compares seroconversion rates estimated from longitudinal data to those derived from cross-sectional surveys and investigates the effects of malaria control interventions on these measures in an area of declining malaria transmission. In addition, the validity of this model was evaluated by comparison with the alternative model.METHODS: Five cross-sectional surveys were carried out at the end of the wet season in Dielmo, a malaria-endemic Senegalese rural area in 2000, 2002, 2008, 2010 and 2012. Antibodies against schizonts crude extract of a local P. falciparum strain adapted to culture (Pf 07/03) were measured by ELISA. Age-specific seroprevalence model was used both for cross-sectional surveys and longitudinal data (combined data of all surveys).RESULTS: A total of 1504 plasma samples obtained through several years follow-up of 350 subjects was used in this study. Seroconversion rates based on P. falciparum schizonts crude extract were estimated for each cross-sectional survey and were found strongly correlated with EIR. High variability between SCRs from cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys was observed. In longitudinal studies, the alternative catalytic reversible model adjusted better with serological data than the catalytic model. Clinical malaria attacks and malaria control interventions were found to have significant effect on seroconversion.DISCUSSION: The results of the study suggested that crude extract was a good serological tool that could be used to assess the level of malaria exposure in areas where malaria transmission is declining. However, additional parameters such as clinical malaria and malaria control interventions must be taken into account for determining serological measurements for more accuracy in transmission assessment