Excess Mortality associated to Influenza epidemic in Portugal, from 2007/2008 to 2014/2015 seasons

Mortality in the north hemisphere is higher in winter than in summer seasons, due to the influenza epidemics as well as cold temperatures. Portuguese influenza surveillance comprises clinical and laboratorial notifications of Influenza-like Illness (ILI) attended in the primary health care units and emergency rooms. Without information on specific cause of deaths in real time, estimation of influenza impact has been accessed using Portuguese Daily Mortality Monitoring System (VDM), that covers all cause mortality of Portuguese population. The aim of this study was to provide excess mortality, potentially associated to Influenza each season (between 2007/08 and 2014/15).

Sistema multiagente para simulación de epidemias

El presente trabajo consiste en la elaboración de un sistema multiagente capaz de realizar simulaciones de enfermedades epidémicas, en determinados entornos, que pueden ser creados por los usuarios del sistema, así como la población que los ocupa, donde cada humano es un agente Jade. El trabajo se compone a su vez de cuatro módulos principales: una aplicación web realizada JSF, una aplicación de escritorio implementada en Java, el propio sistema multiagente que realiza las simulaciones, desarrollado usando Java sobre el framework de Jade y un servidor web que contiene al sistema multiagente y a la aplicación web mencionados anteriormente.El sistema desarrollado permite una gran cantidad de configuraciones sobre todos los aspectos que pueden influir en la simulación de una epidemia, como por ejemplo, parámetros de los entornos (tamaño, nivel de desarrollo, población de riesgo, etc.), población (porcentaje de población activa, estudiante, etc.) y enfermedades, así como sobre la propia simulación, ajustando por ejemplo el número de días de la duración o la probabilidad de que una persona decida ir a trabajar si está enferma. Además de realizar simulaciones, el sistema permite almacenarlas y consultarlas posteriormente, pudiendo tanto reproducirlas de nuevo como consultar información estadística detallada sobre la misma, así como distintas gráficas que muestran la evolución de la epidemia a lo largo de la simulación.Para garantizar un funcionamiento óptimo del sistema, este se ha ajustado y probado mediante diversas pruebas de estrés que garantizan que el rendimiento del mismo durante la realización de simulaciones es adecuado. Todo esto conforma un sistema cuya finalidad es la obtención de datos que puedan ser útiles de cara al estudio de enfermedades infecciosas potencialmente epidémicas y permitan extraer conclusiones sobre las mismas, ayudando al mejor entendimiento de este tipo de enfermedades y su comportamiento en determinados entornos.

Hygiene and biosecurity: the language and politics of risk in an era of emerging infectious diseases

Infectious diseases, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and avian influenza, have recently been high on the agenda of policy makers and the public. Although hygiene and biosecurity are preferred options for disease management, policy makers have become increasingly aware of the critical role that communication assumes in protecting people during outbreaks and epidemics. This article makes the case for a language-based approach to understanding the public perception of disease. Health language research carried out by the authors, based on metaphor analysis and corpus linguistics, has shown that concepts of journeys, pathways, thresholds, boundaries and barriers have emerged as principal framing devices used by stakeholders to advocate a hygiene based risk and disease management. These framings provide a common ground for debate, but lead to quite different perceptions and practices. This in turn might be a barrier to global disease management in a modern world.

Asian soybean rust in Brazil: past, present, and future.

