Résumé
Identifying and exploring emerging trends in news is becoming more essential than ever with many changes occurring around the world due to the global health crises. However, most of the recent research has focused mainly on detecting trends in social media, thus, benefiting from social features (e.g. likes and retweets on Twitter) which helped the task as they can be used to measure the engagement and diffusion rate of content. Yet, formal text data, unlike short social media posts, comes with a longer, less restricted writing format, and thus, more challenging. In this paper, we focus our study on emerging trends detection in financial news articles about Microsoft, collected before and during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (July 2019 to July 2020). We make the dataset accessible and we also propose a strong baseline (Contextual Leap2Trend) for exploring the dynamics of similarities between pairs of keywords based on topic modeling and term frequency. Finally, we evaluate against a gold standard (Google Trends) and present noteworthy real-world scenarios regarding the influence of the pandemic on Microsoft. ©2022 Association for Computational Linguistics.
Résumé
Introduction: Graves' diseases is a rare autoimmune disease in children. Viral infections are considered as a trigger for autoimmune thyroid disorders. A temporal association between SARSCoV- 2 and a novel pediatric hyperinflammatory condition called Paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome has been reported in 2020, raising questions about the link between SARS-CoV-2 and autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases. Over the last year (2021), we noticed an increase in the number of children presenting to our department with Graves' disease. Our primary aim is to document the incidence of Graves' disease in our department since 2005, comparing our data with national data regarding thiamazol delivery. Our secondary aim is to compare the characteristics of the patients diagnosed before and during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. Material(s) and Method(s): A retrospective study including all the pediatric patients diagnosed with Graves' disease seen in our department since 2005 was performed. Hyperthyroid newborns were excluded. Data collected were the date and the age at diagnosis, the thyroid hormone levels, TSI at diagnosis, data from the national health insurance regarding the number of delivered thyroid hormone synthesis inhibitor drugs, thiamazol, in children (<18 years)/year. Result(s): A total of 48 patients with Graves' disease were diagnosed since 2005 in our department. Fifteen patients (1/3) were diagnosed since the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, with the highest incidence in 2021 (11 patients). At the national level, an increase of thiamazol delivery is observed in 2020 and 2021 compared to the preceding years. Similar results regarding the age of diagnosis, free T4 and T3 levels or the presence of auto-immune diseases in the personal or family history were observed between the patients diagnosed before and those diagnosed during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. Conclusion(s): We observed a temporal association between SARS-CoV-2 outbreak and an increase in pediatric Graves' disease. The age and severity of the disease seems not to be influenced by the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. SARS-CoV-2 could thus constitute a trigger for pediatric Graves' disease. Further studies are needed to confirm our findings.
Résumé
In the past decade, China has taken several steps to make the renminbi (RMB) a globally important currency. Since the RMB was included in the IMF’s SDR basket in 2016, several central banks have started using it as a reserve currency. Moreover, the exchange rate regime of the RMB has gradually been modified to add some flexibility, and Beijing has begun to promote cross-border RMB trade settlement. In this paper, we use panel data to analyze how changes in the RMB exchange rate might influence the movement of other currencies in the Asia-Pacific region. We find that the RMB’s relative importance has significantly increased from 2015 onwards, i.e. since the date of the last reform of the RMB central parity quoting mechanism. Our results also suggest that the RMB’s impact has remained broadly unchanged since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. Contrary to some other findings, the COVID-19 has not reduced the relevance of the Chinese currency in the region. © ECMS Ibrahim A. Hameed, Agus Hasan