Dr. Mona Meyer is not included in the author byline. She should be listed as the sixteenth author and affiliated with Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada. The contributions of this author are as follows: Contributed reagents/materials/analysis/tools.


Reason for Corrigendum:There was a mistake in the first section of the Results. LOC_Os01g40500 should be LOC_Os02g40500. The authors apologize for the mistake. This error does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way.DC, SM, and PV conceived and designed the experiments. All experiments performed by PV and SV. DC, SM, and PV analyzed the data. DC, RD, VP, and OD revised the paper. DC, PV, RD, OD, and SV wrote the paper. All authors have read and approve of the final manuscript.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


Leishmania parasites, the causative agents of leishmaniasis. Cutaneous leishmaniasis is an increasing public health problem in the Republic of Suriname and is mainly caused by Leishmania (Vianna) guyanensis, but L. (V.) braziliensis, L. (L.) amazonensis, and L. (V.) naiffi also infect humans. Transmission occurs predominantly in the forested hinterland of the country. Information regarding the potential vectors of leishmaniasis in Suriname is limited. This study aims to broaden the knowledge about vectors involved in the transmission of cutaneous leishmaniasis in Suriname. For this purpose, sand flies were characterized in various foci of cutaneous leishmaniasis in the country, the districts of Para, Brokopondo, and Sipaliwini.Sand flies (Diptera: Psychodidae) are the vectors of Sand flies were collected in areas around mining plots and villages using CDC light traps in the period between February 2011 and March 2013. They were categorized by examination of the spermathecea  and the external genitalia .Lutzomyia aragaoi, Lu. ayrozai, Lu. damascenoi, and Lu. sordellii) that had never before been described for Suriname. Five percent of the catch comprised Lu. squamiventris sensu lato, one female of which was positive with L. (V.) braziliensis and was captured in a gold mining area in Brokopondo. Other sand fly species found positive for Leishmania parasites were Lu. trichopyga, Lu. ininii, and Lu. umbratilis, comprising 32, 8, and 4%, respectively, of the catch. These were captured at gold mining areas in Brokopondo and Sipaliwini, but the Leishmania parasites they had ingested could not be identified due to insufficient amounts of DNA.A total of 2,743 sand fly specimens belonging to 34 different species were captured, including four species , Lu. trichopyga, Lu. ininii, and Lu. umbratilis - have been found to harbor Leishmania parasites. The latter were among the most abundant species captured. These observations may contribute to the understanding of leishmaniasis transmission and the development of control programs in Suriname.The sand fly fauna in Suriname is highly diverse and comprises  Leishmania. It is encountered in eighty-eight tropical and sub-tropical countries throughout the world where it mainly affects poor communities, and has a worldwide prevalence of 12 million cases [Phlebotomus in the Old World or the genus Lutzomyia in the New World [Leishmaniasis is a parasitic disease caused by protozoan flagellates of the genus ew World . The visew World ,5.The Republic of Suriname has a surface area of 163,820 km2, is situated on the north-east coast of South America, and borders the Atlantic Ocean to the north, French Guiana to the east, Brazil to the south, and Guyana to the west  comprises more than three-quarters of its land surface, and consists largely of sparsely inhabited savanna and dense tropical rain forest. It is mainly populated by Maroons and Amerindians who live in villages along the major rivers. It is also the part of the country with extensive gold mining, bauxite mining, logging, and ecotourism activities that have been growing in scale and economic importance in recent years . SurinamCutaneous leishmaniasis is an emerging disease in Suriname where it is known as 'bosyaws’ or 'busiyasi’ . In thisLeishmania (Vianna) guyanensis[Lutzomyia umbratilis[L. (V.) guyanensis in other countries of the Amazon basin [Leishmania species have recently been identified in Suriname, including L. (V.) lainsoni and L. (L.) amazonensis[L. (V.) naiffi[L. (V.) braziliensis[Leishmania species have also been identified in other Amazonian countries, but not in Suriname [The majority of cutaneous leishmaniasis cases in Suriname 95.8%) has been attributed to infection with uyanensis. So far,mbratilis, the pro5.8% has on basin , and thion basin . In addiazonensis, L. (V.).) naiffi, as wellziliensis. The sanSuriname .L. (L.) amazonensis and L. (V.) braziliensis to cause the more serious muco-cutaneous form of the disease, it is important to characterize the sand fly species responsible for the transmission of leishmaniasis in Suriname. For this reason, the sand fly diversity in various foci of cutaneous leishmaniasis in the interior of Suriname has been assessed in the present study. The results obtained may improve the understanding of leishmaniasis transmission in the country and contribute to the development of control programs.In view of the increasing prevalence of cutaneous leishmaniasis in the country, and considering the ability of Sand flies were collected between February 2011 and March 2013 in the forested hinterland of Suriname. The collection sites were selected on the basis of cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis reported by the Dermatology Service and the Medical Mission. The latter institution is also a division of Suriname’s Ministry of Health and provides primary health care in the hinterland.The collection sites were grouped according to their locations in the different administrative districts. In the southern district of Sipaliwini Figure , three pSand flies were collected using a total of six CDC light traps. The traps were set for four consecutive nights from 18.00 h to 07.00 h, one to two meters above-ground. In the villages, the traps were placed at peridomestic sites, in dog kennels, chicken coops, and around agricultural plots. In the gold mining locations, the traps were mainly placed in the forest and in animal burrows, far from human residences.The collected sand flies were sedated by placing them on ice, and males and females were separated. The males were stored in 70% alcohol, then mounted in Berlese’s fluid. The females were stored in Angero NA™  conservation buffer in preparation for DNA extraction. The sand flies were categorized by species according to the classification system of Young and Duncan  by examiet al. [Five to ten females of the same species were pooled for DNA extraction in 1 mL L6 lysis buffer consisting of 50 mM Tris–HCl , 5 M guSCN , 20 mM EDTA , and 0.1% Triton-X-100 , using a protocol described by Boom et al. . In brieLeishmania-specific DNA was detected by subjecting the DNA samples to quantitative real time PCR (qPCR) according to a protocol described by van der Meide et al.[L. donovani DNA dilution series ranging from 10 to 107 parasites per reaction.de et al., with slLeishmania species were identified using a polymerase chain reaction–restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR–RFLP) assay described by Marfurt et al.[L. (V.) guyanensis (M4147), L. (V.) braziliensis, L. (L.) amazonensis (LTB 16), and L. (V.) naiffi (L2204) were included as references. The PCR products were incubated for 2 h at 37°C with the restriction enzyme HaeIII, after which the resulting restriction digestions were analyzed on a 2% agarose  gel. Fragments were visualized under UV light.The infecting rt et al.. In eachAltogether, 2,743 sand flies were collected in the seven collection sites, including 1,740 males and 1,003 females . The most abundant species were Lu. trichopyga , as well as Lu. infraspinosa, Lu. ubiquitalis, and Lu. innini, each of which comprised roughly 10% of the total catch  guyanensis – was collected at Merian and Sabajo Hills (Table Lu. flaviscutellata - the proven vector of L. (L.) amazonensis - at Merian  guyanensis, comprised only 0.4% of the total catch of 2,743 specimens  that was captured at Sabajo Hills and that had visibly taken a blood meal, was positive for L. (V.) braziliensis , and four sand fly species infected with Leishmania parasites are reported (Lu. squamiventris (s.l.) with L. (V.) braziliensis, and Lu. umbratilis, Lu. ininii, Lu trichopyga with Leishmania spp.).Although the L (V.) guyanensis - as mentioned above, the main infecting Leishmania species in Suriname - typically occur in the hinterland during the rainy seasons [The number of sand fly species collected in this study (34) is close to the number (39) described by Burgos & Hudson . However seasons .Lu. ayrozai. This sand fly is a proven vector of L. (V.) naiffi in Brazil [L. (V.) braziliensis in Bolivia [Lu. innini, Lu. ubiquitalis, Lu. umbratilis, and Lu. flaviscutellata are not new for Suriname. However, Lu. innini comprised almost one-tenth of the total catch in the present study, and a French Guianese study reported on specimens of this sand fly species infected with Leishmania species [Lu. ubiquitalis, Lu. umbratilis, as well as Lu. flaviscutellata constituted approximately 10, 4, and 1%, respectively, of the total number of captured sand flies, and are proven vectors of L. (V.) lainsoni[L. (V.) guyanensis[L. (L.) amazonensis[Leishmania species as causative agents of leishmaniasis in Suriname [One of the species found for the first time in Suriname was n Brazil ,21 and o Bolivia . Lu. inn species . And Lu.uyanensis, and L. azonensis, respectSuriname -14, provLeishmania species that could be identified in a sand fly in the present study was L. (V.) braziliensis. This parasite was found in a female specimen of Lu. squamiventris (s.l.) that is generally considered a vector of L. (V.) naiffi in both French Guiana [L. (V.) braziliensis , and two Dutch soldiers with L. (V.) naiffi[Lu. squamiventris (s.l.) could be a vector of L (V.) braziliensis and L (V.) naiffi in Suriname, supporting the possible presence of various Leishmania species in the country.The only h Guiana  and Brazh Guiana . It was .) naiffi. These dLeishmania DNA in several female specimens of Lu. umbratilis. This observation is in accordance with a previous report [Leishmania promastigotes in the anterior part of the gut of females of this sand fly species. Lu. umbratilis is the proven vector of L. (V.) guyanensis in French Guiana [Leishmania DNA in specimens of this sand fly species in the current study strengthens its candidacy as a vector for this Leishmania species in Suriname [Leishmania. In the present study, only few sandflies were found to carry Leishmania parasites (DNA) and more elaborate studies on this topic must be carried out. It is also important to gather information such as infection rates, infectivity, and the presence of metacyclic forms in the mid gut.Another noteworthy finding from the current study was the presence of s report  mentionih Guiana  as well h Guiana  and a feh Guiana ,11 incluh Guiana . TherefoSuriname . HoweverLeishmania species in the country. The abundance and diversity of sand fly species was high in these high-transmission areas, and two sand fly species infected with Leishmania parasites (Lu. squamiventris (s.l.) with L. (V.) braziliensis, and Lu. umbratilis with Leishmania spp.) have been identified.In summary, this study is the first to present a comprehensive and updated list of sand fly species in important foci of cutaneous leishmaniasis in Suriname, including four new records and six proven vectors of the five Leishmania species in the country. This could be due to more encounters with the vectors as a result of the upsurge in economic activities in the forested hinterland [The abundance and diversity of sand fly species in Suriname corresponds with the apparent increase in nterland . As shownterland . The finThe authors declare that they have no competing interests.AK: design of the study, field work, determination of sand flies, molecular analysis, and writing of the manuscript; TS: determination of sand flies, training and advice on catching procedures; AG and AS: catching and determination of sand flies; DM and HS: conception of the study, data analysis, and writing of the manuscript. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.


