ANTHROPOGENIC CHANGE VS NATURAL VARIABILITY: LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE CONTINUOUS PLANKTON RECORDER

The Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) surveys have sampled plankton in the North Atlantic using ships-of-opportunity since 1958. The resulting unique, methodologically-consistent, multi-decadal datasets can distinguish between anthropogenic and natural variability. I show an example of a plankton group that may be driven by anthropogenic effects, another one that is likely due to natural variability and discuss changes in the North Atlantic plankton community structure in the context of multiple stressors. As anthropogenic CO2 emissions acidify the oceans, calcifiers such as coccolithophores are expected to be detrimentally affected. Our first study shows that CPR coccolithophore occurrence increased basin-wide from ~2 to over 20% from 1965-2010. Using Random Forest models to examine >20 possible environmental drivers, I found that CO2 and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) were the best predictors. Since coccolithophore photosynthesis is strongly carbon-limited, increasing CO2 and temperature may be accelerating its growth rate. It is generally assumed that the distribution of the marine nitrogen fixer Trichodesmium, is restricted to warm, (sub)tropical oligotrophic waters. However, the second study demonstrates that Trichodesmium are widely distributed in “cold” North Atlantic waters. Trichodesmium presence near the British Isles increased approximately five-fold during the 1980s-1990s. Using NCEP reanalysis wind and pressure anomalies, and the Sahel precipitation anomaly, I propose that this can be explained by an increase in the Saharan dust source, coupled with wind and pressure anomalies that opened a pathway for iron-rich dust transport. As Trichodesmium can grow in temperatures below 20o C, the N2 fixation capability of Trichodesmium strains from extra-tropical regions must be reevaluated. This has important implications for the global Nitrogen budget. The third study expands the first study to examine nine plankton groups, testing the hypothesis of a plankton phase shift in the North Atlantic. Results show a shift from large to small phytoplankton groups, changes in phenology, an increase in calcifiers and evidence of bottom-up and top-down effects. However, the change was not abrupt and the different timings and sensitivities to forcings across plankton groups suggest multiple drivers. No single parameter explained all the observed changes, although CO2, AMO and diatoms were important predictors. Primary Advisor: Carlos del Castillo, PhD, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences Second Reader: Anand Gnandesikan, PhD, Department of Earth and Planetary Science

Acute onset supraclavicular lymphadenopathy coinciding with intramuscular mRNA vaccination against COVID-19 may be related to vaccine injection technique, Spain, January and February 2021

Monitoring adverse reactions following immunisation is essential, particularly for new vaccines such as those against COVID-19. We describe 20 cases of acute onset of a single supraclavicular lymphadenopathy manifesting between 24 h and 9 days after ipsilateral intramuscular administration of an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine, referred to our WHO Collaborating Centre for Vaccine Safety. Our results indicate that the swelling of supraclavicular lymph nodes following immunisation may constitute a benign and self-limited condition, related to a higher than recommended injection siteS

Risk Analysis by Age on the Burden of Meningococcal Disease in Spain.

We conducted an age-based risk analysis of meningococcal disease in Spain to provide prospects on a rational vaccine schedule in pediatrics. We used the National Hospital Registry to estimate meningococcal hospitalization rate. Population census for each year was used as the denominator in computing the hospitalization rate. We computed the odds ratio of each age using 5-year-old children. There was a dramatic decline in risk in 1 year (OR 0.58) to 4 years of age (OR 0.21). The risk continued to decline until 13 years old. Afterward, it had a minimal upward trajectory observed at 14–17 years old (OR 0.08). Infants and adolescents are at continued risk of invasive meningococcal disease in Spain. The highest risk occurs in infants. Surveillance data, together with evidence on long-term immunogenicity and capacity for herd effect, should be considered for a more relevant immunization schedule

Using the ACO algorithm for path searches in social networks

The original publication is available at www.springerlink.comOne of the most important types of applications currently being used to share knowledge across the Internet are social networks. In addition to their use in social, professional and organizational spheres, social networks are also frequently utilized by researchers in the social sciences, particularly in anthropology and social psychology. In order to obtain information related to a particular social network, analytical techniques are employed to represent the network as a graph, where each node is a distinct member of the network and each edge is a particular type of relationship between members including, for example, kinship or friendship. This article presents a proposal for the efficien solution to one of the most frequently requested services on social networks; namely, taking different types of relationships into account in order to locate a particular member of the network. The solution is based on a biologically-inspired modificatio of the ant colony optimization algorithm.This study was funded through a competitive grant awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science for the THUBAN Project (TIN2008-02711) and through MA2VICMR consortium (S2009/TIC-1542, http://www.mavir.net), a network of excellence funded by the Madrid Regional Government.Publicad

A Bio-Inspired Algorithm for Searching Relationships in Social Networks

Proceedings of: Third International Conference on Computational Aspects of Social Networks (CASoN).Took place 2011, October,19-21 , in Salamanca (Sapin).The event Web site is http://www.mirlabs.net/cason11/Nowadays the Social Networks are experiencing a growing importance. The reason of this is that they enable the information exchange among people, meeting people in the same field of work or establishing collaborations with other research groups. In order to manage social networks and to find people inside them, they are usually represented as graphs with persons as nodes and relationships between them as edges. Once this is done, establishing contact with anyone involves searching the chain of people to reach him/her, that is, the search of the path inside the graph which joins two nodes. In this paper, a new algorithm based on nature is proposed to realize this search: SoS-ACO (Sense of Smell - Ant Colony Optimization). This algorithm improves the classical ACO algorithm when it is applied in huge graphs.This study was funded through a competitive grant awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science for the THUBAN Project (TIN2008-02711) and through MA2VICMR consortium (S2009/TIC-1542, http://www.mavir.net), a network of excellence funded by the Madrid Regional Government.Publicad

