Future Perspectives on the Relevance of Auditory Markers in Prodromal Parkinson's Disease

Research on auditory processing in Parkinson's disease (PD) has recently made substantial progress. At present, evidence has been found for altered auditory processing in the clinical stage of PD. The auditory alterations in PD have been demonstrated with low-cost and non-invasive assessments that are already used in routine clinical practice. Since auditory alterations have been reported early in disease progression, it would be highly relevant to investigate whether auditory markers could be provided in the prodromal stage of PD. In addition, auditory alterations in early stage PD might be modulated by dopaminergic medication. Therefore, the aim of this review is (1) to summarize the literature on auditory processing in PD with a specific focus on the early disease stages, (2) to give future perspectives on which audiological and electrophysiological measurements could be useful in the prodromal stage of PD and (3) to assess the effect of dopaminergic medication on potential auditory markers in the prodromal stage of PD

Archeologische opgraving van een meerperiodensite in de "Bergenmeersen" in het kader van het Sigmaplan (Gem. Wichelen Prov. Oost-Vlaanderen)

Het archeologisch onderzoek leverde gegevens op uit een groot aantal archeologische periodes, gaande van het middenpaleolithicum tot de nieuwe tijden, met enkele belangrijke inzichten: een bijna continue aanwezigheid in het opgravingsareaal in de steentijden, met enkele duidelijke concentraties uit het finaalpaleolithicum/vroegmesolithicum, en helaas minder grijpbare en meer diffuse gegevens voor de andere periodes. Wellicht was het gebied in met name het middenneolithicum eerder gelegen in de periferie van sites dichter tegen de loop van de vroegere Schelde, bv. op de plaats van de Paardenweide. Ook uit de vroege ijzertijd en Romeinse periode werden aanwijzingen voor bewoning aangetroffen, in beide gevallen werd wellicht een gedeelte van een erf aangesneden in zone B. Uit de vroege en volle middeleeuwen zijn de archeologische gegevens heel schaars, maar in de laatmiddeleeuwse periode werd in zone A een feodale motteversterking opgericht, die samen met de vroegere kerk, ongeveer 300 m ten zuidoosten, ongetwijfeld de kern vormde van het laatmiddeleeuwse Wichelen. Met name het aardewerk duidt op een bewoning van deze site in de 13de en 14de eeuw. Ten slotte wijzen de gegevens op verschillende fasen van inrichting van zone B van de 15de tot de 18de eeuw, vanaf de 17de eeuw, wellicht gerelateerd aan het historisch gekende Hof te Zijpen. Zoals diverse andere onderzoeken in de Sigma-gebieden wijzen deze opgravingsgegevens opnieuw op het belang van de alluviale gebieden voor de archeologie van de diverse periodes, vanaf de steentijd

Het archeologisch onderzoek in Raversijde (Oostende) in de periode 1992-2005

Raversijde - sinds 1970 deel van de stad Oostende, voordien Middelkerke - gaat terug tot een laatmiddeleeuwse vissersnederzetting met de naam Walraversijde. Deze vissersnederzetting was gesitueerd nabij de huidige grens Middelkerke/Oostende in een zone die zich grotendeels binnen het huidige provinciedomein Raversijde bevindt, maar zich ook nog in belangrijke mate uitstrekt tot op het strand ter hoogte van dit domein.In deze publicatie over archeologisch onderzoek in Raversijde komen de opgravingscampagnes op het grondgebied van het provinciedomein Raversijde uit de periode 1992-1998 uitvoerig aan bod. Daarnaast worden een aantal markante opgravingsresultaten van na 1998 belicht: het muntdepot dat op het einde van 1999 werd aangetroffen, de in 2003 aangesneden zone met begravingen en de in 2005 geïdentificeerde Romeinse dijk.Dit 8ste deel van de Relicta Monografieën behandelt chronologisch de resten en sporen uit de prehistorie, de Romeinse periode, de late middeleeuwen en de vroeg-moderne tijden. Deze publicatie is in de eerste plaats een opgravingsverslag: ze beschrijft, analyseert en interpreteert de belangrijkste sporen samen met een selectie van de aangetroffen mobiele resten en de resultaten van natuurwetenschappelijk onderzoek

