Travelers With Cutaneous Leishmaniasis Cured Without Systemic Therapy

Guidelines recommend wound care and/or local therapy as first-line treatment for cutaneous leishmaniasis. An analysis of a referral treatment program in 135 travelers showed that this approach was feasible in 62% of patients, with positive outcome in 83% of evaluable patient

New Code-Based Privacy-Preserving Cryptographic Constructions

Code-based cryptography has a long history but did suffer from periods of slow development. The field has recently attracted a lot of attention as one of the major branches of post-quantum cryptography. However, its subfield of privacy-preserving cryptographic constructions is still rather underdeveloped, e.g., important building blocks such as zero-knowledge range proofs and set membership proofs, and even proofs of knowledge of a hash preimage, have not been known under code-based assumptions. Moreover, almost no substantial technical development has been introduced in the last several years. This work introduces several new code-based privacy-preserving cryptographic constructions that considerably advance the state-of-the-art in code-based cryptography. Specifically, we present $3$ major contributions, each of which potentially yields various other applications. Our first contribution is a code-based statistically hiding and computationally binding commitment scheme with companion zero-knowledge (ZK) argument of knowledge of a valid opening that can be easily extended to prove that the committed bits satisfy other relations. Our second contribution is the first code-based zero-knowledge range argument for committed values, with communication cost logarithmic in the size of the range. A special feature of our range argument is that, while previous works on range proofs/arguments (in all branches of cryptography) only address ranges of non-negative integers, our protocol can handle signed fractional numbers, and hence, can potentially find a larger scope of applications. Our third contribution is the first code-based Merkle-tree accumulator supported by ZK argument of membership, which has been known to enable various interesting applications. In particular, it allows us to obtain the first code-based ring signatures and group signatures with logarithmic signature sizes

Peuplements de carnivores planctoniques gelatineux et structures productives en Mediterranee occidentale

Planktonic carnivores (chaetognaths, ctenophores, medusae and siphonophores) collected in the upper 200 metres of the Ibero-Moroccan bay and the western Mediterranean were used to obtain a classification of stations in terms of distinct faunistic zones. The planktonic community of the central sector of the Mediterranean shows a progressive devolution of abundance with the gradual disappearance of meroplanktonic and budding species and the increase of oceanic forms (Sagitta bipunctata, Eudoxoides spiralis and Rhopalonema velatum ). These faunistic zones of the Mediterranean, from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Ligurian Sea, can therefore be interpreted in terms of succession, from an initial state of maximal diversity and abundance caused by the mixing of populations of meroplanktonic, neritic, shallow and deep species that benefit from the very favorable trophic conditions

Diversity of plum pox virus in plum orchards in Serbia

International audienceSerbia is a leading plum producing country in Europe with more than 41 million of bearing trees . For almost 80 years, Plum pox virus (PPV) is a threat for the stone fruit production in Serbia. So far, three major out of seven strains were reported: PPV-M, PPV-D and PPV-Rec. Material for this study was collected during three year period (2008-2010). A total number of 265 samples were collected from 84 plum orchards in 12 Serbian districts. Two to four trees showing clear sharka symptoms were randomly chosen and sampled from each orchard. Strain-typing was performed by IC-RT-PCR method with PPV-M and PPV-D specific primers targeting two genomic regions of PPV. Additionally, 39 isolates from different locations were selected for sequencing fragments located in C-tеr NIb―N-tеr CP part of CP region and C-ter P3-6K1-N- ter CI region. The most prevalent strain in analyzed samples was PPV-Rec (53.5%), followed by PPV-D (27.9%) and PPV-M (5.4%). Mixed infections were found in 13.2% of samples. All types of mixed infections were detected: PPV-M+PPV-D, PPV-M+PPV-Rec and PPV-D+PPV-Rec. The highest incidence among mixed infections was PPV-D+PPV-Rec combination - 67.6%. For the first time, natural triple infection was confirmed in one sample (PPV-M+PPV-D+PPV-Rec). In 37 orchards only one PPV strain was found; in 42 orchards two strains and all three strains were detected in 5 orchards. The most prevalent strain was PPV-Rec that was found in 69 orchards (in single and mixed infections) in all districts. On the contrary, PPV-M strain was found only in 15 orchards. Obtained results confirmed earlier assumption on the long term presence of PPV-Rec strain on plum in Serbia. Phylogenetic analysis of selected isolates confirmed strain-typing results. Further analysis showed the absence of geographical genetic differentiation of isolates that suggest the intensive gene flow between districts through contaminated planting material in the past