DNA extraction from formalin-fixed Franciscana tissues

The present paper reports the extraction of DNA from formalin-fixed Pontoporia blainvillei tissues. Following the Vachot and Monerot (1996) protocol, fragmented DNA (300-700bp) was extracted from more than 95% of liver and muscle samples. DNA yield in liver samples was significantly higher than in muscle samples (4.574 ± 1.169mg DNA/mg versus 0.808 ± 0.297mg DNA/mg). Similar results were obtained from nine other species of cetaceans and five species of pinnipeds. It is of special interest to have a method that allows the utilisation of museum specimens not originally preserved for genetic studies, which may include rarely available, declining or extinct species. SPANISH: El presente trabajo reporta la extracción de ADN a partir de tejidos formolizados de Pontoporia blainvillei. Siguiendo el protocolo de Vachot y Monerot (1996) se pudo extraer ADN degradado (300-700pb) en más del 95% de las muestras de hígado y músculo analizadas. El rendimiento en ADN fue significativamente mayor en muestras de hígado que en muestras de músculo (4.574 ± 1.169mg DNA/mg tejido húmedo versus 0.808 ± 0.297mg DNA/mg tejido húmedo). Resultados similares se obtuvieron en otras nueve especies de Cetáceos y cinco de Pinnípedos. Resulta de gran interés contar con un método que permita la utilización de especímenes depositados en museos y que no hayan sido originalmente colectados para estudios genéticos, incluyendo especies de difícil obtención, en franca declinación o extintas

BAYESIAN ANALYSIS OF THE COMPOUND COLLECTIVE MODEL; THE VARIANCE PREMIUM PRINCIPLE WITH EXPONENTIAL POISSON AND GAMMA-GAMMA DISTRIBUTIONS

The distribution of the aggregate claim size is the considerable importance in insurance theory since, for example, it is needed as an input in premium calculation principles and reserve calculation which plays an important paper in ruin theory. In this paper a Bayesian study for the collective risk model by incorporating a prior distribution for both, the parameter of the claim number distribution and the parameter of the claim size distribution is made and applied to the variance premium principle. Later a sensitivity study is to carry out on both parameters using Bayesian global robustness. Despite the complicated form of the collective risk model it is shown how the robustness study can be treated in an easy way. We illustrate the results obtained with numerical examples.Bayesian Robustness, Contamination Class, Variance Principle.

BAYESIAN ANALYSIS OF THE COMPOUND COLLECTIVE MODEL: THE NET PREMIUM PRINCIPLE WITH EXPONENTIAL POISSON AND GAMMA–GAMMA DISTRIBUTIONS

This article develops a Bayesian analysis of the Compound Collective Model utilizing the Net Premium Principle, considering single-period models. With respect to likelihoods, we used a Poisson distribution for the number of claims and an Exponential distribution for the severity of the accident/event. Gamma distributions were used for the prior distributions. The robustness of the posterior premium was analyzed with respect to the prior distribution specification of the severity of the accident/event, utilizing contamination classes, these being the class of all the distributions and that of all the unimodal distributions with the same mode. Numerical applications of the results obtained were performed.Compound collective model; Bayesian analysis; Robustness analysis.

Comparing the impacts of drip irrigation by freshwater and reclaimed wastewater on the soil microbial community of two citrus species

[SPA] La búsqueda de nuevos recursos para el riego es un requerimiento en los agro ecosistemas mediterráneos. Se evaluó el impacto del riego con aguas de distintos suministros sobre la comunidad microbiana del suelo y sobre la fisiología de la planta en cultivos de pomelo y mandarino en el Sureste de España. Se consideraron los siguientes tratamientos: i) Agua procedente del Trasvase Tajo-Segura y de pozo (TW) ii) Agua regenerada procedente de una EDAR de la zona (RW) iii) Riego con TW, excepto en la segunda fase de desarrollo del fruto en la que se regó con RWc iv) Riego con RW, excepto en la segunda fase de desarrollo del fruto en la que se regó con TWc. [ENG] The search for new water resources for irrigation is a mandatory requirement in Mediterranean agroecosystems. The impacts of irrigation with water from different origins were evaluated in the soil microbial community and plant physiology of grapefruit and mandarin trees in the south-east of Spain. The following treatments were considered: i) freshwater from the Tajo-Segura water transfer canal and well (TW) ii) reclaimed water from a wastewater treatment plant ( RW) iii) irrigation with TW, except in the second stage of fruit development when RWc was applied iv) irrigation with RW, except in the second stage of fruit development when TWc was applied. Enzyme activities and phospholipids fatty acids were determined to know the phylum of microbial biomass.Authors are grateful to MINECO projects and Seneca foundation

