Semantic Feature Extraction Using SBERT for Dementia Detection.

Dementia is a neurodegenerative disease that leads to the development of cognitive deficits, such as aphasia, apraxia, and agnosia. It is currently considered one of the most significant major medical problems worldwide, primarily affecting the elderly. This condition gradually impairs the patient's cognition, eventually leading to the inability to perform everyday tasks without assistance. Since dementia is an incurable disease, early detection plays an important role in delaying its progression. Because of this, tools and methods have been developed to help accurately diagnose patients in their early stages. State-of-the-art methods have shown that the use of syntactic-type linguistic features provides a sensitive and noninvasive tool for detecting dementia in its early stages. However, these methods lack relevant semantic information. In this work, we propose a novel methodology, based on the semantic features approach, by using sentence embeddings computed by Siamese BERT networks (SBERT), along with support vector machine (SVM), K-nearest neighbors (KNN), random forest, and an artificial neural network (ANN) as classifiers. Our methodology extracted 17 features that provide demographic, lexical, syntactic, and semantic information from 550 oral production samples of elderly controls and people with Alzheimer's disease, provided by the DementiaBank Pitt Corpus database. To quantify the relevance of the extracted features for the dementia classification task, we calculated the mutual information score, which demonstrates a dependence between our features and the MMSE score. The experimental classification performance metrics, such as the accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score (77, 80, 80, and 80%, respectively), validate that our methodology performs better than syntax-based methods and the BERT approach when only the linguistic features are used.

Nutrition in medical education in Latin America: Results of a cross-sectional survey.

RATIONALE: The gap between the nutrition education provided to medical students and the nutrition competences and attitudes needed for doctors to provide effective nutrition care is a global concern. The goal of this study was to investigate the curricular content on nutrition education in Latin American medical schools and to evaluate the self-perceived knowledge, attitudes, and barriers to nutrition practice of final-year medical students. METHODS: Eighty-five public and private medical schools from 17 Latin American countries were invited to participate in the study. Two close-ended online questionnaires consisting of 25 and 43 questions were sent to medical school directors. Quantitative variables were expressed as frequencies, percentages, mean ± standard deviation, medians, and ranges. RESULTS: A total of 22 (26%) medical school directors responded, of which 11 schools (50%) offered stand-alone mandatory nutrition courses in preclinical and 8 (36%) in clinical years. The mean hours dedicated to nutrition education was 47 (range: 0-150). A total of 1530 of 1630 (94%) students from 12 countries responded. Students' average age was 25 ± 3 years, and 59% were female. Most students agreed that improving patients' health through nutrition (91%) is important and that nutrition counseling and assessment should be part of routine care provided by all physicians (89%), but they lack the level of education and training required to address nutrition-related issues. CONCLUSIONS: Positive attitude and interest in nutrition among final-year medical students is high, but nutrition education is not perceived as sufficient to adequately prepare doctors in the field of nutrition.

Reaction Mechanisms of the Electrosynthesis of Magnetite Nanoparticles Studied by Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy.

This work presents a mechanistic study of the electrochemical synthesis of magnetite nanoparticles (NPs) based on the analysis of the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) technique. After a discussion of the mechanisms reported in the literature, three models are devised and a prediction of their EIS spectra is presented. The approach consisted of the simulation of EIS spectra as a tool for assessing model validity, as EIS allows to characterize the relaxation of adsorbed intermediates. The comparison between the simulated impedance spectra and the experimental results shows that the mechanisms proposed to date do not explain all of the experimental results. Thus, a new model is proposed, in which up to three adsorbed intermediate species are involved. This model accounts for the number of loops found in experimental impedance data. The closest approximation of the features found in the experimental spectra by this proposed model suggests a better representation of the reaction mechanism within the evaluated potential range.

Effect of electrode geometry on the electrolyte resistance measurement over the surface of a skin phantom in a noninvasive manner.

We analyzed the electrode geometry to obtain the potential (E) and current density (J) distributions at the surface of a skin phantom (SP), in this case a planar surface. Two electrode geometries were tested: a circular electrode (CiE) and a rectangular electrode (ReE). First, by a finite element simulation, we calculated the E and J distributions at the surface of the SP. Second, we determined the resistivity properties as a function of the electrochemical impedance. Three- and four-electrode configurations were used to measure the E versus distance between the reference electrodes (d). For the ReE, the electrolyte resistance (Re) measurements show a linear behavior with respect to "d" if the zone of the linear distribution of E and the homogeneous current density (JH) is considered. In contrast, the CiE shows nonlinear behavior due to the absence of that zone of the linear distribution of E and JH in the entire range. For ReE, we deduced that the behavior of Re versus "d" is related to the material resistivity. Consequently, the ReE geometry improves the Re measurements on the surface and shows us a way to control the behavior of this element in planar samples such as skin.

