Enfermedades inflamatorias nasales y de senos parasales


title: Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear considerations in a major incident

text: Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) incidents have a disproportionate effect on all aspects of efficient management of casualties. The immediate risks to rescue and healthcare staff, along with damage and threats to existing infrastructure, make CBRN incidents an important consideration to plan and train for, even if the likelihood of encountering them is remote. In addition to the generic ‘all hazards’ approach shared with all major incident planning, CBRN incident management has a number of specific treatments and interventions which require early identification of the agent involved, and thus a high degree of specialist knowledge among responders.


Protocolo diagnóstico y tratamiento empírico de la faringoamigdalitis


Analyses bibliographiques


Infecciones respiratorias


Avances en la antibioterapia empírica. Aplicaciones prácticas al tratamiento de las neumonías, de las infecciones urinarias, abdominales, de partes blandas y de sepsis de origen desconocido


title: Bio-Affinität I: Antikörper und Immuntests

text: Sie, lieber Leser, sitzen unter anderem hier, weil Ihre Vorfahren ein gutes Immunsystem besaßen. Wenn auch nur einer Ihrer Vorfahren beim Marsch aus den Savannen Afrikas, als Bauern der Steinzeit, in den mittelalterlichen Städten, beim Ausbruch von Cholera, Pest oder Grippe den allgegenwärtigen Mikroben erlegen wäre, würden Sie das im Moment nicht lesen können. Glückwunsch! Sie sind ein Überlebenskünstler… Vor nicht allzu langer Zeit wurden Ihre Chancen, dies alles zu überleben, durch Antibiotika und Impfungen drastisch erhöht.


Infecciones por neumococo. Clasificación. Factores predisponentes. Aspectos patogénicos de relevancia clínica o diagnóstica. Manifestaciones clínicas. Formas de comienzo


Infecciones víricas


Manejo general y extrahospitalario del paciente con sospecha de infección viral


Corona-Viren


Viren


title: Molekulare Struktur eukaryotischer Chromosomen

text: Die Chromosomen sind die lichtmikroskopisch sichtbaren, materiellen Träger der Gene. Bedeutet das aber, dass sie lediglich eine Ansammlung kettenartig aneinandergefügter Gene sind? Aus allen cytologischen Beobachtungen schließen wir, dass die Chromosomen, und damit die Gene, in Mitose und Meiose gleichmäßig auf die Tochterzellen verteilt werden. Dazu werden die Centromerenbereiche der Chromosomen benutzt, die als Ansatzpunkte für die Mikrotubuli des Spindelapparates dienen. So werden die Chromosomen oder deren Untereinheiten, die Chromatiden, bei der Zellteilung auf die Tochterzellen aufgeteilt. Auch bei der DNA-Replikation haben Chromosomen eine wichtige Aufgabe zu erfüllen. Der normale Replikationsmechanismus linearer DNA-Moleküle führt in jedem Replikationszyklus zu einer Verkürzung der DNADoppelhelix von den Enden her, da die RNA-Primer am Ende der DNA zwar entfernt, aber nicht durch DNASequenzen ersetzt werden können. Außerdem muss eine spezielle Struktur sicherstellen, dass die freien Enden der DNA im Chromosom nicht von Exonukleasen abgebaut werden oder durch Reparaturenzyme mit den freien Enden der DNA eines anderen Chromosoms verschmelzen. Das wird durch besondere terminale Domänen, die Telomere, gewährleistet. Bei der weiteren Untersuchung der molekularen Struktur des Genoms machte man die unerwartete Entdeckung, dass das eukaryotische Genom zum größten Teil nicht aus Protein-kodierenden DNA-Sequenzen besteht. Ein großer Teil der DNA-Sequenzen gehört zur repetitiven DNA, die, wie der Name schon sagt, in vielen, teils identischen, teils voneinander strukturell abweichenden, aber ähnlichen Kopien im Genom vorhanden ist. Ein Teil dieser DNA, vor allem hochrepetitive Sequenzen, ist in heterochromatischen Chromosomenabschnitten lokalisiert. Andere sind in Einzelkopien über das gesamte Genom verstreut. Die erstaunlich großen Unterschiede im DNA-Gehalt der Genome höherer Organismen müssen hauptsächlich Unterschieden in der Menge repetitiver DNA zugeschrieben werden. Sie beruhen also nicht auf wesentlichen Unterschieden in der Zahl Protein-kodierender Gene. Chromosomen sind dynamische Strukturen, die strukturell und funktionell eng mit dem Stoffwechsel und dem Differenzierungsgrad der jeweiligen Zelle verbunden sind. Ihre Bedeutung geht weit über das hinaus, was man von einem reinen „Gen-Depot“ erwarten würde. So hat die unterschiedliche Konstitution der Geschlechtschromosomen in den beiden Geschlechtern zur Folge, dass die Anzahl der Kopien der auf diesen Chromosomen gelegenen Gene im männlichen und weiblichen Geschlecht unterschiedlich ist. Solche quantitativ unbalancierten Genkonstitutionen werden in der Regel vom Organismus nicht toleriert. Verschiedene Organismengruppen haben daher spezifische Mechanismen entwickelt, um für einen funktionellen Ausgleich (Dosiskompensation) der verschiedenen Genkopienzahlen zu sorgen. In Säugetieren wird eines der beiden X-Chromosomen des weiblichen Geschlechts inaktiviert, so dass ein der hemizygoten X-Chromosomenkonstitution des männlichen Geschlechts funktionell gleichwertiger Zustand zustande kommt. In Drosophila erfolgt der Ausgleich in der Genaktivität durch erhöhte Aktivität der X-chromosomalen Gene im Männchen. Die Inaktivierung des Säuger-X-Chromosoms lässt verschiedene wesentliche biologische Mechanismen erkennen. Abgesehen von der Feststellung, dass ganze Chromosomen innerhalb eines Genoms gerichtet funktionell inaktiviert oder hyperaktiviert werden können, ist es von grundlegender Bedeutung, dass eine einmal erfolgte Inaktivierung innerhalb eines Organismus im Allgemeinen erhalten bleibt. Das Chromosom muss mithin eine Information aufnehmen, die dafür sorgt, dass es in allen folgenden Zellgenerationen inaktiv bleibt. Man bezeichnet eine solche Information als chromosomale Prägung (Imprinting). Eine weitere Konsequenz der X-Chromosomeninaktivierung ist, dass verschiedene Zellen von Säugerweibchen eine unterschiedliche Konstitution hinsichtlich der aktiven X-chromosomalen Gene besitzen können. Säugerweibchen sind daher funktionelle Mosaike in Bezug auf die Ausprägung geschlechtsgebundener Gene. Wir wissen, dass die chromosomale DNA in einer ersten Verpackungsstufe in der Form von kompakten Nukleosomen organisiert wird. Sie windet sich hierzu zweimal um einen Komplex aus Histonproteinen. Eine Kette derartiger DNA-Histonpartikel formt eine Chromatinfibrille von 10 nm Durchmesser. Diese Fibrille wird jedoch zusätzlich in Fibrillen höherer Ordnung organisiert. Aktives und inaktives Chromatin unterscheiden sich dabei in dem Ausmaß der Kondensation; Insulator-Elemente sind an der Ausbildung offener Chromatinstrukturen und an der Anheftung der Chromatiden an der Kernmembran beteiligt. Die Kompartimentierung des Zellkerns in chromosomale Territorien und Interchromatindomänen erlaubt die räumliche Trennung verschiedener funktioneller Abläufe im Zellkern, wie Transkription und Reifung der RNA.


title: Sarcocystis

text: Für S. suihominis: Isospora bigemina; für S. bovihominis: S. hominis, Isospora bigemina


title: Intensivmedizin und Anästhesiologie

text: Rund 5–10% aller stationären Patienten eines Krankenhauses liegen auf einer Intensivstation und sind häufig wegen der Grunderkrankung oder der Schwere ihrer akuten Erkrankung immunsupprimiert. Die Letalität ist mit 25–30% entsprechend hoch. Weiterhin werden zunehmend invasive diagnostische und therapeutische Maßnahmen auf Intensivstationen durchgeführt, sodass 25% aller nosokomialen Infektionen auf Intensivstation erworben werden (Widmer 1994; Trilla 1994). Diese sind überwiegend »deviceassoziiert«, wobei die patienteneigene, endogene Bakterienflora das wichtigste Erregerreservoir darstellt. Etwa 20–25% dieser Infektionen sind vermeidbar (Gastmeier et al. 2002), sodass die konsequente Einhaltung sinnvoller und soweit wie möglich evidenzbasierter, infektionspräventiver Maßnahmen auf einer Intensivstation besonders wichtig ist. Weiterhin kommt es insbesondere auf Intensivstationen häufig zur Übertragungen von Bakterien überwiegend durch die Hände des Stationspersonals oder durch inadäquat wiederaufbereitete Gegenstände, die beim Patienten angewendet werden. Die Bedeutung der unbelebten Umgebung wie z. B. Luft, Wasser oder der patientennahen oder -fernen Flächen bei der Übertragung wird in der Literatur sehr kontrovers diskutiert (Talon 1999). Dennoch sollte eine Intensivstation so konzipiert sein, dass das Risiko der Infektionsentstehung sowie der Übertragung von beispielsweise multiresistenten Erregern minimiert werden. Hierzu zählen ausreichende Möglichkeiten für eine hygienische Händedesinfektion, desinfizierbare Oberflächen sowie ausreichende räumliche Gestaltung der einzelnen Patientenzimmer.


title: Durch Luft übertragbare Erkrankungen

text: Die Bedeutung der Luft als Infektionsüberträger wird nicht selten überschätzt: Nur wenige Infektionen wie Tuberkulose oder Aspergillose werden tatsächlich aerogen, d. h. durch die Luft in Form von Aerosolen übertragen. Aerosole sind z. B. wässrige, feste, ölige Schwebstoffe, d. h. winzige Partikel, die wegen ihres geringen Gewichts lange Zeit in der Luft schweben, bevor sie sedimentieren. Hiervon abzugrenzen sind Kontaktinfektionen durch erregerhaltige »große Tröpfchen« (z. B. Influenza, RSV), die durch Husten, Sprechen oder Niesen ausgestoßen werden. Als aerogen übertragbare Infektionen gelten neben Tuberkulose und Aspergillose unter bestimmten Bedingungen auch Masern, Windpocken und Zoster sowie Mukormykosen. Für die von Mensch zu Mensch übertragbaren Infektionen gilt als wichtigste Isolationsmaßnahme die Unterbringung der Patienten in einem Einzelzimmer, möglichst mit negativer Druckführung. Wegen der besonderen klinischen und krankenhaushygienischen Relevanz wird die invasive Aspergillose im Folgenden ausführlich dargestellt, die übrigen Infektionen werden kurz abgehandelt. Die invasive Aspergillose ist eine seltene, überwiegend bei immungeschwächten Patienten nach lang andauernder Neutropenie auftretende Pilzinfektion, die häufig letal verläuft.


