Traditional disease surveillance can be augmented with a wide variety of open sources, such as online news media, twitter, blogs, and web search records. Rapidly increasing volumes of these open sources are proving to be extremely valuable resources in helping analyze, detect, and forecast outbreaks of infectious diseases, especially new diseases or diseases spreading to new regions. However, these sources are in general unstructured (noisy) and construction of surveillance tools ranging from real-time disease outbreak monitoring to construction of epidemiological line lists involves considerable human supervision. Intelligent modeling of such sources using text mining methods such as, topic models, deep learning and dependency parsing can lead to automated generation of the mentioned surveillance tools. Moreover, real-time global availability of these open sources from web-based bio-surveillance systems, such as HealthMap and WHO Disease Outbreak News (DONs) can aid in development of generic tools which will be applicable to a wide range of diseases (rare, endemic and emerging) across different regions of the world. In this dissertation, we explore various methods of using internet news reports to develop generic surveillance tools which can supplement traditional surveillance systems and aid in early detection of outbreaks. We primarily investigate three major problems related to infectious disease surveillance as follows. (i) Can trends in online news reporting monitor and possibly estimate infectious disease outbreaks? We introduce approaches that use temporal topic models over HealthMap corpus for detecting rare and endemic disease topics as well as capturing temporal trends (seasonality, abrupt peaks) for each disease topic. The discovery of temporal topic trends is followed by time-series regression techniques to estimate future disease incidence. (ii) In the second problem, we seek to automate the creation of epidemiological line lists for emerging diseases from WHO DONs in a near real-time setting. For this purpose, we formulate Guided Epidemiological Line List (GELL), an approach that combines neural word embeddings with information extracted from dependency parse-trees at the sentence level to extract line list features. (iii) Finally, for the third problem, we aim to characterize diseases automatically from HealthMap corpus using a disease-specific word embedding model which were subsequently evaluated against human curated ones for accuracies. / Ph. D. / Infectious Disease Outbreaks are a threat to public health and economic stability of many countries. Traditional Disease Surveillance data released by organizations, such as CDC, ProMED is delayed and therefore, not reliable for real-time monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks. Recently, open source indicators, such as online news sources and social media sources (Twitter) have been shown to be effective in monitoring infectious disease outbreaks in real-time due to their volume, ease of availability and citizen participation. This dissertation focuses on developing multiple data analytic tools which perform automated analysis of online disease-related news articles with an aim to characterize infectious diseases and monitor their spatial and temporal progression in real-time. We show that temporal trends extracted from online news articles can be used to capture dynamics of multiple disease outbreaks, such as whooping cough outbreak in U.S. during summer of 2012, periodic outbreaks of H7N9 in China during 2013-2014 and emerging MERS outbreak in Saudi Arabia. However, online news reporting during infectious disease outbreaks is driven by interest and therefore, news coverage for certain diseases can be inconsistent over time leading to erroneous surveillance.

No / The rapid shift and increase in remote access to organisation resources have led to a significant increase in the number of attack vectors and attack surfaces, which in turn has motivated the development of newer and more sophisticated cyber-attacks. Such attacks include Multi-Stage Attacks (MSAs). In MSAs, the attack is executed through several stages. Classifying malicious traffic into stages to get more information about the attack life-cycle becomes a challenge. This paper proposes a malicious traffic clustering approach based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). LDA is a topic modelling approach used in natural language processing to address similar problems. The proposed approach is unsupervised learning and therefore will be beneficial in scenarios where traffic data is not labeled and analysis needs to be performed. The proposed approach uncovers intrinsic contexts that relate to different categories of attack stages in MSAs. These are vital insights needed across different areas of cybersecurity teams like Incident Response (IR) within the Security Operations Center (SOC), the insights uncovered could have a positive impact in ensuring that attacks are detected at early stages in MSAs. Besides, for IR, these insights help to understand the attack behavioural patterns and lead to reduced time in recovery following an incident. The proposed approach is evaluated on a publicly available MSAs dataset. The performance results are promising as evidenced by over 99% accuracy in identified malicious traffic clusters.

