Similarity Search Strategy Research Articles

Oxadiazole Derivatives as Anticancer and Immunomodulatory Agents: A Systematic Review.

Tumor plasticity processes impact the treatment of different types of cancer; as an effect of this, the bioprospecting of therapies from natural and/or synthetic compounds that can regulate or modulate the immune system has increased considerably. Oxadiazole derivatives are structures that exhibit diverse biological activities. Therefore, this review aimed to evaluate the activity of oxadiazole compounds against tumor cell lines and their possible immune-mediated mechanisms. A search in PubMed, Web of Science, and Science Direct databases was carried out on studies published from January 1, 2004, to January 31, 2022, using "oxadiazole" in combination with the other descriptors "cancer" and "macrophage". Only experimental in vitro and in vivo articles were included. A similar search strategy was used in the Derwent Innovation Index database for technology mapping. The search was performed on Drugbank using the descriptor oxadiazole for commercial mapping. 23 oxadiazole studies were included in this review, and some biological activities linked to antitumoral and immunomodulation were listed. Oxadiazole derivatives inhibited tumor cell growth and proliferation, blocked cell cycle, modulated mitochondrial membrane potential, presented immunoregulatory activity by different mechanisms reducing proinflammatory cytokines levels and acted directly as selective inhibitors of the COX enzyme. There was an increase in oxadiazole patent publications in the last 11 years, with emphasis on chemistry, pharmacy and biotechnology applied to microbiology areas. Compounds with 1,2,4-oxadiazole isomer are predominant in patent publications and approved drugs as observed in the technological and commercial mapping. Therefore, oxadiazole derivatives are therapeutic molecules that can be considered promising for the development of cancer therapies.

Upsurge in publications on ramp lesions of the meniscus: A bibliometric study

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to analyze the trends in publications on ramp lesions of the meniscus in the current literature. We hypothesized that publications on ramp lesions have increased rapidly in recent years due to increased knowledge of both clinical and radiological pathology.MethodsA Scopus search performed on 21/01/23 retrieved 171 documents. A similar search strategy was employed to carry out a search for ramp lesions on PubMed with no time filters and only English articles. The articles were downloaded into Excel software, and citations for PubMed articles were determined from the iCite website. Analysis was performed using Excel. Using Orange software, data mining was performed from the titles of all articles.ResultsThere are a total of 126 publications from 2011 to 2022 with a total of 1778 citations in PubMed. Of all publications, 72% were published in the last 3 years, from 2020 to 2022, indicating an exponential increase in interest in this subject in recent years. Similarly, 62% of the citations were aggregated by the years 2017–2020, both years included. When the journals were analyzed according to the number of citations, the American Journal of Sports Medicine (AJSM) topped with 822 citations (46% of all citations) and 25 publications, followed by Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy (KSSTA) with 27 articles and 388 citations (22% of all citations). When analyzed by citations per publication for different types of studies, randomized clinical trials (RCTs) were the most cited, with 32 citations per publication, followed by basic science articles with 31.5. Most of the basic science articles were cadaver studies examining anatomy, technique, and biomechanics. Technical notes were the third most cited at 18.64 per publication. While the USA is the country that leads publications, France is in a significant second position contributing to research on this topic, followed by Germany and Luxembourg.ConclusionsGlobal trend analysis suggests that ramp lesion research has significantly increased and that the number of papers on the topic is steadily increasing. We found that the publications and citations presented a rising trend, the majority of the highly cited papers were contributed by a few centers, and the most cited were randomized clinical trials and basic science studies. The long-term outcomes of conservatively and surgically treated ramp lesions have attracted the most research interest.

Improved Hamming-space-based similarity search algorithm

In the modern context, similarity is driven by the quality-features of the data objects and steered by content preserving stimuli, as retrieval of relevant 'nearest neighbourhood' objects and the way similar objects are pursued. Current similarity searches in Hamming-space-based strategies finds all the data objects within a threshold Hamming-distance for a user query. Though, the numbers of computations for Hamming-distance and candidate generation are the key concerns from the several years. The Hamming-space paradigm extends the range of alternatives for an optimised search experience. A novel 'counting-based' similarity search strategy is proposed, with an a priori and improved Hamming-space estimation, e.g., optimised candidate generation and verification functions. The strategy adapts towards the lesser set of user query dimensions and subsequently constraints the Hamming-space computations with each data objects, driven by generated statistics. The extensive evaluation asserts that the proposed counting-based approach can be combined with any pigeonhole principle-based similarity search to further improve its performance.

