A 14-year old girl sitting for her Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) in Samburu County died tragically on Wednesday after she complained of stomach cramps.

Schools will be ready by Monday to receive final year high-school students, the chairman of secondary education headmasters said on Saturday. The rest of the schools are scheduled to open on May 21. Giorgos Iosiphides said excess desks and chairs have been removed from classrooms in line with guidelines. The...

The post Coronavirus: Schools ready for Monday (Updated) appeared first on Cyprus Mail.

Open markets in Limassol, Dherynia, and Larnaca began operating again on Saturday for the first time since the lockdown measures were enforced. The openings followed similar moves in Nicosia after the government decided to ease restrictions last week. “There is order, safety, calm and people are shopping,” Limassol Mayor Nicos...

The post Coronavirus: Open markets back in business after lockdown (updated) appeared first on Cyprus Mail.

Safeguards due diligence reports are prepared as part of safeguard due diligence and review to ensure compliance with ADB safeguard policy due diligence requirements. This document dated May 2020 is provided for the ADB project 51039-002 in Afghanistan.

Safeguards due diligence reports are prepared as part of safeguard due diligence and review to ensure compliance with ADB safeguard policy due diligence requirements. This document dated May 2020 is provided for the ADB project 2020-05-07 in Afghanistan.

MCHP Updates Q3FY20 Financial Guidance

MCHP Provides Update on Business Environment

MCHP to Provide Q4FY20 Business Update on March 2 2020

MCHP Provides Business Update for Q4FY20

MCHP Provides Update on Q4FY20 Net Sales and the Business Environment

An extinct variety of date palm tree has been grown from ancient seeds preserved in the Judean desert for 2000 years, the oldest seeds ever germinated

The United States Oil Fund LP, the largest oil-focused exchange-traded product (ETP) in the country, is moving to spread out its investments in oil futures in response to extreme market turbulence,...

The mysterious Liangzhu civilisation was a neolithic "Venice of the East", rivalling ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia with its engineering marvels

The mysterious Liangzhu civilisation was a neolithic "Venice of the East", rivalling ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia with its engineering marvels

Auto production in Mexico and Brazil, Latin America's top producers, plunged by an unprecedented 99% in April as a result of the coronavirus crisis, with the two countries building a total of just 5,569 vehicles.

Two more firms are eyeing a share of Reliance Industries Ltd's $65-billion digital unit Jio Platforms, according to Bloomberg News, setting them up to be a part of a growing list of firms that have recently invested in the Indian company.

The largest union representing U.S. meatpacking workers said on Friday it opposed the reopening of plants as the Trump administration had failed to guarantee workers' safety.

The head of the International Monetary Fund on Friday signaled a possible downward revision of global economic forecasts, and warned the United States and China against rekindling a trade war that could weaken a recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

A group of Republican lawmakers from energy-producing states on Friday called on President Donald Trump to prevent banks from halting loans and investments with companies that produce oil and other fossil fuels while they have access to federal assistance programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday he aims to present plans next week to reopen the economy, as key sectors like carmaking look to begin business again after over a month of quarantine measures to curb the coronavirus outbreak.

Pfizer Inc said on Friday it is in talks to shift more of its medicine production to outside contractors as it prepares for large-scale production of an experimental vaccine to prevent COVID-19, should it prove safe and effective.

* Tourism, travel, hospitality business hit the hardest by COVID

* Airports say it could be devastating for aviation industry (Adds details, changes sourcing)

Title: Urologists' Group Issues Updated Guidelines on PSA Test
Category: Health News
Created: 5/3/2013 12:35:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 5/3/2013 12:00:00 AM

Title: When Grandparents Raise Grandkids, Are They Up to Date on Child Safety?
Category: Health News
Created: 5/4/2017 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 5/4/2017 12:00:00 AM

Title: Which Symptoms Point to Severe COVID-19? Doctors Issue New Update
Category: Health News
Created: 5/8/2020 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 5/8/2020 12:00:00 AM

Based on a review of more than 1,000 patients who've already sought care for respiratory illnesses since the coronavirus was declared a pandemic in March, researchers at Harvard Medical School are offering up a new list of symptoms to watch out for.

