Subword and Crossword Units for CTC Acoustic Models

This paper proposes a novel approach to create an unit set for CTC based speech recognition systems. By using Byte Pair Encoding we learn an unit set of an arbitrary size on a given training text. In contrast to using characters or words as units this allows us to find a good trade-off between the size of our unit set and the available training data. We evaluate both Crossword units, that may span multiple word, and Subword units. By combining this approach with decoding methods using a separate language model we are able to achieve state of the art results for grapheme based CTC systems.Comment: Current version accepted at Interspeech 201

Nonoperative Treatment of Charcot Neuro-osteoarthropathy

Conservative treatment of Charcot neuro-osteoarthropathy (CN) aims to retain a stable, plantigrade, and ulcer-free foot, or to prevent progression of an already existing deformity. CN is treated with offloading in a total contact cast as long as CN activity is present. Transition to inactive CN is monitored by the resolution of clinical activity signs and by resolution of bony edema in MRI. Fitting of orthopedic depth insoles, orthopedic shoes, or ankle-foot orthosis should follow immediately after offloading has ended to prevent CN reactivation or ulcer development. Keywords: Charcot arthropathy; Charcot foot; Charcot neuro-osteoarthropathy; Conservative; Management; Nonoperative; Treatmen

Transcriptional regulation of taxol™ biosynthesis in taxus cuspidate procambium cells

This thesis presents an investigation into the transcriptional regulation of TaxolTM biosynthsis in Taxus cuspidata cell suspension cultures. The potent anticancer drug TaxolTM has been shown to be successful in the treatment of breast, lung and ovarian cancer and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) related Kaposi’s sarcoma. Produced by all species of yew, TaxolTM belongs to the class of taxane diterpenoids and is of huge pharmaceutical importance. The plant material utilised in this thesis is a cell suspension culture initiated from isolated procambium cells of T. cuspidata. The latter is a meristematic tissue giving rise to the conductive tissue of plants. This un-differentiated cell suspension culture exhibits an increased and stable production of TaxolTM in response to the plant hormone elicitor methyljasmonate, limited cell aggregation and fast growth when compared to a cell suspension culture initiated from differentiated cells (somatic) of T. cuspidata. In order to assess the stem cell characteristics of the employed procambium cell suspension culture, the transcriptome of T. cuspidata was sequenced utilising Roche/ 454 and Illumina/ Solexa NlaIII tag sequencing technoloxiv gies. Statistical analysis uncovered differential expression profiles of 563 genes present within the procambium cell derived transcriptome by comparison with the somatic cell derived transcriptome. Gene ontology analysis of the latter identified that genes associated with response to stress and defence response were upregulated in the differentially expressed portion within the procambium cell suspension culture. This is consistent with the characteristics of animal stem cells which exhibit robust defence strategies to environmental stress. Furthermore PHLOEM INTERCALATED WITH XYLEM (PXY ) and TRACHEARY ELEMENT DIFFERENTIATION 2 (TED2), which are essential for ordered procambium cell division and differentiation into trachaery elements respectively in A. thaliana and Z. elegans, are up-regulated in the T. cuspidata procambium cell suspension culture. Further T. cuspidata homologues of the jasmonate signalling components JASMONATE ZINC FINGER LIKE ZIM DOMAIN 2 (JAZ2) and JAZ3 were identified among up-regulated transcripts in response to jasmonate treatment in both the procambium and the somatic cell line. Blast analysis identified 211 transcription factors within the APETELA 2 (AP2), BASIC-HELIX-LOOPHELIX (bHLH), WRKY, MYB and BASIC-LEUCIN-ZIPPER (bZIP) families. Further characterisation established 21 transcription factors which are significantly up-regulated in response to jasmonate treatment and show a higher expression level in procambium cells. These provide promising targets for further functional characterisation to elucidate their involvement within TaxolTM biosynthesis. In order to investigate transcriptional regulation of the TaxolTM structural genes, a 513 bp fragment corresponding to the TAXADIENE SYNTHASE (TASY ) promoter was cloned by genome walking. In-silico analysis of the TASY and 3’-N-DEBENZOYLTAXOL N-BENZOYLTRANSFERASE (DBTNBT) promoter resulted in the identification of methyljasmonate and pathogen-responsive elements which may significantly contribute to jasmonate mediated accumulation of TaxolTM. Analysis of a chimeric promoter construct driving the reporter gene β-GLUCURONIDASE (GUS) in N. benthamiana confirmed jasmonate-responsiveness of the TASY promoter. Finally, comparison of the expression level of genes coding for potentially rate-limiting enzymes within the TaxolTM pathway established a significantly increased expression of BACCATIN II PHENYLPROPANOYLTRANSFERASE (BAPT) in response to jasmonate treatment within the procambium cell suspension culture. Furthermore transcripts of TASY, PHENYLALANINE AMINOMUTASE (PAM) and DBTNBT show an overall higher expression and prolonged transcript accumulation in procambium compared to somatic cells. In this thesis jasmonate-signalling components, jasmonate-responsive transcription factors and differential gene expression profiles of TaxolTM structural genes were identified which, may contribute to an increased TaxolTM production in the utilised procambium cell suspension culture. Furthermore the T. cuspidata procambium cell suspension culture was found to have an increased level of stress- and defence-response reflected by differential gene expression profiles and content of phenolic compounds and TaxolTM

