Automatic detection of Parkinson’s disease: an experimental analysis of common speech production tasks used for diagnosis

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder of mid-to-late life after Alzheimer’s disease. During the progression of the disease, most individuals with PD report impairments in speech due to deficits in phonation, articulation, prosody, and fluency. In the literature, several studies perform the automatic classification of speech of people with PD considering various types of acoustic information extracted from different speech tasks. Nevertheless, it is unclear which tasks are more important for an automatic classification of the disease. In this work, we compare the discriminant capabilities of eight verbal tasks designed to capture the major symptoms affecting speech. To this end, we introduce a new database of Portuguese speakers consisting of 65 healthy control and 75 PD subjects. For each task, an automatic classifier is built using feature sets and modeling approaches in compliance with the current state of the art. Experimental results permit to identify reading aloud prosodic sentences and story-telling tasks as the most useful for the automatic detection of PD.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

EduBrowser : a multimodal automated monitoring system for co-located collaborative learning

Majority of learning analytics systems are designed to monitor and analyze students’ online interactions during collaborative learning. In the case of co-located collaborative learning, student interactions take place in the physical space as well as online. While existing learning management systems provide specific logs and snapshots of students’ online responses that are automatically captured, the potential of insights that can be derived from students’ non-digital face-to-face interactions during collaborative discourse remains untapped. In this paper, we propose an architecture for data acquisition and processing from co-located face-to-face collaborative learning, designed to be scalable beyond dyadic and triadic collaborative learning and across different curricula. We outline the system design, current experience of deployment across 4 sessions of co-located collaborative learning sessions, as well as brief examples of acquired data

Edoxaban versus warfarin in patients with atrial fibrillation

Contains fulltext : 125374.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)BACKGROUND: Edoxaban is a direct oral factor Xa inhibitor with proven antithrombotic effects. The long-term efficacy and safety of edoxaban as compared with warfarin in patients with atrial fibrillation is not known. METHODS: We conducted a randomized, double-blind, double-dummy trial comparing two once-daily regimens of edoxaban with warfarin in 21,105 patients with moderate-to-high-risk atrial fibrillation (median follow-up, 2.8 years). The primary efficacy end point was stroke or systemic embolism. Each edoxaban regimen was tested for noninferiority to warfarin during the treatment period. The principal safety end point was major bleeding. RESULTS: The annualized rate of the primary end point during treatment was 1.50% with warfarin (median time in the therapeutic range, 68.4%), as compared with 1.18% with high-dose edoxaban (hazard ratio, 0.79; 97.5% confidence interval [CI], 0.63 to 0.99; P<0.001 for noninferiority) and 1.61% with low-dose edoxaban (hazard ratio, 1.07; 97.5% CI, 0.87 to 1.31; P=0.005 for noninferiority). In the intention-to-treat analysis, there was a trend favoring high-dose edoxaban versus warfarin (hazard ratio, 0.87; 97.5% CI, 0.73 to 1.04; P=0.08) and an unfavorable trend with low-dose edoxaban versus warfarin (hazard ratio, 1.13; 97.5% CI, 0.96 to 1.34; P=0.10). The annualized rate of major bleeding was 3.43% with warfarin versus 2.75% with high-dose edoxaban (hazard ratio, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.71 to 0.91; P<0.001) and 1.61% with low-dose edoxaban (hazard ratio, 0.47; 95% CI, 0.41 to 0.55; P<0.001). The corresponding annualized rates of death from cardiovascular causes were 3.17% versus 2.74% (hazard ratio, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.77 to 0.97; P=0.01), and 2.71% (hazard ratio, 0.85; 95% CI, 0.76 to 0.96; P=0.008), and the corresponding rates of the key secondary end point (a composite of stroke, systemic embolism, or death from cardiovascular causes) were 4.43% versus 3.85% (hazard ratio, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.78 to 0.96; P=0.005), and 4.23% (hazard ratio, 0.95; 95% CI, 0.86 to 1.05; P=0.32). CONCLUSIONS: Both once-daily regimens of edoxaban were noninferior to warfarin with respect to the prevention of stroke or systemic embolism and were associated with significantly lower rates of bleeding and death from cardiovascular causes. (Funded by Daiichi Sankyo Pharma Development; ENGAGE AF-TIMI 48 ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00781391.)