A Functional Ecological Comparison of three Sponge Species from the Lower Florida Keys

The shallow, tidal flats off the islands of the lower Florida Keys represent a harsh environment for sessile marine invertebrates. This habitat is home to three taxonomically distinct sponge species that share similar rope morphologies: Cliona varians forma varians, Ircinia variabilis, and Neopetrosia subtriangularis. Despite sharing a habitat, these three species differ in their symbiont regime, with C. varians hosting dinoflagellate photosymbionts, and I. variabilis and N. subtriangularis hosting cyanobacterial photosymbionts. We conducted experiments to measure other ecological differences between these species. The sponges were all assayed for pumping rates using dye-video analysis and tissue samples were taken to compare the composition and functional genes of their microbiomes. The results indicated that N. subtriangularis had a significantly higher pumping rate than the other species. The microbiomes of the species varied, and the microbiome functional gene screening provided evidence that C. varians forma varians hosts nitrogen fixing bacteria, that I. variabilis hosts methane metabolizing bacteria, and that N. subtriangularis hosts nitric oxide reducing bacteria. More work is currently underway to examine the metabolism of these sponges, giving us insight into the unique ecology of this harsh habitat

Doha agreement meeting on terminology and definitions in groin pain in athletes.

BACKGROUND: Heterogeneous taxonomy of groin injuries in athletes adds confusion to this complicated area. AIM: The 'Doha agreement meeting on terminology and definitions in groin pain in athletes' was convened to attempt to resolve this problem. Our aim was to agree on a standard terminology, along with accompanying definitions. METHODS: A one-day agreement meeting was held on 4 November 2014. Twenty-four international experts from 14 different countries participated. Systematic reviews were performed to give an up-to-date synthesis of the current evidence on major topics concerning groin pain in athletes. All members participated in a Delphi questionnaire prior to the meeting. RESULTS: Unanimous agreement was reached on the following terminology. The classification system has three major subheadings of groin pain in athletes: 1. Defined clinical entities for groin pain: Adductor-related, iliopsoas-related, inguinal-related and pubic-related groin pain. 2. Hip-related groin pain. 3. Other causes of groin pain in athletes. The definitions are included in this paper. CONCLUSIONS: The Doha agreement meeting on terminology and definitions in groin pain in athletes reached a consensus on a clinically based taxonomy using three major categories. These definitions and terminology are based on history and physical examination to categorise athletes, making it simple and suitable for both clinical practice and research

Design and Performance of the mDOM Mainboard for the IceCube Upgrade

About 400 mDOMs (multi-PMT Digital Optical Modules) will be deployed as part of the IceCube Upgrade Project. The mDOM’s high pressure-resistant glass sphere houses 24 PMTs, 3 cameras, 10 flasher LEDs and various sensors. The mDOM mainboard design was challenging due to the limited available volume and demanding engineering requirements, like the maximum overall power consumption, a minimum trigger threshold of 0.2 photoelectrons (PE), the dynamic range and the linearity requirements. Another challenge was the FPGA firmware design, dealing with about 35 Gbit/s of continuous ADC data from the digitization of the 24 PMT channels, the control of a high speed dynamic buffer and the discriminator output sampling rate of about 1GSPS. High-speed sampling of each of the discriminator outputs at ~1 GSPS improves the leading-edge time resolution for the PMT waveforms. An MCU (microcontroller unit) coordinates the data taking, the data exchange with the surface and the sensor readout. Both the FPGA firmware and MCU software can be updated remotely. After discussing the main hardware blocks and the analog frontend (AFE) design, test results will be shown, covering especially the AFE performance. Additionally, the functionality of various sensors and modules will be evaluated