Revision and Update of the Consensus Definitions of Invasive Fungal Disease From the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer and the Mycoses Study Group Education and Research Consortium.

BACKGROUND: Invasive fungal diseases (IFDs) remain important causes of morbidity and mortality. The consensus definitions of the Infectious Diseases Group of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer and the Mycoses Study Group have been of immense value to researchers who conduct clinical trials of antifungals, assess diagnostic tests, and undertake epidemiologic studies. However, their utility has not extended beyond patients with cancer or recipients of stem cell or solid organ transplants. With newer diagnostic techniques available, it was clear that an update of these definitions was essential. METHODS: To achieve this, 10 working groups looked closely at imaging, laboratory diagnosis, and special populations at risk of IFD. A final version of the manuscript was agreed upon after the groups' findings were presented at a scientific symposium and after a 3-month period for public comment. There were several rounds of discussion before a final version of the manuscript was approved. RESULTS: There is no change in the classifications of "proven," "probable," and "possible" IFD, although the definition of "probable" has been expanded and the scope of the category "possible" has been diminished. The category of proven IFD can apply to any patient, regardless of whether the patient is immunocompromised. The probable and possible categories are proposed for immunocompromised patients only, except for endemic mycoses. CONCLUSIONS: These updated definitions of IFDs should prove applicable in clinical, diagnostic, and epidemiologic research of a broader range of patients at high-risk

An Interactive Relaxation Approach for Anomaly Detection and Preventive Measures in Computer Networks

It is proposed to develop a framework of detecting and analyzing small and widespread changes in specific dynamic characteristics of several nodes. The characteristics are locally measured at each node in a large network of computers and analyzed using a computational paradigm known as the Relaxation technique. The goal is to be able to detect the onset of a worm or virus as it originates, spreads-out, attacks and disables the entire network. Currently, selective disabling of one or more features across an entire subnet, e.g. firewalls, provides limited security and keeps us from designing high performance net-centric systems. The most desirable response is to surgically disable one or more nodes, or to isolate one or more subnets.The proposed research seeks to model virus/worm propagation as a spatio-temporal process. Such models have been successfully applied in heat-flow and evidence or gestalt driven perception of images among others. In particular, we develop an iterative technique driven by the self-assessed dynamic status of each node in a network. The status of each node will be updated incrementally in concurrence with its connected neighbors to enable timely identification of compromised nodes and subnets. Several key insights used in image analysis of line-diagrams, through an iterative and relaxation-driven node labeling method, are explored to help develop this new framework

Data Leak Detection As a Service: Challenges and Solutions

We describe a network-based data-leak detection (DLD) technique, the main feature of which is that the detection does not require the data owner to reveal the content of the sensitive data. Instead, only a small amount of specialized digests are needed. Our technique – referred to as the fuzzy fingerprint – can be used to detect accidental data leaks due to human errors or application flaws. The privacy-preserving feature of our algorithms minimizes the exposure of sensitive data and enables the data owner to safely delegate the detection to others.We describe how cloud providers can offer their customers data-leak detection as an add-on service with strong privacy guarantees. We perform extensive experimental evaluation on the privacy, efficiency, accuracy and noise tolerance of our techniques. Our evaluation results under various data-leak scenarios and setups show that our method can support accurate detection with very small number of false alarms, even when the presentation of the data has been transformed. It also indicates that the detection accuracy does not degrade when partial digests are used. We further provide a quantifiable method to measure the privacy guarantee offered by our fuzzy fingerprint framework

Epidemic epizootic West Nile virus in the United States

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Infectious Diseases, Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases."August 2003."Also includes Appendices: A. National West Nile Virus Surveillance System -- B. Surveillance case definition for West Nile Virus infection in equines -- C. National surveillance case definition for arboviral encephalitis/meningitis -- D. CDC-recommended surveillance case definition for WN fever -- E. Recommended framework for standardized "extended" clinical variables in studies of human WNV disease.Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-78).I. Surveillance -- II. Laboratory diagnosis -- III. Prevention and Control -- IV. Health Department infrastructure -- V. Interjurisdictional data sharing and national reporting of human cases -- VI. Research priorities.200

Epidemic/epizootic West Nile virus in the United States : guidelines for surveillance, prevention, and control. 3rd revision

