2,943 research outputs found
Leishmania isoenzyme polymorphisms in Ecuador: Relationships with geographic distribution and clinical presentation
Background: Determinants of the clinical presentation of the leishmaniases are poorly understood but Leishmania species and strain differences are important. To examine the relationship between clinical presentation, species and isoenzyme polymorphisms, 56 Leishmania isolates from distinct presentations of American tegumentary leishmaniasis (ATL) from Ecuador were analyzed.
Methods: Isolates were characterized by multilocus enzyme electrophoresis for polymorphisms of 11 isoenzymes. Patients were infected in four different ecologic regions: highland and lowland jungle of the Pacific coast, Amazonian lowlands and Andean highlands.
Results: Six Leishmania species constituting 21 zymodemes were identified: L. (Viannia) panamensis (21 isolates,
7 zymodemes), L. (V.) guyanensis (7 isolates, 4 zymodemes), L. (V.) braziliensis (5 isolates, 3 zymodemes), L.
(Leishmania) mexicana (11 isolates, 4 zymodemes), L. (L.) amazonensis (10 isolates, 2 zymodemes) and L. (L.) major
(2 isolates, 1 zymodeme). L. panamensis was the species most frequently identified in the Pacific region and was
associated with several clinical variants of cutaneous disease (CL); eight cases of leishmaniasis recidiva cutis (LRC) found in the Pacific highlands were associated with 3 zymodemes of this species. Mucocutaneous leishmaniasis
found only in the Amazonian focus was associated with 3 zymodemes of L. braziliensis. The papular variant of CL,
Uta, found in the Andean highlands was related predominantly with a single zymodeme of L. mexicana.
Conclusion: Our data show a high degree of phenotypic variation within species, and some evidence for associations between specific variants of ATL (i.e. Uta and LRC) and specific Leishmania zymodemes. This study
further defines the geographic distribution of Leishmania species and clinical variants of ATL in Ecuador
Near real-time surveillance of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic with incomplete data
When responding to infectious disease outbreaks, rapid and accurate estimation of the epidemic trajectory is critical. However, two common data collection problems affect the reliability of the epidemiological data in real time: missing information on the time of first symptoms, and retrospective revision of historical information, including right censoring. Here, we propose an approach to construct epidemic curves in near real time that addresses these two challenges by 1) imputation of dates of symptom onset for reported cases using a dynamically-estimated "backward" reporting delay conditional distribution, and 2) adjustment for right censoring using the NobBS software package to nowcast cases by date of symptom onset. This process allows us to obtain an approximation of the time-varying reproduction number (Rt) in real time. We apply this approach to characterize the early SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in two Spanish regions between March and April 2020. We evaluate how these real-time estimates compare with more complete epidemiological data that became available later. We explore the impact of the different assumptions on the estimates, and compare our estimates with those obtained from commonly used surveillance approaches. Our framework can help improve accuracy, quantify uncertainty, and evaluate frequently unstated assumptions when recovering the epidemic curves from limited data obtained from public health systems in other locations.PMD was supported by the fellowship Ramón Areces Foundation. JAH was funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, Award U54GM088558, and the National Institutes of Health Director’s Early Independence, Award DP5-OD028145. ML was supported by the Morris-Singer Fund and by a subcontract from the Carnegie Mellon University under an award from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Award U01IP001121). MS was supported by the National Institute Of General Medical Sciences, Award R01GM130668-02. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.S
The biota of the Upper Cretaceous site of Lo Hueco (Cuenca, Spain)
The Late Cretaceous (Campanian-Maastrichtian) fossil site of Lo Hueco was recently discovered close to the village of Fuentes (Cuenca,
Spain) during the cutting of a little hill for installation of the railway of the Madrid-Levante high-speed train. To date, it has yielded a rich
collection of well-preserved Cretaceous macrofossils, including plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates. The recovered fossil assemblage
is mainly composed of plants, molluscs (bivalves and gastropods), actinopterygians and teleosteans fishes, amphibians, panpleurodiran
(bothremydids) and pancryptodiran turtles, squamate lizards, eusuchian crocodyliforms, rhabdodontid ornithopods, theropods (mainly
dromaeosaurids), and titanosaur sauropods. This assemblage was deposited in a near-coast continental muddy floodplain crossed by distributary
sandy channels, exposed intermittently to brackish or marine and freshwater flooding as well as to partial or total desiccation events.The Konzentrat-Lagerstatt of Lo Hueco constitutes a singular accumulation of fossils representing individuals of some particular lineages
of continental tetrapods, especially titanosaurs, eusuchians and bothremydid turtles. In the case of the titanosaurs, the site has yielded
multiple partial skeletons in anatomical connection or with a low dispersion of their skeletal elements. A combination of new taxa, new
records of taxa previously known in the Iberian Peninsula, and relatively common taxa in the European record compose the Lo Hueco biota.