Schock


Septischer Kreislaufschock und septische Kardiomyopathie


Virus-Gastroenteritis


Die Pathophysiologie der Entzündung


title: Astroviren und Toroviren

text: Neben den seit 10 Jahren als Gastroenteritiserreger identifizierten Astroviren und den vorbeschriebenen Noro-, Calici-, Adeno- und Rotaviren gibt es noch eine Reihe anderer Viren, die eher nebenbefundlich gastrointestinale Symptome auslösen können, wie HIV, CMV, Entero- und Herpesviren, von denen bisher noch nicht bekannt ist, ob sie, wie zumeist im Tierreich, vergleichbare Erkrankungen verursachen können. Zu diesen gehören die Corona- und Toroviren, Parvoviren und Picobirnaviren. Zumindest für Coronaviren und Picobirnaviren wurde in Einzelfällen eine Assoziation von Durchfallerkrankungen bei Neugeborenen und AIDS-Patienten beschrieben (Chang et al. 1982, Grohmann et al. 1993). Coxsackievirus A1 wurde in Zusammenhang mit Durchfallerkrankungen gebracht, ohne dass dies allerdings bis heute bewiesen werden konnte (Townsend et al. 1982). Gleiches gilt auch für Reoviren und Toroviren (Koopmans et al. 1997).


Erkrankungen der Atemwege und der Lunge


docid: ihkqauve

title: PCR-Analytik


Neuerkrankungsrate und Vorkommen chronischer Erkrankungen


Türkisch — Deutsch Türkçe — Almanca


Arena-Viren


Leberversagen


Multiorganinfektionen — komplexe klinisch-infektiologische Krankheiten


Milz Und Pankreas


Deutsch — Türkisch Almanca — Türkçe


Bakterielle Infektionen


Bevölkerung


Neonatologie


Gegenstand, Aufgabenstellung und heutige Rolle der Medizinischen Mikrobilogie


title: Isolierungsmaßnahmen

text: Isolierungsmaßnahmen hatten in der Medizin seit jeher zum Ziel, eine Weiterverbreitung von Krankheiten zu verhindern. Je weniger man von Ursache und Verbreitungsweg einer Erkrankung wusste, desto rigoroser waren die ergriffenen Absonderungsmaßnahmen (»Aussätzige«). Erst die Entdeckung der Mikroorganismen als Auslöser infektiöser Erkrankungen eröffnete die Möglichkeit einer genaueren Erforschung auch der Übertragungswege. Die Kenntnis des infektionsspezifischen Übertragungsweges einer Erkrankung ist aber die entscheidende Voraussetzung zur Festlegung sinnvoller, d. h. effektiver Isolierungsrichtlinien. Die in der Vergangenheit empfohlenen pauschalen Maßnahmen, die diesen Sachverhalt nicht berücksichtigten, resultierten oftmals in erkennbarer Überisolierung, mit der Folge, dass in der täglichen Praxis auch notwendige Isolierungsmaßnahmen eher lax gehandhabt wurden. Die Konsequenzen waren die Zunahme nosokomialer Infektionen und die endemische Ausbreitung multiresistenter Bakterien in Kliniken.


Lexikonteil


Intrakrine, parakrine und autokrine Funktionen des PTH/PTHrP-Systems


Apparative Diagnostik


Nosokomiale Pneumonie


Enfermedades infecciosas. Concepto. Clasificación. Aspectos generales y específicos de las infecciones. Criterios de sospecha de enfermedad infecciosa. Pruebas diagnósticas complementarias. Criterios de indicación


Sarcoma idiopathicum multiplex hemorrhagicum


Conocimientos básicos sobre enfermedades víricas emergentes: apuntes para atención primaria (parte 1)


title: Las medidas higiénicas y las barreras son estrategias efectivas para impedir la transmisión de las infecciones víricas

text: OBJETIVO: Valorar la efectividad de las intervenciones físicas (aislamiento, cuarentena, alejamiento social, barreras y protección personal) en la transmisión de las infecciones respiratorias de origen vírico. FUENTES DE DATOS: Estudios en cualquier idioma y tipo de publicación recogidos en las siguientes bases de datos: Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (Cochrane Library 2009, número 2), Medline (1966 a mayo de 2009), OldMedline (1955 a 1965), Embase (1990 hasta la semana 18 de 2009) y CINAHL (1982 a mayo de 2009). Se seleccionaron estudios que evaluasen cualquier intervención física para prevenir la transmisión de virus respiratorios de animales a humanos o de humanos a humanos, comparándola frente a cualquier otra o frente a ninguna actuación (“no hacer nada”). SELECCIÓN DE ESTUDIOS Y EXTRACCIÓN DE DATOS: Ensayos clínicos, estudios observacionales de cohortes, de casos y controles, estudios transversales, estudios antes-después y estudios de series temporales, realizados en personas de cualquier edad y en los que constase información de control de posibles factores de confusión. Tras la lectura del título y del resumen se procedió a la lectura completa del estudio si este reunía los criterios de elegibilidad o si se disponía de información insuficiente para su exclusión del análisis. Se hizo una clasificación de la calidad atendiendo al riesgo de sesgos: estudios con alto, medio y bajo riesgo de sesgos. Las principales variables de resultados analizadas fueron el número de casos, la gravedad, los ingresos hospitalarios y la mortalidad por infecciones víricas. RESULTADOS PRINCIPALES: La estrategia de búsqueda generó 2.958 citas, de las que 168 fueron potencialmente relevantes y recuperadas, incluyéndose finalmente 58 estudios pertenecientes a 59 proyectos de investigación (4 ensayos clínicos aleatorios, 14 ensayos aleatorizados en clúster, 7 estudios de casos y controles, 21 de cohortes y 13 estudios antes-después). La calidad de los ensayos clínicos fue baja y la de los estudios observacionales, intermedia. El metaanálisis de los estudios de casos y controles sugiere que las medidas físicas son altamente efectivas en prevenir la propagación del síndrome agudo respiratorio severo (SARS). Por ejemplo, el lavado frecuente de manos (> 10 veces al día) obtiene una odds ratio (OR) de 0,45 (intervalo de confianza [IC] 95%: 0,36-0,57) y un número necesario de pacientes a tratar (NNT) de 4,9 (IC 95%: 3,65-5,52). El uso de mascarillas simples, una OR de 0,32 (IC 95%: 0,25-0,40) y un NNT de 6 (IC 95%: 4,54-8,03) y el empleo de mascarillas N95, una OR de 0,09 (IC 95%: 0,03-0,30) y NNT de 3 (IC 95%: 2,37-4,06). Utilizar guantes, una OR de 0,43 (IC 95%: 0,29-0,65) y NNT de 5 (IC 95%: 4,15-15,41) y el uso de batas, una OR de 0,23 (IC 95%: 0,14-0,37) y NNT de 5 (IC 95%: 3,37-7,12). El uso simultáneo de lavado de manos, mascarillas, guantes y bata obtiene una OR de 0,09 (IC 95%: 0,02-0,35) y NNT de 3 (IC 95%: 2,66-4,97). Las medidas combinadas también fueron efectivas para frenar la transmisión de la gripe entre los familiares. Se desconoce si suplementar el lavado de manos con virucidas y antisépticos disminuye la transmisión de las enfermedades respiratorias. CONCLUSIÓN: Las medidas higiénicas y las barreras físicas (especialmente el lavado de manos, el uso de mascarillas y el aislamiento de los casos) son estrategias efectivas para impedir la transmisión de las infecciones víricas.


Abordaje de la infección respiratoria baja en ancianos


Síndrome respiratorio agudo grave y otros virus respiratorios emergentes en el siglo XXI


Tratamiento empírico de las infecciones del adulto


Conocimientos básicos sobre enfermedades víricas emergentes: apuntes para atención primaria (parte 2)


Entschädigung für Praxisschließung


Praxisalltag versus Coronavirus


AGENDA


Contraindicaciones y recomendaciones médicas para los viajes en avión


L’épidémie de COVID-19 bouscule tout.Organisation des soins, télémédecine, éducation thérapeutique, édition médicale, et rôles du diabète et du terrain cardiovasculaire


COVID-19 virus - EFOMP President's message


Editor's note


Ragfijn samen- spel: bestuurlijke organisatie crisisbestrijding


KORT: opvallende Nieuwsberichten, feiten en cijfers


Besturen in crisistijd: zichtbaar maar ook inzetbaar blijven


Redactioneel


Inge Borghuis


docid: qdxhyqjz

title: Panorama


title: Geriatric infections: Decreased immunity or evolved opportunists?

text: In host–parasite co-evolution, parasites are assumed to have an advantage owing to their shorter generation time. Evolution of pathogens within the lifetime of a host individual is implicated as a strong selective force in the evolution of sex and aging in the host. However, this assumption or its testable predictions have not been examined empirically. We classified infectious bacteria and viruses into those that can have continued long-term existence on the host body (group 1) versus those that have only a short-term interaction during an active infection (group 2). We surveyed the literature for age-specific incidence data about infections from both the groups. The age trends of the two groups show contrasting patterns. The incidence of infections by all group 1 pathogens showed a 2.28- to 28-fold increase in older ages. In group 2, 6 out of the 9 pathogens showed a significant declining trend in incidence with age. In both groups, there was greater mortality or morbidity among the infected in the old-age classes. These patterns are better explained by pathogen evolution than by age-related decline in immunity. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s12038-020-0025-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.


