FT Speech: Danish Parliament Speech Corpus

This paper introduces FT Speech, a new speech corpus created from the recorded meetings of the Danish Parliament, otherwise known as the Folketing (FT). The corpus contains over 1,800 hours of transcribed speech by a total of 434 speakers. It is significantly larger in duration, vocabulary, and amount of spontaneous speech than the existing public speech corpora for Danish, which are largely limited to read-aloud and dictation data. We outline design considerations, including the preprocessing methods and the alignment procedure. To evaluate the quality of the corpus, we train automatic speech recognition systems on the new resource and compare them to the systems trained on the Danish part of Spr\r{a}kbanken, the largest public ASR corpus for Danish to date. Our baseline results show that we achieve a 14.01 WER on the new corpus. A combination of FT Speech with in-domain language data provides comparable results to models trained specifically on Spr\r{a}kbanken, showing that FT Speech transfers well to this data set. Interestingly, our results demonstrate that the opposite is not the case. This shows that FT Speech provides a valuable resource for promoting research on Danish ASR with more spontaneous speech.Comment: Submitted to Interspeech 202

Alkylamino and aralkylamino derivatives of avarone and its mimetic as selective agents against non-small cell lung cancer cells, their antibacterial and antifungal potential

In this paper, the synthesis of fourteen alkylamino and arylamino derivatives of sesquiterpene quinone avarone and its model compound tert-butylquinone is described. Branched, cyclic, allylic and benzylic alkylamino/arylamino groups were introduced into the quinone moiety. For all the obtained derivatives, their biological activity and redox properties were studied. The cytotoxic activity of the synthesized derivatives towards multidrug resistant (MDR) human non-small cell lung carcinoma NCI-H460/R cells, their sensitive counterpart NCI-H460 and human normal keratinocytes (HaCaT) was investigated. The antimicrobial activity towards Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, and fungal cultures was determined. Some of the synthesized derivatives showed selectivity for cancer cells, including MDR cells. Regarding their cell death induction potential, the most promising compounds were allylamino derivatives, preferentially triggering apoptosis, with high selectivity for cancer cells, including MDR cells. Several compounds showed promising antimicrobial activity, comparable to those of commercial antibiotic and antimycotic agents

From Masked Language Modeling to Translation: Non-English Auxiliary Tasks Improve Zero-shot Spoken Language Understanding

The lack of publicly available evaluation data for low-resource languages limits progress in Spoken Language Understanding (SLU). As key tasks like intent classification and slot filling require abundant training data, it is desirable to reuse existing data in high-resource languages to develop models for low-resource scenarios. We introduce xSID, a new benchmark for cross-lingual (x) Slot and Intent Detection in 13 languages from 6 language families, including a very low-resource dialect. To tackle the challenge, we propose a joint learning approach, with English SLU training data and non-English auxiliary tasks from raw text, syntax and translation for transfer. We study two setups which differ by type and language coverage of the pre-trained embeddings. Our results show that jointly learning the main tasks with masked language modeling is effective for slots, while machine translation transfer works best for intent classification

Zuclopenthixol decanoate in pregnancy: Successful outcomes in two consecutive off springs of the same mother

Introduction. Almost all individual antipsychotics are classified into the intermediate pregnancy risk category as no or limited data exist about human pregnancy outcomes. We presented the case of zuclopenthixol decanoate using in two successive pregnancies of the same woman, which had not been published in the available peer-reviewed literature. Case report. A middle-age female subject who suffered from schizophrenia received zuclopenthixol decanoate injection during her two consecutive pregnancies. About four and a half months before diagnosis of the first pregnancy (~3.5 years after psychosis emergence), zuclopenthixol decanoate (400 mg every other week, im injection) was introduced to the treatment protocol (due to previous non-compliance with halo-peridol and risperidone). A significant clinical improvement was achieved and the dose during pregnancy was reduced to 200 mg once monthly and maintained to date. In both pregnancies the women gave birth to healthy girls who have been developing normally until now, at their ages of 6 months and of 3.5 years. During pregnancy and after giving birth to children the mothers' psychiatric status and her social functioning were significantly improved and are still stable. Close monitoring of the mother's health, a multidisciplinary approach to both her treatment and the monitoring of pregnancies as well as the complete compliance with the prescribed drug protocol were likely to be crucial for the therapeutic success. Conclusion. A favorable outcome of the present case suggests that the zuclopenthixol decanoate is a rational therapeutic option for pregnant women suffering from psychosis when the expected benefit exceed the potential risk, but a definitive evidence for its safety requires large, controlled studies