The particular conditions of the fossil site of Lo Hueco and the preliminary results indicate that the analysis of the geological context, the
floral and faunal content, and the taphonomical features of the site provide elements that will be especially useful for reassess the evolutionary
history of some lineages of European Late Cretaceous reptiles.Peer reviewe
Update on the correlation of the highest energy cosmic rays with nearby extragalactic matter
Data collected by the Pierre Auger Observatory through 31 August 2007 showed
evidence for anisotropy in the arrival directions of cosmic rays above the
Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuz'min energy threshold, \nobreak{eV}. The
anisotropy was measured by the fraction of arrival directions that are less
than from the position of an active galactic nucleus within 75 Mpc
(using the V\'eron-Cetty and V\'eron catalog). An updated
measurement of this fraction is reported here using the arrival directions of
cosmic rays recorded above the same energy threshold through 31 December 2009.
The number of arrival directions has increased from 27 to 69, allowing a more
precise measurement. The correlating fraction is , compared
with expected for isotropic cosmic rays. This is down from the early
estimate of . The enlarged set of arrival directions is
examined also in relation to other populations of nearby extragalactic objects:
galaxies in the 2 Microns All Sky Survey and active galactic nuclei detected in
hard X-rays by the Swift Burst Alert Telescope. A celestial region around the
position of the radiogalaxy Cen A has the largest excess of arrival directions
relative to isotropic expectations. The 2-point autocorrelation function is
shown for the enlarged set of arrival directions and compared to the isotropic
expectation.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physics on 31 August 201
Anisotropy and chemical composition of ultra-high energy cosmic rays using arrival directions measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory
The Pierre Auger Collaboration has reported evidence for anisotropy in the
distribution of arrival directions of the cosmic rays with energies
eV. These show a correlation with the distribution
of nearby extragalactic objects, including an apparent excess around the
direction of Centaurus A. If the particles responsible for these excesses at
are heavy nuclei with charge , the proton component of the
sources should lead to excesses in the same regions at energies . We here
report the lack of anisotropies in these directions at energies above
(for illustrative values of ). If the anisotropies
above are due to nuclei with charge , and under reasonable
assumptions about the acceleration process, these observations imply stringent
constraints on the allowed proton fraction at the lower energies
Gauge and Scheme Dependence of Mixing Matrix Renormalization
We revisit the issue of mixing matrix renormalization in theories that
include Dirac or Majorana fermions. We show how a gauge-variant on-shell
renormalized mixing matrix can be related to a manifestly gauge-independent one
within a generalized scheme of renormalization. This
scheme-dependent relation is a consequence of the fact that in any scheme of
renormalization, the gauge-dependent part of the mixing-matrix counterterm is
ultra-violet safe and has a pure dispersive form. Employing the unitarity
properties of the theory, we can successfully utilize the afore-mentioned
scheme-dependent relation to preserve basic global or local symmetries of the
bare Lagrangian through the entire process of renormalization. As an immediate
application of our study, we derive the gauge-independent renormalization-group
equations of mixing matrices in a minimal extension of the Standard Model with
isosinglet neutrinos.Comment: 31 pages, LaTeX, uses axodraw.st
Operations of and Future Plans for the Pierre Auger Observatory
Technical reports on operations and features of the Pierre Auger Observatory,
including ongoing and planned enhancements and the status of the future
northern hemisphere portion of the Observatory. Contributions to the 31st
International Cosmic Ray Conference, Lodz, Poland, July 2009.Comment: Contributions to the 31st ICRC, Lodz, Poland, July 200
Anisotropy studies around the galactic centre at EeV energies with the Auger Observatory
Data from the Pierre Auger Observatory are analyzed to search for
anisotropies near the direction of the Galactic Centre at EeV energies. The
exposure of the surface array in this part of the sky is already significantly
larger than that of the fore-runner experiments. Our results do not support
previous findings of localized excesses in the AGASA and SUGAR data. We set an
upper bound on a point-like flux of cosmic rays arriving from the Galactic
Centre which excludes several scenarios predicting sources of EeV neutrons from
Sagittarius . Also the events detected simultaneously by the surface and
fluorescence detectors (the `hybrid' data set), which have better pointing
accuracy but are less numerous than those of the surface array alone, do not
show any significant localized excess from this direction.Comment: Matches published versio
Advanced functionality for radio analysis in the Offline software framework of the Pierre Auger Observatory
The advent of the Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) necessitates the
development of a powerful framework for the analysis of radio measurements of
cosmic ray air showers. As AERA performs "radio-hybrid" measurements of air
shower radio emission in coincidence with the surface particle detectors and
fluorescence telescopes of the Pierre Auger Observatory, the radio analysis
functionality had to be incorporated in the existing hybrid analysis solutions
for fluoresence and surface detector data. This goal has been achieved in a
natural way by extending the existing Auger Offline software framework with
radio functionality. In this article, we lay out the design, highlights and
features of the radio extension implemented in the Auger Offline framework. Its
functionality has achieved a high degree of sophistication and offers advanced
features such as vectorial reconstruction of the electric field, advanced
signal processing algorithms, a transparent and efficient handling of FFTs, a
very detailed simulation of detector effects, and the read-in of multiple data
formats including data from various radio simulation codes. The source code of
this radio functionality can be made available to interested parties on
request.Comment: accepted for publication in NIM A, 13 pages, minor corrections to
author list and references in v
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