SARS-CoV-2 infection: The role of cytokines in COVID-19 disease.

COVID-19 disease, caused by infection with SARS-CoV-2, is related to a series of physiopathological mechanisms that mobilize a wide variety of biomolecules, mainly immunological in nature. In the most severe cases, the prognosis can be markedly worsened by the hyperproduction of mainly proinflammatory cytokines, such as IL-1, IL-6, IL-12, IFN-γ, and TNF-α, preferentially targeting lung tissue. This study reviews published data on alterations in the expression of different cytokines in patients with COVID-19 who require admission to an intensive care unit. Data on the implication of cytokines in this disease and their effect on outcomes will support the design of more effective approaches to the management of COVID-19

The locus of semantic interference in picture naming

El locus del efecto de interferencia semántica en la denominación de
 dibujos. En los experimentos que se presentan se utilizó el procedimiento
 de priming enmascarado para explorar el locus del efecto de interferencia
 semántica. Para ello se manipuló la naturaleza de la tarea (denominación y
 decisión de género), el tipo de relación entre el prime y el target (semántica
 y fonológica) y el tiempo de presentación del prime. Los resultados
 indicaron que el efecto de interferencia semántica aparece en las tareas de
 denominación (Experimento 1) y de decisión de género (Experimento 2),
 con tiempos de presentación del prime de 100 ms. Este resultado replica el
 efecto encontrado por otros investigadores y lo extiende a la tarea de
 decisión de género. Por otro lado, el efecto de facilitación fonológica no
 apareció en la tarea de decisión de género (Experimento 3). Este patrón de
 resultados sugiere que el efecto de interferencia semántica es consecuencia
 de procesos que ocurren en el nivel de representación del lemma, y que la
 tarea de decisión de género no está influenciada por la activación
 fonológica

e-BioFlow: improving practical use of workflow systems in bioinformatics

Workflow management systems (WfMSs) are useful tools for bioinformaticians. As experiences with using WfMSs accumulate, shortcomings of current systems become apparent. In this paper, we focus on practical issues that hinder WfMS users and that arise in the design and execution of workflows, and in access of web services. We present e-BioFlow, a workflow engine that demonstrates in which way a number of these problems can be solved. e-BioFlow offers an improved user interface, can deal with large data volumes, stores all provenance, and has a powerful provenance browser. e-BioFlow also offers the possibility to design and run workflows step by step, allowing its users an explorative research style

Age-related effects of task difficulty on the semantic relevance of query reformulations

This study examined the semantics of query reformulations in relation to age and task difficulty. Task difficulty was manipulated using a metric called task preciseness defined as the semantic similarity of the task description with the content of the target page(s) containing the answer. A behavioral experiment was conducted in which 24 younger adults and 21 older adults solved six low precise and six high precise information search tasks. The behavioral outcomes were found to be in line with preceding work indicating that the metric was successful in differentiating different levels of task difficulty. Analysis of the semantic relevance of queries showed that for low precise tasks, the queries generated by younger adults had significantly higher mean semantic relevance than that of older adults whereas for high precise tasks, it was the other way round. When analyzed across reformulations, it was found that the mean semantic relevance of queries generated by older adults, decreased for both low and high precise tasks. For younger adults, it remained constant for high precise tasks and even increased for low precise tasks. Implications of these findings for the design of information search systems are discussed