Bibliographic record
Abstract
After meetings in Hong Kong, Robertson (Australia), Charlottesville (Virginia), Chatel-Guyon (France), Sao Palo (Brazil), and Shanghai (China), the 7th International Conference on the Epididymis was held in Montreal (Canada) from September 20 to 23, 2018. One hundred scientists from 11 countries gathered to present their most recent findings on this critically important tissue in male reproduction, one that has received far less attention than it deserves. Special presentations were made to honor two of the founding ‘parents’ of our modern understanding of the epididymis (Fig. 1). The Plenary lecture, named after Dr. Marie-Claire Orgebin-Crist, was delivered by Dr. Louis Hermo. Dr. Patricia Cuasnicu presented the remarkable achievements of Dr. Michael Bedford, who passed away earlier in 2018. We are fortunate to have a picture of these two pioneers that was taken at the previous Conference on the Epididymis. The outstanding suggestions from members of the Program Committee (Avellar MC—Brazil, Breton S—USA, Cornwall G—USA, Cuasnicu P—Argentina, Drevet J—France, Hinton BT—USA, Robaire B—Canada, and Zhang Y—China) allowed us to bring together leaders researching every facet of ‘the tissue’. The main themes of the meeting were as follows: development of the Wolffian duct and the epididymis; physiology of the epididymis; epididymal sperm maturation and contraception; non-coding RNAs in the epididymis; infections of and defense by the epididymis; immune system and the epididymis; toxicants and epididymal function; the human epididymis; and clinical aspects of epididymal dysfunction. Excellent presentations were provided by 22 invited speakers and in 51 posters, covering a remarkably rich variety of novel and exciting developments regarding our understanding of how this tissue functions and is regulated. A PDF of the program and of abstracts may be found at: http://www.medicine.mcgill.ca/pharma/robairelab/Documents/Epididymis7_FinalProgram.pdf This issue of Andrology contains 19 articles, representing nearly 90% of the presentations delivered by invited speakers. Each of these peer-reviewed articles contributes new dimensions to our understanding of the complexity of this remarkably long tube that creates and provides continuously changing environments for spermatozoa as they mature and are then stored. The dynamic interactions with the immune system, the interface between the epithelial cells and spermatozoa via epididymosomes, our evolving understanding of the roles of non-coding RNAs and other small molecules, are all opening new avenues that are likely to provide new opportunities for the development of male contraceptives and the treatment of male infertility. The success of this meeting would not have been possible without the untiring efforts of Ms. Elise Boivin-Ford and Dr. Anais Noblanc and the financial contributions from the Male Contraceptive Initiative, Canadian Institutes for Health Research, Society for the Study of Reproduction, American Society of Andrology, International Society of Andrology, Reseau Quebecois en Reproduction, McGill University, McGill University Health Centre, Centre for Research in Reproduction and Development, Université de Montréal, Université Laval, Institut National de Recherche en Santé, and Fluxion.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.011 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.012 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.013 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.014 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".