No / Intermittent pneumatic compression (IPC) is a mechanical method of delivering compression to swollen limbs that can be used to treat venous leg ulcers and limb swelling due to lymphoedema. This review analyses the evidence for the effectiveness of IPC as a treatment for venous leg ulcers. OBJECTIVES: To determine whether IPC increases the healing of venous leg ulcers. To determine the effects of IPC on health related quality of life of venous leg ulcer patients. SEARCH STRATEGY: We searched the Cochrane Wounds Group Specialised Register (December 2007); the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) - The Cochrane Library Issue 4, 2007; Ovid MEDLINE - 2006 to November Week 2 2007; Ovid EMBASE - 2006 to 2007 Week 49 and Ovid CINAHL - 2006 to December Week 1 2007. SELECTION CRITERIA: Randomised controlled studies either comparing IPC with control (sham IPC or no IPC) or comparisons between IPC treatment regimens, in venous ulcer management were included. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Data extraction and assessment of study quality were undertaken by one author and checked by a second. MAIN RESULTS: Seven randomised controlled trials (including 367 people in total) were identified. Only one trial reported both allocation concealment and blinded outcome assessment. In one trial (80 people) more ulcers healed with IPC than with dressings (62% vs 28%; p=0.002). Four trials compared IPC with compression against compression alone. The first of these trials (45 people) found increased ulcer healing with IPC plus compression than with compression alone (relative risk for healing 11.4, 95% Confidence Interval 1.6 to 82). The remaining three trials (122 people) found no evidence of a benefit for IPC plus compression compared with compression alone. One small trial (16 people) found no difference between IPC (without additional compression) and compression bandages alone. One trial compared different ways of delivering IPC (104 people) and found that rapid IPC healed more ulcers than slow IPC (86% vs 61%; log rank p=0.003). AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: IPC may increase healing compared with no compression, but it is not clear whether it increases healing when added to treatment with bandages, or if it can be used instead of compression bandages. Rapid IPC was better than slow IPC in one trial. Further trials are required to determine whether IPC increases the healing of venous leg ulcers when used in modern practice where compression therapy is widely used.

主題-評論結構(topic-comment)在主題顯著(topic prominent)的語言(如中文)扮演十分重要的角色,尤其是在描述第二語言學習者的中介語時特別重要．但是有關研究,對於中國學生在學習英文時產生的中介語,並沒有對主題-評論結構提供全面且確切的描述．本研究旨在探討中國學生學習英文時所產生的中介語之主題-評論結構, 運用三種測驗來引出中介語—文法判定測驗, 引導寫作測驗, 及翻譯測驗．受試者包含台灣區域位於台北的三所國中挑選的94位國二生,以國一期末考英文成績分為三組．此外,並於政大語視中心挑選14位以英語為母語的外籍生作為本研究的控制組．本研究探討的四種主題-評論結構是由中英文主題結構對比中所產生的, 分別為主題省略(topic drop), 主題移前(topicalization), 主題置左(left-dislocation), 及雙主詞結構(double-subject construction)．本研究所運用的中介語之理論架構是參考三種第二外語習得理論所發展出來的, 分別為第一語言影響(L1 influence), 普遍語法(universal grammar)的存在, 以及附屬集合理論(the Subset Principle)． 研究結果顯示, 第一語言轉換(L1 transfer)在所有程度的學生的中介語當中都十分普遍, 但是普遍語法只有在程度最高的學生的中介語較為明顯．因此本研究推論中介語系統內部運作過程包含三階段, 開始為第一語言轉換, 接著是第一語言轉換及普遍語法並存, 最後階段為普遍語法． / The role that the topic-comment structure plays in a topic prominent language such as Chinese is very important when it comes to SLA learners’ interlanguage. However, the related research has not provided a comprehensive framework in describing topic structures of Chinese EFL learners’ interlanguage. The purpose of this study is to analyze the topic structures in Chinese EFL learners’ interlanguage elicited by three tasks—the grammaticality judgment task, the guided writing task, and the translation task. The subjects include 94 junior high school students chosen from three separate schools in Taipei, Taiwan, and they were divided into three proficiency levels. In addition, 14 native speakers from the language center of NCCU served as the control group. This study investigated four topic structures—topic drop, topicalization, left-dislocation, and double-subject construction—which were determined by a comparative study of Chinese and English topic structures. The current theoretical framework of interlanguage operation is developed from three SLA perspectives—L1 influence, the existence of universal grammar (UG), and the subset principle. Results indicated that L1 transfer was prevalent in all proficiency levels but UG was only obvious in the most advanced level. It was thus inferred that the internal operation of interlanguage system should include three stages—first L1 transfer, then L1 transfer and UG, and finally UG.

