Search

Even though the combined use of ultrasound (US) and alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) is recommended for the surveillance of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the utilization of AFP has its challenges, including accuracy dependent on its cut-off levels, degree of liver necroinflammation, and etiology of liver disease. Though various studies have demonstrated the utility of protein induced by vitamin K absence II (PIVKA-II) in surveillance, treatment monitoring, and predicting recurrence, it is still not recommended as a routine biomarker test. A panel of 17 experts from Asia-Pacific, gathered to discuss and reach a consensus on the clinical usefulness and value of PIVKA-II for the surveillance and treatment monitoring of HCC, based on six predetermined statements. The experts agreed that PIVKA-II was valuable in the detection of HCC in AFP-negative patients, and could potentially benefit detection of early HCC in combination with AFP. PIVKA-II is clinically useful for monitoring curative and intra-arterial locoregional treatments, outcomes, and recurrence, and could potentially predict microvascular invasion risk and facilitate patient selection for liver transplant. However, combining PIVKA-II with US and AFP for HCC surveillance, including small HCC, still requires more evidence, whilst its role in detecting AFP-negative HCC will potentially increase as more patients are treated for hepatitis-related HCC. PIVKA-II in combination with AFP and US has a clinical role in the Asia-Pacific region for surveillance. However, implementation of PIVKA-II in the region will have some challenges, such as requiring standardization of cut-off values, its cost-effectiveness and improving awareness among healthcare providers.

Highthroughput drug screening is an established approach to investigate tumor biology and identify therapeutic leads. Traditional platforms use two-dimensional cultures which do not accurately reflect the biology of human tumors. More clinically relevant model systems such as three-dimensional tumor organoids can be difficult to scale and screen. Manually seeded organoids coupled to destructive endpoint assays allow for the characterization of treatment response, but do not capture transitory changes and intra-sample heterogeneity underlying clinically observed resistance to therapy. We present a pipeline to generate bioprinted tumor organoids linked to label-free, time-resolved imaging via high-speed live cell interferometry (HSLCI) and machine learning-based quantitation of individual organoids. Bioprinting cells gives rise to 3D structures with unaltered tumor histology and gene expression profiles. HSLCI imaging in tandem with machine learning-based segmentation and classification tools enables accurate, label-free parallel mass measurements for thousands of organoids. We demonstrate that this strategy identifies organoids transiently or persistently sensitive or resistant to specific therapies, information that could be used to guide rapid therapy selection.

Lactic acid bacteria have been advocated as probiotics to replace antibiotic growth promoters, improve growth performance, and reduce cost production in swine farming. The aim of this study is to identify and evaluate the probiotic traits of strain LCN13 isolated from traditionally fermented feed for swine. Thirty-five bacterial isolates with different morphological characteristics were isolated, among which 9 isolates showed the ability to produce lactic acid and antibacterial activity against pathogenic bacteria. Among them, isolate LCN13 exhibited a strong capacity to produce lactic acid (18.5 ± 0.31 g/L), inhibited gastrointestinal pathogens such as Salmonella typhimurium ATCC 14028 (18.3 ± 1.52 mm), Escherichia coli ATCC 11105 (24.7 ± 2.14 mm), and Staphylococcus epidermidis ATCC 35984 (31.6 ± 2.93 mm), and produced 182 ng/mL folate and 233 ng/mL riboflavin as measured by LC-MS/MS after 24 hours of incubation. Based on morphological, biochemical, and 16S rRNA gene analysis, the isolate LCN13 was identified as Lactobacillus plantarum. Phenotypic analysis revealed that L. plantarum LCN13 showed remarkable resistance to 1.2% ox-bile salt, 2.0 mM H2O2, and pH 3.0. In addition, the ability to produce high levels of folate (253.6 ± 10.7 ng/mL) and riboflavin (312.0 ± 12.2 ng/mL) after 48 hours was exploited for the first time in the L. plantarum. Taken together, L. plantarum LCN13 might serve as a potential probiotic candidate for animal farming.

Advanced deep learning (DL) algorithms may predict the patient's risk of developing breast cancer based on the Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) and density standards. Recent studies have suggested that the combination of multi-view analysis improved the overall breast exam classification. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-view DL approach for BI-RADS and density assessment of mammograms. The proposed approach first deploys deep convolutional networks for feature extraction on each view separately. The extracted features are then stacked and fed into a Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM) classifier to predict BI-RADS and density scores. We conduct extensive experiments on both the internal mammography dataset and the public dataset Digital Database for Screening Mammography (DDSM). The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms the single-view classification approach on two benchmark datasets by huge F1-score margins (+5% on the internal dataset and +10% on the DDSM dataset). These results highlight the vital role of combining multi-view information to improve the performance of breast cancer risk prediction., This paper has been accepted by the 44th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (2022 IEEE EMBC)