Feature extraction method of football fouls based on deep learning algorithm

In order to overcome the problems of abnormal detection and low accuracy in the process of football foul feature extraction, this paper proposes a football foul feature extraction method based on deep learning algorithm to accurately identify the fouls in the process of normal competition. In this method, the background is eliminated by the difference between the input image and the background image, so as to obtain the effective detection target. According to the characteristics of football competition, the human motion tracking algorithm is proposed. Through the template representation, candidate target representation, similarity measurement calculation and search strategy, the dynamic target is tracked in real-time, and its dynamic information is obtained. Finally, the star skeleton feature is used to extract the football foul action feature, and the image feature is transformed into available data to realise the data extraction of action feature. The experimental results show that the proposed method can detect the target with low accuracy.

Day‐ahead wind power ramp forecasting using an image‐based similarity search strategy

With the increase in penetration of wind generation on interconnected power systems, the importance of wind power ramp forecasting has continuously grown. Large power ramps caused by sudden weather changes raise more concerns due to their significant impact on the power system economics and stability. Correct wind power ramp forecasts can help the system operators and utility companies to tradeoff the risks when scheduling wind energy in the electricity market. In this paper, a day-ahead wind power ramp forecasting algorithm is developed to provide probabilistic ramp forecasts for look-ahead times up to 48 h using hourly wind speed forecasts from Environment Canada High Resolution Deterministic Prediction System (HRDPS). An image-based similarity search strategy has been designed to build a direct link between the wind speed forecasts and the wind power ramp prediction, thus reducing the impact of the uncertainty from both the power production forecast model and the ramp identification process on the forecasting accuracy. A performance assessment and validation of the proposed ramp event forecasting method is conducted by using the forecast and operation data from six investigated wind farms across Canada.

Chemical identification and indexing in PubMed full-text articles using deep learning and heuristics.

The identification of chemicals in articles has attracted a large interest in the biomedical scientific community, given its importance in drug development research. Most of previous research have focused on PubMed abstracts, and further investigation using full-text documents is required because these contain additional valuable information that must be explored. The manual expert task of indexing Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms to these articles later helps researchers find the most relevant publications for their ongoing work. The BioCreative VII NLM-Chem track fostered the development of systems for chemical identification and indexing in PubMed full-text articles. Chemical identification consisted in identifying the chemical mentions and linking these to unique MeSH identifiers. This manuscript describes our participation system and the post-challenge improvements we made. We propose a three-stage pipeline that individually performs chemical mention detection, entity normalization and indexing. Regarding chemical identification, we adopted a deep-learning solution that utilizes the PubMedBERT contextualized embeddings followed by a multilayer perceptron and a conditional random field tagging layer. For the normalization approach, we use a sieve-based dictionary filtering followed by a deep-learning similarity search strategy. Finally, for the indexing we developed rules for identifying the more relevant MeSH codes for each article. During the challenge, our system obtained the best official results in the normalization and indexing tasks despite the lower performance in the chemical mention recognition task. In a post-contest phase we boosted our results by improving our named entity recognition model with additional techniques. The final system achieved 0.8731, 0.8275 and 0.4849 in the chemical identification, normalization and indexing tasks, respectively. The code to reproduce our experiments and run the pipeline is publicly available. Database URL https://github.com/bioinformatics-ua/biocreativeVII_track2

Timing of Delivery for Twins With Growth Discordance and Growth Restriction: An Individual Participant Data Meta-analysis.

