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The use of agrochemicals is increasingly recognized as interfering with pollination services due to its detrimental effects on pollinators. Compared to the relatively well-studied chemical toxicity of agrochemicals, little is known on how they influence various biophysical floral cues that are used by pollinating insects to identify floral rewards. Here, we show that widely used horticultural and agricultural synthetic fertilizers affect bumblebee foraging behavior by altering a complex set of interlinked biophysical properties of the flower. We provide empirical and model-based evidence that synthetic fertilizers recurrently alter the magnitude and dynamics of floral electrical cues, and that similar responses can be observed with the neonicotinoid pesticide imidacloprid. We show that biophysical responses interact in modifying floral electric fields and that such changes reduce bumblebee foraging, reflecting a perturbation in the sensory events experienced by bees during flower visitation. This unveils a previously unappreciated anthropogenic interference elicited by agrochemicals within the electric landscape that is likely relevant for a wide range of chemicals and organisms that rely on naturally occurring electric fields.

The atmosphere hosts multiple sources of electric charge that influence critical processes such as the aggregation of droplets and the removal of dust and aerosols. This is evident in the variability of the atmospheric electric field. Whereas these electric fields are known to respond to physical and geological processes, the effect of biotic sources of charge has not hitherto been considered. Here, we combine theoretical and empirical evidence to demonstrate that honeybee swarms directly contribute to atmospheric electricity, in proportion to the swarm density. We provide a quantitative assessment of this finding, by comparing the electrical contribution of various swarming insect species with common abiotic sources of charge. This reveals that the charge contribution of some insect swarms will be comparable with that of meteorologically induced variations. The observed transport of charge by insects therefore demonstrates an unexplored role of biogenic space charge for physical and ecological processes in the atmosphere.

Background: Several commercial and academic autologous chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) products targeting CD19 have been approved in Europe for relapsed/refractory B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, high-grade B-cell lymphoma and mantle cell lymphoma. Products for other diseases such as multiple myeloma and follicular lymphoma are likely to be approved by the European Medicines Agency in the near future. Design: The European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT)-Joint Accreditation Committee of ISCT and EBMT (JACIE) and the European Haematology Association collaborated to draft best practice recommendations based on the current literature to support health care professionals in delivering consistent, high-quality care in this rapidly moving field. Results: Thirty-six CAR-T experts (medical, nursing, pharmacy/laboratory) assembled to draft recommendations to cover all aspects of CAR-T patient care and supply chain management, from patient selection to long-term follow-up, post- authorisation safety surveillance and regulatory issues. Conclusions: We provide practical, clinically relevant recommendations on the use of these high- cost, logistically complex therapies for haematologists/oncologists, nurses and other stakeholders including pharmacists and health sector administrators involved in the delivery of CAR-T in the clinic. Keywords: B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B ALL) ; CAR T-cells ; cytokine release syndrome (CRS) ; immune effector cell associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS) ; large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL) ; multiple myeloma (MM).

There is a widespread concern that we are witnessing an ongoing homogenisation of ecological communities. However, in contrast to human impacts on spatial patterns in biodiversity, human impacts on the temporal aspects of β‐diversity have received little attention. Moreover, the interplay between spatial and temporal β‐diversity is poorly understood. To address this knowledge gap, we assessed dissimilarity within freshwater macrofaunal communities of drainage ditches to determine spatiotemporal β‐diversity as well as homogenisation in relation to different types of land use.We considered four distinct changes in community composition: spatial turnover, temporal turnover, spatial variation over time, and temporal variation in space, as well as the combined effects of space and time on β‐diversity. As a metric of dissimilarity, we calculated the taxonomic Hellinger distance between samples from different locations and time points and correlated these with distance in space and in time, as well as with three spatial variables, including land‐use type, and two temporal variables. We studied the effect of interactions between spatial and temporal variables on dissimilarity by applying a permutational analysis of variance.Our results illustrate the importance of changes in community composition in time with respect to temporal turnover, spatial variation over time, and temporal variation in space. While we did not find spatial turnover in community composition, both month and year had a considerable effect. Within a year, β‐diversity decreased over the months, yet these assembly patterns differed between years. This suggests major effects of seasonal and year‐to‐year dynamics on β‐diversity. Land use was also observed to be a main driver: ditches in nature conservation areas had higher β‐diversity and temporal heterogeneity was lowest in ditches adjacent to the most intensive agricultural land‐use category, indicating that agricultural practices can homogenise biodiversity in both space and time.By analysing the spatial and temporal β‐diversity patterns in freshwater macrofaunal communities in concert, we have shown that β‐diversity is a sensitive and highly informative metric of both spatial and temporal changes in community composition.

