Developing Deployable Spoken Language Translation Systems given Limited Resources

Approaches are presented that support the deployment of spoken language translation systems. Newly developed methods allow low cost portability to new language pairs. Proposed translation model pruning techniques achieve a high translation performance even in low memory situations. The named entity and specialty vocabulary coverage, particularly on small and mobile devices, is targeted to an individual user by translation model personalization

Differential diagnosis of laryngeal spindle cell carcinoma and inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor – report of two cases with similar morphology

BACKGROUND: Spindle cell tumors of the larynx are rare. In some cases, the dignity is difficult to determine. We report two cases of laryngeal spindle cell tumors. CASE PRESENTATION: Case 1 is a spindle cell carcinoma (SPC) in a 55 year-old male patient and case 2 an inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor (IMT) in a 34 year-old female patient. A comprehensive morphological and immunohistochemical analysis was done. Both tumors arose at the vocal folds. Magnified laryngoscopy showed polypoid tumors. After resection, conventional histological investigation revealed spindle cell lesions with similar morphology. We found ulceration, mild atypia, and myxoid stroma. Before immunohistochemistry, the dignity was uncertain. Immunohistochemical investigations led to diagnosis of two distinct tumors with different biological behaviour. Both expressed vimentin. Furthermore, the SPC was positive for pan-cytokeratin AE1/3, CK5/6, and smooth-muscle actin, whereas the IMT reacted with antibodies against ALK-1, and EMA. The proliferation (Ki67) was up to 80% in SPC and 10% in IMT. Other stainings with antibodies against p53, p21, Cyclin D1, or Rb did not result in additional information. After resection, the patient with SPC is free of disease for seven months. The IMT recurred three months after first surgery, but no relapses were found eight months after resurgery. CONCLUSION: Differential diagnosis can be difficult without immunohistochemistry. Therefore, a comprehensive morphological and immunohistochemical analysis is necessary, but markers of cell cycle (apart from the assessment of proliferation) do not help

Cosmic ray transport and anisotropies

We show that the large-scale cosmic ray anisotropy at ~10 TeV can be explained by a modified Compton-Getting effect in the magnetized flow field of old supernova remnants. This approach suggests an optimum energy scale for detecting the anisotropy. Two key assumptions are that propagation is based on turbulence following a Kolmogorov law and that cosmic ray interactions are dominated by transport through stellar winds of the exploding stars. A prediction is that the amplitude is smaller at lower energies due to incomplete sampling of the velocity field and also smaller at larger energies due to smearing.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur

Existence of symmetric and asymmetric spikes for a crime hotspot model

Copyright @ 2014 Society for Industrial and Applied MathematicsWe study a crime hotspot model suggested by Short, Bertozzi, and Brantingham in [SIAM J. Appl. Dyn. Syst., 9 (2010), pp. 462--483]. The aim of this work is to establish rigorously the formation of hotspots in this model representing concentrations of criminal activity. More precisely, for the one-dimensional system, we rigorously prove the existence of steady states with multiple spikes of the following types: (i) multiple spikes of arbitrary number having the same amplitude (symmetric spikes), and (ii) multiple spikes having different amplitude for the case of one large and one small spike (asymmetric spikes). We use an approach based on Lyapunov--Schmidt reduction and extend it to the quasilinear crime hotspot model. Some novel results that allow us to carry out the Lyapunov--Schmidt reduction are (i) approximation of the quasilinear crime hotspot system on the large scale by the semilinear Schnakenberg model, and (ii) estimate of the spatial dependence of the second component on the small scale which is dominated by the quasilinear part of the system. The paper concludes with an extension to the anisotropic case

Establishing Physalis as a Solanaceae model system enables genetic reevaluation of the inflated calyx syndrome

The highly diverse Solanaceae family contains several widely studied model and crop species. Fully exploring, appreciating, and exploiting this diversity requires additional model systems. Particularly promising are orphan fruit crops in the genus Physalis, which occupy a key evolutionary position in the Solanaceae and capture understudied variation in traits such as inflorescence complexity, fruit ripening and metabolites, disease and insect resistance, self-compatibility, and most notable, the striking inflated calyx syndrome (ICS), an evolutionary novelty found across angiosperms where sepals grow exceptionally large to encapsulate fruits in a protective husk. We recently developed transformation and genome editing in Physalis grisea (groundcherry). However, to systematically explore and unlock the potential of this and related Physalis as genetic systems, high-quality genome assemblies are needed. Here, we present chromosome-scale references for P. grisea and its close relative P. pruinosa and use these resources to study natural and engineered variation in floral traits. We first rapidly identified a natural structural variant in a bHLH gene that causes petal color variation. Further, and against expectations, we found that CRISPR-Cas9 targeted mutagenesis of 11 MADS-box genes, including purported essential regulators of ICS, had no effect on inflation. In a forward genetics screen, we identified huskless, which lacks ICS due to mutation of an AP2-like gene that causes sepals and petals to merge into a single whorl of mixed identity. These resources and findings elevate Physalis to a new Solanaceae model system, and establish a paradigm in the search for factors driving ICS

