STEER: Exploring the dynamic relationship between social information and networked media through experimentation

With the growing popularity of social networks, online video services and smart phones, the traditional content consumers are becoming the editors and broadcasters of their own stories. Within the EU FP7 project STEER, project partners have developed a novel system of new algorithms and toolsets that extract and analyse social informatics generated by social networks. Combined with advanced networking technologies, the platform creates services that offer more personalized and accurate content discovery and retrieval services. The STEER system has been deployed in multiple geographical locations during live social events such as the 2014 Winter Olympics. Our use case experiments demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the underlying technologies

Physical modelling of water, fauna and flora: knowledge gaps, avenues for future research and infrastructural needs

peer reviewedPhysical modelling is a key tool for generating understanding of the complex interactions between aquatic organisms and hydraulics, which is important for management of aquatic environments under environmental change and our ability to exploit ecosystem services. Many aspects of this field remain poorly understood and the use of physical models within eco-hydraulics requires advancement in methodological application and substantive understanding. This paper presents a review of the emergent themes from a workshop tasked with identifying the future infrastructure requirements of the next generation of eco-hydraulics researchers. The identified themes are: abiotic factors, adaptation, complexity and feedback, variation, and scale and scaling. The paper examines these themes and identifies how progress on each of them is key to existing and future eðorts to progress our knowledge of eco-hydraulic interactions. Examples are drawn from studies on biofilms, plants, and sessile and mobile fauna in shallow water fluvial and marine environments. Examples of research gaps and directions for educational, infrastructural and technological advance are also presented.PISCES work package of HYDRALAB FP

Influenza vaccine effectiveness against influenza A subtypes in Europe: Results from the 2021-2022 I-MOVE primary care multicentre study

Background: In 2021-2022, influenza A viruses dominated in Europe. The I-MOVE primary care network conducted a multicentre test-negative study to measure influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE). Methods: Primary care practitioners collected information on patients presenting with acute respiratory infection. Cases were influenza A(H3N2) or A(H1N1)pdm09 RT-PCR positive, and controls were influenza virus negative. We calculated VE using logistic regression, adjusting for study site, age, sex, onset date, and presence of chronic conditions. Results: Between week 40 2021 and week 20 2022, we included over 11 000 patients of whom 253 and 1595 were positive for influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 and A(H3N2), respectively. Overall VE against influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 was 75% (95% CI: 43-89) and 81% (95% CI: 45-93) among those aged 15-64 years. Overall VE against influenza A(H3N2) was 29% (95% CI: 12-42) and 25% (95% CI: -41 to 61), 33% (95% CI: 14-49), and 26% (95% CI: -22 to 55) among those aged 0-14, 15-64, and over 65 years, respectively. The A(H3N2) VE among the influenza vaccination target group was 20% (95% CI: -6 to 39). All 53 sequenced A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses belonged to clade 6B.1A.5a.1. Among 410 sequenced influenza A(H3N2) viruses, all but eight belonged to clade 3C.2a1b.2a.2. Discussion: Despite antigenic mismatch between vaccine and circulating strains for influenza A(H3N2) and A(H1N1)pdm09, 2021-2022 VE estimates against circulating influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 were the highest within the I-MOVE network since the 2009 influenza pandemic. VE against A(H3N2) was lower than A(H1N1)pdm09, but at least one in five individuals vaccinated against influenza were protected against presentation to primary care with laboratory-confirmed influenza.This project has received funding from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control with in the framework contract ECDC/2018/029.S

A survey of three-dimensional turbo codes and recent performance enhancements

This paper presents a survey of two techniques intended for improving the performance of conventional turbo codes (TCs). The first part of this work is dedicated to explore a hybrid concatenation structure combining both parallel and serial concatenation based on a three-dimensional (3D) code. The 3D structure, recently introduced by Berrou et al., is able to ensure large asymptotic gains at very low error rates at the expense of an increase in complexity and a loss in the convergence threshold. In order to reduce the loss in the convergence threshold, the authors consider first a time-varying construction of the post-encoded parity. Then, they investigate the association of the 3D TC with high-order modulations according to the bit-interleaved coded modulation approach. The second part of this study deals with irregular TCs. In contrast to 3D TCs, although irregular TCs can achieve performance closer to capacity, their asymptotic performance is very poor. Therefore, the authors propose irregular turbo coding schemes with suitable interleavers in order to improve their distance properties. Finally, a modified encoding procedure, inspired from the 3D TC, makes it possible to obtain irregular TCs which perform better than the corresponding regular codes in both the waterfall and the error floor regions