The fifth anniversary of Regional Studies in Marine Science


docid: hqeegntd

title: Introduction to the Special Issue on Pelvic Pain


Cardiothoracic Surgeons in Pandemics: Ethical Considerations


Life is Dynamic and So is JASE


IWWG News and Views


title: TRIM62 From Chicken as a Negative Regulator of Reticuloendotheliosis Virus Replication

text: Emerging evidence suggests that the tripartite motif containing 62 (TRIM62), a member of the TRIM family, plays an important role in antiviral processes. The objective of the study was to explore the role of TRIM62 in reticuloendotheliosis virus (REV) infection and its potential molecular mechanism. We first demonstrated that the REV infection affected the TRIM62 expression first upregulated and then downregulated in CEF cells. Next, we evaluated the effect of TRIM62 on viral replication. Overexpression of TRIM62 decreased REV replication. On the contrary, silencing of endogenously expressed TRIM62 increased viral replication. Then, to explore the necessity of domains in TRIM62's negative regulation on viral replication, we transfected CEF cells with TRIM62 domain deletion mutants. Deletion domain partially abolished TRIM62's antiviral activity. The effect of SPRY domain deletion was the highest and that of coiled-coil was the lowest. Further, we identified 18 proteins that coimmunoprecipitated and interacted with TRIM62 by immunocoprecipitation and mass spectrometry analysis. Strikingly, among which, both Ras-related protein Rab-5b (RAB5B) and Arp2/3 complex 34-kDa subunit (ARPC2) were involved in actin cytoskeletal pathway. Altogether, these results strongly suggest that chicken TRIM62 provides host defense against viral infection, and all domains are required for its action. RAB5B and ARPC2 may play important roles in its negative regulation processes.


title: Respiratory viral infections in a cohort of children during the first year of life and their role in the development of wheezing()

text: INTRODUCTION: It is known that infants with viral respiratory infections severe enough to require hospital admission have a high risk of developing recurrent wheezing. Few data have been published on unselected populations. The main aim of this study was to analyse symptomatic and asymptomatic respiratory viral infections during the first year of life in a cohort of infants, recruited at birth, and the development of recurrent wheezing. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A total of 302 newborns were recruited. A nasopharyngeal aspirate was taken when the patients had a respiratory infection, as well as in the visits for vaccination at 2, 4, 6, and 12 months. RT-nested PCR assays were performed to detect 16 viruses. RESULTS: A total of 1293 samples were analysed (1005 healthy controls and 288 respiratory infections). Samples taken during routine check-ups were positive in 30.8% of cases, while those with respiratory infection were positive in 77.8%, P < .001 (OR: 3, 95% CI: 2.4–3.8). A total of 239 (79%) infants had at least 1 positive respiratory viral infection detected. The most frequent virus (71%) was rhinovirus (RV). Recurrent wheezing was found in 27 (11%) children during their first year of life (1.2 episodes, SD 2.9). Recurrent wheezing was present in 58.3% of patients admitted to hospital during their first viral infection, vs. 8.6% of infants when the first infection was mild or who had asymptomatic viral detection, P < .001 (OR: 2.18; 95% CI: 1.05–4.5). CONCLUSIONS: In our series, severe respiratory infections leading to hospitalisation in the first months of life are risk factors for developing wheezing, but not in the case of mild RV infections.


title: Previous or coincident infections with suspected Kawasaki disease. Should we change our approach?()()

text: INTRODUCTION: Kawasaki disease (KD) is a multisystem vasculitis associated with coronary artery abnormalities. Infections could be a trigger of the inflammation. The main aim of this study was to describe the presence of infections in children with KD, and to analyse the clinical characteristics and the presence of coronary abnormalities in these cases. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A retrospective study was performed within the Kawasaki Disease network (KAWA-RACE (2011-2016). An analysis was performed that included patients with positive microbiological findings (PMF) during the acute phase, as well as those with a previous recent infection (PRI) during the 4 weeks preceding KD diagnosis. RESULTS: The study included a total of 621 children with KD, with PMF being found in 101 (16.3%) patients, and a PRI in 107 (17.2%). Significantly less echocardiographic abnormalities were found in the group with a PRI, when compared to those without a PRI (23 vs. 35%, P = .01) and also a lower proportion of overall coronary artery lesions (16 vs. 25%, P = .054). No significant differences were found in the proportion of aneurysms in either of these groups (PRI or PMF) when compared to those without infection. CONCLUSIONS: In the present study, no differences were found in the incidence of coronary aneurysms in either of the groups, with or without PRI or PMF. Therefore, if KD is suspected, appropriate treatment should be started despite having a confirmed infection.


Update MERS


title: A review of the Royal Perth Hospital Bali experience: an infection control perspective

text: Thirty five patients were transferred to Royal Perth Hospital (RPH) after the Bali bombings. The patients had severe burn injuries and were considered to be at high-risk of both the carriage and acquisition of multi-resistant organisms (MROs). Whilst seeking to protect the Bali patients with a comprehensive infection control response, we also sought to protect other high-risk patients from nosocomial acquisition of MROs. MROs were detected from 25 (82%) of the 29 Bali patients admitted to RPH. Bali patients were colonised, or infected, with one or more of the following MROs: multi-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (MRAB) (19 patients), extended-spectrum ß-lactamase (ESBL) producing Gram-negative bacteria (15 patients), vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) (nine patients), multi-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa (MRPA) (six patients), multi-resistant Chryseobacterium sp. (four patients), and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) (three patients). Five Bali patients developed a total of eight bacteraemic episodes, with MRPA sepsis contributing to death in two patients. Since the Bali bombings horizontal transmission of Bali MROs has occurred in 41 non-Bali patients in RPH. MRPA has had the greatest clinical impact. Eight non-Bali patients developed a total of 11 bacteraemic episodes, with MRPA sepsis contributing to death in four patients. However, apart from MRPA, we have now controlled transmission of the other MROs in RPH. The emergency response to the Bali disaster required strong leadership, good communication and multi-disciplinary teamwork. The infection control strategy contributed to good outcomes for most Bali bombing patients. However, many patients within the Bali cohort were heavily colonised with MROs, and some developed invasive infection. Subsequent nosocomial transmission of these MROs to non-Bali patients has been a legacy of the Bali tragedy.


title: Paramedic knowledge of infection control principles and standards in an Australian emergency medical system (EMS)

text: Infection control is an essential component of health care. The literature generally suggests that most health professionals’ knowledge of infection control principles and standards is poor or, at the very least, inadequate. There is a paucity of research examining paramedic knowledge of infection control principles and standards, particularly in the Australian pre-hospital context. The purpose of this study was to determine paramedic knowledge of standard infection control definitions and principles in an Australian emergency medical system (EMS). A confidential and anonymous mail survey was distributed to all paramedics working in a State-wide Australian ambulance service (n=2274) A total of 1258 surveys were returned - a response rate of 55.3%. Only 46.2% (n=581) of the participants identified the correct components of the ’chain of infection’. Correct identification of the definition of ’nosocomial’ was made by 27,9% (n=347) of participants. Less than one-fifth (17.2%, n=217) of participants identified 'standards and additional precautions’ as the current system of infection control. Less than half (41.6%, n=523) of the sample correctly identified hand washing as the primary’ infection control strategy’ to prevent cross-infection. This study suggests knowledge of fundamental principles and standards of infection control among paramedics is poor in this jurisdiction and recommends the introduction of comprehensive in-service education programmes in infection control. Further research is required to investigate if, and how, these results may be realised in practice.


Rôle de la médecine interne face aux maladies infectieuses émergentes


Cutaneous lesions associated with feline coronavirus, FIP, and FIV


Maladies exotiques : maladies émergentes du xx(e) siècle


Parvoviral Enteritis: What's New?


Evaluation of available diagnostic techniques for feline infectious peritonitis


Pyogranulomatous panophthalmitis in a ferret


docid: prgrgbxg

title: Virus recovery from idiopathic conjunctivitis of dogs


title: Chapter 9 Fusion of Viral Envelopes with Cellular Membranes

text: This chapter reviews some characteristic features of membrane fusion activity for each virus and discusses the mechanisms of membrane fusion, especially low pH-induced membrane fusion. It concentrates on the interaction of the hydrophobic segment with the target cell membrane lipid bilayer and suggests the entrance of the segment into the lipid bilayer hydrophobic core as a key step in fusion. The envelope is a lipid bilayer membrane with the virus specific glycoproteins spanning it. The bilayer originates from the host cell membrane and has a lipid composition and transbilayer distribution quite similar to the host's. The viral glycoproteins have the functions of binding to the target cell surface and fusion with the cell membranes. The two functions are carried by a single glycoprotein in influenza virus (HA), vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) G glycoprotein, and Semliki Forest virus SFV E glycoprotein. In Sendai virus (HVJ), the functions are carried by separate glycoproteins, hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN) for binding and fusion glycoprotein (F) for fusion. When viruses encounter target cells, they first bind to the cell surface through an interaction of the viral glycoprotein with receptors.


Variabilité génétique des virus à ARN


title: Membrane Glycoproteins of Enveloped Viruses

text: This chapter focuses on the recent information of the glycoprotein components of enveloped viruses and points out specific findings on viral envelopes. Although enveloped viruses of different major groups vary in size and shape, as well as in the molecular weight of their structural polypeptides, there are general similarities in the types of polypeptide components present in virions. The types of structural components found in viral membranes are summarized briefly in the chapter. All the enveloped viruses studied to date possess one or more glycoprotein species and lipid as a major structural component. The presence of carbohydrate covalently linked to proteins is demonstrated by the incorporation of a radioactive precursor, such as glucosamine or fucose, into viral polypeptides, which is resolved by sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Enveloped viruses share many common features in the organization of their structural components, as indicated by several approaches, including electron microscopy, surface-labeling, and proteolytic digestion experiments, and the isolation of subviral components. The chapter summarizes the detailed structure of the glycoproteins of four virus groups: (1) influenza virus glycoproteins, (2) rhabdovirus G protein, (3) togavirus glycoprotein, and (4) paramyxovirus glycoproteins The information obtained includes the size and shape of viral glycoproteins, the number of polypeptide chains in the complete glycoprotein structure, and compositional data on the polypeptide and oligosaccharide portions of the molecules.


Zum Auftreten eine neuartigen Coronavirus


Viral infections associated with pneumonia


title: Neuronal targeting and functional effects of infectious agents transmitted from animals to man

text: The nervous system is an «immune-privileged» site and can provide a reservoir to harbor as persistent or latent infections certain microbes that find their way to the brain. From an evolutionary standpoint, such infections are characterized at most times by low levels of the infectious agent in the systemic domain, except when multiplication has just taken place. Hence the ability for transmission of the pathogens from animals to Man will be determined by the availability of microbes to be transferred by a vector (e.g. in trypanosomiasis), or the amount of infective forms of the microbes shed into an environment (e.g. in toxoplasmosis). Using African trypanosomes, toxoplasma,Listeria and influenza A virus as examples, mechanisms by which microbes can spread and be targeted to and within the brain to cause various types of nervous system dysfunctions is reviewed. Newly revealed potentials of certain cytokines to stimulate neurons to control the growth, and even kill, microbes in their cell bodies is also described.


title: The Role of Self-Assembling Lipid Molecules in Vaccination

text: The advent of vaccines represents one of the most significant advances in medical history. The protection provided by vaccines has greatly contributed in reducing the number of cases of infections and most notably to the eradication of small pox. A large number of new technologies and approaches in vaccine development are currently being investigated with the goal of providing the basis for the next generation of prophylactics against an ever-expanding list of emerging and reemerging pathogens. In this chapter, we will focus on the role of lipids and lipid self-assembling vesicles in new and promising vaccination approaches. We will start by describing how lipids can induce activation of the innate immune system and focus on some lipid-derived vaccine adjuvants. Next, we will review current lipid-based self-assembling particles used as vaccine platforms, specifically liposomes and virus-like particles, and how virus-like particles have facilitated research of highly pathogenic viruses such as Ebola.


