Herpetofauna en dos sitios en el municipio de Soto la Marina, Tamaulipas, México

We conducted a herpetofaunal study from November 2009 to July 2010 on the ranches El Herradero and San Jose de los Leones, both in the municipality of Soto la Marina, in the centraleastern part of the state of Tamaulipas, northeastern Mexico. Their location corresponds to a peninsula surrounded by the Laguna Madre. The objectives were to conduct a herpetological inventory and to determine the distribution of the species in the plant communities and the status of each species following the criteria of the NOM-059-SEMARNAT-2010. The information will be useful in delineating an area to set aside for conservation easement for the species. We followed the transect method described by Campbell & Christman (1982). We recorded 17 species: one anuran, one crocodile, six turtles, three lizards and six snakes. Of these, eight are new records for the municipality of Soto la Marina, 10 species are at risk, six are of special concern, three are threatened, and one is endangered. The ranches contain 34.69% of the herpetofauna species present in the municipality.Se realizó un estudio herpetofaunístico en los ranchos El Herradero y San José de los Leones ambos ubicados en el municipio de Soto la Marina, en la porción central-oriental del estado de Tamaulipas al Noreste de México. Estos predios se ubican en una forma de península rodeada por agua perteneciente a la Laguna Madre. Los objetivos fueron: realizar un inventario herpetológico, determinar la asociación de la herpetofauna con las comunidades vegetales y determinar el estatus de cada una de las especies de acuerdo a la NOM-059-SEMARNAT-2010. Lo anterior con la finalidad de que el área ocupada por los ranchos sea para establecer sitios de conservación como servidumbre ecológica de especies. Se siguió el muestreo de transectos descrito por Campbell & Christman (1982). El estudio se realizó desde noviembre de 2009 hasta julio de 2010. Se registraron 17 especies: un anuro, seis tortugas, un cocodrilo, tres lagartijas y seis serpientes. De estos, ocho son nuevos reportes para el municipio de Soto la Marina, y de acuerdo con la NOM-059-SEMARNAT-2010 se reportaron 10 especies donde seis se encuentran Sujetas a Protección Especial, tres se encuentran Amenazadas y una en Peligro de Extinción. Los ranchos cuentan con 34.69% de las especies de herpetofauna presente en el municipio

Nuevo método de evaluación del riesgo de erosión hídrica en operaciones forestales basado en la variabilidad de las precipitaciones

Nuevo método de evaluación del riesgo de erosión hídrica en operaciones forestales basado en la variabilidad de las precipitaciones A new method of assessing water erosion risk in forest operations based on rainfall variability Water erosion has been a major environmental problem associated to forest harvesting operations in humid and temperate climates. The incorporation of this factor in the decision making process has been complex due to the high variability observed in rainfall intensity and magnitude. This paper presents a methodology for incorporating the temporal variability of rainfall in the planning of forest operations. We used a monthly index based on the R-RUSLE erosivity factor. This index allows knowing the most likely value of soil loss and associating a confidence level. Thus, the forest planner has an estimate of erosion rates related to the operations, and an index that reflects the rainfall variability. With this methodology it is possible to identify, for a given level of soil loss, those months in which there is a higher uncertainty. This methodology was applied to a pine plantation in Santa Barbara, Biobío Region, Chile, where the rainfall erosivity ranges from 16 MJ mm ha -1 h -1 to 271 MJ mm ha -1 h -1 depending on the month of the year

Generating Interpretable Fuzzy Systems for Classification Problems

En este artículo se presenta un nuevo método para generar sistemas difusos interpretables, a partir de datos experimentalesde entrada y salida, para resolver problemas de clasificación. En la partición antecedente se emplean conjuntos triangulares con interpolación de 0.5 lo cual evita la presencia de solapamientos complejos que suceden en otros métodos. Los consecuentes, tipo Singleton, son generados por la proyección de los valores modales de cada función de membresía triangular en el espacio de salida y se emplea el método de mínimos cuadrados para el ajuste de los consecuentes. El método propuesto consigue una mayor precisión que la alcanzada con los métodos actuales existentes, empleando un número reducido de reglas y parámetros y sin sacrificar la interpretabilidad del modelo difuso. El enfoque propuesto es aplicado a dos problemas clásicos de clasificación: el Wisconsin Breast Cancer (WBC) y el Iris Data Classification Problem, para mostrar las ventajas del método y comparar los resultados con los alcanzados por otros investigadores.This paper presents a new method to generate interpretable fuzzy systems from training data to deal with classification problems. The antecedent partition uses triangular sets with 0.5 interpolations avoiding the presence of complex overlapping that happens in another method. Singleton consequents are generated form the projection of the modal values of each triangular membership function into the output space. Least square method is used to adjust the consequents. The proposed method gets a higher average classification accuracy rate than the existing methods with a reduced number of rules andparameters and without sacrificing the fuzzy system interpretability. The proposed approach is applied to two classical classification problems: Iris data and the Wisconsin Breast Cancer classification problem

