Grid-enabled sentinel network for cancer surveillance

International audienc

Innovative in silico approaches to address avian flu using grid technology

The recent years have seen the emergence of diseases which have spread very quickly all around the world either through human travels like SARS or animal migration like avian flu. Among the biggest challenges raised by infectious emerging diseases, one is related to the constant mutation of the viruses which turns them into continuously moving targets for drug and vaccine discovery. Another challenge is related to the early detection and surveillance of the diseases as new cases can appear just anywhere due to the globalization of exchanges and the circulation of people and animals around the earth, as recently demonstrated by the avian flu epidemics. For 3 years now, a collaboration of teams in Europe and Asia has been exploring some innovative in silico approaches to better tackle avian flu taking advantage of the very large computing resources available on international grid infrastructures. Grids were used to study the impact of mutations on the effectiveness of existing drugs against H5N1 and to find potentially new leads active on mutated strains. Grids allow also the integration of distributed data in a completely secured way. The paper presents how we are currently exploring how to integrate the existing data sources towards a global surveillance network for molecular epidemiology.Comment: 7 pages, submitted to Infectious Disorders - Drug Target

Vibrotactile pedals : provision of haptic feedback to support economical driving

The use of haptic feedback is currently an underused modality in the driving environment, especially with respect to vehicle manufacturers. This exploratory study evaluates the effects of a vibrotactile (or haptic) accelerator pedal on car driving performance and perceived workload using a driving simulator. A stimulus was triggered when the driver exceeded a 50% throttle threshold, past which is deemed excessive for economical driving. Results showed significant decreases in mean acceleration values, and maximum and excess throttle use when the haptic pedal was active as compared to a baseline condition. As well as the positive changes to driver behaviour, subjective workload decreased when driving with the haptic pedal as compared to when drivers were simply asked to drive economically. The literature suggests that the haptic processing channel offers a largely untapped resource in the driving environment, and could provide information without overloading the other attentional resource pools used in driving

HOPE, an open platform for medical data management on the grid

International audienc

Myopia risk behaviour related to the COVID-19 lockdown in Europe:The generation R study

Purpose: To battle the spreading of the COVID-19 virus, nationwide lockdowns were implemented during 2020 and 2021. Reports from China revealed that their strict home confinements led to an increase in myopia incidence. The Netherlands implemented a more lenient lockdown, which allowed children to go outside. We evaluated the association between COVID-19 restrictions, myopia risk behaviour and myopia progression in Dutch teenagers. Method: A total of 1101 participants (mean age 16.3 ± 3.65 yrs) completed questionnaires about their activities before, during and after lockdown (March–October 2020). We used a repeated-measures ANOVA to compare time use between these time periods. Ocular measurements were acquired before the COVID-19 pandemic when participants were 13 years old; only 242 participants had ocular measurements at 18 years of age at the time of this analysis. Linear regression analyses were used to evaluate the association between lifestyle factors and myopia progression. Results: Children were on average 16.2 (1.03) years of age during lockdown. Total nearwork increased from 8.11 h/day to 11.79 h/day, and remained higher after lockdown at 9.46 h/day (p &lt; 0.001). Non-educational nearwork increased by 2.22 h/day (+49%) during lockdown and was associated with faster axial length progression (B 0.002 mm/h/year; SE 0.001 p = 0.03). Before and during lockdown, the mean time spent outdoors was similar (1.78 h/day and 1.80 h/day, respectively). After lockdown, time spent outdoors decreased to 1.56 h/day (p &lt; 0.001). Conclusion: The Dutch lockdown significantly increased digitised nearwork in adolescents but did not affect outdoor exposure. The changes in time spent performing nearwork remained after the lockdown measures had ended. We expect that the COVID-19 pandemic may lead to an increase in myopia prevalence and progression in European children.</p

Divergent ECC1 effector homologs modulate host-specific virulence in cucurbit-infecting Fusarium oxysporum

Fusarium oxysporum (Fo) is a soil-borne fungal pathogen that causes wilt disease in over one hundred plant species, with host-specific strains classified into formae speciales (ff. spp.). For example, Fo f. sp. melonis (Fom) only causes disease in melon while Fo f. sp. radicis-cucumerinum (Forc) can infect multiple cucurbit species. The virulence factors underlying host specificity in these cucurbit-infecting formae speciales have largely remained elusive, limiting our understanding of Fo-host interactions. A previous study identified Effector for Cucurbit Compatibility 1a (ECC1a), an avirulence protein from Fom that restricts cucumber infection when introduced into Forc. Here, we show that ECC1a is part of a previously unrecognized effector gene family, ECC1, abundantly present in strains that infect one or more cucurbit species. However, the role of this family in host compatibility is still poorly understood. Using gene knockout- and replacement strategies, we show that the ECC1 gene family contributes to virulence of both Forc and Fom on cucumber and melon. Specifically, ECC1a contributes to Fom virulence on melon and Forc virulence on cucumber. ECC1b appears to be primarily involved in Fom virulence on melon.Expression profiling reveals a potential role of ECC1 during early stages of infection, suggesting involvement in initial host colonization. Together, these findings highlight the host- and forma specialis-specific functions of ECC1 homologs in Fo pathogenicity