Examination of the chagas disease vector, Triatoma gerstackeri, in the lower Rio Grande Valley

Chagas disease is caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which is carried by an insect vector of the family Reduviidae, and of the subfamily Triatomina. The species Triatoma gerstaeckeri is identified as the primary vector of T. cruzi within the Rio Grande Valley. Species of Triatoma gerstaeckeri were trapped in La Sal del Rey National Refuge in 2012 and 2013. Data indicates a seasonal dispersal pattern of activity for T. gerstaeckeri. Optimal time of capture was between 1-2 hours after sunset. Different methods were utilized to determine the best combination of lures. Results indicate that the UV-light alone is sufficient in attracting T. gerstaeckeri. Using a combination of dry ice with UV-light did not increase efficiency of trapping but this method did not reduce the likelihood either. PCR was performed on 87 T. gerstaeckeri vectors and a 20% infection rate with T. cruzi was observed

Ligand effects on the optical and chiroptical properties of the thiolated Au18cluster

The effect of chiral and achiral ligands protecting the inner Au9 core of the Au18(SR)14 cluster is studied based on density functional theory (DFT) and its corrected long-range interaction (DFT-D) approach. It was found that the electronic properties (energy levels) depend on the specific ligands, which induce distinct distortions on the Au–S framework. However, the substitution of S-c-C6H11 as SCH3 ligands may be considered to be correct given the obtained resemblance to the displayed bonding, optical and chiroptical properties. A further comparison of the CD and UV spectra displayed by the Au18 cluster protected by chiral and achiral ligands attests that more intense profiles are featured by ligands including phenyl rings and/or oxygen atoms such that the Au18 cluster protected by either achiral metamercaptobenzoic acid (m-MBA) or achiral SPh ligands displays more intense UV and CD signals. These results provide new insight into the effect of ligands on thiolated gold cluster

Para el análisis historiográfico de los episodios Olavarrianos

1 archivo PDF (17 páginas). fhquadragintatresDe las diversas versiones decimonónicas sobre la independencia mexicana destaca una poco estudiada: las series de Novelas históricas, del tipo Episodios nacionales escritas por Enrique de Olavarría. En este texto se plantea una ruta de análisis historiográfico que resalta el carácter híbrido de ese género histórico-literario y el horizonte enunciativo de un autor que reconstruye un episodio fundamental de la nación. Palabras clave: Historiografía. Literatura. Historia. Novela. Episodios nacionales. Enrique de Olavarría

Los otros héroes : el soldado de a pie en "El Cerro de las Campanas"

1 archivo PDF (20 páginas). fhtrigintaseptemEn la búsqueda de nuevas formas de problematizar el pasado y con base en estudios historiográficos culturales, se presenta un análisis historiográfico-literario de la novela de 1868: El Cerro de las Campanas para destacar su valor como documento histórico, amén de la labor literaria de su autor, el liberal mexicano Juan Antonio Mateos. El fin es destacar la labor histórica presente en la novela y descubrir el valor que Mateos le dio tanto a los grandes héroes de la Guerra de Intervención como a los soldados patriotas del pueblo llano