First, to evaluate the risks of stillbirth and neonatal death by gestational age in twin pregnancies with different levels of growth discordance and in relation to small for gestational age (SGA), and on this basis to establish optimal gestational ages for delivery. Second, to compare these optimal gestational ages with previously established optimal delivery timing for twin pregnancies not complicated by fetal growth restriction, which, in a previous individual patient meta-analysis, was calculated at 37 0/7 weeks of gestation for dichorionic pregnancies and 36 0/7 weeks for monochorionic pregnancies. A search of MEDLINE, EMBASE, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Ovid between 2015 and 2018 was performed of cohort studies reporting risks of stillbirth and neonatal death in twin pregnancies from 32 to 41 weeks of gestation. Studies from a previous meta-analysis using a similar search strategy (from inception to 2015) were combined. Women with monoamniotic twin pregnancies were excluded. Overall, of 57 eligible studies, 20 cohort studies that contributed original data reporting on 7,474 dichorionic and 2,281 monochorionic twin pairs. We performed an individual participant data meta-analysis to calculate the risk of perinatal death (risk difference between prospective stillbirth and neonatal death) per gestational week. Analyses were stratified by chorionicity, levels of growth discordance, and presence of SGA in one or both twins. For both dichorionic and monochorionic twins, the absolute risks of stillbirth and neonatal death were higher when one or both twins were SGA and increased with greater levels of growth discordance. Regardless of level of growth discordance and birth weight, perinatal risk balanced between 36 0/7-6/7 and 37 0/7-6/7 weeks of gestation in both dichorionic and monochorionic twin pregnancies, with likely higher risk of stillbirth than neonatal death from 37 0/7-6/7 weeks onward. Growth discordance or SGA is associated with higher absolute risks of stillbirth and neonatal death. However, balancing these two risks, we did not find evidence that the optimal timing of delivery is changed by the presence of growth disorders alone. PROSPERO, CRD42018090866.

Improving Hamming-Distance Computation for Adaptive Similarity Search Approach

In the modern context, the similarity is determined by content-preserving stimuli, retrieval of relevant ‘nearest neighbor' objects, and the way similar objects are pursued. Current similarity search in hamming-space-based strategies finds all the data objects within a threshold hamming-distance for a user query, though the number of computations for distance and candidate generation are key concerns from the many years. The hamming-space paradigm extends the range of alternatives for an optimized search experience. A novel counting-based similarity search strategy is proposed with an improved hamming-space (e.g., optimized candidate generation and verification function). The strategy adapts towards the lesser set of user query dimensions and subsequently constrains the hamming-space computations with each data object driven by generated statistics. The extensive evaluation asserts that the proposed counting-based approach can be combined with any pigeonhole principle-based similarity search to further improve its performance.

A Late-time Galaxy-targeted Search for the Radio Counterpart of GW190814

Abstract GW190814 was a compact object binary coalescence detected in gravitational waves by Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo that garnered exceptional community interest due to its excellent localization and the uncertain nature of the binary’s lighter-mass component (either the heaviest known neutron star, or the lightest known black hole). Despite extensive follow-up observations, no electromagnetic counterpart has been identified. Here, we present new radio observations of 75 galaxies within the localization volume at Δt ≈ 35–266 days post-merger. Our observations cover ∼32% of the total stellar luminosity in the final localization volume and extend to later timescales than previously reported searches, allowing us to place the deepest constraints to date on the existence of a radio afterglow from a highly off-axis relativistic jet launched during the merger (assuming that the merger occurred within the observed area). For a viewing angle of ∼46° (the best-fit binary inclination derived from the gravitational wave signal) and assumed electron and magnetic field energy fractions of ϵ e = 0.1 and ϵ B = 0.01, we can rule out a typical short gamma-ray burst-like Gaussian jet with an opening angle of 15° and isotropic-equivalent kinetic energy 2 × 1051 erg propagating into a constant-density medium n ≳ 0.1 cm−3. These are the first limits resulting from a galaxy-targeted search for a radio counterpart to a gravitational wave event, and we discuss the challenges—and possible advantages—of applying similar search strategies to future events using current and upcoming radio facilities.

