Primera aproximación al uso de la ocupación del tapir (Tapirella bairdii Gill, 1865) como indicador de la integridad ecológica en la Reserva de la Biosfera Maya, Guatemala

La Reserva de la Biosfera Maya (RBM) es un área protegida de relevancia nacional, regional y mundial por la diversidad biológica  asociada  y  los  beneficios  que  se  obtienen  de  esta.  En  su  plan  maestro  se  plantea  el  conjunto  de  elementos  de conservación a partir de los cuales se orientan estrategias y se evalúa la efectividad de manejo de dicha reserva, entre los cuales se incluye a Tapirella  bairdii  (tapir), por lo que es importante contar con un monitoreo de esta especie como una  herramienta para la administración de esta reserva. En el 2015 se inició el desarrollo de un protocolo de monitoreo basado en la estimación de  la  probabilidad de  ocupación  y el  presente  estudio constituye  la  continuación de  esta  iniciativa  a  través de la implementación de las  temporadas  de muestreo en 2017 y 2018. Se registró la presencia del tapir en cinco zonas núcleo de la RBM empleando trampas cámara y se estimó la probabilidad de ocupación. Los valores estimados sugieren una relación  de la ocupación con la integridad ecológica, en la cual hay una mayor ocupación en áreas con menor perturbación. Se generaron modelos con cinco covariables relacionadas con amenazas potenciales, sin embargo fue el modelo nulo el que se  seleccionó  de  acuerdo  al  criterio  definido.  Los  resultados  sugieren  que  la  integridad  ecológica  en  las  áreas  de  estudio  está siendo afectada  como consecuencia  de  las presiones antrópicas por lo que  es necesario el  fortalecimiento de  aquellas con menores valores de ocupación.

Study protocol for the multicentre cohorts of Zika virus infection in pregnant women, infants, and acute clinical cases in Latin America and the Caribbean: The ZIKAlliance consortium

Background: The European Commission (EC) Horizon 2020 (H2020)-funded ZIKAlliance Consortium designed a multicentre study including pregnant women (PW), children (CH) and natural history (NH) cohorts. Clinical sites were selected over a wide geographic range within Latin America and the Caribbean, taking into account the dynamic course of the ZIKV epidemic. Methods: Recruitment to the PW cohort will take place in antenatal care clinics. PW will be enrolled regardless of symptoms and followed over the course of pregnancy, approximately every 4 weeks. PW will be revisited at delivery (or after miscarriage/abortion) to assess birth outcomes, including microcephaly and other congenital abnormalities according to the evolving definition of congenital Zika syndrome (CZS). After birth, children will be followed for 2 years in the CH cohort. Follow-up visits are scheduled at ages 1-3, 4-6, 12, and 24 months to assess neurocognitive and developmental milestones. In addition, a NH cohort for the characterization of symptomatic rash/fever illness was designed, including follow-up to capture persisting health problems. Blood, urine, and other biological materials will be collected, and tested for ZIKV and other relevant arboviral diseases (dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever) using RT-PCR or serological methods. A virtual, decentralized biobank will be created. Reciprocal clinical monitoring has been established between partner sites. Substudies of ZIKV seroprevalence, transmissio

Classical versus quantum views of intense laser pulse propagation in gases

International audienceWe study the behavior of reduced models for the propagation of intense laser pulses in atomic gases. The models we consider incorporate ionization, blueshifting, and other nonlinear propagation effects in an ab initio manner, by explicitly taking into account the microscopic electron dynamics. Numerical simulations of the propagation of ultrashort linearly-polarized and elliptically-polarized laser pulses over experimentally-relevant propagation distances are presented. We compare the behavior of models where the electrons are treated classically with those where they are treated quantum-mechanically. A classical equivalent to the ground state is found, which maximizes the agreement between the quantum and classical predictions of the single-atom ionization probability as a function of laser intensity. We show that this translates into quantitative agreement between the quantum and classical models for the laser field evolution during propagation through gases of ground-state atoms. This agreement is exploited to provide a classical perspective on low- and high-order harmonic generation in linearly-polarized fields. In addition, we demonstrate the stability of the polarization of a nearly-linearly-polarized pulse using a two-dimensional model

Sub- and supercritical continuous hydrothermal technology for advanced nanostructured clay minerals

Invited talkInternational audienc

Rapid genome shrinkage in a self-fertile nematode reveals sperm competition proteins

To reveal impacts of sexual mode on genome content, we compared chromosome-scale assemblies of the outcrossing nematode Caenorhabditis nigoni to its self-fertile sibling species, C. briggsaeC. nigoni's genome resembles that of outcrossing relatives but encodes 31% more protein-coding genes than C. briggsaeC. nigoni genes lacking C. briggsae orthologs were disproportionately small and male-biased in expression. These include the male secreted short (mss) gene family, which encodes sperm surface glycoproteins conserved only in outcrossing species. Sperm from mss-null males of outcrossing C. remanei failed to compete with wild-type sperm, despite normal fertility in noncompetitive mating. Restoring mss to C. briggsae males was sufficient to enhance sperm competitiveness. Thus, sex has a pervasive influence on genome content that can be used to identify sperm competition factors

Seamless Network-Wide IGP Migrations

Network-wide migrations of a running network, such as the replacement of a routing protocol or the modification of its configuration, can improve the performance, scalability, manageability, and security of the entire network. However, such migrations are an important source of concerns for network operators as the reconfiguration campaign can lead to long and service-affecting outages. In this paper, we propose a methodology which addresses the problem of seamlessly modifying the configuration of commonly used link-state Interior Gateway Protocols (IGP). We illustrate the benefits of our methodology by considering several migration scenarios, including the addition or the removal of routing hierarchy in an existing IGP and the replacement of one IGP with another. We prove that a strict operational ordering can guarantee that the migration will not create IP transit service outages. Although finding a safe ordering is NP-complete, we describe techniques which efficiently find such an ordering and evaluate them using both real-world and inferred ISP topologies. Finally, we describe the implementation of a provisioning system which automatically performs the migration by pushing the configurations on the routers in the appropriate order, while monitoring the entire migration process

Ex vivo confocal laser scanning microscopy: A diagnostic technique for easy real-time evaluation of benign and malignant skin tumours

Ex vivo confocal laser scanning microscopy (ex vivo CLSM) is a novel diagnostic tool for a quick bedside evaluation of freshly excised tissue, comparable to histology. We aimed to assess the sensitivity and specificity of ex vivo CLSM in detecting malignant features, to validate its reliability in identifying various skin tumours based on a combination of confocal features and to evaluate the digital staining mode (DS). One-hundred twenty freshly excised skin samples from 91 patients were evaluated. Each lesion was screened for the presence of 23 predefined confocal criteria with ex vivo CLSM, followed by a histopathological examination. The diagnostic agreement between ex vivo CLSM and histology was 89.2%. The diagnostic accuracy of ex vivo CLSM in detecting malignancy reached a sensitivity of 98% and a specificity of 76%. Ex vivo CLSM enabled a rapid identification of the most common skin tumours, the tumour dignity and cytological features. The DS demonstrated a close resemblance to conventional histopathology