Comparison of Neurocognitive Functioning and Fine Motor Skills in Pediatric Cancer Survivors and Healthy Children

Background: The late treatment outcomes of pediatric brain tumors and of hematopoietic and lymphoid tissue tumors are an important focus of both rehabilitation and research. Neurocognitive and motor disorders induce further learning problems impeding social-emotional adaptation throughout a whole lifespan. Core deficits in short-term and working memory, visuospatial constructional ability, verbal fluency, and fine motor skills underlie distorted intellectual and academic achievement. This study aimed to assess the individual differences in cognitive ability and fine motor skills of pediatric tumor survivors and the age-matched healthy controls. Methods: A total of 504 tumor survivors after treatment and 646 age-matched healthy controls underwent neurocognitive and fine motor assessments. Findings: The group of tumor survivors scored significantly worse in both neurocognitive and fine motor skill in compared with the healthy control group. The pediatric brain tumor survivors (PBT group) performed worse in cognitive (p p p p p p p p p p < 0.01) in the control group. Neurocognitive and fine motor skill characteristics in the THL group did not correlate with age

Virioplankton and virus-induced mortality of prokaryotes in the Kara Sea (Arctic) in summer

Among the Arctic seas, the largest volume of river runoff (~45% of the total river-water inflow into the Arctic Ocean) enters the Siberian Kara Sea. The viral communities of the Kara Sea are important for the functioning of the marine ecosystem. Studies of virus–prokaryote interactions on the Kara Sea shelf have been conducted only in spring and autumn. Here, we investigated the abundance of free viruses, viruses attached to prokaryotes, and pico-sized detrital particles; the morphology (shape and size) of the viruses, viral infection and virus-mediated mortality of prokaryotes in early summer, i.e., during a seasonal ice melting period and maximum inflow of river-water volumes with high concentrations of dissolved and suspended organic carbon. Seawater samples for microbial analyses were collected across the Kara Sea shelf zone on board the Norilskiy Nickel as a research platform from June 29 to July 15, 2018. Abundances of prokaryotes (range (0.6–25.3) × 105 cells mL−1) and free viruses (range (10–117) × 105 viruses mL−1) were correlated (r = 0.63, p = 0.005) with an average virus: prokaryote ratio of 23.9 ± 5.3. The abundance of free viruses and viral-mediated mortality of prokaryotes were significantly higher in early summer than in early spring and autumn. Free viruses with a capsid diameter of 16–304 nm were recorded in the examined water samples. Waters in the Kara Sea shelf contained high concentrations of suspended organic particles 0.25–4.0 µm in size (range (0.6–25.3) × 105 particles mL−1). The proportions of free viruses, viruses attached to prokaryotes, and viruses attached to pico-sized detrital particles were 89.8 ± 6.0%, 2.2 ± 0.6% and 8.0 ± 1.3%, respectively, of the total virioplankton abundance (on average (61.5 ± 6.2) × 105 viruses mL−1). Viruses smaller than 60 nm clearly dominated at all studied sites. The majority of free viruses were not tailed. We estimated that an average of 1.4% (range 0.4–3.5%) of the prokaryote community was visibly infected by viruses, suggesting that a significant proportion of prokaryotic secondary production, 11.4% on average (range 4.0–34.0%), was lost due to viral lysis. There was a negative correlation between the abundance of pico-sized detrital particles and the frequency of visibly infected prokaryotic cells: r = −0.67, p = 0.0008