The latent tuberculosis cascade-of-care among people living with HIV: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Tuberculosis preventive therapy (TPT) reduces TB-related morbidity and mortality in people living with HIV (PLHIV). Cascade-of-care analyses help identify gaps and barriers in care and develop targeted solutions. A previous latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) cascade-of-care analysis showed only 18% of persons in at-risk populations complete TPT, but a similar analysis for TPT among PLHIV has not been completed. We conducted a meta-analysis to provide this evidence. We first screened potential articles from a LTBI cascade-of-care systematic review published in 2016. From this study, we included cohorts that reported a minimum of 25 PLHIV. To identify new cohorts, we used a similar search strategy restricted to PLHIV. The search was conducted in Medline, Embase, Health Star, and LILACS, from January 2014 to February 2021. Two authors independently screened titles and full text and assessed risk of bias using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale for cohorts and Cochrane Risk of Bias for cluster randomized trials. We meta-analyzed the proportion of PLHIV completing each step of the LTBI cascade-of-care and estimated the cumulative proportion retained. These results were stratified based on cascades-of-care that used or did not use LTBI testing to determine eligibility for TPT. We also performed a narrative synthesis of enablers and barriers of the cascade-of-care identified at different steps of the cascade. A total of 71 cohorts were included, and 70 were meta-analyzed, comprising 94,011 PLHIV. Among the PLHIV included, 35.3% (33,139/94,011) were from the Americas and 29.2% (27,460/94,011) from Africa. Overall, 49.9% (46,903/94,011) from low- and middle-income countries, median age was 38.0 [interquartile range (IQR) 34.0;43.6], and 65.9% (46,328/70,297) were men, 43.6% (29,629/67,947) were treated with antiretroviral therapy (ART), and the median CD4 count was 390 cell/mm3 (IQR 312;458). Among the cohorts that did not use LTBI tests, the cumulative proportion of PLHIV starting and completing TPT were 40.9% (95% CI: 39.3% to 42.7%) and 33.2% (95% CI: 31.6% to 34.9%). Among cohorts that used LTBI tests, the cumulative proportions of PLHIV starting and completing TPT were 60.4% (95% CI: 58.1% to 62.6%) and 41.9% (95% CI:39.6% to 44.2%), respectively. Completion of TPT was not significantly different in high- compared to low- and middle-income countries. Regardless of LTBI test use, substantial losses in the cascade-of-care occurred before treatment initiation. The integration of HIV and TB care was considered an enabler of the cascade-of-care in multiple cohorts. Key limitations of this systematic review are the observational nature of the included studies, potential selection bias in the population selection, only 14 cohorts reported all steps of the cascade-of-care, and barriers/facilitators were not systematically reported in all cohorts. Although substantial losses were seen in multiple stages of the cascade-of-care, the cumulative proportion of PLHIV completing TPT was higher than previously reported among other at-risk populations. The use of LTBI testing in PLHIV in low- and middle-income countries was associated with higher proportion of the cohorts initiating TPT and with similar rates of completion of TPT.

Ancient enamel peptides recovered from the South American Pleistocene species Notiomastodon platensis and Myocastor cf. coypus

We used two fossil teeth from South American Pleistocene mammals to obtain subsuperficial acid etching samples. We employed samples from the species Notiomastodon platensis and Myocastor cf. coypus for the enamel etchings. The controls included an extant rodent (rat). After the first etching was discarded, a second 20-s etching (i.e., subsuperficial) was directly collected with a ZipTip and injected into an LTQ Orbitrap Velos for MS analysis. The peptides were identified with different software programs that used Peptide Spectrum Match (PSM) and de novo sequencing including similarity search strategies. Most of the peptides that were recovered from the enamel of the fossils belonged to enamel-specific proteins. To our knowledge, this is the first study that has described the recovery of enamel peptide molecules from extinct South American taxa, indicating that enamel peptide data from late Pleistocene fossils can be employed as an additional parameter for phylogenetic analysis, and that the sample can be obtained by a very conservative acid etching, with almost no damage to the fossils. SignificanceThis study shows that it is possible to obtain information based on plenty of ancient peptides recovered from subsuperficial enamel of fossil teeth from South American Pleistocene. The quality of the data suggests that peptides are likely the best preserved biomolecules under certain harsh environmental conditions. The recovery procedure only lasted 20 s and was minimally destructive to the fossils. This opens a myriad of new possibilities for the study of the past.

Effects of oats on gastrointestinal health as assessed by in vitro, animal, and human studies.

Oats are uniquely nutritious, owing to their composition of bioactive compounds, lipids, and β-glucan. Scientific research has established that oats can improve diet quality, reduce cholesterol, regulate satiety, and protect against carcinogenesis in the colon; however, determining the effects of oats on gastrointestinal health and the gut microbiome is a newer, evolving area of research. To better understand the effects of oats on gastrointestinal health in humans, a literature review with predefined search criteria was conducted using the PubMed database and keywords for common gastrointestinal health outcomes. Moreover, to examine the gastrointestinal effects of oats across the scientific spectrum, a similar search strategy was executed to identify animal studies. In vitro studies were identified from the reference lists of human and animal studies. A total of 8 human studies, 19 animal studies, and 5 in vitro studies met the inclusion criteria for this review. The evidence in humans shows beneficial effects of oats on gastrointestinal health, with supportive evidence provided by in vitro and animal studies. The effective dose of oats varies by type, although an amount providing 2.5 to 2.9g of β-glucan per day was shown to decrease fecal pH and alter fecal bacteria. For oat bran, 40 to 100g/d was shown to increase fecal bacterial mass and short-chain fatty acids in humans. Differences in study design, methodology, and type of oats tested make valid comparisons difficult. The identification of best practices for the design of oat studies should be a priority in future research, as the findings will be useful for determining how oats influence specific indices of gastrointestinal health, including the composition of the human gut microbiome.

