Large-Scale Goodness Polarity Lexicons for Community Question Answering

We transfer a key idea from the field of sentiment analysis to a new domain: community question answering (cQA). The cQA task we are interested in is the following: given a question and a thread of comments, we want to re-rank the comments so that the ones that are good answers to the question would be ranked higher than the bad ones. We notice that good vs. bad comments use specific vocabulary and that one can often predict the goodness/badness of a comment even ignoring the question, based on the comment contents only. This leads us to the idea to build a good/bad polarity lexicon as an analogy to the positive/negative sentiment polarity lexicons, commonly used in sentiment analysis. In particular, we use pointwise mutual information in order to build large-scale goodness polarity lexicons in a semi-supervised manner starting with a small number of initial seeds. The evaluation results show an improvement of 0.7 MAP points absolute over a very strong baseline and state-of-the art performance on SemEval-2016 Task 3.Comment: SIGIR '17, August 07-11, 2017, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan; Community Question Answering; Goodness polarity lexicons; Sentiment Analysi

Investigations of the Expression of Carcinoembryonic Antigen at the Surface of Cultured Human Colon Carcinoma Cells

A number of cellular products present during fetal development, but absent from normal adult tissues, have been shown to be re-expressed in cancer cells. One example of these oncofetal substances is carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA). Studies were undertaken to examine the expression of CEA at the surface of human colon carcinoma cells grown in vitro and to develop a radioimmunoassay for quantitation of CEA and antibodies to CEA in the serum of cancer patients. Antibodies specific for CEA were prepared in goats and these antibodies were found to induce polar redistribution or capping of the antigen. As with other systems in which polar redistribution of surface molecules have been studied, the capping was temperature-dependent and required an intact microfilament system. Fluorescent-labeled antibodies were utilized to demonstrate that while CEA would undergo capping, blood group antigen A did not, hence these antigens exist as separate molecules at the cell surface. The capping process was further characterized using ¹²⁵I-labeled antibodies and it was demonstrated that upon capping the majority of cell surface CEA underwent endocytosis. The ability to specifically remove CEA from the cell surface with antibody was used to demonstrate a rapid reappearance of CEA on the tumor cell surface, and this reappearance appeared to require protein synthesis. A precise quantitative radioimmunoassay for CEA was developed and used to determine the amount of CEA expressed on cell surfaces. Various strains of cells were established in vitro which differed in the amount of CEA they produced. Two strains which differed in the amount of CEA expressed at their cell surfaces were shown to be equally tumorigenic in nude mice, which suggested a lack of correlation between CEA production and tumorigenicity. The radioimmunoassay was also used to study the control of genetic expression of CEA. There was a direct correlation between the amount of cell surface CEA and the amount of CEA secreted into the culture medium. Control over the level of CEA expressed by various strains appeared genetically stable. Yet, a number of lines of evidence suggested that the parental population from which the strains were derived was heterogeneous with respect to CEA synthesis. The effects of various inducing agents on CEA expression by various cell strains was examined. One strain (HCT-8 Nu2), a very low CEA producing strain, could be induced to express high levels of CEA by inclusion of theophylline in the culture medium. This effect appeared after three days of incubation and reached a maximum after five days. Enhanced expression was dosedependent and time-dependent, requiring continual presence of the drug. The effect also appeared to require continual protein synthesis and did not cause marked alteration of cell morphology or growth. It was demonstrated that the effect was not density-dependent and did not appear to be due to selective proliferation of a high expressor population. Further, the effect could not be mimicked with dibutyryl cyclic adenosine monophosphate. Similarly, another strain (HCT-8R) could be induced to produce higher levels of CEA with bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU). This effect was not as dramatic as the theophylline effect and only appeared transiently. The response to BrdU was dose-dependent. The specific inhibition of binding of ¹²⁵I-Iabeled anti-CEA antibodies by unlabeled anti-CEA antibodies, was used to demonstrate that no antibodies to CEA could be detected in control or cancer patient sera. The radioimmunoassay was also examined to determine its ability to quantitate the amount of CEA in serum from cancer patients and controls. It was determined that this test could measure comparable ranges of standard reference CEA, obtained from international or marketed sources. The results obtained from tests of patient sera closely correlated with results obtained using a marketed assay kit. A limited number of sera from patients was examined for CEA using the assay. Comparable percentages of patients with CEA-related cancers were found positive by my assay as reported in studies using standard assays. However, my assay appeared to have greater specificity than standard assays in that a lesser percent of patients without CEA-related cancers were positive.Doctor of Philosophy (PhD

An epitope-specific DerG-PG70 LEAPS vaccine modulates T cell responses and suppresses arthritis progression in two related murine models of rheumatoid arthritis

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A Phase 3 Trial of 2 Years of Androgen Suppression and Radiation Therapy With or Without Adjuvant Chemotherapy for High-Risk Prostate Cancer: Final Results of Radiation Therapy Oncology Group Phase 3 Randomized Trial NRG Oncology RTOG 9902.

