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Up until now, several studies have shown that a speechinterface system giving verbal suggestions with beepingsounds that decrease in pitch conveyed a low systemconfidence level to users intuitively, and these beeping soundswere named “artificial subtle expressions” (ASEs). However,all participants in these studies were only Japanese, so if theparticipants’ mother tongue has different sensitivity tovariations in pitch compared with Japanese, theinterpretations of the ASEs might be different. We theninvestigated whether the ASEs are interpreted in the sameway as with Japanese regardless of the users’ mother tongues;specifically we focused on three language categories intraditional phonological typology. We conducted a web-basedexperiment to investigate whether the ways speakers ofGerman, Portuguese (stress accent language), MandarinChinese (tone language) and Japanese (pitch accent language)interpret the ASEs are different or not. The results of thisexperiment showed that the ways of interpreting did not differ,so this suggests that these ways are language-independent

Background: Distinguishing between central nervous system lymphoma (CNSL) and CNS infectious and/or demyelinating diseases, although clinically important, is sometimes difficult even using imaging strategies and conventional cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analyses. To determine whether detection of genetic mutations enables differentiation between these diseases and the early detection of CNSL, we performed mutational analysis using CSF liquid biopsy technique. Methods: In this study, we extracted cell‐free DNA from the CSF (CSF‐cfDNA) of CNSL (N = 10), CNS infectious disease (N = 10), and demyelinating disease (N = 10) patients, and performed quantitative mutational analysis by droplet‐digital PCR. Conventional analyses were also performed using peripheral blood and CSF to confirm the characteristics of each disease. Results: Blood hemoglobin and albumin levels were significantly lower in CNSL than CNS infectious and demyelinating diseases, CSF cell counts were significantly higher in infectious diseases than CNSL and demyelinating diseases, and CSF‐cfDNA concentrations were significantly higher in infectious diseases than CNSL and demyelinating diseases. Mutation analysis using CSF‐cfDNA detected MYD88L265P and CD79Y196 mutations in 60% of CNSLs each, with either mutation detected in 80% of cases. Mutual existence of both mutations was identified in 40% of cases. These mutations were not detected in either infectious or demyelinating diseases, and the sensitivity and specificity of detecting either MYD88/CD79B mutations in CNSL were 80% and 100%, respectively. In the four cases biopsied, the median time from collecting CSF with the detected mutations to definitive diagnosis by conventional methods was 22.5 days (range, 18–93 days). Conclusions: These results suggest that mutation analysis using CSF‐cfDNA might be useful for differentiating CNSL from CNS infectious/demyelinating diseases and for early detection of CNSL, even in cases where brain biopsy is difficult to perform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Byline: Takao. Teranishi, Shigeo. Ohba, Yushi. Kawazoe, Kazuhide. Adachi, Kazuhiro. Murayama, Seiji. Yamada, Masato. Abe, Mitsuhiro. Hasegawa, Yuichi. Hirose Superficial siderosis is a rare disease resulting from the deposited hemosiderin [...]