Accelerated HIV testing for PMTCT in maternity and labour wards is vital to capture mothers at a critical point in the programme at district level

TORONTO AIDS Conference 200

Expansion of small-scale changes in macrobenthic community inside an offshore wind farm?

The presence of offshore wind farms in the marine environment has some impacts on the macrobenthic community living in the natural sandy sediments. Changes in hydrodynamics, presence of epifaunal coverage along the turbine and fisheries exclusion are expected to be the main causes influencing the macrobenthos. In this study it was investigated whether changes in sediment characteristics and the macrobenthic community occurred inside a wind farm in the Belgian part of the North Sea. Both stations in the close vicinity of the turbines (50 m distance, close samples) and further away (350-500 m distance, far samples) were sampled with a Van Veen grab in autumn 2015

Tidal migration of nematodes on an estuarine tidal flat (the Molenplaat, Schelde Estuary, SW Netherlands)

The vertical distribution patterns of the nematode community and of the 10 most dominant nematode species on an intertidal flat in the Schelde Estuary (the Molenplaat, The Netherlands) are described at specific time intervals over a tidal cycle. The observed distribution profiles indicate that vertical migrations occur and are species-specific. The predatory Enoploides longispiculosus and the deposit-feeding Daptonema normandicum migrated upwards at incoming tide and downwards when the flat became exposed, while another deposit feeder,Daptonema setosum, did the opposite. Several abiotic and biotic factors may contribute to the observed patterns. Hydrodynamics, pore water drainage and episodic steep increases in temperature upon low tide exposure as well as vertical movements of prey organisms may have been of particular relevance at the time and site of sampling. However, the impact of each of these factors needs further investigation. The present study corroborates the dynamic nature of vertical distribution profiles of nematodes in intertidal sediments, highlighting the importance of sampling time with respect to the tide, as well as a species approach

Predation rates and prey selectivity in two predacious estuarine nematodes

Enoploides longispiculosus and Adoncholaimus fuscus are representatives of nematode genera prominent in sediments of the North Sea and adjacent estuaries. Both are predatory nematodes, although predation is facultative in the latter. The present study investigates functional responses and prey selectivity in both species through the use of controlled laboratory experiments. Both predators had strongly prey density-dependent predation rates. A maximal predation rate of 4 monhysterid prey nematodes per predator per 24 h was found inE. longispiculosus at prey densities of 200 ind. per petri dish and higher; no such maximal predation rate was found for A. fuscus, indicating that this species was prey-limited at all prey densities tested. Predation rates were strongly affected by temperature, with a Q10 close to 2 between 10 and 20 °C. Incubation in the light resulted in a similar decrease in predation rate compared to dark incubations, as did a temperature decrease from 20 to 10 °C. E. longispiculosus exhibited a clear preference for some nematode prey over others. An encounter probability model indicated that preferences could not be explained by encounter rates. Strike rates were low (E. longispiculosus, and exceptionally low (A. fuscus, indicating that many encounters did not result in attack, or that a portion of the attacks did not result in prey capture. The observed predation rates cannot be supported by prey nematode standing stock and production at the 2 sampling sites used in this study, where E. longispiculosus dominates the nematode community in abundance and, especially, biomass. A. fuscus may mainly derive food from feeding modes other than predation; E. longispiculosus may be prey-limited in its natural habitat. Since this nematode also feeds on other metazoans, it may also impact temporary meiofauna. The high predation rates and prey selectivity of predacious nematodes may be important structuring factors to meiofaunal communities

Migrating medical communications software to a multi-tenant cloud environment

The rise of cloud computing has paved the way for many new applications. Many of these new cloud applications are also multi-tenant, ensuring multiple end users can make use of the same application instance. While these technologies make it possible to create many new applications, many legacy applications can also benefit from the added flexibility and cost-savings of cloud computing and multi-tenancy. In this paper, we describe the steps required to migrate a. NET-based medical communications application to the Windows Azure public cloud environment, and the steps required to add multi-tenancy to the application. We then discuss the advantages and disadvantages of our migration approach. We found that the migration to the cloud itself requires only a limited amount of changes to the application, but that this also limited the benefits, as individual instances would only be partially used. Adding multi-tenancy requires more changes, but when this is done, it has the potential to greatly reduce the cost of running the application

Detection of genetically modified plant products by protein strip testing: an evaluation of real-life samples

The determination of the presence of genetically modified plant material by the detection of expressed genetically engineered proteins using lateral flow protein strip tests has been evaluated in different matrices. The presence of five major genetically engineered proteins (CP4-EPSPS, CryIAb, Cry9C, PAT/pat and PAT/bar protein) was detected at low levels in seeds, seed/leaf powder and leaf tissue from genetically modified soy, maize or oilseed rape. A comparison between &quot;protein strip test&quot; (PST) and &quot;polymerase chain reaction&quot; (PCR) analysis of genetically modified food/feed samples demonstrates complementarities of both techniques. -® Springer-Verlag 2007</p