HLA-haploidentical haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (haplo-HSCT) is increasingly offered to patients with high-risk acute leukaemia. Unfortunately, haplo-HSCT is followed by a delayed immunoreconstitution. The aim of this EBMT registry study was to explore the clinical impact of lymphocyte subset counts after haplo-HSCT. We considered 144 leukaemic patients transplanted in the period 2001-2012. Pre-transplantation clinical variables and differential immune-cell counts (CD3, CD4, CD8 T cells, NK and B cells) measured before day 100 were evaluated for their capacity to predict overall survival, relapse mortality or non-relapse mortality (NRM). Negative prognostic factors for overall survival were advanced disease state at transplantation, host age and CMV seropositivity. Higher CD3, CD4 and CD8 counts were associated with a better overall survival and a lower NRM. Strikingly, when tested in multivariable analysis, higher CD3 and CD8 counts were still significantly associated with a lower NRM. These results indicate that an accelerated T-cell reconstitution correlates with less transplantation mortality, likely due to the protective role of T cells against viral infections. This observation suggests that CD8+ T-cell counts should be investigated as surrogate biomarkers of outcome in prospective haplo-HSCT trials.

Decadal declines in aquatic ecosystem health prompted monitoring efforts and studies on effects of human practices on aquatic biodiversity, yet a consideration of ecological processes and trophic linkages is increasingly required to develop an in-depth understanding of aquatic food webs and its vulnerability to human activities. Here, we test in laboratory incubations using natural organic matter whether agricultural practices have an effect on two interacting ecological processes (i.e., decomposition and invertebrate growth) as the relevant temporal components of the trophic linkage between aquatic microbial communities and aquatic invertebrates. We further assess whether these altered trophic interactions are visible on ecologically relevant scales. We observed clear patterns in agricultural constraints on microbial decomposition, which coincided with reduced invertebrate growth and an unexpected increase in invertebrate consumption of organic matter. Similar differences in invertebrate length depending on land use were observed in our field survey, thereby providing important clues on the relevance and vulnerability of interdependent processes that can serve to improve future forays in monitoring ecosystem health.

[EN] There is an increasing interest to study the interactions between atmospheric electrical parameters and living organisms at multiple scales. So far, relatively few studies have been published that focus on possible biological effects of atmospheric electric and magnetic fields. To foster future work in this area of multidisciplinary research, here we present a glossary of relevant terms. Its main purpose is to facilitate the process of learning and communication among the different scientific disciplines working on this topic. While some definitions come from existing sources, other concepts have been re-defined to better reflect the existing and emerging scientific needs of this multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary area of research., This paper is based upon work from the COST Action "Atmospheric Electricity Network: coupling with the Earth System, climate and biological systems (ELECTRONET)," supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). AO received funding from Poland Ministry of Science and Higher Education for statutory research of the Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences (Grant No 3841/E-41/S/2019).

