Speaking COVID-19: supporting COVID-19 communication and engagement efforts with people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities.

BACKGROUND: Since the emergence of COVID-19, issues have been raised regarding the approach used to engage with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CaLD) communities during this public health crisis. This study aimed to understand the factors impacting communication and engagement efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of crucial CaLD community stakeholders and opinion leaders. METHODS: Forty-six semi-structured telephone interviews were undertaken with key stakeholders who have an active role (established before the pandemic) in delivering services and other social support to CaLD communities in Australia. RESULTS: Seven key themes emerged: (1) the digital divide and how to connect with people; (2) information voids being filled by international material; (3) Differentiating established with new and emerging communities' needs; (4) speaking COVID-19; (5) ineffectiveness of direct translations of English language resources; (6) coordination is needed to avoid duplication and address gaps and (7) recognising the improvements in governments' approach. CONCLUSION: Alliances must be set up that can be activated in the future to reduce issues around resource development, translation, and dissemination of messages to minimise gaps in the response. Financial assistance must be provided in a timely way to community organisations to support the development and dissemination of culturally appropriate communication materials

All Politics is Local: The Renminbi's Prospects as a Future Global Currency

. In this article we describe methods for improving the RWTH German speech recognizer used within the VERBMOBIL project. In particular, we present acceleration methods for the search based on both within-word and across-word phoneme models. We also study incremental methods to reduce the response time of the online speech recognizer. Finally, we present experimental off-line results for the three VERBMOBIL scenarios. We report on word error rates and real-time factors for both speaker independent and speaker dependent recognition. 1 Introduction The goal of the VERBMOBIL project is to develop a speech-to-speech translation system that performs close to real-time. In this system, speech recognition is followed by subsequent VERBMOBIL modules (like syntactic analysis and translation) which depend on the recognition result. Therefore, in this application it is particularly important to keep the recognition time as short as possible. There are VERBMOBIL modules which are capable to work ..

Smelting conditions and smelting products: Experimental insights into the development of iron bloomery furnaces

The material record for bloomery furnaces in Iron Age and Roman Britain is fragmentary and, because of this paucity of evidence, the reconstruction of the ceramic structures used in iron production is difficult. Experiments have nevertheless been carried out to explore the working parameters and efficiency of iron smelting in bowl furnaces (small structures with little structure above ground level, interior measuring about 30 cm in height) (Craddock, 1995; Girbal, 2013) and shaft furnaces (height c.1m) (Smith, 2013; Crew, 2013; Doonan and Dungworth, 2013; Tylecote and Merkel, 1985; Tylecote and Wynne, 1958). These experiments aimed to clarify which furnace is more efficient for iron smelting and therefore what method was most likely used in Iron Age and Roman Britain. It is theorised that iron smelting furnaces developed from bowl structures to shaft structures over time, as smelters sought furnaces which could reach higher temperatures and create more reducing atmospheres (Dungworth 2013; Tylecote and Merkel, 1985; Tylecote and Wynne, 1958). These experiments suggest that the shaft furnace was used as it could meet these requirements. This study looks at the working conditions of a shaft furnace at an intermediary height - between that of a bowl furnace and of a shaft furnace - in order to understand its working parameters and to consequently better understand the progression from a bowl to a 1m high shaft structure

Differential Antigen Presentation Regulates the Changing Patterns of CD8+ T Cell Immunodominance in Primary and Secondary Influenza Virus Infections

The specificity of CD8+ T cell responses can vary dramatically between primary and secondary infections. For example, NP366–374/Db- and PA224–233/Db-specific CD8+ T cells respond in approximately equal numbers to a primary influenza virus infection in C57BL/6 mice, whereas NP366–374/Db-specific CD8+ T cells dominate the secondary response. To investigate the mechanisms underlying this changing pattern of immunodominance, we analyzed the role of antigen presentation in regulating the specificity of the T cell response. The data show that both dendritic and nondendritic cells are able to present the NP366–374/Db epitope, whereas only dendritic cells effectively present the PA224–233/Db epitope after influenza virus infection, both in vitro and in vivo. This difference in epitope expression favored the activation and expansion of NP366–374/Db-specific CD8+ memory T cells during secondary infection. The data also show that the immune response to influenza virus infection may involve T cells specific for epitopes, such as PA224–233/Db, that are poorly expressed at the site of infection. In this regard, vaccination with the PA224–233 peptide actually had a detrimental effect on the clearance of a subsequent influenza virus infection. Thus, differential antigen presentation impacts both the specificity of the T cell response and the efficacy of peptide-based vaccination strategies

Mucosal Application of gp140 Encoding DNA Polyplexes to Different Tissues Results in Altered Immunological Outcomes in Mice