Pelophylax ridibundus and Pelophylax lessonae, and their hybrids Pelophylax esculentus. P. lessonae and P. esculentus form stable complexes (L-E complexes) in which P. esculentus are hemiclonal. In L-E complexes all the transmitted genomes by P. esculentus carry deleterious mutations which are lethal in homozygosity.Some species of water frogs originated from hybridization between different species. Such hybrid populations have a particular reproduction system called hybridogenesis. In this paper we consider the two species P. esculentus frogs. Finally, simulations show how L-E complexes react to the introduction of translocated P. ridibundus.We analyze, by means of an individual based computational model, L-E complexes. The results of simulations based on the model show that, by eliminating deleterious mutations, L-E complexes collapse. In addition, simulations show that particular female preferences can contribute to the diffusion of deleterious mutations among all P. ridibundus can destabilize L-E complexes.The conclusions are the following: (i) deleterious mutations  strongly contribute to the stability of L-E complexes; (ii) female sexual choice can contribute to the diffusion of deleterious mutations; and (iii) the introduction of  Pelophylax ridibundus Pallas, 1771) and pool frog  can mate producing the hybrid edible frog . P. esculentus can coexist with one or both of the parental species giving rise to mixed populations. Usually, the genotypes of P. ridibundus, P. lessonae and P. esculentus are indicated by RR, LL, and LR, respectively. In Europe there are mixed populations containing P. ridibundus and P. esculentus individuals, called R-E systems, populations with P. lessonae and P. esculentus individuals, called L-E systems, and populations with all three species. Due to the eastern origin of P. ridibundus, R-E complexes are frequently found in Eastern Europe, while L-E systems are widespread throughout the rest of Europe , is given by the probability of randomly taking no mj males, with mi male of the taken ones. Using the hypergeometric probability distribution, We consider that the populations have a reproductive season each year. During this season all the females mate. Female sexual choice is implemented by a of males ,62, i.e.n is, the greater the strength of the female preference. Increasing the n value will lead to a female choosing from a greater number of males, thus mimicking the behaviour of a more discriminating female. In order to obtain stable complexes, we assume a species-specific female preference, in particular, following the studies in  we obtain stable complexes, when P. ridibundus are inviable. This result is analogous to the ones in . Many of these mutations are either not significant or not deleterious. Values of the mutation rate in the interval , used in our model, take both the above considerations into account.For computational purposes we have considered only three stages of mutation accumulation on the ation in , we assuR genomes in the population. Our model builds on the previous ones by assuming sexual choices in the populations. However, it differs by considering a population in which deleterious mutations are not present, but are generated according to a mutation rate. In addition, only when this accumulation reaches a given threshold does it become lethal. This leads us to conclude that sexual selection not only stabilizes the complexes, but can also force mutation diffusion.Our study differs significantly with the results of other authors with regard to the diffusion of mutations. The models in -60 proviNote that our simulations do not enable us to prove the hypothesis suggested in . ComputaP. ridibundus into stable L-E complexes. P. ridibundus can mate both with P. esculentus, producing P. ridibundus, and with P. lessonae (primary hybridization), producing P. esculentus. Primary hybrids can have low fertility rates [P. ridibundus in a way that P. lessonae males are seldom chosen . On the other hand, the preference of P. lessonae females is mainly for males of their own species. We assign the same fitness both to the introduced P. ridibundus and to those generated by matings of P. ridibundus with P. esculentus. This is in accordance with the semi-natural experiments in [P. ridibundus fitness, which is lower than the fitness of the resident P. lessonae and P. esculentus because we consider that a marshy environment with a low oxygen level, where P. lessonae and P. esculentus live, is less suitable for P. ridibundus.Another point that we study with our model is the consequence of introducing ty rates , thus thments in . HoweverP. ridibundus often out-compete the other species resulting in a mono-specific population, when their fitness is comparable to the resident population’s. Although the introduction of P. ridibundus results in new R hemiclones, which contribute to the genetic diversity of hybrids, our results do not support the hypothesis presented in [P. ridibundus is competitive with the fitness of the resident population (δe=0.0), P. ridibundus males will survive and P. ridibundus often will replace the original population. Note that in this case we also have stable L-E-R complexes as the outcome. This is a system where two independent populations coexist, an L-E complex and a P. ridibundus population. The L-E complex is stable due to female preferences and lethal mutations on the R genomes, while the P. ridibundus population is stable because of the absence of deleterious mutations, which are purged by selection. The two populations do not cross because the number of individuals in both is high enough to ensure that females of one population in most cases find a preferred male, of the same population, in the set randomly chosen by the best-of- n procedure.The results show that, as predicted in , the intented in  that thiP. ridibundus individuals will not survive for long, given their unfitness, but P. ridibundus frogs, before their death, can introduce R genomes without mutation in the P. esculentus population, thus provoking the collapse of the complex.The whole population collapses when the introduced frogs have a low fitness. In this case, P. ridibundus are at a considerable disadvantage, the introduced unfit population is out-competed. During their short survival time, P. ridibundus females are not able to have a sufficient number of matings with P. esculentus males, thus they cannot introduce a sufficient number of R genomes without mutations into the P. esculentus population.Finally, by assuming that P. lessonae and P. esculentus. The individual based model considers not only the genotypes, but also the age of each individual and the average lifespan. In addition, female preferences (implemented by a best-of- n procedure) and ecological selection are considered.We have presented an individual-based computational model to study L-E water frog populations, i.e. complexes composed of We believe that our results highlight that: R genomes strongly contribute, together with sexual preferences, to maintaining the stability of such complexes,- deleterious mutations in the R genomes carrying deleterious mutations in L-E complexes, and- female sexual choice can contribute to the diffusion of P. ridibundus can destroy L-E complexes.- the introduction of The authors declare that they have no competing interests.All authors conceived the computational model. PB programmed the simulator and performed the experiments. All authors contributed to write the paper. All authors read and approved the manuscript.


The first two authors, Jihyeon Lim and Zhongbo Liu, should be noted as contributing equally to this work, not as corresponding authors. The publisher apologizes for the error.yuling.chi@einstein.yu.edu.The sole corresponding author is Yuling Chi, who can be contacted at