Hyperspectral band selection using structural information via hierarchical clustering

The techniques of unsupervised band selection are important in the processing of hyperspectral images, such as dimension reduction and abstraction of meaningful information. These techniques aim to select the most informative bands from the original dataset using some similarity metrics and search strategies. For this purpose, the structural information of the images can be utilized in many applications, such as the compact representation and classification of hyperspectral images. Hierarchical clustering method was chosen as the searching strategy and interest points, such as clear edges, blobs, and boundaries of objects, were used as the structural information during the selection of representative bands. At the same time, a similarity criterion was developed to generate a representative band subset from the hyperspectral bands. Finally, the representative band subsets obtained from the proposed methods were classified by the k-nearest neighborhood algorithm and the classification accuracy results were taken as performance criteria. The performances of the proposed methods were compared with the Walumi and Waludi techniques that are common in the literature. Experimental results show that the proposed methods give better results than the others.

Inclusion of Sex and Gender in Emergency Medicine Research-A 2018 Update.

The objectives were to 1) evaluate the inclusion of sex and gender in publications by emergency medicine (EM) researchers following the 2014 federal mandate and an Academic Emergency Medicine consensus conference on sex- and gender-based research and 2) assess trends compared with 2011 status report that showed 29% studies used sex and gender in the study design and 2% reported it as a primary outcome. Using MEDLINE, the term "emergency" was used to identify all English-language studies of adult humans published between 2014 and 2017 as EM affiliated (i.e., the first, second, or last author belonged to an EM section, division, center, or institution functioning as emergency department). Four trained abstractors reviewed the data using a standardized data abstraction form. The search revealed 6,442 articles using the selected "emergency" terms, and 2,628 original studies coded as EM-affiliated publications were reviewed, 2,340 met inclusion criteria, and 2,336 were analyzed. This compared to 750 articles reviewed in 2011 using similar search strategy. The adjusted inter-rater reliability for data abstraction was 97% (95% confidence interval [CI]=95.4%-98.6%]. The leading study areas contributing the most articles were cardiovascular (17.5%), administration/crowding (15.8%), infectious diseases (9.2%), trauma/injury (9.2%), emergency medical services (6.1%), and pulmonary (6.1%). Eighty-six percent (n=1,921) reported the sex/gender composition of the sample and 0.4% (n=8) reported transgender identity. Thirty-four percent used sex/gender in the study design, with 27% (n=609) reporting it as a control variable, 24% (n=543) as an independent variable, and 2% using sex/gender as primary outcome. Studies funded by federal sources were significantly more likely to include sex/gender in the study design than other sources of funding (odds ratio= 1.77; 95% CI= 1.4-2.2). Compared to 2011, we noted an increase in the number of EM scholarship and use of sex and gender in study design, yet the proportion evaluating it as a primary outcome remained unchanged.

Physical Therapist Student Outcomes of Interprofessional Education in Professional (Entry-Level) Physical Therapist Education Programs: A Systematic Review

