Unbiased RNA shotgun metagenomics in social and solitary wild bees detects associations with eukaryote parasites and new viruses

The diversity of eukaryote organisms and viruses associated with wild bees remains poorly characterized in contrast to the well-documented pathosphere of the western honey bee, Apis mellifera. Using a deliberate RNA shotgun metagenomic sequencing strategy in combination with a dedicated bioinformatics workflow, we identified the (micro-)organisms and viruses associated with two bumble bee hosts, Bombus terrestris and Bombus pascuorum, and two solitary bee hosts, Osmia corn uta and Andrena vaga. Ion Torrent semiconductor sequencing generated approximately 3.8 million high quality reads. The most significant eukaryote associations were two protozoan, Apicystis bombiand Crithidia bombi, and one nematode parasite Sphaerularia bombi in bumble bees. The trypanosome protozoan C. bombi was also found in the solitary bee 0. corn uta. Next to the identification of three honey bee viruses Black queen cell virus, Sacbrood virus and Varroa destructor virus-1 and four plant viruses, we describe two novel RNA viruses Scaldis River bee virus (SRBV) and Ganda bee virus (GABV) based on their partial genomic sequences. The novel viruses belong to the class of negative-sense RNA viruses, SRBV is related to the order Mononegavirales whereas GABV is related to the family Bunyaviridae. The potential biological role of both viruses in bees is discussed in the context of recent advances in the field of arthropod viruses. Further, fragmentary sequence evidence for other undescribed viruses is presented, among which a nudivirus in 0. corn uta and an unclassified virus related to Chronic bee paralysis virus in B. terrestris. Our findings extend the current knowledge of wild bee parasites in general and addsto the growing evidence of unexplored arthropod viruses in valuable insects

Characterizing microstructural alterations in a ratmodel of mild traumatic brain injury

1. INTRODUCTION Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is an acquired brain injury that contributes to a substantial number of deaths (mortality rate: 15 per 100 000 in Europe) and a high number of cases of permanent disability (incidence rate: 235 per 100 000 in Europe). Most of the TBI patients have mild TBI (mTBI), a condition that shows no abnormalities on conventional imaging but can result in persisting cognitive defects. Diffusion imaging is an MRI technique sensitive to diffusion of water molecules in the brain and can detect subtle changes in white matter organization. The aim of this study is to investigate whether advanced diffusion MRI scanning can be used to detect microstructural changes in a rat model of mTBI. 2. MATERIALS AND METHODS 2.1 Animal model Nine female Wistar rats weighing 250 ± 19.6 g obtained mTBI utilizing the Marmarou weight drop model [1]. In brief, in anesthetized rats a steel helmet was fixed on the skull 1/3 before and 2/3 behind bregma. The rat was positioned under a 450 g brass weight on a foam bed. The weight was dropped from a height of 1m guided through a plexiglass column. The foam bed together with the rat was rapidly removed away from the column to prevent a second injury. Rats were allowed to recover for one week. 2.2 Imaging and data analysis MRI data was acquired on a 7T MRI scanner (PharmaScan, Bruker, Ettlingen) before and 1 week after injury. T2-weighted images were acquired for anatomical reference. Multishell diffusion data was acquired with multiple directions (b=800, 1500 and 2000; 32, 46 and 64 directions, respectively). Diffusion weighted images were corrected for EPI, motion and eddy current distortions and quantitative maps were calculated for the diffusion tensor and diffusion kurtosis model in ExploreDTI [2]. Furthermore diffusion kurtosis tensor estimation was done using weighted linear least squares method and maps for white matter metrics were calculated using the model of Fieremans et al. [3]. The maps were co-registered in SPM12 with a template based on the local population and a volume-of-interest analysis was performed in the hippocampus, cingulum and corpus callosum using Amide toolbox [4]. Differences between the two time points were calculated for each map using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test in SPSS. P < 0.05 was considered significant. 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The DTI and DKI metrics were not significantly different between the two time points. The axonal water fraction (AWF) was significantly increased in the cingulum, corpus callosum and hippocampus after mTBI and could be explained by axonal swelling. To verify this hypothesis, histological analysis is currently ongoing. Sections will be stained for synapses, astrocytes, neurons and myelin. References Marmarou, A. et al. A new model of diffuse brain injury in rats: Part I. J Neuroscience, 80, 291-300, 1994. Leemans, A. et al. ExploreDTI: a graphical toolbox for processing, analyzing, and visualizing diffusion MR data. In: 17th Annual Meeting of Intl Soc Mag Reson Med, p. 3537, Hawaii, USA, 2009 Fieremans, E. et al. White matter characterization with diffusional kurtosis imaging, Neuroimage 58(1): 177-188, 2011. Loening, AM. et al. AMIDE: A Free Software Tool for Multimodality Medical Image Analysis. Molecular Imaging, 2(3):131-137, 2003

Het vertrouwen van ouders van zuigelingen, peuters en adolescenten in vaccinatie in Vlaanderen

status: publishe

Evaluatie van het HPV-vaccinatieprogramma voor 12-jarige meisjes in Vlaanderen.

status: publishe

When Worlds Collide: AI-Created, Human-Mediated Video Description Services and the User Experience

| openaire: EC/H2020/780069/EU//MeMADThis paper reports on a user-experience study undertaken as part of the H2020 project MeMAD (‘Methods for Managing Audiovisual Data: Combining Automatic Efficiency with Human Accuracy’), in which multimedia content describers from the television and archive industries tested Flow, an online platform, designed to assist the post-editing of automatically generated data, in order to enhance the production of archival descriptions of film content. Our study captured the participant experience using screen recordings, the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ), a benchmarked interactive media questionnaire and focus group discussions, reporting a broadly positive post-editing environment. Users designated the platform’s role in the collation of machine-generated content descriptions, transcripts, named-entities (location, persons, organisations) and translated text as helpful and likely to enhance creative outputs in the longer term. Suggestions for improving the platform included the addition of specialist vocabulary functionality, shot-type detection, film-topic labelling, and automatic music recognition. The limitations of the study are, most notably, the current level of accuracy achieved in computer vision outputs (i.e. automated video descriptions of film material) which has been hindered by the lack of reliable and accurate training data, and the need for a more narratively oriented interface which allows describers to develop their storytelling techniques and build descriptions which fit within a platform-hosted storyboarding functionality. While this work has value in its own right, it can also be regarded as paving the way for the future (semi)automation of audio descriptions to assist audiences experiencing sight impairment, cognitive accessibility difficulties or for whom ‘visionless’ multimedia consumption is their preferred option.Peer reviewe