PURPOSE: Long-term (LT) androgen suppression (AS) with radiation therapy (RT) is a standard treatment of high-risk, localized prostate cancer (PCa). Radiation Therapy Oncology Group 9902 was a randomized trial testing the hypothesis that adjuvant combination chemotherapy (CT) with paclitaxel, estramustine, and oral etoposide plus LT AS plus RT would improve overall survival (OS). METHODS AND MATERIALS: Patients with high-risk PCa (prostate-specific antigen 20-100 ng/mL and Gleason score [GS] ≥ 7 or clinical stage ≥ T2 and GS ≥ 8) were randomized to RT and AS (AS + RT) alone or with adjuvant CT (AS + RT + CT). CT was given as four 21-day cycles, delivered beginning 28 days after 70.2 Gy of RT. AS was given as luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone for 24 months, beginning 2 months before RT plus an oral antiandrogen for 4 months before and during RT. The study was designed based on a 6% improvement in OS from 79% to 85% at 5 years, with 90% power and a 2-sided alpha of 0.05. RESULTS: A total of 397 patients (380 eligible) were randomized. The patients had high-risk PCa, 68% with GS 8 to 10 and 34% T3 to T4 tumors, and median prostate-specific antigen of 22.6 ng/mL. The median follow-up period was 9.2 years. The trial closed early because of excess thromboembolic toxicity in the CT arm. The 10-year results for all randomized patients revealed no significant difference between the AS + RT and AS + RT + CT arms in OS (65% vs 63%; P=.81), biochemical failure (58% vs 54%; P=.82), local progression (11% vs 7%; P=.09), distant metastases (16% vs 14%; P=.42), or disease-free survival (22% vs 26%; P=.61). CONCLUSIONS: NRG Oncology RTOG 9902 showed no significant differences in OS, biochemical failure, local progression, distant metastases, or disease-free survival with the addition of adjuvant CT to LT AS + RT. The trial results provide valuable data regarding the natural history of high-risk PCa treated with LT AS + RT and have implications for the feasibility of clinical trial accrual and tolerability using CT for PCa

Gastroesophageal Reflux in Association with Congenital Heart Disease

The clinical course of 19 infants with severe respiratory symptoms associated with the pres ence of both congenital heart disease and gastroesophageal reflux is described. Down Syndrome or central nervous system disease was present in 12 of the 19 infants. The identification of reflux as a major or additional cause of the respiratory complications was often overlooked. Medical therapy alone was successful in only one of the 19 patients. Early repair or palliation of the cardiac malformation with or without subsequent antireflux surgical procedure was as sociated with relief of the symptoms in 13 patients.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67259/2/10.1177_000992288302200606.pd

The impact of polio eradication on routine immunization and primary health care: a mixed-methods study.

BACKGROUND: After 2 decades of focused efforts to eradicate polio, the impact of eradication activities on health systems continues to be controversial. This study evaluated the impact of polio eradication activities on routine immunization (RI) and primary healthcare (PHC). METHODS: Quantitative analysis assessed the effects of polio eradication campaigns on RI and maternal healthcare coverage. A systematic qualitative analysis in 7 countries in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa assessed impacts of polio eradication activities on key health system functions, using data from interviews, participant observation, and document review. RESULTS: Our quantitative analysis did not find compelling evidence of widespread and significant effects of polio eradication campaigns, either positive or negative, on measures of RI and maternal healthcare. Our qualitative analysis revealed context-specific positive impacts of polio eradication activities in many of our case studies, particularly disease surveillance and cold chain strengthening. These impacts were dependent on the initiative of policy makers. Negative impacts, including service interruption and public dissatisfaction, were observed primarily in districts with many campaigns per year. CONCLUSIONS: Polio eradication activities can provide support for RI and PHC, but many opportunities to do so remain missed. Increased commitment to scaling up best practices could lead to significant positive impacts