At present, there is no cure for bone metastasis. The current goals in patient care are to palliate pain, prevent pathological bone fracture and increase the strength and function of bone, so as to extend the life expectancy and maintain a good quality of life. Bisphosphonate treatment is the currently standard therapy of bone metastasis and is commonly used by physicians; it alleviates the tumour-induced hypercalcemia in 90% of patients and reduces the metastatic bone pain in 50% of patients. Moreover, it also prevents the pathological fracture of the affected bones. However, while effective, bisphosphonate injections are very costly, though its oral formulation is less expensive it is also less efficacious, and causes gastrointestinal discomfort. Furthermore, prolonged use of bisphosphonate treatment may lead to certain adverse effects, including hypocalcemia. These factors will prohibit the longterm use of such medication as it can negatively affect the treatment outcome. / Based on enormous medical potentials illustrated by the aforementioned findings, BBYNG deserves wider clinical application, large-scale clinical study on its preventive effect against bone metastasis and detailed investigation of its mode(s) of action in the body. / Based on the above-described understanding of Chinese medicine and bone metastasis, supplementing the kidney and strengthening bone could be the basic principle for the treatment of bone metastasis using Chinese medicine. In view of this theory, and in addition to the clinical observation and a thorough search of the available literature, we selected relevant kidney-tonifying Chinese herbs, namely (Fructus Ligustri Lucidi), (Rhizoma Drynariae), (Herba Epimedii), (Psoralea Corylifolia) and wide-spectrum anticancer herbs (Herba Hedyotidis Diffusae) for the preparation of a combined formula--BBYNG. / Chinese medicine has long been used to treat cancers. Its advantages reside in its holistic properties, which bring palliative, corrective and convalescing functions against damage caused by radiotherapy, chemotherapy and surgery. These features position Chinese medicines as the adjuvant to orthodox cancer treatment. During the late stage of tumour development, when standard therapy is no longer effective, Chinese medicine plays a critical role as an integrated therapy. Searching for a safe, inexpensive and effective Chinese medicine preparation suitable for prolonged use as adjunct therapy in late cancer cases is of paramount importance. / Clinical results. Both Chinese medicine and Western medicine treated patients showed no significant change in their blood parameters or liver and kidney examinations before and after drug administration; Male subjects on BBYNG, their bone mass density remained stable after 6 months treatment and the subjects on OSTAC showed slightly decreased In females, subjects on BBYNG remained stable, but subjects on OSTAC slightly increased. / Clinical study. The study was designed as a randomized, parallel-group comparison between BBYNG formula and Bisphosphonate. The patients who meet the inclusion/exclusion criteria were randomly assigned to receive either BBYNG granules, which was prepared by a GMP manufacturer, or Clodronic acid. The treatment period was 6 months (24 weeks). For both groups, various clinical parameters such as body functions, blood examinations, bone density (BMD) assessment, X-ray examinations, pain intensity and quality of life were evaluated and compared. / Conclusions. (1) As an adjuvant to patients with bone metastases, BBYNG is effective in relieving the metastatic bone pain, improving the quality of life. (2) In the animal model, BBYNG reduced the metastatic bone damage, prolonged the survival and enhanced the T lymphocyte immunity in the tumour-bearing mice. (3) In vitro study on the breast and lung cancer cell lines showed that BYYNG could induce apoptosis and prevent tumour cell invasion. It suggests that BYYNG may restrict tumour growth and development, thus reducing the occurrence of bone metastasis. / In accordance with Chinese medicine, bone metastasis can be categorized into "bone tumour" "bone erosion" "bone wilting" "bone necrosis" and "bone impediment". The main cause of bone metastasis is twofold: cancer toxicity, and in Chinese medicine theory, the kidney governs the bone marrow, if the kidney is not functioning in balance, then the bone will become weak. Cancer toxicity is the "pathogenic cause" to skeletal metastases, while kidney weakness decreases the body