Economic analysis of animal disease control inputs at farm level: the case of trypanocide use in villages under risk of drug resistance in West Africa

This paper presents an economic analysis of the use of drugs (isometamidium and diminazene) in controlling African Animal Trypanosomosis (AAT), a serious disease of cattle and small ruminants in villages that exhibit resistance to isometamidium in Burkina Faso and Mali in West Africa. The study applies a production function framework integrating a damage control function to assess the short term productivity effect of trypanocide use under different epidemiological conditions. We found that the marginal value products of isometamidium in all epidemiological conditions, and the marginal value product of diminazene in high-prevalence-high-resistance conditions are positive and greater than one revealing an underuse of trypanocidal drugs in those conditions. The economical optimum level of isometamidium is far larger than the current use level. In a strict economic interpretation, this implies that in the short term cattle farmers could increase the profitability if they increase trypanocide input beyond current levels. On the other hand, if the use of trypanocide increases, cattle farmers will also be more likely to experience future losses from trypanocide resistance. In this paper we demonstrated the feasibility of applying the damage control framework for measuring the productivity of veterinary therapeutic drugs at farm level in poor African countries

Endoscopic Treatment of Stump Infection of the Residual Synovial Cavity After Through-the-Knee Amputation: A Case Report

CASE We report the case of a 35-year-old patient who presented with a septic residual synovial cavity infection 8 weeks after a through-the-knee amputation because of a parosteal sarcoma. An endoscopic evacuation of the turbid fluid and synovial debridement through parapatellar portals as in a standard knee arthroscopy was performed, in conjunction with appropriate antibiotic therapy. One year postoperatively, there were no signs of residual infection. CONCLUSION Endoscopic treatment of a septic stump infection of the residual synovial cavity after through-the-knee amputation is feasible. In our case, this approach resulted in rapid wound healing and early prosthesis mobility

The 2017 KIT IWSLT Speech-to-Text Systems for English and German

This paper describes our German and English Speech-to-Text (STT) systems for the 2017 IWSLT evaluation campaign. The campaign focuses on the transcription of unsegmented lecture talks. Our setup includes systems using both the Janus and Kaldi frameworks. We combined the outputs using both ROVER [1] and confusion network combination (CNC) [2] to achieve a good overall performance. The individual subsystems are built by using different speaker-adaptive feature combination (e.g., lMEL with i-vector or bottleneck speaker vector), acoustic models (GMM or DNN) and speaker adaptation (MLLR or fMLLR). Decoding is performed in two stages, where the GMM and DNN systems are adapted on the combination of the first stage outputs using MLLR, and fMLLR. The combination setup produces a final hypothesis that has a significantly lower WER than any of the individual sub-systems. For the English lecture task, our best combination system has a WER of 8.3% on the tst2015 development set while our other combinations gained 25.7% WER for German lecture tasks

Etude des politiques relatives aux stratégies de gestion de la chimiorésistance dans le cadre de la lutte contre la trypanosomose en Afrique de l'Ouest: cas du Mali

Discussion sur l’etude des politiques relatives aux stratégies de gestion de la chimiorésistance dans le cadre de la lutte contre la trypanosomose en Afrique de l’Ouest, Mali. Le projet a pour objectif d’assurer l’efficacité des trypanocides comme une composante effective des strategies intégrées et améliorées de contrôle de Ia trypanosomose animale dans Ia region ouest-africaine. Pour atteindre cet objectif, des organisations nationales de recherche et de developpement, des institutions internationales et régionales de recherche, et des universités allemandes travaillent en partenariat afin de développer aux niveaux local et regional des strategies de reduction de risque de Ia chimiorésistance. L’accent est mis principalement sur l‘information et des supports techniques aux paysans, aux prestataires de service en sante animale, aux vétérinaires professionnels et aux décideurs politiques. Les informations et supports techniques ont pour but de promouvoir Ia lutte intégrée et l’utilisation rationnelle des trypanocides afin de réduire les risques a long terme de Ia chimiorésistance sans compromettre Ia capacité des éleveurs a pouvoir protéger leurs animaux contre les effets néfastes de la trypanosomose animale. Le projet est réalisé au Burkina Faso, au Mali et en Guinée par l’lnstitut International de Recherche sur l’Elevage (lLRl) en collaboration avec d’autres organisations. Des approaches de solutions sont alors proposees de maniere a apporter une solution durable au phenomene de la chimioresistance