Where was COVID-19 first discovered? Designing a question-answering system for pandemic situations

The COVID-19 pandemic is accompanied by a massive “infodemic” that makes it hard to identify concise and credible information for COVID-19-related questions, like incubation time, infection rates, or the effectiveness of vaccines. As a novel solution, our paper is concerned with designing a question-answering system based on modern technologies from natural language processing to overcome information overload and misinformation in pandemic situations. To carry out our research, we followed a design science research approach and applied Ingwersen’s cognitive model of information retrieval interaction to inform our design process from a socio-technical lens. On this basis, we derived prescriptive design knowledge in terms of design requirements and design principles, which we translated into the construction of a prototypical instantiation. Our implementation is based on the comprehensive CORD-19 dataset, and we demonstrate our artifact’s usefulness by evaluating its answer quality based on a sample of COVID-19 questions labeled by biomedical experts

Bovine polledness

The persistent horns are an important trait of speciation for the family Bovidae with complex morphogenesis taking place briefly after birth. The polledness is highly favourable in modern cattle breeding systems but serious animal welfare issues urge for a solution in the production of hornless cattle other than dehorning. Although the dominant inhibition of horn morphogenesis was discovered more than 70 years ago, and the causative mutation was mapped almost 20 years ago, its molecular nature remained unknown. Here, we report allelic heterogeneity of the POLLED locus. First, we mapped the POLLED locus to a ∼381-kb interval in a multi-breed case-control design. Targeted re-sequencing of an enlarged candidate interval (547 kb) in 16 sires with known POLLED genotype did not detect a common allele associated with polled status. In eight sires of Alpine and Scottish origin (four polled versus four horned), we identified a single candidate mutation, a complex 202 bp insertion-deletion event that showed perfect association to the polled phenotype in various European cattle breeds, except Holstein-Friesian. The analysis of the same candidate interval in eight Holsteins identified five candidate variants which segregate as a 260 kb haplotype also perfectly associated with the POLLED gene without recombination or interference with the 202 bp insertion-deletion. We further identified bulls which are progeny tested as homozygous polled but bearing both, 202 bp insertion-deletion and Friesian haplotype. The distribution of genotypes of the two putative POLLED alleles in large semi-random sample (1,261 animals) supports the hypothesis of two independent mutations

Substrate utilization, ammonium mineralization and phylogenetic relationships of the fungi Leptodontidium sp. found in boreal forest soil

Many studies on global elements fluxes neglect biological aspects or simply refer to them unspecifiedly as biological activity. The advent of molecular tools to investigate these ac-tivities has although given rise to a further understanding of the matter. In this study an attempt to determine the ecology and function of 11 strains of the fungal genus Leptodon-tidium (L.) in boreal forest soils is made. In an earlier study (Lindahl et al. 2010) strains with affinity to L. increased in abundance after the disruption of root carbon transport from host trees to ectomycorrhizal Fungi. At the same time ectomycorrhizal species de-creased in abundance which provoked the hypothesis that the senescent ectomycorrhiza is decomposed by L. and other opportunistic Fungi. To test this hypothesis L. strains were grown on different agar based substrates while substrate utilization was assessed by measuring respiration. Since other studies observed increased soil ammonium levels in disturbed forests (e.g. clear cut areas) another experiment was set up to measure ammo-nium mineralization of L. when decomposing fungal substrate. Finally a phylogeny of the strains based on the rDNA internal spacer and large subunit region was made in order to get more information on taxonomic relationships as well as ecological and functional in-formation

Schädlingsprognose mit SOPRA als Entscheidungshilfe im Bioobstbau

The forecasting tool SOPRA has been developed with the objective to optimize timing of monitoring and control measures of insect pests in fruit orchards. Phenologymodels were developed driven by solar radiation, air temperature and soil temperature on hourly basis including simulation of characteristic habitat conditions for Dysaphis plantaginea, Hoplocampa testudinea, Cydia pomonella, Grapholita lobarzewskii, Cacopsylla pyri, Rhagoletis cerasi, Anthonomus pomorum and Adoxophyes orana. On base of local weather data, age structure of pest populations is simulated and crucial events for management in organic and integrated production are announced. Through a web-interface, the simulation results are made available to consultants and growers (www.sopra.info). As timing of monitoring and management are especially important in organic growing, SOPRA is applied as decision support system (DSS) for major insect pests of organic fruit orchards in Switzerland

Clinician attitudes to pain and use of analgesia in cattle: where are we 10 years on?

Pain in cattle can arise though disease or injury or may result from veterinary or husbandry procedures. Controlling pain is important to safeguard animal welfare. Previous studies indicated that the use of analgesics in cattle has lagged behind use in companion animals. Over the last decade, more analgesic products have become available for use in cattle and there have been increased efforts to communicate the importance and benefits of analgesia. A questionnaire (based on that used in a similar study published in 2006) was sent to UK cattle practitioners asking them to score pain severity for several conditions of cattle and asking about their attitudes towards and use of analgesic medicines. A total of 242 surveys were returned. Male clinicians and those graduating before 1990 scored pain severity significantly lower and were significantly less likely to use NSAIDs. Generally, use of NSAIDs was more common for conditions assigned higher pain scores. However, uptake of NSAID use was much lower for a number of routine procedures in calves than would be expected from the pain scores they were assigned. A need remains to increase use of analgesic products, especially NSAIDs in calves, in line with best practice recommendations

Tele-Operated Lunar Rover Navigation Using Lidar

Near real-time tele-operated driving on the lunar surface remains constrained by bandwidth and signal latency despite the Moon s relative proximity. As part of our work within NASA s Human-Robotic Systems Project (HRS), we have developed a stand-alone modular LIDAR based safeguarded tele-operation system of hardware, middleware, navigation software and user interface. The system has been installed and tested on two distinct NASA rovers-JSC s Centaur2 lunar rover prototype and ARC s KRex research rover- and tested over several kilometers of tele-operated driving at average sustained speeds of 0.15 - 0.25 m/s around rocks, slopes and simulated lunar craters using a deliberately constrained telemetry link. The navigation system builds onboard terrain and hazard maps, returning highest priority sections to the off-board operator as permitted by bandwidth availability. It also analyzes hazard maps onboard and can stop the vehicle prior to contacting hazards. It is robust to severe pose errors and uses a novel scan alignment algorithm to compensate for attitude and elevation errors