Trong các nguồn lực phát triển kinh tế - xã hội, khoa học và công nghệ là một trong những nhân tố đóng vai trò quan trọng hàng đầu. Cách mạng khoa học và công nghệ đang tạo tiền đề, điều kiện và cũng là động lực hình thành và thúc đẩy hàng loạt các hiện tượng, công việc khác của con người trong đời sống, xã hội (KH&CN, 2021). Khoa học - công nghệ góp phần mở rộng khả năng phát hiện và khai thác có hiệu quả các nguồn lực, sản phẩm khoa học - công nghệ đóng góp trực tiếp vào GDP, đồng thời quyết định tăng trưởng trong dài hạn và chất lượng tăng trưởng, tạo điều kiện chuyển đổi từ chiều rộng sang chiều sâu. Khoa học - công nghệ ngày càng phát triển kéo theo sự ra đời hàng loạt của các công nghệ mới, hiện đại như: vật liệu mới, công nghệ nano, công nghệ sinh học, điện tử, viễn thông… làm tăng các yếu tố của sản xuất - kinh doanh, tăng thu nhập, điều đó dẫn đến sự gia tăng chi tiêu cho tiêu dùng của người dân và do đó cũng tăng đầu tư cho cả nền kinh tế (G.Hưng, 2020).Sự phát triển công nghệ luôn mang đến những điểm đột phá, và cách thức vận động mới cho nền kinh tế thị trường. Thế nhưng đã có nhiều câu hỏi được đặt ra là liệu rằng công nghệ có đang thực sự mang lại cho con người cơ hội làm việc hay là hay là đang lấy đi những công việc từ tay của những người công nhân? Máy móc có đang chiếm lấy công việc của chúng ta? Hay chính người công nhân đã trở nên lỗi thời bởi trí tuệ nhân tạo và robot? Để trả lời cho những câu hỏi trên, nhóm 3 chúng tôi đã quyết định viết bài luận này nhằm nghiên cứu những vấn đề xung quanh tác động của khoa học công nghệ tới cơ hội việc làm của con người trên toàn thế giới. Cấu trúc bài luận bao gồm ba phần như sau: Thực trạng; Tác động; Nguyên nhân; Giải pháp.

Trải qua hai năm đại dịch Covid-19, ngành du lịch đang có xu hướng khởi sắc, dần dần phục hồi và phát triển trở lại.

Trải qua hai năm Covid-19, hiện nay ngành du lịch đang có xu hướng khởi sắc, dần dần phục hồi và phát triển trở lại.

Thử nghiệm hóa chất lên động vật: Thực trạng, Hậu quả và Nỗ lực

Chordomas are rare tumors of notochordal origin, most commonly arising in the sacrum or skull base. Chordomas are considered insensitive to conventional chemotherapy, and their rarity complicates running timely and adequately powered trials to identify effective treatments. Therefore, there is a need for discovery of novel therapeutic approaches. Patient-derived organoids can accelerate drug discovery and development studies and predict patient responses to therapy. In this proof-of-concept study, we successfully established organoids from seven chordoma tumor samples obtained from five patients presenting with tumors in different sites and stages of disease. The organoids recapitulated features of the original parent tumors and inter- as well as intrapatient heterogeneity. High-throughput screenings performed on the organoids highlighted targeted agents such as PI3K/mTOR, EGFR, and JAK2/STAT3 inhibitors among the most effective molecules. Pathway analysis underscored how the NF-κB and IGF-1R pathways are sensitive to perturbations and potential targets to pursue for combination therapy of chordoma.

Whether it is in the form of transcribed conversations, blog posts, or tweets, qualitative data provides a reader with rich insight into both the overarching trends as well as the diversity of human ideas expressed through text. Handling and analyzing large amounts of qualitative data, however, is difficult, often requiring multiple time-intensive perusals in order to identify patterns. This difficulty is multiplied with each additional question or time point present in a data set. A primary challenge then is creating visualizations that support the interpretation of qualitative data by making it easier to identify and explore trends of interest. By combining the affordances of both text and visualizations, WordStream has previously enabled ease of information retrieval and processing of time-series text data, but the data-wrangling necessary to produce a WordStream remains a significant barrier for non-technical users. In response, this paper presents WordStream Maker: an end-to-end platform with a pipeline that utilizes natural language processing (NLP) to help non-technical users process raw text data and generate a customizable visualization without programming practice. Lessons learned from integrating NLP into visualization and scaling to large data sets are discussed, along with use cases to demonstrate the usefulness of the platform., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. In NLVIZ: Exploring Research Opportunities for Natural Language, Text, and Data Visualization, IEEE VIS 2022

Understanding chemical modifications on proteins opens up further possibilities for research on rare diseases. This work proposes visualization approaches using two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) visual representations to analyze and gain insights into protein modifications. In this work, we present the application of Modie Viewer as an attempt to address the Bio+MedVis Challenge at IEEE VIS 2022., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, Bio+MedVis Challenge @ IEEE VIS 2022

Anthocyanins are antioxidant compounds susceptible to environmental factors. Anthocyanin encapsulation into yeast cells is a viable solution to overcome this problem. In this study, the optimal factors for anthocyanin encapsulation were investigated, including anthocyanin concentration, plasmolysis contraction agent, and ethanol concentration, and response surface methodology was evaluated, for the first time. Anthocyanin from Hibiscus sabdariffa L. flowers was encapsulated into Saccharomyces cerevisiae using plasmolysis contraction agent (B: 3%-20% w/v), ethanol concentration (C: 3%-20% v/v), and anthocyanin concentration (A: 0.15-0.45 g/ml). The encapsulation yield and anthocyanin loss rate were determined using a spectrometer (520 nm), and color stability evaluation of the capsules was performed at 80℃ for 30 min. The results of the study showed that these factors have a significant impact on the encapsulation of anthocyanin, in which ethanol agents have the highest encapsulation yield compared to other factors in the study. Statistical analysis shows that the independent variables (A, B, C), their squares (A2, B2, C2), and the interaction between B and C have a significant effect on the encapsulation yield. The optimized factors were anthocyanin, 0.25 g/ml; NaCl, 9.5% (w/v); and ethanol, 11% (v/v) with an encapsulation yield of 36.56% ± 0.55% and anthocyanin loss rate of 15.15% ± 0.98%; This is consistent with the expected encapsulation yield of 35.46% and loss rate of 13.2%.