Phlebotomus and 3 of Genus Sergentomyia were identified. Four species including P. papatasi (3.98%), P. sergenti (1.14%), S. tiberiadis (87.18%), and S. baghdadis (7.7%) were found indoors. Six species including P. papatasi (3.47%), P. sergenti (3.17%), P. alexandri (0.1%), S. tiberiadis (77.74%), S. baghdadis (15.41%), and one female of S. clydei (0.11%) were collected from outdoors. Sand flies started to appear from March and disappear at the end of January. There was only one peak in the density curve in July. The study revealed that S. tiberiadis and S. baghdadis could enter indoors which 89 and 81.8% of them were found blood-fed, respectively. Moreover, P. papatasi, S. tiberiadis, and S. baghdadis were active indoors and outdoors in most months of the year. Nested-PCR of P. papatasi females was positive against kinetoplast DNA of L. major and L. turanica and also mixed natural infections were found by L. gerbilli and L. turanica. Moreover, mixed infections by L. major and L. turanica were observed in this species. Sergentomyia clydei and S. tiberiadis were found to be negative to any DNA of Leishmania species. Phlebotomus sergenti females were found infected with DNA of L. turanica and this is the first report of natural infection and detection of the parasite from this sand fly species in worldwide.Cutaneous leishmaniasis is the most important health problem in the city of Bushehr, southwestern Iran. The objective of the study was to determine some ecological aspects of sand flies in the city during 2010–2011. Sand flies were collected monthly from outdoors and indoors by sticky traps at four selected districts of the city. They were also dissected and examined by nested-PCR for identification of the parasite during August–September of 2011. A total of 1234 adult sand flies were collected and 6 species including 3 of Genus  There is a long history of Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL) in Iran. The oldest traditional medical book has been written by an Iranian scientist, Avicenna , which was completed in 1025, about 1000 years ago. It is called Qanun (The Laws of Medicine) and it was used as a textbook until eighteenth century in the universities of European and Islamic countries. In this book, Avicenna has mentioned on cutaneous lesions of his patients, which was called Khyroonieh, with long duration and the treatment of the ulcers had been difficult and resistant to different drugs, the clinical signs of the ulcers were imagined to be CL  and Zoonotic Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (ZCL). About 20,000 cases of leishmaniasis are reported annually, which 80% of them are ZCL, 0.5% Visceral Leishmaniasis (VL), and the rest is ACL. Leishmania major and Leishmania tropica. In some parts of the city, Tatera indica is the main reservoir host and Nesokia indica as the secondary reservoir. The prevalence of scar was 5.9% among the inhabitants and for ulcer it was <0.5% in 2010 . The causative agents of the disease are  in 2010 . BushehrBushehr, like most of other Iranian cities, has expanded quickly over recent years. Mass emigration to the city from other parts of the province and urbanization of peripheral with poor facilities and sanitation, construction of buildings nearby rodent colonies, increase of non-endemic people in south Pars Project, Bushehr Military Complex, and the presence of Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant are the main reasons of occurrence of CL in the city. If the disease does not receive considerable attention by the health authorities, it may spread into other parts of the country, which are free from CL. However, the entomological studies on sand flies have not been carried out in the city yet and there is no accurate data on vector(s) of the disease.The objective of this study was to determine some ecological aspects of sand flies in the city of Bushehr during 2010–2011, as an initial step in the development of effective strategies for the control of leishmaniasis in the city.The city of Bushehr located in a plain running along the coastal region on the Persian Gulf coast of southwestern Iran and is the administrative center of its province.Field studies were carried out during 2010–2011, in the city of Bushehr   and outdoors  fixed places, using 30 sticky traps (castor oil coated white papers 20 cm × 35 cm) from the beginning (March) to the end of active season (January). Collected sand flies were stored in 70% ethanol. For species identification, sand flies were mounted in Puri’s medium, produced at the medical entomology department . In caseThe middle parts of female sand flies (including thorax and abdomen) were used; the samples were washed with absolute ethanol and after drying washed three times in cold sterile phosphate-buffered saline . Before submitting the sandflies to the DNA extraction procedure, they were subjected to 13 freeze/thaw cycles, using liquid nitrogen and boiling water and sampler tips or pestle, to disrupt tissue and treated as described for the tissue samples . GenomicL. major, a 206 bp in L. gerbili, and a 141 bp in L. turanica across the internal transcribed spacer 2 [Akhavan et al.  PCR was performed as the same first-round exception for annealing at 58°C for 30 s. At the end, 10 μl of the reaction mix was analyzed by 2.5% agarose gel electrophoresis.We used nested-PCR to identify the fication . All samL. major (MRHO/IR/75/ER), L. gerbilli (MRHO/CN/60/GERBILLI), and L. turanica (MRHO/SU/1983/MARZ-051) as positive controls and distilled water were used as negative controls  agarose gels, and stained with ethidium bromide to visualize by electrophoresis. Initially, ITS-PCR was confirmed with standard DNA of reference strains  MRHO/IR/5/ER, L. MnlI 2 μl at 37°C for 4 h without prior purification using conditions recommended by the supplier . The restriction fragments were subjected to electrophoresis in 3% agarose gel containing ethidium bromide for 3 h at 65 V and visualized on a UV transilluminator.PCR products (20 μl) were digested with P. papatasi (3.98%), P. sergenti (1.14%), S. tiberiadis (87.18%), and S. baghdadis (7.7%). From outdoors, six species including P. papatasi (3.47%), P. sergenti (3.17%), P. alexandri (0.1%), S. tiberiadis (77.74%), S. baghdadis (15.41%), and S. clydei (0.11%) were collected  out of 20 specimens. Table Leishmania infection rate of sand flies by nested-PCR and Figures P. papatasi from outdoors and four of six from indoors were found to be infected by L. major and two of four from outdoors by L. turanica, which produced species-specific bands of 231 and 141 bp, respectively. Mixed natural infections with L. gerbilli and L. turanica were also observed in 16.7% of P. papatasi from indoors. In rodent burrows, mixed infections of both L. major and L. turanica was found in one of two of this sand fly species.Twenty individual female specimens including four species of nd in 11 5% out ofP. segenti from outdoors were found to be infected by L. turanica and produced a PCR band of 141 bp. One of the infected P. sergenti was gravid and the other was semi-gravid and both of them were collected by sticky traps near dwellings.Two out of three female Phlebotomus and two Sergentomyia species were identified for the first time in the city of Bushehr. Phlebotomus papatasi, P. sergenti, and P. alexandri have medical importance because of their proven or probable roles as vectors of parasites causing human leishmaniasis in the Old world  in indoors and 7 months in outdoors and has been caught from all infected districts except Sangi district located in the center of the city. Phlebotomus sergenti is rarely found indoors and its density is very low as 4 male specimens of this species were caught but 28 of these flies were collected from outdoors during August–October in the city. Whether we could not find natural infection of females of this sand fly species by L. tropica, it has been recorded from the cities of Esfahan in the center and Shiraz in the south by molecular and monoclonal diagnostic antibody tests (Phlebotomus sergenti has a wide distribution in the country and extends beyond the distribution of L. tropica.Anthroponotic cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by ountries –14. Thisountries . In the dy tests . PhlebotPhlebotomus alexandri is widely distributed in Palaearctic region, but it is never common (L. infantum and L. major in the provinces of Fars and Khuzestan, southern Iran (r common . It is ur common –18 althor common . It is tr common . The preern Iran .Sergentomyia tiberiadis is a thermophilic and xerophilos species, usually in low and dry rocky mountains of southern Afghanistan, but absent in humid areas. In Iran, it is found in eight provinces, five in the south and the others in the center, northwest, and northeast. Regarding its restricted distribution to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran and specially its presence in human residences in the areas of CL, vectoral role of this species needs to be investigated. Sergentomyia baghdadisis distributed in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and southern Afghanistan, it is thermophilic and hydrophilic species of plains, sometimes numerous in human dwellings and rodent burrows. Whether it is considered as a possible vector of reptilian leishmaniasis, its feeding habits and relation to CL should be investigated as well.L. major and L. turanica and mixed infection of L. gerbilli and L. turanica in P. papatasi, which is agreement with the findings by Strelkova et al. in 1996 and Parvizi and Ready in 2008 (L. major and L. turanica by P. papatasi. This sand fly species is considered as the vector of L. major to humans in the city of Bushehr. Sergentomyia clydei and S. tiberiadis were found to be negative for Leishmania.In the current study, we found DNA of  in 2008  indicatePhlebotomus sergenti was found naturally infected by L. turanica near dwellings and according to our knowledge this is the first report of infection of this sand fly species by L. turanica in worldwide. Natural infection of P. sergenti was found in an experimental study by Chajbullinova and her colleagues in 2012; they showed that in P. sergenti, L. turanica promastigotes were present only on the defecation of blood meal remnants (P. mongolensis and P. anderjevi have been found naturally infected in the field and also in experimental studies (L. turanica from P. papatasi, P. anderjevi, P. caucasicus, P. mongolensis, P. alexandri, and S. clydei in natural foci of ZCL (L. turanica has also been detected from P. papatasi in central and north of the country and also from P. caucasicus in the northwest (L. turanica from other Paraphlebotomus species suggest that vector competence for Leishmania may differ between members of this subgenus. However, further studies are needed to clarify the role of these vectors in the circulation of L. turanica. This Leishmania species has also been detected repeatedly from R. opimus in Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia. It has also been detected from T. indica and Rattus norvegicus in the city of Bushehr and also from Nesokia indica in southwest of the country (remnants . In a st studies . In Turkorthwest . Reports country .L. turanica haplotype TurkHo3, which was previously isolated and identified from sand flies and rodents in this region (P. papatasi and P. sergenti, different aspects on sand fly ecology in the infected districts of the city, drawing attention to the diagnosis and treatment of Leishmania infections, follow up studies on more of Leishmania species from P. sergenti in the area are necessary in order to reach a better understanding of the interaction between L. major and L. turanica are recommended. The management of organic waste, controlled urbanization, and improvement of sanitary condition in the suburbs would reduce to a significant degree the density of sand fly vectors.In 2014, two isolates from two patients in northeast of Iran were examined by Nested-PCR-RFLP and sequenced several times. They were identified as s region . It can The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


Dr. Marie Chattaway should be included as an author for this article. She should be listed as the 12th author, and her affiliation is: 2. Public Health England, London, United Kingdom. The contributions of this author are as follows: Performed the Experiments, analyzed the data.


Elizabethkingia meningoseptica is a gram-negative, obligate aerobic bacterium in the family Flavobacteriaceae  meningosepticum, and in 1994 it was reclassified in the genus Chryseobacterium . In 2005, it was placed in the new genus Elizabethkingia.Named for Elizabeth O. King, a bacteriologist at the US Centers for Disease Control who studied meningitis in infants, eriaceae . King na


Scientific Reports6: Article number: 22184;10.1038/srep22184 Published online: 02222016; Updated: 06022016Peiwu Yu did not contribute directly to this study and has been removed from the author list.The Acknowledgements section now reads:“We sincerely appreciate Peiwu Yu for providing linguistic support. This study has been financially supported by Research Fund of Public Welfare in Health Industry, Health and Family Plan Committee of China (No. 201402015) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81572413).”The Author Contributions statement now reads:“J.C. and K.T. contributed to the design of the study and manuscript writing. J.C. and J.G. contributed to the data extraction and analysis process of the study. K.T. contributed to the financial support and revision of the manuscript.”In addition, Ji Cheng was incorrectly listed as being affiliated with ‘Department of General Surgery, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, 400038 China’. The correct affiliation is listed below:Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430022 China.These errors have now been corrected in the PDF and HTML versions of the Article, as well as the Supplementary Information file.


Dr David B. Donner was incorrectly listed as fifth author of this article. The editors have followed up with the authors' institutions, the Universidad de Concepción and the University of California San Francisco, in relation to the contributions to this work.In line with the recommendation by the University of California San Francisco, where the work described in this article was initiated, Dr Donner should be listed as co-corresponding author and placed before Dr Pincheira's name. The author list should be revised to read as follows:☯*, Roxana Pincheira☯*Carlos Farkas, Carla P. Martins, David Escobar, Matias I. Hepp, Ariel F. Castro, Gerard Evan, José L. Gutiérrez, Robert Warren, David B. Donner*Corresponding Authors: donnerd@surgery.ucsf.edu (DBD); ropincheira@udec.cl (RP)In addition, the Funding statement should be revised to acknowledge support to Dr Warren and Dr Donner, the Funding statement should read as below:This work was supported by Academic Senate Individual Investigator Grant from University of California, San Francisco to RP, DIUC grant from Universidad de Concepcion-Chile, and Regular Fondecyt Grant 1110821-Chile to RP. CF was supported by the Regular Fondecyt Grant 1110821-Chile to RP. DE was supported by a PhD fellowship from CONICYT-Chile. RW was supported by a grant by the Edmund Wattis Littlefield Foundation, DD was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Grant CA67891, a grant from the Cancer Research Coordinating Committee of the University of California and a grant from the Lehman Brothers Research Foundation.The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.


