Toxicity in Multilingual Machine Translation at Scale

Machine Translation systems can produce different types of errors, some of which are characterized as critical or catastrophic due to the specific negative impact that they can have on users. In this paper we focus on one type of critical error: added toxicity. We evaluate and analyze added toxicity when translating a large evaluation dataset (HOLISTICBIAS, over 472k sentences, covering 13 demographic axes) from English into 164 languages. An automatic toxicity evaluation shows that added toxicity across languages varies from 0% to 5%. The output languages with the most added toxicity tend to be low-resource ones, and the demographic axes with the most added toxicity include sexual orientation, gender and sex, and ability. We also perform human evaluation on a subset of 8 translation directions, confirming the prevalence of true added toxicity. We use a measurement of the amount of source contribution to the translation, where a low source contribution implies hallucination, to interpret what causes toxicity. Making use of the input attributions allows us to explain toxicity, because the source contributions significantly correlate with toxicity for 84% of languages studied. Given our findings, our recommendations to reduce added toxicity are to curate training data to avoid mistranslations, mitigate hallucination and check unstable translations

Immunophenotyping Reveals the Diversity of Human Dental Pulp Mesenchymal Stromal Cells In vivo and Their Evolution upon In vitro Amplification

International audienceMesenchymal stromal/stem cells (MSCs) from human dental pulp (DP) can be expanded in vitro for cell-based and regenerative dentistry therapeutic purposes. However, their heterogeneity may be a hurdle to the achievement of reproducible and predictable therapeutic outcomes. To get a better knowledge about this heterogeneity, we designed a flow cytometric strategy to analyze the phenotype of DP cells in vivo and upon in vitro expansion with stem cell markers. We focused on the CD31 − cell population to exclude endothelial and leukocytic cells. Results showed that the in vivo CD31 − DP cell population contained 1.4% of CD56 + , 1.5% of CD146 + , 2.4% of CD271 + and 6.3% of MSCA-1 + cells but very few Stro-1 + cells (≤1%). CD56 + , CD146 + , CD271 + , and MSCA-1 + cell subpopulations expressed various levels of these markers. CD146 + MSCA-1 + , CD271 + MSCA-1 + , and CD146 + CD271 + cells were the most abundant DP-MSC populations. Analysis of DP-MSCs expanded in vitro with a medicinal manufacturing approach showed that CD146 was expressed by about 50% of CD56 + , CD271 + , MSCA-1 + , and Stro-1 + cells, and MSCA-1 by 15-30% of CD56 + , CD146 + , CD271 + , and Stro-1 + cells. These ratios remained stable with passages. CD271 and Stro-1 were expressed by <1% of the expanded cell populations. Interestingly, the percentage of CD56 + cells strongly increased from P1 (25%) to P4 (80%) both in all sub-populations studied. CD146 + CD56 + , MSCA-1 + CD56 + , and CD146 + MSCA-1 + cells were the most abundant DP-MSCs at the end of P4. These results established that DP-MSCs constitute a heterogeneous mixture of cells in pulp tissue in vivo and in culture, and that their phenotype is modified upon in vitro expansion. Further studies are needed to determine whether co-expression of specific MSC markers confers DP cells specific properties that could be used for the regeneration of human tissues, including the dental pulp, with standardized cell-based medicinal products

SeamlessM4T-Massively Multilingual & Multimodal Machine Translation

What does it take to create the Babel Fish, a tool that can help individuals translate speech between any two languages? While recent breakthroughs in text-based models have pushed machine translation coverage beyond 200 languages, unified speech-to-speech translation models have yet to achieve similar strides. More specifically, conventional speech-to-speech translation systems rely on cascaded systems that perform translation progressively, putting high-performing unified systems out of reach. To address these gaps, we introduce SeamlessM4T, a single model that supports speech-to-speech translation, speech-to-text translation, text-to-speech translation, text-to-text translation, and automatic speech recognition for up to 100 languages. To build this, we used 1 million hours of open speech audio data to learn self-supervised speech representations with w2v-BERT 2.0. Subsequently, we created a multimodal corpus of automatically aligned speech translations. Filtered and combined with human-labeled and pseudo-labeled data, we developed the first multilingual system capable of translating from and into English for both speech and text. On FLEURS, SeamlessM4T sets a new standard for translations into multiple target languages, achieving an improvement of 20% BLEU over the previous SOTA in direct speech-to-text translation. Compared to strong cascaded models, SeamlessM4T improves the quality of into-English translation by 1.3 BLEU points in speech-to-text and by 2.6 ASR-BLEU points in speech-to-speech. Tested for robustness, our system performs better against background noises and speaker variations in speech-to-text tasks compared to the current SOTA model. Critically, we evaluated SeamlessM4T on gender bias and added toxicity to assess translation safety. Finally, all contributions in this work are open-sourced and accessible at https://github.com/facebookresearch/seamless_communicatio

Promotion des moustiquaires imprégnées d’insecticide et contrôle du paludisme : quel niveau de protection pour les enfants en période de sevrage au Burkina Faso ?