Background: Acute pancreatitis (AP) is an inflammatory process in which the local pancreatic injury leads to systemic inflammation. Neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet to lymphocyte ratio (PLR) have been shown to predict the severity of various diseases related to inflammation. Data about prognostic value of the combination of PLR - NLR and Bedside index of severity in acute pancreatitis (BISAP) score in patients with AP was still limited. This study aimed to investigate the prognostic value of the combination of PLR - NLR and BISAP scorein patients diagnosed with AP and its relationship with the severity of the disease. Methods: A prospective cross-sectional study. Results: The study records a total of 132 patients being enrolled from February 2019 to September 2019 at the Gastrointestinal Department and Intensive Care Unit of Cho Ray Hospital with AP due to alcohol use (n = 42), gallstone (n = 12) and hypertriglyceridemia (n=36). Patients with PLR ≥ 375.55 and/or NLR ≥ 12.46 had a higher rate of severe AP compared to those with PLR < 375.55 and NLR < 12.46 (OR 2.619, 95% CI: 1.206- 5.686, P 0.013). The combination of PLR - NLR and BISAP demonstrated a predictive value of severe AP (AUC 0.667, 95% CI: 0.579-0.748) with sensitivity being 65.7%, specificity being 67.7%, PPV being 43.4% and NPV being 84.0%. Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that the combination of NLR - PLR and BISAP can predict the severity of acute pancreatitis Key words: Acute pancreatitis (AP), Neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR), Platelet to lymphocyte ratio (PLR), Severity, BISAP score

Recovery efficiency of 137Cs in seawater samples with different volumes of 40, 50, 60, 80 and 100 liters using co-precipitation method by ferrocyanide compounds has been determined. 134Cs nuclide was used as a tracer to determine recovery efficiency. The results showed that the recovery efficiency of 134Cs ranged from 92.62% to 99.26% with mean value of (95.22 ± 2.61)% for different sample volumes. Average recovery efficiency for samples with a volume of 50 liters was (95.70 ± 2.50)% and uncertainty when determining 137Cs in seawater samples were still less than 20%. Therefore, reducing the volume of sample to 50 liters still ensures reliability when determining 137Cs in seawater samples by co-precipitation method, thereby reducing the chemical and time when analyze a large number of samples.

Background: Results from the latest meta-analysis, in fresh cycles, showed that the application of time-lapse monitoring (TLM) together with an embryo-evaluating algorithm was associated with a significantly higher rate of ongoing pregnancy and a lower rate of early pregnancy loss. The aim of this study was to compare the clinical outcomes of frozen embryos classified according to morphokinetic versus morphologic criteria. Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study, conducted at IVFAS, An Sinh Hospital, Vietnam, from July 2014 to July 2017. Patients undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment with antagonist protocol and having freeze-only on day 5 were included. Exclusion criteria were patients (i) treated with in-vitro maturation, (ii) having obstructive azoospermia, or (iii) having uterine abnormalities. Embryos were cultured up to day 5 in TLM system (Primo Vision, Vitrolife, Sweden) or in benchtop (G185, K System, Denmark). The quality of frozen embryos was evaluated based on morphokinetic or morphologic criteria. In the subsequent cycle, endometrial preparation was done by using exogenous estradiol and progesterone. Embryos were thawed and up to 2 embryos were transferred to the uterus. The primary outcome was ongoing pregnancy. The rate of post-thaw survival, post-thawed good/moderate embryo, clinical pregnancy, implantation, miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy were used as secondary endpoints. Results: A total of 276 patients were recruited, with 138 patients in the morphokinetic group and 138 patients in the morphologic group. Baseline characteristics were comparable between the two groups. There was no significant difference in ongoing pregnancy rate in morphokinetic versus morphologic group (57.2% vs. 60.1%, p=0.71). All secondary outcomes were comparable between the two groups. Conclusion: In frozen day-5 embryo transfer, the clinical outcomes were similar when embryos were classified according to morphokinetic versus morphologic criteria for freezing. Using morphokinetic criteria to select embryos for freezing did not improve the ongoing pregnancy rate, as compared to morphologic criteria.

This paper presents VisMCA, an interactive visual analytics system that supports deepening understanding in ML results, augmenting users' capabilities in correcting misclassification, and providing an analysis of underlying patterns, in response to the VAST Challenge 2020 Mini-Challenge 2. VisMCA facilitates tracking provenance and provides a comprehensive view of object detection results, easing re-labeling, and producing reliable, corrected data for future training. Our solution implements multiple analytical views on visual analysis to offer a deep insight for underlying pattern discovery.

This paper reports on the ReINTEL Shared Task for Responsible Information Identification on social network sites, which is hosted at the seventh annual workshop on Vietnamese Language and Speech Processing (VLSP 2020). Given a piece of news with respective textual, visual content and metadata, participants are required to classify whether the news is `reliable' or `unreliable'. In order to generate a fair benchmark, we introduce a novel human-annotated dataset of over 10,000 news collected from a social network in Vietnam. All models will be evaluated in terms of AUC-ROC score, a typical evaluation metric for classification. The competition was run on the Codalab platform. Within two months, the challenge has attracted over 60 participants and recorded nearly 1,000 submission entries.