Migraine causes significant disability and severely affects patients' quality of life. A significant proportion of patients is not diagnosed, and therefore not treated adequately. A short and reliable migraine screening tool could improve disease identification. ID-Migraine is a simple and reliable screening tool, originally developed in the United States, but also used in other countries and languages.To assess the performance of the ID-Migraine questionnaire on a Hungarian sample.Outpatients at the Headache Service, Department of Neurology, Semmelweis University completed the Hungarian version of ID-Migraine. The gold standard was the clinical diagnosis made by a headache specialist according to the ICHD criteria. We calculated the sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value and the misclassification rate.305 patients  were enrolled. The diagnosis was migraine in 244, tension type headache in 37, cluster headache in 16 and other headaches in 8. The questionnaire's sensitivity was 0.95 and specificity was 0.56. The positive predictive value was 0.89 and the negative predictive value was 0.78. The misclassification rate was 0.13.The Hungarian version of ID-Migraine was easy to use and well accepted by patients. Its specificity was somewhat lower than that of the original questionnaire; its other measures of performance were similar to those of the original version and its existing Italian, Turkish and Portuguese translations. ID-Migraine seems to be a promising screening tool for migraine in the Hungarian population.No conflict of interest.


J.C. is the American Heart Association (AHA) Endowed Chair in Cardiovascular Research. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.The following grant number from the Telethon Foundation, Italy, to M.L.B. is missing from the Funding section: GGP12282. The complete, correct funding information is as follows: This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute ; and the Telethon Foundation, Italy (S07006TELA and GGP12282 to M.L.B.;


The complete declaration is as follows:In the letter “Instruments for Assessing Risk of Bias and Other Methodological Criteria of Animal Studies: Omission of Well-Established Methods” by Beck et al. [Environ Health Perspect 122:A66–A67 (2014); http://www.ebtox.com). S. Hoffmann, J.R. Fowle III, and J. Goodman are consultants and have worked on a range of toxicity and risk assessment issues for a wide variety of clients. R.A. Becker and N.B. Beck are employed by the American Chemistry Council, a trade association of chemical manufacturers. A. Boobis, D. Fergusson, M. Lalu, and M. Leist are employed by institutes of higher education. In the past 3 years, A. Boobis and M. Leist have worked on a range of toxicity and risk assessment issues for a number of clients; this has included some consultancies.None of the authors received specific financial support or honorarium as compensation for developing this letter. Several authors are members of the Evidence-Based Toxicology Collaboration (EBTC), and M.L. Stephens and S. Hoffmann serve as the secretariats for the North American and European EBTC Steering Committees, respectively, for which they are compensated for their time. The EBTC’s overall aims are to improve toxicological decision making, facilitate the modernization of the toxicological toolbox, and reinvigorate the safety sciences (see The authors regret the error.


AbstractAmphinemura Ris from China are described and illustrated, i.e. A. annulata Du & Ji, sp. n. from Zhejiang, Shanxi, Shaanxi and Guizhou Province, and A. lingulata Du & Wang, sp. n. from Shaanxi and Sichuan Province. A. annulata is similar to A. tricintusidens Wang & Zhu in having an apical cavity of the epiproct, but the epiproct ventral sclerite and the median paraproct lobe of the two species are different. A. lingulata is related to A. didyma Zhu & Yang in having the similar epiproct, but they differ mostly in paraproct median and outer lobes.Two new species of the genus  Amphinemurinae includes seven genera, i.e. PageBreakAmphinemura Ris, Indonemoura Baumann, Mesonemoura Baumann, Protonemura Kempny, Sphaeronemoura Shimizu & Sivec, Malenka Ricker and Tominemoura Sivec & Stark, and the first five genera were found in China. The genus Amphinemura is the largest genus of Amphinemurinae with more than 170 species from the Oriental and Holarctic Regions  in having the similar median and outer paraproct lobe. However, their epiprocts are markedly different. Amphinemura lingulata sp. n. is also similar to Amphinemura zhoui Li & Yang (2008b), Amphinemura helanshana Li, Murányi & Yang (2013) and Amphinemura tibetensis Zhu & Yang (2003) in the epiproct with a pair of sclerotized small projections encasing each side of the tip, but their paraproct lobes are different obviously.This new species is related to Nemouridae, suggested seven species-groups for East Asian species of Amphinemura, i.e. the flavicollis group, theclavigera group, the spinigera group, the sagittata group, the flavostigma group, the pentagona group and themegaloba group, and arranged some Chinese species in these species-groups. However, only the flavostigma group and the megaloba group were subsequently published (Amphinemura will be needed considering the high number of species included.ublished , b. A reAmphinemura, including the two new species documented in this paper, were recorded in China. It can be expected that more Amphinemura species will be found in the future because China is across the Palaearctic and Oriental Region and features not yet faunistically explored areas with suitable resources for stoneflies. Additionally, studies focused on the biogeography, phylogeny and evolution are also needed to further understand the species diversity of Amphinemura.So far 74 species of


We examine differences in the careers of men and women Ph.D.s from two major European universities. Having performed regression analysis, we find that women are more likely than men to be employed in public administration when the alternatives are either academia or industry. Between the latter two alternatives, women are more likely to be employed in academia. These gender differences persist after accounting for Ph.D.s’ and their supervisors’ characteristics. Gender gaps are smaller for Ph.D.s with large research outputs and for those who conducted applied research. Restricting the analysis to Ph.D.s who pursued postdoc training, women are less likely than men to be employed in highly ranked universities, even after controlling for their research outputs. Finally, we find gender differences in Ph.D.s’ appointment to professorship, which are explained by the Ph.D.s’ publication output and the quality of their postdoc training. In the US and in Europe, the participation of women in science has increased over time . DespiteTo fill these gaps, we use detailed information about Ph.D.s in science and engineering from two major European universities, one located in Sweden and the other in Switzerland. The organization of these universities is very similar to that of other European institutes of technology, including the Polytechnic University of Turin, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, the Eindhoven University of Technology, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. We have information about Ph.D.s’ employment outcomes after graduation and whether they pursued careers in academia (including research centers), industry, or public administration (including schools and teaching colleges). This is an important distinction in light of the fact that, at least in the US, an increasing number of Ph.D.s are considering careers outside of academia ,13,14,15We find that women are more likely than men to be employed in public administration when the alternatives are either academia or industry. Moreover, they are more likely to be employed in academia than in industry. These differences persist after accounting for their publication outputs during their Ph.D., their involvement in applied projects, and their supervisors’ characteristics. The gender gap in the probability of being employed in public administration disappears when we compare men and women with large publication outputs. The gender gap in the probability of being employed in industry remains when we compare men and women who participated in applied projects during their Ph.D. However, women involved in applied projects are more likely than women not involved in such projects to be employed in industry. When the sample of Ph.D.s who pursued postdoc training is considered, we find that women are less likely than men to be employed after graduation in highly ranked universities, even after controlling for their research outputs. Finally, we find gender differences in Ph.D.s’ appointment to professorship. These differences are explained by the Ph.D.s’ publication output and the quality of their postdoc training.This paper performs secondary analysis of publicly available data and received IRB exemption from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Even though the data is publicly available, we anonymized and de-identified Ph.D. student information in compliance with IRB regulations.To build our sample, we obtained complete lists of Ph.D.s who graduated from the Swedish Chalmers University of Technology  and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) from 1999 to 2009. These institutions share a number of characteristics: they are leading research institutions in their own countries, they focus on science and engineering, and they have extensive collaborations with the industrial sector . MoreoveFrom the initial population of Ph.D.s , we only retained those for whom we had complete information regarding their employment. We gathered this information through extensive searches on the Ph.D.s’ websites, their supervisors’ websites, their publicly available dissertations, and their LinkedIn profiles . The perForty-two percent of the Ph.D.s graduated in basic sciences  and the remaining in engineering. Eighty-four percent of them had only one supervisor assigned. For those with more than one supervisor assigned, we conducted extensive searches to identify their main supervisor . In termj = 1,2,3,…,k,…,M; Pr(yi = j|xi) is the probability that Ph.D. i attains employment category j, given xi; xi is a vector of covariates; and βj is a vector of coefficients pertaining to employment category j. In addition to a Ph.D.’s gender, xi includes demographic variables of age and nationality. We distinguish between domestic and foreign students. Within the category of foreign students, we distinguish between foreign students from EU-15 countries and the remaining foreign students, given that Ph.D.s from outside the EU-15 face considerable limitations in their ability to work in Sweden or Switzerland. We also include an indicator for whether a student had worked prior to starting his or her Ph.D. We measure the research output of a Ph.D. with the number of research articles (including conference proceedings) that a student had published from enrollment to two years after graduation. By so doing, we take into account possible lags between the time a research project is completed and the time its results are published [Our initial research questions are: i) Are there gender differences in employment choices of Ph.D.s? and ii) Can such gender differences be explained by observable factors, with a specific focus on the students’ Ph.D. training characteristics? To address these questions, we consider the following employment outcomes after graduation: academia, industry, and public administration. We thus estimate the following multinomial logit model:ublished . Moreovei’s enrollment, whether he or she was granted patents during the same period, and was involved in European projects with companies. At both Chalmers and EPFL, European projects are an important component of the total collaborations that professors establish with industrial partners. One possible concern with our strategy is that men and women match with supervisors who have distinct characteristics. Hence, supervisors’ controls may capture Ph.D.s’ unobserved characteristics that are correlated with gender and not the impact of supervisor characteristics on the Ph.D.s.’ career choices. Reassuringly, descriptive statistics presented in We include supervisor characteristics because these are likely to be correlated with a Ph.D.’s training. Thus, we control for a supervisor’s publication count in the five years prior to Ph.D. i’s graduation cohort, which is defined as the count of students who graduated in year t in the same field as i [i in the job market [i. Additionally, we control for the availability of postdoc positions in the US, distinguishing between basic sciences and engineering, since many Ph.D.s pursue postdoc training in the US. This measure is defined as the difference between the number of postdocs hired by US universities in a given year and the number of US Ph.D.s who graduated in that year in the same field as Ph.D. i.We add graduation-year fixed effects, university-research field fixed effects , and measures for labor market conditions at graduation. As a measure for labor market supply, we use the size of Ph.D. eld as i . The fieb market . In the In the second part of the analysis, we restrict our attention to those 1,137 Ph.D.s who pursued, after their graduation, a postdoc training and address the following two questions: i) Are there gender differences in the Ph.D.s’ likelihood of attaining positions in highly ranked universities (including research institutions)? ii) Are there gender differences in the hazard of appointment to professorship? By appointment to professorship we mean appointment to a position of assistant professor, which encompasses research as well as teaching duties. We thus exclude senior lecturers from the category of assistant professors because they tend to focus solely on teaching.i is enrolled as a postdoc in a highly ranked university:yi = 1|xi) is the probability that Ph.D. i received a postdoc training in a highly ranked university, given xi; xi is the same vector of covariates used in Eq , is modeled as:hj,0(t) is the baseline hazard; xi is a vector that contains the same covariates as in Eq where hWe begin by estimating Eq . We initj will occur rather than the base outcome, with the opposite being true for ratios less than one. Standard errors are clustered around Ph.D. supervisors. Employment outside of academia is the base outcome. We gradually introduce the aforementioned controls to assess whether and how these controls affect gender differences in Ph.D.s’ employment attainments. Column I includes the gender indicator, Ph.D.s’ demographic and predetermined characteristics, measures for labor market conditions at graduation, and fixed effects. As shown, women are more likely than men to be employed in academia, the coefficient of the female dummy being significant at the 10 percent confidence level.In As reported in It could be that female Ph.D.s are more likely to work in academia because they are less involved in applied projects during their training. We explore this possibility in column III, where we control for whether Ph.D.s participated in applied projects. We also include indicators for whether a supervisor was granted patents and collaborated with firms during his or her appointment. The indicator describing a Ph.D.’s involvement in applied projects is a significant, negative predictor of a Ph.D.’s probability of being employed in academia. With the inclusion of this control, the female dummy coefficient decreases slightly, as expected, but remains highly significant.j will occur rather than the base outcome, with the opposite being true for ratios less than one. Standard errors are clustered around Ph.D. supervisors. Employment in academia is the base outcome. Regression specifications in columns I and IV include the gender indicator, Ph.D.s’ demographic and predetermined characteristics, measures for labor market conditions at graduation, and fixed effects. The results indicate that women are significantly more likely than men to work in public administration than academia or industry. Moreover, they are more likely to work in academia than they are in industry.In One reason why women are more likely to be employed in public administration could be that they are less productive. However, upon introducing a Ph.D.s’ research output and the output of his or her supervisor (columns II and V), women remain more likely than men to work in public administration.Women could be less likely to work in industry relative to academia and public administration because they are less involved in applied projects. Having controlled for whether Ph.D.s participated in applied projects during their training and for whether their supervisors were granted patents and had collaborated with firms, the gender gap in industry employment remains statistically significant (columns III and VI).One possible concern with the estimates presented in Tables As an extension to the findings presented in In Panel B, we explore whether there are gender differences in the probability of working in industry relative to working academia or public administration, among Ph.D.s involved in applied projects. We use the same statistical model as in Panel A. We interact the gender variable with the indicator for whether Ph.D.s pursued applied projects. The base outcome is employment outside of industry. A test of the difference between the impact of women involved in applied projects and the impact of men involved in the same projects on the probability of working in industry rejects the null hypothesis that the difference is equal to zero . However, women involved in applied projects are more likely than women not involved in such projects to work in industry .Next, we take a closer look at those Ph.D.s who pursued postdoc training. We ask whether there are gender differences in their likelihood of pursuing postdoc positions in highly ranked universities after graduation (Eq ) and in The results from estimating Eq  are repot who have become assistant professors, but could have transitioned into any other occupation. Standard errors are clustered around Ph.D.s. In Panel A, we exclude from the covariates in Eq Click here for additional data file.S2 Tablei’s enrollment in the doctoral program. Controls include Ph.D. demographic and predetermined characteristics, Ph.D. number of publications and involvement in applied projects, labor market characteristics at graduation, university-research field fixed effects, and graduation-year fixed effects.Coefficients are odds ratios. Ratios greater than one indicate that an increase in the regressor leads to a higher probability that a Ph.D. student is female, with the opposite being true for ratios less than one. Standard errors clustered around supervisors are in parentheses. Supervisor characteristics are measured during the 5 years prior to Ph.D. (DOCX)Click here for additional data file.S3 TableCoefficients are average marginal effects. Standard errors clustered around students from the same university-research field and graduation-year are in parentheses. *** p<0.01. Controls include labor market characteristics at graduation, university-research field fixed effects, and graduation-year fixed effects.(DOCX)Click here for additional data file.S4 TableStandard errors clustered around students from the same university-research field and graduation-year are in parentheses. ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01. Controls include Ph.D. demographic and predetermined characteristics, Ph.D. number of publications and involvement in applied projects, supervisor characteristics, labor market characteristics at graduation, university-research field fixed effects, and graduation-year fixed effects. We report coefficient estimates with and without the Mills’ ratio.(DOCX)Click here for additional data file.