The third annual Journal Article Tag Suite Conference (JATS-Con) will be held on October 16 and 17, 2012 on the NIH Campus in Bethesda, Maryland. JATS-Con is a conference for users of the NISO Z39.96 Journal Article Tag Suite: that is, users of any of the NLM DTDs. JATS-Con is a peer-reviewed conference with a broad range of content on the Tag Suite from the technical to publishing theory — and the latest news on the Tag Suite. For more information, see JATS-Con.

The PMC Overview and FAQ have been updated to provide more information on the Scientific Quality Review Process for journals that apply to participate in PMC.

In 2014, PMC implemented a scientific and editorial quality review procedure whereby expert consultants from outside the National Library of Medicine (NLM) conduct an independent review of journals seeking to participate in PMC. This was in response to a significant increase in new publishers and journals applying to participate in PMC, many of which are unknown to NLM in terms of quality and publishing practices. The independent review, which was approved by the PMC National Advisory Committee (see minutes from June 10, 2014), follows an assessment by NLM that the journal meets NLM’s criteria for its collection, as outlined in the Collection Development Manual.

PMC also recently updated the minimum requirement on the number of substantive, peer-reviewed articles needed before a journal can apply to PMC. The new 25-article minimum ensures that the reviewers have a sufficient amount of content on which to base their recommendation for inclusion in PMC. The new minimum article requirement takes effect on January 1, 2016. Publishers are encouraged to use the 25-article minimum as a guideline in the interim when submitting applications.

PMC has reorganized its FTP Service site for users interested in accessing the Text Mining Collections, which include the original Open Access (OA) Subset. New top-level FTP directories help users quickly locate the content available for bulk download that best suits their research needs. These directories include:

• oa_package - article packages for individual OA articles
• oa_pdf – individual PDFs for OA articles
• oa_bulk – bulk packages of text from OA articles
• manuscript – author manuscripts collected under a funding agency’s public access policy
• historical_ocr – select OCR texts from the PMC Back Issue Digitization project

To make it easier for users to identify and comply with the different licenses that apply to OA articles, new file lists have been created and the file lists for individual OA articles now include a “license-type” field for each article. Similarly, the bulk packages of OA article text have been divided into two sets. One set comprises articles that may be used for commercial purposes (the Commercial Use Collection); the other contains articles that can be used only for non-commercial purposes. See the Open Access Subset page for details.

To allow regular users to transition to the new arrangement, the previous arrangement of files and directories will be maintained in parallel for at least four weeks (i.e., until the end of August 2016).

As of August 2016, PMC is home to four million articles! To make this wealth of full-text content easier to navigate, PMC has rolled out a few updates:

1) Search Result Filters
On all search results pages, you will now see filters (similar to PubMed’s filters) on the left-hand side that allow you to filter your results by article attributes, publication date, research funder, and search fields. These filters replace the Limits page and allow you to more readily:

• find open access articles (PMC has more than 1.35 million open access articles that can be reused according to their license statements),
• explore PMC’s rich historical content from NLM's back issue digitization project,
• browse research supported by PMC-participating funding organizations (click "Customize" to view additional funder options),
• and much more.

You can now also quickly add articles that are under a 12-month or less embargo in PMC to your search results by selecting the “Include embargoed articles” filter option under Text Availability. See the PMC User Guide for more information on these filters.

2) Reference List Display
Using related article data available in PMC, articles that cite papers that have been either retracted or named in a Findings of Research Misconduct issued by the HHS Office of Research Integrity and not yet retracted will now include a red hyperlink to the relevant notice directly from the article’s reference list. This update will help users more easily identify post-publication updates to existing research.

In response to the growing interest in the availability of data associated with articles, PMC is reviewing current practices around data and seeking feedback on how to best serve the data needs of the research community.

As part of these efforts, the PMC policy statement on supplementary data was recently updated to more clearly articulate the requirement that any supplementary data (images, tables, video, or other documents / files) that are associated with an article must be deposited in PMC with an article. The search filter "has suppdata[filter]" can be used in PMC to discover records with associated supplementary data files.

