Discovery of entomopathogenic fungi across geographical regions in southern China on pine sawyer beetle Monochamus alternatus and implication for multi-pathogen vectoring potential of this beetle

Entomopathogen-based biocontrol is crucial for blocking the transmission of vector-borne diseases; however, few cross-latitudinal investigations of entomopathogens have been reported for vectors transmitting woody plant diseases in forest ecosystems. The pine sawyer beetle Monochamus alternatus is an important wood borer and a major vector transmitting pine wilt disease, facilitating invasion of the pinewood nematode Bursaphelenchus xylophilus (PWN) in China. Due to the limited geographical breadth of sampling regions, species diversity of fungal associates (especially entomopathogenic fungi) on M. alternatus adults and their potential ecological functions have been markedly underestimated. In this study, through traditional fungal isolation with morphological and molecular identification, 640 fungal strains (affiliated with 15 genera and 39 species) were isolated from 81 beetle cadavers covered by mycelia or those symptomatically alive across five regional populations of this pest in southern China. Multivariate analyses revealed significant differences in the fungal community composition among geographical populations of M. alternatus, presenting regionalized characteristics, whereas no significant differences were found in fungal composition between beetle genders or among body positions. Four region-representative fungi, namely, Lecanicillium attenuatum (Zhejiang), Aspergillus austwickii (Sichuan), Scopulariopsis alboflavescens (Fujian), and A. ruber (Guangxi), as well as the three fungal species Beauveria bassiana, Penicillium citrinum, and Trichoderma dorotheae, showed significantly stronger entomopathogenic activities than other fungi. Additionally, insect-parasitic entomopathogenic fungi (A. austwickii, B. bassiana, L. attenuatum, and S. alboflavescens) exhibited less to no obvious phytopathogenic activities on the host pine Pinus massoniana, whereas P. citrinum, Purpureocillium lilacinum, and certain species of Fusarium spp.—isolated from M. alternatus body surfaces—exhibited remarkably higher phytopathogenicity. Our results provide a broader view of the entomopathogenic fungal community on the vector beetle M. alternatus, some of which are reported for the first time on Monochamus spp. in China. Moreover, this beetle might be more highly-risk in pine forests than previously considered, as a potential multi-pathogen vector of both PWN and phytopathogenic fungi

Real-time Monitoring for the Next Core-Collapse Supernova in JUNO

Core-collapse supernova (CCSN) is one of the most energetic astrophysical events in the Universe. The early and prompt detection of neutrinos before (pre-SN) and during the SN burst is a unique opportunity to realize the multi-messenger observation of the CCSN events. In this work, we describe the monitoring concept and present the sensitivity of the system to the pre-SN and SN neutrinos at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), which is a 20 kton liquid scintillator detector under construction in South China. The real-time monitoring system is designed with both the prompt monitors on the electronic board and online monitors at the data acquisition stage, in order to ensure both the alert speed and alert coverage of progenitor stars. By assuming a false alert rate of 1 per year, this monitoring system can be sensitive to the pre-SN neutrinos up to the distance of about 1.6 (0.9) kpc and SN neutrinos up to about 370 (360) kpc for a progenitor mass of 30$M_{\odot}$ for the case of normal (inverted) mass ordering. The pointing ability of the CCSN is evaluated by using the accumulated event anisotropy of the inverse beta decay interactions from pre-SN or SN neutrinos, which, along with the early alert, can play important roles for the followup multi-messenger observations of the next Galactic or nearby extragalactic CCSN.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figure

Potential of Core-Collapse Supernova Neutrino Detection at JUNO

JUNO is an underground neutrino observatory under construction in Jiangmen, China. It uses 20kton liquid scintillator as target, which enables it to detect supernova burst neutrinos of a large statistics for the next galactic core-collapse supernova (CCSN) and also pre-supernova neutrinos from the nearby CCSN progenitors. All flavors of supernova burst neutrinos can be detected by JUNO via several interaction channels, including inverse beta decay, elastic scattering on electron and proton, interactions on C12 nuclei, etc. This retains the possibility for JUNO to reconstruct the energy spectra of supernova burst neutrinos of all flavors. The real time monitoring systems based on FPGA and DAQ are under development in JUNO, which allow prompt alert and trigger-less data acquisition of CCSN events. The alert performances of both monitoring systems have been thoroughly studied using simulations. Moreover, once a CCSN is tagged, the system can give fast characterizations, such as directionality and light curve

Detection of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background with JUNO

