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Month: July 2021

BOC–HKBU Chinese medicine community scheme offers free rehabilitation services to low-income stroke patients

Posted on by HKBUCPRO

Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) and the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui (HKSKH) Welfare Council have received a generous donation from the Bank of China (Hong Kong) (BOCHK) for the three-year “BOC–HKBU Chinese Medicine Community Stroke Prevention and Rehabilitation Scheme”.

The Scheme provides free Chinese medicine rehabilitation treatments to 500 eligible low-income stroke patients and it also offers free preventive treatments and tracking assessments to 1,200 people who have a medium to high risk of having a stroke.

The launch ceremony for the Scheme was held on 29 July on the HKBU campus. Dr Cheung Wai-lun, Project Director of the Chinese Medicine Hospital Project Office, the Food and Health Bureau; Mr Jimmy Sun, General Manager of the Institutional Business Department, BOCHK; Professor Alexander Wai, President and Vice-Chancellor of HKBU; and Dr Lee Ching-yee, Director of HKSKH Welfare Council Limited, officiated at the ceremony.

In his speech, Professor Alexander Wai said the School of Chinese Medicine (SCM) at HKBU launched Hong Kong’s first full-time Chinese medicine undergraduate programme funded by the University Grants Committee in 1988. Since then, SCM has been providing Chinese medicine services to the community and promoting Chinese medicine education, research and healthcare services in Hong Kong.

“Apart from reducing public healthcare expenses, improving the quality of life of stroke patients, and increasing the success rate of rehabilitation initiatives, the BOC-HKBU Chinese Medicine Community Stroke Prevention and Rehabilitation Scheme can also serve as a good example of how we can construct a community medical service management model based on collaboration between the Chinese medicine sector and the community,” he said.

Mr Jimmy Sun said: “BOCHK has all along taken a proactive approach to its social responsibilities, and it has continuously supported primary healthcare and the development of Chinese medicine. We have maintained a long-term partnership with HKBU in the area of Chinese medicine, including a donation to its School of Chinese Medicine to establish the Bank of China (Hong Kong) Chinese Medicines Centre in 2003, and the offering of Chinese medicine supplements for pneumonia prevention to frontline medical staff in collaboration with the University’s Anti-SARS Action Group in the fight against the SARS outbreak. In the future, BOC will continue to support the development of Chinese medicine so that more Hong Kong citizens can benefit.”

Dr Lee Ching-yee said the HKSKH Welfare Council has worked with SCM through a medical-community collaboration to set up community clinics since 2017. In particular, teachers and students from SCM visited elderly people in the Kowloon City district to follow up and deal with their physical pain problems. “The community clinics set up by this Scheme officially opened in January this year. In just half a year, the project team received more than 100 applications. With professional treatments administered by Chinese medicine practitioners and follow-ups organised by social workers, many successful cases have been observed,” she said.

Mr Wong Hon-kwong, a beneficiary of the Scheme who received half a year of free Chinese medicine and acupuncture services, said: “I could not open my left palm before, but I can now. My friends can see my progress.” His wife also said that he has improved his mobility. As a result,  he can now walk more smoothly, and these developments have boosted his self-confidence.

The BOC–HKBU Chinese Medicine Community Stroke Prevention and Rehabilitation Scheme, which started in October 2020 and runs until September 2023, mainly serves people aged 60 or above who are Comprehensive Social Security Assistance or Old Age Living Allowance recipients, or stroke patients from low-income families. Stroke patients under the age of 60 who are in need of support can also join the Scheme after an assessment by social workers or a referral from one of the SCM clinics.

Under the Scheme, experts from SCM will form treatment teams and formulate a six-month treatment programme for stroke patients.

Patients will receive free Chinese medicine, acupuncture and massage treatments two to three times a week, up to 72 times in total. SCM will arrange for Chinese medicine practitioners to visit the patients, or alternatively, the practitioners will invite them to receive their treatments at the elderly centres of the HKSKH Welfare Council. It is expected that about 500 people will benefit from the Scheme. Furthermore, the Scheme will provide counselling and support services for older stroke patients and their family members.

In addition, SCM clinics and the HKSKH Welfare Council’s elderly centres will set up health management stations for stroke patients, with SCM offering training to suitable older people who can then go on and serve as Chinese medicine senior ambassadors for stroke prevention. Using a soon-to-be-launched website, the ambassadors will assess the risk of stroke in other older people in the community and promote stroke prevention messages.

