Sumatran rhinoceros and wildlife survey East of Segama, Danum Valley, Sabah, Malaysia

The purpose of this survey was to assess the Sumatran rhinoceros population occurring around DVFC on the eastern part of Sungai Segama, Sabah

Pollen sources foraged by domesticated stingless bee (Heterotrigona itama) reared in gelam forests of Terengganu, Malaysia

Melittopalynological analysis is one of the principal tools used to reveal significant floral sources to bees. Gelam (Melaleuca spp.) forest provides habitat for bees and provision for high quality honey. However, the forests are declining due to anthropogenic activities which directly reduced the availability of botanical sources on which bees rely for survival. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the pollen sources preferred by domesticated stingless bees (Heterotrigona itama) reared in fragmented Gelam forests from two meliponiaries in Terengganu. The palynological analysis was carried out on pollen load foraged by the stingless bees. Thirty seven pollen types belonging to 13 plant families were collected from the pollen loads of 251 stingless bee foragers. Tiliagraphs with CONISS and rank abundance curves were used to illustrate the pollen grains preferred by H. itama. Results clearly showed that Melastoma malabathricum and Cyperus aromaticus were the most frequently visited and vital pollen sources for H. itama in the Gelam forests. Interestingly, Gelam (Melaleuca cajuputi) pollen is one of the floral sources, suggesting that Gelam is one of the preferred pollen and nectar sources for stingless bees. This study discovered a causal link between the fragmentation of Gelam forests and the low abundance of Melaleuca cajuputi pollen foraged by H. itama. Information on this dynamic is critically important for maintaining the health of bee colonies as well as for the conservation efforts of Gelam forests in Terengganu, Malaysia

Rapid in-country sequencing of whole virus genomes to inform rabies elimination programmes.

Genomic surveillance is an important aspect of contemporary disease management but has yet to be used routinely to monitor endemic disease transmission and control in low- and middle-income countries. Rabies is an almost invariably fatal viral disease that causes a large public health and economic burden in Asia and Africa, despite being entirely vaccine preventable. With policy efforts now directed towards achieving a global goal of zero dog-mediated human rabies deaths by 2030, establishing effective surveillance tools is critical. Genomic data can provide important and unique insights into rabies spread and persistence that can direct control efforts. However, capacity for genomic research in low- and middle-income countries is held back by limited laboratory infrastructure, cost, supply chains and other logistical challenges. Here we present and validate an end-to-end workflow to facilitate affordable whole genome sequencing for rabies surveillance utilising nanopore technology. We used this workflow in Kenya, Tanzania and the Philippines to generate rabies virus genomes in two to three days, reducing costs to approximately £60 per genome. This is over half the cost of metagenomic sequencing previously conducted for Tanzanian samples, which involved exporting samples to the UK and a three- to six-month lag time. Ongoing optimization of workflows are likely to reduce these costs further. We also present tools to support routine whole genome sequencing and interpretation for genomic surveillance. Moreover, combined with training workshops to empower scientists in-country, we show that local sequencing capacity can be readily established and sustainable, negating the common misperception that cutting-edge genomic research can only be conducted in high resource laboratories. More generally, we argue that the capacity to harness genomic data is a game-changer for endemic disease surveillance and should precipitate a new wave of researchers from low- and middle-income countries

Search for new particles in events with energetic jets and large missing transverse momentum in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

A search is presented for new particles produced at the LHC in proton-proton collisions at root s = 13 TeV, using events with energetic jets and large missing transverse momentum. The analysis is based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 101 fb(-1), collected in 2017-2018 with the CMS detector. Machine learning techniques are used to define separate categories for events with narrow jets from initial-state radiation and events with large-radius jets consistent with a hadronic decay of a W or Z boson. A statistical combination is made with an earlier search based on a data sample of 36 fb(-1), collected in 2016. No significant excess of events is observed with respect to the standard model background expectation determined from control samples in data. The results are interpreted in terms of limits on the branching fraction of an invisible decay of the Higgs boson, as well as constraints on simplified models of dark matter, on first-generation scalar leptoquarks decaying to quarks and neutrinos, and on models with large extra dimensions. Several of the new limits, specifically for spin-1 dark matter mediators, pseudoscalar mediators, colored mediators, and leptoquarks, are the most restrictive to date.Peer reviewe

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Probing effective field theory operators in the associated production of top quarks with a Z boson in multilepton final states at root s=13 TeV

Peer reviewe

Characterisation of IE and UL5 gene products of equine herpesvirus 1 using DNA inoculation of mice - Brief report

10 page(s

Cucumber Mosaic Virus 2b Protein Subcellular Targets and Interactions: Their Significance to RNA Silencing Suppressor Activity

10 páginas, 8 figuras -- PAGS nros. 294-303The RNA silencing suppressor activity of the 2b protein of Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) has been variously attributed to its nuclear targeting, its interaction with and inhibition of Argonaute 1 (AGO1), or its ability to bind small RNAs in vitro. In addition, the 2b ortholog of Tomato aspermy virus forms aggregates and binds RNAs in vitro. We have further studied the relationships between CMV 2b protein silencing suppressor activity and its subcellular distribution, protein-protein interactions in vivo, and interactions with small interfering RNAs in vitro. To do this, we tagged the protein with fluorescent markers and showed that it retained suppressor activity. We showed that the 2b protein is present in the nucleolus and that it self-interacts and interacts with AGO1 and AGO4 in vivo. Using a battery of mutants, we showed that the putative nuclear localization signals and phosphorylation motif of the 2b protein are not required for self-interaction or for interaction with AGO proteins. The occurrence of neither of these interactions or of nucleolar targeting was sufficient to provide local silencing-suppression activity. In contrast, the ability of the 2b protein to bind small RNAs appears to be indispensable for silencing suppressor functionKim for providing the binary construct expressing fibrillarin-mRFP. Work at T. C Canto’s lab was funded by grants 200740I003 from the CSIC, grant L2008-03482 from the Spanish Ministry of Innovation and Science, and bilateral grant P2008RU03 from the Spanish Ministry of Innovation and Science and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. I. González s recipient of a Ph.D. grant from the Spanish Ministry of Innovation and Science. L. Martínez, C. Llave, and F. Atencio were funded by the Spanish Ministry of Innovation and Science. P. Palukaitis was funded by the Scottish Executive Research Evaluation and Rural Affairs Directorate. M. G. Lewsey and J. P. Carr were funded by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council grant BB/D008204/1Peer reviewe