Having a good Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design is challenging. Previous works have contributed significantly to fostering HCI, including design principle with report study from the instructor view. The questions of how and to what extent students perceive the design principles are still left open. To answer this question, this paper conducts a study of HCI adoption in the classroom. The studio-based learning method was adapted to teach 83 graduate and undergraduate students in 16 weeks long with four activities. A standalone presentation tool for instant online peer feedback during the presentation session was developed to help students justify and critique other's work. Our tool provides a sandbox, which supports multiple application types, including Web-applications, Object Detection, Web-based Virtual Reality (VR), and Augmented Reality (AR). After presenting one assignment and two projects, our results showed that students acquired a better understanding of the Golden Rules principle over time, which was demonstrated by the development of visual interface design. The Wordcloud reveals the primary focus was on the user interface and shed some light on students' interest in user experience. The inter-rater score indicates the agreement among students that they have the same level of understanding of the principles. The results show a high level of guideline compliance with HCI principles, in which we witnessed variations in visual cognitive styles. Regardless of diversity in visual preference, the students presented high consistency and a similar perspective on adopting HCI design principles. The results also elicited suggestions into the development of the HCI curriculum in the future., Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, 15th International Symposium on Visual Computing 2020

Additional file 1. Overview of the methods applied to calculate productivity costs.

Additional file 2. Questionnaire for pig farmers.

Additional file 1. Summary of survey data for pig farms in Bac Giang and Nghe An province of Vietnam.

Additional file 1. Monitoring and evaluations tools for event-based surveillance in Vietnam. This file contains supervision checklists, desk review tool, key informant interview guides, focus group discussion guides, timeliness form, and acceptability surveys.

The four major characteristics of the 21st century context are globalization; information technology, knowledge economy and ethnic issues. They require a strong innovation, synchronization in terms of program, content, methods and evaluation. The use of teaching theories in the direction of capacity development, application of information technology teaching became the trend of modern education. This paper deals with the design of electronic lesson plans based on constructivism theory that help teachers and students access to rich and diverse sources of knowledge. As a result, their needs for exploration, research and problem solving are stimulated. This not only makes the lesson more lively and attractive but also enhances the ability to learn and use the technology of teachers and students.

Genus Sinotympana Lee, 2009 Sinotympana Lee 2009: 87. TYPE SPECIES. Sinotympana incomparabilis Lee 2009: 88. (Nankunshan National Park, Guangdong Province, China) DIAGNOSIS . This genus was originally differentiated compared to genera of the Dundubiina (Lee 2009) but was later reassigned to the Aolina (Lee and Emery 2014). A key to the genera of the Aolina was produced by Lee and Emery (2014) and updated with additional genera by Lee and Sanborn (2015) and Lee (2016). Sinotympana is distinguished from the other Aolina by the following group of characters in these keys: body length less than 3.2 times as wide as abdominal tergite 3, timbal cover with a minimal gap between timbal cover and cruciform elevation, male abdomen longer than distance between anterior postclypeus and posterior cruciform elevation, and the male opercula not extending to the posterior margin of sternite III with medial margins only slightly separated or slightly overlapped. DISTRIBUTION . China (Guangdong) and Vietnam (Cao Bang).

