Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research

Marriage-induced homeownership as a driver of housing booms: evidence from Hong Kong

Buying a home for marriage is customary in many societies. Traditionally, therefore, young couples getting married is a key driver of demand for homeownership. Yet the idea of marriage-induced demand for homeownership is a relatively underexplored component of housing price change. We examine the role of marriage-induced demand for homeownership in Hong Kong, a relatively self-contained housing market with fewer options for migration than most large cities. We use an instrumental variable strategy to test the hypothesis that more unmarried individuals at the prime age for marriage increases housing prices. We find that an additional one thousand marriage-aged but unmarried individuals leads to a seven per cent increase in housing prices. These findings confirm the importance of demographic factors such as cohort size and marriage rates on housing price projections, housing needs assessments, and housing policy

Cerebral grey, white matter and csf in never-medicated, first-episode schizophrenia

We report the first voxel-based morphometric (VBM) study to examine cerebral grey and white matter and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) using computational morphometry in never-medicated, first-episode psychosis (FEP). Region-of-interest (ROI) analysis was also performed blind to group membership. 26 never-medicated individuals with FEP (23 with DSM-IV schizophrenia) and 38 healthy controls had MRI brain scans. Groups were balanced for age, sex, handedness, ethnicity, paternal socio-economic status, and height. Healthy controls were recruited from the local community by advertisement. Grey matter, white matter, and CSF: global brain volume ratios were significantly smaller in patients. Patients had significantly less grey matter volume in L and R caudate nuclei, cingulate gyri, parahippocampal gyri, superior temporal gyri, cerebellum and R thalamus, prefrontal cortex. They also had significantly less white matter volume in the R anterior limb of the internal capsule fronto-occipital fasciculus and L and R fornices, and significantly greater CSF volume especially in the R lateral ventricle. Excluding the 3 subjects with brief psychotic disorder did not alter our results. Our data suggest that fronto-temporal and subcortical-limbic circuits are morphologically abnormal in never-medicated, schizophrenia. ROI analysis comparing the schizophrenia group (n = 23) with the healthy controls (n = 38) confirmed caudate volumes were significantly smaller bilaterally by 11%, and lateral ventricular volume was significantly larger on the right by 26% in the patients. Caudate nuclei and lateral ventricular volume measurements were uncorrelated (Pearson correlation coefficient 0.30, p = 0.10), ruling out the possibility of segmentation artefact. Ratio of lateral ventricle to caudate volume was bilaterally significantly increased (p < 0.005, 2-tailed), which could represent an early biomarker in first-episode, never-medicated schizophrenia. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Deferiprone inhibits iron overload-induced tissue factor bearing endothelial microparticle generation by inhibition oxidative stress induced mitochondrial injury, and apoptosis

Iron overload-induced cardiovascular toxicity is one of the most common causes of morbidity and mortality in beta-thalassemia major patients. We have previously shown that iron overload-induced systemic arterial changes characterized by endothelial dysfunction are associated with increased endothelial microparticle (EMP) release. In this study, we further demonstrate how EMP release is associated with iron-induced mitochondrial injury and apoptosis of endothelial cells. Iron increased the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and calcium influx into mitochondria [Ca2+]m. Iron also disturbed mitochondrial respiration function and eventually led to loss of mitochondrial membrane potential (ΔΨm). A significant increase in apoptotic cells and EMPs were found under iron treatment. EMPs contained tissue factor (TF), which has potential clinical impact on thromboembolic phenomenon. Then, we investigated the salvaging effect of deferiprone (L1) on endothelial cell damage and EMP release. We found that L1 could inhibit iron-induced ROS generation, and decrease mitochondrial damage with the resultant effect of less endothelial cell apoptosis and EMP release. L1 could protect endothelial cells from iron-induced toxic effects and minimize EMP release, which could be potentially helpful in a subgroup of thalassemia patients who have increased thromboembolic complications.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Donor-derived immunity to hepatitis B after liver transplantation

Conference Theme: Linking Basic Science to Clinical Applicatio

Early psychosis services for rural, remote and coastal communities in Australia

BACKGROUND: An effective means of reducing disability from psychotic disorders is the provision of early detection and intervention targeted at the prodromal phase. Current research and clinical programs for early psychosis (EP) have failed to encapsulate the specific needs of rural and remote communities (RARC) such as limited availability of mental health providers and long distances to travel for care (Fox et al, 1995). This study investigated access to care and service delivery for rural youths experiencing EP. METHODS: Routine clinical mental health service data were analysed for 10–25 year old patients across three rural regions of New South Wales. A large data set (N=1562) for the Central West (CW) rural region was compared to smaller data sets for the Far West (FW) remote and the North Coast (NC) coastal regions. Demographic, clinical and service features were analysed against characteristics specific to RARC. Clinical measures included the HoNOSCA, HoNOS and SDQ. RESULTS: EP patients in the CW represented 10.4% of patients accessing mental health services, but utilised services twice as often as non EP patients and absorbed 37.6% of inpatient service encounters. While the median distance to access service for CW EP patients was 88km, an absence of inpatient services for FW resulted in FW EP patients travelling as far as 895km for hospitalisation. CONCLUSIONS: The results emphasise the importance of developing specific EP services to address the diversity across RARC. The lack of appropriate and timely treatment for rural youths is likely to increase the impairment associated with EP

Women surgeons in Hong Kong

Objective: To survey Hong Kong women surgeon's current situation: their ability to balance career, personal and family life, and to look into some gender-specific issues. Methods: A 28-item questionnaire online survey was emailed to 142 female and 761 male surgeons with questions asking about four areas: demographic data, job satisfaction, work life balance and work opportunity. Results: Fifty-eight female and 114 male surgeons completed the questionnaire. The mean age of female surgeon respondents was significantly younger than male surgeon respondents (33 vs 43 years, P = 60 hours per week, P = 0.402); however, both felt satisfied or very satisfied with their current job situation (74% female and 76% male, P = 0.536) and were happy or very happy with other aspects of their lives (84% female and 82% male). More male respondents were married (83% male vs 35 % female, P < 0.001) and more married men had biological children at the time of the survey (83% male vs 62% female, P = 0.034). Both married males and females had family commitments affecting training, career advancement and overseas training. The majority of male and female surgeons did not experience discrimination during training or career advancement; however, more females felt discriminated against during selection and training processes (25% female vs 12% male, P = 0.001) and during career advancement (18% female vs 10% male, P = 0.013). Conclusion: Our survey results showed that both female and male surgeons are able to combine productive careers with satisfactory personal and family lives. However, both female and male surgeons faced many difficulties in their working lives; women may have more difficulties regarding family issues, as our survey showed that more women surgeons remained single and more married women surgeons had no children. Policies that facilitate a work life balance are important to attract and retain the best and talented physicians, regardless of sex. In view of the increasing number of women surgeons, frequent surveys are needed to determine whether women surgeons experience a working environment that ensures a level playing field. © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 College of Surgeons of Hong Kong.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Development of antibody to hepatitis B surface antigen after liver transplantation for chronic hepatitis B

Patients with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection have a defective HBV-specific immune response, and the spontaneous development of antibody against hepatitis B surface antigen (anti-HBs) after liver transplantation has not been observed. We report the spontaneous production of anti-HBs in 21 of 50 (42%) patients receiving lamivudine monoprophylaxis after liver transplantation. Seroconversion to anti-HBs status (> 10 mIU/mL) was found at a median of 8 days (range, 1 to 43 days) after transplantation. In each case, serial serum samples showed a > 100% increase in antibody titer as compared with that of day 7 after transplantation in the absence of any blood product transfusion. The anti-HBs titer increased to a maximum within 3 months, and the peak titer was > 100 mIU/mL in 10 patients, 100 to 1000 mIU/mL in 5 patients, and > 1,000 mIU/mL in 6 patients. In 12 patients, anti-HBs disappeared from serum at a median of 201 days (range, 24 to 414 days), whereas the other 9 patients remained positive for anti-HBs at a median of 221 days (range, 94 to 1,025 days) after transplantation. Patients in whom anti-HBs in serum developed had a more rapid clearance of serum hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) (log rank test, P = .011). Using logistic regression analysis, the only predictor of anti-HBs production was an HBV-immune donor (odds ratio, 18.9; 95% confidence interval, 3.2 to 112.4; P = .001). In conclusion, patients who undergo liver transplantation for chronic hepatitis B using lamivudine prophylaxis may develop anti-HBs spontaneously. The antibody is likely to be of donor origin, suggesting the possibility of adoptive immunity transfer through a liver graft.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Spontaneous development of antibody to hepatitis B surface antigen after liver transplantation for chronic hepatitis B using lamivudine prophylaxis

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