Mapping the Human Brain in Frequency Band Analysis of Brain Cortex Electroencephalographic Activity for Selected Psychiatric Disorders

There are still no good quantitative methods to be applied in psychiatric diagnosis. The interview is still the main and most important tool in the psychiatrist work. This paper presents the results of electroencephalographic research with the subjects of a group of 30 patients with psychiatric disorders compared to the control group of healthy volunteers. All subjects were solving working memory task. The digit-span working memory task test was chosen as one of the most popular tasks given to subjects with cognitive dysfunctions, especially for the patients with panic disorders, depression (including the depressive phase of bipolar disorder), phobias, and schizophrenia. Having such cohort of patients some results for the subjects with insomnia and Asperger syndrome are also presented. The cortical activity of their brains was registered by the dense array EEG amplifier. Source localization using the photogrammetry station and the sLORETA algorithm was then performed in five EEG frequency bands. The most active Brodmann Areas are indicated. Methodology for mapping the brain and research protocol are presented. The first results indicate that the presented technique can be useful in finding psychiatric disorder neurophysiological biomarkers. The first attempts were made to associate hyperactivity of selected Brodmann Areas with particular disorders

Assessing Bacterial Community Assembly and Function for Improved Biological Removal of Pathogens and Contaminants in Stormwater Filtration Systems

Pathogens and nutrients are consistently top pollutants of waterbodies around the world. Stormwater runoff is a major source of these pollutants, though with proper treatment, such as engineered filtration, water quality can potentially be improved for safe infiltration, discharge or reuse of runoff. Microorganisms are ubiquitous in stormwater, thus microbial community development on filtration based remediation systems requires consistent maintenance, which is far from optimized in practice. Previous work has demonstrated that biofilm microorganisms that colonize stormwater filters can lead to biofouling, as well as differ substantially in their remediation potential. However, few studies have investigated either the variation of the community in stormwater, or tested remediation ability with natural communities that are representative of variation from different potential treatment locations. Here we assessed the natural bacterial community structure variability of urban stormwater with 16S rRNA gene sequencing at a variety of runoff locations. We inferred the presence of potential pathogens and organisms associated with remediation functions (e.g. denitrification) from their sequence classification. Overall, we found high variability in stormwater bacterial community structure across rooftop, roadway, and Municipal Separate Storm Sewer outfall samples, but substantially less variability in potential for contaminant remediation. We also tested whether microbial community functional potential (e.g. pathogen presence and nitrate removal) in experimental filtration systems was sensitive to inoculum community composition, deposition and drift during biofilm assembly in experimental filtration columns. Potentially pathogenic and denitrifying organisms increased in total abundance in experimental filtration columns over a one month growth period. Additionally, inoculation of filters with stormwater microbial communities provided significantly better pathogen removal than single isolate, sand, and control columns. Filters inoculated with stormwater communities performed similarly despite substantial taxonomic differences in inoculum communities taken from different runoff locations. Model pathogen initial removal performance had significant correlation with inoculum community diversity while biofilm presence was anti-correlated with the amount of E. coli remobilized in a subsequent simulated storm event. A similar approach could be used to investigate other pathogens of concern, varied chemistry and environmental conditions associated with stormwater or drinking, waste and other water treatment systems

Gut Microorganisms of Aquatic Animals 2.0

This is a collection of scientific research articles focusing on the associations and/or interactions of various aquatic animals with their microorganisms, focusing mostly on fish and, in particular, gut bacterial communities

The Evolution of Scleractinian Microbial Symbionts

The modern world has presented many threats to the health and stability of ecosystems worldwide. One of the most biodiverse ecosystems, coral reefs, faces particularly strong pressures, and is already declining rapidly in complexity and area. Although the stressors that affect reefs are diverse, ranging from nutrient pollution to overfishing, invasive species to climate change, the impact of many of these stressors is ultimately mediated through interactions between the coral animal and its microbial associates, or microbiome. Some such interactions are readily apparent and have been studied for decades. For instance, coral bleaching, which is caused in part by increases in water temperature due to climate change, has devastated large swaths of reefs in recent years. The visual ‘bleaching’ that characterizes this phenomenon is the result of a breakdown in the symbiosis of the coral with photosynthetic algae of the family Symbiodiniaceae that normally live within its tissue. These algae provide the coral with essential energy, nutrients, and other services, but under temperature stress, they are expelled from the transparent tissue, leaving the white underlying coral skeleton visible and the animal without its food source. However, other interactions between the coral and its microbiome are less well-defined. Many coral diseases, for instance, may be caused by the opportunistic overgrowth of fungi and bacteria in nutrient-rich water or under conditions of general stress. Even less clear is how bacteria may act as mutualists in the coral ‘holobiont’. Other cnidarians have been shown to require developmental stimulation from particular bacterial species, and non-Symbiodiniaceae microbes have also been hypothesized to act as nutritional symbionts or as defense against other, pathogenic microbes. Scleractinian corals are diverse; having been evolving for more than 450 million years and including over 1,500 species. Because of this, they are likely to have many different modes of interaction with their microbiomes. To begin to better understand the similarities and differences among the microbiomes of corals, I conducted during my PhD the Global Coral Microbiome Project (GCMP), which sampled thousands of coral colonies from dozens of phylogenetically diverse species. Through the course of my work, I identified the similarities and differences between the microbiomes of these many species, showed the importance of considering shared evolutionary history in the analysis of such datasets, and developed new, rigorous methods of microbiome analysis that separate the effects of distinct evolutionary and ecological processes