Boiling heat transfer (BHT) is a particularly efficient heat transport method because of the latent heat associated with the process. However, the efficiency of BHT decreases significantly with increasing wall temperature when the critical heat flux (CHF) is reached. Graphene has received much recent research attention for applications in thermal engineering due to its large thermal conductivity. In this study, graphene films of various thicknesses were deposited on a heated surface, and enhancements of BHT and CHF were investigated via pool-boiling experiments. In contrast to the well-known surface effects, including improved wettability and liquid spreading due to micron- and nanometer-scale structures, nanometer-scale folded edges of graphene films provided a clue of BHT improvement and only the thermal conductivity of the graphene layer could explain the dependence of the CHF on the thickness. The large thermal conductivity of the graphene films inhibited the formation of hot spots, thereby increasing the CHF. Finally, the provided empirical model could be suitable for prediction of CHF. Following the demonstration by Geim and Novoselov23810et al.−1m−1 (at room temperature). Although the thermal conductivity of these graphene films is significantly smaller than has been reported for single graphene flakes, it remains larger than that of many other substrates, and hence graphene remains attractive for heat transfer applications. However, despite the favorable heat transport properties, little information about applications of graphene on thermal system is available. The characteristics of a heated surface, including the surface wettability1314161821Since graphene typically exists in the form of ultra-thin microscale flakes, much effort has been invested to synthesize large-area films that retain the properties of graphene. Jang Here, we report that thin graphene films on a heated surface may result in more efficient dissipation of heat in the lateral direction, which inhibits the formation of dry/hot spots during boiling, leading to an increase and CHF. The role of graphene films on the heated surface was investigated using infrared high-speed visualization of the boiling process. We found that the graphene layer led to an increase in the CHF via lateral heat transport, which inhibited the formation of hot/dry spots. Pool-boiling experiments were carried out in the Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) pool-boiling experimental facility, which is illustrated in the schematic diagram shown in colloidV is the volume of the RGO flakes, A is the area of the film, δ is the thickness of the film, graphiteρ is the density of the graphite, and colloidρ is the density of the RGO colloid. The filtered graphene film was transferred to the surface of the silicon heater  high-speed visualization  for 2 minutes during each step of the experiment. At large heat fluxes, the power supply was shut down when a sudden increase in the wall temperature was observed, which corresponded to the CHF.Prior to each experiment, deionized (DI) water was boiled for 1 hour using a cartridge heater to degas the water. Two wires were soldered to each electrode to apply a voltage and measure the temperature using the correlation shown in All images of the infrared high-speed visualization were trimmed and processed using Matlab and Image J. Raw image data appeared too dark, and so nucleation could not be observed. Therefore, the brightness and contrast were adjusted for each experimental case; this adjustment did not result in a change in the recorded temperature. One- and two-dimensional data arrays of the temperature distribution were extracted for the selected domain to analyze the temperature distribution and the changes with time thereof. The overall temperature distribution, one-dimensional temperature profiles, and temperature plots were obtained from the extracted data.H.S.A. designed the experiments and all procedures, and was the main author of the paper. J.M.K. carried out the experiments, provided the figure artwork, performed the data analysis, and contributed some written material to the manuscript. T.J. K. assisted with the analysis of the graphene film. S.C.P., J.M.K. and D.I.Y. also carried out experiments, fabricated experimental apparatus, and acquired and interpreted the SEM and TEM data. Y.P. carried out the visualization experiments using the infrared camera and fabricated some of the experimental apparatus. K.W.H. analyzed the AFM data. H.J.J. assisted with the analysis of the surface characteristics and boiling performance. H.S.P. assisted in the analysis of the IR visualization. H.K. and M.H.K. equally directed the project. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the paper.Supplementary informationVideo clip of IR high-speed camera in real time


Dis. Model. Mech.8, 867-875.There was an error published in The spelling of an author name was given incorrectly as Melody J. Whitley. The correct spelling is given in the author list above.The authors apologise to readers for this error.


The eighth author’s name is spelled incorrectly. The correct name is Heidi Stöckl.There is an error in the fourth sentence of the penultimate paragraph in the Discussion section. The correct sentence is: Femicide was, for a long time, only addressed in Europe under the wider umbrella of violence against women. It gained greater research and public attention by European and global projects and institutions only in the last decade, under the COST Action IS1206 on Femicide, the EU Daphne Justice Programmes and addressed through ACUNS (Academic Council on the United Nations System) [44].This updated sentence cites a new reference, which is: Weil, S. “Femicide in Europe”. In: Dimitrijevic, M., Filip, A and Platzer M (eds) Femicide: a Global Issue that Demands Action. Taking Action against Gender-Related Killing of Women and Girls, Vol. 4. Vienna: ACUNS; 2015. Pp.118-121.