Rotavirus and autoimmunity

Rotavirus, a major etiological agent of acute diarrhea in children worldwide, has historically been linked to autoimmunity. In the last few years, several physiopathological approaches have been proposed to explain the leading mechanism triggering autoimmunity, from the old concept of molecular mimicry to the emerging theory of bystander activation and break of tolerance. Epidemiological and immunological data indicate a strong link between rotavirus infection and two of the autoimmune pathologies with the highest incidence: celiac disease and diabetes. The role for current oral rotavirus vaccines is now being elucidated, with a so far positive protective association demonstrated

Interpretation and generation incremental management in natural interaction systems

Human interaction develops as an exchange of contributions between participants. The construction of a contribution is not an activity unilaterally created by the participant who produces it, but rather it constitutes a combined activity between the producer and the rest of the participants who take part in the interaction, by means of simultaneous feedback. This paper presents an incremental approach (without losing sight of how turns are produced throughout time), in which the interpretation of contributions is done as they take place, and the final generated contributions are the result of constant rectifications, reformulations and cancellations of the initially formulated contributions. The Continuity Manager and the Processes Coordinator components are proposed. The integration of these components in natural interaction systems allow for a joint approach to these problems. Both have been implemented and evaluated in a real framework called LaBDA-Interactor System which has been applied to the "dictation domain". We found that the degree of naturalness of this turn-taking approach is very close to the human one and it significantly improves the interaction cycle. (c) 2012 British Informatics Society Limited.The development of this approach and its construction as part of the Natural Interaction System LaBDA-Interactor has been par-tially supported by MA2VICMR (Regional Government of Madrid, S2009/TIC-1542), SemAnts (Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade, AVANZA I+D TSI-020110-2009-419); THUBAN (Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, TIN2008-02711); and ‘Access Channel to Digital Resources and Contents’ (Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, TSI-020501-2008-54).Publicad

Enhancing Natural Interaction with Circumstantial Knowledge

This work focuses the circumstantial knowledge management for a specific need: the achievement of Natural Interaction (NI). In first place, a cognitive approach to NI is glanced as the framework for such knowledge management. This approach reflects some certain requirements for the whole interaction system, which are met by a multi-agent system implementation. Finally, a Situation Modeling is proposed for a first approach to the interaction circumstances management.The presented work has been developed within the MAVIR project (S-505/TIC/0267) endorsed by the Regional Government of Madrid, and is being extended through the SOPAT project (CIT-410000-2007-12), supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education.Publicad

Conocimiento circunstancial en sistemas de interacción natural

Proceedinds of: The 2nd International Symposium on Ubiquitous Computing & Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI'07), CEDI'07. Took place 2007, september 11-14, in Zaragoza (Spain).El trabajo presentado en este artículo se centra en la gestión del conocimiento circunstancial para mejorar los aspectos relacionados con la interacción natural. En primer lugar se presenta la arquitectura cognitiva, marco que sustenta el sistema de interacción. Esta arquitectura está compuesta de distintos modelos (de funcionamiento autónomo) cuya implementación se basa en sistemas multi-agente. Por último se presenta una primera aproximación del modelo de situación, uno de los componentes más relevantes del sistema, para la gestión de la circunstancia de la interacción.Este trabajo ha sido desarrollado en el marco del proyecto MAVIR (respaldado por la Conmunidad Autónoma de Madrid). y está siendo extendido en el proyecto SOPAT: Servicio de Orientación Personalizada y Accesible para el Turismo (CIT-410000-2007-12), financiado por el Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia.Publicad

Meningococcal group B vaccine for the prevention of invasive meningococcal disease caused by Neisseria meningitidis serogroup B

Invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) is a major public health concern because of its high case fatality, long-term morbidity, and potential to course with outbreaks. IMD caused by Nesseira meningitidis serogroup B has been predominant in different regions of the world like Europe and only recently broadly protective vaccines against B serogroup have become available. Two protein-based vaccines, namely 4CMenB (Bexsero®) and rLP2086 (Trumenba®) are currently licensed for use in different countries against MenB disease. These vaccines came from a novel technology on vaccine design (or antigen selection) using highly specific antigen targets identified through whole-genome sequence analysis. Moreover, it has the potential to confer protection against non-B meningococcus and against other Neisserial species such as gonococcus. Real-world data on the vaccine-use are rapidly accumulating from the UK and other countries which used the vaccine for control of outbreak or as part of routine immunization program, reiterating its safety and efficacy. Additional data on real-life effectiveness, long-term immunity, and eventual herd effects, including estimates on vaccine impact for cost-effectiveness assessment are further needed. Given the predominance of MenB in Europe and other parts of the world, these new vaccines are crucial for the prevention and public health control of the disease, and should be considered.S