Intensive medicine in Europe: A need


„Ich habe keine große Hoffnung, dass das Epidemierisiko künftig durch ein paar kreative Versicherungsprodukte gelöst werden kann“


Cool bleiben


„Zuschüsse scheinen in einzelnen Fällen notwendig“


„Der Rückgang an den Aktienmärkten geht nicht spurlos an uns vorüber“: Im Profil: Christoph Jurecka, CFO Munich Re


Volle Belastung: Coronainfiziertes Personal und präventive Maßnahmen zwingen Versicherer dazu, zahlreiche Mitarbeiter ins Homeoffice zu schicken. Die Digitalisierung schafft Abhilfe, doch sie erfordert auch Opfer. Einblicke von innen.


Schlussfolgerung: mangelhaft: Wenn sich die Konjunktur eintrübt oder die Börsen massiv in die Knie gehen, triumphieren die Crash-Propheten. Haben die Untergangsauguren also doch recht? Gerade in der aktuellen Situation um das Coronavirus könnte man zu diesem Ergebnis kommen.


Leere Plätze: Covid-19 hat die deutsche Wirtschaft fest im Griff. Soziale Kontakte werden auf ein Minimum begrenzt, Massenveranstaltungen im großen Stile abgesagt, Notfallpläne aktiviert. Versicherer könnten in ihrer Rolle als Stabilitätsanker mit ihren Produkten gerade jetzt wichtige Signale aussenden, doch sie halten sich zurück. Fragen von außen.


title: Beste professional in sociaal werk, BPSWeetjes

text: Met dit bericht willen we allereerst ons respect tonen aan alle professionals die momenteel onder moeilijke omstandigheden hun belangrijke werk blijven doen. Soms met gevaar voor eigen gezondheid en met de verantwoordelijkheid anderen niet te besmetten. Je bent van grote betekenis voor mensen die juist nu soms extra begeleiding, ondersteuning en hulp nodig hebben.


Wider die Katastrophenstimmung


Veränderungen bei Video- und Telefonsprechstunden


Lizenz zum Versichern: Der neue James Bond ist im Auftrag Ihrer Majestät wieder unter Absicherung der Allianz unterwegs. Oft ist das ein Quantum Trost für die Produktionsfirma, wenn am Film-Set etwas schief geht oder der Hauptdarsteller plötzlich ausfällt. Absagen aufgrund von Seuchen oder Epidemien wie dem Corona-Virus sind in diesen Spezialpolicen dagegen meistens ausgeschlossen.


title: Nieuws

text: Erna werkt als cliëntondersteuner, gedetacheerd vanuit MEE, in een wijkteam. ‘Met een klein crisisteam op het gemeentehuis en de rest vanuit huis wordt er gewoon doorgewerkt. Een deel van de hulpvragen verandert nu natuurlijk wel. Veel therapie, dagbesteding en andere samenkomsten zijn afgelast. Gezinnen waar geweld speelt zijn extra kwetsbaar. In het geval van sommige cliënten en gezinnen waar veel kwetsbaarheid speelt, en waar wij bijvoorbeeld casusregie voeren, moeten we de vinger extra aan de pols houden. En ondertussen lopen aanvragen voor ondersteuning en indicatiestelling ook gewoon door.’


Zwischen Infektionsschutz und Versorgungsauftrag: Eine Zwischenbilanz vier Wochen nach Ausbruch der Pandemie


"Plötzlich veränderte sich die Situation fast stündlich": Corona-Virus erzwingt Verschiebung der DERM auf 16.-18. Oktober


title: Zoonoses et santé au travail

text: Les zoonoses représentent une part importante des maladies infectieuses dans le monde. Elles évoluent dans le temps et l’espace et nécessitent une veille attentive. Les travailleurs sont exposés par le biais d’un contact avec le réservoir animal ou d’un environnement souillé par l’animal. Elles sont souvent sous-diagnostiquées ou peu déclarées malgré un nombre de travailleurs exposés non négligeables. Certains exemples de zoonoses fréquentes ou faisant l’objet de nombreuses interrogations auprès des médecins du travail sont présentés : borréliose de Lyme, fièvre Q, chlamydiose aviaire… Les grands principes de prévention sont rappelés et le rôle du médecin du travail dans l’information des salariés, dans l’évaluation du risque, dans les modalités de la surveillance médicale, dans l’indication des vaccinations –quand elles existent – et dans la veille est souligné.


Le médecin du travail en milieu hospitalier face aux risques biologiques émergents, hors pandémie grippale


Législation


Ambulante Versorgung in der Corona-Krise: Großteil der COVID-19-Patienten wird in den Praxen behandelt


Bilanzen: Allianz, Talanx, Hannover Rück, Generali, Alter Leipziger-Hallesche, DVAG, Deutsche Familienversicherung, VIG


Middle East respiratory syndrome


title: Gross pathology of small mammals

text: A review is presented on how to perform a meaningful necropsy of the rabbit, ferret, and guinea pig. Brief descriptions of gross findings of significant diseases are provided in sufficient detail for identification in practice. Diseases are organized by organ systems affected and included based on their clinical significance, incidence, and importance in the United States.


title: Rabbit and rodent ophthalmology()

text: Ocular disorders of rabbits and rodents are caused by genetic defects, infections, nutritional eficiencies, congenital malformations, as well as environmental and management problems. Their investigation and diagnosis rely on implementation of diagnostic approaches and instrumentation used commonly for other companion animal species. Special considerations of importance include the small size of the eye in some species, necessitating use of magnification for accurate assessment, and the vulnerability of some species to complications of parenteral and even topical antibiotic and anti-inflammatory therapy.


Pneumonia: Classification diagnosis and nursing management: Nursing Standard 2005;19(42):50–4


title: Infectious and parasitic diseases of captive passerines

text: The small passerines, canaries and finches, are social birds often bred and housed in flock aviaries. The aviary may be a mixed aviary housing different species or a breeding aviary concentrating on a single species. Multiple birds in contact with each other provide the means by which infectious disease can spread. Dietary and husbandry requirements vary for the species of passerines housed and can also influence disease outbreaks when they are less than optimal. Stress factors, including nutritional, husbandry (overcrowding, aviary maintenance), breeding, and the introduction of new birds, may play a significant role in disease outbreaks. An overview of viral, bacterial, fungal, and parasitic issues affecting passerines housed in aviaries will be addressed.


European Respiratory Society: 15th Annual Congress of the European Respiratory Society; 17–21 September 2005; Copenhagen, Denmark


PUESTA AL DÍA EN CLÍNICA NOTICIAS | ACTUALIZACIONES | INVESTIGACIONES


Lo que necesita saber acerca del síndrome respiratorio agudo severo


Breves en enfermería


title: Feline infectious peritonitis: answers to frequently asked questions concerning FIP and coronavirus

text: Feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) is caused by infection with feline coronavirus (FCoV), a highly infectious virus transmitted mostly indirectly, by sharing litter trays with a FCoV excretor, or by fomites. The majority of FCoV-infected cats remain healthy, with up to 12% developing FIP. While any age or breed of cat can develop FIP, FIP disproportionately affects pedigree kittens: most studies found that around 70% of FIP cases occurred in pure-bred cats under 2 years of age. In this paper, some questions about FCoV and FIP that are likely to be asked of, and by, a veterinary nurse will be addressed.


Convergencia mundial de las enfermedades infecciosas emergentes: a tan solo un viaje en avión de distancia


title: Acute Hemorrhagic Edema with extensive truck involvement and Rhinovirus infection association

text: Acute Hemorrhagic Edema (AHE) is a rare form of leukocytoclastic vasculitis with an unknown etiology. There are various possible triggers associated with the development of AHE such as Upper Respiratory Tract related infections which have been reported in the literature. A typical case of AHE is a child less than 2 years of age having the symptoms of fever, Acral Targetoid Purpura, and Edema. The course of this illness is benign with a complete resolution within few weeks. This case report involves a patient having the classical symptoms of fever, Purpura and Edema, but with an unusual extensive truncal involvement. Moreover, Rhinovirus infection testing was positive in the child’s case. The presence of the virus gives a suspicion of being the possible trigger for the boy’s AHE. In the previous hospital, the treatment started with steroid for a course of one week without a significant improvement which brought the patients to the Emergency department. A decision of continuing a supportive treatment led to a complete resolution. After 3 weeks the AHE symptoms were gone without any complications.


Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and Dentistry After Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome


title: The China Syndrome: the impact of the SARS epidemic in Southeast Asia

text: The war in Iraq, the threat of terrorism and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic have made international business activities increasingly difficult and risky. The worldwide economic downturn and slow growth in domestic markets are forcing companies to depend more than ever on overseas trade. SARS emerged in China in November 2002 and has spread to 26 countries. The SARS epidemic has caused the most severe economic crisis in Southeast Asia since the wave of bank failures and currency devaluations that swept the region five years ago. The SARS epidemic has prompted health officials to implement travel advisories and restrictions, in order to defer nonessential travel to regions of Asia with large numbers of SARS cases. They are enforcing quarantine and isolation measures in major cities to try and limit the spread of SARS. The President of the United States has signed an executive order adding SARS to the list of communicable diseases that can be quarantined. A major disruption in China could paralyze just‐in‐time supply chains and cause an economic crisis for retailers and other businesses worldwide. The SARS epidemic has caused many economists to drastically reduce their economic‐growth forecasts for Asia. New infectious diseases, such as SARS, can emerge and easily travel around the globe, infecting less‐resilient hosts and mutating because of the influence of viruses and bacteria in their new environment. Health officials are even more concerned about the pandemic disaster that hasn’t happened, but may still. However, the SARS epidemic has created positive economic benefits for some companies.


title: SARS: lessons in strategic planning for hoteliers and destination marketers

text: PURPOSE: – The purpose of this paper is to review the impact that the 2003 SARS epidemic had on tourism and summarize the lessons that were learned from this crisis. To offer both practical and strategic tips for hoteliers and destination marketers in the Niagara region should a similar crisis affect this region. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: – Findings were derived from the analysis of both secondary and primary data. The popular press and academic journals as well as reports, briefs, and presentations were analyzed. A questionnaire was designed to investigate the impact of SARS, management during the crisis, recovery strategies, and formal planning. FINDINGS: – Provides information on how industry dealt with a major, extended crisis. Recognizes the importance of an integrated strategy for dealing with a crisis. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS: – The paper concentrates on the effects of an epidemic in two large North American cities. The strategic and practical tips may not be suitable in other jurisdictions. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: – This paper provides information on how the tourism industry can prepare itself for a crisis or disaster and describes how all stakeholders must work together to better deal with the effects of a crisis. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: – This paper summarizes the effects that SARS had on the tourism industry and offers practical and strategic tips for preparing for and managing crises.