Increasing evidence suggests that mucosally targeted vaccines will enhance local humoral and cellular responses whilst still eliciting systemic immunity. We therefore investigated the capacity of nasal, sublingual or vaginal delivery of DNA-PEI polyplexes to prime immune responses prior to mucosal protein boost vaccination. Using a plasmid expressing the model antigen HIV CN54gp140 we show that each of these mucosal surfaces were permissive for DNA priming and production of antigen-specific antibody responses. The elicitation of systemic immune responses using nasally delivered polyplexed DNA followed by recombinant protein boost vaccination was equivalent to a systemic prime-boost regimen, but the mucosally applied modality had the advantage in that significant levels of antigen-specific IgA were detected in vaginal mucosal secretions. Moreover, mucosal vaccination elicited both local and systemic antigen-specific IgG(+) and IgA(+) antibody secreting cells. Finally, using an Influenza challenge model we found that a nasal or sublingual, but not vaginal, DNA prime/protein boost regimen protected against infectious challenge. These data demonstrate that mucosally applied plasmid DNA complexed to PEI followed by a mucosal protein boost generates sufficient antigen-specific humoral antibody production to protect from mucosal viral challenge

Multilingual representations for low resource speech recognition and keyword search

© 2015 IEEE. This paper examines the impact of multilingual (ML) acoustic representations on Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and keyword search (KWS) for low resource languages in the context of the OpenKWS15 evaluation of the IARPA Babel program. The task is to develop Swahili ASR and KWS systems within two weeks using as little as 3 hours of transcribed data. Multilingual acoustic representations proved to be crucial for building these systems under strict time constraints. The paper discusses several key insights on how these representations are derived and used. First, we present a data sampling strategy that can speed up the training of multilingual representations without appreciable loss in ASR performance. Second, we show that fusion of diverse multilingual representations developed at different LORELEI sites yields substantial ASR and KWS gains. Speaker adaptation and data augmentation of these representations improves both ASR and KWS performance (up to 8.7% relative). Third, incorporating un-transcribed data through semi-supervised learning, improves WER and KWS performance. Finally, we show that these multilingual representations significantly improve ASR and KWS performance (relative 9% for WER and 5% for MTWV) even when forty hours of transcribed audio in the target language is available. Multilingual representations significantly contributed to the LORELEI KWS systems winning the OpenKWS15 evaluation

Localisation of RNAs into the germ plasm of vitellogenic xenopus oocytes

We have studied the localisation of mRNAs in full-grown Xenopus laevis oocytes by injecting fluorescent RNAs, followed by confocal microscopy of the oocyte cortex. Concentrating on RNA encoding the Xenopus Nanos homologue, nanos1 (formerly Xcat2), we find that it consistently localised into aggregated germ plasm ribonucleoprotein (RNP) particles, independently of cytoskeletal integrity. This implies that a diffusion/entrapment-mediated mechanism is active, as previously reported for previtellogenic oocytes. Sometimes this was accompanied by localisation into scattered particles of the “late”, Vg1/VegT pathway; occasionally only late pathway localisation was seen. The Xpat RNA behaved in an identical fashion and for neither RNA was the localisation changed by any culture conditions tested. The identity of the labelled RNP aggregates as definitive germ plasm was confirmed by their inclusion of abundant mitochondria and co-localisation with the germ plasm protein Hermes. Further, the nanos1/Hermes RNP particles are interspersed with those containing the germ plasm protein Xpat. These aggregates may be followed into the germ plasm of unfertilized eggs, but with a notable reduction in its quantity, both in terms of injected molecules and endogenous structures. Our results conflict with previous reports that there is no RNA localisation in large oocytes, and that during mid-oogenesis even germ plasm RNAs localise exclusively by the late pathway. We find that in mid oogenesis nanos1 RNA also localises to germ plasm but also by the late pathway. Late pathway RNAs, Vg1 and VegT, also may localise into germ plasm. Our results support the view that mechanistically the two modes of localisation are extremely similar, and that in an injection experiment RNAs might utilise either pathway, the distinction in fates being very subtle and subject to variation. We discuss these results in relation to their biological significance and the results of others

Basal body stability and ciliogenesis requires the conserved component Poc1

Centrioles are the foundation for centrosome and cilia formation. The biogenesis of centrioles is initiated by an assembly mechanism that first synthesizes the ninefold symmetrical cartwheel and subsequently leads to a stable cylindrical microtubule scaffold that is capable of withstanding microtubule-based forces generated by centrosomes and cilia. We report that the conserved WD40 repeat domain–containing cartwheel protein Poc1 is required for the structural maintenance of centrioles in Tetrahymena thermophila. Furthermore, human Poc1B is required for primary ciliogenesis, and in zebrafish, DrPoc1B knockdown causes ciliary defects and morphological phenotypes consistent with human ciliopathies. T. thermophila Poc1 exhibits a protein incorporation profile commonly associated with structural centriole components in which the majority of Poc1 is stably incorporated during new centriole assembly. A second dynamic population assembles throughout the cell cycle. Our experiments identify novel roles for Poc1 in centriole stability and ciliogenesis

A rare case of a retroperitoneal enterogenous cyst with in-situ adenocarcinoma

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Retroperitoneal enterogenous cysts are uncommon and adenocarcinoma within such cysts is a rare complication.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>We present the third described case of a retroperitoneal enterogenous cyst with adenocarcinomatous changes and only the second reported case whereby the cyst was not arising from any anatomical structure.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This case demonstrates the difficulties in making a diagnosis as well as the importance of a multi-disciplinary approach, and raises further questions regarding post-operative treatment with chemotherapy.</p