Distribution of micro-organisms along a transect in the South-East Pacific Ocean (BIOSOPE cruise) from epifluorescence microscopy

International audienceThe distribution of selected groups of micro-organisms was analyzed along a South-East Pacific Ocean transect sampled during the BIOSOPE cruise in 2004. The transect could be divided into four regions of contrasted trophic status: a high Nutrient Low Chlorophyll (HNLC) region (mesotrophic) near the equator, the South-East Pacific Ocean gyre (hyper-oligotrophic), the transition region between the gyre and the coast of South America (moderately oligotrophic), and the Chile upwelling (eutrophic). The abundance of phycoerythrin containing picocyanobacteria, autotrophic and heterotrophic eukaryotes in different size ranges, dinoflagellates, and ciliates was determined by epifluorescence microscopy after DAPI staining. All populations reached a maximum in the Chile upwelling and a minimum near the centre of the gyre. Picocyanobacteria reached a maximum abundance of 70×10³ cell mL-1. In the HNLC zone, up to 50% of picocyanobacteria formed colonies. Autotrophic eukaryote and dinoflagellate abundance reached 24.5×10³ and 200 cell mL-1, respectively. We observed a shift in the size distribution of autotrophic eukaryotes from 2–5 µm in eutrophic and mesotrophic regions to less than 2 µm in the central region. The contribution of autotrophic eukaryotes to total eukaryotes was the lowest in the central gyre. Maximum concentration of ciliates (18 cell ml-1) also occurred in the Chile upwelling, but, in contrast to the other groups, their abundance was very low in the HNLC zone and near the Marquesas Islands

Distribution of micro-organisms along a transect in the South-East Pacific Ocean (BIOSOPE cruise) using epifluorescence microscopy

International audienceThe distribution of selected groups of micro-organisms was analyzed along a South-East Pacific Ocean transect sampled during the BIOSOPE cruise in 2004. The transect could be divided into four regions of contrasted trophic status: a High Nutrient Low Chlorophyll (HNLC) region (mesotrophic) near the equator, the South-East Pacific Ocean gyre (hyper-oligotrophic), a transition region between the gyre and the coast of South America (moderately oligotrophic), and the Chile upwelling (eutrophic). The abundance of phycoerythrin containing picocyanobacteria (PE picocyanobacteria), autotrophic and heterotrophic eukaryotes (classified into different size ranges), dinoflagellates, and ciliates was determined by epifluorescence microscopy after DAPI staining. Despite some apparent loss of cells due to sample storage, distribution patterns were broadly similar to those obtained by flow cytometry for PE picocyanobacteria and picoeukaryotes. All populations reached a maximum in the Chile upwelling and a minimum near the centre of the gyre. The maximum abundance of PE picocyanobacteria was 70 103 cell mL-1. Abundance of autotrophic eukaryotes and dinoflagellates reached 24.5 103 and 20 cell mL-1, respectively. We observed a shift in the size distribution of autotrophic eukaryotes from 2–5 µm in eutrophic and mesotrophic regions to less than 2 µm in the central region. The contribution of autotrophic eukaryotes to total eukaryotes was the lowest in the central gyre. Maximum concentration of ciliates (18 cell mL-1) also occurred in the Chile upwelling, but, in contrast to the other groups, their abundance was very low in the HNLC zone and near the Marquesas Islands. Two key findings of this work that could not have been observed with other techniques are the high percentage of PE picocyanobacteria forming colonies in the HLNC region and the observation of numerous dinoflagellates with bright green autofluorescence

Bio-Inspired Multi-Layer Spiking Neural Network Extracts Discriminative Features from Speech Signals

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) enable power-efficient implementations due to their sparse, spike-based coding scheme. This paper develops a bio-inspired SNN that uses unsupervised learning to extract discriminative features from speech signals, which can subsequently be used in a classifier. The architecture consists of a spiking convolutional/pooling layer followed by a fully connected spiking layer for feature discovery. The convolutional layer of leaky, integrate-and-fire (LIF) neurons represents primary acoustic features. The fully connected layer is equipped with a probabilistic spike-timing-dependent plasticity learning rule. This layer represents the discriminative features through probabilistic, LIF neurons. To assess the discriminative power of the learned features, they are used in a hidden Markov model (HMM) for spoken digit recognition. The experimental results show performance above 96% that compares favorably with popular statistical feature extraction methods. Our results provide a novel demonstration of unsupervised feature acquisition in an SNN

Prevalence of resistance mutations related to integrase inhibitor S/GSK1349572 in HIV-1 subtype B raltegravir-naive and -treated patients

Objectives To compare the frequency of previously in vitro-selected integrase mutations (T124A, T124A/S153F, S153Y, T124A/S153Y and L101I/T124A/S153Y) conferring resistance to S/GSK1349572 between HIV-1 subtype B integrase inhibitor (INI)-naive and raltegravir-treated patients. Methods Integrase sequences from 650 INI-naive patients and 84 raltegravir-treated patients were analysed. Results The T124A mutation alone and the combination T124A/L101I were more frequent in raltegravir-failing patients than in INI-naive patients (39.3% versus 24.5%, respectively, P = 0.005 for T124A and 20.2% versus 10.0%, respectively, P = 0.008 for T124A/L101I). The S153Y/F mutations were not detected in any integrase sequence (except for S153F alone, only detected in one INI-naive patient). Conclusions T124A and T124A/L101I, more frequent in raltegravir-treated patients, could have some effect on raltegravir response and their presence could play a role in the selection of other mutations conferring S/GSK1349572 resistance. The impact of raltegravir-mediated changes such as these on the virological response to S/GSK1349572 should be studied further