International audiencePoster CAE.04 Introduction: malaria causes about one million children deaths every year toward the world and 75% of those are African children under five years. Although, when the Insecticide Treated Nets (ITN) are use correctly and in following days, they must avoid six deaths per years from one mille children who sleep under ITN. Since “Roll Back Malaria’’ target, many efforts are been done in several countries in order to promote ITN use. But the rate of child under five year morbidity and mortality due to malaria is still high. What about this? The aim of this study is to compare le level of protection with ITN of child under five; we particularly aim the children who are leaving there mother because of nurse stopping in Burkina Faso. Methods: This investigation used a descriptive and comparative method. And for this we have done a literature review followed by an interview of the population in two Health District, one in rural area and another in urban area. We also interviewed the National Malaria Control Program of Burkina Faso workers. Results: The mains results sow that 42% of household own one ITN for the family use and 57,6% of them have more than two ITN. The ITN owners bought them in 57, 6% of the cases. The Ante-natal free distribution of ITN represent 27,3% and the rate of women who sleep under ITN(65%) where high than men (46, 2%).The children under one year where likely to be sleeping under ITN because of there mother and the nursery was the main reason as said by 75% of women. 78,8% of the parents of children under five said that they will try to give them an ITN in order to continue the protection against mosquitoes bits when they will bee leaving they mother nursery. But 21, 2 % of the parents mention the lack of money to buy a new ITN for there children. The children leave they parents bed progressively to another bed and they often sleep without ITN protection with there brothers, sisters or grand-mothers. Conclusion: Booth men and women of any social group know that ITN are an effective mean to protect children against malaria burden; they accept ITN and they use them. But the period of mother nursery stopping and the sleeping arrangement sow us many practices and behaviours that have a negative impact on the protection of children under five. Given the fact that most of household are less than two ITN owners, we expect that when the children leave they parents bed for another bed, they are not protected with ITN. And then there are at risk of malaria illness more than those who are still in they mother nursery or protection.Poster CAE.04Le paludisme est à l’origine d’environ un million de décès par an et plus de 75% sont des enfants africains de moins de cinq ans; or lorsque les moustiquaires imprégnées d’insecticide (MII) sont correctement utilisées et en permanence, elles permettent d’éviter le décès de six enfants par an sur mille enfants dormant sous MII. Depuis le lancement de l’initiative «Roll Back Malaria» des efforts significatifs dans plusieurs pays ont permis de vulgariser l’utilisation des MII. Néanmoins on constate toujours une forte morbidité et mortalité liées au paludisme chez les enfants de moins de cinq ans. Dans cette étude un intérêt particulier est porté sur la protection des enfants en période de sevrage. L’objectif de cette étude est de comparer le niveau de protection par les moustiquaires imprégnées des enfants en période de sevrage à ceux qui sont encore sous allaitement maternel au Burkina Faso. Méthodes: Nous avons mené une enquête transversale à visée descriptive et comparative en suivant une démarche exploratoire. Ainsi, à la suite des entretiens exploratoires et de la revue de littérature nous avons mené une enquête complémentaire sur la promotion des MII auprès des populations bénéficiaires dans deux districts sanitaires dont un en milieu rural et un en milieu urbain et des responsables du PNLP/BF. Résultats: les principaux résultats montrent que 42,4% des ménages disposent d'une MII pour les besoins de la famille contre 57,6% des ménages qui ont plus d’une MII; 57,6% des bénéficiaires de MII les ont achetés. Les acquisitions lors des consultations prénatales représentent 27,3% et la proportion de femmes qui dorment quotidiennement sous MII (65%) est plus élevée que celle des hommes (46,2%). Les enfants de moins d’un an sont généralement sous MII en raison du fait qu’ils partagent la même couche que leur maman et l’allaitement maternel en est la principale raison comme l’affirment 75% des femmes. En cas de sevrage, 78,8% des parents envisagent de continuer à protéger les enfants contre les piqûres de moustiques avec les MII et ce, afin d’«éviter les dépenses pour soigner le paludisme». Cependant 21,2% des parents évoquent le manque de moyens financiers pour s’acheter une nouvelle moustiquaire au profit des enfants qui sont en période de sevrage. L’enfant qui entre en période de sevrage est séparé progressivement de ses parents vers une autre couche; Il est remis à sa grand-mère ou va dans une autre couche avec ses frères et soeurs et le plus souvent ne bénéficie plus de la protection de la moustiquaire. Conclusion: Les hommes aussi bien que les femmes ont compris que les moustiquaires imprégnées protégeaient les enfants du paludisme et l’acceptation des MII par les différentes catégories socioprofessionnelles semble ne pas poser de problème. Cependant entre l’allaitement, le sevrage et le mode de couchage on note des diversités de comportements qui ont une influence négative sur la protection des enfants de moins de cinq ans. Etant donné qu’une grande partie des ménages disposent d’une seule MII on s’attend à ce que les enfants perdent la MII pendant la période de sevrage. Ce qui les rend plus vulnérables au paludisme que les enfants encore sous allaitement maternel. Ce poster est issu du mémoire soutenu pour l'obtention du Master 2 en Développement / Santé Internationale à l'Université Senghor à Alexandrie, Egypte par Clément BAGNOA intitulé "Promotion des moustiquaires imprégnées d’insecticide et contrôle du paludisme : quel niveau de protection pour les enfants en période de sevrage au Burkina Faso ?" sous la direction de Nicole Vernazza - Licht, anthropologue

