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Background: Current casualty care training modalities present several challenges, including limited simulation facilities, instructor dependence, lack of standardization, documentation of trainees' performance and training personalization. The study presents the design, development and preliminary evaluation of a novel hybrid training platform to address these challenges., Methods: A mixed reality platform was chosen and developed to address field operators' requirements. The platform is easy to operate and can be set up by laypeople within 20-min in multiple environments. Individual-level training documentation is generated autonomously following each session, evaluating 30 aspects of performance. From this, a unique aggregated dataset emerges as a substrate for executives' dashboards and intelligent planning of future sessions., Results: An evaluation process took part using simulator-based training in different stages along the project using a questionnaire (Likert-scale based). Fifty military physicians took part in an identical head injury scenario requiring airway management by endotracheal intubation and were immediately surveyed., Conclusion: TrauMR is an agile hybrid training that harbors the potential to address many of the emerging challenges of training for prehospital care in combat and civilian environments.

Objective: To assess the utility of self-reported symptoms in identifying positive coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases among predominantly healthy young adults in a military setting., Methods: A questionnaire regarding COVID-19 symptoms and exposure history was administered to all individuals contacting the Israeli Defence Forces Corona call-centre, before PCR testing. Surveyed symptoms included cough, fever, sore throat, rhinorrhoea, loss of taste or smell, chest pain and gastrointestinal symptoms. Factors were compared between positive and negative cases based on confirmatory test results, and positive likelihood ratios (LR) were calculated. Results were stratified by sex, body mass index, previous medical history and dates of questioning, and a multivariable analysis for association with positive test was conducted., Results: Of 24 362 respondents, 59.1% were men with a median age of 20.5 years (interquartile range 19.6-22.4 years). Significant positive LRs were associated with loss of taste or smell (LR 3.38, 95% CI 3.01-3.79), suspected exposure (LR 1.33, 95% CI 1.28-1.39) and fever (LR 1.26, 95% CI 1.17-1.36). Those factors were also associated with positive PCR result in a multivariable analysis (OR 3.51, 95% CI 3.04-4.06; OR 1.86, 95% CI 1.65-2.09; and OR 1.34, 95% CI 1.19-1.51, respectively). Reports of loss of taste or smell increased gradually over time and were significantly more frequent during the late period of the study (63/5231, 1.21%; 156/7941, 1.96%; and 1505/11 190, 13.45%: p < 0.001)., Conclusion: Loss of taste or smell, report of a suspicious exposure and fever (>37.5°C) were consistently associated with positive LRs for a positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR test result, in a population of predominantly young and healthy adults., (Copyright © 2021 European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The greatest danger faced by divers who use oxygen-enriched gas mixtures is central nervous system oxygen toxicity (CNS-OT). CNS-OT is characterised by convulsions resembling grand-mal epileptic seizures, which may terminate in drowning and death. Elevated arterial levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) (hypercapnia) represent a major risk factor for CNS-OT when breathing hyperoxic gas mixtures. To reduce the risk of a diver being involved in a CNS-OT incident due to hypercapnia, candidates for combat diving are examined at our institute using a routine physiological training procedure, in which they are tested for CO₂ detection and retention. We present the case of a candidate for combat diving, who unexpectedly exhibited signs typical of CNS-OT while breathing pure oxygen under normobaric conditions with > 3 kPa inspired CO₂. Severe headache and nausea, as well as facial muscle twitching, appeared during one of these routine tests. Subsequent medical examination including neurological tests, magnetic resonance imaging and an electroencephalogram were unremarkable. To the best of our knowledge, an event such as this has never previously been published in the medical literature. We present a discussion of the case, and a review of the relevant literature regarding CO₂ as a risk factor for the development of CNS-OT., (Copyright: This article is the copyright of the authors who grant Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine a non-exclusive licence to publish the article in electronic and other forms.)