As an underground multi-purpose neutrino detector with 20 kton liquid scintillator, Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is competitive with and complementary to the water-Cherenkov detectors on the search for the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB). Typical supernova models predict 2-4 events per year within the optimal observation window in the JUNO detector. The dominant background is from the neutral-current (NC) interaction of atmospheric neutrinos with 12C nuclei, which surpasses the DSNB by more than one order of magnitude. We evaluated the systematic uncertainty of NC background from the spread of a variety of data-driven models and further developed a method to determine NC background within 15\% with {\it{in}} {\it{situ}} measurements after ten years of running. Besides, the NC-like backgrounds can be effectively suppressed by the intrinsic pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) capabilities of liquid scintillators. In this talk, I will present in detail the improvements on NC background uncertainty evaluation, PSD discriminator development, and finally, the potential of DSNB sensitivity in JUNO

Severe pediatric adenoviral pneumonia combined with invasive pulmonary aspergillosis

Abstract Background This study aimed to analyze the clinical characteristics of severe pediatric adenoviral pneumonia combined with invasive pulmonary aspergillosis. Methods We retrospectively analyzed the clinical data of five children clinically diagnosed with severe adenoviral pneumonia combined with invasive pulmonary aspergillosis at Xiamen Children’s Hospital. Results These five children included one boy and four girls, with ages of onset ranging from 8 months and 15 days to 2 years and 2 months. All of them had fever with a mean duration of 11–35 days and cough. Pulmonary imaging was performed, which revealed solid pulmonary opacification in all five children, pleural effusion in two children, and emphysema and multiple small cavity formations in one child. Multiple microbiological tests were performed on the 5 children, and adenovirus was positive in the alveolar lavage fluid for the first time, and aspergillus culture was positive in the second test. On tracheoscopy, the bronchial mucosa was seen to be congested and edematous or pale and eroded; white moss-like material was seen adhering to the tracheal wall or even blocking the airway. The five children were treated with a combination of two or more broad-spectrum antimicrobials, glucocorticoids, and gamma globulins and underwent bronchoscopy. Voriconazole was added in the treatment regimen after the diagnosis of aspergillosis (28–34 days of treatment). Four of the children were discharged in good condition with a mean total length of hospital stay of 17–47 days. The other child leave against medical advice. Follow-up 3–5 months after discharge showed that one child had been cured; two children had developed obliterative bronchiolitis; one child had developed bronchiectasis; and the remaining child who had been discharged spontaneously was not contactable via telephone. Conclusions Immune disorders and antibiotic and steroid treatments for adenovirus infection are high-risk factors for secondary invasive pulmonary aspergillosis in children. Prolonged fever and cough are the main manifestations, but which lack specificity, and bronchoscopic mucosal-specific injury evaluation and alveolar lavage fluid culture are helpful in the diagnosis of aspergillosis. The long-term prognosis of severe pediatric adenoviral pneumonia combined with invasive pulmonary aspergillosis maybe poor

Attention-Guided Network with Densely Connected Convolution for Skin Lesion Segmentation

The automatic segmentation of skin lesions is considered to be a key step in the diagnosis and treatment of skin lesions, which is essential to improve the survival rate of patients. However, due to the low contrast, the texture and boundary are difficult to distinguish, which makes the accurate segmentation of skin lesions challenging. To cope with these challenges, this paper proposes an attention-guided network with densely connected convolution for skin lesion segmentation, called CSAG and DCCNet. In the last step of the encoding path, the model uses densely connected convolution to replace the ordinary convolutional layer. A novel attention-oriented filter module called Channel Spatial Fast Attention-guided Filter (CSFAG for short) was designed and embedded in the skip connection of the CSAG and DCCNet. On the ISIC-2017 data set, a large number of ablation experiments have verified the superiority and robustness of the CSFAG module and Densely Connected Convolution. The segmentation performance of CSAG and DCCNet is compared with other latest algorithms, and very competitive results have been achieved in all indicators. The robustness and cross-data set performance of our method was tested on another publicly available data set PH2, further verifying the effectiveness of the model

Fluorinated or brominated meta‐diamides as the new scaffolds for the treatment of rice bacterial leaf blight

Abstract Rice is the main calorie source and stable food for half of the global population worldwide, while the rice bacterial leaf blight has been one of the main challenges to rice yields and quality. Herein, we revealed the novel scaffolds, fluorinated or brominated meta‐diamides (F1–F44), for treating the rice bacterial leaf bright for the first time. The major findings are as follows: (i) based on the different methods, fluorinated meta‐diamides and brominated meta‐diamides were obtained, respectively, and the latter has rarely been reported; (ii) fluorinated meta‐diamide F17 showed a protection activity of 51.3% and a curative activity of 48.7% against the rice bacterial leaf blight caused by the bacteria Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo), which were better than those of used bactericides. Scanning electron microscopy suggested that F17 may deform and rupture Xoo; and (iii) the majority of brominated meta‐diamides were more active than corresponding fluorinated meta‐diamides, which revealed the antibacterial activity of brominated meta‐diamides for the first time. The present work is expected to provide new ideas for meta‐diamides for treating rice bacterial leaf blight