Around 1,200 older people with a moderate to high risk of stroke will be referred to the HKSKH Welfare Council’s elderly centres to undergo a one-year preventive treatment programme and follow-up assessments. The website will also provide recommendations on balanced diets and appropriate exercises for people with a low to medium risk of stroke, and alert high-risk individuals to seek medical treatment.

Those who are interested in participating in the Scheme can call 6533 9972 or 2333 1854 for any enquiries, or they can complete the following online form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdCoJwAYWDzOpxXvzkOYkRx0_7xB8GvZeuscb7B98jtiwItGA/viewform

Chula opens Gender Health Clinic to serve the transgender community

Posted on by Chulalongkorn University

The King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital of the Thai Red Cross Society has founded a “Gender Health Clinic” in collaboration with faculty members from the Gender Medicine and Menopause, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University to provide a comprehensive health clinic to underline the importance of transgender in Thai society today.

In addition, this Gender Health Clinic is also a specialized learning center for doctors, medical students, and interested medical personnel. It is also an international research centre on transgender health in conjunction with the Center of Excellence in Transgender Health (CETH).

“The establishment of a Gender Health Clinic is meant to provide medical services specifically for transgender patients who previously could find no specialized clinics in this field. Patients use hormones, self-inject hormones, or take birth control pills haphazardly or wrongly do what their friends do.  Some people go to underground clinics and are not treated by specialists which is even more dangerous,” Associate Professor Krasian Panyakhamlert, M.D., Head of Gender Medicine and Menopause, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Faculty of  Medicine, Chulalongkorn University and founder of Gender Health Clinic elaborated.

Dr. Thanapob Bampenkiatkul, MD. Special Lecturer in Gender Medicine and Menopause,  Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Faculty of Medicine, and a specialist at the Gender Health Clinic explained,” Consultation depends on the way an individual patient wants to change his/her body to feel good. We provide information on the safest and most appropriate ways to become the person he/she wants to be.”

Regarding Hormone replacement therapy for a sex change, a popular method used by transgender people to transform their physique into their desired gender, Amarin Suwan, M.D., a lecturer of Gender Medicine and Menopause, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Faculty of Medicine, and a specialist at the Gender Health Clinic, opined, “Every person’s body is different and requires different drugs/doses to suit the body. Some people are better suited for pills taken orally, while others are better with topical drugs, or they may get the same drug but at different dosages, which the doctor will recommend the best.”

Most importantly, hormone replacement therapy is not for everyone.  People with breast cancer, myocardial infarction, coronary artery disease (CAD), coagulopathy, polycythemia vera, or patients with abnormal liver or lipid profiles, etc. are barred from hormone therapy.

Dr. Thanapob said, “Transgenders have diverse needs.  For instance, most trans men want their ovaries and uterus gone because they don’t belong to their body, while some people don’t mind them as much.  Some may want to get pregnant or have vaginal sex, so they don’t have a hysterectomy, while only 3-4 per cent of all-trans men worldwide undergo penile reconstruction surgery. So, to each his own.”

The Gender Health Clinic offers gender reassignment surgery services for both transgender men and women, by working with a transgender surgery clinic.  The types of surgical procedures include breast reduction and breast enlargement,  hysterectomy, removal of ovaries, and fallopian tubes, penile and vaginal reconstruction, as well as castration, and other surgeries including hips augmentation, Adam’s apple sharpening, jaw sharpening, face shape change.

Adolescents under 18 years of age are treated on a case-by-case basis. The clinic has specialized endocrinologists and child and adolescent psychiatrists from the Integrative Adolescent Health Clinic. All of this is for service recipients to have a better quality of life and mental health.

Among other services, the Gender Health Clinic also offers counselling services for gender-related health problems, such as menopause, vaginal dryness, endocrinological disorders related to sex hormones, and the consequential unsatisfying sex, such as lack of sex drive, pain from sexual intercourse, etc.

Russian Academy of Sciences confers medal on TPU Student

Posted on by Tomsk Polytechnic University

The results of the 2020 Competition for a Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences for Young Scientists of Russia and Students of Higher Educational Institutions of Russia for the Best Research Works have been announced.

According to the results of the 2020 Competition in Physicotechnical Problems of the Energy Industry, Kristina Paushkina, a second-year graduate student of the TPU School of Energy and Power Engineering, was conferred the medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences for her research work “Scientific Rationale of the Application Perspectives of Energetically, Environmentally and Economically Efficient Composite Fuels in Heat Power Engineering”. Kristina’s research supervisor is Dmitry Glushkov, Associate Professor of the TPU Research School of High-Energy Physics.

