Termhood-based Comparability Metrics of Comparable Corpus in Special Domain

Cross-Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) and machine translation (MT) resources, such as dictionaries and parallel corpora, are scarce and hard to come by for special domains. Besides, these resources are just limited to a few languages, such as English, French, and Spanish and so on. So, obtaining comparable corpora automatically for such domains could be an answer to this problem effectively. Comparable corpora, that the subcorpora are not translations of each other, can be easily obtained from web. Therefore, building and using comparable corpora is often a more feasible option in multilingual information processing. Comparability metrics is one of key issues in the field of building and using comparable corpus. Currently, there is no widely accepted definition or metrics method of corpus comparability. In fact, Different definitions or metrics methods of comparability might be given to suit various tasks about natural language processing. A new comparability, namely, termhood-based metrics, oriented to the task of bilingual terminology extraction, is proposed in this paper. In this method, words are ranked by termhood not frequency, and then the cosine similarities, calculated based on the ranking lists of word termhood, is used as comparability. Experiments results show that termhood-based metrics performs better than traditional frequency-based metrics

Donor-Derived Genotype 4 Hepatitis E Virus Infection, Hong Kong, China, 2018

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) genotype 4 (HEV-4) is an emerging cause of acute hepatitis in China. Less is known about the clinical characteristics and natural history of HEV-4 than HEV genotype 3 infections in immunocompromised patients. We report transmission of HEV-4 from a deceased organ donor to 5 transplant recipients. The donor had been viremic but HEV IgM and IgG seronegative, and liver function test results were within reference ranges. After a mean of 52 days after transplantation, hepatitis developed in all 5 recipients; in the liver graft recipient, disease was severe and with progressive portal hypertension. Despite reduced immunosuppression, all HEV-4 infections progressed to persistent hepatitis. Four patients received ribavirin and showed evidence of response after 2 months. This study highlights the role of organ donation in HEV transmission, provides additional data on the natural history of HEV-4 infection, and points out differences between genotype 3 and 4 infections in immunocompromised patients

Tropism and Innate Host Responses of the 2009 Pandemic H1N1 Influenza Virus in ex Vivo and in Vitro Cultures of Human Conjunctiva and Respiratory Tract

The novel pandemic influenza H1N1 (H1N1pdm) virus of swine origin causes mild disease but occasionally leads to acute respiratory distress syndrome and death. It is important to understand the pathogenesis of this new disease in humans. We compared the virus tropism and host-responses elicited by pandemic H1N1pdm and seasonal H1N1 influenza viruses in ex vivo cultures of human conjunctiva, nasopharynx, bronchus, and lung, as well as in vitro cultures of human nasopharyngeal, bronchial, and alveolar epithelial cells. We found comparable replication and host-responses in seasonal and pandemic H1N1 viruses. However, pandemic H1N1pdm virus differs from seasonal H1N1 influenza virus in its ability to replicate in human conjunctiva, suggesting subtle differences in its receptor-binding profile and highlighting the potential role of the conjunctiva as an additional route of infection with H1N1pdm. A greater viral replication competence in bronchial epithelium at 33°C may also contribute to the slight increase in virulence of the pandemic influenza virus. In contrast with highly pathogenic influenza H5N1 virus, pandemic H1N1pdm does not differ from seasonal influenza virus in its intrinsic capacity for cytokine dysregulation. Collectively, these results suggest that pandemic H1N1pdm virus differs in modest but subtle ways from seasonal H1N1 virus in its intrinsic virulence for humans, which is in accord with the epidemiology of the pandemic to date. These findings are therefore relevant for understanding transmission and therapy

Lumbar disc degeneration is linked to a carbohydrate sulfotransferase 3 variant

Lumbar disc degeneration (LDD) is associated with both genetic and environmental factors and affects many people worldwide. A hallmark of LDD is loss of proteoglycan and water content in the nucleus pulposus of intervertebral discs. While some genetic determinants have been reported, the etiology of LDD is largely unknown. Here we report the findings from linkage and association studies on a total of 32,642 subjects consisting of 4,043 LDD cases and 28,599 control subjects. We identified carbohydrate sulfotransferase 3 (CHST3), an enzyme that catalyzes proteoglycan sulfation, as a susceptibility gene for LDD. The strongest genome-wide linkage peak encompassed CHST3 from a Southern Chinese family-based data set, while a genome-wide association was observed at rs4148941 in the gene in a meta-analysis using multiethnic population cohorts. rs4148941 lies within a potential microRNA-513a-5p (miR-513a-5p) binding site. Interaction between miR-513a-5p and mRNA transcribed from the susceptibility allele (A allele) of rs4148941 was enhanced in vitro compared with transcripts from other alleles. Additionally, expression of CHST3 mRNA was significantly reduced in the intervertebral disc cells of human subjects carrying the A allele of rs4148941. Together, our data provide new insights into the etiology of LDD, implicating an interplay between genetic risk factors and miRNA.Link_to_subscribed_fulltex