In 2012, a female wildlife biologist experienced fever, malaise, headache, generalized myalgia and arthralgia, neck stiffness, and a sore throat shortly after returning to the United States from a 6-week field expedition to South Sudan and Uganda. She was hospitalized, after which a maculopapular rash developed and became confluent. When the patient was discharged from the hospital on day 14, arthralgia and myalgia had improved, oropharynx ulcerations had healed, the rash had resolved without desquamation, and blood counts and hepatic enzyme levels were returning to reference levels. After several known suspect pathogens were ruled out as the cause of her illness, deep sequencing and metagenomics analysis revealed a novel paramyxovirus related to rubula-like viruses isolated from fruit bats.

BackgroundHepatitis B Virus (HBV) infection is a worldwide public health problem. In the 1980’s a highly effective and safe vaccine against HBV was developed, although breakthrough infection still occasionally occurs because of the emergence of escape mutants. The aim of this study was to identify HBV genotypes and escape mutants in children and their mothers in Amerindian communities of the Amazonas State, Southern Colombia.MethodsBlood specimens collected from children and mothers belonging to 37 Amerindian communities in Amazonas state, were screened for HBsAg and anti-HBc using ELISA. The partial region containing the S ORF was amplified by nested PCR, and amplicons were sequenced. The phylogenetic analysis was performed using the MEGA 5.05 software.ResultsForty-six children (46/1275, 3.6%) and one hundred and seventy-seven mothers (177/572, 30.9%) were tested positive for the anti-HBc serological marker. Among them, 190 samples were tested for viral genome detection; 8.3% (2/31) serum samples obtained from children and 3.1% (5/159) from mothers were positive for the ORF S PCR. The predominant HBV genotype in the study population was F, subgenotype F1b; in addition, subgenotype F1a and genotype A were also characterized. Two HBV escape mutants were identified, G145R, reported worldwide, and W156*; this stop codon was identified in a child with occult HBV infection. Other mutations were found, L109R and G130E, located in critical positions of the HBsAg sequence.ConclusionsThis study aimed to characterize the HBV genotype F, subgenotypes F1b and F1a, and genotype A in Amerindian communities and for the first time escape mutants in Colombia. Further investigations are necessary to elucidate the frequency and the epidemiological impact of the escape mutants in the country.

Abstract. A simple representation framework for ontological knowledge with dynamic and deontic characteristics is presented. It represents structural relationships (is-a, part/whole), dynamic relationships (actions such as register, pay, etc.), and conditional relationships (if-then-else). As a case study, we apply our representation language to the task of requirements elicitation in software engineering. We show how our pre-conceptual schemas can be obtained from controlled natural language discourse and how these diagrams can be then converted into standard UML diagrams. Thus our representation framework is shown to be a useful intermediate step for obtaining UML diagrams from natural language discourse.

Approximately 10% of the world population is infected with Entamoeba histolyfica, but only 10% of the carriers develop symptomatic amebiasis. This discrepancy could be explained by the genotypic differences between the morphologically indistinguishable invasive and noninvasive strains of E. histolytica currently identified by zymodeme analysis, a technique that is unsuitable for routine diagnostic laboratories. Here we report the production of a monoclonal antibody against E. histolytica and its use in an immunofluorescence assay to identify invasive isolates cultured from stool samples of infected patients in several regions where amebiasis is endemic: Bangladesh, Colombia, and Mexico. After testing a total of 88 E. histolytica isolates, the correlation between zymodeme characterization and the immunofluorescence assay with the invasive isolatespecific monoclonal antibody was 100%o. The epitope detected by the invasive isolate-specific monoclonal antibody resides in a previously undescribed internal protein with molecular masses of 84 and 81 kDa in axenic and polyxenic E. histolytica strains, respectively. Entamoeba histolytica is the etiological agent of human amebiasis. The infection is distributed worldwide, although the majority of cases are found in developing countries where fecal-oral transmission of E. histolytica cysts is facil

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Existen enfermedades que dificultan el uso de herramientas computacionales de manera eficiente. Por esto, algunas entidades y centros de investigación desarrollan aplicaciones de software para facilitar el acceso al uso de los computadores a las personas que padecen alguna enfermedad que altera de manera significativa su motricidad. Para garantizar que el producto de software cumpla las funciones para las que se diseñó, se le realizan algunas pruebas. Una de ellas es la evaluación de usabilidad del software que, a menudo, se realiza de forma empírica. En este artículo se propone un método con enfoque heurístico para evaluar la usabilidad de software diseñado para facilitar el acceso a la computación a personas con discapacidad motriz. A menudo, en temas de usabilidad, un experto que no conoce las necesidades específicas de las personas lanza juicios acerca de lineamientos en el desarrollo del software. Esta investigación toma importancia porque tiene en cuenta las medidas de pesos que asignan los usuarios finales de este tipo de aplicaciones de software.

Several business areas, like Management and Negotiation, have used games like a didactic way to simulate world reality, to introduce students to the day-to-day generated problems, and to extract from the application of games, concrete learning for theoretical knowledge securing. In this paper we present “Requirements Game”, a practical way to simulate software development conditions in a competitive environment similar to real life. This game has been played by several groups of students from Facultad de Minas, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and this paper summarizes the results from this experience.

<p><strong>Introducción.</strong> El virus de la hepatitis A (HAV) es un importante patógeno que se transmite por vía fecal-oral. La epidemiología de la infección está directamente relacionada con el acceso de la población al agua potable y con la infraestructura de alcantarillado.<br /><strong>Objetivo.</strong> Determinar la presencia del HAV e identificar el genotipo en muestras de agua de abastecimiento y agua residual en ocho municipios, un corregimiento y una vereda del departamento de Antioquia, noroccidente de Colombia.<br /><strong>Materiales y métodos.</strong> Se hicieron tres muestreos seriados de diciembre de 2012 a abril de 2014 en la fuente principal de abastecimiento de los acueductos y en el principal vertimiento de aguas residuales de cada municipio. Las muestras se concentraron por filtración y ultrafiltración tangencial, y por las técnicas de polietilenglicol y floculación con leche descremada, respectivamente. A partir del ARN total de cada muestra, se amplificaron la región VP3-VP1 para la detección del genoma viral y la región VP1-2B para la genotipificación.<br /><strong>Resultados.</strong> El genoma del HAV se detectó en las fuentes de agua de abastecimiento de Puerto Berrío, Frontino y Nutibara, y en las muestras de aguas residuales provenientes de los municipios de Arboletes, Zaragoza y Venecia. Mediante el análisis de las secuencias se identificó el subgenotipo IA del virus.<br /><strong>Conclusión.</strong> Este estudio permitió detectar la presencia del HAV en 6,6 % de las muestras de agua de abastecimiento y en 13,3 % de las muestras de agua residual de los municipios en estudio. Se reporta por primera vez la circulación del subgenotipo IA en muestras ambientales en Antioquia.</p>