“The research is the continuation of research works under the supervision of Pavel Strizhak, Professor of the TPU Butakov Research Center. There was conducted experimental and theoretical research of the ignition process and combustion of composite fuels based on waste coal adding combustible municipal solid waste. There were researched not only the characteristics of ignition and combustion but also the ecological ones, such as the concentration of sulphur oxide and nitrogen in flue gases. Based on the obtained data, there was developed a feasibility study of the application of the obtained fuels at the existing facilities of the heat power engineering industry on the example of Kemerovo Oblast, Novosibirsk Oblast and Tomsk Oblast,” Kristina Paushkina says.

The Competition is held to identify and support talented young researchers, to contribute to the professional growth of scientific youth, to encourage creative initiatives of young scientists of Russia and students of higher educational institutions of Russia in conducting research.

Annually, the Russian Academy of Sciences confers 21 medals with prizes of 50,000 rubles each on young scientists for the best research works and 21 medals with prizes of 25,000 rubles each on students of higher educational institutions of Russia.

Japanese Consulate meets ITS to strengthen cooperation,

Posted on by ITS Global Engagement

Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) welcomed a virtual visit from the Consulate General of Japan in Surabaya on Wednesday (7/7). The visit was attended by the newly elected Japanese Consulate General, Mr Takeyama Kenichi and his staff. From ITS, the visit was attended by ITS Rector, Prof. Dr Ir. Mochamad Ashari M.Eng., along with other members of ITS Executive Board and staff.

Through this visit, Mr Takeyama intended to strengthen cooperation with ITS and to develop more projects with ITS and Indonesia. Prof. Ashari, in his remarks, stated that ITS
partnerships with Japan, especially with some of the best universities in Japan, have been going very well for a long time.

Considering the major development of Japanese technology and innovation, Prof. Ashari wished to initiate more collaborations with Japan because it is about time that universities become educational centres and enhance entrepreneurship activities. Regarding the opportunities, ITS Vice-Rector for Research, Innovation, Cooperation, and Alumni, Bambang Pramujati, PhD explained that ITS has 10 productive
research centres and is expected to cooperate further with universities in Japan.


Two parties hoped that this meeting would mark the new chapter of relations between ITS and Japan.

Thammasat University conducts joint research on “Thailand’s One Year After Covid-19”

Posted on by Thammasat University

At Pridi Banomyong International College, Thammasat University, academic scholars from Thai studies, Chinese studies and Indian studies collaborated in conducting research under the topic of “Thailand’s One Year After COVID-19” to study the effects and analyze results to offer solutions and policy proposals that provides benefits to Thai people and community as follows.

Assistant Prof. Dr. Yi Lin from Chinese Studies Program found that focusing on cultural and traditional tourism would contribute to more success for Chinese tourist market to allow social and cultural exchanges between Chinese tourists and Thai people. The key to a positive attitude between Thai and Chinese people is that both of us have long-standing social and cultural integration.

Dr. Thomas Bruce, Head of Thai Studies Program, who highlighted the study of “The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Food Retail in Bangkok”, found that government measures against COVID-19 had a direct impact on the food retail and public transportations that remain available, such as MRT, are the crucial factors to the survival of Chinatown’s food retails because despite loss of foreign tourists, they were replaced by Thai customers.

Asst. Prof. Dr. Shweta Sinha from Indian Studies Program conducted a comparative study of the effects of COVID-19 on the agricultural sector of India and Thailand. The results showed interesting facts; during the pandemic, India increased rice exports by 44% compared to 2020. Vietnam also ordered rice from India for the first time in decades. However, Thailand rice exportation decreased by 31%due to its high price resulting in lack of competitiveness. According to Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC), Thai farmers had a household debt of 54% and 50% of Thai farmers had debt over 200,000 baht per household and another 20% owe more than 400,000 baht per household.

“The challenges of the agricultural households are declining income and increase in debt, COVID-19 is also a factor of digital disruption,” noted Asst. Prof. Dr. Shweta Sinha.

Dr. Mohd Faheem, Head of Indian Studies Program, addressed the lessons learned during the lockdown in India which resulted in a massive relocation of labour to bigger cities for works and better income. Most of the migrants suffered from shortages of food, shelters, and money. In addition, they dealt with anxiety, paranoia, and fear of COVID-19 infection. Thus, his research suggested that the most important thing is that the labors should not have been ignored by the government and establishing labour database and distributing opportunities to the countryside would help manage and minimize migration to big cities.

