(Text- fig. I)The recent publication (Butcher, 1952) of some new marine algal species belonging to genera largely non-marine arouses interest as there are relatively few genera ranging from marine to freshwater habitats. Two of the genera concerned, Chlorella and Stichococcus, are notable for their very wide habitat range in fresh water and on land.Three marine Stichococcus strains were examined and compared with S. bacillaris Naegeli, 1849, and with various non-marine strains of that species. And that was not a species of Stichococcus Naeg. Though the tendency to fragment is strong in these strains the method of cell division appears typical of the genus and not intermediate between it and Nannochloris as Butcher suggests. The type strain when grown in a sea water and soil biphasic medium produces filaments of usually four to eight cells and occasionally up to 18 cells; while in the other strains seldom are more than two cells seen in a filament. That Butcher's alga is both aquatic and marine does not warrant its position in a separate species. Though S. bacillaris is frequently found in damp terrestrial places it is often also aquatic and like Chlorella is one of the more usual colonists of neglected stock bottles of various solutions and of distilled water. It is not surprising therefore that this alga should be found in estuarine and off-shore marine waters.To test the impression that S. bacillaris is an unexacting plant regarding salinity three strains were grown in (a) Foyn's erdschreiber medium, (b) the

Digital health technologies are transforming the way health outcomes are captured and measured. Digital biomarkers may provide more objective measurements than traditional approaches as they encompass continuous and longitudinal data collection and use of automated analysis for data interpretation. In addition, the use of digital health technology allows for home-based disease assessments, which in addition to reducing patient burden from on-site hospital visits, provides a more holistic picture of how the patient feels and functions in the real world. Tools that can robustly capture drug efficacy based on disease-specific outcomes that are meaningful to patients, are going to be key to the successful development of new treatments. This is particularly important for people living with rare and chronic complex conditions, where therapeutic options are limited and need to be developed using a patient-focused approach to achieve the biggest impact. Working in partnership with patient Organisation Duchenne UK, we co-developed a video-based approach, delivered through a new mobile health platform (DMD Home), to assess motor function in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a genetic, rare, muscular disease characterized by the progressive loss of muscle function and strength. Motor function tasks were selected to reflect the “transfer stage” of the disease, when patients are no longer able to walk independently but can stand and weight-bear to transfer. This stage is important for patients and families as it represents a significant milestone in the progression of DMD but it is not routinely captured and/or scored by standard DMD clinical and physiotherapy assessments. A total of 62 videos were submitted by eight out of eleven participants who onboarded the app and were analysed with pose estimation software (OpenPose) that led to the extraction of objective, quantitative measures, including time, pattern of movement trajectory, and smoothness and symmetry of movement. Computer vision analysis of video tasks to identify voluntary or compensatory movements within the transfer stage merits further investigation. Longitudinal studies to validate DMD home as a new methodology to predict progression to the non-ambulant stage will be pursued.

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