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Introduction: The development of certain immune-mediated diseases (IMD) in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases [IBD; Crohn’s disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC)] has been linked to treatment of IBD. Hair loss in some patients may be due to immune-mediated alopecia areata (AA). Risk factors and outcomes of AA in patients with IBD have not been previously explored.This was a retrospective, multi-center case–control study. Cases were identified as individuals who developed IBD before AA diagnosis. Controls comprised of those who were never diagnosed with AA and treated contemporaneously, selected using random number generator. We extracted demographic and IBD treatment history. Severity of Alopecia Tool (SALT) was used to stratify AA severity. AA outcomes and interventions were compared within controls.We identified 58 cases and 90 controls. Cases had significantly higher rate of tumor necrosis factor α antagonist (anti-TNF) use compared to controls (40.7% vs. 20.0%, p = 0.006). Both groups had similar IBD disease location, behavior, and related surgery. Majority of cases had endoscopic remission or mild disease activity at AA diagnosis. There was no difference in partial or complete improvement of AA between those who stopped or continued IBD therapy (p = 0.57). Those with severe AA were significantly less likely to have complete (0% vs 33.3%, p = 0.01) or any improvement (50% vs 84.9%, p = 0.02) of AA compared to those with non-severe AA.Individuals with IBD who later develop AA were more likely to have been on anti-TNF at time of AA onset. Severity of AA was a significant predictor of AA resolution. Fortunately many patients had improvement in their AA despite continuation of IBD therapy.Methods: The development of certain immune-mediated diseases (IMD) in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases [IBD; Crohn’s disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC)] has been linked to treatment of IBD. Hair loss in some patients may be due to immune-mediated alopecia areata (AA). Risk factors and outcomes of AA in patients with IBD have not been previously explored.This was a retrospective, multi-center case–control study. Cases were identified as individuals who developed IBD before AA diagnosis. Controls comprised of those who were never diagnosed with AA and treated contemporaneously, selected using random number generator. We extracted demographic and IBD treatment history. Severity of Alopecia Tool (SALT) was used to stratify AA severity. AA outcomes and interventions were compared within controls.We identified 58 cases and 90 controls. Cases had significantly higher rate of tumor necrosis factor α antagonist (anti-TNF) use compared to controls (40.7% vs. 20.0%, p = 0.006). Both groups had similar IBD disease location, behavior, and related surgery. Majority of cases had endoscopic remission or mild disease activity at AA diagnosis. There was no difference in partial or complete improvement of AA between those who stopped or continued IBD therapy (p = 0.57). Those with severe AA were significantly less likely to have complete (0% vs 33.3%, p = 0.01) or any improvement (50% vs 84.9%, p = 0.02) of AA compared to those with non-severe AA.Individuals with IBD who later develop AA were more likely to have been on anti-TNF at time of AA onset. Severity of AA was a significant predictor of AA resolution. Fortunately many patients had improvement in their AA despite continuation of IBD therapy.Results: The development of certain immune-mediated diseases (IMD) in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases [IBD; Crohn’s disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC)] has been linked to treatment of IBD. Hair loss in some patients may be due to immune-mediated alopecia areata (AA). Risk factors and outcomes of AA in patients with IBD have not been previously explored.This was a retrospective, multi-center case–control study. Cases were identified as individuals who developed IBD before AA diagnosis. Controls comprised of those who were never diagnosed with AA and treated contemporaneously, selected using random number generator. We extracted demographic and IBD treatment history. Severity of Alopecia Tool (SALT) was used to stratify AA severity. AA outcomes and interventions were compared within controls.We identified 58 cases and 90 controls. Cases had significantly higher rate of tumor necrosis factor α antagonist (anti-TNF) use compared to controls (40.7% vs. 20.0%, p = 0.006). Both groups had similar IBD disease location, behavior, and related surgery. Majority of cases had endoscopic remission or mild disease activity at AA diagnosis. There was no difference in partial or complete improvement of AA between those who stopped or continued IBD therapy (p = 0.57). Those with severe AA were significantly less likely to have complete (0% vs 33.3%, p = 0.01) or any improvement (50% vs 84.9%, p = 0.02) of AA compared to those with non-severe AA.Individuals with