Interplay between excitation kinetics and reaction-center dynamics in purple bacteria

Photosynthesis is arguably the fundamental process of Life, since it enables energy from the Sun to enter the food-chain on Earth. It is a remarkable non-equilibrium process in which photons are converted to many-body excitations which traverse a complex biomolecular membrane, getting captured and fueling chemical reactions within a reaction-center in order to produce nutrients. The precise nature of these dynamical processes -- which lie at the interface between quantum and classical behaviour, and involve both noise and coordination -- are still being explored. Here we focus on a striking recent empirical finding concerning an illumination-driven transition in the biomolecular membrane architecture of {\it Rsp. Photometricum} purple bacteria. Using stochastic realisations to describe a hopping rate model for excitation transfer, we show numerically and analytically that this surprising shift in preferred architectures can be traced to the interplay between the excitation kinetics and the reaction center dynamics. The net effect is that the bacteria profit from efficient metabolism at low illumination intensities while using dissipation to avoid an oversupply of energy at high illumination intensities.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in New Journal of Physic

Construcción de prototipos para las etapas de un traductor de idiomas basada en el análisis y estructuración de una plataforma teórica

Este trabajo está enmarcado en el área del Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural, específicamente la Traducción Automática. Se enumeran cada una de las etapas que hacen parte del proceso de traducción automática, documentando la base teórica y los resultados de prototipos que muestran el procesamiento realizado por cada etapa, permitiendo al lector diferenciar por medio de ejemplos los diferentes procesos que aquí intervienen. Concluye mostrando la salida del prototipo principal para frases afirmativas en presente simple del idioma inglés, teniendo como destino el idioma español, mostrando como se genera una salida libre de ambigüedades gracias al manejo de las relaciones temática

Epidemiology of intra-abdominal infection and sepsis in critically ill patients: “AbSeS”, a multinational observational cohort study and ESICM Trials Group Project

Purpose: To describe the epidemiology of intra-abdominal infection in an international cohort of ICU patients according to a new system that classifies cases according to setting of infection acquisition (community-acquired, early onset hospital-acquired, and late-onset hospital-acquired), anatomical disruption (absent or present with localized or diffuse peritonitis), and severity of disease expression (infection, sepsis, and septic shock). Methods: We performed a multicenter (n = 309), observational, epidemiological study including adult ICU patients diagnosed with intra-abdominal infection. Risk factors for mortality were assessed by logistic regression analysis. Results: The cohort included 2621 patients. Setting of infection acquisition was community-acquired in 31.6%, early onset hospital-acquired in 25%, and late-onset hospital-acquired in 43.4% of patients. Overall prevalence of antimicrobial resistance was 26.3% and difficult-to-treat resistant Gram-negative bacteria 4.3%, with great variation according to geographic region. No difference in prevalence of antimicrobial resistance was observed according to setting of infection acquisition. Overall mortality was 29.1%. Independent risk factors for mortality included late-onset hospital-acquired infection, diffuse peritonitis, sepsis, septic shock, older age, malnutrition, liver failure, congestive heart failure, antimicrobial resistance (either methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, vancomycin-resistant enterococci, extended-spectrum beta-lactamase-producing Gram-negative bacteria, or carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative bacteria) and source control failure evidenced by either the need for surgical revision or persistent inflammation. Conclusion: This multinational, heterogeneous cohort of ICU patients with intra-abdominal infection revealed that setting of infection acquisition, anatomical disruption, and severity of disease expression are disease-specific phenotypic characteristics associated with outcome, irrespective of the type of infection. Antimicrobial resistance is equally common in community-acquired as in hospital-acquired infection

Construcción de prototipos para las etapas de un traductor de idiomas basada en el análisis y estructuración de una plataforma teórica.

The approach of this work is about the Natural Language Processing, specially the Machine Translation. It describes each of the stages of the Machine Translation process, documenting its theoretical base and the results of prototypes which demonstrate the processing made for each stage, letting the reader differentiate each process through examples. At the end it shows the output of the main prototype for affirmative sentences in present simple from English to Spanish, showing the output free of ambiguities thanks to the use of correlated topics.Este trabajo está enmarcado en el área del Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural, específicamente la Traducción Automática. Se enumeran cada una de las etapas que hacen parte del proceso de traducción automática, documentando la base teórica y los resultados de prototipos que muestran el procesamiento realizado por cada etapa, permitiendo al lector diferenciar por medio de ejemplos los diferentes procesos que aquí intervienen. Concluye mostrando la salida del prototipo principal para frases afirmativas en presente simple del idioma inglés, teniendo como destino el idioma español, mostrando como se genera una salida libre de ambigüedades gracias al manejo de las relaciones temáticas

Association analysis of resistance to cereal cyst nematodes (Heterodera avenae) and root lesion nematodes (Pratylenchus neglectus and P. thornei) in CIMMYT advanced spring wheat lines for semi-arid conditions

To identify loci linked to nematode resistance genes, a total of 126 of CIMMYT advanced spring wheat lines adapted to semi-arid conditions were screened for resistance to Heterodera avenae, Pratylenchus neglectus, and P. thornei, of which 107 lines were genotyped with 1,310 DArT. Association of DArT markers with nematode response was analyzed using the general linear model. Results showed that 11 markers were associated with resistance to H. avenae (pathotype Ha21), 25 markers with resistance to P. neglectus, and 9 significant markers were identified to be linked with resistance to P. thornei. In this work we confirmed that chromosome 4A (~90-105 cM) can be a source of resistance to P. thornei as has been recently reported. Other significant markers were also identified on chromosomal regions where no resistant genes have been reported for both nematodes species. These novel QTL were mapped to chromosomes 5A, 6A, and 7A for H. avenae; on chromosomes 1A, 1B, 3A, 3B, 6B, 7AS, and 7D for P. neglectus; and on chromosomes 1D, 2A, and 5B for P. thornei and represent potentially new loci linked to resistance that may be useful for selecting parents and deploying resistance into elite germplasm adapted to regions where nematodes are causing problem. © 2016, Japanese Society of Breeding. All rights reserved