1,721,144 research outputs found
Dysregulated circulating microRNAs as potential new biomarkers of asbestos exposure and malignant pleural mesothelioma
No full textMalignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is an aggressive form of cancer, in which asbestos-related chronic inflammation has been well documented. The use of asbestos was banned in Italy in 1992, whereas it is still employed in other Countries, thus favoring the MPM onset. To date, current diagnostic and prognostic assays for MPM are inadequate, whereas this tumor, being diagnosed in advanced stages, is still fatal. For these reasons, the identification of sensitive and specific MPM biomarkers is of paramount importance. Several evidences have pointed to microRNAs (miRNAs) as biomarkers detectable in patients affected by different diseases, including MPM. In a recent investigation, circulating miRNAs from serum samples of MPM patients, workers ex-exposed to asbestos fibers (WEA) and healthy subjects (HS), have been analyzed by microarray and real time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR). This study allowed to identify three circulating miRNAs, which were found to be dysregulated in the investigated cohorts. The limitation of these results was the small sample size (n=49). The aim of my research was to verify if these dysregulated miRNAs could be statistically validated as new biomarkers of MPM and/or asbestos exposure. To this purpose, sera (n=206) from MPM affected patients (n=69), WEA (n=75) and HS (n=62) were investigated by RT-qPCR and droplet digital PCR (ddPCR). In addition, clinic-pathologic characteristics, occupational and non-occupational information, were collected for WEA and MPM cohorts, in order to check the possible correlations between miRNA levels and these variables. Data obtained confirmed a dysregulation of the three miRNAs in sera from the investigated cohorts. It is worth noting that the ddPCR results were consistent with RT-qPCR data, whereas a linear correlation between the two techniques was obtained. These aspects reinforced the value of the results. Moreover, ROC analyses indicated that two miRNAs were able to significantly discriminate MPM from WEA. The third miRNA was detected in a smaller number of serum samples. However, this miRNA was found to be dysregulated in the three cohorts, being significantly up-regulated in WEA compared to HS. Overall, the most relevant dysregulation of the investigated miRNAs resulted in the WEA cohort. This suggests that these miRNAs may be involved in inflammatory pathways, related to asbestos exposure. The three miRNAs were reported to be dysregulated in different tumors and other inflammation related diseases. It is worth noting that predicted and validated targets for these miRNAs suggest that they are potentially involved in pathways, which are dysregulated in inflammation and/or carcinogenesis. In addition, a significant difference, in the levels of a specific miRNA, emerged between patients with epithelioid MPM compared to the biphasic subtype, while this miRNA negatively correlated with cumulative asbestos exposure. In summary, my research validated the dysregulation of the investigated miRNAs in the three cohorts. Overall, my findings shed light on new potential implications of these molecules in inflammation pathways related to asbestos exposure and suggest that the three miRNAs could have a role in MPM development. These miRNAs could be proposed as potential biomarkers: (i) of disease and consequently for an early MPM diagnosis; (ii) indicative of MPM subtype; (iii) of asbestos exposure; (iv) specifically indicative of exposure duration and quantity of inhaled fibers. Minimally invasive tests, based on quantification of miRNAs in serum, could be employed for screening and monitoring high-risk subjects, as asbestos exposed workers.Il mesotelioma maligno della pleura (MPM) è un tumore aggressivo, il cui principale fattore di rischio è l'esposizione all'amianto. L’impiego di questo minerale cancerogeno è stato bandito in Italia nel 1992, mentre in altri Paesi l’amianto è tuttora in uso, favorendo quindi l’insorgenza di MPM. Attualmente, gli strumenti diagnostici e prognostici per il MPM risultano