NOWJ1@ALQAC 2023: Enhancing Legal Task Performance with Classic Statistical Models and Pre-trained Language Models

This paper describes the NOWJ1 Team's approach for the Automated Legal Question Answering Competition (ALQAC) 2023, which focuses on enhancing legal task performance by integrating classical statistical models and Pre-trained Language Models (PLMs). For the document retrieval task, we implement a pre-processing step to overcome input limitations and apply learning-to-rank methods to consolidate features from various models. The question-answering task is split into two sub-tasks: sentence classification and answer extraction. We incorporate state-of-the-art models to develop distinct systems for each sub-task, utilizing both classic statistical models and pre-trained Language Models. Experimental results demonstrate the promising potential of our proposed methodology in the competition.Comment: ISAILD@KSE 202

Prospects for Food Fermentation in South-East Asia, Topics From the Tropical Fermentation and Biotechnology Network at the End of the AsiFood Erasmus+Project

Fermentation has been used for centuries to produce food in South-East Asia and some foods of this region are famous in the whole world. However, in the twenty first century, issues like food safety and quality must be addressed in a world changing from local business to globalization. In Western countries, the answer to these questions has been made through hygienisation, generalization of the use of starters, specialization of agriculture and use of long-distance transportation. This may have resulted in a loss in the taste and typicity of the products, in an extensive use of antibiotics and other chemicals and eventually, in a loss in the confidence of consumers to the products. The challenges awaiting fermentation in South-East Asia are thus to improve safety and quality in a sustainable system producing tasty and typical fermented products and valorising by-products. At the end of the “AsiFood Erasmus+ project” (www.asifood.org), the goal of this paper is to present and discuss these challenges as addressed by the Tropical Fermentation Network, a group of researchers from universities, research centers and companies in Asia and Europe. This paper presents current actions and prospects on hygienic, environmental, sensorial and nutritional qualities of traditional fermented food including screening of functional bacteria and starters, food safety strategies, research for new antimicrobial compounds, development of more sustainable fermentations and valorisation of by-products. A specificity of this network is also the multidisciplinary approach dealing with microbiology, food, chemical, sensorial, and genetic analyses, biotechnology, food supply chain, consumers and ethnology

Safety and efficacy of fluoxetine on functional outcome after acute stroke (AFFINITY): a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

Background Trials of fluoxetine for recovery after stroke report conflicting results. The Assessment oF FluoxetINe In sTroke recoverY (AFFINITY) trial aimed to show if daily oral fluoxetine for 6 months after stroke improves functional outcome in an ethnically diverse population. Methods AFFINITY was a randomised, parallel-group, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial done in 43 hospital stroke units in Australia (n=29), New Zealand (four), and Vietnam (ten). Eligible patients were adults (aged ≥18 years) with a clinical diagnosis of acute stroke in the previous 2–15 days, brain imaging consistent with ischaemic or haemorrhagic stroke, and a persisting neurological deficit that produced a modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score of 1 or more. Patients were randomly assigned 1:1 via a web-based system using a minimisation algorithm to once daily, oral fluoxetine 20 mg capsules or matching placebo for 6 months. Patients, carers, investigators, and outcome assessors were masked to the treatment allocation. The primary outcome was functional status, measured by the mRS, at 6 months. The primary analysis was an ordinal logistic regression of the mRS at 6 months, adjusted for minimisation variables. Primary and safety analyses were done according to the patient's treatment allocation. The trial is registered with the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry, ACTRN12611000774921. Findings Between Jan 11, 2013, and June 30, 2019, 1280 patients were recruited in Australia (n=532), New Zealand (n=42), and Vietnam (n=706), of whom 642 were randomly assigned to fluoxetine and 638 were randomly assigned to placebo. Mean duration of trial treatment was 167 days (SD 48·1). At 6 months, mRS data were available in 624 (97%) patients in the fluoxetine group and 632 (99%) in the placebo group. The distribution of mRS categories was similar in the fluoxetine and placebo groups (adjusted common odds ratio 0·94, 95% CI 0·76–1·15; p=0·53). Compared with patients in the placebo group, patients in the fluoxetine group had more falls (20 [3%] vs seven [1%]; p=0·018), bone fractures (19 [3%] vs six [1%]; p=0·014), and epileptic seizures (ten [2%] vs two [<1%]; p=0·038) at 6 months. Interpretation Oral fluoxetine 20 mg daily for 6 months after acute stroke did not improve functional outcome and increased the risk of falls, bone fractures, and epileptic seizures. These results do not support the use of fluoxetine to improve functional outcome after stroke

Hybrid Modeling Approaches For Microwave Heating System Design

International audienceOne of the advantages of microwave heating of a dielectric material is the direct transfer of electromagnetic energy to the core of the dielectric through interactions between electromagnetic waves and the dielectric, without heating the surrounding elements [1]. For an industrial application, the appropriated design of a specific applicator is essential [2]. This usually goes through the following steps: a) Choice of generator and first of all its working frequency. b) Identification of the electrical properties of the dielectric to be heated around the working frequency c) Design of an applicator ensuring a good impedance matching so as to have return losses below a threshold, and those during the heating procedure during which the complex permittivity of heated material will change depending on temperature. The applicator design work will be taken around a coaxial cell (Fig. 1). This later will be used both as a measurement cell for complex permittivity of a ceramic material having fairly good susceptibility to microwave power, and as part of the microwave applicator, ensuring the supply of electromagnetic energy in the form of a Transverse ElectroMagnetic (TEM) wave and the fixation of the ceramic susceptor. This article will be divided into 2 parts: i. The extraction of the complex permittivity by an inverse modeling whose objective function is built using measurements of scattering parameters of measurement cell and a simulation based on the hybridization of a two port model resulting from the experiment and a one port model obtained by using the COMSOL software. ii. The determination of the geometry of the applicator ensuring a minimum of reflection. For this an optimization will be carried out using LiveLinkTM for MATLAB module to fix the position of the susceptor in the coaxial cell and that of the removable short-circuit at the end of the cell. The validation of the correct operation by a simulation under COMSOL multiphysics of the heating by microwaves of the applicator will be presented during the conference

Thermal analysis of RF intermittently heating porous media with coaxial cell

International audienc

A laboratory GTEM cell design for electromagnetic exposure study on biological system

International audienceIn this paper, a Gigaherz Transverse Electromagnetic (GTEM) cell is designed for laboratory use electromagnetic fields exposure study on biological system. Once the total volume and the area of exposure have been defined, a first calculation will be made to deduce the initial values of the parameters of the GTEM cell. The use of a fullwave electromagnetic simulation software will allow these parameters to be adjusted to obtain a low reflection on a frequency band around 915 MHz, and a fairly homogeneous electric field in the test zone... The effect of the biological medium on the distribution of the electromagnetic field will also be analyzed and the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) estimation will be made with different parameters of the biological media

Atelier 1: Mesures par analyseur de réseaux

National audienc

SUBSTRATE INTEGRATED WAVEGUIDE DESIGN USING THE TWO DIMENTIONNAL FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

International audienc