Efficient time series detection of the strong stochasticity threshold in Fermi-Pasta-Ulam oscillator lattices

In this work we study the possibility of detecting the so-called strong stochasticity threshold, i.e. the transition between weak and strong chaos as the energy density of the system is increased, in anharmonic oscillator chains by means of the 0-1 test for chaos. We compare the result of the aforementioned methodology with the scaling behavior of the largest Lyapunov exponent computed by means of tangent space dynamics, that has so far been the most reliable method available to detect the strong stochasticity threshold. We find that indeed the 0-1 test can perform the detection in the range of energy density values studied. Furthermore, we determined that conventional nonlinear time series analysis methods fail to properly compute the largest Lyapounov exponent even for very large data sets, whereas the computational effort of the 0-1 test remains the same in the whole range of values of the energy density considered with moderate size time series. Therefore, our results show that, for a qualitative probing of phase space, the 0-1 test can be an effective tool if its limitations are properly taken into account.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures; accepted for publication in Physical Review

Covariant hydrodynamic Lyapunov modes and strong stochasticity threshold in Hamiltonian lattices

We scrutinize the reliability of covariant and Gram-Schmidt Lyapunov vectors for capturing hydrodynamic Lyapunov modes (HLMs) in one-dimensional Hamiltonian lattices. We show that,in contrast with previous claims, HLMs do exist for any energy density, so that strong chaos is not essential for the appearance of genuine (covariant) HLMs. In contrast, Gram-Schmidt Lyapunov vectors lead to misleading results concerning the existence of HLMs in the case of weak chaos.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review

Macroscopic evidence of microscopic dynamics in the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam oscillator chain from nonlinear time series analysis

The problem of detecting specific features of microscopic dynamics in the macroscopic behavior of a many-degrees-of-freedom system is investigated by analyzing the position and momentum time series of a heavy impurity embedded in a chain of nearest-neighbor anharmonic Fermi-Pasta-Ulam oscillators. Results obtained in a previous work [M. Romero-Bastida, Phys. Rev. E {\bf69}, 056204 (2004)] suggest that the impurity does not contribute significantly to the dynamics of the chain and can be considered as a probe for the dynamics of the system to which the impurity is coupled. The ($r,\tau$) entropy, which measures the amount of information generated by unit time at different scales $\tau$ of time and $r$ of the observable, is numerically computed by methods of nonlinear time-series analysis using the position and momentum signals of the heavy impurity for various values of the energy density $\epsilon$ (energy per degree of freedom) of the system and some values of the impurity mass $M$. Results obtained from these two time series are compared and discussed.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, RevTeX4 PRE format; to be published in Phys. Rev.

Application of Experimental Design and Canonical Analysis of Response Surfaces to the Optimization of Poly(3-hydroxyalkanoates) Production by Pseudomonas aeruginosa 42A2

The aim of this work was to optimize the culture medium for biomass and PHA production by Pseudomonas aeruginosa 42A2, using a five-level-three-factor central composite rotatable design (CCRD) combined with response surface methodology (RSM). A total of 23 sets of experiments was developed to obtain the second-order polynomial equations that were used to predict biomass and PHA production in terms of three independent variables: carbon source, nitrate and phosphate concentrations. Canonical analysis of the response surface models showed that the optimum medium composition differed for the production of biomass and PHA. When the models were validated experimentally by culturing Pseudomonas aeruginosa 42A2 in the optimal media, similar values to the predicted ones were obtained for the biomass (18.73 g L–1) and PHA (4.52 g L–1) concentrations. Moreover, central composite rotatable design and canonical analysis of the response surfaces proved to be useful tools for determining the optimum composition of the culture medium

Dynamic modelling and control of a reciprocating engine

Nowadays energy systems should be considered as integrated energy systems (IESs), where interactions between different energy vectors affect each other. A good performance of the whole system depends on the adequate behaviour of each individual element as undesired dynamics may propagate from one element to another. Due to the system complexity, a common practice is to employ steady-state models. Although such an approach is valuable as it provides significant insight into the system behaviour, it may hide inherent coupling characteristics as the dynamics are not considered. To ensure the satisfactory performance of each component,dynamic models are not only required, but essential. With a truly dynamic model it is possible to clearly understand how the system is affected by different operating conditions, load variations and disturbances over time, which in turn enables an effective control system design. Following this line, this paper presents a mathematical model, based on the mean value approach, of a reciprocating engine, which is used in combined heat and power units – key component of an IES. Although the system is non-linear, it is shown that a single-input single-output linear system can be derived and, thus, a frequency domain representation suitable for control system design can be obtained. The system has been developed in MATLAB/Simulink. Simulation results show that the designed linear controller is capable of ensuring a good performance of the reciprocating engine non-linear model