West Nile and Usutu viruses are efficiently inactivated in platelet concentrates by UVC light using the THERAFLEX UV-Platelets system.

Background And Objectives: West Nile virus (WNV) and Usutu virus (USUV) are mosquito-borne flaviviruses (Flaviviridae) that originated in Africa, have expanded their geographical range during the last decades and caused documented infections in Europe in the last years. Acute WNV and USUV infections have been detected in asymptomatic blood donors by nucleic acid testing. Thus, inactivation of both viral pathogens before blood transfusion is necessary to ensure blood product safety.

Mammals Preferred: Reassortment of and Occurs in Mammalian but Not Insect Cells.

Reassortment is a viral genome-segment recomposition known for many viruses, including the orthobunyaviruses. The co-infection of a host cell with two viruses of the same serogroup, such as the and the can give rise to novel viruses. One example is the Ngari virus, which has caused major outbreaks of human infections in Central Africa.

Phase separation and coexistence of hydrodynamically interacting microswimmers.

A striking feature of the collective behavior of spherical microswimmers is that for sufficiently strong self-propulsion they phase-separate into a dense cluster coexisting with a low-density disordered surrounding. Extending our previous work, we use the squirmer as a model swimmer and the particle-based simulation method of multi-particle collision dynamics to explore the influence of hydrodynamics on their phase behavior in a quasi-two-dimensional geometry. The coarsening dynamics towards the phase-separated state is diffusive in an intermediate time regime followed by a final ballistic compactification of the dense cluster.