Individual increase in inbreeding allows estimating effective sizes from pedigrees

We present here a simple approach to obtain reliable estimates of the effective population size in real world populations via the computation of the increase in inbreeding for each individual (delta F-i) in a given population. The values of delta Fi are computed as t-root of 1 - (1 - F-i) where F-i is the inbreeding coefficient and t is the equivalent complete generations for each individual. The values of delta F computed for a pre-defined reference subset can be averaged and used to estimate effective size. A standard error of this estimate of N-e can be further computed from the standard deviation of the individual increase in inbreeding. The methodology is demonstrated by applying it to several simulated examples and to a real pedigree in which other methodologies fail when considering reference subpopulations. The main characteristics of the approach and its possible use are discussed both for predictive purposes and for analyzing genealogies

Estudio de prefactibilidad y viabilidad de la instalación de un sistema de tratamiento de residuos sólidos en el hospital Virgen de la Puerta Essalud, 2020

Esta investigación tuvo como objetivo general determinar la evaluación del estudio de prefactibilidad y viabilidad de la instalación de un sistema de tratamiento de residuos sólidos en el Hospital Virgen de la Puerta EsSalud, 2020, la investigación fue de tipo aplicada, el método de investigación que utilizamos fue: el inductivo – deductivo, el diseño es no experimental de corte transversal, la población y muestra fue los 32 servicios hospitalarios que brinda el hospital, se utilizó la técnica del análisis documentario y como instrumento ficha de registro documentario, se obtuvieron los siguientes resultados: el proyecto es ambientalmente viable, puesto que los impactos negativos son en su mayoría leves y moderados, en el estudio de prefactibilidad se determinó la demanda y la proyección y con lo cual se pudo determinar la tecnología a utilizar, se demostró la viabilidad técnica del proyecto, empleando principalmente la tecnología de Esterilización a vapor: Autoclaves, resulta la más apropiada para el tratamiento en la fuente, es económica y financieramente rentable, como lo demuestran los siguientes indicadores: Un VAN de S/ 1,111,714.62, un TIR de 28.69% y C/B de 1.57. Finalmente, el proyecto ha pasado las evaluaciones del estudio de prefactibilidad, técnica, ambiental y económica con éxito, se concluye que el mismo genera valor y por tanto que su puesta en marcha es viable.Tesi

Airfoil catalogue for wind turbine blades with OpenFOAM

A methodology to efficiently simulate wind tunnel tests of several airfoils with OpenFOAM has been developed in this work. This methodology bridges OpenFOAM capabilities with Matlab postprocessing to analyse efficiently the performance of wind turbine airfoils at any angle of attack. This technique has been developed to reduce the cost, in terms of time and resources, of wind tunnel campaigns on wind turbine blade airfoils. Different turbulence models were used to study the behaviour of the airfoils near stall. Wind turbine airfoils need to be characterized for all possible angles of attack, in order to reproduce the real aerodynamic patterns during operation. Unfortunately, this situation is translated into a huge demand of wind tunnel testing resources, airfoil manufacturing and data post-processing. The high costs in terms of experimental measurements have encouraged many researches to elaborate airfoil catalogues by performing CFD simulations.Results are compared with a testing campaign on wind turbine airfoils aerodynamics run at AB6 wind tunnel of IDR/UPM located at the campus Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Madrid, Spain), this tunnel being particularly suited for bi-dimensional applications. It is an open wind tunnel with a test section of 2.5 x 0.5 m, the turbulence intensity is under 3% at a Reynolds number of Re ∼= 5×105. The central part of the airfoil mock-ups were built with a 3D printer Additive Fused Deposition Modelling technology (FDM). Simulation results show a fair agreement with experiments, and helped to improve the performance of the wind tunnel

Thermal Performance of the Cerro Prieto Geothermal Field Fluid Transportation Network

ABSTRACT The thermal performance at the Cerro Prieto Geothermal Field (CPGF) fluid transportation network was evaluated in terms of the mass, energy and exergy flows of the separated steam and water at selected points of the transportation network, the mass and heat losses from the separators, pipelines and fittings, and the partial (transportation sub-processes) and overall (wellhead to power plant inlet) thermal efficiencies. Thermal efficiencies of the transportation sub-processes and overall steam field (wellhead to power plant inlet) processes were also evaluated. The 1st law efficiencies range from 86.8 to 98.1% for the individual fluid transportation subprocesses while those of the 2nd law vary from 78.9 to 95.9%. The overall efficiencies are 67.6% and 75.2 %, respectively. Total heat losses from the HP and LP gathering networks amounted to 180.6 MWt of which 72.9 MWt were lost through the pipelines thermal insulation, 33.7 MWt from the pipelines fittings, and 74.0 MWt from the condensate drains. Potential areas for improvement of energy utilization were detected and evaluated, and showed a potential for energy recovery equivalent to 83 MWe of additional capacity while maintaining the same rate of fluid and energy extraction and the same number of producing wells. INTRODUCTION In geothermal fields, the fluid from producing wells is usually transported through a network of pipelines to the power plants which may be sited several hundred of meters or even some kilometers away. Thus, the performance of the pipeline transportation network is affected among others, by the type of fluid being transported (one-or two-phase), the network geometry and complexity, the actual thermal insulation condition and steam field operating strategies. In fact, one of the largest problems in analyzing pipeline network behavior is the difficulty in accounting for the actual component operational and physical features as some conditions change from the design specifications. This occurs, for example, when the pipelines thermal insulation deteriorates with time, or when pipelines carry less fluid than the flow specified at normal operation conditions, etc. Hence, the departure from operational design specifications of the pipeline network components and operating philosophy are some of the factors that affect the fluid transportation network thermal performance

Mortality due to non-AIDS-defining cancers among people living with HIV in Spain over 18 years of follow-up

Purpose: Our aim was to describe non-AIDS-defining cancer (NADC) mortality among people living with HIV (PLWH), to compare it with that of the general population, and to assess potential risk factors. Methods: We included antiretroviral-naive PLWH from the multicentre CoRIS cohort (2004-2021). We estimated mortality rates and standardised mortality ratios (SMRs). We used cause-specific Cox models to identify risk factors. Results: Among 17,978 PLWH, NADC caused 21% of all deaths observed during the follow-up. Mortality rate due to NADC was 1.58 (95%CI 1.36, 1.83) × 1000 person-years and lung and liver were the most frequent cancer-related causes of death. PLWH had 79% excess NADC mortality risk compared to the general population with the highest SMR found for Hodgkin lymphoma, anal and liver cancers. The SMRs decreased with age and were the highest in age groups under 50 years. The most important prognostic factor was low CD4 count, followed by smoking, viral hepatitis and HIV transmission through heterosexual contact or injection drug use. Conclusion: Non-AIDS cancers are an important cause of death among PLWH. The excess mortality related to certain malignancies and the association with immunodeficiency, smoking, and coinfections highlights the need for early detection and treatment of cancer in this population.Purpose: Our aim was to describe non-AIDS-defining cancer (NADC) mortality among people living with HIV (PLWH), to compare it with that of the general population, and to assess potential risk factors. Methods: We included antiretroviral-naive PLWH from the multicentre CoRIS cohort (2004-2021). We estimated mortality rates and standardised mortality ratios (SMRs). We used cause-specific Cox models to identify risk factors. Results: Among 17,978 PLWH, NADC caused 21% of all deaths observed during the follow-up. