COVID-19 and the difficulty of inferring epidemiological parameters from clinical data

Knowing the infection fatality ratio (IFR) is of crucial importance for evidence-based epidemic management: for immediate planning; for balancing the life years saved against the life years lost due to the consequences of management; and for evaluating the ethical issues associated with the tacit willingness to pay substantially more for life years lost to the epidemic, than for those to other diseases. Against this background Verity et al. (2020, Lancet Infections Diseases) have rapidly assembled case data and used statistical modelling to infer the IFR for COVID-19. We have attempted an in-depth statistical review of their approach, to identify to what extent the data are sufficiently informative about the IFR to play a greater role than the modelling assumptions, and have tried to identify those assumptions that appear to play a key role. Given the difficulties with other data sources, we provide a crude alternative analysis based on the Diamond Princess Cruise ship data and case data from China, and argue that, given the data problems, modelling of clinical data to obtain the IFR can only be a stop-gap measure. What is needed is near direct measurement of epidemic size by PCR and/or antibody testing of random samples of the at risk population.Comment: Version accepted by the Lancet Infectious Diseases. See previous version for less terse presentatio

Fast calibrated additive quantile regression

We propose a novel framework for fitting additive quantile regression models, which provides well calibrated inference about the conditional quantiles and fast automatic estimation of the smoothing parameters, for model structures as diverse as those usable with distributional GAMs, while maintaining equivalent numerical efficiency and stability. The proposed methods are at once statistically rigorous and computationally efficient, because they are based on the general belief updating framework of Bissiri et al. (2016) to loss based inference, but compute by adapting the stable fitting methods of Wood et al. (2016). We show how the pinball loss is statistically suboptimal relative to a novel smooth generalisation, which also gives access to fast estimation methods. Further, we provide a novel calibration method for efficiently selecting the 'learning rate' balancing the loss with the smoothing priors during inference, thereby obtaining reliable quantile uncertainty estimates. Our work was motivated by a probabilistic electricity load forecasting application, used here to demonstrate the proposed approach. The methods described here are implemented by the qgam R package, available on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN)

New compounds with bioisosteric replacement of classic choline kinase inhibitors show potent antiplasmodial activity.

In the fight against Malaria, new strategies need to be developed to avoid resistance of the parasite to pharmaceutics and other prevention barriers. Recently, a Host Directed Therapy approach based on the suppression of the starting materials uptake from the host by the parasite has provided excellent results. In this article, we propose the synthesis of bioisosteric compounds that are capable of inhibiting Plasmodium falciparum Choline Kinase and therefore to reduce choline uptake, which is essential for the development of the parasite. Of the 41 bioisosteric compounds reported herein, none showed any influence of the linker on the antimalarial and enzyme inhibitory activity, whereas an effect of the type of cationic heads used could be observed. SARs determined that the thienopyrimidine substituted in 4 by a pyrrolidine is the best scaffold, independently of the chosen linker. The decrease in lipophilicity seems to improve the antimalarial activity but to cause an opposite effect on the inhibition of the enzyme. While potent compounds with similar good inhibitory values have been related to the proposed mechanism of action, some of them still show discrepancies and further studies are needed to determine their specific molecular target.This research was funded by Convocatoria 2019 Proyectos de I + D + i - RTI Tipo B “Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación” grant number PID2019–109294RB-I00, University of Granada, Cei-BioticProject grant number CEI2013-MP-1, the Instituto de Salud Carlos III Subdirección General de Redes y Centros de Investigación Cooperativa-Red de Investigación Cooperativa en Enfermedades Tropicales (RICET: RD16/0027/0014), the Plan Nacional (SAF PID2019-109623RB-I002016-79957-R) and the Junta de Andalucía (BIO-199)

Análisis foliar en frutales: herramienta de diagnóstico de alto retorno.

En cada nuevo ciclo productivo en frutales, es importante evaluar el estado nutricional del sistema sueloplanta. Para ello resulta de gran utilidad contar con herramientas como el análisis de suelo, el análisis foliar y el análisis de fruto. Si pretendemos llegar a rendimientos óptimos en cada temporada, conocer el estado nutricional ayuda en el plan de manejo de la fertilización, aplicando lo necesario en el momento adecuado. El análisis foliar o de otro órgano de la planta, ya sea fruto o pecíolo, es una herramienta muy eficaz para informarnos sobre el estado nutricional de los frutales y corregir deficiencias de algún nutriente que pudiera tener la planta

Granadas: un cultivo para la diversificación.

La Estación Experimental ?Wilson Ferreira Aldunate? INIA Las Brujas, a través del Programa Nacional de Investigación en Producción Frutícola, viene impulsandoel desarrollo de frutales alternativos, teniendo en cuenta que estos productos se presentan como opciones válidas en procesos de diversificación y complementariedada los sistemas de producción frutícola tradicionales

FPTA 342: Implementación de tecnologías de manejo integrado en predios citrícolas familiares de Salto, con énfasis en plagas y enfermedades cuarentenarias como mosca de la fruta, cancro cítrico y mancha negra.

La propuesta logró acercar las tecnologías disponibles para el manejo integrado de enfermedades y plagas a productores citrícolas familiares de Salto. Asimismo, el grupo de productores participantes del proyecto conoció la problemática del HLB que afecta a la región, a través de capacitaciones y giras al exterior

FPTA 342: Manejo integrado de plagas y enfermedades en productores citrícolas familiares.

En el contexto actual de cuidado del medio ambiente, la inocuidad de los alimentos y la salud de los trabajadores, productores citrícolas de la Sociedad de FomentoRural de Salto avanzan hacia sistemas de producción más sustentables

Estudio de la floración en cultivares de pecan.

El pecán (Carya illinoinensis) está siendo cultivado en nuestro país en forma creciente, y podemos considerarlo una especie exótica que cuenta con una buena adaptacióna las condiciones agroecológicas locales y es de fácil manejo productivo

Reproductive biology in cultivars "Abate Fetel" and "Williams": characterization of the compatibility and parthenocarpic capacity. [abstract of poster].

Pear (Pyrus communis) tends to have erratic productions in Uruguay, presenting self-incompatibility and floral inter-compatibility, with an estimated important role of parthenocarpy in Williams. Causes of variability in production are numerous, being the variation of rate in pollination a determining factor. The objective of this work was to characterize reproductive biology and evaluate genetic compatibility of cultivars "Abate Fetel" and "Williams" with other pollen sources, for Uruguayan agroclimatic conditions