Governance Implications Of Global Infectious Disease Epidemics Under Shared Health Governance Scheme. Lessons From Sars

The world is becoming flat. With the progress of globalization and world integration, the past century has witnessed a growing number of emerging and reemerging diseases. It has become a common concern the world will face a deadly infectious disease pandemic and the international community needs to set up a functional system to face up the challenge. Over the past decade, outbreaks of SARS, H5N1 and H1N1 pandemic have raised concern among public health officials and the public in general on the need of global and local pandemic control. Infectious agents have been able to take advantage of the dramatic population flow, facilitated by the advance in transportation, to reach out to every inch of land on the planet. Diseases no longer respect nation boundaries and no single country are able to handle infectious epidemics. All has pointed to an urgent need of better governance in globalized infectious disease transmission. As complex as the epidemic itself, infectious disease control presents significant governance challenges. World Health Organization (WHO) is created with a mandate to be a world governor of health. However in this post-Westphalia international regime, states still have the residual power in governance and without a real functioning world government, the role of WHO as a leader in controlling global infectious diseases is limited. It is thus crucial to answer the question of how nation states and WHO should place themselves in the architecture of global epidemics control. This paper will examine the role of nation states and global health agencies, taking China and WHO as respective examples, in preparedness and response to the SARS epidemics. It will further compare the specific strengthens of each player in containing global infectious disease outbreaks under a shared health governance scheme

Gene expression analysis of induced pluripotent stem cells from aneuploid chromosomal syndromes

BACKGROUND: Human aneuploidy is the leading cause of early pregnancy loss, mental retardation, and multiple congenital anomalies. Due to the high mortality associated with aneuploidy, the pathophysiological mechanisms of aneuploidy syndrome remain largely unknown. Previous studies focused mostly on whether dosage compensation occurs, and the next generation transcriptomics sequencing technology RNA-seq is expected to eventually uncover the mechanisms of gene expression regulation and the related pathological phenotypes in human aneuploidy. RESULTS: Using next generation transcriptomics sequencing technology RNA-seq, we profiled the transcriptomes of four human aneuploid induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines generated from monosomy × (Turner syndrome), trisomy 8 (Warkany syndrome 2), trisomy 13 (Patau syndrome), and partial trisomy 11:22 (Emanuel syndrome) as well as two umbilical cord matrix iPSC lines as euploid controls to examine how phenotypic abnormalities develop with aberrant karyotype. A total of 466 M (50-bp) reads were obtained from the six iPSC lines, and over 13,000 mRNAs were identified by gene annotation. Global analysis of gene expression profiles and functional analysis of differentially expressed (DE) genes were implemented. Over 5000 DE genes are determined between aneuploidy and euploid iPSCs respectively while 9 KEGG pathways are overlapped enriched in four aneuploidy samples. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate that the extra or missing chromosome has extensive effects on the whole transcriptome. Functional analysis of differentially expressed genes reveals that the genes most affected in aneuploid individuals are related to central nervous system development and tumorigenesis

