Highlights on HIV eradication in 2013

Almost 20 years after the introduction of HAART, scientific community, doctors and patients are still struggling with the absence of effective strategies aimed at eradicating HIV infection, or at preventing it through a vaccin

Frequency and phenotype of B cell subpopulations in young and aged HIV-1 infected patients receiving ART

BACKGROUND: Aged individuals respond poorly to vaccination and have a higher risk of contracting infections in comparison to younger individuals; whether age impacts on the composition and function of B cell subpopulations relevant for immune responses is still controversial. It is also not known whether increased age during HIV-1 infection further synergizes with the virus to alter B cell subpopulations. In view of the increased number of HIV-1 infected patients living to high age as a result of anti-retroviral treatment this is an important issue to clarify. RESULTS: In this work we evaluated the distribution of B cell subpopulations in young and aged healthy individuals and HIV-1 infected patients, treated and naïve to treatment. B cell populations were characterized for the expression of inhibitory molecules (PD-1 and FcRL4) and activation markers (CD25 and CD69); the capacity of B cells to respond to activation signals through up-regulation of IL-6 expression was also evaluated. Increased frequencies of activated and tissue-like memory B cells occurring during HIV-1 infection are corrected by prolonged ART therapy. Our findings also reveal that, in spite of prolonged treatment, resting memory B cells in both young and aged HIV-1 infected patients are reduced in number, and all memory B cell subsets show a low level of expression of the activation marker CD25. CONCLUSIONS: The results of our study show that resting memory B cells in ART-treated young and aged HIV-1 infected patients are reduced in number and memory B cell subsets exhibit low expression of the activation marker CD25. Aging per se in the HIV-1 infected population does not worsen impairments initiated by HIV-1 in the memory B cell populations of young individuals. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12977-014-0076-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Exposing the limits of zero-shot cross-lingual hate speech detection

Reducing and counter-acting hate speech on Social Media is a significant concern. Most of the proposed automatic methods are conducted exclusively on English and very few consistently labeled, non-English resources have been proposed. Learning to detect hate speech on English and transferring to unseen languages seems an immediate solution. This work is the first to shed light on the limits of this zero-shot, cross-lingual transfer learning framework for hate speech detection. We use benchmark data sets in English, Italian, and Spanish to detect hate speech towards immigrants and women. Investigating post-hoc explanations of the model, we discover that non-hateful, language-specific taboo interjections are misinterpreted as signals of hate speech. Our findings demonstrate that zero-shot, cross-lingual models cannot be used as they are, but need to be carefully designed

“EH, Evolutionary Building” Prototype Housing at Solomeo by R. Piano & P. Rice Engineers and Architects with Gruppo Isovibro Perugia: Architectural Study and Guidelines for Conservation and Reuse

The prototype “EH, evolutionary building” at Solomeo by the design team Piano & Rice Engineers and Architects Vibrocemento Perugia s.p.a. is an example of the experimental design of residential buildings for emergency situations and represents a crucial phase of transition from traditional prefabrication to open prefabrication. Built on the basis of the project prepared for the competition held following the disastrous 1976 earthquake in Friuli, many of the ideas tested in the prototype were later used to construct the RIGO housing estate at Corciano. The text describes the architectural study and guidelines for the protection and reuse of this significant modernist building, today abandoned

Proportion and factors associated with recent HIV infection in a cohort of patients seen for care in Italy over 1996-2014: Data from the ICONA Foundation Study cohort.

In Italy the prevalence of recent HIV infection (RHI) isn't currently monitored. Early diagnosis is crucial to allow introduction of antiretroviral therapy (cART) in the recent phase of infection. We aimed to estimate the proportion and the determinants of RHI among patients enrolled in the ICONA cohort; we explored differences in the median time from HIV diagnosis to cART initiation and in the viro-immunological response between RHI and Less Recent HIV infections (NRHI). We included antiretroviral-naïve HIV-positive patients enrolled in the cohort with documented dates of HIV-negative and positive antibodies tests, grouped in RHI (estimated date of seroconversion within 12 months of enrolment) and NRHI. Proportion of RHI and the trend of this proportion by calendar period (1996-2014) were investigated (Chi-square test). Logistic regression analysis was employed to identify factors associated with RHI. The time from seroconversion to cART initiation was compared in RHI and NRHI overall and after stratification by calendar period (survival analysis). We finally explored the time from starting cART to HIV-RNA <50 copies/mL and to CD4+ gain ≥200 cells/mmc by Cox regression. HIV seroconversion could be estimated for 2608/12,616 patients: 981/2608 (37.6%) were RHI. Proportion of RHI increased in recent calendar periods and was associated with younger age, baseline higher HIV-RNA and CD4+ count. There wasn't difference in the 2-year estimates of cART start between RHI and NRHI, regardless of calendar period. Rates and hazards of virological response were similar in RHI versus NRHI. RHI showed a 1.5-fold higher probability of CD4+ gain, also following adjustment for calendar period and cART regimen, and for age, HCV and smoking; the difference in probability was however attenuated after further controlling for baseline HIV-RNA and CD4+ T-cells. The increased proportion of RHI over time suggests that in recent years in Italy HIV infections are more likely to be detected earlier than before. The similar rates of cART introduction and viro-immunological response in RHI and NRHI probably reflect the efficacy of the modern cART regimens. An improvement of the prevention services is warranted to allow an early cART access, also in the perspective of therapy as prevention

Measuring Harmful Representations in Scandinavian Language Models

Scandinavian countries are perceived as role-models when it comes to gender equality. With the advent of pre-trained language models and their widespread usage, we investigate to what extent gender-based harmful and toxic content exist in selected Scandinavian language models. We examine nine models, covering Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, by manually creating template-based sentences and probing the models for completion. We evaluate the completions using two methods for measuring harmful and toxic completions and provide a thorough analysis of the results. We show that Scandinavian pre-trained language models contain harmful and gender-based stereotypes with similar values across all languages. This finding goes against the general expectations related to gender equality in Scandinavian countries and shows the possible problematic outcomes of using such models in real-world settings.Comment: Accepted at the 5th workshop on Natural Language Processing and Computational Social Science (NLP+CSS) at EMNLP 2022 in Abu Dhabi, Dec 7 202