defence against the cancer. A vicious cycle ensues when cancer and kidney deficiency and bone weakness occurs simultaneously coincidently and worsens the conditions. / In vitro study on tumour cell lines. The anticancer effects of different concentrations of BBYNG formula and various single components against human breast cancer and lung cancer cell lines were evaluated by cell viability test (MTT assay), cell apoptosis test and invasion suppression test. / In vitro study results. BBYNG and the aqueous extracts of its component herbs at very low drug concentrations stimulated the growth of three tumour cell lines tested. When the concentrations were slightly increased, they showed an inhibitory effect on cancer cell proliferation. As the drug concentrations further increased, the extracts showed cytotoxic effects on these tumor cells. At the noncytotoxic dose, the extracts could trigger apoptosis and enhance the caspase-3 activity in all three tumour cell lines. In addition, at this "non toxic" concentration, the extracts markedly inhibited the in vitro invasive property of the 4T1 breast cancer cell lines in our Matrigel invasion model. Thus these in vitro results suggested that BBYNG possess anticancer, invasion-inhibitory and anti-metastatic activities. / In vivo animal study results. (Tumour growth was slower in the BBYNG treatment group when compared to the OSTAC and control groups, but this was not significantly difference) BBYNG significantly delayed tumour growth in tumour bearing mice, but it did not minimize the tumour size markedly. Moreover, BBNYG did minimize the mobility restriction caused by tumours, reduce the damage to bones, prolong the survival time and enhanced the T lymphocyte immunity. / In vivo animal study. A well-established animal model for breast cancer was used to evaluate and compare the pharmacological effects of BBYNG formula and Clodronic acid, as shown by different indicators such as tumour progression, animal's mobility, survival time, bone metastasis-induced fracture intensity and the immunological status of the tumour-bearing mice. / Malignant tumour is characterized by early metastasis. Among them 37 to 80 (depending on which type of cancer) patients show tendency of bone metastasis. Bone metastasis is usually accompanied by various complications, such as severe pain, pathological bone fracture, hypercalcemia, and bone marrow suppression, which can substantially affect the quality of life of the patients. Thus, the prevention and treatment of bone metastasis in cancer is an issue worth pursuing. / Malignant tumours leading to high mortality and morbidity are a serious threat to human health. It is the leading cause of death in China. In Hong Kong, there are over 20 thousand new cancer cases and more than 1100 people die due to cancers every year. / Study objectives. To elucidate the efficacy and some pharmacological aspects of BBYNG in regard to the treatment of bone metastasis through clinical observation and different laboratory experiments. This study would be of significant reference value to the disease-oriented drug formulation and application, mechanistic study and research methodology of the treatment of bone metastasis using Chinese medicines. / The clinical and laboratory experimental results are summarized as below: / The research study is composed of three parts, the clinical study, in vivo animal study and in vitro study on tumour cell lines. The research methods used are as follows: / Those on BBYNG treatment showed more a stable and satisfactory quality of life than those in the Western medicine-treated group. For the Clodronic acid treatment group, patients generally showed worsened symptoms and quality of life deteriorated. The ECOG index of the BBYNG group was statistically better than that of the Clodronic acid group. Within the 72-week clinical observational period, the mortality of Clodronic acid group is significantly higher that of the BBYNG group. The effects of BBYNG group as presented in relieving the pain-induced influence on patients' emotion, interpersonal relationship and entertainment was more pronounced than that in the Clodronic acid group. / Wu Ka. / 論文(哲學博士)--香港中文大學, 2006. / 參考文獻(p. 299-324). / Adviser: Leung Ping Chung. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-03, Section: B, page: 1570. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / School code: 1307. / Lun wen (zhe xue bo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2006. / Can kao wen xian (p. 299-324). / Wu Ka.

