The Effects of Different Diets and Transgenerational Stress on Acyrthosiphon pisum Development.

Despite the fact that sap-feeding hemipterans are major agricultural pests, little is known about the pea aphid's (Acyrthosiphon pisum) nymphal development, compared to other insect models. Given our limited understanding of A. pisum nymphal development and variability in the naming/timing of its developmental events between different environmental conditions and studies, here, we address developmental knowledge gaps by elucidating how diet impacts A. pisum nymphal development for the LSR1 strain when it develops on its universal host plant (Vicia faba), isolated leaves, and artificial diet. Moreover, we test how plant age and transgenerational stressors, such as overcrowding and low plant vigor, can affect nymphal development. We also validate a morphological method to quickly confirm the life stage of each nymphal instar within a mixed population. Overall, we found extremely high variation in the timing of developmental events and a significant delay in nymphal (~5-25-h/instar) and pre-reproductive adult (~40-h) development when reared on isolated leaves and artificial diets, compared to intact host plants. Also, delays in development were observed when reared on older host plants (~9-17-h/event, post 2nd instar) or when previous generations were exposed to overcrowding on host plants (~20-h delay in nymph laying) compared to controls

Comparison of four models simulating phosphorus dynamics in Lake Vänern, Sweden

International audienceThis paper compares four water quality models applied to Lake Vänern, Sweden. The comparison is focused on phosphorus, the primary limiting nutrient in Lake Vänern. Two of the models, FYRISÅ and HBV­NP, are simple and were developed as parts of catchment models. Two other models, called LEEDS and BIOLA, are more comprehensive lake models. The models were calibrated using data from the period 1985?1992 and validated using data from the period 1993?2000. The fit to calibration data is similar for the FYRISÅ, HBV­NP, and LEEDS models, and slightly worse for the BIOLA model. All models fit the validation data almost as well as the calibration data. The models' behaviour was tested in two representative scenarios. An increase of emissions by 40% from a pulp and paper mill has a negligible effect on the water quality, while a decrease in phosphorus load by 14% (accomplished by better waste-water treatment in rural households) gives a considerable decrease in phosphorus concentration in the lake. Still, the results of the scenarios vary between the models. Keywords: lake, phosphorus, model, scenarios, simulatio

Neurological Disorders in Primary Sjögren's Syndrome.

International audienceSjögren's syndrome is an autoimmune disease characterized by an autoimmune exocrinopathy involving mainly salivary and lacrimal glands. The histopathological hallmark is periductal lymphocytic infiltration of the exocrine glands, resulting in loss of their secretory function. Several systemic manifestations may be found in patients with Sjögren's syndrome including neurological disorders. Neurological involvement ranges from 0 to 70% among various series and may present with central nervous system and/or peripheral nervous system involvement. This paper endeavors to review the main clinical neurological manifestations in Sjögren syndrome, the physiopathology, and their therapeutic response

Analysis of Player Motion in Sport Matches

The system for analysis of player motion during sport matches, developed at University of Ljubljana will be presented. The system allows for non-intrusive measurement of positions of all players in indoor sports through whole match using only inexpensive video equipment - cameras mounted on the ceiling of the sports hall. Tracking process (obtaining trajectories from videos) is automatic and only supervised by operator, to initialize player positions at the beginning and correct the mistakes during the tracking. The software provides means for user friendly calibration of video data - using court markings of each supported sport (e.g. european handball, basketball, squash, tennis...) as reference coordinates. Manual annotations can be added, to complement the quantitative data. Software keeps synchronization between annotations and trajectory data and provides means to use custom annotation dictionaries. Due to calibration, the results are provided in court coordinates (meters, centimeters) and can be exported (synchronized with annotations in same file) for further analysis with any application (e.g. excel, SPSS). Software itself supports several kinds of graphical data presentations. If time allows, the software itself will be demonstrated with examples from different sports

Regulatory B Cells: An Exciting Target for Future Therapeutics in Transplantation.

International audience: Transplantation is the preferred treatment for most end-stage solid organ diseases. Despite potent immunosuppressive agents, chronic rejection remains a real problem in transplantation. For many years, the predominant immunological focus of research into transplant rejection has been T cells. The pillar of immunotherapy in clinical practice is T cell-directed, which efficiently prevents acute T cell-mediated allograft rejection. However, the root of late allograft failure is chronic rejection and the humoral arm of the immune response now emerges as an important factor in transplantation. Thus, the potential effects of Abs and B cell infiltrate on transplants have cast B cells as major actors in late graft rejection. Consequently, a number of recent drugs target either B cells or plasma cells. However, immunotherapies, such as the anti-CD20 B cell-depleting antibody, can generate deleterious effects on the transplant, likely due to the deletion of beneficial population. The positive contribution of regulatory B (Breg) cells or B10 cells has been reported in the case of transplantation, mainly in mice models and highlights the primordial role that some populations of B cells can play in graft tolerance. Yet, this regulatory aspect remains poorly characterized in clinical transplantation. Thus, total B cell depletion treatments should be avoided and novel approaches should be considered that manipulate the different B cell subsets. This article provides an overview of the current knowledge on the link between Breg cells and grafts, and reports a number of data advising Breg cells as a new target for future therapeutic approaches