Avian Influenza Viruses and Pandemic Influenza


title: Apoptosis and Cell Death: Relevance to Lung

text: In multicellular organisms, cell death plays an important role in development, morphogenesis, control of cell numbers, and removal of infected, mutated, or damaged cells. The term apoptosis was first coined in 1972 by Kerr et al.1 to describe the morphologic features of a type of cell death that is distinct from necrosis and is today considered to represent programmed cell death. In fact, the evidence that a genetic program existed for physiologic cell death came from the developmental studies of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.2 As time has progressed, however, apoptotic cell death has been shown to occur in many cell types under a variety of physiologic and pathologic conditions. Cells dying by apoptosis exhibit several characteristic morphologic features that include cell shrinkage, nuclear condensation, membrane blebbing, nuclear and cellular fragmentation into membrane-bound apoptotic bodies, and eventual phagocytosis of the fragmented cell (Figure 4.1).


title: Molecular Pathology of Rickettsial Lung Infections

text: Rickettsial infections of humans comprise a diverse group of infections caused by pathogens that are obligate intracellular bacteria with a genetic relationship, including the genera Rickettsia, Orientia, Ehrlichia, and Anaplasma. The host cells of these pathogens largely belie the systemic clinical manifestations, because Rickettsia and Orientia infect endothelial cells, and Ehrlichia and Anaplasma infect circulating leukocytes (monocytes and neutrophils, respectively). Thus, the predominant manifestations (fever, headache, myalgia, with or without rash) do not usually focus attention on the respiratory system; however, the underlying pathogenesis of these infections involves degrees of vascular compromise either by direct injury and inflammation or by the action of vasoactive proinflammatory molecules such as cytokines, chemokines, and prostaglandins. Given that the lung possesses the largest vascular bed in the human body, it is not surprising that pulmonary involvement is periodically identified and, when severely affected, is considered a potentially life-threatening complication.1,2


title: Fibrogenesis

text: Pulmonary fibrosis can be idiopathic or secondary to inflammatory states or injuries (Table 46.1). The tempo ranges from insidious to rapid, and the location of the fibrous tissue can be centered around or in the airways (bronchiolitis obliterans) or in the alveolar compartment (idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis [IPF]). In this chapter, we focus on IPF, the paradigmatic fibrosing lung disorder.


Nipah and Hendra Viruses Encephalitis


docid: pfxsxhbo

title: Genetic Abnormalities of Surfactant Metabolism

text: Pulmonary surfactant is the complex mixture of lipids and proteins needed to reduce alveolar surface tension at the air-liquid interface and prevent alveolar collapse at the end of expiration. It has been recognized for almost 50 years that a deficiency in surfactant production due to pulmonary immaturity is the principal cause of the respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) observed in prematurely born infants.1 Secondary surfactant deficiency due to injury to the cells involved in its production and functional inactivation of surfactant is also important in the pathophysiology of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) observed in older children and adults.2,3 In the past 15 years, it has been recognized that surfactant deficiency may result from genetic mechanisms involving mutations in genes encoding critical components of the surfactant system or proteins involved in surfactant metabolism.4,5 Although rare, these single gene disorders provide important insights into normal surfactant metabolism and into the genes in which frequently occurring allelic variants may be important in more common pulmonary diseases.


docid: jofxbllr

title: Molecular Pathology of Viral Respiratory Diseases

text: Virology has long been the gold standard by which advances in molecular biology and methodology have been measured.1 As new molecular tools have been developed, new viruses or variants of older, established taxons have been described. Recent advances in genetic sequencing and amplification technologies were pivotal in detecting and describing the two newest agents with a tropism for the respiratory system, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and avian influenza virus,2–4 both of which have the potential to be pandemic agents with a high mortality and morbidity rate. The rapid development of specific molecular tests led to effective public health measures to be put in place to successfully quarantine these agents thus far. The identification of these two new agents underscores the fact that the major cause of nonbacterial epidemics in history has been viruses with a predilection for the respiratory system. The classic example is the global “Spanish flu” pandemic of 1918, attributed to causing the deaths of 20–40 million people within 1 year, a mortality rate greater than that recorded for World War I and the 4 worst years of the Black Plague (AD 1347–1351) combined.4–7


title: Epithelial Repair and Regeneration

text: Contact with the environment positions the respiratory epithelium at risk for acute and chronic injury from infectious pathogens, noxious agents, and inflammatory processes. Thus, to protect gas transfer within the lung the epithelium is programmed for routine maintenance and repair. Programs for repair are directed by epithelial, mesenchymal, and inflammatory signals that collectively constitute highly regulated networks. Principal components of the repair network are developmental morphogens, integrin and growth factor signaling molecules, and transcription factors. The epithelium responds to these signals with a remarkable plasticity and is bulwarked by a population of lung progenitor cells to ensure maintenance and repair for fluid balance and host defense functions.


title: Tissue Culture Models

text: The use of tissue cultures as a research tool to investigate the pathophysiologic bases of diseases has become essential in the current age of molecular biomedical research. Although it will always be necessary to translate and validate the observations seen in vitro to the patient or animal, the ability to investigate the role(s) of individual variables free from confounders is paramount toward increasing our understanding of the physiology of the lung and the role of its cellular components in disease. Additionally, it is not feasible to conduct certain research in humans because of ethical constraints, yet investigators may still be interested in the physiologic response in human tissues; in vitro characterization of human tissue is an acceptable choice.


The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome


title: Nanotechnology: Towards the detection and treatment of inflammatory diseases

text: Biological systems operate at the nanoscale. Nanomedicine is the application of nanotechnology to monitor and treat biological systems in health and disease. This is accomplished by real time monitoring of molecular signaling at the cellular and tissue level. During the past decade, there has been an explosion in this field, resulting in revolutionary advances in determining the microstructure and function of living systems. These discoveries have led to the development of powerful tools for fundamental biological and medical research. Nanotechnology has been applied to targeted drug delivery to minimize side effects, creating implantable materials as scaffolds for tissue engineering, creating implantable devices, surgical aids and nanorobotics, as well as throughput drug screening and medical diagnostic imaging. The nanoinitiatives are funded by governments and private sources throughout the world to develop or further refine the technology to provide the beyond-imaginable, most sophisticated tools to a physician and scientists to inflammatory diseases. No doubt, there will be many technical, regulatory and legal challenges in the deployment of these technologies. Unquestionably, there is enough desire and commitment to meet these challenges for the good of society and betterment of the quality of life.


title: Designer Probiotics: The Next-Gen High Efficiency Biotherapeutics

text: The probiotic engineering is a cutting edge technology for improving disease diagnosis, treating gastrointestinal disorders and infectious diseases, and improving nutrition and ecological health. Use of bioengineered microorganisms in animals has different targets and prospects owing to differences in their anatomy, physiology, and feeding habits. In ruminants, the bioengineered microorganism is primarily aimed to enhance nutrient utilization, detoxify toxic plant metabolites, and lessen the enteric methanogenesis, while in non-ruminants, the bioengineered microorganisms are aimed to enhance nutrient utilizations, confer protection against pathogens, and inhibit infectious agents. Highlights The microorganisms can be engineered to enhance their metabolic efficiency. The bioengineered microorganisms could solve the burgeoning problem of drug-resistant pathogens. The recombinant probiotics are promising therapeutic agents against infectious diseases.


title: Systemic Clinical and Metabolic Diseases

text: Like other animals pet and companion birds are also prone to systemic illness. This is presented in the form of certain clinical signs and symptoms which is known as “ sick-bird syndrome.”


title: The new normal: lessons learned from SARS for corporations operating in emerging markets

text: The modern industrialized world was completely caught off guard by the recent SARS outbreak. Fortunately, for most organizations, the impact has been short lived, but management has been provided with a reminder of the impact of the external environment in a world of ever increasing globalization. As seen with the SARS outbreak, a lack of preparedness can have devastating effects on business and warrant inclusion in a business definition of a crisis. This paper uses the recent SARS epidemic as a background to highlight the importance of crisis planning, particularly in emerging economies, and suggests how organizations can address these concerns.


title: Protective Microglial Subset in Development, Aging, and Disease: Lessons From Transcriptomic Studies

text: Microglial heterogeneity has been the topic of much discussion in the scientific community. Elucidation of their plasticity and adaptability to disease states triggered early efforts to characterize microglial subsets. Over time, their phenotypes, and later on their homeostatic signature, were revealed, through the use of increasingly advanced transcriptomic techniques. Recently, an increasing number of these “microglial signatures” have been reported in various homeostatic and disease contexts. Remarkably, many of these states show similar overlapping microglial gene expression patterns, both in homeostasis and in disease or injury. In this review, we integrate information from these studies, and we propose a unique subset, for which we introduce a core signature, based on our own research and reports from the literature. We describe that this subset is found in development and in normal aging as well as in diverse diseases. We discuss the functions of this subset as well as how it is induced.


