Transmission characteristics of allexiviruses by the eriophyid mite, Aceria tulipae (Keifer) (Acari: Eriophyidae) from naturally mixed infected garlic (Allium sativum L.)

The transmission characteristics of members of the genus Allexivirus to leek (Allium porrum L.) by its eriophyid mite vector, Aceria tulipae (Keifer), were studied. Prior to conducting transmission tests, colonies of nonviruliferous A. tulipae were established on healthy leek seedlings. A single A. tulipae transmitted the viruses with up to 50 % efficiency but transmission efficiency increased when > 10 mites per plant were used. Allexiviruses were acquired by A. tulipae after a minimum acquisition access period (AAP) of 30 minutes, whereas transmission tests suggest that a one hour inoculation access period (IAP) was needed for successful transmission. Allexiviruses were transmitted from garlic to leek plants by A. tulipae and mixed infections by more than one virus were observed. ShVX, GarV-A, -C, -D, and -B were detected in most inoculated plants, whereas other members of the genus (GarV-E, -X, and GarMbFV) were found only occasionally. None of the mites that originated from eggs deposited on infected plants transmitted allexiviruses, indicating that the viruses are not transmitted transovarially. No latent period was demonstrated. Taken together, these data suggest a semipersistent mode of transmission of Allexivirus members by A. tulipae. The output of this study will assist in the better management of the vector and the associated diseases.

Identification and Confirmation of Resistance in Mungbean [Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek] Derivatives to Mungbean Yellow Mosaic Virus (MYMV)

Background: Mung bean Yellow Mosaic Virus (MYMV) is found to be one of the prime viral diseases of mungbean in Tamil Nadu state. Screening for MYMV resistance in field condition always remains a hassle for breeding society. The peculiar MYMV symptoms often failed in the field due to some factors such as environmental changes, whitefly genotypes, host factors etc. With the above perspective, the present study aimed to screen the mung bean derivatives against MYMV through a novel in vitro agroinoculation technique and further substantiation through whitefly transmission.Methods: Four interspecific derivatives (VGGRU 1, VGGRU 2, VGGRU 3 and VGGRU 4) generated by making crosses between mungbean VRM (Gg) 1 and rice bean (TNAU RED) along with the susceptible check VRM (Gg) 1 were agroinoculated with the MYMV infectious clone VA 239 (KA30 DNA A + KA27 DNA) and are further substantiated through whitefly transmission studies from the artificially reared whiteflies. Result: The agroinoculation results revealed that among the four interspecific derivatives, VGGRU 1 was found to be completely resistant to MYMV. The substantiation of the obtained result through whitefly transmission also revealed that 24 h Acquisition Access Period (AAP) and 24 h Inoculation Access Period (IAP) with Bemisia tabaci able to cause 65% infectivity in susceptible plant VRM (Gg) 1 and zero infectivity in VGGRU 1 and the results were PCR confirmed for the presence of viral DNA.

Ability of Euscelidius variegatus to Transmit Flavescence Dorée Phytoplasma with a Short Latency Period

Phytoplasma transmission takes place by insect vectors through an Acquisition Access Period (AAP), Latency Period (LP) and Inoculation Access Period (IAP). Generally, phytoplasmas are believed to be transmitted more efficiently by nymphs because they need a long LP to reach the salivary glands before becoming infective. The transmission can start from adults as well, but in this case a long LP may exceed the insect’s lifespan. However, previous evidence has indicated that adults can undergo a shorter LP, even though little knowledge is available regarding the phytoplasma temporal dynamics during this period. Here, we investigate the minimum time required by the phytoplasma to colonize the vector midgut and salivary glands, and finally to be inoculated into a plant. We used the leafhopper Euscelidius variegatus to investigate the life cycle of flavescence dorée phytoplasma (FDP). Phytoplasma-free E. variegatus adults were left on broad beans (BBs) infected with FDP for an AAP of 7 days. Subsequently, they were individually transferred onto a healthy BB for seven different IAPs, each one lasting 24 h from day 8 to 14. Molecular analyses and fluorescence in situ hybridization were performed for FDP detection. FDP was found in the leafhopper midgut from IAP 1 with an infection rate reaching 50%, whereas in the salivary glands it was found from IAP 2 with an infection rate reaching 30%. FDP was also detected in BBs from IAP 4, with infection rates reaching 10%. Our results represent an important step to further deepen the knowledge of phytoplasma transmission and its epidemiology.