Assessment of the spatial and temporal variations of water quality for agricultural lands with crop rotation in China by using a HYPE model

Many water quality models have been successfully used worldwide to predict nutrient losses from anthropogenically impacted catchments, but hydrological and nutrient simulations with little data are difficult considering the transfer of model parameters and complication of model calibration and validation. This study aims (i) to assess the performance capabilities of a new and relatively more advantageous model-hydrological predictions for the environment (HYPE) to simulate stream flow and nutrient load in ungauged agricultural areas by using a multi-site and multi-objective parameter calibration method and (ii) to investigate the temporal and spatial variations of total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorous (TP) concentrations and loads with crop rotation using the model for the first time. A parameter estimation tool (PEST) was used to calibrate parameters, which shows that the parameters related to the effective soil porosity were most sensitive to hydrological modeling. N balance was largely controlled by soil denitrification processes, whereas P balance was influenced by the sedimentation rate and production/decay of P in rivers and lakes. The model reproduced the temporal and spatial variations of discharge and TN/TP relatively well in both calibration (2006–2008) and validation (2009–2010) periods. The lowest NSEs (Nash-Suttclife Efficiency) of discharge, daily TN load, and daily TP load were 0.74, 0.51, and 0.54, respectively. The seasonal variations of daily TN concentrations in the entire simulation period were insufficient, indicated that crop rotation changed the timing and amount of N output. Monthly TN and TP simulation yields revealed that nutrient outputs were abundant in summer in terms of the corresponding discharge. The area-weighted TN and TP load annual yields in five years showed that nutrient loads were extremely high along Hong and Ru rivers, especially in agricultural lands

Regulatory B Cells: An Exciting Target for Future Therapeutics in Transplantation.

International audience: Transplantation is the preferred treatment for most end-stage solid organ diseases. Despite potent immunosuppressive agents, chronic rejection remains a real problem in transplantation. For many years, the predominant immunological focus of research into transplant rejection has been T cells. The pillar of immunotherapy in clinical practice is T cell-directed, which efficiently prevents acute T cell-mediated allograft rejection. However, the root of late allograft failure is chronic rejection and the humoral arm of the immune response now emerges as an important factor in transplantation. Thus, the potential effects of Abs and B cell infiltrate on transplants have cast B cells as major actors in late graft rejection. Consequently, a number of recent drugs target either B cells or plasma cells. However, immunotherapies, such as the anti-CD20 B cell-depleting antibody, can generate deleterious effects on the transplant, likely due to the deletion of beneficial population. The positive contribution of regulatory B (Breg) cells or B10 cells has been reported in the case of transplantation, mainly in mice models and highlights the primordial role that some populations of B cells can play in graft tolerance. Yet, this regulatory aspect remains poorly characterized in clinical transplantation. Thus, total B cell depletion treatments should be avoided and novel approaches should be considered that manipulate the different B cell subsets. This article provides an overview of the current knowledge on the link between Breg cells and grafts, and reports a number of data advising Breg cells as a new target for future therapeutic approaches

INEF12Basketball Dataset and the Group Behavior Recognition Issue

Proceedings of: 9th Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. Workshop on User-Centric Technologies and Applications (CONTEXTS 2012), Salamanca, March 28-30, 2012Activity recognition is one of the most prolific fields of research. For this reason, there are new fields of research that expand the possibilities of the activity recognition: Group behavior recognition. This field does not limit the number of elements in the scene, and there are a lot of new elements that must be analyzed. Each group, like each individual element, has its behavior, but this behavior depends on their elements, and the relationships between these elements. All these new elements cause that group behavior recognition was a new field of research, with some similar elements but it must be studied apart. This way, group behavior recognition is a novel field, in which there are not many researches and there are not many datasets that could be used by researchers. This situation causes the slow advance of the science in this field. This paper tries to show a complete description of the problem domain, with all the possible variants, a formal description and show a novel architecture used to solve this issue. Also describes a specific group behavior recognition dataset, and shows how it could be usedThis work was supported in part by Projects CICYT TIN2011-28620-C02-01, CICYT TEC2011-28626-C02-02, CAMCONTEXTS (S2009/TIC-1485) and DPS2008-07029-C02-02Publicad