Évitez la Corée du Sud : MERS-CoV y est arrivé


Les nouveaux virus responsables de gastro-entérites


Coronavirus : du nCoV au MERS-CoV


docid: xjfvzdjg

title: Chemistry, biochemistry and biology of sialic acids()


Se protéger contre une nouvelle grippe aviaire ?


docid: omcexmvk

title: Integral Membrane Proteins


title: Imagerie moderne des pneumonies infectieuses aiguës

text: The acute infectious pneumonia constitute a problem of public health because they are one cause of great morbidity and mortality in adult. If the clinical and radiological information allow often to achieve the diagnosis of infectious pneumonia, the etiologic diagnosis is more difficult. Indeed, numerous pathogen germs are responsible of pneumonia and the reaction of lung is not very various, this explain the low specificity of radiological imaging, except for few characteristic cases. That’s why the understanding of physiopathologic mechanisms allow to explain some special cases. In the same way, the knowledge of anatomical and radiological understanding allow the acknowledgment of three main radiographic appearance. As for the evaluation of epidemiological and immune contexte, they can allow to recognize the concern germ.


title: Natural Products as Antiviral Agents

text: Since the ancient times, natural products have served as a major source of drugs. About fifty percent of today's pharmaceutical drugs are derived from natural origin. Interest in natural products as a source of new drugs is growing due to many factors that will be discussed in this article. Viruses have been resistant to therapy or prophylaxis longer than any other form of life. Currently, there are only few drugs available for the cure of viral diseases including acyclovir which is modeled on a natural product parent. In order to combat viruses which have devastating effects on humans, animals, insects, crop plants, fungi and bacteria, many research efforts have been devoted for the discovery of new antiviral natural products. Recent analysis of the number and sources of antiviral agents reported mainly in the annual reports of medicinal chemistry from 1984 to 1995 indicated that seven out of ten synthetic agents approved by FDA between 1983-1994, are modeled on a natural product parent. It has been estimated that only 5-15% of the approximately 250,000 species of higher plants have been systematically investigated for the presence of bioactive compounds while the potential of the marine environment has barely been tapped. The aim of this review is to provide an overview on the central role of natural products in the discovery and development of new antiviral drugs by displaying 340 structures of plant, marine and microbial origin that show promising in vitro antiviral activity.


title: [25] Protein RNA-binding activity measured by northwestern blot analysis: The interferon-inducible RNA-dependent protein kinase PKR

text: The chapter describes the procedure for the analysis of RNA-binding activity by the Northwestern RNA blot assay. The procedure is described with the human RNA-dependent protein kinase (PKR). The Northwestern RNA blot assay provides an efficient approach for the identification of regions of a protein responsible for its RNA-binding activity. The strategy for the measurement of RNA-binding activity by Northwestern analysis involves the immobilization of target proteins on a filter membrane. Proteins fractionated by sodium dodecyl sulfate–polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) are electroblotted onto a nitrocellulose filter membrane by standard techniques. The fiber-bound proteins are then analyzed for RNA-binding activity using a radioactive RNA probe; this RNA-protein blot analysis constitutes the Northwestern assay. Subsequently, a Western immunoblot analysis is carried out using the same filter membrane as is used for the Northwestern analysis to verify that comparable amounts of test proteins are present. The Western analysis is especially important in the cases of proteins that do not register as RNA-binding proteins in the Northwestern assay.


Bronquiolitis


title: Virological and pathological processes involved in Theiler's virus infection of the central nervous system

text: Theiler's virus strains GDVII and FA cause an acute encephalitis when injected intracerebrally into mice, whereas strains To, BeAn and DA establish a persistent infection and produce a chronic demyelinating disease. The chronic infection is also dependent on the mouse strain used, with susceptibility linked in part to the D locus of the MHC. The region of the virus genome associated with neurovirulence maps to the P1 region, encoding the capsid proteins, and to the 5′ non-coding region. There is evidence that BeAnDA virus persists in oligodendrocytes, where it reactivates to initiate demyelinating disease. Host factors are involved in the development of the lesion, including CD4(+) T cell responses. These lymphocytes most probably mediate damage through activation of macrophages leading to local destruction of glial cells. Another possible pathological role for the immune system is the recognition of nerve cell antigens and the initiation of autoimmune disease. Such a virus-triggered phenomenon may well underlie human CNS diseases such as multiple sclerosis.


title: Chapter 10 Protein synthesis and regulation in eukaryotes

text: Protein synthesis is one of the most complex processes in the cell. Its regulation during different stages of growth, division, differentiation, development, aging, and death is a crucial aspect of a living system. In order to translate one mRNA molecule transcribed from a gene, almost 200 small and large components are required to function effectively and accurately, while using large quantities of cellular energy. Ribosomes, initiation factors, elongation factors, amino acids, tRNAs, and aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases are the major components of the protein synthetic apparatus. Protein synthesis proceeds in three steps—initiation, elongation, and termination, followed by posttranslational modifications. The rate-limiting factors for the regulation of total protein synthesis can be any of the components of the protein synthetic machinery. The availability of mRNA and the amounts and activities of ribosomes, initiation factors, and elongation factors are the major regulators of protein synthesis. Posttranslational modifications such as phosphorylation of various protein synthetic components are involved in determining their activity and stability.


Acronyms


SARS Lessons learnt


Cumulative biological source index: Volumes 1–20


title: Characterization of Codon Usage Bias in UL21gene from Duck Enteritis Virus

text: In this paper, the comprehensive analysis of codon usage bias of Duck enteritis virus (DEV) UL21 gene was performed by using CAI, CHIPS and CUSP program of EMBOSS. Our study showed that codon usage bias of DEV UL21 had strong bias towards the A-ended or T-ended codons, and GC3s contents of the codon usage bias in DEV UL21 gene were significantly varied compared with those of other 27 reference herpesviruses. The CAI, ENC value of DEV CHv strain UL21 gene is 0.615 and 55.167, respectively, indicating that the codon usage bias of this gene is weak and lowly expressed. The plot of ENC versus GC3S content revealed that DEV UL21 gene is subject to GC compositional constraints. The phylogentic analysis about amino acids codon usage bias of DEV UL21 and the27 reference herpesviruses showed that DEV was evolutionarily closer to herpesviruses Mardivirus. In addition, the codon usage bias of DEV UL21 gene was compared with those of E. coli, yeast and humans. There are 42, 45, 39 same codons usage bias between the DEV UL21 to E.coli, Yeast, H.sapiens, respectively, indicaiting that UL21 gene of DEV may be more efficiently expressed in the yeast system.


Utilidad de las técnicas de diagnóstico virológico en las infecciones respiratorias en pediatría


title: Signals and Mechanisms of Sorting in Epithelial Polarity

text: This chapter discusses epithelial-membrane polarity, sorting pathways in polarized cells, and the sorting-signal paradigm. Polarized epithelial cells have long captured the attention of cell biologists and cell physiologists. At the electron-microscopic level, one of the most apparent and fundamental features of this cell type is its polarized organization of intracellular organelles and its structurally and compositionally distinct lumenal (apical) and serosal (basolateral) plasma-membrane domains. The polarized epithelial phenotype is an absolute necessity for organ-system function. In the most general sense, these cells organize to form a continuous, single layer of cells, or epithelium, which serves as a semi-permeable barrier between apposing and biologically distinct compartments. Within the tubules of the nephron, these cells orchestrate complex ion-transporting processes that ultimately control the overall fluid balance of the organism. At the surface of the gastrointestinal tract, specialized versions of this cell type control the digestion, absorption, and immuno-protection of the organism.


docid: slsfhrkx

title: Virale Atemwegserkrankungen – Influenza, RSV und neue Viren


Das Who is Who der Gastroenteritisviren


Neutralizing activity of Echinacea purpurea on Coronaviruses including highly pathogenic Middle-East-Respiratory Syndrome Virus (MERS-CoV)


Viruserkrankungen bei Schlangen – Welche Erreger sind von Bedeutung?


title: CLEF eHealth Evaluation Lab 2020

text: Laypeople’s increasing difficulties to retrieve and digest valid and relevant information in their preferred language to make health-centred decisions has motivated CLEF eHealth to organize yearly labs since 2012. These 20 evaluation tasks on Information Extraction (IE), management, and Information Retrieval (IR) in 2013–2019 have been popular—as demonstrated by the large number of team registrations, submissions, papers, their included authors, and citations (748, 177, 184, 741, and 1299, respectively, up to and including 2018)—and achieved statistically significant improvements in the processing quality. In 2020, CLEF eHealth is calling for participants to contribute to the following two tasks: The 2020 Task 1 on IE focuses on term coding for clinical textual data in Spanish. The terms considered are extracted from clinical case records and they are mapped onto the Spanish version of the International Classification of Diseases, the 10th Revision, including also textual evidence spans for the clinical codes. The 2020 Task 2 is a novel extension of the most popular and established task in CLEF eHealth on CHS. This IR task uses the representative web corpus used in the 2018 challenge, but now also spoken queries, as well as textual transcripts of these queries, are offered to the participants. The task is structured into a number of optional subtasks, covering ad-hoc search using the spoken queries, textual transcripts of the spoken queries, or provided automatic speech-to-text conversions of the spoken queries. In this paper we describe the evolution of CLEF eHealth and this year’s tasks. The substantial community interest in the tasks and their resources has led to CLEF eHealth maturing as a primary venue for all interdisciplinary actors of the ecosystem for producing, processing, and consuming electronic health information.


title: A Multi-task Approach to Open Domain Suggestion Mining Using Language Model for Text Over-Sampling

text: Consumer reviews online may contain suggestions useful for improving commercial products and services. Mining suggestions is challenging due to the absence of large labeled and balanced datasets. Furthermore, most prior studies attempting to mine suggestions, have focused on a single domain such as Hotel or Travel only. In this work, we introduce a novel over-sampling technique to address the problem of class imbalance, and propose a multi-task deep learning approach for mining suggestions from multiple domains. Experimental results on a publicly available dataset show that our over-sampling technique, coupled with the multi-task framework outperforms state-of-the-art open domain suggestion mining models in terms of the F-1 measure and AUC.


title: SentiInc: Incorporating Sentiment Information into Sentiment Transfer Without Parallel Data

text: Sentiment-to-sentiment transfer involves changing the sentiment of the given text while preserving the underlying information. In this work, we present a model SentiInc for sentiment-to-sentiment transfer using unpaired mono-sentiment data. Existing sentiment-to-sentiment transfer models ignore the valuable sentiment-specific details already present in the text. We address this issue by providing a simple framework for encoding sentiment-specific information in the target sentence while preserving the content information. This is done by incorporating sentiment based loss in the back-translation based style transfer. Extensive experiments over the Yelp dataset show that the SentiInc outperforms state-of-the-art methods by a margin of as large as [Formula: see text]11% in G-score. The results also demonstrate that our model produces sentiment-accurate and information-preserved sentences.