Winner: Dr. Jesse BloomRunner up: Dr. Alexander PlossViruses accepted nominations for a 2015 Young Investigator Prize in Virology. The target age was set at 40 and under. Over 50 nominations were received and were evaluated by a panel of judges comprised of Viruses editorial board members.With the goal of recognizing outstanding contributions to the field of virology by early-career investigators, last year Viruses Young Investigator Award.. Dr. Bloom received his Ph.D. with Dr. Frances Arnold and did postdoctoral training with Dr. David Baltimore, both at Caltech. Since 2011, he has been an Assistant Member in the Division of Basic Sciences at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Dr. Bloom’s research combines experimental and computational approaches to study influenza virus, with a focus on developing a better understanding of the biophysical and immunological constraints and selection pressures that shape influenza virus evolution. A major strength of his research is to seamlessly integrate molecular virology, next-generation sequencing, and computational biology to ask critical questions about influenza virus evolution. A highlight of Dr. Bloom’s postdoctoral research was an influential paper published in Science on the molecular basis for influenza virus resistance to oseltamivir (Tamiflu). More recently (ELife 2014), Dr. Bloom’s lab demonstrated that the “head” of the influenza hemagglutinin (HA) protein is highly tolerant of mutations. As the head of HA is the region of the protein that is targeted by antibodies, this finding sheds light on the remarkable ability of the influenza virus to escape the host immune response.I am pleased to announce Dr. Jesse Bloom of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, as the recipient of the 2015 Dr. Bloom has received a number of awards and honors, including a Searle Scholar Award and a Sloan Research Fellowship.When Dr. Bloom is not in the lab, he enjoys outdoor activities, such as running, hiking, and biking.Viruses conference, Viruses 2016—At the Forefront of Virus-Host Interactions, to be held 26–28 January 2016, in Basel, Switzerland, http://sciforum.net/conference/viruses-2016.In addition to the cash prize and plaque, Dr. Bloom will be an invited speaker at the 2016 Because of the outstanding quality of the nominations received for this award, we are also pleased to announce a runner-up: Dr. Alexander Ploss from Princeton University. Dr. Ploss conducted his Ph.D. research at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York in the lab of Dr. Eric Palmer and did postdoctoral research with Dr. Charlie Rice at the Rockefeller University. In 2009, he was appointed Assistant Professor at the Rockefeller University and in 2013 he became an Assistant Professor at Princeton University. Dr. Ploss’s research is focused on addressing fundamental questions about hepatitis B and C virus infection using humanized mouse model systems. He is an author on over 60 scientific articles, many of which are published in high-impact journals. Dr. Ploss has received several honors and awards including the Astellas Young Investigator Award of the Infectious Disease Society of America and the Liver Scholar Award of the American Liver Foundation.When not in the lab, Dr. Ploss is playing his violin, or, together with his wife, caring for their four young children.Viruses sponsored a competition for travel awards for two graduate students or postdoctoral fellows to attend meetings of their choice. The 2015 travel award winners are Dr. Kirsty Short, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Thijs Kuiken, Department of Viroscience, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Dr. Redmond Smyth, a post-doctoral researcher in the lab of Dr. Roland Marquet, Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, Strasbourg, France.In addition to the Young Investigator Award, Viruses editorial staff and editorial board members, I wish to congratulate the four outstanding young virologists for their accomplishments.On behalf of the


Dr. Yuelong Ma is not included in the author byline. She should be listed as the sixth author and affiliated with Molecular Medicine, Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, Duarte, CA. The contributions of this author are as follows: Contributed reagents/materials/analysis/tools.Dr. Jun Xie is not included in the author byline. He should be listed as the seventh author and affiliated with Molecular Medicine, Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, Duarte, CA. The contributions of this author are as follows: Contributed reagents/materials/analysis/tools.


Reason for Corrigendum:In the original article, the patients' names were inadvertently disclosed in the Supplementary Material. The Supplementary Files have since been updated to protect the patients' privacy. The authors apologize for this mistake.JY and XZ conceived and designed the experiments. XW and WL performed clinical detection in Sierra Leone. HL, PL, and DD performed and developed the RT-LAMP. YM, EL, PL, DD, DZ, LC, and XH performed the experiments. XZ wrote the manuscript. JY and XZ edited the manuscript.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


Laodelphax striatellus , occurs during the winter wheat harvest season in East Asia. Knowing the take-off time of emigrating L. striatellus is crucial for predicting such migrations with a simulation technique because winds, carriers of migratory insects, change continuously. Several methods were used in China and Japan from late May to early June 2012 and again in 2013 to identify the precise timing of take-off. These methods included: a tow net trap mounted to a pole at 10 m above the ground, a helicopter-towed net trap, and a canopy trap  set over wheat plants. Laodelphax striatellus emigrated from wheat fields mainly in the early evening, before dusk. The insects also emigrated during the daytime but rarely emigrated at dawn, showing a pattern that is unlike the bimodal emigration at dusk and dawn of two other rice planthoppers, the brown planthopper, Nilaparvata lugens (Stål), and the white-backed planthopper, Sogatella furcifera (Horváth). There was no significant difference in the temporal pattern of take-off behavior between females and males of Japanese L. striatellus populations.Overseas migration of the small brown planthopper,  Vanessa cardui (Linnaeus) . The number of L. striatellus trapped in this study was found to be low at dawn. The reason for this phenomenon is unknown, and a further study is needed to know how low air temperatures and other factors affect L. striatellus’s take-off at dawn in late May to early June, or other seasons as well.The bimodal take-off pattern of L. striatellus in the temperate zone of eastern China or Japan moves from a wheat host to rice plants, the population density of the subsequent one to two generations declines probably due to several factors, i.e., natural enemies, applied insecticides, and high temperatures in summer [L. striatellus emigration in summer in the temperate zone seems to be rather difficult to conduct. On the other hand, in Taiwan which is located in the subtropical region, harvest of the first crop of rice, an environmental disturbance causing emigration, is conducted in late June to mid-July and L. striatellus is one of the major pests in rice fields. Thus, investigation of L. striatellus emigration timing in summer might be more feasible in Taiwan.After n summer , 33. In L. striatellus in East Asia. Take-off times at dusk and dawn were used in a recent migration simulation model [A diurnal take-off pattern was used to predict overseas migration of on model . Based o


The congress was supported by Iranian Neurological Association under the auspicious of International Headache Society. 340 physicians and researchers participated in the congress among them Professor A. Rapoport, Professor R. Cowan, Professor H. Bolay, Dr. F. Maniyar, and Dr. H. Ansari were the international guests. The 4The congress was managed by Professor M. Togha and nicely supported by the president of the Neurological Association, Professor H. Pakdaman. The main aim of the congress was to familiarize neurologists and other specialists with the latest scientific achievements in the field of “Headache”.The interesting characteristic of this congress was that abstracts and most of the full texts of lectures were available online on our website from the first day of the congress. In addition, the hard copies of the abstract were offered to the participants on registration. Accordingly, several scientific programs were held during 3 days. The programs were divided into the following five categories:1. Main LecturesTotally, 35 lectures were presented by headache specialists and physicians who were considered expert in a specific field related to primary or secondary headaches.Accordingly, we can refer to the basic lectures, like pathophysiology of migraine [CGRP ] presented by Professor A. Rapoport, and basic science  presented by Professor H. Bolay. Besides, different speeches on updates in the field of diagnosis and treatment of primary headaches were given, like non-cephalic migraine equivalents by Professor R. Cowan, optimizing treatment of acute migraine attack by Dr. F. Maniyar, and cluster headache by Dr. H. Ansari. Different speeches were offered on migraine variants, secondary headaches and related subjects such as metabolic headache by Professor M. Ghafarpoor; ictal epileptic headache by Professor M. Motamedi; migraine and vertigo by Professor M. Togha, and drug interactions in headache treatment by Dr. L. Kuti.2. Case PresentationThis part was one of the popular sections of the congress moderated by Dr. M. Nabavi, and five challenging cases were discussed in an interactive presentation.3. WorkshopsIn this section, two workshops were provided, in the first of which mainly younger neurologists were trained on techniques of botulinum toxin injection for chronic migraine; and the techniques of nerve blocks in headaches were touched in the second workshop. These workshops were nicely moderated by Dr. H. Ansari. 4. PanelsTwo panels were held during the congress. The first panel discussed different aspects of idiopathic intracranial hypertension and idiopathic intracranial hypotension, and the other one reviewed different unapproved but effective treatment modalities on headaches including migraine surgery, nutritional aspects on headache, the effect of exercise on headaches, and the suggestions of Iranian traditional medicine for headaches.5. Residents Scientific CompetitionThis was nicely conducted by Dr. A. Okhovat with cooperation of Dr. S. Ahmadi-Karvrigh and Dr. E. Hesami. In this part, the competition was between the selected neurology residents from 13 universities of different cities of Iran in the primary and final sections and the first, second and third winners were received valuable presents. The valuable assistance of Dr. S. Baghizadeh and Mr. H. Ghasemi and nice cooperation of Dr. H. Paknejad, Dr. A. Okhovat, Dr. S. Haghighi, Dr. N. Yamani, Dr. F. Vahabi, Dr. Advani, Dr. M. Ghafarpoor, A. Naser Moghadasi, S. Razeghi Jahromi and S. Habibi Moeini as well as, the other members of scientific and organizing committee had an important role in the better management of the congress.The headache congress could unquestionably play an important role in promoting the status of knowledge in the field of headache in Iran. The positive feedback from the attendees was a good sign of achievement to the goal of the congress that was the presentation of high-quality programs meet their expectations. Indeed, attendance of distinguished international headache specialist with the cooperation of International Headache Society, and Iranian esteemed neurologists as lecturers and the active participants from different parts of Iran in response to invitation from Iranian Headache Association contributed to establish a good relationship between the Iranian Headache Association and International Headache Society.


The affiliation for the eighth author is incorrect. The correct affiliation for Erik T. Walbeehm is Dept. of Plastic Surgery, Radboud UMC, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.