Dr Usanee Lertrattananon, Head of the Chinese Studies Program, found that during the COVID-19 crisis, live streaming technology had become a key to success for several businesses. In addition, it became the people’s means to socialize. There were various successful Chinese websites and applications, e.g., Lazada, Shopee, and TikTok, that was introduced to Thai market. Therefore, COVID-19 offered opportunities and challenges for businesses at the same time.

Dr. Ornthicha Duangrat, Thai Studies Lecturer, focused on the conflicts between the superpowers, China and the United States, and mentioned “COVID-19 pandemic had inevitably intensified the competition between these two nations as well as expanded the influence of their powers. While vaccination currently played an important role. As we could see from Vietnam and the Philippines that they had to compromise and adapt themselves to balance the power of China and the United States. Likewise, Thailand needed to find more approaches for vaccination which might get from the ASEAN cooperation.”

Prommin Lertsuridej, M.D., the Former Deputy Prime Minister, said “The first priority of Thailand at this moment is vaccination and availability of rapid test kit to allow borders reopening so that Thai people would not lose their hope and faith. To be able to find infected patients quickly could save time and cancellation of quarantine measures would increase tourists’ interest in visiting Thailand. The rapid test kit is affordable and Thai specialists are developing it. I would like to see more of the government’s attention on this issue.”

COVID-19 has an impact on various aspects. It is more than a health issue because its impact remains widespread through the economy and society. This crisis is not only a challenge, but it is also a change that allows us to learn and grow at the same time.

KNU researchers develop an advanced water treatment system

Posted on by Kyungpook National University ‏‏‎ ‎

A research team at Kyungpook National University has developed an advanced water treatment system that can break down most of the naproxen, a drug that has failed to filter existing sewage treatment facilities.

Chang Min Park, a professor of Environmental Engineering at Kyungpook National University, and Yeo Min Yoon, a professor at South Carolina University, developed a technology that can break down 99.9% of naproxen, an anti-inflammatory drug, in an hour.

Existing advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), such as photocatalysts, ozone oxidation, and penton oxidation, require high processing costs and energy and often remain in soil and water systems with low efficiency due to incomplete release of residual drugs such as naproxen.

The research team applied a sono-photometric degradation process to a “hybrid catalyst material with a multi-component hierarchical structure” synthesized by doping a cerium oxide-zirconia (CeO2-ZrO2) nanostructure with molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) nanostructure.

As a result, it was confirmed that when multi-component hybrid nanoparticles absorbed photo-ultrasonic energy, they maximized the production of active oxygen species through sonar light and hot spot formation, eliminating 99.9% of naproxen within an hour.

Furthermore, the research team said that even if multi-component hybrid nanoparticles are reused five times, the processing cost is expected to be reduced in that catalytic properties and structural stability are maintained.

“If we actively utilize the next generation of advanced water treatment technology developed this time, we will be able to drastically reduce the existing huge cost, time, and energy required to deal with naproxen remaining in the environment. In particular, the study is expected to be applied to the removal of other aqueous residual drugs.”

FBM-UiTM becomes an affiliate member of the European Foundation for Management Development

Posted on by NURUL SALIZAWATEE MAHPAR & NOOR RITA MOHAMAD KHAN

Faculty of Business and Management (FBM), Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) has been accepted as an affiliate member of the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD).

EFMD is a global, non-profit, membership-driven organisation that act as an accreditation body for business schools, business school programmes, and corporate universities based in Brussels, Belgium, with offices in Geneva, Hong Kong, Miami and Prague. With the support of more than 900 members across 90 countries, EFMD act as a catalyst to promote and enhance excellence in management
development globally.

As a member of EFMD, FBM has become part of the largest community of management development professionals worldwide, from both the academic and corporate worlds.  This will drive the faculty towards international recognition and be part of the most diverse business education network and stay ahead of the curve in management development.

The drive of getting this recognition from EFMD for FBM was initiated by the former dean of FBM and continued by the current leadership of Professor Dr. Noryati Ahmad. It was supported by the other top management members of the faculty headed by Dr. Nor Lelawati Jamaludin together with a team of dedicated committee members; Dr. Noor Ain Mohd Yunus, Dr. Azimah Daud, Dr. Aida Azlina Mansor, Pn. Norina Ahmad Jamil and Pn. Nurul Salizawatee Mahpar.  Together they made FBM-UiTM more visible globally and credible.

