Temporal, Environmental, and Biological Drivers of the Mucosal Microbiome in a Wild Marine Fish, Scomber japonicus.

Changing ocean conditions driven by anthropogenic activities may have a negative impact on fisheries by increasing stress and disease. To understand how environment and host biology drives mucosal microbiomes in a marine fish, we surveyed five body sites (gill, skin, digesta, gastrointestinal tract [GI], and pyloric ceca) from 229 Pacific chub mackerel, Scomber japonicus, collected across 38 time points spanning 1 year from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Pier (La Jolla, CA). Mucosal sites had unique microbial communities significantly different from the surrounding seawater and sediment communities with over 10 times more total diversity than seawater. The external surfaces of skin and gill were more similar to seawater, while digesta was more similar to sediment. Alpha and beta diversity of the skin and gill was explained by environmental and biological factors, specifically, sea surface temperature, chlorophyll a, and fish age, consistent with an exposure gradient relationship. We verified that seasonal microbial changes were not confounded by regional migration of chub mackerel subpopulations by nanopore sequencing a 14,769-bp region of the 16,568-bp mitochondria across all temporal fish specimens. A cosmopolitan pathogen, Photobacterium damselae, was prevalent across multiple body sites all year but highest in the skin, GI, and digesta between June and September, when the ocean is warmest. The longitudinal fish microbiome study evaluates the extent to which the environment and host biology drives mucosal microbial ecology and establishes a baseline for long-term surveys linking environment stressors to mucosal health of wild marine fish.IMPORTANCE Pacific chub mackerel, Scomber japonicus, are one of the largest and most economically important fisheries in the world. The fish is harvested for both human consumption and fish meal. Changing ocean conditions driven by anthropogenic stressors like climate change may negatively impact fisheries. One mechanism for this is through disease. As waters warm and chemistry changes, the microbial communities associated with fish may change. In this study, we performed a holistic analysis of all mucosal sites on the fish over a 1-year time series to explore seasonal variation and to understand the environmental drivers of the microbiome. Understanding seasonality in the fish microbiome is also applicable to aquaculture production for producers to better understand and predict when disease outbreaks may occur based on changing environmental conditions in the ocean

Integration of inertial MEMS sensors in active smart RFID labels for transport monitoring

The transport monitoring of sensitive and valuable goods requires, besides the storage of logistic data, the record of climate and ambient conditions. Therefore the acquisition of physical values like temperature, humidity, pressure, acceleration and inclination is necessary. Commercially available data logger devices are expensive and sizable. A cost effective alternative are active smart radio frequency identification (RFID) label containing microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). By integration of sensors, display and autonomous energy supply in a passive RFID label, wireless smart systems are created. However, the integration of MEMS into smart labels causes special requirements concerning power consumption and packaging. The power consumption of the system is limited due to the autonomous energy supply and so energy efficiency of the sensor is a key requirement. The special demands to the packaging are caused by the assembly of smart labels. The devices are integrated by flip chip bonding on an interposer, which is laminated between the capping layers of the label. Furthermore, usual roll to roll fabrication demands flexibility of the layers. This assembly technique limits the height of the components and hence, no additional housing of the chips is applicable. Therefore, wafer level packaging of the MEMS transducer providing hermetic sealing by minimizing chip geometry is necessary. For realizing a semi-active smart RFID label monitoring temperature, mechanical shock and inclination during transport processes, a MEMS based capacitive inertial sensor has been developed. For low energy consumption of the system sensor functionalities have been integrated and a low-power mixed-signal ASIC for sensor signal processing has been developed. Hermetic sealing of the microstructures has been done by seal glass bonding and a wafer level thin film encapsulation (TFE) technology based on CF-polymer as sacrificial layer material

4GOOD - Technology and prototype for a 4th-Generation Omni-purpose Optical Disc system

Digital optical data storage has become firmly established through CD, DVD and their derivatives. Future mobile and stationary multimedia applications demand for ever higher storage density, even beyond HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc with 50 GB maximum storage capacity (dual layer). While holographic recording is in the far future for the consumer domain, the 4th generation of optical storage is being heralded by a leap in technology. Within a European initiative in the scope of the EUREKA project MobileDRIVE and the project 4GOOD (4th-Generation Omni-purpose Optical Disc-system), funded by the German Ministry of Economy and Technology, the fundamental technologies are being developed for high-density optical data storage (60... 100 Gbit/inch(2) in order to achieve at least 200 GB on a 12 cm disc, or e.g. > 5 GB on a 3 cm miniaturised version (single layer). The contribution describes the technology objectives, challenges, concepts and project status in the key areas of disc development, drive including laser, optics, acceleration sensors for mobile operation, and signal processing

Qiita: rapid, web-enabled microbiome meta-analysis

Gonzalez A, Navas-Molina JA, Kosciolek T, et al. Qiita: rapid, web-enabled microbiome meta-analysis. Nature Methods. 2018;15(10):796-798