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In humans, injuries and diseases can result in irreversible tissue or organ loss. This well-known fact has prompted several basic studies on organisms capable of adult regeneration, such as amphibians, bony fish, and invertebrates. These studies have provided important biological information and helped to develop regenerative medicine therapies, but important gaps concerning the regulation of tissue and organ regeneration remain to be elucidated. To this aim, new models for studying regenerative biology could prove helpful. Here, the description of the cephalic tentacle regeneration in the adult of the freshwater snail Pomacea canaliculata is presented. In this invasive mollusk, the whole tentacle is reconstructed within 3 months. Regenerating epithelial, connective, muscular and neural components are already recognizable 72 h post-amputation (hpa). Only in the early phases of regeneration, several hemocytes are retrieved in the forming blastema. In view of quantifying the hemocytes retrieved in regenerating organs, granular hemocytes present in the tentacle blastema at 12 hpa were counted, with a new and specific computer-assisted image analysis protocol. Since it can be applied in absence of specific cell markers and after a common hematoxylin-eosin staining, this protocol could prove helpful to evidence and count the hemocytes interspersed among regenerating tissues, helping to unveil the role of immune-related cells in sensory organ regeneration.

In real-world scenarios, recommenders face non-functional requirements\ud of technical nature and must handle dynamic data in the form\ud of sequential streams. Evaluation of recommender systems must\ud take these issues into account in order to be maximally informative.\ud In this paper, we present Idomaar—a framework that enables the\ud efficient multi-dimensional benchmarking of recommender algorithms.\ud Idomaar goes beyond current academic research practices\ud by creating a realistic evaluation environment and computing both\ud effectiveness and technical metrics for stream-based as well as setbased\ud evaluation. A scenario focussing on “research to prototyping\ud to productization” cycle at a company illustrates Idomaar’s potential.\ud We show that Idomaar simplifies testing with varying configurations\ud and supports flexible integration of different data.

Running in its third year at CLEF, NewsREEL challenged participants\ud to develop news recommendation algorithms and have them benchmarked in\ud an online (Task 1) and offline setting (Task 2), respectively. This paper provides\ud an overview of the NewsREEL scenario, outlines this year’s campaign, presents\ud results of both tasks, and discusses the approaches of participating teams. Moreover,\ud it overviews ideas on living lab evaluation that have been presented as part\ud of a “New Ideas” track at the conference in Portugal. Presented results illustrate\ud potentials for multi-dimensional evaluation of recommendation algorithms in\ud a living lab and simulation based evaluation setting.

ISJ 9: 207-211, 2012 ISSN Neprilysin (NEP) represents an important enzyme in both vertebrates and invertebrates. In the present report we have focused our attention to invertebrates. In particular, a structure related to CD10/NEP as well as its activity in different tissues, such as immunocytes, nervous tissue and muscle of various species were detected. Moreover, the role played by the enzyme in the interactions between host and parasite has also been reported. The findings indicate that NEP immunoregulation is a well-balanced process that, with appropriate physiological and homeostatic responses to challenges, allows the survival and well-being of the species.

Immune and neuroendocrine functions display significant overlap in highly divergent and evolutionarily distant models such as molluscs, crustaceans, insects and mammals. Fundamental players in this crosstalk are professional phagocytes: macrophages in vertebrates and immunocytes in invertebrates. Although they have different developmental origins, macrophages and immunocytes possess comparable functions and differentiate under the control of evolutionarily conserved transcription factors. Macrophages and immunocytes share their pools of receptors, signalling molecules and pathways with neural cells and the neuro-endocrine system. In crustaceans, adult transdifferentiation of circulating haemocytes into neural cells has been documented recently. In light of developmental, molecular and functional evidence, we propose that the immune-neuroendocrine role of circulating phagocytes pre-dates the split of protostomian and deuterostomian superphyla and has been conserved during the evolution of the main groups of metazoans.