Sinotympana caobangensis sp. nov. Pham & Sanborn (Figs. 1–3, 5–6) TYPE SERIES . Holotype: “ VIETNAM / Cao Bang prov., Nguyen Binh distr., / Phia Oac—Phia Den NR / light trap / Pham HT coll. / 11.v.2014 / VNMN-E-000.0007.773”, male (VNMN). Paratypes: same data as holotype, nine males (VNMN). DESCRIPTION . Castaneous and tawny marked with piceous. Ratio of body length to head width about 3.0 (2.98– 3.02). Head. Head castaneous, frons greenish ochraceous, small piceous spot just lateral to lateral ocelli, piceous fascia extending from medial lateral ocelli anteriorly expanding to frontoclypeal suture and posteriorly to margin of head, anterior vertex and supra-antennal plate piceous, mark extending to posterior head including posterior cranial depression and fusing with piceous posterior of eye, distance between lateral ocelli and eyes slightly longer than distance between the two lateral ocelli, ocelli reddish, eyes ochraceous. Genae castaneous with transverse piceous fascia between postclypeus and eye, lorum castaneous anteriorly, piceous posteriorly, postclypeus prominently swollen, castaneous with piceous spot on dorsal surface, series of 8–9 transverse fuscous fasciae on either side of midline, ventroposterior midline and ventrolateral regions piceous, anteclypeus castaneous with two fuscous spots on the middle of the carina and piceous posterior margin, mentum pale tawny with lateral castaneous fasciae, labium pale tawny with castaneous central longitudinal fascia and piceous apex, reaching posterior margins of hind coxae, antennae piceous. Thorax. Pronotum castaneous with short tawny fascia on midline, piceous fascia on either side of midline expanding laterally anteriorly and posteriorly forming elongated triangular areas, posterior also extends medially to fuse across midline in ambient fissure, ambient fissure and paramedian and lateral fissures piceous, curved piceous fascia extending from posterior paramedian fissure onto disc, piceous extending across disc from posterior lateral fissure to ambient fissure, ambient fissure piceous, pronotal collar tawny posterior and lateral margin edged in piceous, with small piceous tooth on lateral margin, lateral angle broadened, oblique piceous mark extending from anterior margin medial to pronotal collar lateral angle, larger piceous spot on lateral portion of pronotal collar lateral angle. Mesonotum tawny with castaneous anterolateral fascia and ochraceous anterolateral margin, central piceous fascia widening at posterior submedial sigilla and extending laterally anterior to cruciform elevation with piceous crossing anterior arm of cruciform elevation, lateral submedian sigilla piceous with fascia expanding in middle towards midline, curving to fuse with central fascia, small triangular spot in medioanterior lateral sigilla, piceous fascia in lateral sigilla extending to piceous posterior margin, scutal depression piceous, cruciform elevation tawny, piceous posterior to anterior arms and posterior margin, wing groove tawny, dense golden pile between anterior arms of cruciform elevation and on posterior margin, white pubescence on anterolateral margin and posterior wing groove. Ventral thoracic segments castaneous laterally, piceous medially, with dense pile and white pubescence. Wings. Fore and hind wings hyaline. Fore wing basal venation castaneous except ochraceous cubitus posterior + 1A and piceous 2A+3A, distal venation piceous, infuscation on radial and radiomedial crossveins, distal radius anterior 2 that extends onto ambient vein in distal apical cell 1, distal radius posterior and distal medial veins 1–3. Hind wing venation similar to fore wing with piceous anal vein 3, grayish along 2A and 3A in anal cell 2, anal cell 3 grayish. Legs. All legs with similar markings, coxae tawny marked with castaneous and piceous, trochanters tawny marked centrally and distally with piceous, femora castaneous with tawny apex heavily marked with piceous laterally and distally, tibia castaneous with annular piceous marks proximally and distally, tarsi and pretarsal claws piceous. Fore femur primary spine basad angled distally, piceous, secondary spine almost perpendicular to long femur axis, piceous with castaneous tip. Operculum. Tawny with anteromedial margin piceous, roughly triangular with rounded apex, surface slightly prominent, operculum extending to or slightly beyond 3rd sternite (sternum), medial margin angled to base, medial margins well separated. Meracanthus pointed, long reaching more than half the length of sternite I, fuscous. Abdomen. Longer than distance from anterior margin of postclypeus to posterior margin of cruciform elevation, tergites primarily piceous variously marked with tawny or castaneous, tergite 1 piceous with transverse tawny fascia dorsally and tawny posterolateral spot, tergite 2 primarily tawny with piceous anterior margin, central fascia not reaching posterior margin and dorsolateral spot on posterior half of tergite lateral portion extending to corner of timbal cover, tergite 3 with large anterior dorsolateral tawny spot and small tawny spot immediately posterior to this large spot near posterior margin, tergites 4–6 piceous with castaneous anterolateral spots, tergites 7–8 piceous, membrane between tergites castaneous. Timbal cover tawny with piceous anteromedial margin edged in castaneous, roughly semicircular with straight ventral margin, completely concealing timbal. Tergites covered with silvery pile, white pruinosity on lateral tergites 2 and 3 including timbal cover. Abdominal sternites I and II piceous, sternite III piceous anteromedially margined with castaneous with transverse tawny fascia posteriorly expanding laterally, sternites IV cataneous with tawny midline and posterior margin, sternites V–VI with tawny midline, castaneous laterally and piceous posterior margin, piceous band wider in sternite VI, sternite VII piceous with castaneous spot on posterolateral margin and tawny spot on anterolateral corner. Epipleurites castaneous anteriorly, tawny posteriorly with piceous marking centrally, amount of piceous increasing in posterior epipleurites. Medial sternites I and II, lateral sternites III–VII and epipleurites covered with white pubescence, epipleurites with long pile. Male genitalia. Distal shoulder of pygofer curved, upper pygofer lobes of pygofer absent, pygofer with ventral margins parallel, basal pygofer lobes indistinct, pressed against lateral pygofer and radiating golden pile, dorsal beak short. Uncus large, with uncal lobes fused at base, bifurcate distally; lateral branches of uncus wide and thick, diverging laterally from base with straight ventral margin; distal margin straight with lateral tip recurving ventrally, lateral margin straight. Aedeagus tubular, small, protruding between lateral branches of uncus. Claspers absent. Female is unknown. MEASUREMENTS (mm). N = 10 males, mean (range). Body length: 36.2 (35.8–36.5), fore wing length: 45.4 (45.1–45.6), fore wing width: 14.0 (13.9–14.2), head width: 9.1 (8.9–9.5), head length: 4.6 (4.5–4.7); pronotum width: 12.8 (12.3–13.0), mesonotum width: 11.0 (10.7–11.4), mesonotum length: 8.8 (8.3–9.1). DIAGNOSIS . The new species can be distinguished from S. incomparabilis by the structure of the obovate ventral margins of the pygofer in S. incomparabilis while the ventral margins are parallel in S. caobangensis sp. nov. The middle pygofer margin lacks long pile in the new species that is present in S. incomparabilis. The uncal lobes of S. caobangensis sp. nov. are straight but curve mediad in S. incomparabilis. The uncal lobes have a straight ventral margin when viewed from the side in the new species but there is a semicircular notch in the uncal lobe of S. incomparabilis. The distal uncal lobes are straight in the new species but semicircular in S. incomparabilis. The new species possesses distinct infuscation on the fore wing radial and radiomedial crossveins, the radiomedial crossvein infuscation is absent in S. incomparabilis. In addition, the markings on the pronotal collar are small and incomplete in the new species but span the pronotal collar with the lateral marks fusing in S. incomparabilis. The male opercula are widely separated in the new species but almost touching or slightly overlapping in S. incomparabilis. Tergites 1 and 2 are significantly marked with tawny and there are midline spots on tergites 4 and 5 in the new species but the tergites are almost completely piceous in S. incomparabilis. BIOLOGY . This species was collected by light trapping in virgin rainforest at an altitude between 950 to1250 meters. This forest still retains abundant primary features, especially the high-altitude sub-tropical evergreen rainforest ecosystem, the mid-altitude sub-tropical evergreen rainforest ecosystem, and mixed timber-bamboo forests with four-layered structure covering large areas. Some ecosystems are specific to high altitude environment, such as the dwarf forest and moss forest ecosystems. DISTRIBUTION . The species is currently only known from the type series collected in Phia Oac—Phia Den National Park, Cao Bang Province, Northern Vietnam (Fig. 1). The national park extends through the communes of Thanh Cong, Quang Thanh, Phan Thanh, and Hung Dao and the town of Tinh Tuc in Nguyen Binh district. The park has a total area of over 10,500ha, with its highest peak at nearly 2,000 meters above sea level. Phia Oac—Phia Den National Park is noted for its fantastic natural and wild scenery. ETYMOLOGY . The name is a combination of caobang– for the province where the the type series was collected and –ensis (L. suffix denoting place).