inadeguati, ed essendo questo tumore diagnosticato quasi sempre negli stadi avanzati, risulta fatale. Pertanto l’identificazione di marcatori sensibili e specifici è di fondamentale importanza. Numerose evidenze indicano i microRNA (miRNA) come marcatori rilevabili in pazienti affetti da differenti patologie, incluso MPM. In uno studio recente, i miRNA circolanti nel siero di pazienti affetti da MPM, lavoratori ex esposti all’amianto (WEA) e soggetti sani (HS), sono stati analizzati mediante microarray e RT-qPCR. Questo studio ha permesso di identificare tre miRNA circolanti, che sono risultati deregolati nelle coorti in esame. Il limite di questi risultati era il ridotto numero di campioni (n=49). Lo scopo della mia ricerca è stato quello di verificare se i tre miRNA selezionati potessero essere validati statisticamente come nuovi marcatori di MPM e/o esposizione all’amianto. A tale fine, i sieri (n=206) di pazienti affetti da MPM (n=69), WEA (n=75) e HS (n=62), sono stati analizzati mediante RT-qPCR e droplet digital PCR (ddPCR). Inoltre, per le coorti dei WEA e MPM, sono state raccolte informazioni occupazionali e non-occupazionali, insieme alle caratteristiche clinico-patologiche, allo scopo di studiare possibili correlazioni tra i livelli dei miRNA e queste variabili. I dati ottenuti hanno confermato una alterata espressione dei tre miRNA nelle coorti in studio. Le due diverse tecniche impiegate nell’analisi di espressione dei miRNA hanno dato risultati che correlano linearmente tra loro, rafforzando quindi la significatività dei dati. Inoltre le curve ROC hanno indicato che due dei tre miRNA erano in grado di discriminare, in maniera significativa, MPM da WEA. Il terzo miRNA in studio è stato rilevato in un numero minore di campioni sierici. Tuttavia, è emerso che anche questo miRNA era deregolato nelle tre coorti, con una significativa sovra-espressione nei WEA rispetto ai HS. Complessivamente, i tre miRNA sono risultati maggiormente deregolati nella coorte dei WEA. Ciò suggerisce che questi miRNA possano essere coinvolti in pathways dell’infiammazione derivata dall’esposizione all’amianto. Da letteratura, i miRNA in studio risultano espressi in maniera aberrante in distinti tumori e altre patologie infiammatorie. Interessante notare che i target predetti e validati per i tre miRNA suggeriscono che questi siano coinvolti in pathways alterate nei processi infiammatori e/o di oncogenesi. Inoltre, è emersa una differenza significativa, nei livelli di espressione di uno specifico miRNA, tra i pazienti affetti da MPM epitelioide, rispetto a quelli con sottotipo bifasico. Lo stesso miRNA correlava negativamente con i livelli di esposizione cumulativa all’amianto. In sintesi, la mia ricerca ha permesso di validare statisticamente l’espressione aberrante dei miRNA indagati nelle coorti in studio. I risultati ottenuti evidenziano potenziali implicazioni di queste molecole nelle pathways infiammatorie associate all’esposizione all’amianto e suggeriscono che questi miRNA possano avere un ruolo nello sviluppo di MPM. Questi tre miRNA potrebbero essere proposti come potenziali marcatori: (i) di malattia, e quindi per una diagnosi precoce di MPM; (ii) del sottotipo di MPM; (iii) di esposizione all’amianto; (iv) nello specifico indicativi della durata dell’esposizione e della quantità di fibre di amianto inalate. Test minimamente invasivi, basati sulla quantificazione dei miRNA nel siero, potrebbero essere impiegati come screening per monitorare i soggetti ad alto rischio, come i lavoratori esposti all’amianto
Multiword Extractor
No full textThis is a lexical acquisition web-service for the automatic extraction of multiword expressions from large corpora. The service takes in input a POS-tagged corpus in CoNLL-X format plus a pair of POS-tags for the first and last word of a MWE, and outputs a list of extracted (candidate) multiword expressions with a set of linguistic and statistical information.
The output can then be post-processed through filters that will refine and improve the accuracy of the extraction, and finally converted to an LMF-compliant XML lexical resource.
The tool code is available open-source at https://github.com/francescafrontini/MWExtractor.