Acute Care Patient Portal Intervention: Portal Use and Patient Activation (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Patient-facing health information technology (HIT) tools, such as patient portals, are recognized as a potential mechanism to facilitate patient engagement and patient-centered care, yet the use of these tools remains limited in the hospital setting. Although research in this area is growing, it is unclear how the use of acute care patient portals might affect outcomes, such as patient activation. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to describe the use of an acute care patient portal and investigate its association with patient and care partner activation in the hospital setting. METHODS We implemented an acute care patient portal on 6 acute care units over an 18-month period. We investigated the characteristics of the users (patients and their care partners) of the patient portal, as well as their use of the portal. This included the number of visits to each page, the number of days used, the length of the user’s access period, and the average percent of days used during the access period. Patient and care partner activation was assessed using the short form of the patient activation measure (PAM-13) and the caregiver patient activation measure (CG-PAM). Comparisons of the activation scores were performed using propensity weighting and robust weighted linear regression. RESULTS Of the 2974 randomly sampled patients, 59.01% (1755/2974) agreed to use the acute care patient portal. Acute care patient portal enrollees were younger, less sick, less likely to have Medicare as their insurer, and more likely to use the Partners Healthcare enterprise ambulatory patient portal (Patient Gateway). The most used features of the acute care patient portal were the laboratory test results, care team information, and medication list. Most users accessed the portal between 1 to 4 days during their hospitalization, and the average number of days used (logged in at least once per day) was 1.8 days. On average, users accessed the portal 42.69% of the hospital days during which it was available. There was significant association with patient activation on the neurology service (P<.001) and medicine service (P=.01), after the introduction of HIT tools and the acute care patient portal, but not on the oncology service. CONCLUSIONS Portal users most often accessed the portal to view their clinical information, though portal usage was limited to only the first few days of enrollment. We found an association between the use of the portal and HIT tools with improved levels of patient activation. These tools may help facilitate patient engagement and improve outcomes when fully utilized by patients and care partners. Future study should leverage usage metrics to describe portal use and assess the impact of HIT tools on specific outcome measures in the hospital setting.

Identification of Dialeurodes citri as a Vector of Citrus yellow vein clearing virus in China

In 2009, a new citrus viral disease caused by Citrus yellow vein clearing virus (CYVCV) was first discovered in China and now CYVCV is widely distributed in the field. CYVCV is transmissible by grafting and is spread by aphids from lemon to bean, and from bean to bean. However, until now, no vector has been shown to transmit CYVCV from citrus to citrus. In this study, after a 24-h acquisition access period (AAP), CYVCV was tested for in Dialeurodes citri (Ashmead), Panonychus citri McGregor, and Aphis citricidus (Kirkaldy) by quantitative RT-PCR. After an AAP of 48 h, groups of adults of D. citri, P. citri, and A. citricidus were given a 48 h inoculation access period on cultivar Daidai sour orange seedlings. Three, 6, and 12 months post-transmission by D. citri, CYVCV was detected in the receptor plants, and the mean incidence of infected trees was 31.9, 39.1, and 39.1%, respectively. CYVCV was not transmitted to citrus by P. citri or A. citricidus. This is the first report of the ability of D. citri to transmit CYVCV from infected to healthy citrus under laboratory conditions.

Ranking Pages of Clustered Users using Weighted Page Rank Algorithm with User Access Period

The World Wide Web comprises billions of web pages and a tremendous amount of information accessible inside of web pages. To recover obliged data from the World Wide Web, search engines perform number of tasks in light of their separate structural planning. The point at which a user gives a query to the search engine, it commonly returns a bulky number of pages related to the user's query. To backing the users to explore in the returned list, different ranking techniques are connected on the search results. The vast majority of the ranking calculations, which are given in the related work, are either link or content based. The existing works don't consider user access patterns. In this paper, a page ranking approach of Weighted Page Rank Score Algorithm taking user access is being conceived for search engines, which deals with the premise of weighted page rank method and considers user access period of web pages into record. For this reason, the web users are clustered based on the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) approach. From those groups, the pages are ranked by improving the weighted page rank approach with usage based parameter of user access period. This calculation is utilized to discover more applicable pages as per user's query. In this way, this idea is extremely helpful to show the most important pages on the uppermost part of the search list on the principle of user searching behavior, which shrinks the search space on a huge scale.