Sinotympana caobangensis sp. nov. Pham & Sanborn (Figs. 1���3, 5���6) TYPE SERIES . Holotype: ��� VIETNAM / Cao Bang prov., Nguyen Binh distr., / Phia Oac���Phia Den NR / light trap / Pham HT coll. / 11.v.2014 / VNMN-E-000.0007.773���, male (VNMN). Paratypes: same data as holotype, nine males (VNMN). DESCRIPTION . Castaneous and tawny marked with piceous. Ratio of body length to head width about 3.0 (2.98��� 3.02). Head. Head castaneous, frons greenish ochraceous, small piceous spot just lateral to lateral ocelli, piceous fascia extending from medial lateral ocelli anteriorly expanding to frontoclypeal suture and posteriorly to margin of head, anterior vertex and supra-antennal plate piceous, mark extending to posterior head including posterior cranial depression and fusing with piceous posterior of eye, distance between lateral ocelli and eyes slightly longer than distance between the two lateral ocelli, ocelli reddish, eyes ochraceous. Genae castaneous with transverse piceous fascia between postclypeus and eye, lorum castaneous anteriorly, piceous posteriorly, postclypeus prominently swollen, castaneous with piceous spot on dorsal surface, series of 8���9 transverse fuscous fasciae on either side of midline, ventroposterior midline and ventrolateral regions piceous, anteclypeus castaneous with two fuscous spots on the middle of the carina and piceous posterior margin, mentum pale tawny with lateral castaneous fasciae, labium pale tawny with castaneous central longitudinal fascia and piceous apex, reaching posterior margins of hind coxae, antennae piceous. Thorax. Pronotum castaneous with short tawny fascia on midline, piceous fascia on either side of midline expanding laterally anteriorly and posteriorly forming elongated triangular areas, posterior also extends medially to fuse across midline in ambient fissure, ambient fissure and paramedian and lateral fissures piceous, curved piceous fascia extending from posterior paramedian fissure onto disc, piceous extending across disc from posterior lateral fissure to ambient fissure, ambient fissure piceous, pronotal collar tawny posterior and lateral margin edged in piceous, with small piceous tooth on lateral margin, lateral angle broadened, oblique piceous mark extending from anterior margin medial to pronotal collar lateral angle, larger piceous spot on lateral portion of pronotal collar lateral angle. Mesonotum tawny with castaneous anterolateral fascia and ochraceous anterolateral margin, central piceous fascia widening at posterior submedial sigilla and extending laterally anterior to cruciform elevation with piceous crossing anterior arm of cruciform elevation, lateral submedian sigilla piceous with fascia expanding in middle towards midline, curving to fuse with central fascia, small triangular spot in medioanterior lateral sigilla, piceous fascia in lateral sigilla extending to piceous posterior margin, scutal depression piceous, cruciform elevation tawny, piceous posterior to anterior arms and posterior margin, wing groove tawny, dense golden pile between anterior arms of cruciform elevation and on posterior margin, white pubescence on anterolateral margin and posterior wing groove. Ventral thoracic segments castaneous laterally, piceous medially, with dense pile and white pubescence. Wings. Fore and hind wings hyaline. Fore wing basal venation castaneous except ochraceous cubitus posterior + 1A and piceous 2A+3A, distal venation piceous, infuscation on radial and radiomedial crossveins, distal radius anterior 2 that extends onto ambient vein in distal apical cell 1, distal radius posterior and distal medial veins 1���3. Hind wing venation similar to fore wing with piceous anal vein 3, grayish along 2A and 3A in anal cell 2, anal cell 3 grayish. Legs. All legs with similar markings, coxae tawny marked with castaneous and piceous, trochanters tawny marked centrally and distally with piceous, femora castaneous with tawny apex heavily marked with piceous laterally and distally, tibia castaneous with annular piceous marks proximally and distally, tarsi and pretarsal claws piceous. Fore femur primary spine basad angled distally, piceous, secondary spine almost perpendicular to long femur axis, piceous with castaneous tip. Operculum. Tawny with anteromedial margin piceous, roughly triangular with rounded apex, surface slightly prominent, operculum extending to or slightly beyond 3rd sternite (sternum), medial margin angled to base, medial margins well separated. Meracanthus pointed, long reaching more than half the length of sternite I, fuscous. Abdomen. Longer than distance from anterior margin of postclypeus to posterior margin of cruciform elevation, tergites primarily piceous variously marked with tawny or castaneous, tergite 1 piceous with transverse tawny fascia dorsally and tawny posterolateral spot, tergite 2 primarily tawny with piceous anterior margin, central fascia not reaching posterior margin and dorsolateral spot on posterior half of tergite lateral portion extending to corner of timbal cover, tergite 3 with large anterior dorsolateral tawny spot and small tawny spot immediately posterior to this large spot near posterior margin, tergites 4���6 piceous with castaneous anterolateral spots, tergites 7���8 piceous, membrane between tergites castaneous. Timbal cover tawny with piceous anteromedial margin edged in castaneous, roughly semicircular with straight ventral margin, completely concealing timbal. Tergites covered with silvery pile, white pruinosity on lateral tergites 2 and 3 including timbal cover. Abdominal sternites I and II piceous, sternite III piceous anteromedially margined with castaneous with transverse tawny fascia posteriorly expanding laterally, sternites IV cataneous with tawny midline and posterior margin, sternites V���VI with tawny midline, castaneous laterally and piceous posterior margin, piceous band wider in sternite VI, sternite VII piceous with castaneous spot on posterolateral margin and tawny spot on anterolateral corner. Epipleurites castaneous anteriorly, tawny posteriorly with piceous marking centrally, amount of piceous increasing in posterior epipleurites. Medial sternites I and II, lateral sternites III���VII and epipleurites covered with white pubescence, epipleurites with long pile. Male genitalia. Distal shoulder of pygofer curved, upper pygofer lobes of pygofer absent, pygofer with ventral margins parallel, basal pygofer lobes indistinct, pressed against lateral pygofer and radiating golden pile, dorsal beak short. Uncus large, with uncal lobes fused at base, bifurcate distally; lateral branches of uncus wide and thick, diverging laterally from base with straight ventral margin; distal margin straight with lateral tip recurving ventrally, lateral margin straight. Aedeagus tubular, small, protruding between lateral branches of uncus. Claspers absent. Female is unknown. MEASUREMENTS (mm). N = 10 males, mean (range). Body length: 36.2 (35.8���36.5), fore wing length: 45.4 (45.1���45.6), fore wing width: 14.0 (13.9���14.2), head width: 9.1 (8.9���9.5), head length: 4.6 (4.5���4.7); pronotum width: 12.8 (12.3���13.0), mesonotum width: 11.0 (10.7���11.4), mesonotum length: 8.8 (8.3���9.1). DIAGNOSIS . The new species can be distinguished from S. incomparabilis by the structure of the obovate ventral margins of the pygofer in S. incomparabilis while the ventral margins are parallel in S. caobangensis sp. nov. The middle pygofer margin lacks long pile in the new species that is present in S. incomparabilis. The uncal lobes of S. caobangensis sp. nov. are straight but curve mediad in S. incomparabilis. The uncal lobes have a straight ventral margin when viewed from the side in the new species but there is a semicircular notch in the uncal lobe of S. incomparabilis. The distal uncal lobes are straight in the new species but semicircular in S. incomparabilis. The new species possesses distinct infuscation on the fore wing radial and radiomedial crossveins, the radiomedial crossvein infuscation is absent in S. incomparabilis. In addition, the markings on the pronotal collar are small and incomplete in the new species but span the pronotal collar with the lateral marks fusing in S. incomparabilis. The male opercula are widely separated in the new species but almost touching or slightly overlapping in S. incomparabilis. Tergites 1 and 2 are significantly marked with tawny and there are midline spots on tergites 4 and 5 in the new species but the tergites are almost completely piceous in S. incomparabilis. BIOLOGY . This species was collected by light trapping in virgin rainforest at an altitude between 950 to1250 meters. This forest still retains abundant primary features, especially the high-altitude sub-tropical evergreen rainforest ecosystem, the mid-altitude sub-tropical evergreen rainforest ecosystem, and mixed timber-bamboo forests with four-layered structure covering large areas. Some ecosystems are specific to high altitude environment, such as the dwarf forest and moss forest ecosystems. DISTRIBUTION . The species is currently only known from the type series collected in Phia Oac���Phia Den National Park, Cao Bang Province, Northern Vietnam (Fig. 1). The national park extends through the communes of Thanh Cong, Quang Thanh, Phan Thanh, and Hung Dao and the town of Tinh Tuc in Nguyen Binh district. The park has a total area of over 10,500ha, with its highest peak at nearly 2,000 meters above sea level. Phia Oac���Phia Den National Park is noted for its fantastic natural and wild scenery. ETYMOLOGY . The name is a combination of caobang��� for the province where the the type series was collected and ���ensis (L. suffix denoting place)., Published as part of Pham, Thai-Hong, Sanborn, Allen F., Nguyen, Huyen-Thi & Constant, Jerome, 2019, A new species and first record of the cicada genus Sinotympana Lee, 2009 (Hemiptera: Cicadidae: Dundubiini) from Vietnam, pp. 565-573 in Zootaxa 4664 (4) on pages 566-570, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4664.4.8, http://zenodo.org/record/3386977