Health status after invasive or conservative care in coronary and advanced kidney disease

BACKGROUND In the ISCHEMIA-CKD trial, the primary analysis showed no significant difference in the risk of death or myocardial infarction with initial angiography and revascularization plus guideline-based medical therapy (invasive strategy) as compared with guideline-based medical therapy alone (conservative strategy) in participants with stable ischemic heart disease, moderate or severe ischemia, and advanced chronic kidney disease (an estimated glomerular filtration rate of <30 ml per minute per 1.73 m2 or receipt of dialysis). A secondary objective of the trial was to assess angina-related health status. METHODS We assessed health status with the Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ) before randomization and at 1.5, 3, and 6 months and every 6 months thereafter. The primary outcome of this analysis was the SAQ Summary score (ranging from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating less frequent angina and better function and quality of life). Mixed-effects cumulative probability models within a Bayesian framework were used to estimate the treatment effect with the invasive strategy. RESULTS Health status was assessed in 705 of 777 participants. Nearly half the participants (49%) had had no angina during the month before randomization. At 3 months, the estimated mean difference between the invasive-strategy group and the conservative-strategy group in the SAQ Summary score was 2.1 points (95% credible interval, 120.4 to 4.6), a result that favored the invasive strategy. The mean difference in score at 3 months was largest among participants with daily or weekly angina at baseline (10.1 points; 95% credible interval, 0.0 to 19.9), smaller among those with monthly angina at baseline (2.2 points; 95% credible interval, 122.0 to 6.2), and nearly absent among those without angina at baseline (0.6 points; 95% credible interval, 121.9 to 3.3). By 6 months, the between-group difference in the overall trial population was attenuated (0.5 points; 95% credible interval, 122.2 to 3.4). CONCLUSIONS Participants with stable ischemic heart disease, moderate or severe ischemia, and advanced chronic kidney disease did not have substantial or sustained benefits with regard to angina-related health status with an initially invasive strategy as compared with a conservative strategy

Management of coronary disease in patients with advanced kidney disease

BACKGROUND Clinical trials that have assessed the effect of revascularization in patients with stable coronary disease have routinely excluded those with advanced chronic kidney disease. METHODS We randomly assigned 777 patients with advanced kidney disease and moderate or severe ischemia on stress testing to be treated with an initial invasive strategy consisting of coronary angiography and revascularization (if appropriate) added to medical therapy or an initial conservative strategy consisting of medical therapy alone and angiography reserved for those in whom medical therapy had failed. The primary outcome was a composite of death or nonfatal myocardial infarction. A key secondary outcome was a composite of death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or hospitalization for unstable angina, heart failure, or resuscitated cardiac arrest. RESULTS At a median follow-up of 2.2 years, a primary outcome event had occurred in 123 patients in the invasive-strategy group and in 129 patients in the conservative-strategy group (estimated 3-year event rate, 36.4% vs. 36.7%; adjusted hazard ratio, 1.01; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.79 to 1.29; P=0.95). Results for the key secondary outcome were similar (38.5% vs. 39.7%; hazard ratio, 1.01; 95% CI, 0.79 to 1.29). The invasive strategy was associated with a higher incidence of stroke than the conservative strategy (hazard ratio, 3.76; 95% CI, 1.52 to 9.32; P=0.004) and with a higher incidence of death or initiation of dialysis (hazard ratio, 1.48; 95% CI, 1.04 to 2.11; P=0.03). CONCLUSIONS Among patients with stable coronary disease, advanced chronic kidney disease, and moderate or severe ischemia, we did not find evidence that an initial invasive strategy, as compared with an initial conservative strategy, reduced the risk of death or nonfatal myocardial infarction