In addition to providing supplementary data with an article, NLM is also encouraging journals and authors to make research data available in a public repository and include the relevant data citation(s) in the paper. Guidance for PMC data providers on tagging data citations is available in the Tagging Guidelines. This guidance is based on the JATS4R recommendations on data citations.

Starting this month, the NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system will also accept deposits of small datasets accompanying deposits of funded author manuscripts for inclusion of PMC. (Guidance for authors is available in the NIHMS FAQ.)

If you have suggestions on future directions in data for PMC to consider, please let us know at pubmedcentral@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

PMC Canada, sponsored by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), with operational support provided by the National Research Council (NRC), has been a valued partner in the PMC International network since 2009. CIHR and NRC have now notified NLM of their decision to permanently take PubMed Central Canada (PMC Canada) offline on February 23, 2018. Details of this decision are available on the PMC Canada website.

The decision to decommission PMC Canada does not affect the status or operations of NIH’s PubMed Central (US) or Europe PubMed Central. PMC Canada content will remain in the PMC archive and be publicly searchable on NLM’s PubMed Central (US) and through Europe PMC. CIHR researchers who publish in journals that deposit their articles directly into NIH’s PubMed Central or deposit manuscripts co-funded with current PMC-participating funders will continue to be considered in compliance with the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications.

NIH and NLM have appreciated our cooperation with CIHR and NRC over the last several years and will continue to identify new opportunities to work together to support open access and research excellence.

In collaboration with Europe PMC, PMC has rolled out several updates to our article display in order to enhance the transparency and readability of the content.

Navigating from the PMC record to the PubMed record has been made easier by the addition of hyperlinked PubMed IDs (PMIDs) in the upper right-hand corner of article records. Clicking the PMID link will take you to the corresponding citation record in PubMed.

The PMC Disclaimer link has also been moved out of the Copyright and License information section for easier discovery and access. This page describes what content is included in PMC as well as other important NCBI and NLM disclaimer information.

Additionally, two changes have been implemented to improve the functionality of author names. Users can now click on an author name to view the author’s affiliation(s). Users also have the option of running a quick author name search in PMC by clicking the linked author name in “Find articles by [author name]”. In the example pictured above, the search would be for “Sawyer SL”[Author].

And finally, figures and tables have been moved inline in the article display. By moving away from the thumbnail display, PMC hopes to make it easier for users to view figure and table data as they read articles. Users may still click on the figure/table title or “Open in separate window” (as available) link for a closer look.

We hope these updates improve the overall user experience in PMC and look forward to hearing your feedback.

References

Screenshots from:

Qiao, Y., Yang, J., Liu, L., Zeng, Y., Ma, J., Jia, J., … Wang, Y. (2018). Successful treatment with pazopanib plus PD-1 inhibitor and RAK cells for advanced primary hepatic angiosarcoma: a case report. BMC Cancer, 18, 212. http://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-018-3996-3

Stabell, A. C., Meyerson, N. R., Gullberg, R. C., Gilchrist, A. R., Webb, K. J., Old, W. M., … Sawyer, S. L. (2018). Dengue viruses cleave STING in humans but not in nonhuman primates, their presumed natural reservoir. eLife, 7, e31919. http://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.31919

Both articles made available under a CC-BY license.

PMC has released expanded information about its selection process for journals that apply for participation. The current review process has been in place since November 2014 and focuses on the scientific rigor and editorial quality of each journal that applies to participate in PMC. Some of the attributes taken into account as part of this process include the article content, journal policies, language quality, and presentation of content. The same assessment considerations are used for reevaluation of currently participating journals. We encourage you to visit the Journal Selection for PMC page to learn more.

Publishers and journals interested in submitting an application to PMC are also encouraged to review our updated policies on agreement types. These policies provide the eligibility criteria for each type of participation agreement and should be considered alongside the pre-application requirements.

We hope these updates are informative and look forward to hearing your feedback.

