Jigsaw @ AMI and HaSpeeDe2: Fine-Tuning a Pre-Trained Comment-Domain BERT Model

The Google Jigsaw team produced submissions for two of the EVALITA 2020 (Basile et al. 2020) shared tasks, based in part on the technology that powers the publicly available PerspectiveAPI comment evaluation service. We present a basic description of our submitted results and a review of the types of errors that our system made in these shared tasks

Progression of atypical parkinsonian syndromes: PROSPECT-M-UK study implications for clinical trials

The advent of clinical trials of disease-modifying agents for neurodegenerative disease highlights the need for evidence-based endpoint selection. Here we report the longitudinal PROSPECT-M-UK study of progressive supranuclear palsy, corticobasal syndrome, multiple system atrophy and related disorders, to compare candidate clinical trial endpoints. In this multicentre United Kingdom study, participants were assessed with serial questionnaires, motor examination, neuropsychiatric and magnetic resonance imaging assessments at baseline, six and twelve-months. Participants were classified by diagnosis at baseline and study end, into Richardson syndrome, progressive supranuclear palsy-subcortical (progressive supranuclear palsy-parkinsonism and progressive gait freezing subtypes), progressive supranuclear palsy-cortical (progressive supranuclear palsy-frontal, progressive supranuclear palsy-speech-and-language, and progressive supranuclear palsy-corticobasal syndrome subtypes), multiple system atrophy-parkinsonism, multiple system atrophy-cerebellar, corticobasal syndrome with and without evidence of Alzheimer’s disease pathology and indeterminate syndromes. We calculated annual rate of change, with linear mixed modelling, and sample sizes for clinical trials of disease modifying agents, according to group and assessment type. Two hundred forty-three people were recruited (117 progressive supranuclear palsy, 68 corticobasal syndrome, 42 multiple system atrophy and 16 indeterminate; 138 [56.8%] male; age at recruitment 68.7 ± 8.61 years). One hundred fifty-nine completed six-month assessment (82 progressive supranuclear palsy, 27 corticobasal syndrome, 40 multiple system atrophy and 10 indeterminate) and 153 completed twelve-month assessment (80 progressive supranuclear palsy, 29 corticobasal syndrome, 35 multiple system atrophy and 9 indeterminate). Questionnaire, motor examination, neuropsychiatric and neuroimaging measures declined in all groups, with differences in longitudinal change between groups. Neuroimaging metrics would enable lower sample sizes to achieve equivalent power for clinical trials than cognitive and functional measures, often achieving N < 100 required for one-year two-arm trials (with 80% power to detect 50% slowing). However, optimal outcome measures were disease specific. In conclusion, phenotypic variance within progressive supranuclear palsy, corticobasal syndrome and multiple system atrophy is a major challenge to clinical trial design. Our findings provide an evidence base for selection of clinical trial endpoints, from potential functional, cognitive, clinical or neuroimaging measures of disease progression

Diagnosis Across the Spectrum of Progressive Supranuclear Palsy and Corticobasal Syndrome

IMPORTANCE: Patients with atypical parkinsonian syndromes (APS), including progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), corticobasal syndrome (CBS) and multiple system atrophy (MSA), may be difficult to distinguish in early stages and are often misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s disease (PD). The diagnostic criteria for PSP have been updated to encompass a range of clinical subtypes, but have not been prospectively studied. OBJECTIVE: To define the distinguishing features of PSP and CBS, and to assess their usefulness in facilitating early diagnosis and separation from PD. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS: Cohort study which recruited APS and PD patients from movement disorder clinics across the UK from September 2015 to December 2018, and will follow up patients over 5 years. APS patients were stratified into PSP-Richardson syndrome, PSP-subcortical (including PSP-parkinsonism and PSP-progressive gait freezing cases), PSP-cortical (including PSP-frontal and PSP/CBS overlap cases), MSA-parkinsonism, MSA-cerebellar, CBS-Alzheimer’s and CBS-non-Alzheimer’s groups. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Baseline group comparisons were conducted using: 1) Clinical trajectory; 2) Cognitive screening scales; 3) Serum neurofilament light chain (NF-L); 4) TRIM11, ApoE and MAPT genotypes; 5) Volumetric MRI. RESULTS: 222 APS cases (101 PSP, 55 MSA, 40 CBS and 26 indeterminate) were recruited (58% male; mean age at recruitment, 68.3 years). Age-matched controls (n=76) and PD cases (n=1967) were also included. Concordance between the ante-mortem clinical diagnosis and pathological diagnosis was achieved in 12/13 (92%) of PSP and CBS cases coming to post-mortem. Applying the MDS PSP diagnostic criteria almost doubled the number of patients diagnosed with PSP. 49/101 (49%) of reclassified PSP patients did not have classical PSP-Richardson syndrome. PSP-subcortical patients had a longer diagnostic latency and a more benign clinical trajectory than PSP-Richardson syndrome and PSP-cortical (p<0.05). PSP-subcortical was distinguished from PSP-cortical and PSP-Richardson syndrome by cortical volumetric MRI measures (AUC 0.84-0.89), cognitive profile (AUC 0.80-0.83), serum NF-L (AUC 0.75-0.83) and TRIM11 rs564309 genotype. Midbrain atrophy was a common feature of all PSP subtypes. 8/17 (47%) of CBS patients with CSF analysis were identified as having CBS-Alzheimer’s. CBS-Alzheimer’s patients had a longer diagnostic latency, relatively benign clinical trajectory, greater cognitive impairment and higher APOE-ε4 allele frequency than CBS-non-Alzheimer’s (p<0.05, AUC 0.80-0.87). Serum NF-L levels distinguished PD from PSP and CBS (p<0.05, AUC 0.80). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Clinical, therapeutic and epidemiological studies focusing on PSP-Richardson syndrome are likely to miss a large number of patients with underlying PSP-tau pathology. CSF analysis defines a distinct CBS-Alzheimer’s subgroup. PSP and CBS subtypes have distinct characteristics that may enhance their early diagnosis