Phylogenetic analyses of Postcranial skeletal Morphology in Didelphid Marsupials

In this study I provide a phylogenetic hypothesis for didelphid Marsupials including a suite of 114 postcranial characters. The postcranial evidence was cladistically analyzed separately and concatenated with a nonmolecular data set previously published (71 cranio-dental-external characters). A combined analysis was done including published IRBP (interphotoreceptor retinoid binding protein, 1158 bp), DMP-1 (dentin matrix protein 1, 1176 bp), and RAG-1 (recombinase-activating gene, 2790 bp) sequences to the nonmolecular data set. In order to compare and evaluate the influence of the inclusion of postcranial morphology to previous hypotheses, the taxon sampling of didelphine ingroup was almost similar to the one used in recent series of papers on didelphid phylogeny. The postcranial information includes 48 characters from the axial skeleton, 37 from the anterior limb, and 29 from the posterior limb. I present anatomical descriptions for each postcranial character, adding details of different conditions observed among didelphine ingroup, as well as some functional implications. Different hypotheses that are discussed as polymorphic characters are alternatively treated as composite entries (CO) and transformation series (TS) in morphological and combined analyses. Different codings of polymorphic postcranial characters produce topologies that in general are not contradictory. The principal difference is the loss of resolution of trees in TS analysis, compared to CO analysis in postcranial evidence, whereas the support values were in general low in both codings. The topology obtained from postcranial evidence supported some already recovered relationships, such as the monophyly of the large opossums (Didelphis, Philander, Chironectes, Lutreolina, and Metachirus), and several polytypic groups such as Didelphis, Monodelphis, Marmosops, Thylamys, Micoureus, and Philander. Additionally, the intermediate position of Hyladelphys between calorumyines and didelphines is kept in CO analysis. The inclusion of the postcranial data set to previous nonmolecular evidence causes little incongruence, although some modifications in the topology and support values were detected. The effect of different codings of polymorphic characters was similar respect to the postcranialonly data set. In this case, the topology obtained with CO analysis was also notably better resolved than TS analysis. Similarly to the postcranial-only analysis, the topologies obtained in the total morphological evidence applying the two kinds of codings are highly congruent, but the TS treatment seemed not to contribute to retention of more phylogenetic information, since the CO analysis was better resolved. The relationships obtained adding the postcranial evidence to published combined data set (i.e., morphology, IRBP, DMP-1, and RAG-1 sequences) were mostly better resolved and supported in the CO coding than the morphological analyses, although the TS coding causes loss of resolution in the strict consensus. In this sense, some strong differences on deep branch topology can be detected depending on the treatment applied to polymorphic entries and partitioned analyses (e.g., phylogenetic condition of the mouse opossums, nodes C and B). Including the postcranial evidence in the total data set, I also recovered the intermediate position of Hyladelphys, but never the distantly related clades recently recovered by the inclusion of RAG-1 sequences (clades B + I in Gruber, K.F., R.S. Voss, and S.A. Jansa. 2007. Base-compositional heterogeneity in the RAG1 locus among didelphid marsupials: implications for phylogenetic inference and the evolution of GC content. Systematic Biology 56: 1–14). However, the position of Metachirus nudicaudatus and Tlacuatzin canescens is highly affected. Excluding the last gene, the partitioned combined analysis considering postcranial evidence was highly congruent with previous IRBP, morphology, and combined topologies, especially in the TS analysis, where all already defined nodes were recovered. The inclusion of postcranial evidence to the previous combined data set actually improves the support values when RAG-1 is eliminated. However, even when the topologies from both kinds of codings of polymorphic data were considerably congruent, the mouse opossums were clustered in CO analysis (although including Metachirus if RAG-1 sequences are included). The application of different criteria for the treatment of polymorphic data affects the relationships and phyletic condition of the mouse opossums. Finally, I discuss the postcranial morphology as evidence of didelphid phylogeny, as well as the new postcranial synapomorphies found in the monophyletic groups recovered in the didelphid crown group.Fil: Flores, David Alfredo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia"; Argentin

A deep learning framework for contingent liabilities risk management : predicting Brazilian labor court decisions

Estimar o resultado de um processo em litígio é crucial para muitas organizações. Uma aplicação específica são os "Passivos Contingenciais", que se referem a passivos que podem ou não ocorrer dependendo do resultado de um processo judicial em litígio. A metodologia tradicional para estimar essa probabilidade baseia-se na opinião de um advogado quem determina a possibilidade de um processo judicial ser perdido a partir de uma avaliação quantitativa. Esta tese apresenta a um modelo matemático baseado numa arquitetura de Deep Learning cujo objetivo é estimar a probabilidade de ganho ou perda de um processo de litígio, principalmente para ser utilizada na estimação de Passivos Contingenciais. A arquitetura, diferentemente do método tradicional, oferece um maior grau de confiança ao prever o resultado de um processo legal em termos de probabilidade e com um tempo de processamento de segundos. Além do resultado primário, a arquitetura estima uma amostra dos casos mais semelhantes ao processo estimado, que servem de apoio para a realização de estratégias de litígio. Nossa arquitetura foi testada em duas bases de dados de processos legais: (1) o Tribunal Europeu de Direitos Humanos (ECHR) e (2) o 4º Tribunal Regional do Trabalho brasileiro (4TRT). Ela estimou de acordo com nosso conhecimento, o melhor desempenho já publicado (precisão = 0,906) na base de dados da ECHR, uma coleção amplamente utilizada de processos legais, e é o primeiro trabalho a aplicar essa metodologia em um tribunal de trabalho brasileiro. Os resultados mostram que a arquitetura é uma alternativa adequada a ser utilizada contra o método tradicional de estimação do desfecho de um processo em litígio realizado por advogados. Finalmente, validamos nossos resultados com especialistas que confirmaram as possibilidades promissoras da arquitetura. Assim, nos incentivamos os académicos a continuar desenvolvendo pesquisas sobre modelagem matemática na área jurídica, pois é um tema emergente com um futuro promissor e aos usuários a utilizar ferramentas baseadas como a desenvolvida em nosso trabalho, pois fornecem vantagens substanciais em termos de precisão e velocidade sobre os métodos convencionais.Estimating the likely outcome of a litigation process is crucial for many organizations. A specific application is the “Contingents Liabilities,” which refers to liabilities that may or may not occur depending on the result of a pending litigation process (lawsuit). The traditional methodology for estimating this likelihood is based on the opinion from the lawyer’s experience which is based on a qualitative appreciation. This dissertation presents a mathematical modeling framework based on a Deep Learning architecture that estimates the probability outcome of a litigation process (accepted & not accepted) with a particular use on Contingent Liabilities. The framework offers a degree of confidence by describing how likely an event will occur in terms of probability and provides results in seconds. Besides the primary outcome, it offers a sample of the most similar cases to the estimated lawsuit that serve as support to perform litigation strategies. We tested our framework in two litigation process databases from: (1) the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and (2) the Brazilian 4th regional labor court. Our framework achieved to our knowledge the best-published performance (precision = 0.906) on the ECHR database, a widely used collection of litigation processes, and it is the first to be applied in a Brazilian labor court. Results show that the framework is a suitable alternative to be used against the traditional method of estimating the verdict outcome from a pending litigation performed by lawyers. Finally, we validated our results with experts who confirmed the promising possibilities of the framework. We encourage academics to continue developing research on mathematical modeling in the legal area as it is an emerging topic with a promising future and practitioners to use tools based as the proposed, as they provides substantial advantages in terms of accuracy and speed over conventional methods