Health-status outcomes with invasive or conservative care in coronary disease

BACKGROUND In the ISCHEMIA trial, an invasive strategy with angiographic assessment and revascularization did not reduce clinical events among patients with stable ischemic heart disease and moderate or severe ischemia. A secondary objective of the trial was to assess angina-related health status among these patients. METHODS We assessed angina-related symptoms, function, and quality of life with the Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ) at randomization, at months 1.5, 3, and 6, and every 6 months thereafter in participants who had been randomly assigned to an invasive treatment strategy (2295 participants) or a conservative strategy (2322). Mixed-effects cumulative probability models within a Bayesian framework were used to estimate differences between the treatment groups. The primary outcome of this health-status analysis was the SAQ summary score (scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating better health status). All analyses were performed in the overall population and according to baseline angina frequency. RESULTS At baseline, 35% of patients reported having no angina in the previous month. SAQ summary scores increased in both treatment groups, with increases at 3, 12, and 36 months that were 4.1 points (95% credible interval, 3.2 to 5.0), 4.2 points (95% credible interval, 3.3 to 5.1), and 2.9 points (95% credible interval, 2.2 to 3.7) higher with the invasive strategy than with the conservative strategy. Differences were larger among participants who had more frequent angina at baseline (8.5 vs. 0.1 points at 3 months and 5.3 vs. 1.2 points at 36 months among participants with daily or weekly angina as compared with no angina). CONCLUSIONS In the overall trial population with moderate or severe ischemia, which included 35% of participants without angina at baseline, patients randomly assigned to the invasive strategy had greater improvement in angina-related health status than those assigned to the conservative strategy. The modest mean differences favoring the invasive strategy in the overall group reflected minimal differences among asymptomatic patients and larger differences among patients who had had angina at baseline

Initial invasive or conservative strategy for stable coronary disease

BACKGROUND Among patients with stable coronary disease and moderate or severe ischemia, whether clinical outcomes are better in those who receive an invasive intervention plus medical therapy than in those who receive medical therapy alone is uncertain. METHODS We randomly assigned 5179 patients with moderate or severe ischemia to an initial invasive strategy (angiography and revascularization when feasible) and medical therapy or to an initial conservative strategy of medical therapy alone and angiography if medical therapy failed. The primary outcome was a composite of death from cardiovascular causes, myocardial infarction, or hospitalization for unstable angina, heart failure, or resuscitated cardiac arrest. A key secondary outcome was death from cardiovascular causes or myocardial infarction. RESULTS Over a median of 3.2 years, 318 primary outcome events occurred in the invasive-strategy group and 352 occurred in the conservative-strategy group. At 6 months, the cumulative event rate was 5.3% in the invasive-strategy group and 3.4% in the conservative-strategy group (difference, 1.9 percentage points; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.8 to 3.0); at 5 years, the cumulative event rate was 16.4% and 18.2%, respectively (difference, 121.8 percentage points; 95% CI, 124.7 to 1.0). Results were similar with respect to the key secondary outcome. The incidence of the primary outcome was sensitive to the definition of myocardial infarction; a secondary analysis yielded more procedural myocardial infarctions of uncertain clinical importance. There were 145 deaths in the invasive-strategy group and 144 deaths in the conservative-strategy group (hazard ratio, 1.05; 95% CI, 0.83 to 1.32). CONCLUSIONS Among patients with stable coronary disease and moderate or severe ischemia, we did not find evidence that an initial invasive strategy, as compared with an initial conservative strategy, reduced the risk of ischemic cardiovascular events or death from any cause over a median of 3.2 years. The trial findings were sensitive to the definition of myocardial infarction that was used