Human dental pulp stem cells cultured in serum-free supplemented medium

Growing evidence show that human dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) could provide a source of adult stem cells for the treatment of neurodegenerative pathologies. In this study, DPSCs were expanded and cultured with a protocol generally used for the culture of neural stem/progenitor cells.Methodology: DPSC cultures were established from third molars. The pulp tissue was enzymatically digested and cultured in serum-supplemented basal medium for 12 hours. Adherent (ADH) and non-adherent (non-ADH) cell populations were separated according to their differential adhesion to plastic and then cultured in serum-free defined N2 medium with epidermal growth factor (EGF) and basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF). Both ADH and non-ADH populations were analyzed by FACS and/or PCR.Results: FACS analysis of ADH-DPSCs revealed the expression of the mesenchymal cell marker CD90, the neuronal marker CD56, the transferrin receptor CD71, and the chemokine receptor CXCR3, whereas hematopoietic stem cells markers CD45, CD133 and CD34 were not expressed. ADH-DPSCs expressed transcripts coding for the Nestin gene, whereas expression levels of genes coding for the neuronal markers β-III tubulin and NF-M, and the oligodendrocyte marker PLP-1 were donor dependent. ADH-DPSCs did not express the transcripts for GFAP, an astrocyte marker. Cells of the non-ADH population that grew as spheroids expressed Nestin, β-III tubulin, NF-M and PLP-1 transcripts. DPSCs migrated out of the spheroids exhibited an odontoblast-like morphology and expressed a higher level of DSPP and osteocalcin transcripts than ADH-DPSCs. Conclusion: Collectively, these data indicate that human DPSCs can be expended and cultured in serum-free supplemented medium with EGF and bFGF. ADH-DPSCs and non-ADH populations contained neuronal and/or oligodendrocyte precursors at different stages of commitment and interestingly, cells from spheroid structures seem to be more engaged into the odontoblastic lineage than the ADH-DPSCs

Impact of rheology on the mass transfer coefficient during the growth phase of Trichoderma reesei in stirred bioreactors

Submerged cultures of filamentous fungi are widely used in industry to produce a variety of economically important proteins, such as cellulase enzymes. One of the possible strategies to increase enzyme yields relies on enhancing biomass concentration before production. However, when biomass concentration is increased, the culture broth becomes highly shear-thinning, affecting both mixing and oxygen transfer. Fungi and enzyme yields depend strongly on the ability to supply oxygen to the broth and, in consequence, scale-up considerations mainly focus on gas-liquid mass transfer predictions. In this study, rheology and mass transfer are characterised during the growth of Trichoderma reesei. A power law model is proposed to simulate the rheology of the broth, based on a consistency index that depends on the concentration of the biomass. Mass transfer coefficients measured during the growth phase in bioreactors of 3 and 20 L are compared to those measured with water and model fluids. As the value of power consumption is important for the mass transfer correlations, special care was devoted to validating its measurement in the larger vessel. Comparisons between experiments and recently developed correlations showed that the use of model fluids is a good way to investigate hydrodynamics and mass transfer inside large mock-ups. Good agreement was observed between mass transfer coefficients measured during the growth phase and those calculated using a correlation developed from model fluid experiments (Gabelle et al., 2011). The tools established here to estimate rheology and mass transfer during the T. reesei growth phase could be used in the future for cost estimation and process optimisation. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Dental Pulp Defence and Repair Mechanisms in Dental Caries

International audienceDental caries is a chronic infectious disease resulting from the penetration of oral bacteria into the enamel and dentin. Microorganisms subsequently trigger inflammatory responses in the dental pulp. These events can lead to pulp healing if the infection is not too severe following the removal of diseased enamel and dentin tissues and clinical restoration of the tooth. However, chronic inflammation often persists in the pulp despite treatment, inducing permanent loss of normal tissue and reducing innate repair capacities. For complete tooth healing the formation of a reactionary/reparative dentin barrier to distance and protect the pulp from infectious agents and restorative materials is required. Clinical and in vitro experimental data clearly indicate that dentin barrier formation only occurs when pulp inflammation and infection are minimised, thus enabling reestablishment of tissue homeostasis and health. Therefore, promoting the resolution of pulp inflammation may provide a valuable therapeutic opportunity to ensure the sustainability of dental treatments. This paper focusses on key cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in pulp responses to bacteria and in the pulpal transition between caries-induced inflammation and dentinogenic-based repair. We report, using selected examples, different strategies potentially used by odontoblasts and specialized immune cells to combat dentin-invading bacteria in vivo

Legislative Documents

Also, variously referred to as: House bills; House documents; House legislative documents; legislative documents; General Court documents