First description of myxozoans from Syria: novel records of hexactinomyxon, triactinomyxon and endocapsa actinospore types

Oligochaete worms collected in late March and early April 2005 from 3 freshwater biotopes in Syria were surveyed over an 11 wk period for myxosporean parasites (Myxozoa). Three types of novel actinospore stages were identified from 1 host species, Psammoryctides albicola. A hexactinomyxon was found in 6 P. albicola (7.5%) collected from a branch of the River Orontes, north of the city of Hama. A triactinomyxon and an endocapsa were found in single P. albicola specimens from the Al-Thaurah region of the Euphrates River (Lake Assad). No oligochaetes collected from Al-Ghab fish farm (Orontes region) released actinospores during the observation period. The present study is the first description of myxosporeans, including actinospore stages, from Syria. The 3 types described herein differ morphologically and molecularly (18S rDNA) from published records

Requirements for global elimination of hepatitis B: a modelling study

Background Despite the existence of effective prevention and treatment interventions, hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection continues to cause nearly 1 million deaths each year. WHO aspires to global control and elimination of HBV infection. We aimed to evaluate the potential impact of public health interventions against HBV, propose targets for reducing incidence and mortality, and identify the key developments required to achieve them. Methods We developed a simulation model of the global HBV epidemic, incorporating data on the natural history of HBV, prevalence, mortality, vaccine coverage, treatment dynamics, and demographics. We estimate the impact of current interventions and scaling up of existing interventions for prevention of infection and introducing wide-scale population screening and treatment interventions on the worldwide epidemic. Findings Vaccination of infants and neonates is already driving a large decrease in new infections; vaccination has already prevented 210 million new chronic infections by 2015 and will have averted 1·1 million deaths by 2030. However, without scale-up of existing interventions, our model showed that there will be a cumulative 63 million new cases of chronic infection and 17 million HBV-related deaths between 2015 and 2030 because of ongoing transmission in some regions and poor access to treatment for people already infected. A target of a 90% reduction in new chronic infections and 65% reduction in mortality could be achieved by scaling up the coverage of infant vaccination (to 90% of infants), birth-dose vaccination (to 80% of neonates), use of peripartum antivirals (to 80% of hepatitis B e antigen-positive mothers), and population-wide testing and treatment (to 80% of eligible people). These interventions would avert 7·3 million deaths between 2015 and 2030, including 1·5 million cases of cancer deaths. An elimination threshold for incidence of new chronic infections would be reached by 2090 worldwide. The annual cost would peak at US$7·5 billion worldwide ($3·4 billion in low-income and lower-middle-income countries), but decrease rapidly and this would be accelerated if a cure is developed. Interpretation Scale-up of vaccination coverage, innovations in scalable options for prevention of mother-to-child transmission, and ambitious population-wide testing and treatment are needed to eliminate HBV as a major public health threat. Achievement of these targets could make a major contribution to one of the Sustainable Development Goals of combating hepatitis

The effect of root exudates on rhizosphere water dynamics

L.J.C. and N.K. are funded by BBSRC SARISA BB/L025620/1, L.J.C. is also funded by EPSRC EP/P020887/1. K.R.D. is funded by ERC 646809DIMR. P.D.H. and T.S.G. are funded by BBSRC BB/J00868/1. The James Hutton Institute receives funding from the Scottish Government. T.R. is funded by BBSRC SARISA BB/L025620/1, EPSRC EP/M020355/1, ERC 646809DIMR, BBSRC SARIC BB/P004180/1 and NERC NE/L00237/1. Data supporting this study are available on request from the University of Southampton repository at https://doi.org/10.5258/SOTON/D0609 [35].Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The Real Anatomy of Complex Linear Superfields

Recent work on classicication of off-shell representations of N-extended worldline supersymmetry without central charges has uncovered an unexpectedly vast number--trillions of even just (chromo)topology types--of so called adinkraic supermultiplets. Herein, we show by explicit analysis that a long-known but rarely used representation, the complex linear supermultiplet, is not adinkraic, cannot be decomposed locally, but may be reduced by means of a Wess-Zumino type gauge. This then indicates that the already unexpectedly vast number of adinkraic off-shell supersymmetry representations is but the proverbial tip of the iceberg.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figure

Investigating the timecourse of accessing conversational implicatures during incremental sentence interpretation

Many contextual inferences in utterance interpretation are explained as following from the nature of conversation and the assumption that participants are rational. Recent psycholinguistic research has focussed on certain of these ‘Gricean’ inferences and have revealed that comprehenders can access them in online interpretation. However there have been mixed results as to the time-course of access. Some results show that Gricean inferences can be accessed very rapidly, as rapidly as any other contextually specified information (Sedivy, 2003; Grodner, Klein, Carbery, & Tanenhaus, 2010); while other studies looking at the same kind of inference suggest that access to Gricean inferences are delayed relative to other aspects of semantic interpretation (Huang & Snedeker, 2009; in press). While previous timecourse research has focussed on Gricean inferences that support the online assignment of reference to definite expressions, the study reported here examines the timecourse of access to scalar implicatures, which enrich the meaning of an utterance beyond the semantic interpretation. Even if access to Gricean inference in support of reference assignment may be rapid, it is still unknown whether genuinely enriching scalar implicatures are delayed. Our results indicate that scalar implicatures are accessed as rapidly as other contextual inferences. The implications of our results are discussed in reference to the architecture of language comprehension