Genus Sinotympana Lee, 2009 Sinotympana Lee 2009: 87. TYPE SPECIES. Sinotympana incomparabilis Lee 2009: 88. (Nankunshan National Park, Guangdong Province, China) DIAGNOSIS . This genus was originally differentiated compared to genera of the Dundubiina (Lee 2009) but was later reassigned to the Aolina (Lee and Emery 2014). A key to the genera of the Aolina was produced by Lee and Emery (2014) and updated with additional genera by Lee and Sanborn (2015) and Lee (2016). Sinotympana is distinguished from the other Aolina by the following group of characters in these keys: body length less than 3.2 times as wide as abdominal tergite 3, timbal cover with a minimal gap between timbal cover and cruciform elevation, male abdomen longer than distance between anterior postclypeus and posterior cruciform elevation, and the male opercula not extending to the posterior margin of sternite III with medial margins only slightly separated or slightly overlapped. DISTRIBUTION . China (Guangdong) and Vietnam (Cao Bang)., Published as part of Pham, Thai-Hong, Sanborn, Allen F., Nguyen, Huyen-Thi & Constant, Jerome, 2019, A new species and first record of the cicada genus Sinotympana Lee, 2009 (Hemiptera: Cicadidae: Dundubiini) from Vietnam, pp. 565-573 in Zootaxa 4664 (4) on page 566, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4664.4.8, http://zenodo.org/record/3386977, {"references":["Lee, Y. J. (2009) A new genus and a new species of Cicadidae (Insecta: Hemiptera) from China. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, 122, 87 - 90. https: // doi. org / 10.2988 / 08 - 29.1","Lee, Y. J. & Emery, D. (2014) Description of a new genus and species of the tribe Dundubiini (Hemiptera: Cicadidae: Cicadinae) from India, with taxonomic notes on Dundubiini including the description of two new subtribes. Zoosystema, 36, 73 - 80. https: // doi. org / 10.5252 / z 2014 n 1 a 5","Lee, Y. J. & Sanborn, A. F. (2015) Erection of a new genus Biura gen. nov., of the subtribe Aolina (Hemiptera: Cicadidae: Cicadinae: Dundubiini). Zootaxa, 4044 (4), 596 - 598. https: // doi. org / 10.11646 / zootaxa. 4044.4.9","Lee, Y. J. (2016) Erections of Changa gen. nov. and Songga gen. nov. of Aolina (Hemiptera: Cicadidae: Cicadinae: Dundubiini) with taxonomic notes and a synonymization. Zootaxa, 4084 (1), 596 - 600. https: // doi. org / 10.11646 / zootaxa. 4084.4.11"]}