Background and Purpose. Traditionally, the physical therapy profession has been involved with interprofessional education (IPE) and collaborative practice. However, IPE was not a requirement for professional (entry-level [EL]) physical therapist (PT) curriculum until recently when the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education (CAPTE) incorporated IPE into the Standards and Elements for professional (EL) physical therapist education programs. Therefore, this systematic review is aimed at synthesizing the available evidence regarding physical therapist student outcomes associated with various IPE instructional methods embedded in professional (EL) physical therapist education programs globally. The evidence gathered may help guide educators when developing and implementing IPE curricula into professional (EL) physical therapist programs. Methods. This systematic review of the literature was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines for searching and reporting processes. Individual searches were developed for PubMed, ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health, and CINAHL. The EBSCOhost databases, ERIC, Education Full Text, and Education Research Complete, were searched simultaneously using a similar comprehensive search strategy that included search terms related to 1) education, 2) interprofessional, and 3) physical therapy. Results. Thirteen articles met the inclusion criteria. Outcomes were measured by 6 different outcome measures (OMs) and achieved by a variety of teaching and learning methods. Multiple studies demonstrated an improvement in attitudes toward perception of and perceived need for collaboration among health care professionals of PTs, as well as improved competency, and autonomy after participation in IPE. Physical therapists valued shared leadership and participation, as well as displaying a readiness to learn with other disciplines. Some studies reported negative outcomes related to the ability of shared learning to increase understanding of clinical problems and improve interprofessional communication and teamwork. Conclusion. Both positive and unintended negative outcomes may result from IPE. The OMs reported in this review measure components of teamwork, roles and responsibilities, communication, learning/reflection, patient focus, and ethics/attitudes. Using more than 1 OM seems to measure the outcomes of IPE more effectively. In summary, current evidence suggests an overall positive impact of IPE on PTs' competency and autonomy, teamwork, collaboration, communication, and readiness to learn achieved by a variety of instructional methods.

Should children with an enlarged vestibular aqueduct be restricted from playing contact sports?

Should children with an enlarged vestibular aqueduct be restricted from playing contact sports?

ARGs-OAP v2.0 with an expanded SARG database and Hidden Markov Models for enhancement characterization and quantification of antibiotic resistance genes in environmental metagenomes.

Much global attention has been paid to antibiotic resistance in monitoring its emergence, accumulation and dissemination. For rapid characterization and quantification of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in metagenomic datasets, an online analysis pipeline, ARGs-OAP has been developed consisting of a database termed Structured Antibiotic Resistance Genes (the SARG) with a hierarchical structure (ARGs type-subtype-reference sequence). The new release of the database, termed SARG version 2.0, contains sequences not only from CARD and ARDB databases, but also carefully selected and curated sequences from the latest protein collection of the NCBI-NR database, to keep up to date with the increasing number of ARG deposited sequences. SARG v2.0 has tripled the sequences of the first version and demonstrated improved coverage of ARGs detection in metagenomes from various environmental samples. In addition to annotation of high-throughput raw reads using a similarity search strategy, ARGs-OAP v2.0 now provides model-based identification of assembled sequences using SARGfam, a high-quality profile Hidden Markov Model (HMM), containing profiles of ARG subtypes. Additionally, ARGs-OAP v2.0 improves cell number quantification by using the average coverage of essential single copy marker genes, as an option in addition to the previous method based on the 16S rRNA gene. ARGs-OAP can be accessed through http://smile.hku.hk/SARGs. The database could be downloaded from the same site. Source codes for this study can be downloaded from https://github.com/xiaole99/ARGs-OAP-v2.0. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Verbal fluency performance in Bengali-English bilingual aphasia

