Human myiasis in Ecuador.

We review epidemiological and clinical data on human myiasis from Ecuador, based on data from the Ministry of Public Health (MPH) and a review of the available literature for clinical cases. The larvae of four flies, Dermatobia hominis, Cochliomyia hominivorax, Sarcophaga haemorrhoidalis, and Lucilia eximia, were identified as the causative agents in 39 reported clinical cases. The obligate D. hominis, causing furuncular lesions, caused 17 (43.5%) cases distributed along the tropical Pacific coast and the Amazon regions. The facultative C. hominivorax was identified in 15 (38%) clinical cases, infesting wound and cavitary lesions including orbital, nasal, aural and vaginal, and occurred in both subtropical and Andean regions. C. hominivorax was also identified in a nosocomial hospital-acquired wound. Single infestations were reported for S. haemorrhoidalis and L. eximia. Of the 39 clinical cases, 8 (21%) occurred in tourists. Ivermectin, when it became available, was used to treat furuncular, wound, and cavitary lesions successfully. MPH data for 2013–2015 registered 2,187 cases of which 54% were reported in men; 46% occurred in the tropical Pacific coast, 30% in the temperate Andes, 24% in the tropical Amazon, and 0.2% in the Galapagos Islands. The highest annual incidence was reported in the Amazon (23 cases/100,000 population), followed by Coast (5.1/100,000) and Andes (4.7/100,000). Human myiasis is a neglected and understudied ectoparasitic infestation, being endemic in both temperate and tropical regions of Ecuador. Improved education and awareness among populations living in, visitors to, and health personnel working in high-risk regions, is required for improved epidemiological surveillance, prevention, and correct diagnosis and treatment

The Use of Genetic Algorithms in UV Disinfection of Drinking Water

In order to have drinking water, some countries have to use chlorine. It is use cause is effective and it’s cheap. An alternative to this process is the UV disinfection of drinking water. Most of the devices in the market use UV bulbs or mercury lamps. The UV LED, which is cheaper and smaller, allows creating new smaller devices. The main contribution of this paper is the use of Genetic Algorithms to help design a drinking water device with UV LEDs

Density-dependent interactions and structure of charged colloidal dispersions in the weak screening regime

We determine the structure of charge-stabilized colloidal suspensions at low ionic strength over an extended range of particle volume fractions using a combination of light and small angle neutron scattering experiments. The variation of the structure factor with concentration is analyzed within a one-component model of a colloidal suspension. We show that the observed structural behavior corresponds to a non-monotonic density dependence of the colloid effective charge and the mean interparticle interaction energy. Our findings are corroborated by similar observations from primitive model computer simulations of salt-free colloidal suspensions.Comment: Revised version, accepted to Phys. Rev. Let

The herpetofauna of Parque Nacional Pico Bonito, Honduras

Seventy-three species of amphibians and reptiles (six salamanders, 20 anurans, 20 lizards, and 27 snakes) are known from Parque Nacional Pico Bonito, Honduras. The physiography, climate, vegetation, and microhabitats of the park are briefly described. Forty-four species are recorded from Lowland Moist Forest, 45 from Premontane Wet Forest, and 14 from Lower Montane Wet Forest. The primary microhabitat and relative abundance of each species are indicated and population declines are discussed

Testing the relevance of effective interaction potentials between highly charged colloids in suspension

Combining cell and Jellium model mean-field approaches, Monte Carlo together with integral equation techniques, and finally more demanding many-colloid mean-field computations, we investigate the thermodynamic behavior, pressure and compressibility of highly charged colloidal dispersions, and at a more microscopic level, the force distribution acting on the colloids. The Kirkwood-Buff identity provides a useful probe to challenge the self-consistency of an approximate effective screened Coulomb (Yukawa) potential between colloids. Two effective parameter models are put to the test: cell against renormalized Jellium models

Experiencia en el uso del asistente matemático derive, en la solución de problemas físicos y/o geométricos

En este trabajo se tratarán problemas, en los cuales se tendrá en cuenta el aspecto de modelación, resolución e interpretación de resultados, donde predomina el análisis geométrico en cada situación. La obtención de estos resultados será sobre la base de la aplicación de las nuevas tecnologías, que favorecen el aprendizaje del estudiante y estimulan los procesos de creación y abstracción, permitiendo realizar operaciones con rapidez y exactitud. Además facilitan el intercambio ágil de información con el ordenador, aprovechando las capacidades tanto simbólicas como gráficas de los Asistentes Matemáticos (en este caso DERIVE)

Evolution of magnetic fields through cosmological perturbation theory

The origin of galactic and extra-galactic magnetic fields is an unsolved problem in modern cosmology. A possible scenario comes from the idea of these fields emerged from a small field, a seed, which was produced in the early universe (phase transitions, inflation, ...) and it evolves in time. Cosmological perturbation theory offers a natural way to study the evolution of primordial magnetic fields. The dynamics for this field in the cosmological context is described by a cosmic dynamo like equation, through the dynamo term. In this paper we get the perturbed Maxwell's equations and compute the energy momentum tensor to second order in perturbation theory in terms of gauge invariant quantities. Two possible scenarios are discussed, first we consider a FLRW background without magnetic field and we study the perturbation theory introducing the magnetic field as a perturbation. The second scenario, we consider a magnetized FLRW and build up the perturbation theory from this background. We compare the cosmological dynamo like equation in both scenarios

Path Integral Approach to Strongly Nonlinear Composite

We study strongly nonlinear disordered media using a functional method. We solve exactly the problem of a nonlinear impurity in a linear host and we obtain a Bruggeman-like formula for the effective nonlinear susceptibility. This formula reduces to the usual Bruggeman effective medium approximation in the linear case and has the following features: (i) It reproduces the weak contrast expansion to the second order and (ii) the effective medium exponent near the percolation threshold are $s=1$, $t=1+\kappa$, where $\kappa$ is the nonlinearity exponent. Finally, we give analytical expressions for previously numerically calculated quantities.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Frequency-reuse planning of the down-link of distributed antenna systems with maximum-ratio-combining (MRC) receivers

Distributed antenna systems (DAS) have been shown to considerably outperform conventional cellular systems in terms of capacity improvement and interference resilience. However, the influence of frequency reuse planning on the performance of DAS remains relatively unknown. To partially fill this gap, this paper presents a comparative analysis of the down-link of DAS versus conventional cellular systems using different values of frequency reuse factor. The analysis assumes Rayleigh fading channels and it also considers maximum-ratio-combining (MRC) receivers at the user terminals to exploit diversity both in the transmission and reception links. Numerical evaluation of the analytical expressions shows that, in general, for most of the cases DAS can achieve better performance figures than conventional cellular systems using considerably smaller values of frequency reuse factor. Conversely, DAS can significantly improve the throughput (2x-3x) and power consumption (6-10 dB) of conventional systems when using the same frequency reuse factor. An interesting result shows that in some particular cases DAS outperform conventional cellular systems no matter the frequency reuse factor used by the latter one, which indicates an effective capacity gain provided by the combined operation of DAS and MRC receivers