ABSTRACT: Asian soybean rust, caused by the fungus Phakopsora pachyrhizi, is the most severe disease of the crop and can cause yield losses of up to 90%. The disease was first reported in Brazil in 2001. Epidemics of the disease are common in the country, where the fungus can survive year?round. Regulatory measures to reduce the inoculum between seasons and avoid late-season soybean have been adopted to manage the disease. Disease control has relied mainly on chemical control, but a lower sensibility of the fungus to fungicides has been reported in Brazil. Major?resistance genes have been mapped and incorporated into the cultivars. With the reduced efficacy of the fungicides, the adoption of integrated measures to control the disease will be important for the sustainability of the crop. This review presents the main changes in the soybean crop system caused by the introduction of the fungus in Brazil, the current management strategies adopted to avoid losses, and the new trends that, together with biotechnological strategies, can improve management in the future. RESUMO: A ferrugem?asiática da soja, causada pelo fungo Phakopsora pachyrhizi, é a doença mais severa da cultura e pode causar perdas de produtividade de até 90%. A doença foi relatada pela primeira vez no Brasil em 2001. Epidemias da doença são comuns no País, onde o fungo pode sobreviver durante todo o ano. Medidas regulatórias para reduzir o inóculo entre safras e evitar a semeadura tardia de soja têm sido adotadas para manejar a doença. O controle da doença tem se baseado principalmente no controle químico, mas uma menor sensibilidade do fungo aos fungicidas tem sido relatada no Brasil. Genes de resistência têm sido mapeados e incorporados às cultivares. Por causa da redução da eficiência dos fungicidas, a adoção de medidas integradas para o controle da doença será importante para a sustentabilidade da cultura. Este artigo de revisão apresenta as principais mudanças no sistema de produção da soja causadas pela introdução do fungo no Brasil, as medidas de controle atualmente usadas para evitar perdas, e as novas tendências que, juntas com estratégias biotecnológicas, podem melhorar o manejo da doença no futuro.

The relation between local and global influence of individuals in scale-free networks

Large-degree nodes in scale-free networks are normally responsible for large cascades of epidemics. However, recent research shows small-degree nodes can also produce large-scale epidemics in the real world. In this letter, we investigate the relation between local and global influence of individuals in scale-free network in order to theoretically explain this real-world phenomenon. The local influence of an individual corresponds to the node degree, and the global influence of an individual reflects the expected number of individuals directly or indirectly influenced by this individual in epidemics. We formalize the later as the novel epidemic betweenness concept, to mathematically estimate the global influence of individuals. Our analysis shows that the global influence follows power-law distributions in scale-free networks. We also observe that the average global influence of individuals is power-law to the degree of nodes, which well explains the reason why large-degree nodes are more likely to produce large cascades of epidemics. In addition, we discover that some smalldegree nodes also possess large global influence in terms of epidemics betweenness. This well explains the counter-intuitive phenomenon in recent research.

Identifying diffusion sources in large networks: a community structure based approach

The global diffusion of epidemics, rumors and computer viruses causes great damage to our society. It is critical to identify the diffusion sources and promptly quarantine them. However, most methods proposed so far are unsuitable for large networks because of their computational cost and the complex spatiotemporal diffusion processes. In this paper, we develop a community structure based approach to efficiently identify diffusion sources in large networks. We first detect the community structure of a network and assign sensors on community bridge nodes to record diffusion dynamics. From the infection time of bridge sensors, we can determine the very first infected community from which the diffusion started and spread out to other communities. This, therefore, overcomes the scalability issue in source identification problems by narrowing the set of suspects down to the first infected community. Then, to accurately locate the diffusion source from suspects, we utilize an intrinsic feature of diffusion sources that the relative infection time of any node is linear with its effective distance from the diffusion source. Thus, for each suspect, we compute the correlation coefficient to measure the degree of linear dependence between sensors' relative infection times and their effective distances from the suspect, and consider the one with the greatest correlation coefficient as the source. We evaluate our approach in two large networks containing more than 300,000 nodes, which are collected from Twitter. The experiment results show that our method can identify diffusion sources with very high degree of accuracy. Especially when the average community size shrinks, the accuracy of our approach increases dramatically.

Clustering of Rab11 vesicles in influenza A virus infected cells creates hotspots containing the 8 viral ribonucleoproteins