Fusión de suturas craneales en el delfín franciscana, Pontoporia blainvillei (Gervais and D'Orbigny, 1844)

Se estudió la fusión de suturas craneales y su asimetría bilateral en el delfín franciscana, Pontoporia blainvillei. Nuestros resultados mostraron que el cierre de suturas presenta baja variabilidad asociada a la longitud corporal total, exceptuando la sutura premaxilar-maxilar, cuyo estado de fusión mostró cierta asociación con el tamaño. Las suturas no mostraron asimetría direccional en su patrón de cierre, en concordancia con los resultados encontrados para las especies de delfines estudiadas hasta ahora. Nuestros resultados apoyan la idea de que diferentes especies de delfines exhiben distintos patrones de cierre de suturas asociados con su historia evolutiva y sus demandas funcionales específicas, y que no hay un patrón común general.Cranial suture closure and its bilateral asymmetry in the franciscana dolphin, Pontoporia blainvillei, were studied. Our results showed that the closure of cranial sutures exhibit low variability associated to total body size, with the exception of the premaxilla-maxilla suture which showed some correlation with body size. The cranial sutures of franciscana dolphins showed closure with no directional asymmetry, in accordance with the results found in dolphin species studied to date. Our results support the idea that different species of dolphins exhibit distinct patterns of suture closure, associated with their specific evolutionary histories and functional demands, and that there is no general common pattern.Fil: del Castillo, Daniela Laura. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia"; ArgentinaFil: Flores, David Alfredo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia"; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico - Tucumán. Unidad Ejecutora Lillo. San Miguel de Tucumán; ArgentinaFil: Cappozzo, Humberto Luis. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia"; Argentina. Fundación de Historia Natural Félix de Azara; Argentin

Energy-efficient through-life smart design, manufacturing and operation of ships in an industry 4.0 environment

Energy efficiency is an important factor in the marine industry to help reduce manufacturing and operational costs as well as the impact on the environment. In the face of global competition and cost-effectiveness, ship builders and operators today require a major overhaul in the entire ship design, manufacturing and operation process to achieve these goals. This paper highlights smart design, manufacturing and operation as the way forward in an industry 4.0 (i4) era from designing for better energy efficiency to more intelligent ships and smart operation through-life. The paper (i) draws parallels between ship design, manufacturing and operation processes, (ii) identifies key challenges facing such a temporal (lifecycle) as opposed to spatial (mass) products, (iii) proposes a closed-loop ship lifecycle framework and (iv) outlines potential future directions in smart design, manufacturing and operation of ships in an industry 4.0 value chain so as to achieve more energy-efficient vessels. Through computational intelligence and cyber-physical integration, we envision that industry 4.0 can revolutionise ship design, manufacturing and operations in a smart product through-life process in the near future