The present thesis deals with the Latin non-verbal topic-introducing construction "Quid X?" (which is more or less equivalent to Czech "A co X?" or English "What about X?") and with the question of its editing in the classical Latin Texts. The main hypothesis of the present work is that in the classical Latin texts this construction is in hundreds of cases misinterpreted as "Quid?" (the X-part being joined to the following sentence) which would make of this misinterpretation the greatest systematic error in the modern editing of classical Latin texts. The first part of the thesis presents formal, functional and historical arguments to support such a bold claim and describes other non-verbal constructions beginning with the word quid, which might be and in fact are mistaken with the topic-introducing construction "Quid X?". The inability of the modern editors to reliably distinguish between different non-verbal constructions is caused by several objective factors, one of them being also the fact that the construction "Quid X?" - quite extraordinary in several respects - is rarely and (if at all) unsufficiently treated in grammars and reference books. The absence of the description of the given construction is itself, in turn, caused probably by the general underestimating and overlooking of small...

Thesis (M.Sc.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, Faculty of Medicine, 1998. / Typescript. Bibliography: leaves 118-128.

This paper investigates the usage of topic in spoken Brasilian Portuguese, considering it as the constituent on the left of the sentence. To carry out the analysis, we chose the proposal of Callou et alii (1993), which considers the topic lato sensu constructions. The aim of our project is to verify how this phenomenon is used, and to observe if the presence of topic either favors or not the occurrence of lexicalized subject in the sentence. In order to do so, an investigation of topic as well as subject structures was carried out, bearing in mind during the analysis, linguistic and extralinguistic factors such as social class and age group. The corpus used to develop the research consisted of 45 interviews carried out with adult speakers from the city of Uberlândia (MG), from both sexs. The analysis showed that in spite of the little presence in the language, all the informers, irrespective of the social class, age group, used the topic structure, confirming our main hypothesis. In regards to the constructions of the topic lato sensu it was noticed that the Dislocation for de left (DE) is more used than Topicalization (TOP). This fact doesn t confirm our hypothesis but confirms the tendency of Brasilian Portuguese to fill all the empty categories, as already mentioned by many researches. Furthermore, according to the theory of Labovian Sociolinguistics and Parametric Sociolinguistics, in which we based this paper, it was possible to conclude that presence x absence of topic lato sensu constructions, in the sentence, is a process of variation, not a process of linguistic change. / Este trabalho investiga o uso do tópico na língua oral do Português do Brasil, considerando como tal o constituinte à esquerda da sentença. Para realizar a análise, adotamos a proposta de Callou et alii (1993), na qual são consideradas construções de tópico lato sensu. O objetivo do nosso trabalho é verificar de que modo o fenômeno é usado e observar, principalmente, se a presença de tópico favorece ou não a ocorrência de sujeito lexicalizado na sentença. Para tanto, foi feita uma investigação de estruturas de tópico e estruturas de sujeito, levando em consideração, na análise, fatores lingüísticos e fatores extralingüísticos classe social e faixa etária. O corpus utilizado para o desenvolvimento da pesquisa constituiu-se de 45 entrevistas realizadas com falantes adultos da cidade de Uberlândia (MG), de ambos os sexos. A análise realizada evidenciou que, apesar da pouca incidência na língua, todos os informantes, independentemente da classe social e da faixa etária, que fizeram uso da estrutura de tópico, lexicalizaram o sujeito, corroborando, assim, nossa hipótese principal. Especificamente em relação às construções de tópico lato sensu, foi constatado que o Deslocamento à Esquerda (DE) é mais usado do que a Topicialização (TOP). Essa constatação refutou nossa hipótese, mas confirma a tendência do Português do Brasil de preencher categorias vazias, como já foi atestado por vários estudiosos. Além disso, seguindo os pressupostos teóricos da Sociolingüística Laboviana e da Sociolingüística Paramétrica, nos quais fundamentamos nosso trabalho, foi possível concluir que presença x ausência de construções de tópico lato sensu , na sentença, constitui um processo de variação e não de mudança lingüística. / Mestre em Lingüística