Pham, Thai-Hong, Sanborn, Allen F., Nguyen, Huyen-Thi, Constant, Jerome (2019): A new species and first record of the cicada genus Sinotympana Lee, 2009 (Hemiptera: Cicadidae: Dundubiini) from Vietnam. Zootaxa 4664 (4): 565-573, DOI: https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4664.4.8

This paper introduces WordStream, an interactive visual tool for the demonstration of topic evolution. Our approach utilizes the two popular techniques. Word clouds are designed to give an engaging visualization of text via font sizes and colors, while stacked graphs are a common method for visualizing topic evolution. In particular, WordStream emphasizes essential terms chronologically and spatially. To show the usefulness of WordStream, we demonstrate its applications on various data sets, including the Huffington Post and IEEE VIS publications., EuroVis 2019 - Short Papers, Text Visualization and Applications, 103, 107, Tommy Dang, Huyen N. Nguyen, and Vung Pham

NeMo (Neural Modules) is a Python framework-agnostic toolkit for creating AI applications through re-usability, abstraction, and composition. NeMo is built around neural modules, conceptual blocks of neural networks that take typed inputs and produce typed outputs. Such modules typically represent data layers, encoders, decoders, language models, loss functions, or methods of combining activations. NeMo makes it easy to combine and re-use these building blocks while providing a level of semantic correctness checking via its neural type system. The toolkit comes with extendable collections of pre-built modules for automatic speech recognition and natural language processing. Furthermore, NeMo provides built-in support for distributed training and mixed precision on latest NVIDIA GPUs. NeMo is open-source https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo, Comment: 6 pages plus references

We propose NovoGrad, an adaptive stochastic gradient descent method with layer-wise gradient normalization and decoupled weight decay. In our experiments on neural networks for image classification, speech recognition, machine translation, and language modeling, it performs on par or better than well tuned SGD with momentum and Adam or AdamW. Additionally, NovoGrad (1) is robust to the choice of learning rate and weight initialization, (2) works well in a large batch setting, and (3) has two times smaller memory footprint than Adam., Comment: Preprint, under review

Differentially expressed adipose tissue genes. (DOCX 11 kb)

To systematically test whether coinfections spread along the HIV-1 transmission network and whether similarities in HIV-1 genomes predict AIDS-defining illnesses and comorbidities, we analyzed the distribution of these variables on the HIV phylogeny of the densely sampled Swiss HIV Cohort Study. By combining different statistical methods, we could detect, quantify, and explain the clustering of diseases. Infectious conditions such as hepatitis C, but also Kaposi sarcoma, clustered significantly, suggesting transmission of these infections along the HIV-1 transmission network. The clustering of patients with neurocognitive complaints could not be completely explained by the clustering of patients with similar demographic risk factors, which suggests a potential impact of viral genetics. In summary, the consistent and robust signal for coinfections and comorbidities highlights the strong interaction of HIV-1 and other infections and shows the potential of combining phylogenetic methods to identify disease traits that are likely to be related to virus genetic factors.