Kinetics of mass loss of arabica coffee during roasting process

Roasting is one of the most complex coffee processing steps due to simultaneous transfers of heat and mass. During this process, beans lose mass because of fast physical and chemical changes that will set color and flavor of the commercial coffee beverage. Therefore, we aimed at assessing the kinetics of mass loss in commercially roasted coffee beans according to heating throughout the processing. For that, we used samples of 350-g Arabica coffee processed grains with water content of 0.1217 kga kg-1, in addition to a continuous roaster with firing gas. The roaster had initial temperatures of 285, 325, 345 and 380 °C, decreasing during the process up to 255, 285, 305 and 335 °C respectively. Mass loss was calculated by the difference between grain weight before and after roasting. We observed a linear variation directly dependent on roaster temperature. For each temperature during the process was obtained a constant mass loss rate, which was reported by the Arrhenius model with r2 above 0.98. In a roaster in non-isothermal conditions, the required activation energy to start the mass loss in a commercial coffee roasting index was 52.27 kJ mol -1.A torrefação é uma das etapas mais complexa do processamento do café devido à transferência simultânea de calor e massa, em que os grãos perdem massa devido à rapidez das mudanças físicas e químicas, necessárias para produzir a cor e o aroma do café comercial. Assim, objetivou-se com este trabalho determinar a cinética da perda de massa dos grãos de café torrados comercialmente em função da temperatura do processo. Foram usadas amostras de 350 g de grãos beneficiados de café arábica com teor de água de 0,1217 kga kg-1 . Usou-se um torrador com queima de gás constante e temperaturas iniciais de 285; 325; 345 e 380 °C, que diminuíram durante a operação até equilibrar-se em 255; 285; 305 e 335 °C, respectivamente. A perda de massa foi calculada a partir do peso dos grãos antes e depois da torração, sendo observada uma variação linear dependente diretamente da temperatura do torrador. Para cada temperatura do processo, foi obtida uma taxa constante de perda de massa, que foi relacionada pelo modelo de Arrhenius com r2 acima de 0,98. Em condições não isotérmicas do torrador, a energia de ativação necessária para iniciar a perda de massa, em índices de torração comercial do café, foi 52,27 kJ mol-1 .Universidad de Costa Rica/[]/UCR/Costa RicaConselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico/[]/CNPq/BrasilCoordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior/[]/CAPES/ BrasilFundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais/[]/FAPEMIG/BrasilUCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Agroalimentarias::Centro para Investigaciones en Granos y Semillas (CIGRAS

SPINE20 A global advocacy group promoting evidence-based spine care of value

PURPOSE: The Global Burden of Diseases (GBD) Studies have estimated that low back pain is one of the costliest ailments worldwide. Subsequent to GBD publications, leadership of the four largest global spine societies agreed to form SPINE20. This article introduces the concept of SPINE20, the recommendations, and the future of this global advocacy group linked to G20 annual summits. METHODS: The founders of SPINE20 advocacy group coordinated with G20 Saudi Arabia to conduct the SPINE20 summit in 2020. The summit was intended to promote evidence-based recommendations to use the most reliable information from high-level research. Eight areas of importance to mitigate spine disorders were identified through a voting process of the participating societies. Twelve recommendations were discussed and vetted. RESULTS: The areas of immediate concern were "Aging spine," "Future of spine care," "Spinal cord injuries," "Children and adolescent spine," "Spine-related disability," "Spine Educational Standards," "Patient safety," and "Burden on economy." Twelve recommendations were created and endorsed by 31/33 spine societies and 2 journals globally during a vetted process through the SPINE20.org website and during the virtual inaugural meeting November 10-11, 2020 held from the G20 platform. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first time that international spine societies have joined to support actions to mitigate the burden of spine disorders across the globe. SPINE20 seeks to change awareness and treatment of spine pain by supporting local projects that implement value-based practices with healthcare policies that are culturally sensitive based on scientific evidence

A Survey on Network Coordinate Systems

Network coordinate systems play an important role in applications such as P2P file sharing, online network games, and IP positioning. Many network applications require a large amount of network delay data. However, plenty of network delay measurements will cause the network heavily loaded and unreachable problems between network nodes. The proposed network coordinate system provides an important means to solve these problems. Firstly the concept and application of the network coordinate system are introduced. Secondly, the existing representative network coordinate systems are elaborated in detail, such as system based on Euclidean distance and matrix decomposition, and then the advantages of each system are compared. Finally, the factors affecting the accuracy of network coordinate system prediction are analyzed, and the problems are pointed out which the network coordinate system is worth researching in the next step

Three new species of Diaphorus Meigen (Diptera: Dolichopodidae) from Tibet

Liu, Ruosi, Wang, Mengqing, Yang, Ding (2015): Three new species of Diaphorus Meigen (Diptera: Dolichopodidae) from Tibet. Zootaxa 3946 (2): 233-240, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3946.2.

Chrysotus Meigen (Diptera: Dolichopodidae) from Tibet with descriptions of four new species

Liu, Ruosi, Wang, Mengqing, Yang, Ding (2013): Chrysotus Meigen (Diptera: Dolichopodidae) from Tibet with descriptions of four new species. Zootaxa 3717 (2): 169-178, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3717.2.