Nuclear localization and cytosolic overexpression of LASP-1 correlates with tumor size and nodal-positivity of human breast carcinoma

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>LIM and SH3 protein 1 (LASP-1), initially identified from human breast cancer, is a specific focal adhesion protein involved in cell proliferation and migration, which was reported to be overexpressed in 8–12 % of human breast cancers and thought to be exclusively located in cytoplasm.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In the present work we analyzed the cellular and histological expression pattern of LASP-1 and its involvement in biological behavior of human breast cancer through correlation with standard clinicopathological parameters and expression of c-erbB2 (HER-2/neu), estrogen- (ER) and progesterone-receptors (PR). For this purpose immunohistochemical staining intensity and percentage of stained cells were semi-quantitatively rated to define a LASP-1 immunoreactive score (LASP-1-IRS). LASP-1-IRS was determined in 83 cases of invasive ductal breast carcinomas, 25 ductal carcinomas in situ (DCIS) and 18 fibroadenomas. Cellular LASP-1 distribution and expression pattern was visualized by immunofluorescence and confocal microscopy and assessed through separate Western blots of nuclear and cytosol preparations of BT-20, MCF-7, MDA-MB231, and ZR-75/1 breast cancer cells.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Statistical analysis revealed that the resulting LASP-1-IRS was significantly higher in invasive carcinomas compared to fibroadenomas (p = 0.0176). Strong cytoplasmatic expression of LASP-1 was detected in 55.4 % of the invasive carcinomas, which correlated significantly with nuclear LASP-1-positivity (p = 0.0014), increased tumor size (p = 0.0159) and rate of nodal-positivity (p = 0.0066). However, levels of LASP-1 expression did not correlate with average age at time point of diagnosis, histological tumor grading, c-erbB2-, ER- or PR-expression.</p> <p>Increased nuclear localization and cytosolic expression of LASP-1 was found in breast cancer with higher tumor stage as well as in rapidly proliferating epidermal basal cells. Confocal microscopy and separate Western blots of cytosolic and nuclear preparations confirmed nuclear localization of LASP-1.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The current data provide evidence that LASP-1 is not exclusively a cytosolic protein, but is also detectable within the nucleus. Increased expression of LASP-1 in vivo is present in breast carcinomas with higher tumor stage and therefore may be related with worse prognosis concerning patients' overall survival.</p

MIBG scans in patients with stage 4 neuroblastoma reveal two metastatic patterns, one is associated with MYCN amplification and in MYCN-amplified tumours correlates with a better prognosis

Methods: Diagnostic 123I-MIBG scans from 249 patients (123 from a European and 126 from the COG cohort) were assessed for metastatic spread in 14 body segments and the form of the lesions: “focal” (clear margins distinguishable from adjacent background) or “diffuse” (indistinct margins, dispersed throughout the body segment). The total numbers of diffuse and focal lesions were recorded. Patients were then categorized as having lesions exclusively focal, lesions more focal than diffuse, lesions more diffuse than focal, or lesions exclusively diffuse.Results: Diffuse lesions affected a median of seven body segments and focal lesions a median of two body segments (P < 0.001, both cohorts). Patients with a focal pattern had a median of 2 affected body segments and those with a diffuse pattern a median of 11 affected body segments (P < 0.001, both cohorts). Thus, two MIBG-avid metastatic patterns emerged: “limited-focal” and “extensive-diffuse”. The median numbers of affected body segments in MYCN-amplified (MNA) tumours were 5 (European cohort) and 4 (COG cohort) compared to 9 and 11, respectively, in single-copy MYCN (MYCNsc) tumours (P < 0.001). Patients with exclusively focal metastases were more likely to have a MNA tumour (60 % and 70 %, respectively) than patients with the other types of metastases (23 % and 28 %, respectively; P < 0.001). In a multivariate Cox regression analysis, focal metastases were associated with a better event-free and overall survival than the other types of metastases in patients with MNA tumours in the COG cohort (P < 0.01).Conclusion: Two metastatic patterns were found: a “limited and focal” pattern found mainly in patients with MNA neuroblastoma that correlated with prognosis, and an “extensive and diffuse” pattern found mainly in patients with MYCNsc neuroblastoma.Purpose: The aim of this study was to find clinically relevant MIBG-avid metastatic patterns in patients with newly diagnosed stage 4 neuroblastoma