Holcoglossum is a typical case. We investigated the phylogenetic utility of the morphological traits of leaf epidermis in the taxonomy of Holcoglossum s.l. by using light and scanning electron microscopy to analyze 38 samples representing 12 species of Holcoglossum, with five species from five closely related genera, such as Ascocentrum, Luisia, Papilionanthe, Rhynchostylis and Vanda. Our results indicated that Holcoglossum can be distinguished from the related genera based on cuticular wax characteristics, and the inclusion of Holcoglossum himalaicum in Holcoglossum is supported by the epidermis characteristics found by LM and SEM. The percentage of the tetracytic, brachyparacytic, and laterocytic stomata types as well as the stomata index and certain combinations of special wax types support infrageneric clades and phylogenetic relationships that have been inferred from molecular data. Laterocytic and polarcytic stomata are perhaps ecological adaptations to the strong winds and ample rains in the alpine region of the Hengduanshan Mountains.Determining the generic delimitations within Aeridinae has been a significant issue in the taxonomy of Orchidaceae, and  Holcoglossum Schltr. is such an example Holcoglossum  is comprised of approximately 17 species ranging from Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam and northeastern Yunnan, and eight of which are endemic to China Vanda-Aerides” alliance, which includes Aerides, Ascocentrum, Ascolabium, Holcoglossum, Neofinetia, Papilionanthe, Penkimia, Seidenfadenia and VandaHolcoglossum and its alliances. However, several different taxonomic treatments have been proposed based on molecular phylogenetic research Holcoglossum s.l., including 14 species of Holcoglossum s.s., and three species from its alliance, including Ascocentrum himalaicum  Christenson, Ascolabium pumilum (Hayata) Schltr., and Penkimia nagalandensis Phukan & Odyuo Determining the generic delimitations within orchid subtribe Aeridinae is difficult and has been considered a “black pit” Holcoglossum, several perspectives exist on the infrageneric taxonomy of this genus Holcoglossum into two sections based on the flower number per inflorescence and plant form. Jin H. omeiense X. H. Jin & S. C. Chen, H. lingulatum (Averyanov) Averyanov, H. wangii Christenson and H. kimballianum (Rchb. f.) Garay in H. sect. Holcoglossum, share similar habits and floral characteristics, including a crested callus and long spur, are grouped into more distant clades in phylograms in molecular phylogenetic studies. The search for morphological synapomorphies for each monophyletic clade has been problematic because of widespread homoplasy In addition to debates on the generic delimitation of Neofinetia and Holcoglossum have porate pollinia, whereas Vanda, Rhyncostylis, Aerides and Trudelia have cleft pollinia In an attempt to overcome these difficulties, previously underexplored morphological characteristics are now being studied in more depth, such as characteristics of pollinia and leaf epidermis. Although pollinia characteristics (number and aperture) are largely homoplasious for Aeridinae in total, they are often useful at the generic and/or infrageneric level. For instance, Holcoglossum and its relatives is the perigenous, which is similar to most of Orchidaceae, and tetracytic type of stomata  is the most popular stomatotype Holcoglossum is a natural group suggested by molecular phylogenetic studies Holcoglossum. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether the characteristics of mature leaf epidermis can provide additional taxonomic and phylogenetic information for the genus Holcoglossum and the infrageneric clades that have been suggested by recent results of molecular phylogenetics.Recent studies have indicated that the ontogeny of stomata in Holcoglossum infrageneric clades mentioned below includes three clades from Xiang et al. H. amesianum (Rchb. f.) Christenson, H. subulifolium (Rchb. f.) Christenson, H. wangii, H. kimballianum, H. nagalandense (Phukan & Odyuo) X.H. Jin, and H. himalaicum  Aver.), AC  Z.H. Tsi, H. rupestre (Hand.-Mazz.) Garay, H. sinicum Christenson, H. weixiense X.H. Jin & S.C. Chen, H. tsii T. Yukawa and H. nujiangense X.H. Jin & S.C. Chen), and HC  Schltr., and H. pumilum (Hayata) X.H. Jin).The leaf epidermal characteristics are listed in Holcoglossum, the shape is hexagonal in the TC clade, quadrilateral to hexagonal in the HC clade and H. flavescens of the AC clade, and quadrilateral in all of the other species of the AC clade  surface are more distinct than those of the adaxial (Ad) surface. Flat rodlets on the abaxial surface of the leaves and threads are only found in  samples . In the  surface ; threads surface ; dense p surface ; and spa surface . Trichom C. Chen  and secrHolcoglossum, Rhynchostylis retusa (L.) Bl. and Ascocentrum ampullaceum (Roxb.) Schltr., although rare stomata are present on the Ad surface of H. omeiense, H. lingulatum and A. ampullaceum (Vanda pumila Hook. f. (Papilionanthe biswasiana (Ghose et Mukerjee) Garay and Luisia magniflora, stomata are presented on the entire leaf surface because of its terete leaf  is mainly found in the AC and HC clades and scarcely found in the TC clade of genus oglossum . StomataThe guard cells are on the same level with the epidermis in the TC clade, are above the epidermis in the AC clade and at a medium level in the HC clade .A. ampullaceum, H. lingulatum, and H. flavescens and Ad surface of H. weixiense and the stephanocytic type on both surfaces of H. flavescens. H. rupestre, and P. biswasiana and Ab surface of H. lingulatum. The determination of the extent of the variability, the predominant stomatotype and the proportion of these types is required so that the stomatal characteristics can be properly correlated with other characteristics, which would be useful for classification purposes The stomata on a single leaf conform to several types, including tetracytic, paracytic, laterocytic or polarcytic. Other very rare stomatotypes found in several species are not included in the total of the stomatotypes; these stomatotypes include the hexacytic on the Ab surface of Holcoglossum, the tetracytic type is present in all of the samples except on the Ab surface of H. nujiangense and H. weixiense. This type has value scopes on the Ab surface of 31.1–68.6% in TC, 0–9.1% in AC and 8.4–11.5% in HC. The brachyparacytic type on the Ab surface has similar value scopes, with 20.0–38.4% in TC, 0–3.8% in AC and 3.4–9.8% in HC. The laterocytic type on the Ab surface has a reverse tendency with 12.9–28.6% in TC, 27.9–32.2% in HC, and 30.0–71.4% in AC  and the latter two in the HC clade (4.0%–4.3%).The scope of the stomatal index is 0–7.5%/0.7%–7.5% (Ad/Ab). The stomatal index on the Ab surface is divided into two groups, and Holcoglossum from its relatives and define infrageneric clades that are recognized in molecular studies Holcoglossum. Our results lend support to the broad taxonomic treatment of Holcoglossum with infrageneric systems. Our results indicate that stomatal and other epidermal features in the Ab surface of the leaves are constant within species and represent good characteristics for taxonomic and phylogenetic studies.In this study, we found that the wax type is a useful taxonomic characteristic that can distinguish Holcoglossum has an obvious infrageneric evolutionary tendency, with the percentage of the tetracytic and brachyparacytic types decreasing in the direction of TC>HC>AC, although there are small intersections between HC and AC clades, whereas the percentage of the laterocytic type is in the reverse order with the highest value in the AC clade , and then dehydrated in an ethanol series before being mounted in Canada balsam. To verify the constancy of the epidermal structure, at least five slides were assembled from different parts of a single leaf for each sample. Because of the difficulty in controlling the time of maceration in 35% NaClO for all of the species of the AC clades, The stomatal terminology is consistent with that of Carpenter Table S1Source of materials.(DOC)Click here for additional data file.


Dr. Karen S. Poksay is not included in the author byline. She should be listed as the seventh author and affiliated with Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Novato, California, United States of America. The contributions of this author are as follows: Performed the experiments.Dr. David T. Madden is not included in the author byline. He should be listed as the eighth author and affiliated with College of Pharmacy, Touro University California, Vallejo, California, United States of America. The contributions of this author are as follows: Analyzed the data and contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools.


The original version of this article  unfortunSLG was supported by an RCUK Fellowship awarded to Professor Grierson, and by the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nottingham. M. Bakkali wishes to thank the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación for the BFU2010-16438 and the Ramón y Cajal fellowship.We thank F. Perfectti and J. M. Gómez at the Universidad de Granada, M. Kawata and S. Chiba at the Tohoku University, J. Brookfield and the late B. Clarke, FRS at the University of Nottingham for critical review of the manuscript; T. Miyashita at the Tokyo University, M. Schilthuizen at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden and R. G. Gillespie at the University of California, Berkeley for fruitful discussions; G. Bowden and T. Sexton for assistance with sample collection; J. Ellis, C. Martin, S. Aitkin, J. Black, A. Hindmarsh and the late K. Corbett from the Attenborough Nature Reserve for helping to coordinate fieldwork; the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust and CEMEX for permission to collect samples. This work was supported by research fellowships from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and Daiwa Foundation, Japan.


May 5, 2015, marks the 17th annual observance of World Asthma Day and the kickoff to Asthma Awareness Month. Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases in the United States. One in 14 Americans lives with asthma,Although asthma cannot be cured, it is possible to manage asthma successfully to reduce and prevent asthma attacks, or episodes. Successful asthma management includes knowing the warning signs of an attack, avoiding things that can trigger an attack, and following the advice of a health care provider.#AsthmaChat2015 in chat messages. No registration is required.Members of the public can join experts from CDC and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday, May 5, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, for a TwitterChat about asthma, common asthma triggers, and how to create an asthma action plan. To join the moderated conversation, follow @CDCEnvironment on Twitter and use the hashtag http://www.cdc.gov/asthma.More information about CDC’s National Asthma Control Program and its public and private partners is available at


