Faeces traits as unifying predictors of detritivore effects on organic matter turnover

In the last decade, our understanding of plant litter decomposition and soil organic matter formation substantially improved but critical blind spots remain. Particularly, the role of detritivores, i.e. soil animals that feed on litter and soil, is poorly understood and notoriously missing from biogeochemical models. This major gap results from methodological difficulties to isolate their effect and from the astonishing diversity of detritivorous organisms with few common features, thereby hampering the identification of general patterns. In this viewpoint, we propose that the characteristics of their faeces can predict detritivore effects on soil processes related to organic matter turnover across the large detritivore diversity. Indeed, faeces are common to all detritivores, and a large part of organic matter is transformed into faeces in many ecosystems. Two recent studies presented here showed that faeces characteristics are powerful predictors of the fate and turnover of this transformed organic matter. We suggest that faeces characteristics, such as water-holding capacity, size and spatial organisation of the faecal pellets and of their constituting particles, particulate organic matter connectivity, as well as the characteristics of dissolved organic matter in faecal pellets, are promising ‘effect traits’. By focusing on similar features rather than differences, this approach has the potential to break down barriers of this highly fragmented soil animal group, in particular between earthworms that are often studied as ecosystem engineers and classical litter transformers such as millipedes, woodlice, or snails. We discuss ways of tackling the complexity of using such traits, particularly regarding the composite determinism of faeces characteristics that are driven both by the detritivore identity and the ingested organic matter. Rigorous and hypothesis-based use of faeces characteristics as effect traits, including clear identification of studied processes, could allow integrating detritivores in our current understanding of organic matter turnover

TULIPP: Towards Ubiquitous Low-power Image Processing Platforms

Many industrial domains rely on vision-based applications which require to comply with severe performance and embedded requirements. TULIPP will develop a reference platform, which consists of a hardware system, a tool chain and a real-time operating system. This platform defines implementation rules and interfaces to tackle power consumption issues while delivering high, energy efficient and guaranteed computing performance for image processing applications. Using this reference platform will enable designers to develop a complete solution at a reduced cost to meet the typical embedded systems requirements: Size, Weight and Power. Moreover, for less constrained systems which performance requirements cannot be fulfilled by one instance of the platform, the reference platform will also be scalable so that the resulting boards can be chained for higher processing power. The instance of the reference platform developed during the project will be use-case driven and split between the implementation of: a reference hardware architecture - a scalable low-power board; a low-power operating system and image processing libraries; a productivityenhancing tool chain. It will lead to three proof-of-concept demonstrators across different application domains: real-time and low-power medical image processing product prototype of surgical X-ray system (mobile c-arm); embedded image processing systems within Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs); automotive real time embedded systems for driver assistance. TULIPP will set up an ecosystem and will closely work with standardization organizations to propose new standards derived from its reference platform to the industry.© 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.

Behavioural responses to a photovoltaic subretinal prosthesis implanted in non-human primates

International audienceRetinal dystrophies and age-related macular degeneration related to photoreceptor degeneration can cause blindness. In blind patients, although the electrical activation of the residual retinal circuit can provide useful artificial visual perception, the resolutions of current retinal prostheses have been limited either by large electrodes or small numbers of pixels. Here we report the evaluation, in three awake non-human primates, of a previously reported near-infrared-light-sensitive photovoltaic subretinal prosthesis. We show that multipixel stimulation of the prosthesis within radiation safety limits enabled eye tracking in the animals, that they responded to stimulations directed at the implant with repeated saccades and that the implant-induced responses were present two years after device implantation. Our findings pave the way for the clinical evaluation of the prosthesis in patients affected by dry atrophic age-related macular degeneration