Generación de piloto automático difuso para maniobras de embarcaciones

This paper introduces a method to generate autopilots for ship headings by using issues from the observation of control actions performed by human operators. The controller is designed based on fuzzy logic and uses triangular membership functions for the antecedent and consequent functions for Singleton type. For an automatic adjustment of the consequential, the recursive least squares method was used. This method is used to generate and validate the course driver of a 350-m tanker, at different load conditions.Este documento presenta un método para generar pilotos automáticos para rumbo de embarcación mediante el uso de asuntos provenientes de la observación de acciones de control realizadas por operadores humanos. El controlador está diseñado basado en lógica difusa (fuzzy logic) y utiliza funciones de pertenencia triangular para las funciones antecedentes y consecuentes para tipo Singleton. Para un ajuste automático de la consecuente, se utilizó el método de mínimos cuadrados recursivos. Este método es utilizado para generar y validar el conductor de curso de un buque cisterna de 350 m, en diferentes condiciones de carga

Comparative genomic analysis uncovers 3 novel loci encoding type six secretion systems differentially distributed in Salmonella serotypes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The recently described Type VI Secretion System (T6SS) represents a new paradigm of protein secretion in bacteria. A number of bioinformatic studies have been conducted to identify T6SS gene clusters in the available bacterial genome sequences. According to these studies, <it>Salmonella </it>harbors a unique T6SS encoded in the <it>Salmonella </it>Pathogenicity Island 6 (SPI-6). Since these studies only considered few <it>Salmonella </it>genomes, the present work aimed to identify novel T6SS loci by <it>in silico </it>analysis of every genome sequence of <it>Salmonella </it>available.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The analysis of sequencing data from 44 completed or in progress <it>Salmonella </it>genome projects allowed the identification of 3 novel T6SS loci. These clusters are located in differentially-distributed genomic islands we designated SPI-19, SPI-20 and SPI-21, respectively. SPI-19 was identified in a subset of <it>S. enterica </it>serotypes including Dublin, Weltevreden, Agona, Gallinarum and Enteritidis. In the later, an internal deletion eliminated most of the island. On the other hand, SPI-20 and SPI-21 were restricted to <it>S. enterica </it>subspecies <it>arizonae </it>(IIIa) serotype 62:z4,z23:-. Remarkably, SPI-21 encodes a VgrG protein containing a C-terminal extension similar to S-type pyocins of <it>Pseudomonas aeruginosa</it>. This is not only the first evolved VgrG described in <it>Salmonella</it>, but also the first evolved VgrG including a pyocin domain described so far in the literature. In addition, the data indicate that SPI-6 T6SS is widely distributed in <it>S. enterica </it>and absent in serotypes Enteritidis, Gallinarum, Agona, Javiana, Paratyphi B, Virchow, IIIa 62:z4,z23:- and IIIb 61:1,v:1,5,(7). Interestingly, while some serotypes harbor multiple T6SS (Dublin, Weltvreden and IIIa 62:z4,z23:-) others do not encode for any (Enteritidis, Paratyphi B, Javiana, Virchow and IIIb 61:1,v:1,5,(7)). Comparative and phylogenetic analyses indicate that the 4 T6SS loci in <it>Salmonella </it>have a distinct evolutionary history. Finally, we identified an orphan Hcp-like protein containing the Hcp/COG3157 domain linked to a C-terminal extension. We propose to designate this and related proteins as "evolved Hcps".</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Altogether, our data suggest that (i) the <it>Salmonella </it>T6SS loci were acquired by independent lateral transfer events and (ii) evolved to contribute in the adaptation of the serotypes to different lifestyles and environments, including animal hosts. Notably, the presence of an evolved VgrG protein related to pyocins suggests a novel role for T6SS in bacterial killing. Future studies on the roles of the identified T6SS loci will expand our knowledge on <it>Salmonella </it>pathogenesis and host specificity.</p

Combination of DROOL rules and Protégé knowledge bases in the ONTO-H annotation tool

ONTO-H is a semi-automatic collaborative tool for the semantic annotation of documents, built as a Protégé 3.0 tab plug-in. Among its multiple functionalities aimed at easing the document annotation process, ONTO-H uses a rule-based system to create cascading annotations out from a single drag and drop operation from a part of a document into an already existing concept or instance of the domain ontology being used for annotation. It also gives support to the detection of name conflicts and instance duplications in the creation of the annotations. The rule system runs on top of the open source rule engine DROOLS and is connected to the domain ontology used for annotation by means of an ad-hoc programmed Java proxy

Some applications of the bootstrap in Spanish Discards Sampling Scheme

Herein we propose a nested boostrap scheme to explore di erent sources of variability in discard data. The proposed tool resamples on trips, hauls within trips and lengthclasess within hauls to include all sources of variability identified in the Spanish DCR sampling program scheme. Megrim (Lepidorhombus wiffiagonis) and Hake (Merluccius merluccius) discard data collected in 2008 from OTB-51 metier operating in ICES Division VI - VII, and Mediterranea DEF-Southern metier operating in the GSA 6S area were considered as case studies. Bootstrap Error and Coeficients of Variation associated to mean discards per trip were obtained and compared with asymptotic estimates. Furthermore, we use the bootstrap to quantify the contribution of the given sources of variability to global variability, and to assess simulated sampling scenarios differing each others in sampling effort. The last application of this method is for detecting outliers in 2008 sampled units (Trips). The good performance of the bootstrap method validates its use to obtain reliable error estimates in further regression and/or classiffication studies on discard data