Influenza A virus is an important human pathogen causative of yearly epidemics and occasional pandemics. The ability to replicate within the host cell is a determinant of virulence, amplifying viral numbers for host-to-host transmission. This process requires multiple rounds of entering permissive cells, replication, and virion assembly at the plasma membrane, the site of viral budding and release. The assembly of influenza A virus involves packaging of several viral (and host) proteins and of a segmented genome, composed of 8 distinct RNAs in the form of viral ribonucleoproteins (vRNPs). The selective assembly of the 8-segment core remains one of the most interesting unresolved problems in virology. The recycling endosome regulatory GTPase Rab11 was shown to contribute to the process, by transporting vRNPs to the periphery, giving rise to enlarged cytosolic puncta rich in Rab11 and the 8 vRNPs. We recently reported that vRNP hotspots were formed of clustered vesicles harbouring protruding electron-dense structures that resembled vRNPs. Mechanistically, vRNP hotspots were formed as vRNPs outcompeted the cognate effectors of Rab11, the Rab11-Family-Interacting-Proteins (FIPs) for binding, and as a consequence impair recycling sorting at an unknown step. Here, we speculate on the impact that such impairment might have in host immunity, membrane architecture and viral assembly.

Geographic variation in seasonality and its influence on the dynamics of an infectious disease

Seasonal changes in environmental drivers - such as temperature, rainfall, and resource availability - have the potential to shape infection dynamics through their reverberating effects on biological processes including host abundance and susceptibility to infection. However, seasonality varies geographically. We therefore expect marked differences in infection dynamics between regions with different seasonal patterns. By pairing extensive Avian Influenza Virus (AIV) surveillance data - 65 358 individual bird samples from 12 species of dabbling ducks sampled at 174 locations across North America - with quantification of seasonality using remote sensed data indicative for primary productivity (normalised differenced vegetation index, NDVI), we provide evidence that seasonal dynamics influence infection dynamics across a continent. More pronounced epidemics were seen to occur in regions experiencing a higher degree of seasonality, and epidemics of lower amplitude and longer duration occurred in regions with a more protracted and lower seasonal amplitude. These results demonstrate the potential importance of geographic variation in seasonality for explaining geographic variation in the dynamics of infectious diseases in wildlife.

Moçambique: educação e VIH/SIDA: as perspectivas dos professores e directores face ao VIH/SIDA na realidade ecolar

Esta dissertação centra-se na análise da perspectiva dos directores/ professores de Educação Cívica e Moral da 6ª e 7ª das Escolas Primárias e Completas (EPCs) na realidade do VIHISIDA nessas mesmas escolas, considerando as representações que estes actores têm face a esta patologia. Este estudo visa apreender a construção da resposta ao fenómeno no quotidiano escolar. Pretende, igualmente, avaliar as representações dos actores face às intervenções e hipóteses de melhoria da resposta dada. E, ainda, chamar a atenção da sociedade, do ministério e da escola, para a necessidade de se ouvir as diversidades que caracterizam as escolas na resposta ao VIH/SIDA. O trabalho de campo foi realizado nas EPCs do Distrito de Quelimane e Nicoadala, com base em entrevistas semi-estruturadas realizadas aos Directores e aos professores da província da Zambézia. Foi igualmente feita recolha documental e bibliográfica, tendo-se recorrido ao apoio de teorias pertinentes ao estudo. Face à investigação realizada, podemos concluir que, apesar do envolvimento dos actores locais no processo de prevenção do VIH/SIDA, existem carências e lacunas a nível da respectiva formação pedagógica e epidemiológica, a nível das condições de trabalho e no que diz respeito às fracas articulações entre o Ministério da Educação e o Ministério da Saúde. ABSTRACT: This dissertation focuses on the perspectives of the principals/teachers of civic and moral education of the 6th and 7th classes o EPC’s on the reality on HIV/AIDS in schools, considering the representation that they have on this pathology. This study aims to understand the construction of responses to the phenomenon in the everyday life. It also aims to take a closer look at the representations of the actors on the interventions and the possibilities of improving the daily responses of the EPC's. Another aspect that was considered was of the society, the ministry and schools on the relevance of listening and nuances of schools in response to HIVIAIDS. Based on the fieldwork in the districts of Quelimane and Nicoadala, semi-structured interviews with school principals/ teachers were carried out as well as the collection of documents, bibliographies and the support of pertinent theories. According to this research we can conclude that besides the local actors' involvements in the prevention process of HIVIAIDS, there are lacks and needs on teaching training and on epidemics, on working conditions and a weak dialogue between Education and Health Ministries.