With the expansion of next-generation sequencing technology and advanced bioinformatics, there has been a rapid growth of genome sequencing projects. However, while this technology enables the rapid and cost-effective assembly of draft genomes, the quality of these assemblies usually falls short of gold standard genome assemblies produced using the more traditional BAC by BAC and Sanger sequencing approaches. Assembly validation is often performed by the physical anchoring of genetically mapped markers, but this is prone to errors and the resolution is usually low, especially towards centromeric regions where recombination is limited. New approaches are required to validate reference genome assemblies. The ability to isolate individual chromosomes combined with next-generation sequencing permits the validation of genome assemblies at the chromosome level. We demonstrate this approach by the assessment of the recently published chickpea kabuli and desi genomes. While previous genetic analysis suggests that these genomes should be very similar, a comparison of their chromosome sizes and published assemblies highlights significant differences. Our chromosomal genomics analysis highlights short defined regions that appear to have been misassembled in the kabuli genome and identifies large-scale misassembly in the draft desi genome. The integration of chromosomal genomics tools within genome sequencing projects has the potential to significantly improve the construction and validation of genome assemblies. The approach could be applied both for new genome assemblies as well as published assemblies, and complements currently applied genome assembly strategies., (© 2014 Society for Experimental Biology, Association of Applied Biologists and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

A comprehensive transcriptome assembly of chickpea has been developed using 134.95 million Illumina single-end reads, 7.12 million single-end FLX/454 reads and 139,214 Sanger expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from >17 genotypes. This hybrid transcriptome assembly, referred to as Cicer arietinumTranscriptome Assembly version 2 (CaTA v2, available at http://data.comparative-legumes.org/transcriptomes/cicar/lista&#95;cicar-201201), comprising 46,369 transcript assembly contigs (TACs) has an N50 length of 1,726 bp and a maximum contig size of 15,644 bp. Putative functions were determined for 32,869 (70.8%) of the TACs and gene ontology assignments were determined for 21,471 (46.3%). The new transcriptome assembly was compared with the previously available chickpea transcriptome assemblies as well as to the chickpea genome. Comparative analysis of CaTA v2 against transcriptomes of three legumes - Medicago, soybean and common bean, resulted in 27,771 TACs common to all three legumes indicating strong conservation of genes across legumes. CaTA v2 was also used for identification of simple sequence repeats (SSRs) and intron spanning regions (ISRs) for developing molecular markers. ISRs were identified by aligning TACs to the Medicago genome, and their putative mapping positions at chromosomal level were identified using transcript map of chickpea. Primer pairs were designed for 4,990 ISRs, each representing a single contig for which predicted positions are inferred and distributed across eight linkage groups. A subset of randomly selected ISRs representing all eight chickpea linkage groups were validated on five chickpea genotypes and showed 20% polymorphism with average polymorphic information content (PIC) of 0.27. In summary, the hybrid transcriptome assembly developed and novel markers identified can be used for a variety of applications such as gene discovery, marker-trait association, diversity analysis etc., to advance genetics research and breeding applications in chickpea and other related legumes.

Ascochyta blight (AB) caused by Ascochyta rabiei (teleomorph, Didymella rabiei) Pass. Lab. is an important fungal disease of chickpea worldwide. Only moderate sources of resistance are available within the cultivated species and we hypothesized that the available sources may carry different genes for resistance, which could be pyramided to improve field resistance to AB. Four divergent moderately resistant cultivars CDC Frontier, CDC Luna, CDC Corinne, and Amit were each crossed to a highly susceptible germplasm ICCV 96029. Parents, F(1) and F(2) generations were evaluated under controlled conditions for their reactions to AB. A total of 144 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were first mapped to eight linkage groups (LG) for the CDC Frontier x ICCV 96029 population. Then based on the evidence from this population, 76, 61, and 42 SSR markers were systematically chosen and mapped in CDC Luna, CDC Corinne, and Amit populations, respectively. Frequency distributions of the AB rating in the F(2) generation varied among the four populations. Composite interval mapping revealed five QTLs (QTL1-5), one on each of LG 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8, respectively, distributed across different sources, controlling resistance to AB. CDC Frontier contained QTL2, 3, and 4 that simultaneously accounted for 56% of phenotypic variations. CDC Luna contained QTL 1 and 3. CDC Corinne contained QTL 3 and 5, while only QTL 2 was identified in Amit. Altogether these QTL explained 48, 38, and 14% of the estimated phenotypic variations in CDC Luna, CDC Corinne, and Amit populations, respectively. The results suggested that these QTLs could be combined into a single genotype to enhance field resistance to AB.