EVALITA Evaluation of NLP and Speech Tools for Italian - December 17th, 2020

Welcome to EVALITA 2020! EVALITA is the evaluation campaign of Natural Language Processing and Speech Tools for Italian. EVALITA is an initiative of the Italian Association for Computational Linguistics (AILC, http://www.ai-lc.it) and it is endorsed by the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AIxIA, http://www.aixia.it) and the Italian Association for Speech Sciences (AISV, http://www.aisv.it)

Speaking with Hands: Creating Animated Conversational Characters from Recordings of Human Performance

We describe a method for using a database of recorded speech and captured motion to create an animated conversational character. People&apos;s utterances are composed of short, clearly-delimited phrases; in each phrase, gesture and speech go together meaningfully and synchronize at a common point of maximum emphasis. We develop tools for collecting and managing performance data that exploit this structure. The tools help create scripts for performers, help annotate and segment performance data, and structure specific messages for characters to use within application contexts. Our animations then reproduce this structure. They recombine motion samples with new speech samples to recreate coherent phrases, and blend segments of speech and motion together phraseby -phrase into extended utterances. By framing problems for utterance generation and synthesis so that they can draw closely on a talented performance, our techniques support the rapid construction of animated characters with rich and appropriate expression

Metallic Porous Electrodes Enable Efficient Bicarbonate Electrolysis

We demonstrate here that a porous free-standing silver foam cathode in an electrolytic flow electrolyzer mediates efficient electrolysis of 3.0 M bicarbonate solutions into CO. These results have direct implications for carbon capture schemes where OH- solutions react with CO2 to form bicarbonate-rich solutions that need to be treated to recycle the sorbent and recover the CO2. Our study shows a viable path for replacing the high-temperature thermal process currently used to recover CO2 from these carboncapture solutions by using electricity to drive the conversion of bicarbonate into CO2 and subsequently into CO. The use of free-standing porous silver electrodes was found to yield electrolysis performance parameters (e.g., a Faradaic efficiency for CO production, FECO, of 95% at 100 mA cm2; <3% performance loss after 80 h operation) that are superior to results obtained in bicarbonate electrolyzers that utilize conventional carbon-based gas diffusion electrodes (GDEs) designed for gaseous CO2 fed electrolyzers. This liquid-fed bicarbonate electrolyzer achieves high CO formation rates with the added benefit of not requiring an energy-intensive CO2 regeneration step that would be necessary for the electrolysis of gaseous CO2. These findings represent a potentially important step in closing the carbon cycle.</p

Dose threshold for radiation induced fetal programming in a mouse model at 4 months of age: Hepatic expression of genes and proteins involved in glucose metabolism and glucose uptake in brown adipose tissue.

Exposure to ionizing radiation contributing to negative health outcomes is a widespread concern. However, the impact of low dose and sub-lethal dose radiation (SLDR) exposures remain contentious, particularly in pregnant women who represent a vulnerable group. The fetal programming hypothesis states that an adverse in utero environment or stress during development of an embryo or fetus can result in permanent physiologic changes often resulting in progressive metabolic dysfunction with age. To assess changes in gene expression profiles of glucose/insulin signaling and lipid metabolism caused by radiation exposure in utero, pregnant C57Bl/6J mice were irradiated using a dose response ranging from low dose to SLDR and compared to a Sham-irradiated group. mRNA expression analysis in 16 week old offspring (n = 84) revealed that genes involved in metabolic function including glucose metabolism, insulin signaling and lipid metabolism were unaffected by prenatal radiation exposures up to 300 mGy. However, female offspring of dams exposed to 1000 mGy had upregulated expression of genes contributing to insulin resistance and gluconeogenesis. In a second cohort of mice, the effects of SLDR on fetal programming of hepatic SOCS3 and PEPCK protein expression were assessed. 4 month old female offspring of dams irradiated at 1000 mGy had: 1) increased liver weights, 2) increased hepatic expression of proteins involved in glucose metabolism and 3) increased 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) uptake in interscapular brown adipose tissue (IBAT) measured by positron emission tomography (PET) (n = 25). The results of this study indicate that prenatal radiation exposure does not affect metabolic function up to 300 mGy and 1000 mGy may be a threshold dose for sex-specific alterations in glucose uptake and hepatic gene and protein expression of SOCS3, PEPCK, PPARGC1A and PPARGC1B. These findings suggest that SLDR doses alter glucose uptake in IBAT and hepatic gene and protein expression of offspring and these changes may progress with age