Abundant Intra-Subtype Reassortment Revealed in H13N8 Influenza Viruses.

Influenza A viruses (IAVs) pose a serious threat to global health. On the one hand, these viruses cause seasonal flu outbreaks in humans. On the other hand, they are a zoonotic infection that has the potential to cause a pandemic. The most important natural reservoir of IAVs are waterfowl. In this study, we investigated the occurrence of IAV in birds in the Republic of Buryatia (region in Russia). In 2020, a total of 3018 fecal samples were collected from wild migratory birds near Lake Baikal. Of these samples, 11 were found to be positive for the H13N8 subtype and whole-genome sequencing was performed on them. All samples contained the same virus with the designation A/Unknown/Buryatia/Arangatui-1/2020. To our knowledge, virus A/Unknown/Buryatia/Arangatui-1/2020 is the first representative of the H13N8 subtype collected on the territory of Russia, the sequence of which is available in the GenBank database. An analysis of reassortments based on the genome sequences of other known viruses has shown that A/Unknown/Buryatia/Arangatui-1/2020 arose as a result of reassortment. In addition, a reassortment most likely occurred several decades ago between the ancestors of the viruses recently collected in China, the Netherlands, the United States and Chile. The presence of such reassortment emphasizes the ongoing evolution of the H13N8 viruses distributed in Europe, North and East Asia, North and South America and Australia. This study underscores the importance of the continued surveillance and research of less-studied influenza subtypes.

TIMo-A Dataset for Indoor Building Monitoring with a Time-of-Flight Camera.

We present TIMo (Time-of-flight Indoor Monitoring), a dataset for video-based monitoring of indoor spaces captured using a time-of-flight (ToF) camera. The resulting depth videos feature people performing a set of different predefined actions, for which we provide detailed annotations. Person detection for people counting and anomaly detection are the two targeted applications. Most existing surveillance video datasets provide either grayscale or RGB videos. Depth information, on the other hand, is still a rarity in this class of datasets in spite of being popular and much more common in other research fields within computer vision. Our dataset addresses this gap in the landscape of surveillance video datasets. The recordings took place at two different locations with the ToF camera set up either in a top-down or a tilted perspective on the scene. Moreover, we provide experimental evaluation results from baseline algorithms.

Nonlinear Optimization of Light Field Point Cloud.

The problem of accurate three-dimensional reconstruction is important for many research and industrial applications. Light field depth estimation utilizes many observations of the scene and hence can provide accurate reconstruction. We present a method, which enhances existing reconstruction algorithm with per-layer disparity filtering and consistency-based holes filling. Together with that we reformulate the reconstruction result to a form of point cloud from different light field viewpoints and propose a non-linear optimization of it. The capability of our method to reconstruct scenes with acceptable quality was verified by evaluation on a publicly available dataset.

Polyaniline/Biopolymer Composite Systems for Humidity Sensor Applications: A Review.

The development of polyaniline (PANI)/biomaterial composites as humidity sensor materials represents an emerging area of advanced materials with promising applications. The increasing attention to biopolymer materials as desiccants for humidity sensor components can be explained by their sustainability and propensity to absorb water. This review represents a literature survey, covering the last decade, which is focused on the interrelationship between the core properties and moisture responsiveness of multicomponent polymer/biomaterial composites. This contribution provides an overview of humidity-sensing materials and the corresponding sensors that emphasize the resistive (impedance) type of PANI devices. The key physicochemical properties that affect moisture sensitivity include the following: swelling, water vapor adsorption capacity, porosity, electrical conductivity, and enthalpies of adsorption and vaporization. Some key features of humidity-sensing materials involve the response time, recovery time, and hysteresis error. This work presents a discussion on various types of humidity-responsive composite materials that contain PANI and biopolymers, such as cellulose, chitosan and structurally related systems, along with a brief overview of carbonaceous and ceramic materials. The effect of additive components, such as polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), for film fabrication and their adsorption properties are also discussed. The mechanisms of hydration and proton transfer, as well as the relationship with conductivity is discussed. The literature survey on hydration reveals that the textural properties (surface area and pore structure) of a material, along with the hydrophile-lipophile balance (HLB) play a crucial role. The role of HLB is important in PANI/biopolymer materials for understanding hydration phenomena and hydrophobic effects. Fundamental aspects of hydration studies that are relevant to humidity sensor materials are reviewed. The experimental design of humidity sensor materials is described, and their relevant physicochemical characterization methods are covered, along with some perspectives on future directions in research on PANI-based humidity sensors.

Pancreas transplantation with isolated splenic artery blood supply - Single center experience.

BACKGROUND: The blood supply of the native pancreas by three arterial lines from the celiac trunk system (splenic artery and common hepatic artery) and the superior mesenteric artery forces surgeons to perform vascular reconstruction to provide sufficient intra-organ blood flow into the graft. The purpose of our study was to assess the possibility of pancreas transplantation with an isolated splenic artery blood supply. METHODS: From January 2012 to July 2018, simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplantation (SPKT) was performed in 21 patients. Gender: male - 11 (52,4%), female 10 (47,6%). Recipients aged 26 to 54, the median age was 38 [34; 42] years. In 6 (28,6%) recipients, the organ perfusion was carried out through the splenic artery alone; in the rest, it was performed through the splenic and inferior pancreaticoduodenal artery exiting from the superior mesenteric artery of the graft. The transplant function, the quality of carbohydrate metabolism compensation, the objective characteristics of intra-organ blood flow was assessed. RESULTS: There were no statistically significant differences in the volume blood flow characteristics revealed by CT-perfusion and laboratory data in the study groups. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the assessment of the function and quality of blood supply to the transplant, the possibility of performing pancreas transplantation with an isolated splenic artery blood supply had been proved.