[Hyperemesis gravidarum: management and nutritional implications; case report and review of literature]. / Hiperemesis gravídica: manejo y consecuencias nutricionales; reporte de caso y revisión de literatura.

INTRODUCTION: Hyperemesis gravidarum is a state of severe nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, leading to dehydration, electrolyte and acid-base disorders, malnutrition and weight loss (> 5%). The prevalence of hyperemesis gravidarum is 0.3-2.3% of all pregnancies. OBJECTIVE: To demonstrate the effectiveness of nutritional support in a case of a complicated hyperemesis gravidarum. A case of a 25 years old woman with hyperemesis gravidarum, who had weight loss of 17.7%, dehydration, electrolyte disorders and arrhythmias, managed with enteral and parenteral nutrition at home until week 26 of gestation reaching to cover 70% of her caloric requirements orally, getting a healthy product and a stable nutritionally mother in late pregnancy. CONCLUSIONS: The multidisciplinary management and specialized nutritional management in such cases it is compulsory to carry the patient and the product at the end of pregnancy in optimal conditions.

Introducción: La hiperemesis gravídica es un estado de naúsea y vómito constante durante el embarazo, asociada a deshidratación, trastornos electrolíticos y ácido ­ base, desnutrición y pérdida de peso (>5%). La prevalencia de la hiperemesis gravídica es del 0.3-2.3% en todos los embarazos. Objetivo: Demostrar la efectividad del soporte nutricional en un caso de Hiperemesis gravídica asociado a desnutrición severa. Se trata de una femenina de 25 años con hiperemesis gravídica, que tuvo pérdida de peso de 17.7%, deshidratación, trastornos electolíticos y arritmias, manejada con nutrición enteral y parenteral en domicilio hasta la semana 26 de gestación logrando cubrir el 70% de sus requerimientos calóricos por vía oral, obteniendo un producto sano y una madre estable nutricionalmente al final del embarazo. Conclusiones: El manejo multidisciplinario y un soporte nutricional especializado en este tipo de casos es imprecindible para llevar al paciente y al producto al final del embarazo en óptimas condiciones.

Hiperemesis gravídica: manejo y consecuencias nutricionales; reporte de caso y revisión de literatura / Hyperemesis gravidarum: management and nutritional implications; case report and review of literature

Introducción: La hiperemesis gravídica es un estado de naúsea y vómito constante durante el embarazo, asociada a deshidratación, trastornos electrolíticos y ácido - base, desnutrición y pérdida de peso (>5%). La prevalencia de la hiperemesis gravídica es del 0.3-2.3% en todos los embarazos. Objetivo: Demostrar la efectividad del soporte nutricional en un caso de Hiperemesis gravídica asociado a desnutrición severa. Se trata de una femenina de 25 años con hiperemesis gravídica, que tuvo pérdida de peso de 17.7%, deshidratación, trastornos electolíticos y arritmias, manejada con nutrición enteral y parenteral en domicilio hasta la semana 26 de gestación logrando cubrir el 70% de sus requerimientos alóricos por vía oral, obteniendo un producto sano y una madre estable nutricionalmente al final del embarazo. Conclusiones: El manejo multidisciplinario y un soporte nutricional especializado en este tipo de casos es imprecindible para llevar al paciente y al producto al final del embarazo en óptimas condiciones (AU)

Introduction: Hyperemesis gravidarum is a state of severe nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, leading to dehydration, electrolyte and acid-base disorders, malnutrition and weight loss (> 5%). The prevalence of hyperemesis gravidarum is 0.3-2.3% of all pregnancies. Objetive: To demonstrate the effectiveness of nutritional support in a case of a complicated hyperemesis gravidarum. A case of a 25 years old woman with hyperemesis gravidarum, who had weight loss of 17.7%, dehydration, electrolyte disorders and arrhythmias, managed with enteral and parenteral nutrition at home until week 26 of gestation reaching to cover 70% of her caloric requirements orally, getting a healthy product and a stable nutritionally mother in late pregnancy. Conclusions: The multidisciplinary management and specialized nutritional management in such cases it is compulsory to carry the patient and the product at the end of pregnancy in optimal conditions (AU)