Phenotypic and Genome-Wide Analysis of an Antibiotic-Resistant Small Colony Variant (SCV) of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Small colony variants (SCVs) are slow-growing bacteria, which often show increased resistance to antibiotics and cause latent or recurrent infections. It is therefore important to understand the mechanisms at the basis of this phenotypic switch.One SCV (termed PAO-SCV) was isolated, showing high resistance to gentamicin and to the cephalosporine cefotaxime. PAO-SCV was prone to reversion as evidenced by emergence of large colonies with a frequency of 10(-5) on media without antibiotics while it was stably maintained in presence of gentamicin. PAO-SCV showed a delayed growth, defective motility, and strongly reduced levels of the quorum sensing Pseudomonas quinolone signal (PQS). Whole genome expression analysis further suggested a multi-layered antibiotic resistance mechanism, including simultaneous over-expression of two drug efflux pumps (MexAB-OprM, MexXY-OprM), the LPS modification operon arnBCADTEF, and the PhoP-PhoQ two-component system. Conversely, the genes for the synthesis of PQS were strongly down-regulated in PAO-SCV. Finally, genomic analysis revealed the presence of mutations in phoP and phoQ genes as well as in the mexZ gene encoding a repressor of the mexXY and mexAB-oprM genes. Only one mutation occurred only in REV, at nucleotide 1020 of the tufA gene, a paralog of tufB, both encoding the elongation factor Tu, causing a change of the rarely used aspartic acid codon GAU to the more common GAC, possibly causing an increase of tufA mRNA translation. High expression of phoP and phoQ was confirmed for the SCV variant while the revertant showed expression levels reduced to wild-type levels.By combining data coming from phenotypic, gene expression and proteome analysis, we could demonstrate that resistance to aminoglycosides in one SCV mutant is multifactorial including overexpression of efflux mechanisms, LPS modification and is accompanied by a drastic down-regulation of the Pseudomonas quinolone signal quorum sensing system

Ecology and Biogeography of Free-Living Nematodes Associated with Chemosynthetic Environments in the Deep Sea: A Review

Background: Here, insight is provided into the present knowledge on free-living nematodes associated with chemosynthetic environments in the deep sea. It was investigated if the same trends of high standing stock, low diversity, and the dominance of a specialized fauna, as observed for macro-invertebrates, are also present in the nematodes in both vents and seeps. Methodology: This review is based on existing literature, in combination with integrated analysis of datasets, obtained through the Census of Marine Life program on Biogeography of Deep-Water Chemosynthetic Ecosystems (ChEss). Findings: Nematodes are often thriving in the sulphidic sediments of deep cold seeps, with standing stock values ocassionaly exceeding largely the numbers at background sites. Vents seem not characterized by elevated densities. Both chemosynthetic driven ecosystems are showing low nematode diversity, and high dominance of single species. Genera richness seems inversely correlated to vent and seep fluid emissions, associated with distinct habitat types. Deep-sea cold seeps and hydrothermal vents are, however, highly dissimilar in terms of community composition and dominant taxa. There is no unique affinity of particular nematode taxa with seeps or vents. Conclusions: It seems that shallow water relatives, rather than typical deep-sea taxa, have successfully colonized the reduced sediments of seeps at large water depth. For vents, the taxonomic similarity with adjacent regular sediments is much higher, supporting rather the importance of local adaptation, than that of long distance distribution. Likely the ephemeral nature of vents, its long distance offshore and the absence of pelagic transport mechanisms, have prevented so far the establishment of a successful and typical vent nematode fauna. Some future perspectives in meiofauna research are provided in order to get a more integrated picture of vent and seep biological processes, including all components of the marine ecosystem

Meiofauna and nematodes in cold seep surface sediments collected during Maria S. Merian cruise MSM13 to the Eastern Mediterranean area

In this study the importance of spatial scales on nematode species distribution and patterns of biodiversity and turnover in cold seeps was investigated. Therefore it was identified how nematode assemblages differ in densities and composition at different spatial scales within and between three geographically separated cold seeps, the Central pockmark area, the Amon and the Amsterdam, all located in the Eastern Mediterranean area. The replicated sampling of several reduced habitats at each seep allowed to elucidate the most important scale of turnover. The spatial scales included here range within habitat (centimeters, micro-scale), within a cold seep (10s to 100's of meters, meso-scale) and between different seeps (10 to 100s of kilometers, macro-scale). The results show that a typical cold seep fauna was found in all reduced samples. Compared to the reference samples, nematode densities were generally higher, with a low genus diversity, and a high dominance of only a few species, some of them being present in all three seep areas. When determining the scale of turnover using relative genera proportions, it appeared that the highest turnover rate was present between seeps (macro-scale). However, calculating the turnover based on presence/absence transformed nematode genera data showed the highest turnover rate between replicate samples (micro-scale) and habitats of the same seep (meso-scale). This shows that nematode assemblages are patchily distributed, even in a single habitat, and implicates that the sampling effort during sampling campaigns should be focused on replicate sampling and multiple habitats of the same seep. This way a more complete image of the present nematode community will be obtained