IBD who later develop AA were more likely to have been on anti-TNF at time of AA onset. Severity of AA was a significant predictor of AA resolution. Fortunately many patients had improvement in their AA despite continuation of IBD therapy.Discussion: The development of certain immune-mediated diseases (IMD) in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases [IBD; Crohn’s disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC)] has been linked to treatment of IBD. Hair loss in some patients may be due to immune-mediated alopecia areata (AA). Risk factors and outcomes of AA in patients with IBD have not been previously explored.This was a retrospective, multi-center case–control study. Cases were identified as individuals who developed IBD before AA diagnosis. Controls comprised of those who were never diagnosed with AA and treated contemporaneously, selected using random number generator. We extracted demographic and IBD treatment history. Severity of Alopecia Tool (SALT) was used to stratify AA severity. AA outcomes and interventions were compared within controls.We identified 58 cases and 90 controls. Cases had significantly higher rate of tumor necrosis factor α antagonist (anti-TNF) use compared to controls (40.7% vs. 20.0%, p = 0.006). Both groups had similar IBD disease location, behavior, and related surgery. Majority of cases had endoscopic remission or mild disease activity at AA diagnosis. There was no difference in partial or complete improvement of AA between those who stopped or continued IBD therapy (p = 0.57). Those with severe AA were significantly less likely to have complete (0% vs 33.3%, p = 0.01) or any improvement (50% vs 84.9%, p = 0.02) of AA compared to those with non-severe AA.Individuals with IBD who later develop AA were more likely to have been on anti-TNF at time of AA onset. Severity of AA was a significant predictor of AA resolution. Fortunately many patients had improvement in their AA despite continuation of IBD therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a multiple case study of a training center collaboration with three offshore companies and a coastline authority. Through a qualitative inquiry, we utilized the actor-network theory to analyze the common understanding of simulator use in these organizations. The paper argues that the simulator itself is an actor that can integrate shared interests with other actors to establish an actor-network. Such an actor-network expands simulator use beyond purely training purposes. It advocates that the simulator is a medium between maritime academia and industry and aligns it with the same actor-network to facilitate the process of "meaning construction." Such a meaning construction process offers simulator-based training with a valuable definition of the learning outcomes. It helps clarifying who will gain the benefits from simulator use in the future, as well as when and on what basis. The paper also reflects on the benefits and limitations of utilizing a multiple case study in the maritime domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being spoken by a large population of speakers worldwide, Cantonese is under-resourced in terms of the data scale and diversity compared to other major languages. This limitation has excluded it from the current “pre-training and fine-tuning” paradigm that is dominated by Transformer architectures. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review on the existing resources and methodologies for Cantonese Natural Language Processing, covering the recent progress in language understanding, text generation and development of language models. We finally discuss two aspects of the Cantonese language that could make it potentially challenging even for state-of-the-art architectures: colloquialism and multilinguality [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To support people working in dangerous industries, virtual reality (VR) can ensure operators manipulate standardized tasks and work collaboratively to deal with potential risks. Surprisingly, limited research has paid attention to the cognitive load of operators in their collaborative tasks, especially via VR interfaces. Once task demands become complex, many researchers focus on optimizing the design of the interaction interfaces to reduce the cognitive load on the operator. In this paper, we propose a new collaborative VR system with edge enhancement to support two teleoperators working in the VR environment to remote control an uncrewed ground vehicle. We use a compared experiment to evaluate the collaborative VR systems, focusing on the time spent on tasks and the total number of operations. Our results show that the total number of processes and the cognitive load during operations were significantly lower in the two-person group than in the single-person group. Our study sheds light on designing VR systems to support collaborative work with respect to the flow of work of teleoperators instead of simply optimizing the design outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]