Event Abstract Back to Event Verbal fluency performance in Bengali-English bilingual aphasia Abhijeet Patra1 and Arpita Bose1* 1 University of Reading, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, United Kingdom Introduction: Research has shown that impairments in executive control may influence word production abilities in aphasia[1,2]. However, studies investigating the contribution of lexical retrieval and executive control processes during word production are mostly limited to monolingual aphasia[3,4]. Very little is known about bilinguals with aphasia (BWA). A better approach to understand the relationship between lexical retrieval and executive control processes might be to use a task that simultaneously draw upon these processes. In a verbal fluency task, lexical and executive contribution for semantic and letter fluency conditions are different; semantic fluency largely depends on lexical retrieval abilities, whilst letter fluency largely depends on executive control abilities. Characterisation of verbal fluency performance beyond number of correct responses (CR) (e.g., Fluency Difference Score FDS; cluster size; number of switches; temporal measures such as within- and between-cluster pauses), have enabled researchers to specifically speculate the components of performance that depends on lexical retrieval vs. executive control processes[5,6,7]. Previous research has shown that in semantic fluency, BWA produced fewer CR, smaller cluster sizes, and fewer number of switches compared to bilingual healthy adults (BHA)[5,6]. These studies have emphasised the greater role of lexical processes in performance differences between BWA and BHA. However, in absence of comparison to letter fluency, it remains inconclusive if it is only the lexical processes that are compromised in BWA. We compared semantic and letter fluency conditions between Bengali-English BWA and BHA to determine: a) if poor performance in aphasia is due to lexical retrieval and/or executive control difficulties; b) are the differences more exaggerated on measures which depend heavily on the executive control processes. Bengali is a South-Asian language spoken by 180.5 million speakers in the world[8]. Despite that aphasia research reporting Bengali speakers remain under-presented (only one study)[9]. We attempt to fill this gap in the literature. Methods & Procedure: Semantic (animals, fruits and vegetables) and letter fluency (/p/, /k/, /m/) 60-seconds trails were collected from eight non-fluent Bengali-English BWA and eight Bengali-English BHA in their dominant language (Bengali). The groups were matched for age, gender, years of education, and bilingualism measures (language proficiency, usage, dominance). We measured: CR, FDS ((CR.semantic fluency - CR.letter fluency)/CR.semantic fluency), cluster size, number of switches, within-and between-cluster pause. Results and Discussion: Table 1 presents results summary. Overall, on both fluency conditions, compared to BHA, BWA produced fewer number of CR, had higher FDS, made fewer switches, and had longer between-cluster pauses. These results are indicative of difficulty in the executive control component of the verbal fluency task in addition to their lexical difficulties[4,7]. Both groups performed similarly on cluster size and within-cluster pauses. Fewer number of CR, and fewer switches for BWA are consistent with the literature[5,6]. No difference in cluster size and within-cluster pause suggest similar search strategies used by BWA and BHA while accessing the mental lexicon. Our results demonstrate that inclusion of letter fluency and a full range of verbal fluency measures are necessary to understand the effect of lexical and executive control processes in verbal fluency performance. Acknowledgements We would like to thank all our participants for their time and effort. We also would like to acknowledge Felix trust, UK for the PhD fellowship.

Patent Survey of Resveratrol, Taxol, Podophyllotoxin, Withanolides and Their Derivatives Used in Anticancer Therapy.

Resveratrol, taxol, podophyllotoxin, withanolides and their derivatives find applications in anti-cancer therapy. They are plant-derived compounds whose chemical structures and synthesis limit their natural availability and restrict a large-scale industrial production. Hence, their production by various biotechnological approaches may hold promise for a continuous and reliable mode of supply. We review process and product patents in this regard. Accordingly, we provide a general outline to search the freely accessible WIPO, EPO, USPTO and Cambia databases with several keywords and patent codes. We have tabulated both granted and filed patents from the said databases. We retrieved ~40 patents from these databases. Novel biotechnological processes for production of these anticancer compounds include Agrobacterium rhizogenes-mediated hairy root culture, suspension culture, cell culture with elicitors, use of recombinant microorganisms, and bioreactors among others. The results are indicative of being both database-specific as well as queryspecific. A ten-year search window yielded 33 patents. The utility of the search strategy is discussed in the light of biotechnological developments in the field. Those who examine patent literature using similar search strategies may complement their knowledge obtained from perusal of mainstream journal resources.

A template matching approach based on the behavior of swarms of locust

For many image processing applications (such as feature tracking, object recognition, stereo matching and remote sensing), the technique known as Template Matching (TM) plays an important role for the localization and recognition of objects or patterns within a digital image. A TM approach seeks to find a position within a source image which yields to the best possible resemblance between a given sub-image (typically referred as image template) and a corresponding region of such source image. TM involves two critical aspects: similarity measurement and search strategy. In this sense, the simplest available TM method involves an exhaustive computation of the Normalized Cross-Correlation (NCC) value (similarity measurement) over all pixel locations of the source image (search strategy). Unfortunately, this approach is strongly restricted due to the high computational cost implied in the evaluation of the NCC coefficient. Recently, several TM methods based on evolutionary approaches have been proposed as an alternative to reduce the number of search locations in the TM process. However, the lack of balance between exploration and exploitation related to the operators employed by many of such approaches makes TM to suffer from several critical flaws, such as premature convergence. In the proposed approach, the swarm optimization method known as Locust Search (LS) is applied to solve the problem of template matching. The unique evolutionary operators employed by LS method’s search strategy allows to explicitly avoid the concentration of search agents toward the best-known solutions, which in turn allows a better exploration of the valid image’s search region. Experimental results show that, in comparison to other similar methods, the proposed approach achieves the best balance between estimation accuracy and computational cost.