STEER - D6.3 Dissemination report and revised exploitations plans

STEER aimed to experiment with advanced practices and technological solutions that can improve the user experience of members of the people ecosystem defined by the project as “Social Telemedia”. Such an ecosystem is already showing, and steadily reinforcing, a great potential for influencing the relationships that, exploiting informatics tools and communication networks, communities of people worldwide are growingly establishing around shared interests, attitudes or professional occupations.Besides the achievement of specific research objectives, STEER aimed to pursue a coordinated strategy and actions for the dissemination of results, which involved submissions to relevant journals, conferences and standardization bodies, and (guest) lectures and talks on STEER topics. Opportunities in the market segments where each industrial partner is active should materialize in the proposition of new or enhanced products or services for social media / social TV and consumer / home devices and applications, which the cooperation in the project makes possible.As a final step in this direction, this deliverable, dissemination report and revised exploitations plans, contains an account of the project dissemination activities that include scientific papers, press releases, leaflets and white papers as well as all standardization contributions and potential patents. Furthermore, it present all partners’ revised (final) exploitation plans in the light of the outcome of the executed experiments.STEER partners disseminated actively their results, involving submissions to relevant journal papers, attending and publishing in conferences and standardization bodies, providing lectures on our technologies, and posting regular updates on our communication platforms. By combining computer sciences and communication networks information, STEER proved to be very successful in bringing useful tools to communities of people sharing common interests. These business opportunities have been exploited in many different sectors. In addition to the concrete tools developed under STEER and already commercially available are presented.This document further has taken into account crucial feedback and comments as expressed by the STEER review committee, during and after the first review of the STEER project, in March 2014. Specifically, this document has presented a fully updated STEER website design, and significantly increased presence on social and video platforms. This document further contains a description of STEER products. Also, the document has presented per-partner exploitation plans, covering both within-consortium follow-up as well as opportunities with external stakeholders. Lastly, this document contains an ethical challenges chapter, including detailed information on how these challenges were met during the experiment, thus providing important information to prospective stakeholders

The Active Site Topology of Aspergillus niger Endopolygalacturonase II as Studied by Site-directed Mutagenesis

Strictly conserved charged residues among polygalacturonases (Asp-180, Asp-201, Asp-202, His-223, Arg-256, and Lys-258) were subjected to site-directed mutagenesis in Aspergillus niger endopolygalacturonase II. Specific activity, product progression, and kinetic parameters (Km and Vmax) were determined on polygalacturonic acid for the purified mutated enzymes, and bond cleavage frequencies on oligogalacturonates were calculated. Depending on their specific activity, the mutated endopolygalacturonases II were grouped into three classes. The mutant enzymes displayed bond cleavage frequencies on penta- and/or hexagalacturonate different from the wild type endopolygalacturonase II. Based on the biochemical characterization of endopolygalacturonase II mutants together with the three-dimensional structure of the wild type enzyme, we suggest that the mutated residues are involved in either primarily substrate binding (Arg-256 and Lys-258) or maintaining the proper ionization state of a catalytic residue (His-223). The individual roles of Asp-180, Asp-201, and Asp-202 in catalysis are discussed. The active site topology is different from the one commonly found in inverting glycosyl hydrolases.

2015/16 I-MOVE/I-MOVE+ multicentre case-control study in Europe: Moderate vaccine effectiveness estimates against influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 and low estimates against lineage-mismatched influenza B among children

BACKGROUND: During the 2015/16 influenza season in Europe, the cocirculating influenza viruses were A(H1N1)pdm09 and B/Victoria, which was antigenically distinct from the B/Yamagata component in the trivalent influenza vaccine. METHODS: We used the test-negative design in a multicentre case-control study in twelve European countries to measure 2015/16 influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE) against medically attended influenza-like illness (ILI) laboratory-confirmed as influenza. General practitioners swabbed a systematic sample of consulting ILI patients and a random sample of influenza-positive swabs was sequenced. We calculated adjusted VE against influenza A(H1N1)pdm09, A(H1N1)pdm09 genetic group 6B.1 and influenza B overall and by age group. RESULTS: We included 11 430 ILI patients, of which 2272 were influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 and 2901 were influenza B cases. Overall VE against influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 was 32.9% (95% CI: 15.5-46.7). Among those aged 0-14, 15-64 and ≥65 years, VE against A(H1N1)pdm09 was 31.9% (95% CI: -32.3 to 65.0), 41.4% (95% CI: 20.5-56.7) and 13.2% (95% CI: -38.0 to 45.3), respectively. Overall VE against influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 genetic group 6B.1 was 32.8% (95% CI: -4.1 to 56.7). Among those aged 0-14, 15-64 and ≥65 years, VE against influenza B was -47.6% (95% CI: -124.9 to 3.1), 27.3% (95% CI: -4.6 to 49.4) and 9.3% (95% CI: -44.1 to 42.9), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Vaccine effectiveness (VE) against influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 and its genetic group 6B.1 was moderate in children and adults, and low among individuals ≥65 years. Vaccine effectiveness (VE) against influenza B was low and heterogeneous among age groups. More information on effects of previous vaccination and previous infection is needed to understand the VE results against influenza B in the context of a mismatched vaccine.ECDC has contributed fund for the coordination and some study sites under the Framework contract no. ECDC/2014/026 for the individuals aged less than 65 years. The I‐MOVE/I‐MOVE+ study team is very grateful to all patients, general practitioners, paediatricians, hospital teams, laboratory teams and regional epidemiologists who have contributed to the study. We acknowledge the authors, originating and submitting laboratories of the sequences from GISAID's EpiFlu Database used for this study. All submitters of data may be contacted directly via the GISAID website http://www.gisaid.org.S