Title: Traveling Abroad? Make Sure Your Measles Shot Is Up to Date
Category: Health News
Created: 7/24/2019 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 7/24/2019 12:00:00 AM

ABSTRACT

Lassa virus (LASV) poses a significant public health problem within the regions of Lassa fever endemicity in Western Africa. LASV infects several hundred thousand individuals yearly, and a considerable number of Lassa fever cases are associated with high morbidity and lethality. No approved LASV vaccine is available, and current therapy is limited to an off-label usage of ribavirin that is only partially effective and associated with significant side effects. The impact of Lassa fever on human health, together with the limited existing countermeasures, highlights the importance of developing effective vaccines against LASV. Here, we present the development and characterization of a recombinant LASV (rLASV) vaccine candidate [rLASV(IGR/S-S)], which is based on the presence of the noncoding intergenic region (IGR) of the small (S) genome segment (S-IGR) in both large (L) and S LASV segments. In cultured cells, rLASV(IGR/S-S) was modestly less fit than wild-type rLASV (rLASV-WT). rLASV(IGR/S-S) was highly attenuated in guinea pigs, and a single subcutaneous low dose of the virus completely protected against otherwise lethal infection with LASV-WT. Moreover, rLASV(IGR/S-S) was genetically stable during serial passages in cultured cells. These findings indicate that rLASV(IGR/S-S) can be developed into a LASV live-attenuated vaccine (LAV) that has the same antigenic composition as LASV-WT and a well-defined mechanism of attenuation that overcomes concerns about increased virulence that could be caused by genetic changes in the LAV during multiple rounds of multiplication.

IMPORTANCE Lassa virus (LASV), the causative agent of Lassa fever, infects several hundred thousand people in Western Africa, resulting in many lethal Lassa fever cases. No U.S. Food and Drug Administration-licensed countermeasures are available to prevent or treat LASV infection. We describe the generation of a novel LASV live-attenuated vaccine candidate rLASV(IGR/S-S), which is based on the replacement of the large genomic segment noncoding intergenic region (IGR) with that of the small genome segment. rLASV(IGR/S-S) is less fit in cell culture than wild-type virus and does not cause clinical signs in inoculated guinea pigs. Importantly, rLASV(IGR/S-S) protects immunized guinea pigs against an otherwise lethal exposure to LASV.

North Carolina has received national attention for its approach to health care payment and delivery reform. Importantly, payment reform alone is not enough to drive systematic changes in care delivery. We highlight the importance of progress in four complementary areas to achieve system-wide payment and care reform.

Surgical procedures are performed in the United States in a wide variety of clinical settings and with variation in clinical outcomes. In May 2012, the Task Force for Children’s Surgical Care, an ad hoc multidisciplinary group comprising physicians representing specialties relevant to pediatric perioperative care, was convened to generate recommendations to optimize the delivery of children’s surgical care. This group generated a white paper detailing the consensus opinions of the involved experts. Following these initial recommendations, the American College of Surgeons (ACS), Children’s Hospital Association, and Task Force for Children’s Surgical Care, with input from all related perioperative specialties, developed and published specific and detailed resource and quality standards designed to improve children’s surgical care (https://www.facs.org/quality-programs/childrens-surgery/childrens-surgery-verification). In 2015, with the endorsement of the American Academy of Pediatrics (https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/135/6/e1538), the ACS established a pilot verification program. In January 2017, after completion of the pilot program, the ACS Children’s Surgery Verification Quality Improvement Program was officially launched. Verified sites are listed on the program Web site at https://www.facs.org/quality-programs/childrens-surgery/childrens-surgery-verification/centers, and more than 150 are interested in verification. This report provides an update on the ACS Children’s Surgery Verification Quality Improvement Program as it continues to evolve.