title: Identifying Notable News Stories

text: The volume of news content has increased significantly in recent years and systems to process and deliver this information in an automated fashion at scale are becoming increasingly prevalent. One critical component that is required in such systems is a method to automatically determine how notable a certain news story is, in order to prioritize these stories during delivery. One way to do so is to compare each story in a stream of news stories to a notable event. In other words, the problem of detecting notable news can be defined as a ranking task; given a trusted source of notable events and a stream of candidate news stories, we aim to answer the question: “Which of the candidate news stories is most similar to the notable one?”. We employ different combinations of features and learning to rank (LTR) models and gather relevance labels using crowdsourcing. In our approach, we use structured representations of candidate news stories (triples) and we link them to corresponding entities. Our evaluation shows that the features in our proposed method outperform standard ranking methods, and that the trained model generalizes well to unseen news stories.


title: Session-Based Path Prediction by Combining Local and Global Content Preferences

text: Session-based future page prediction is important for online web experiences to understand user behavior, pre-fetching future content, and for creating future experiences for users. While webpages visited by the user in the current session capture the users’ local preferences, in this work, we show how the global content preferences at the given instant can assist in this task. We present DRS-LaG, a Deep Reinforcement Learning System, based on Local and Global preferences. We capture these global content preferences by tracking a key analytics KPI, the number of views. The problem is formulated using an agent which predicts the next page to be visited by the user, based on the historic webpage content and analytics. In an offline setting, we show how the model can be used for predicting the next webpage that the user visits. The online evaluation shows how this framework can be deployed on a website for dynamic adaptation of web experiences, based on both local and global preferences.


title: Domain Adaptation via Context Prediction for Engineering Diagram Search

text: Effective search for engineering diagram images in larger collections is challenging because most existing feature extraction models are pre-trained on natural image data rather than diagrams. Surprisingly, we observe through experiments that even in-domain training with standard unsupervised representation learning techniques leads to poor results. We argue that, because of their structured nature, diagram images require more specially-tailored learning objectives. We propose a new method for unsupervised adaptation of out-of-domain feature extractors that asks the model to reason about spatial context. Specifically, we fine-tune a pre-trained image encoder by requiring it to correctly predict the relative orientation between pairs of nearby image regions. Experiments on the recently released Ikea Diagram Dataset show that our proposed method leads to substantial improvements on a downstream search task, more than doubling recall for certain query categories in the dataset.


title: Principle-to-Program: Neural Methods for Similar Question Retrieval in Online Communities

text: Similar question retrieval is a challenge due to lexical gap between query and candidates in archive and is very different from traditional IR methods for duplicate detection, paraphrase identification and semantic equivalence. This tutorial covers recent deep learning techniques which overcome feature engineering issues with existing approaches based on translation models and latent topics. Hands-on proposal thus will introduce each concept from end user (e.g., question-answer pairs) and technique (e.g., attention) perspectives, present state of the art methods and a walkthrough of programs executed on Jupyter notebook using real-world datasets demonstrating principles introduced.


title: BERT for Evidence Retrieval and Claim Verification

text: We investigate BERT in an evidence retrieval and claim verification pipeline for the task of evidence-based claim verification. To this end, we propose to use two BERT models, one for retrieving evidence sentences supporting or rejecting claims, and another for verifying claims based on the retrieved evidence sentences. To train the BERT retrieval system, we use pointwise and pairwise loss functions and examine the effect of hard negative mining. Our system achieves a new state of the art recall of 87.1 for retrieving evidence sentences out of the FEVER dataset 50K Wikipedia pages, and scores second in the leaderboard with the FEVER score of 69.7.


title: Teaching a New Dog Old Tricks: Resurrecting Multilingual Retrieval Using Zero-Shot Learning

text: While billions of non-English speaking users rely on search engines every day, the problem of ad-hoc information retrieval is rarely studied for non-English languages. This is primarily due to a lack of data set that are suitable to train ranking algorithms. In this paper, we tackle the lack of data by leveraging pre-trained multilingual language models to transfer a retrieval system trained on English collections to non-English queries and documents. Our model is evaluated in a zero-shot setting, meaning that we use them to predict relevance scores for query-document pairs in languages never seen during training. Our results show that the proposed approach can significantly outperform unsupervised retrieval techniques for Arabic, Chinese Mandarin, and Spanish. We also show that augmenting the English training collection with some examples from the target language can sometimes improve performance.


title: The Effect of Content-Equivalent Near-Duplicates on the Evaluation of Search Engines

text: Current best practices for the evaluation of search engines do not take into account duplicate documents. Dependent on their prevalence, not discounting duplicates during evaluation artificially inflates performance scores, and, it penalizes those whose search systems diligently filter them. Although these negative effects have already been demonstrated a long time ago by Bernstein and Zobel [4], we find that this has failed to move the community. In this paper, we reproduce the aforementioned study and extend it to incorporate all TREC Terabyte, Web, and Core tracks. The worst-case penalty of having filtered duplicates in any of these tracks were losses between 8 and 53 ranks.


title: Shared Tasks on Authorship Analysis at PAN 2020

text: The paper gives a brief overview of the four shared tasks that are to be organized at the PAN 2020 lab on digital text forensics and stylometry, hosted at CLEF conference. The tasks include author profiling, celebrity profiling, cross-domain author verification, and style change detection, seeking to advance the state of the art and to evaluate it on new benchmark datasets.


title: Living Labs for Academic Search at CLEF 2020

text: The need for innovation in the field of academic search and IR, in general, is shown by the stagnating system performance in controlled evaluation campaigns, as demonstrated in TREC and CLEF meta-evaluation studies, as well as user studies in real systems of scientific information and digital libraries. The question of what constitutes relevance in academic search is multi-layered and a topic that drives research communities for years. The Living Labs for Academic Search (LiLAS) workshop has the goal to inspire the discussion on research and evaluation of academic search systems by strengthening the concept of living labs to the domain of academic search. We want to bring together IR researchers interested in online evaluations of academic search systems and foster knowledge on improving the search for academic resources like literature, research data, and the interlinking between these resources. The employed online evaluation approach based on a living lab infrastructure allows the direct connection to real-world academic search systems from the life sciences and the social sciences.


title: Utilizing Temporal Psycholinguistic Cues for Suicidal Intent Estimation

text: Temporal psycholinguistics can play a crucial role in studying expressions of suicidal intent on social media. Current methods are limited in their approach in leveraging contextual psychological cues from online user communities. This work embarks in a novel direction to explore historical activities of users and homophily networks formed between Twitter users for extracting suicidality trends. Empirical evidence proves the advantages of incorporating historical user profiling and temporal graph convolutional modeling for automated detection of suicidal connotations on Twitter.


title: Novel and Diverse Recommendations by Leveraging Linear Models with User and Item Embeddings

text: Nowadays, item recommendation is an increasing concern for many companies. Users tend to be more reactive than proactive for solving information needs. Recommendation accuracy became the most studied aspect of the quality of the suggestions. However, novel and diverse suggestions also contribute to user satisfaction. Unfortunately, it is common to harm those two aspects when optimizing recommendation accuracy. In this paper, we present EER, a linear model for the top-N recommendation task, which takes advantage of user and item embeddings for improving novelty and diversity without harming accuracy.


title: Distant Supervision for Extractive Question Summarization

text: Questions are often lengthy and difficult to understand because they tend to contain peripheral information. Previous work relies on costly human-annotated data or question-title pairs. In this work, we propose a distant supervision framework that can train a question summarizer without annotation costs or question-title pairs, where sentences are automatically annotated by means of heuristic rules. The key idea is that a single-sentence question tends to have a summary-like property. We empirically show that our models trained on the framework perform competitively with respect to supervised models without the requirement of a costly human-annotated dataset.


title: Machine-Actionable Data Management Plans: A Knowledge Retrieval Approach to Automate the Assessment of Funders’ Requirements

text: Funding bodies and other policy-makers are increasingly more concerned with Research Data Management (RDM). The Data Management Plan (DMP) is one of the tools available to perform RDM tasks, however it is not a perfect concept. The Machine-Actionable Data Management Plan (maDMP) is a concept that aims to make the DMP interoperable, automated and increasingly standardised. In this paper we showcase that through the usage of semantic technologies, it is possible to both express and exploit the features of the maDMP. In particular, we focus on showing how a maDMP formalised as an ontology can be used automate the assessment of a funder’s requirements for a given organisation.


title: Graph-Based Entity-Oriented Search: A Unified Framework in Information Retrieval

text: Modern search engines have evolved beyond document retrieval. Nowadays, the information needs of the users can be directly satisfied through entity-oriented search, by taking into account the entities that better relate to the query, as opposed to relying exclusively on the best matching terms. Evolving from keyword-based to entity-oriented search poses several challenges, not only regarding the understanding of natural language queries, which are more familiar to the end-user, but also regarding the integration of unstructured documents and structured information sources such as knowledge bases. One opportunity that remains open is the research of unified frameworks for the representation and retrieval of heterogeneous information sources. The doctoral work we present here proposes graph-based models to promote the cooperation between different units of information, in order to maximize the amount of available leads that help the user satisfy an information need.


title: MedLinker: Medical Entity Linking with Neural Representations and Dictionary Matching

text: Progress in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) has been closely followed by applications in the medical domain. Recent advancements in Neural Language Models (NLMs) have transformed the field and are currently motivating numerous works exploring their application in different domains. In this paper, we explore how NLMs can be used for Medical Entity Linking with the recently introduced MedMentions dataset, which presents two major challenges: (1) a large target ontology of over 2M concepts, and (2) low overlap between concepts in train, validation and test sets. We introduce a solution, MedLinker, that addresses these issues by leveraging specialized NLMs with Approximate Dictionary Matching, and show that it performs competitively on semantic type linking, while improving the state-of-the-art on the more fine-grained task of concept linking (+4 F1 on MedMentions main task).


title: Incremental Approach for Automatic Generation of Domain-Specific Sentiment Lexicon

text: Sentiment lexicon plays a vital role in lexicon-based sentiment analysis. The lexicon-based method is often preferred because it leads to more explainable answers in comparison with many machine learning-based methods. But, semantic orientation of a word depends on its domain. Hence, a general-purpose sentiment lexicon may gives sub-optimal performance compare with a domain-specific lexicon. However, it is challenging to manually generate a domain-specific sentiment lexicon for each domain. Still, it is impractical to generate complete sentiment lexicon for a domain from a single corpus. To this end, we propose an approach to automatically generate a domain-specific sentiment lexicon using a vector model enriched by weights. Importantly, we propose an incremental approach for updating an existing lexicon to either the same domain or different domain (domain-adaptation). Finally, we discuss how to incorporate sentiment lexicons information in neural models (word embedding) for better performance.