Manually reading, evaluating, and scoring motivation letters as part of the admissions process is a time-consuming and tedious task for Dalarna University's program managers. An automated scoring system would provide them with relief as well as the ability to make much faster decisions when selecting applicants for admission. The aim of this thesis was to analyse current human judgment and attempt to emulate it using machine learning techniques. We used various topic modelling methods, such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation and Non-Negative Matrix Factorization, to find the most interpretable topics, build a bridge between topics and human-defined factors, and finally evaluate model performance by predicting scoring values and finding accuracy using logistic regression, discriminant analysis, and other classification algorithms. Despite the fact that we were able to discover the meaning of almost all human factors on our own, the topic models' accuracy in predicting overall score was unexpectedly low. Setting a threshold on overall score to select applicants for admission yielded a good overall accuracy result, but did not yield a good consistent precision or recall score. During our investigation, we attempted to determine the possible causes of these unexpected results and discovered that not only is topic modelling limitation to blame, but human bias also plays a role.

Dans une interaction humain-agent, l’engagement de l’utilisateur est un élément essentiel pour atteindre l’objectif de l’interaction. Dans cette thèse, nous étudions comment l’engagement de l’utilisateur pourrait être favorisé par le comportement de l’agent. Nous nous concentrons sur les stratégies de comportement verbal de l’agent qui concernent respectivement la forme, le timing et le contenu de ses énoncés. Nous présentons des études empiriques qui concernent certains aspects du comportement de politesse de l’agent, du comportement d’interruption de l’agent, et les sujets de conversation que l’agent adresse lors de l’interaction. Basé sur les résultats de la dernière étude, nous proposons un Gestionnaire de Sujets axé sur l’engagement (modèle computationnel) qui personnalise les sujets d’une interaction dans des conversations où l’agent donne des informations à un utilisateur humain. Le Modèle de Sélection des Sujets du Gestionnaire de Sujets décide sur quoi l’agent devrait parler et quand. Pour cela, il prend en compte la perception par l’agent de l’utilisateur, qui est dynamiquement mis à jour, ainsi que l’état mental et les préférences de l’agent. Le Modèle de Transition de Sujets du Gestionnaire de Sujet, basé sur une étude empirique, calcule comment l’agent doit présenter les sujets dans l’interaction en cours sans perdre la cohérence de l’interaction. Nous avons implémenté et évalué le Gestionnaire de Sujets dans un agent virtuel conversationnel qui joue le rôle d’un visiteur dans un musée. / In human-agent interaction the engagement of the user is an essential aspect to complete the goal of the interaction. In this thesis we study how the user’s engagement could be favoured by the agent’s behaviour. We thereby focus on the agent’s verbal behaviour considering strategies that regard respectively the form, timing, and content of utterances : We present empirical studies that regard (aspects of) the agent’s politeness behaviour, interruption behaviour, and the topics that the agent addresses in the interaction. Based on the outcomes of the latter study we propose an engagement-driven Topic Manager (computational model) that personalises the topics of an interaction in human-agent information-giving chat. The Topic Selection component of the Topic Manager decides what the agent should talk about and when. For this it takes into account the agent’s dynamically updated perception of the user as well as the agent’s own mental state. The Topic Transition component of the Topic Manager, based upon an empirical study, computes how the agent should introduce the topics in the ongoing interaction without loosing the coherence of the interaction. We implemented and evaluated the Topic Manager in a conversational virtual agent that plays the role of a visitor in amuseum.