Phototactic Robot Tunable by Sensorial Delays

The presence of a delay between sensing and reacting to a signal can determine the long-term behavior of autonomous agents whose motion is intrinsically noisy. In a previous work [M. Mijalkov, A. McDaniel, J. Wehr, and G. Volpe, Phys. Rev. X 6, 011008 (2016)], we have shown that sensorial delay can alter the drift and the position probability distribution of an autonomous agent whose speed depends on the illumination intensity it measures. Here, using theory, simulations, and experiments with a phototactic robot, we generalize this effect to an agent for which both speed and rotational diffusion depend on the illumination intensity and are subject to two independent sensorial delays. We show that both the drift and the probability distribution are influenced by the presence of these sensorial delays. In particular, the radial drift may have positive as well as negative sign, and the position probability distribution peaks in different regions depending on the delay. Furthermore, the presence of multiple sensorial delays permits us to explore the role of the interaction between them.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure

Tissue-specific Salmonella Typhimurium gene expression during persistence in pigs

Salmonellosis caused by Salmonella Typhimurium is one of the most important bacterial zoonotic diseases. The bacterium persists in pigs resulting in asymptomatic 'carrier pigs', generating a major source for Salmonella contamination of pork. Until now, very little is known concerning the mechanisms used by Salmonella Typhimurium during persistence in pigs. Using in vivo expression technology (IVET), a promoter-trap method based on Delta purA attenuation of the parent strain, we identified 37 Salmonella Typhimurium genes that were expressed 3 weeks post oral inoculation in the tonsils, ileum and ileocaecal lymph nodes of pigs. Several genes were expressed in all three analyzed organs, while other genes were only expressed in one or two organs. Subsequently, the identified IVET transformants were pooled and reintroduced in pigs to detect tissue-specific gene expression patterns. We found that efp and rpoZ were specifically expressed in the ileocaecal lymph nodes during Salmonella peristence in pigs. Furthermore, we compared the persistence ability of substitution mutants for the IVET-identified genes sifB and STM4067 to that of the wild type in a mixed infection model. The Delta STM4067::kanR was significantly attenuated in the ileum contents, caecum and caecum contents and faeces of pigs 3 weeks post inoculation, while deletion of the SPI-2 effector gene sifB did not affect Salmonella Typhimurium persistence. Although our list of identified genes is not exhaustive, we found that efp and rpoZ were specifically expressed in the ileocaecal lymph nodes of pigs and we identified STM4067 as a factor involved in Salmonella persistence in pigs. To our knowledge, our study is the first to identify Salmonella Typhimurium genes expressed during persistence in pigs

Application of the DIVA principle to Salmonella Typhimurium vaccines in pigs avoids interference with serosurveillance programmes

Salmonellosis is one of the most important bacterial zoonotic diseases in humans and Salmonella infections are often linked with the consumption of contaminated pork. In order to reduce Salmonella Typhimurium infections in humans, minimization of the Salmonella intake into the food chain is important. Vaccination has been proposed to control Salmonella infections in pigs. However, pigs vaccinated with the current vaccines cannot be discriminated from infected pigs with the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) -based serological tests used in European serosurveillance programmes. We therefore examined which LPS encoding genes of Salmonella Typhimurium can be deleted to allow differentiation of infected and vaccinated pigs, without affecting the vaccine strain’s protective capacity. For this purpose, deletion mutants in Salmonella strain 112910a, used as vaccine strain, were constructed in the LPS encoding genes: ∆rfbA, ∆rfaL, ∆rfaJ, ∆rfaI, ∆rfaG and ∆rfaF. Inoculation of BALB/c mice with the parent strain, ∆rfaL, ∆rfbA or ∆rfaJ strains but not the ∆rfaG, ∆rfaF or ∆rfaI strains protected significantly against subsequent infection with the virulent Salmonella Typhimurium strain NCTC12023. Immunization of piglets with the ∆rfaJ or ∆rfaL mutants resulted in the induction of a serological response lacking detectable antibodies against LPS. This allowed a differentiation between sera from pigs immunized with the ∆rfaJ or ∆rfaL strains and sera from pigs infected with their isogenic wild type strain

Attentional biases for emotional facial stimuli in currently depressed patients with bipolar disorder

Compared to the extensive research focussing on cognitive vulnerability factors underlying the onset and maintenance of major depressive disorder, studies investigating dysfunctional processing of emotional information in bipolar depression remain scarce. Therefore, this experimental study examined the nature and time course of attentional biases for emotional information in depressive patients with bipolar disorder. Fourteen currently depressed patients with Bipolar I Disorder (BD) and 14 nondepressed control participants (NC), matched for age, gender and education level, performed an emotional modification of the spatial cueing task. Cues consisted of angry, positive and neutral facial expressions presented for 200 and 1,000 ins. BD patients showed an enhanced cue validity effect for angry faces and had more difficulties in disengaging attention away from angry as well as happy facial expressions compared to NC participants, who conversely demonstrated a "protective bias" away from negative information. This pattern of differential attentional processing was only found within the early stage of information processing at a presentation duration of 200 ins. These results provide evidence for deficits at the early stages of attentive processing of emotional information in depressed bipolar patients compared to healthy controls