In late summer 1999, the first domestically acquired human cases of West Nile (WN) encephalitis were documented in the U.S. The discovery of virus-infected, overwintering mosquitoes during the winter of 1999-2000 presaged renewed virus activity for the following spring and precipitated early season vector control and disease surveillance in New York City (NYC) and the surrounding areas. These surveillance efforts were focused on identifying and documenting WN virus (WNV) infections in birds, mosquitoes and equines as sentinel animals that could alert health officials to the occurrence of human disease. Surveillance tracked the spread of WNV throughout much of the U.S. between 2000 and 2002. By the end of 2002, WNV activity had been identified in 44 states and the District of Columbia. The 2002 WNV epidemic and epizootic resulted in reports of 4,156 reported human cases of WN disease (including 2,942 meningoencephalitis cases and 284 deaths), 16,741 dead birds, 6,604 infected mosquito pools, and 14,571 equine cases. The 2002 WNV epidemic was the largest recognized arboviral meningoencephalitis epidemic in the Western Hemisphere and the largest WN meningoencephalitis epidemic ever recorded. Significant human disease activity was recorded in Canada for the first time, and WNV activity was also documented in the Caribbean basin and Mexico. In 2002, 4 novel routes of WNV transmission to humans were documented for the first time: 1) blood transfusion, 2) organ transplantation, 3) transplacental transfer, and 4) breast-feeding.Since 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a variety of other U.S. governmental agencies and partners have sponsored yearly national meetings of arbovirologists, epidemiologists, laboratorians, ecologists, vector-control specialists, wildlife biologists, communication experts, and state and local health and agriculture officials to assess the implications of the WNV introduction into the U.S. and to refine the comprehensive national response plan. Recommendations from these meetings have been used to develop and to update these guidelines.The following CDC, Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases staff members prepared this report: Duane J. Gubler, Lyle R. Petersen, John T. Roehrig, Grant L. Campbell, Nicholas Komar, Roger S. Nasci, Emily Zielinski-Gutierrez, Anthony A. Marfin, Robert S. Lanciotti, Michel L. Bunning, Daniel R. O\u2019Leary, Mel Fernandez, Lauren Dieterich, Barbara B. Tuttle, Rebecca L. Deavours.Introduction \u2013 I. Surveillance \u2013 II. Laboratory diagnosis \u2013 III. Prevention and control -- IV. Health department infrastructure -- V. Interjurisdictional data sharing and national reporting of human cases \u2013 VI. Research priorities -- Appendix A. National West Nile virus surveillance system \u2013 Appendix B. Surveillance case definition for West Nile virus infection in equines \u2013 Appendix C. National surveillance case definition for arboviral encephalitits/meningitis \u2013 Appendix D. CDC-recommended surveillance case definition for WN fever \u2013 Appendix E. Recommended framework for standardized \u201cextended\u201d clinical variables in studies of human WNV disease \u2013 References.SupersededPrevention and ControlInfectious Diseas

Nonhemolytic, Nonmotile Gram-Positive Rods Indicative of Bacillus anthracis

We report a 40-year-old female patient who was admitted to the hospital because of a left ovarian mass torsion. A nonhemolytic, nonmotile Bacillus, suspicious of Bacillus anthracis, was isolated from a blood culture. We discuss the evaluation that led to the final identification of the bacterium as B. megaterium

Remedying Security Concerns at an Internet Scale

The state of security across the Internet is poor, and it has been so since the advent of the modern Internet. While the research community has made tremendous progress over the years in learning how to design and build secure computer systems, network protocols, and algorithms, we are far from a world where we can truly trust the security of deployed Internet systems. In reality, we may never reach such a world. Security concerns continue to be identified at scale through-out the software ecosystem, with thousands of vulnerabilities discovered each year. Meanwhile, attacks have become ever more frequent and consequential.As Internet systems will continue to be inevitably affected by newly found security concerns, the research community must develop more effective ways to remedy these issues. To that end, in this dissertation, we conduct extensive empirical measurements to understand how remediation occurs in practice for Internet systems, and explore methods for spurring improved remediation behavior. This dissertation provides a treatment of the complete remediation life cycle, investigating the creation, dissemination, and deployment of remedies. We start by focusing on security patches that address vulnerabilities, and analyze at scale their creation process, characteristics of the resulting fixes, and how these impact vulnerability remediation. We then investigate and systematize how administrators of Internet systems deploy software updates which patch vulnerabilities across the many machines they manage on behalf of organizations. Finally, we conduct the first systematic exploration of Internet-scale outreach efforts to disseminate information about security concerns and their remedies to system administrators, with an aim of driving their remediation decisions. Our results show that such outreach campaigns can effectively galvanize positive reactions.Improving remediation, particularly at scale, is challenging, as the problem space exhibits many dimensions beyond traditional computer technical considerations, including human, social, organizational, economic, and policy facets. To make meaningful progress, this work uses a diversity of empirical methods, from software data mining to user studies to Internet-wide network measurements, to systematically collect and evaluate large-scale datasets. Ultimately, this dissertation establishes broad empirical grounding on security remediation in practice today, as well as new approaches for improved remediation at an Internet scale