Functional Effects of Parasites on Food Web Properties during the Spring Diatom Bloom in Lake Pavin: A Linear Inverse Modeling Analysis

This study is the first assessment of the quantitative impact of parasitic chytrids on a planktonic food web. We used a carbon-based food web model of Lake Pavin (Massif Central, France) to investigate the effects of chytrids during the spring diatom bloom by developing models with and without chytrids. Linear inverse modelling procedures were employed to estimate undetermined flows in the lake. The Monte Carlo Markov chain linear inverse modelling procedure provided estimates of the ranges of model-derived fluxes. Model results support recent theories on the probable impact of parasites on food web function. In the lake, during spring, when ‘inedible’ algae (unexploited by planktonic herbivores) were the dominant primary producers, the epidemic growth of chytrids significantly reduced the sedimentation loss of algal carbon to the detritus pool through the production of grazer-exploitable zoospores. We also review some theories about the potential influence of parasites on ecological network properties and argue that parasitism contributes to longer carbon path lengths, higher levels of activity and specialization, and lower recycling. Considering the “structural asymmetry” hypothesis as a stabilizing pattern, chytrids should contribute to the stability of aquatic food webs

“Be an ambassador for change that you would like to see”: a call to action to all stakeholders for co-creation in healthcare and medical research to improve quality of life of people with a neuromuscular disease

BACKGROUND: Patient and public involvement for co-creation is increasingly recognized as a valuable strategy to develop healthcare research targeting patients’ real needs. However, its practical implementation is not as advanced and unanimously accepted as it could be, due to cultural differences and complexities of managing healthcare programs and clinical studies, especially in the rare disease field. MAIN BODY: The European Neuromuscular Centre, a European foundation of patient organizations, involved its key stakeholders in a special workshop to investigate the position of the neuromuscular patient community with respect to healthcare and medical research to identify and address gaps and bottlenecks. The workshop took place in Milan (Italy) on January 19–20, 2018, involving 45 participants who were mainly representatives of the patient community, but also included experts from clinical centers, industry and regulatory bodies. In order to provide practical examples and constructive suggestions, specific topics were identified upfront. The first set of issues concerned the quality of life at specific phases of a patient’s life, such as at the time of diagnosis or during pediatric to adult transition, and patient involvement in medical research on activities in daily living including patient reported outcome measures. The second set of issues concerned the involvement of patients in the management of clinical research tools, such as registries and biobanks, and their participation in study design or marketing authorization processes. Introductory presentations were followed by parallel working group sessions, to gain constructive contributions from all participants. The concept of shared decision making was used to ensure, in discussions, a partnership-based identification of the wishes and needs of all stakeholders involved, and the “ladder of participation” tool served as a model to evaluate the actual and the desired level of patients’ involvement in all topics addressed. A general consensus on the outcome of the meeting was collected during the final plenary session. This paper reports the outcome of the workshop and the specific suggestions derived from the analysis of the first set of topics, related to quality of life. The outcomes of the second set of topics are reported elsewhere and are only briefly summarized herein for the sake of completeness. CONCLUSIONS: The neuromuscular community proved to be very active and engaged at different levels in the healthcare initiatives of interest. The workshop participants critically discussed several topics, providing practical examples where different stakeholders could play a role in making a change and bridging gaps. Overall, they indicated the need for education of all stakeholders for better communication, where everyone should become an ambassador to promote real change. Support should also come from institutions and healthcare bodies both at structural and economic level

Effects of multiple stressors on cyanobacteria abundance vary with lake type

Blooms of cyanobacteria are a current threat to global water security that is expected to increase in the future because of increasing nutrient enrichment, increasing temperature and extreme precipitation in combination with prolonged drought. However, the responses to multiple stressors, such as those above, are often complex and there is contradictory evidence as to how they may interact. Here we used broad scale data from 494 lakes in central and northern Europe, to assess how cyanobacteria respond to nutrients (phosphorus), temperature and water retention time in different types of lakes. Eight lake types were examined based on factorial combinations of major factors that determine phytoplankton composition and sensitivity to nutrients: alkalinity (low and medium‐high), colour (clear and humic) and mixing intensity (polymictic and stratified). In line with expectations, cyanobacteria increased with temperature and retention time in five of the eight lake types. Temperature effects were greatest in lake types situated at higher latitudes, suggesting that lakes currently not at risk could be affected by warming in the future. However, the sensitivity of cyanobacteria to temperature, retention time and phosphorus varied among lake types highlighting the complex responses of lakes to multiple stressors. For example, in polymictic, medium‐high alkalinity, humic lakes cyanobacteria biovolume was positively explained by retention time and a synergy between TP and temperature while in polymictic, medium‐high alkalinity, clear lakes only retention time was identified as an explanatory variable. These results show that, although climate change will need to be accounted for when managing the risk of cyanobacteria in lakes, a ‘one‐size fits‐all’ approach is not appropriate. When forecasting the response of cyanobacteria to future environmental change, including changes caused by climate and local management, it will be important to take this differential sensitivity of lakes into account

Multi-objective optimization in a job shop with energy costs through hybrid evolutionary techniques

Energy costs are an increasingly important issue in real-world scheduling, for both economic and environmental reasons. This paper deals with a variant of the well-known job shop scheduling problem, where we consider a bi-objective optimization of both the weighted tardiness and the energy costs. To this end, we design a hybrid metaheuristic that combines a genetic algorithm with a novel local search method and a linear programming approach. We also propose an efficient procedure for improving the energy cost of a given schedule. In the experimental study we analyse our proposal and compare it with the state of the art and also with a constraint programming approach, obtaining competitive results

Supporting Interaction in the RoboCare Intelligent Assistive Environment

The ROBOCARE project is aimed at creating an instance of integrated environment with software and robotic agents to actively assist an elderly person at home. In particular the project has synthesized a proactive environment for continuous daily activity monitoring in which an autonomous robot acts as a main interactor with the person. This paper accounts for the combination of features that create interactive capabilities for personalized and mixed-initiative interaction with the assisted person. A project with an intelligent assistant The use of intelligent technology for supporting elderly people at home has been addressed in various research projects in the last years (Pollack et al. 2003; Pineau et al. 2003; Haigh et al. 2003; Pollack 2005)

Efficient Approaches for Solving a Multiobjective Energy-aware Job Shop Scheduling Problem

RCRA International Workshop on “Experimental Evaluation of Algorithms for Solving Problems with Combinatorial Explosion” (24th. 2017. Bari, Italy