This initiative is aligned with the aspirations of UiTM towards achieving globally renowned university status. The former Vice-Chancellor of UiTM, Emeritus Professor Datuk Ir Dr. Mohd Azraai Kassim once stressed on the importance of visibility in a very crisp way and reminded that: “In this world, you not only need to be good, but people need to know that you are good”.

Thus, the spotlighted membership is a good measure to move UiTM and the Faculty of
Business and Management forward with international recognition and accreditation as well as making it more visible.

KCMH successfully treats breast cancer patient with immunotherapy

Posted on by Editorial Team

Queen Sirikit Center for Breast Cancer at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital (KCMH) and Thai Red Cross Society (Chulalongkorn Hospital) has become the world’s first institution to have successfully used immunotherapy to treat a breast cancer patient. The patient is now in complete remission with minimal side effects and improved quality of life. Located in Bangkok, KCMH serves as the teaching hospital for the Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, and the Thai Red Cross College of Nursing.

After the ordeals of various breast cancer treatments that could not stop it from spreading to her liver, lungs, and bones, Ploenpit Goware decided to stop the treatments and was resigned to spend the rest of her days with her daughter.  That was before Associate Professor Dr Kris Chatamra, Head of the Queen Sirikit Center for Breast Cancer at Chulalongkorn Hospital recommended “Immunotherapy” which gave her a sense of renewed hope.

“My condition remarkably improved after six months of treatment — from being bound to a wheelchair and having trouble walking because of compromised skeletal integrity, now I can walk up and down the stairs without feeling exhausted.  The pain in my bones has disappeared and I no longer need to rely on painkillers. The biopsy results from my liver with metastasized cancer show no traces of cancer cells left,” Ploenpit said with a smile, adding that the side effects of the treatment were only some blisters and minor joint pains.

Today, Ploenpit is living a normal life.  She only has to be mindful of the movements involving her back and neck due to compromised bones from her previous treatments some years ago.

Breast Cancer: The Number One Threat to Women Worldwide

Breast cancer is the world’s number-one cancer that costs women’s lives and it is also the most prevalent type of cancer among Thai women. There are many ways to treat breast cancer according to world standards, i.e. chemotherapy, radiation therapy, hormone therapy, targeted therapy, and surgery. However, for some patients, even after these treatments, cancer may recur.  So, immunotherapy is another alternative.

“Immunotherapy is one option for cancer treatments. Studies have been done overseas over several decades, but the method has never been applied to breast cancer treatment, nor has there been any tailor-made treatment for each patient,” said Associate Professor Dr Kris.

“For a long time now, the Center has been studying this topic, preparing tools and equipment, as well as amassing the medical team, until we found the way to treat breast cancer with immunotherapy and can help patients.”

Associate Professor Dr Kris Chatamra, Head of the Queen Sirikit Center for Breast Cancer, Chulalongkorn Hospital

How Immunotherapy Works Against Breast Cancer

Associate Professor Dr Kris explained that immunotherapy works by stimulating the most common and basic immune cells or T-cells in order to get rid of the cancer cells.

He said, “The immune system is the most crucial system of the human body. When pathogens enter the body, the immune system activates to fight them. However, when cancer cells occur, the immune system does not destroy these cells as it misreads them for normal cells. So, we have been studying the unique properties of these cancer cells, and found that their outer cell membrane contains certain specific proteins that are different in each patient.”

“We take the patient’s immune cells and grow them in the lab alongside the specific proteins (peptides) of that patient’s cancer.  Within 24 hours, the immune cells will learn and remember the cancer cells’ specific peptides. Then, we will inject the learned immune cells into the patient’s lymph nodes so that they spread throughout the immune system and help destroy the cancer cells,” Associate Professor Dr Kris further elaborated on the immunotherapy procedure.

Immunotherapy and the Future of Cancer Treatment

Having successfully treated the first patient, the Center started using immunotherapy to treat other breast cancer patients and expected to cut the treatment cost down by one-third from that of the first patient’s – making it cost even less than chemotherapy.

“In over 50 years of my experience as a breast cancer doctor, times have drastically changed.  With early detection, coupled with immunotherapy treatment, patients’ have up to 90 percent chance of being cured.”

“For those who are cured, nobody can tell if cancer will come back.  The only thing I can say is that the immune system will remain in the body forever, and should there be new cancer cells, it should be enough to put up a fight.”

Most importantly, Assoc. Prof. Dr Kris said that the immune system has access to any part of the body, including the brain, whereas chemotherapy cannot. “Do not despair.  I want every patient to have hope,” he added.