Estimates of decomposition and consumption rates of plant litter generally rely on the incubation of a known quantity of leaves. However, the chemical composition of natural plant material is highly variable among species and biogeographic regions, and cannot be easily manipulated for experimental purposes. This chapter describes a method to overcome these constraints using decomposition and consumption tablets (DECOTABs). DECOTABs are easy-to-prepare agar-based pellets (agar 25% dry mass) with the remaining 75% being organic matter (OM) at choice. In the standard DECOTAB, the 75% OM consists entirely of cellulose powder. For specific DECOTABs, part or all of the cellulose can be replaced to vary OM composition, for example, by adding particulate organic matter, ground plant litter or specific substances such as polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). This makes the DECOTABs highly standardized, inexpensive and adjustable, enabling extensive manipulation of chemical composition. Proposed only recently, DECOTABs have already provided insight into the importance of environmental conditions, detritivore community composition and litter quality in controlling decomposition and consumption rates.

Temperate aquatic communities are highly diverse and seasonally variable, due to internal biotic processes and environmental drivers, including human‐induced stressors. The impact of drivers on species abundance is supposed to differ fundamentally depending on whether populations are experiencing limitations, which may shift over the season. However, an integrated understanding of how drivers structure communities seasonally is currently lacking. In order to partition the effect of drivers, we used random forests to quantify interactions between all taxa and environmental factors using macrofaunal data from 18 agricultural ditches sampled over two years. We found that, over the agricultural season, taxon abundance became increasingly better predicted by the abundances of co‐occurring taxa and nutrients compared to other abiotic factors, including pesticides. Our approach provides fundamental insights in community dynamics and highlights the need to consider changes in species interactions to understand the effects of anthropogenic stressors.

Titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2NP) are increasingly released in soil ecosystems, while there is limited understanding of the impacts of TiO2NP on soil bacterial communities. Here we investigated the effects of TiO2NP on the taxonomic composition and functional profile of a soil bacterial community over a 60-day exposure period. In short-term exposure (1-day), contradictory effects on the taxonomic composition of soil bacterial communities were found after exposure to a low realistic environmental concentration of TiO2NP at 1 mg/kg as compared to the effects induced by medium and high concentrations of TiO2NP at 500 and 2000 mg/kg. After long-term exposure (60-day), the negative effects of TiO2NP at the low concentration disappeared, and the inhibition by TiO2NP of the abundance of core taxa was enhanced along with increasing exposure concentrations. However, although significant alterations were observed in the taxonomic composition over time and exposure concentrations, no significant change was observed in the community functional profile as well as enzyme activity after 60-day exposure, indicating that functional redundancy likely contributed to the bacterial community tolerance after the exposure to TiO2NP. Our study highlighted the importance of assessing bacterial community compositional and functional responses in assessing the environmental risk of nanoparticles on soil ecosystems.

Plastic nanoparticles originating from weathering plastic waste are emerging contaminants in aquatic environments, with unknown modes of action in aquatic organisms. Recent studies suggest that internalised nanoplastics may disrupt processes related to energy metabolism. Such disruption can be crucial for organisms during development and may ultimately lead to changes in behaviour. Here, we investigated the link between polystyrene nanoplastic (PSNP)-induced signalling events and behavioural changes. Larval zebrafish exhibited PSNP accumulation in the pancreas, which coincided with a decreased glucose level. By using hyperglycemic and glucocorticoid receptor (Gr) mutant larvae, we demonstrate that the PSNP-induced disruption in glucose homoeostasis coincided with increased cortisol secretion and hyperactivity in challenge phases. Our work sheds new light on a potential mechanism underlying nanoplastics toxicity in fish, suggesting that the adverse effect of PSNPs are at least in part mediated by Gr activation in response to disrupted glucose homeostasis, ultimately leading to aberrant locomotor activity., Nadja Brun et al. examine the link between a polystyrene nanoplastic-induced distortion of energy metabolism and behavioural changes in zebrafish. They show that exposure to polystyrene nanoplastics results in the disruption of glucose homoeostasis with an increase in cortisol secretion, and hyperactivity.