[Franz Büchner's wartime hypoxia research and the Nobel Prize]. / Franz Büchners Hypoxieforschung aus der Kriegszeit und der Nobelpreis.

BACKGROUND: Between 1901 and 1953, a total of 5110 persons were nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. This time period spans both world wars and touches on the question of how the Nobel Committees dealt with German prize candidates. PURPOSE: The nominations of the German pathologist Franz Büchner for the Nobel Prize will be used to examine the extent to which it played a role in the awarding of the prize if some of the research results to be honoured were obtained during the National Socialist era. The article also presents an overview of all pathologists from Germany who were nominated for the Nobel Prize during the first half of the 20th century. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data from the nomination archive in Stockholm as well as nomination letters and expert opinions of the Nobel Committee (Nobel Archive) were analysed. Franz Büchner's nomination is examined in more detail as an example, because the nominators justified their proposal with Büchner's publications traced here, that in part originated from the National Socialist era. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Franz Büchner was nominated by three German professors in 1963. Both areas for which he was to be awarded concerned his research on the influence of oxygen deficiency on the function and development of the human organism. In the end, Büchner's achievements were deemed not worthy of the Nobel Prize. His role as a military researcher during National Socialism and the knowledge of hypoxia acquired during this period do not seem to have had a negative impact on the Nobel Prize evaluation.

Machine Learning Approaches to Classify Anatomical Regions in Rodent Brain from High Density Recordings.

Identifying different functional regions during a brain surgery is a challenging task usually performed by highly specialized neurophysiologists. Progress in this field may be used to improve in situ brain navigation and will serve as an important building block to minimize the number of animals in preclinical brain research required by properly positioning implants intraoperatively. The study at hand aims to correlate recorded extracellular signals with the volume of origin by deep learning methods. Our work establishes connections between the position in the brain and recorded high-density neural signals. This was achieved by evaluating the performance of BLSTM, BGRU, QRNN and CNN neural network architectures on multisite electrophysiological data sets. All networks were able to successfully distinguish cortical and thalamic brain regions according to their respective neural signals. The BGRU provides the best results with an accuracy of 88.6 % and demonstrates that this classification task might be solved in higher detail while minimizing complex preprocessing steps.

The SMOOTH-Robot: A Modular, Interactive Service Robot.

The SMOOTH-robot is a mobile robot that-due to its modularity-combines a relatively low price with the possibility to be used for a large variety of tasks in a wide range of domains. In this article, we demonstrate the potential of the SMOOTH-robot through three use cases, two of which were performed in elderly care homes. The robot is designed so that it can either make itself ready or be quickly changed by staff to perform different tasks. We carefully considered important design parameters such as the appearance, intended and unintended interactions with users, and the technical complexity, in order to achieve high acceptability and a sufficient degree of utilization of the robot. Three demonstrated use cases indicate that such a robot could contribute to an improved work environment, having the potential to free resources of care staff which could be allocated to actual care-giving tasks. Moreover, the SMOOTH-robot can be used in many other domains, as we will also exemplify in this article.

Indigenous Dirofilaria immitis in Bangladesh.

Dirofilaria immitis is a parasite of domestic and wild canids and felids in tropical, subtropical and temperate regions throughout the world. The canine heartworm (D. immitis) is the causative agent of canine and feline cardiopulmonary dirofilariasis. This parasite is known to cause a zoonotic disease, namely human pulmonary dirofilariasis. D. immitis is known to be endemic in several South and Southeast Asian countries (e.g. India and Malaysia), but there has previously been no information about the presence of this pathogen in Bangladesh. We present a case of canine dirofilariasis caused by D. immitis in rural southeastern Bangladesh. A male filaroid nematode (95 mm in length and 1.94 mm in width) was identified in the heart of a dog. Species classification was performed by microscopy and molecular tools. Sequence analysis revealed a 100 % identity within the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I (CO1) gene to two Chinese and one Australian D. immitis samples. Usually, dogs stay outside overnight with a high risk to get infected with D. immitis via nocturnal mosquito vectors, which may lead to high prevalences of this pathogen in the canine population and thus increase the risk of human infections with this neglected parasitic disease.

Endoparasites of rodents from the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Southeastern Bangladesh.

Rodents are a key mammalian group highly successful in adapting to a variety of environments throughout the world and play an important role in many zoonotic cycles. Within this project, the gastrointestinal and extraintestinal parasite fauna of 76 rodents (Muroidea and Sciuridae) was determined in the District of Bandarban (Chittagong Hill Tracts) in Southeastern Bangladesh. Gastrointestinal and extraintestinal parasites were examined with macro- and microscopical tools (e.g. Ziehl-Neelsen Staining) at a field site in Bandarban. A wide variety of parasites were found in rodent hosts, including protozoa-Giardia sp. (n = 8), Cryptosporidium sp. (n = 1), Entamoeba sp. (n = 8), Trichomonadida (n = 4), Isospora sp. (n = 1), trematodes (Echinostoma sp.; n = 3), cestodes-Hymenolepis nana (n = 1), Hymenolepis diminuta (n = 3), Hymenolepis sp. (n = 2), Taenia taeniaeformis-Larven (n = 4), Catenotaenia sp. (n = 1), Taenia sp. (n = 1), nematodes-Heterakis spumosa (n = 4), Heterakis sp. (n = 1), Aspiculuris tetraptera (n = 2), Capillaria hepatica (n = 2), Capillaria sp. (n = 3), Syphacia sp. (n = 2), Strongyloides sp. (n = 10), Trichostrongylus sp. (n = 2) and Trichuris sp. (n = 1)-and acanthocephalans (Moniliformis moniliformis; n = 2). Several of the examined parasites are of zoonotic importance via direct or indirect transmission (e.g. C. hepatica) and may affect humans.

Ectoparasites of livestock, dogs, and wild rodents in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in southeastern Bangladesh.

A large variety of ectoparasites parasitizing on livestock, dogs, and rodents are documented throughout the world, of which several are proven vectors for major (including zoonotic) diseases affecting humans and/or livestock. However, there remains a significant lack of knowledge in regard to the ectoparasite fauna in remote regions of the developing world, such as southeastern Bangladesh, and an urgent need to investigate this fauna to improve diagnostic options. In the course of the present study, more than 5,300 ectoparasites were collected by flag dragging and handpicking of livestock, dogs, and rodents in the District of Bandarban (Chittagong Hill Tracts) in southeastern Bangladesh. Three tick species were identified: Haemaphysalis bispinosa (flagging, cattle, goats, and dogs), Rhipicephalus microplus (cattle, goats), and Rhipicephalus sanguineus (dogs, goats, and flagging). H. bispinosa was the dominant tick species on mammalian hosts as well as on vegetation. Furthermore, Ctenocephalides canis (dogs, goats) and Linognatus sp. (goat) were found. Overall, 73 rodents of eight different species (e.g., Mus musculus, Rattus sikkimensis, Bandicota bengalensis, and Niviventer sp.) hosted a variety of ectoparasites such as mites (Laelaps nuttali, Laelaps echidninus, Lyponissoides sp. and Ornithonyssus bacoti), fleas (Xenopsylla cheopis), and one myiasis-causing dipteran species. Monitoring the ectoparasite burden of livestock and other mammals is urgently needed in order to control ectoparasites associated with social and economic burden (e.g., reduced milk production, weight loss). Several zoonotic diseases can be transmitted by ectoparasites in this area, where the majority of the population live in basic housing conditions and in direct contact with livestock, dogs, and rodents.