The latest highlights from Chulalongkorn University can be accessed here.

 

A new safe and efficient data processing technology

Posted on by Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical University

Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical University ETU-LETI scientists, together with Smartilizer, studied a new approach to data analysis that does not require transferring data from the source to an analytical center.

The researchers tested the effectiveness of existing open-source systems on different data sets: sensor readings from moving cars and X-rays of pneumonia patients. To test the applicability in IoT systems, the authors evaluated the following features: ease of use and installation, analysis capabilities, accuracy, and performance. The paper was published in the journal Sensors.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a data transmission network that consists of physical objects with in-built connectors. Using such connectors, the objects are able to communicate with each other and their environment. For example, in the smart home concept, appliances are connected to each other and external control device, allowing managing from a cell phone.

The standard architecture of an IoT system consists of three layers. The first (device layer) is the hardware devices that produce and collect the data. The middle layer is responsible for transferring data from the devices to the application layer, which provides services or applications that integrate or analyze the data.

Traditional approaches to such systems involve data collection from IoT devices into one
centralized repository for further analysis. However, they are not always applicable due to a large volume of collected data, communication channels with limited bandwidth, security and privacy requirements.

Significant disadvantages are an increase in total processing time, network traffic, and risk of unauthorized access to the data. Therefore, new approaches to the analysis of such data are being developed. One of them is federated learning that allows analyzing data directly on sources and federating the results of each analysis to yield a result as traditional centralized data processing. There is less load and risk because all the data is processed locally.

One of the main applications of this AI-based technology is the security and privacy of
personal data collected around the world every second. This issue has become extremely important after the adoption of several legislative regulations, such as the GDPR in the European Union, CCPA in the USA, and PDPA in Singapore. They require transparent processing of personal data with an explicitly stated purpose and the consent of the data subject.

In a smart home, the data sources are the devices in each apartment: the alarm clock, the
bathroom faucet, the underfloor heating, and the lights. In the traditional approach, all data from each apartment is collected in a centralized repository. It is used to train a model (such as a neural network), and after that, the model would be transmitted back to the smart home control system.

At the alarm call, such a model “knows” that heating should start warming up, the bathtub should be filled, and the lights in certain rooms should turn on. On the one hand, data collection is necessary to train such a model because the more data, the smarter the model.

On the other hand, information about you: when you get up, when you go to the bathroom, when you eat, and so on, becomes available to someone else, and you do not know how it will be used. According to the principles of federated learning, the data will not leave your apartment.

ETU “LETI” scientists tested systems from different companies: Google, Webank, Baidu, the OpenMined community, and others. The authors conducted a series of experiments with them on three data sets.

The first contained the parameters of a moving passenger car (average speed, engine load, etc.) and assessed the driving style, the road surface, and the traffic state. The second included similar signal data for dumpers, and its analysis provided information about the vehicle operation. Finally, the third set was X-ray images from 5,232 patients (3,383 images of them with signs of pneumonia). The analysis allowed us to distinguish sick people from healthy ones.

“We compared all currently available open-source federated learning frameworks and
evaluated their capabilities. Our approach proved to be effective in all three cases. However, not all of them are suitable for industrial development now. Some systems are still in their early stages and not ready for widespread use. Nevertheless, the federated learning technology itself is extremely relevant and rapidly developing,” says Ivan Kholod, Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science and Technology at ETU “LETI.”

TPU launches an online school to teach Russian to international students

Posted on by Tomsk Polytechnic University

The Division for Russian of the Tomsk Polytechnic University School of Core Engineering Education has launched the Global Russian Online School (GROSchool) project, which plans to teach Russian to international students on a permanent basis.

The School will offer a range of language courses: from learning the language for everyday use to special courses, such as “Business Russian”, “Russian for Engineers”, etc. Classes will be held online, allowing international students who are not yet able to come to Russia or who prefer to learn a foreign language remotely to be involved in the language learning process.

“The idea of launching an online school appeared in our Division a long time ago, yet it was last year that gave us the invaluable experience of running classes in a distance learning format, and we are now ready to take these classes to a commercial level,” says Evgenia Sherina, Head of the Division for Russian Language and Director of the GROSchool.

The Head of the project noted that the modern website was specially created for the School and would allow attendees not only to view the list of courses, but also to calculate their tuition fees and to submit an application promptly. Enrolment for the traditional TPU Summer Holidays Russian Language School for international attendees will soon be opened.