An approach to the morphological disambiguation problem using conditional random fields

Morphology is the subfield of linguistics that studies the internal structures of words. Morphological analysis is the first step in revealing this structure by enumerating possible underlying morphological unit combinations that describe the surface form of a given word. The given surface form is said to be morphologically ambiguous, when more than one analysis corresponds to the given surface form. While words in every natural language may manifest morphological ambiguity, solving the problem of morphological disambiguation presents different challenges for different languages. In this work, we present an approach to this problem using Conditional Random Fields, a statistical framework that elegantly avoids data sparseness problems arising from the large vocabulary and tag set sizes, a characteristic of Turkish language. CRFs are used to build statistical models that rely on simple functions of easily testable properties of the training data at hand. Thanks to higher expressiveness gained by using tests on individual morphological markers, our results are in line with the state-of-the-art, using only a simple one-dimensional bigram chain model

Patient and partner outcome of inflatable and semi-rigid penile prosthesis in a single institution

ABSTRACTIntroduction:Penile prostheses are subject to a continuous development and have gained better mechanical reliability and safety during the last decades. In this study, we aimed to investigate the outcomes and satisfaction rates of inflatable penile prosthesis (IPP) and semirigid penile prosthesis (SPP) implantation.Materials and Methods:From August 2001 to June 2012, 257 men with erectile dysfunction (ED) underwent penile prosthesis implantation (PPI) at our institution. Of the 257 patients, 118 underwent implantation of IPP and 139 underwent SPP implantation. The pre-operative and post-operative erectile status of the patients were assessed by international index of erectile function (IIEF) questionnaire. The satisfaction of patients and partners were evaluated by a telephone interview using the erectile dysfunction inventory of treatment satisfaction (EDITS) questionnaire and EDITS partner survey.Results:The overall major complication rate was higher in IPP group. PPI led to a significant improvement in IIEF scores in both groups. For IPP and SPP groups the average EDITS scores were 78±11and 57±8, respectively, and that for the partners were 72±10 and 49±7, respectively (pConclusion:Although the IPP implantation have better satisfaction rates, the SPP implantation is still a viable treatment option in the surgical treatment of ED because of low cost and high durability with acceptable satisfaction rates.</sec

Clinical features and outcomes of nontransitional cell carcinomas of the urinary bladder: Analysis of 125 cases

Objectives: The aim was to evaluate pathologic diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of 125 patients with nontransitional cell carcinoma of the urinary bladder. Materials and Methods: A total of 3590 patients with bladder tumors operated in our clinic between September 1998 and May 2013 were retrospectively evaluated. A total of 125 patients (107 men and 18 women) with nontransitional cell bladder cancer, confirmed by histopathology, were included in this study. The patients′ characteristics, including age, gender, smoking history, tumor size, and localization, histological types, pathological tumor stages, treatment modalities, and survival rates were all recorded. Results: Of these tumors, 47 (37.6%) were adenocarcinoma (AC), 42 (33.6%) were squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), 23 (18.4%) were undifferentiated carcinoma (UC), 13 (10.4%) were other types of bladder carcinoma. Sixty-three (50.4%) patients had undergone radical cystectomy and pelvic lymphadenectomy ± adjuvant treatment (chemotherapy [CT]/radiotherapy) and 52 (41.6%) patients received radiotherapy ± CT. The median survival time of patients with AC and SCC were significantly higher than patients with UC (AC vs UC, P = 0.001; SCC vs UC, P = 0.000; AC vs. SCC, P = 0.219). Median survival time was significantly higher in radical cystectomy ± adjuvant treatment group (P < 0.05) in all histological types. Conclusion: Prognosis of urinary bladder tumors was directly related to histological type and stage of the tumor. CT or radiotherapy has limited response rates. Early radical cystectomy should be performed to improve prognosis