RiVax is a promising recombinant ricin toxin A subunit (RTA) vaccine antigen that has been shown to be safe and immunogenic in humans and effective at protecting rhesus macaques against lethal-dose aerosolized toxin exposure. We previously used a panel of RTA-specific monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) to demonstrate, by competition enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), that RiVax elicits similar serum antibody profiles in humans and macaques. However, the MAb binding sites on RiVax have yet to be defined. In this study, we employed hydrogen exchange-mass spectrometry (HX-MS) to localize the epitopes on RiVax recognized by nine toxin-neutralizing MAbs and one nonneutralizing MAb. Based on strong protection from hydrogen exchange, the nine MAbs grouped into four spatially distinct epitope clusters (namely, clusters I to IV). Cluster I MAbs protected RiVax's α-helix B (residues 94 to 107), a protruding immunodominant secondary structure element known to be a target of potent toxin-neutralizing antibodies. Cluster II consisted of two subclusters located on the "back side" (relative to the active site pocket) of RiVax. One subcluster involved α-helix A (residues 14 to 24) and α-helices F-G (residues 184 to 207); the other encompassed β-strand d (residues 62 to 69) and parts of α-helices D-E (154 to 164) and the intervening loop. Cluster III involved α-helices C and G on the front side of RiVax, while cluster IV formed a sash from the front to back of RiVax, spanning strands b, c, and d (residues 35 to 59). Having a high-resolution B cell epitope map of RiVax will enable the development and optimization of competitive serum profiling assays to examine vaccine-induced antibody responses across species.

On 31 December 2019, the World Health Organization was informed of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology in Wuhan, China. Subsequent investigations identified a novel coronavirus, now named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), from the affected patients. Highly sensitive and specific laboratory diagnostics are important for controlling the rapidly evolving SARS-CoV-2-associated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic. In this study, we developed and compared the performance of three novel real-time reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) assays targeting the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp)/helicase (Hel), spike (S), and nucleocapsid (N) genes of SARS-CoV-2 with that of the reported RdRp-P2 assay, which is used in >30 European laboratories. Among the three novel assays, the COVID-19-RdRp/Hel assay had the lowest limit of detection in vitro (1.8 50% tissue culture infective doses [TCID₅₀]/ml with genomic RNA and 11.2 RNA copies/reaction with in vitro RNA transcripts). Among 273 specimens from 15 patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 in Hong Kong, 77 (28.2%) were positive by both the COVID-19-RdRp/Hel and RdRp-P2 assays. The COVID-19-RdRp/Hel assay was positive for an additional 42 RdRp-P2-negative specimens (119/273 [43.6%] versus 77/273 [28.2%]; P < 0.001), including 29/120 (24.2%) respiratory tract specimens and 13/153 (8.5%) non-respiratory tract specimens. The mean viral load of these specimens was 3.21 x 10⁴ RNA copies/ml (range, 2.21 x 10² to 4.71 x 10⁵ RNA copies/ml). The COVID-19-RdRp/Hel assay did not cross-react with other human-pathogenic coronaviruses and respiratory pathogens in cell culture and clinical specimens, whereas the RdRp-P2 assay cross-reacted with SARS-CoV in cell culture. The highly sensitive and specific COVID-19-RdRp/Hel assay may help to improve the laboratory diagnosis of COVID-19.

Identifying gene variants causing monogenic diabetes (MD) increases understanding of disease etiology and allows for implementation of precision therapy to improve metabolic control and quality of life. Here, we aimed to assess the prevalence of MD in youth with diabetes in Lithuania, uncover potential diabetes-related gene variants, and prospectively introduce precision treatment. First, we assessed all pediatric and most young-adult patients with diabetes in Lithuania (n = 1,209) for diabetes-related autoimmune antibodies. We then screened all antibody-negative patients (n = 153) using targeted high-throughput sequencing of >300 potential candidate genes. In this group, 40.7% had MD, with the highest percentage (100%) in infants (diagnosis at ages 0–12 months), followed by those diagnosed at ages >1–18 years (40.3%) and >18–25 years (22.2%). The overall prevalence of MD in youth with diabetes in Lithuania was 3.5% (1.9% for GCK diabetes, 0.7% for HNF1A, 0.2% for HNF4A and ABCC8, 0.3% for KCNJ11, and 0.1% for INS). Furthermore, we identified likely pathogenic variants in 11 additional genes. Microvascular complications were present in 26% of those with MD. Prospective treatment change was successful in >50% of eligible candidates, with C-peptide >252 pmol/L emerging as the best prognostic factor.