Further details can be found in:
Quochi Valeria & Frontini Francesca & Rubino Francesco. 2012. A MWE Acquisition and Lexicon Builder Web Service. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2012), December 10-14 2012, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India.
Frontini Francesca & Rubino Francesco & Quochi Valeria. 2012. Automatic Creation of quality multi-word Lexica from noisy text data. In Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop on Analytics for Noisy Unstructured Text Data (AND2012). December 9, 2012, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India (Co-located with COLING2012)
Italian {Language} {Resources}. {From} {CLARIN}-{IT} to the {VLO} and {Back}: {Sketching} a {Methodology} for {Monitoring} {LRs} {Visibility}
Full text linkThis paper sketches a user-oriented, qualitative methodology for both (i) monitoring the existence and availability of language resources relevant for a given CLARIN national community and language and (ii) assessing the offering potential of CLARIN, in terms of Language Resources provided to national consortia. From the user perspective, the methodology has been applied to investigate the visibility of language resources available for Italian within the CLARIN central services, in particular the Virtual Language Observatory. As a proof-of-concept, the methodology has been tested on the resources available through the CLARIN-IT data centres, but, ideally, it could be applied by any national data centre aiming to assess the existence of LRs in CLARIN for any given languages and check their accessibility for the interested users. It is thus argued that such an assessment might be a useful instrument in the hands of national coordinators and centre managers for (i) bringing to the fore both strengths and critical issues about their data providing community and (ii) for planning targeted actions to improve and increase both visibility and accessibility of their LRs
Speech audio archives and CLARIN metadata
No full textThe issue of metadata is crucially intertwined with interoperability, accessibility, and re-use of research data. On the other hand, such issue is particularly cumbersome in the case of speech and oral archives, which are often scattered among different public and private institutions. From this respect, the aim of the European Common Language Resources and Infrastructure for Social Sciences and Humanities (CLARIN) is to provide easy access to digital written, spoken, video, multimodal language data and at the same time to offer advanced tools to discover, annotate, and analyse them. The paper presents CLARIN and its Component MetaData Infrastructure (CMDI) and it further discusses the relevant profiles for the description of speech and oral archives. Since Italy has recently joined the CLARIN infrastructure consortium, it additionally analyses the accessibility of Italian corpora via the Virtual Language Observatory (VLO) and via the Parlare Italiano web portal
Presenting a system of human-machine interaction for performing map tasks
No full textA system for human machine interaction is presented, that offers second language learners of Italian the possibility of assessing their competence by performing a map task, namely by guiding the a virtual follower through a map with written instructions in natural language. The underlying natural language processing algorithm is described, and the map authoring infrastructure is presented
Restructuring a Taxonomy of Literary Themes and Motifs for More Efficient Querying.
No full textIn this paper we describe ongoing work in the restructuring of a tagset originally organised as a taxonomy and used to annotate literary themes and motifs in a corpus of classical works of poetry from a number of different traditions. We show how such a tagset can be rendered more efficient and useful through the appropriation of ideas and techniques from lexical semantics and ontology design. The newly redesigned tagset is described with examples showing how the new design is much more expres-sive than the old taxonomy; furthermore, an example query is described in order to demonstrate how more refined semantic searches can be carried using the new ver-sion of the taxonomy. The final result is, we hope, a resource that will be useful not only for the specific project for which it was developed but one that is well-designed and well-documented enough to be of use for other similar semantic annotation tasks
{CLARIN}-{IT} Resources in {CLARIN} {ERIC} - a Bird’s-Eye View
No full textThis paper investigates the visibility of CLARIN-IT language resources within the services of the CLARIN ERIC central infrastructure, notably the Virtual Language Observatory, the Switchboard and the Federated Content Search, from a user perspective in order to identify possible issues. While the experiment focused on one national consortium, the ultimate goal is to develop an assessment methodology that can be used by any national consortia aiming to review the accessibility of their resources and tools within the CLARIN central services
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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