title: Hybrid Semantic Recommender System for Chemical Compounds

text: Recommending Chemical Compounds of interest to a particular researcher is a poorly explored field. The few existent datasets with information about the preferences of the researchers use implicit feedback. The lack of Recommender Systems in this particular field presents a challenge for the development of new recommendations models. In this work, we propose a Hybrid recommender model for recommending Chemical Compounds. The model integrates collaborative-filtering algorithms for implicit feedback (Alternating Least Squares (ALS) and Bayesian Personalized Ranking (BPR)) and semantic similarity between the Chemical Compounds in the ChEBI ontology (ONTO). We evaluated the model in an implicit dataset of Chemical Compounds, CheRM. The Hybrid model was able to improve the results of state-of-the-art collaborative-filtering algorithms, especially for Mean Reciprocal Rank, with an increase of 6.7% when comparing the collaborative-filtering ALS and the Hybrid ALS_ONTO.


title: ANTIQUE: A Non-factoid Question Answering Benchmark

text: Considering the widespread use of mobile and voice search, answer passage retrieval for non-factoid questions plays a critical role in modern information retrieval systems. Despite the importance of the task, the community still feels the significant lack of large-scale non-factoid question answering collections with real questions and comprehensive relevance judgments. In this paper, we develop and release a collection of 2,626 open-domain non-factoid questions from a diverse set of categories. The dataset, called ANTIQUE, contains 34k manual relevance annotations. The questions were asked by real users in a community question answering service, i.e., Yahoo! Answers. Relevance judgments for all the answers to each question were collected through crowdsourcing. To facilitate further research, we also include a brief analysis of the data as well as baseline results on both classical and neural IR models.


title: Knowledge Graph Entity Alignment with Graph Convolutional Networks: Lessons Learned

text: In this work, we focus on the problem of entity alignment in Knowledge Graphs (KG) and we report on our experiences when applying a Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) based model for this task. Variants of GCN are used in multiple state-of-the-art approaches and therefore it is important to understand the specifics and limitations of GCN-based models. Despite serious efforts, we were not able to fully reproduce the results from the original paper and after a thorough audit of the code provided by authors, we concluded, that their implementation is different from the architecture described in the paper. In addition, several tricks are required to make the model work and some of them are not very intuitive.We provide an extensive ablation study to quantify the effects these tricks and changes of architecture have on final performance. Furthermore, we examine current evaluation approaches and systematize available benchmark datasets.We believe that people interested in KG matching might profit from our work, as well as novices entering the field. (Code: https://github.com/Valentyn1997/kg-alignment-lessons-learned).


title: Which BM25 Do You Mean? A Large-Scale Reproducibility Study of Scoring Variants

text: When researchers speak of BM25, it is not entirely clear which variant they mean, since many tweaks to Robertson et al.’s original formulation have been proposed. When practitioners speak of BM25, they most likely refer to the implementation in the Lucene open-source search library. Does this ambiguity “matter”? We attempt to answer this question with a large-scale reproducibility study of BM25, considering eight variants. Experiments on three newswire collections show that there are no significant effectiveness differences between them, including Lucene’s often maligned approximation of document length. As an added benefit, our empirical approach takes advantage of databases for rapid IR prototyping, which validates both the feasibility and methodological advantages claimed in previous work.


title: Unsupervised Ensemble of Ranking Models for News Comments Using Pseudo Answers

text: Ranking comments on an online news service is a practically important task, and thus there have been many studies on this task. Although ensemble techniques are widely known to improve the performance of models, there is little types of research on ensemble neural-ranking models. In this paper, we investigate how to improve the performance on the comment-ranking task by using unsupervised ensemble methods. We propose a new hybrid method composed of an output selection method and a typical averaging method. Our method uses a pseudo answer represented by the average of multiple model outputs. The pseudo answer is used to evaluate multiple model outputs via ranking evaluation metrics, and the results are used to select and weight the models. Experimental results on the comment-ranking task show that our proposed method outperforms several ensemble baselines, including supervised one.


title: Generating Query Suggestions for Cross-language and Cross-terminology Health Information Retrieval

text: Medico-scientific concepts are not easily understood by laypeople that frequently use lay synonyms. For this reason, strategies that help users formulate health queries are essential. Health Suggestions is an existing extension for Google Chrome that provides suggestions in lay and medico-scientific terminologies, both in English and Portuguese. This work proposes, evaluates, and compares further strategies for generating suggestions based on the initial consumer query, using multi-concept recognition and the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). The evaluation was done with an English and a Portuguese test collection, considering as baseline the suggestions initially provided by Health Suggestions. Given the importance of understandability, we used measures that combine relevance and understandability, namely, uRBP and uRBPgr. Our best method merges the Consumer Health Vocabulary (CHV)-preferred expression for each concept identified in the initial query for lay suggestions and the UMLS-preferred expressions for medico-scientific suggestions. Multi-concept recognition was critical for this improvement.


title: Towards Query Logs for Privacy Studies: On Deriving Search Queries from Questions

text: Detailed query histories often contain a precise picture of a person’s life, including sensitive and personally identifiable information. As sanitization of such logs is an unsolved research problem, commercial Web search engines that possess large datasets of this kind at their disposal refrain from disseminating them to the wider research community. Ironically, studies examining privacy in search often require detailed search logs with user profiles. This paper builds on an observation that information needs are also expressed in the form of questions in online Community Question Answering (CQA) communities. We take a step towards understanding the process of formulating queries from questions to form a basis for automatic derivation of search logs from CQA forums. Specifically, we sample natural language (NL) questions spanning diverse themes from the StackExchange platform, and conduct a large-scale conversion experiment where crowdworkers submit search queries they would use when looking for equivalent information. We also release a dataset of 7,000 question-query pairs from our study.


title: Proposal of the First International Workshop on Semantic Indexing and Information Retrieval for Health from Heterogeneous Content Types and Languages (SIIRH)

text: The application of Information Retrieval (IR) and deep learning strategies to explore the vast amount of rapidly growing health-related content is of utmost importance, but is also particularly challenging, due to the very specialized domain language, and implicit differences in language characteristics depending on the content type. This workshop aims at presenting and discussing current and future directions for IR and machine learning approaches devoted to the retrieval and classification of different types of health-related documents ranging from layman or patient generated texts to highly specialized medical literature or clinical records. It includes a session on the MESINESP shared task, supported by the Spanish National Language Technology plan (Plan TL), in order to address the importance and impact of community evaluation efforts, in particular BioASQ, BioCreative, eHealth CLEF, MEDIQA and TREC, as scenarios for exploring evaluation settings and generate data collections of key importance for promoting the development and comparison of IR resources. Additionally, an open session will address IR technologies for heterogeneous health-related content open to multiple languages with a particular interest in the exploitation of structured controlled vocabularies and entity linking, covering the following topics: multilingual and non-English health-related IR, concept indexing, text categorization, generation of evaluation resources biomedical document IR strategies; scalability, robustness and reproducibility of health IR and text mining resources; use of specialized machine translation and advanced deep learning approaches for improving health related search results; medical Question Answering search tools; retrieval of multilingual health related web-content; and other related topics.


title: Dualism in Topical Relevance

text: There are several concepts whose interpretation and meaning is defined through their binary opposition with other opposite concepts. To this end, in this paper we elaborate on the idea of leveraging the available antonyms of the original query terms for eventually producing an answer which provides a better overview of the related conceptual and information space. Specifically, we sketch a method in which antonyms are used for producing dual queries, which can in turn be exploited for defining a multi-dimensional topical relevance based on the antonyms. We motivate this direction by providing examples and by conducting a preliminary evaluation that shows its importance to specific users.


title: Graph Databases for Information Retrieval

text: Graph models have been deployed in the context of information retrieval for many years. Computations involving the graph structure are often separated from computations related to the base ranking. In recent years, graph data management has been a topic of interest in database research. We propose to deploy graph database management systems to implement existing and novel graph-based models for information retrieval. For this a unifying mapping from a graph query language to graph based retrieval models needs to be developed; extending standard graph database operations with functionality for keyword search. We also investigate how data structures and algorithms for ranking should change in presence of continuous database updates. We want to investigate how temporal decay can affect ranking when data is continuously updated. Finally, can databases be deployed for efficient two-stage retrieval approaches?


title: Reproducibility is a Process, Not an Achievement: The Replicability of IR Reproducibility Experiments

text: This paper espouses a view of reproducibility in the computational sciences as a process and not just a point-in-time “achievement”. As a concrete case study, we revisit the Open-Source IR Reproducibility Challenge from 2015 and attempt to replicate those experiments: four years later, are those computational artifacts still functional? Perhaps not surprisingly, we are not able to replicate most of the retrieval runs encapsulated by those artifacts in a modern computational environment. We outline the various idiosyncratic reasons why, distilled into a series of “lessons learned” to help form an emerging set of best practices for the long-term sustainability of reproducibility efforts.


title: Predicting the Size of Candidate Document Set for Implicit Web Search Result Diversification

text: Implicit result diversification methods exploit the content of the documents in the candidate set, i.e., the initial retrieval results of a query, to obtain a relevant and diverse ranking. As our first contribution, we explore whether recently introduced word embeddings can be exploited for representing documents to improve diversification, and show a positive result. As a second improvement, we propose to automatically predict the size of candidate set on per query basis. Experimental evaluations using our BM25 runs as well as the best-performing ad hoc runs submitted to TREC (2009–2012) show that our approach improves the performance of implicit diversification up to 5.4% wrt. initial ranking.


title: QISS: An Open Source Image Similarity Search Engine

text: Qwant Image Similarity Search (QISS) is a multi-lingual image similarity search engine based on a dual path neural networks that embed texts and images into a common feature space where they are easily comparable. Our demonstrator, available at http://research.qwant.com/images, allows real-time searches in a database of approximately 100 million images.


title: Reproducible Online Search Experiments

text: In the empirical sciences, the evidence is commonly manifested by experimental results. However, very often, these findings are not reproducible, hindering scientific progress. Innovations in the field of information retrieval (IR) are mainly driven by experimental results as well. While there are several attempts to assure the reproducibility of offline experiments with standardized test collections, reproducible outcomes of online experiments remain an open issue. This research project will be concerned with the reproducibility of online experiments, including real-world user feedback. In contrast to previous living lab attempts by the IR community, this project has a stronger focus on making IR systems and corresponding results reproducible. The project aims to provide insights concerning key components that affect reproducibility in online search experiments. Outcomes help to improve the design of reproducible IR online experiments in the future.