The epidemiological transition in Antananarivo, Madagascar: an assessment based on death registers (1900–2012)

Background: Madagascar today has one of the highest life expectancies in sub-Saharan Africa, despite being among the poorest countries in the continent. There are relatively few detailed accounts of the epidemiological transition in this country due to the lack of a comprehensive death registration system at the national level. However, in Madagascar's capital city, death registration was established around the start of the 20th century and is now considered virtually complete. Objective: We provide an overview of trends in all-cause and cause-specific mortality in Antananarivo to document the timing and pace of the mortality decline and the changes in the cause-of-death structure. Design: Death registers covering the period 1976–2012 were digitized and the population at risk of dying was estimated from available censuses and surveys. Trends for the period 1900–1976 were partly reconstructed from published sources. Results: The crude death rate stagnated around 30‰ until the 1940s in Antananarivo. Mortality declined rapidly after the World War II and then resurged again in the 1980s as a result of the re-emergence of malaria and the collapse of Madagascar's economy. Over the past 30 years, impressive gains in life expectancy have been registered thanks to the unabated decline in child mortality, despite political instability, a lasting economic crisis and the persistence of high rates of chronic malnutrition. Progress in adult survival has been more modest because reductions in infectious diseases and diseases of the respiratory system have been partly offset by increases in cardiovascular diseases, neoplasms, and other diseases, particularly at age 50 years and over. Conclusions: The transition in Antananarivo has been protracted and largely dependent on anti-microbial and anti-parasitic medicine. The capital city now faces a double burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases. The ongoing registration of deaths in the capital generates a unique database to evaluate the performance of the health system and measure intervention impacts

STDP Allows Fast Rate-Modulated Coding with Poisson-Like Spike Trains

Spike timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) has been shown to enable single neurons to detect repeatedly presented spatiotemporal spike patterns. This holds even when such patterns are embedded in equally dense random spiking activity, that is, in the absence of external reference times such as a stimulus onset. Here we demonstrate, both analytically and numerically, that STDP can also learn repeating rate-modulated patterns, which have received more experimental evidence, for example, through post-stimulus time histograms (PSTHs). Each input spike train is generated from a rate function using a stochastic sampling mechanism, chosen to be an inhomogeneous Poisson process here. Learning is feasible provided significant covarying rate modulations occur within the typical timescale of STDP (∼10–20 ms) for sufficiently many inputs (∼100 among 1000 in our simulations), a condition that is met by many experimental PSTHs. Repeated pattern presentations induce spike-time correlations that are captured by STDP. Despite imprecise input spike times and even variable spike counts, a single trained neuron robustly detects the pattern just a few milliseconds after its presentation. Therefore, temporal imprecision and Poisson-like firing variability are not an obstacle to fast temporal coding. STDP provides an appealing mechanism to learn such rate patterns, which, beyond sensory processing, may also be involved in many cognitive tasks

Nutrients limitation of primary productivity in the Southeast Pacific (BIOSOPE cruise)

Revue sans Comité de lectureInternational audienceIron is an essential nutrient involved in a variety of biological processes in the ocean, including photosynthesis, respiration and nitrogen fixation. Atmospheric deposition of aerosols is recognized as the main source of iron for the surface ocean. In high nutrient, low chlorophyll areas, it is now clearly established that iron limits phytoplankton productivity but its biogeochemical role in low nutrient, low chlorophyll environments has been poorly studied. We investigated this question in the unexplored southeast Pacific, arguably the most oligotrophic area of the global ocean. Situated far from any continental aerosol source, the atmospheric iron flux to this province is amongst the lowest of the world ocean. Here we report that, despite low dissolved iron concentrations (~0.1 nmol l-1) measured across the whole gyre (3 stations situated in the center, the western and the eastern edge), photosynthesis and primary productivity are only limited by iron availability at the border of the gyre, but not in the center. The seasonal stability of the gyre has apparently allowed for the development of populations acclimated to these extreme oligotrophic conditions. Moreover, despite clear evidence of nitrogen limitation in the central gyre, we were unable to measure nitrogen fixation in our experiments, even after iron and/or phosphate additions, and cyanobacterial nifH gene abundances were extremely low compared to the North Pacific Gyre. The South Pacific gyre is therefore unique with respect to the physiological status of its phytoplankton populations

Beyond capitalism and liberal democracy: on the relevance of GDH Cole’s sociological critique and alternative

This article argues for a return to the social thought of the often ignored early 20th-century English thinker GDH Cole. The authors contend that Cole combined a sociological critique of capitalism and liberal democracy with a well-developed alternative in his work on guild socialism bearing particular relevance to advanced capitalist societies. Both of these, with their focus on the limitations on ‘free communal service’ in associations and the inability of capitalism to yield emancipation in either production or consumption, are relevant to social theorists looking to understand, critique and contribute to the subversion of neoliberalism. Therefore, the authors suggest that Cole’s associational sociology, and the invitation it provides to think of formations beyond capitalism and liberal democracy, is a timely and valuable resource which should be returned to