T. b. rhodesiense showing few signs of morbidity, yet posing a significant risk to human health. It is important to understand the relationship between infected cattle and infected individuals so that an appropriate response can be made to the risk posed to the community from animals infected with human pathogens in a village setting.Uganda has active foci of both chronic and acute HAT with the acute zoonotic form of disease classically considered to be restricted to southeast Uganda, while the focus of the chronic form of HAT was confined to the northwest of the country. Acute HAT has however been migrating from its traditional disease focus, spreading rapidly to new districts, a spread linked to movement of infected cattle following restocking. Cattle act as long-term reservoirs of human infective T. b. rhodesiense infection and human infective and non-human T. brucei s.l. circulating in cattle at village level in Kaberamaido and Dokolo Districts, Uganda. The study was undertaken in villages that had reported a case of sleeping sickness in the six months prior to sample collection and those villages that had never reported a case of sleeping sickness.This paper examines the relationship between human T. brucei s.l. . Cattle age had a significant effect (p<0.001) on the likelihood of T. brucei s.l. infection within cattle: cattle between 18–36 months  and cattle over 36 months  had significantly higher odds of T. brucei s. l. infection than cattle under 18 months of age. Furthermore, village human sleeping sickness status had a significant effect (p<0.05) on the detection of T. b. rhodesiense in the village cattle herd, with significantly higher likelihood of T. b. rhodesiense in the village cattle of case villages . Overall a higher than average T. brucei s.l. prevalence (>16.3%) in a village herd over was associated with significantly higher likelihood of T. b. rhodesiense being detected in a herd .The sleeping sickness status of the villages had a significant effect with higher odds of infection in cattle from case than from non-case villages for  T.b. rhodesiense HAT. In a survey of cattle in Ugandan villages; six that had a reported HAT case in the previous six months, and six which did not, an association was detected between presence of HAT in a village and infection of village cattle with human infective parasites. Village HAT status was significant (p<0.05) for detection of T.b. rhodesiense in the village herd, with significantly greater likelihood of T.b. rhodesiense in herds from case villages . T. brucei s.l. prevalence of over 16.3% in cattle was associated with significantly greater likelihood of T.b. rhodesiense infection within the herd . Cattle age had a significant effect (p<0.001) on the likelihood of a T. brucei s.l. infection: cattle between 18–36 months  and over 36 months  had significantly higher rates of T. brucei s.l. than animals under 18 months of age. Cattle are long-term reservoirs of T.b. rhodesiense that will outlive control strategies that do not directly eliminate parasite infection. T.b. rhodesiense and/or elevated T. brucei s.l. prevalence in village herds can serve as an indicator for HAT risk.Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) is a fatal parasitic disease of humans. Domestic cattle act as reservoirs for  Trypanosoma congolense, T. vivax and T. brucei s.l., with the former two species being more pathogenic T. brucei s.l.; the chronic form of HAT, caused by Trypanosoma brucei gambiense, is found in western and central Africa, with the acute form of the disease, caused by T. b. rhodesiense, found in east and southern Africa T. b. rhodesiense and T. b. gambiense have given rise to large scale epidemics claiming many thousands of lives Tsetse transmitted trypanosomiasis contributes a significant burden for both human and animal disease across tsetse infested Sub-Saharan Africa. African animal trypanosomiasis (AAT), manifests as a spectrum of diseases, most commonly caused by T. b. rhodesiense and parasites that cause AAT. Movement of such cattle has introduced parasites to districts formerly free of human disease but where tsetse are present and able to transmit disease. In Tororo District 23% of cattle were found to be infected with T. b. rhodesienseUganda has active foci of both chronic and acute HAT within its borders. Until recently the acute form was confined to southeast Uganda, while the focus of the chronic form was confined to the northwest of the country. In recent years the two disease foci have been converging and in 2005 were separated by only 150 kmT. b. rhodesiense areas At the start of the outbreak in this previously unaffected area, HAT cases were clustered around the local cattle market, which was trading a high proportion of cattle sourced from endemic T. b. rhodesienseSince the first human cases were detected in Soroti in 2001, cases of Rhodesian sleeping spread to neighbouring districts; >500 cases have been reported from Kaberamaido District and the neighbouring Dokolo District since 2004. Analysis of the spatial distribution of HAT cases within the newly affected districts of Dokolo and Kaberamaido showed that proximity to a cattle market was a significant risk factor for human infection with T. b. rhodesiense in cattle in order to provide an indicator of risk to the human population in the affected districts, as well as to permit appraisal of the risk of the disease spreading to neighbouring districts. To examine the prevalence and distribution of T. brucei s.l. (both of non-human infective T. b. brucei and human infective T. b. rhodesiense) in village cattle, samples were taken from villages that had reported a case of sleeping sickness in the six months before sample collection (defined as case villages) and from those that had never reported a case of sleeping sickness (defined as non-case villages). This approach allowed a comparison of T. brucei s.l. prevalence and presence or absence of T. b. rhodesiense in cattle between case and non-case villages.This study aims to investigate the extent of the reservoir of human infective Two hospitals, Serere hospital in Soroti and Lwala hospital in Kaberamaido, were equipped to diagnose and treat cases of sleeping sickness from across the study area comprising Apac, Dokolo, Kaberamaido and Lira see . All diaVillage cattle were sampled at three case village sites and three non-case village sites each in Kaberamaido and Dokolo Districts . The sixIn addition to the 12 study villages from Kaberamaido and Dokolo, cattle from 4 further villages of interest were sampled. An additional case village was selected in Aloi sub-county, Lira District (village L1), the sub-county furthest to the north in Lira District to report HAT cases in 2005. In Apac District village cattle were sampled from the only village that had reported a case of sleeping sickness , with adjustment for the village cluster design Geographic coordinates of each sampling site were recorded using a hand held Global Positioning System  to allow mapping of their exact location .Blood was drawn from the ear vein of each sampled animal into heparinised capillary tubes and applied immediately onto an FTA card . FTA cards were left to dry and placed together with desiccant in airtight multi-barrier pouches .Additional information recorded for each animal sampled included cattle breed, age, sex and body condition category.T. brucei s. l. T. brucei s. l., were further tested by PCR specific for the human infective subspecies T.b. rhodesienseFive 3 mm discs were punched from each blood sample and processed in preparation for PCR as previously described T. brucei s. l. as detected by PCR was expressed as a percentage, and exact binomial 95% confidence intervals were computed . All further statistical analysis (uni- and multivariable mixed models) was restricted to the 12 study villages  in Kaberamaido and Dokolo. The effect of the study design was estimated by including village herd as a random effect in a model without fixed effect predictors, and the percentage of total variance occurring at the level of the random effect was estimated using the latent variable approach Prevalence of T. brucei s. l. infection were initially examined at the univariate level including village herd as a random effect, followed by step-wise forward construction of a multivariable level mixed model, considering any factor significant at the 80% level (p≤0.2) in the univariable analysis. Factors significant at the 95% level (p≤0.05) were retained in the multivariable mixed model. A final mixed effect model with village as random effect, to account for village level variation, and cattle age, cattle condition category and case/non-case status of each village as fixed effects was constructed.The effect of cattle age group, condition category , gender , breed , village administrative district (binary variable: Kaberamaido/Dokolo) and village sleeping sickness status (binary variable: case/non-case) on the odds of T. b. rhodesiense was of interest at the village herd level, the village herd was used as the epidemiological unit for analysis. District, village sleeping sickness status (binary variable: case/ non-case status), herd age structure, herd condition category (binary variable: less/ more than 10% of herd in poor condition), herd age structure (binary variable: less/ more than 20% of herd in youngest age category) were investigated using univariable logistic regression. Apart from sleeping sickness status, no variable was significant at the 80% level, thus no multivariable model was constructed.Since presence of T. brucei s. l., as detected by PCR . Across all the villages sampled, fifteen of the animals that were observed to be infected with T. brucei s.l were harbouring T. b. rhodesiense human infective parasites . The number of T. brucei s. l. and T. b. rhodesiense positive samples across the 12 study villages within the main sleeping sickness focus in Kaberamaido and Dokolo, as well as the 4 additional villages of interest from Lira and Apac are shown in In total 1428 cattle were sampled from 16 villages and of these, 221 were infected with T. brucei s. l. infection and modeled as univariable fixed effect (with village herd included as the random effect) considered for inclusion in the multivariable mixed effect model is shown in T. brucei s. l. infection. Cattle between 18–36 months  and cattle over 36 months  showed significantly higher odds of T. brucei s. l. infection than did younger cattle that were under 18 months of age. Condition score was also considered as a variable for inclusion in the multivariable mixed effect model . Cattle in moderate condition also had lower odds of having a T. brucei s. l. infection detected than cattle in poor condition but this was not statistically significant .The effect of individual risk factors on the odds of Village sleeping sickness status (p<0.01), cattle age (p<0.001) and cattle condition score (p<0.05) were retained as fixed effects in the final multivariable model for the 12 study villages in Dokolo and Kaberamaido  .Amongst the 12 study villages in Kaberamaido and Dokolo, village sleeping sickness status had a significant effect on the detection of T. brucei s. l. prevalence within the village herd of more than 16.3%, was also associated with significantly higher odds of T. b. rhodesiense being detected in the respective herd . No other variable was significant at the 80% level. Due to the high degree of co-linearity between sleeping sickness status of the village and higher than average T. brucei s. l. prevalence  showed only a moderate prevalence of s.l. see , T. b. rT. brucei s.l. prevalence in the two non-case villages (A1 and A2) sampled in Apac was low at under 4% in both villages and no T. b. rhodesiense was detected. However, a high prevalence of T. brucei s.l. was observed in the case village herd  was observed to be as high or higher than the prevalence detected in case villages in Kaberamaido and Dokolo that is indicative of HAT risk.Mapping of reported cases has shown a continued northward spread of the disease within Dokolo and Lira District and in the summer of 2006 the first case of sleeping sickness was reported from Apac District rd A3 in  in Apac T. brucei s. l. in a village herd, the likelihood of detecting T. b. rhodesiense and the status of the village as a sleeping sickness case village. This could provide a useful means of determining risk at village or parish level in endemic districts in Uganda. A high village level prevalence of T. brucei s.l. could be used to predict risk for human infection and justify herd level chemotherapy to remove circulating human infective  parasites from the herd, given the specificity and sensitivity of molecular tools that are available for diagnosis of T. brucei s.l. The present study showed a strong association between high levels of It is clear from the close link between animal and human infection at village level that any sustainable intervention against sleeping sickness should be targeted and sustained at local community level. Control of infection in the animal reservoir through appropriate veterinary intervention with effective cross talk between relevant Ministries could realise the value of a One Health Approach for zoonotic disease control


Reason for Erratum:Due to a typesetting error, in the Results section, values were reported incorrectly in the second paragraph of subsection Experience of Reactance.F = 3.87, should read as: F = 3.84.The publisher apologizes for this mistake. This error does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way.The original article was updated.