Effect of Lactobacillus rhamnosus HN001 and Bifidobacterium longum BB536 on the healthy gut microbiota composition at phyla and species level: a preliminary study

AIM: To evaluate the ability of Lactobacillus rhamnosus HN001 and Bifidobacterium longum BB536 to colonize the intestinal environment of healthy subjects and modify the gut microbiota composition. METHODS: Twenty healthy Italian volunteers, eight males and twelve females, participated in the study. Ten subjects took a sachet containing 4 × 109 colony-forming units (CFU) of Bifidobacterium longum BB536 and 109 CFU of Lactobacillus rhamnosus HN001, 30 min before breakfast (pre-prandial administration), while ten subjects took a sachet of probiotic product 30 min after breakfast (post-prandial administration). The ability of Lactobacillus rhamnosus HN001 and Bifidobacterium longum BB536 to colonize human gut microbiota was assessed by means of quantitative real-time PCR, while changes in gut microbiota composition were detected by using Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine. RESULTS: Immediately after 1-mo of probiotic administration, B. longum BB536 and L. rhamnosus HN001 load was increased in the majority of subjects in both pre-prandial and post-prandial groups. This increase was found also 1 mo after the end of probiotic oral intake in both groups, if compared to samples collected before probiotic consumption. At phyla level a significant decrease in Firmicutes abundance was detected immediately after 1-mo of B. longum BB536 and L. rhamnosus HN001 oral intake. This reduction persisted up to 1 mo after the end of probiotic oral intake together with a significant decrease of Proteobacteria abundance if compared to samples collected before probiotic administration. Whereas, at species level, a higher abundance of Blautia producta, Blautia wexlerae and Haemophilus ducrey was observed, together with a reduction of Holdemania filiformis, Escherichia vulneris, Gemmiger formicilis and Streptococcus sinensis abundance. In addition, during follow-up period we observed a further reduction in Escherichia vulneris and Gemmiger formicilis, together with a decrease in Roseburia faecis and Ruminococcus gnavus abundance. Conversely, the abundance of Akkermansia muciniphila was increased if compared to samples collected at the beginning of the experimental time course. CONCLUSION: B. longum BB536 and L. rhamnosus HN001 showed the ability to modulate the gut microbiota composition, leading to a significant reduction of potentially harmful bacteria and an increase of beneficial ones. Further studies are needed to better understand the specific mechanisms involved in gut microbiota modulation

Indicators for early childhood education and care

The main purpose of this technical brief is to investigate the comparability between two early childhood education and care indicators currently used by the European Commission – namely the Barcelona target and the ET 2020 ECEC benchmark – and to identify methodological differences and common traits that may have implications in their use for policy-making. Results show that, despite being potentially similar measures of participation of children in early childhood education and care in the different countries, they are essentially different in their nature as they cover different groups of individuals. Additionally, the fact that they use different datasets, namely administrative data from UOE and survey data from EU-SILC, implies that they follow diverse data collection protocols; in particular, the use of EU-SILC survey data brings the risk of not having a fully representative sample of the children population; and exposes data to respondent and interviewer’s biases, which further contributes to the existing differences between them. Notwithstanding, results provided in the brief suggest that the different age composition of the two indicators could explain a consistent part of the difference in the overall shares; in the majority of countries, for age groups 4 and 5, numbers are quite similar. Thus, while still taking into account all the caveats explained in this document, we could conclude that for these age groups results could be equally used for policy support. Some suggestions for the improvement of the Barcelona target sub-indicator for the ET 2020 ECEC benchmark within the Joint Assessment Framework are also proposed.JRC.B.4-Human Capital and Employmen

An advanced variant of an interpolatory graphical display algorithm

In this paper an advanced interpolatory graphical display algorithm based on cardinal B-spline functions is provided. It is well-known that B-spline functions are a flexible tool to design various scale rapresentations of a signal. The proposed method allows to display without recursion a function at any desiderable resolution so that only initial data and opportune vectors weight are involved. In this way the structure of the algorithm is independent across the scale and a computational efficiency is reached. In this paper mono and bi-dimensional vectors weight generated by means of centered cubic cardinal B-spline functions have been supplied

Cohort Patterns in adult literacy skills: How are new generations doing?

Skills are core elements of the socio-economic prospects of individuals, while they also improve national productivity, growth and social cohesion. Understanding how skills evolve over time and what drives their evolution has become a policy priority of many European countries. Using the 1994–1998 International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) and the 2012 Survey on Adult Skills (PIAAC) we build synthetic cohorts and examine how the population gains, loses or preserves cognitive skills (literacy) over time. While, as expected, deterioration in the level of skills due to ageing is common to almost all the European countries studied, for some of them concerns arise for the occurrence of skill deterioration across generations, especially among less well-educated and medium-educated individuals. Certain countries appear to be doing a poorer job in providing the necessary literacy skills over successive generations

School-to-work transition of young individuals: what can the ELET and NEET indicators tell us?

Early school leavers (ELET), normally face greater difficulties in successfully integrating in the labour market, earn less, have higher unemployment rates, and are more at risk of social exclusion and poverty than those who complete higher levels of education. This can have negative consequences not only at the individual level, but also for the society they live in. While youth unemployment has received wide attention by both researchers and policy makers, especially in some EU countries, it is also important to be aware of the fact that these young ELET are also probably more at risk of becoming inactive instead of unemployed (even more than their adult counterparts). These inactive individuals are potentially quite a disadvantaged group in terms of labour market integration and social commitment. Thus, it is worth paying attention to an indicator of “joblessness” which accounts for all those who are neither in employment, nor in education or training (NEET), as a more accurate proxy of the size of the group of individuals most at risk on the labour market. Thus, the main objectives of this technical brief are: 1) To provide some descriptive evidence on the size of ELET and NEETs across EU Member States using aggregate data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS); 2) To further examine how countries compare with respect to school-to-work transitions of early leavers from education and training; and 3) To investigate the link between educational attainment and NEET status.JRC.DDG.01-Econometrics and applied statistic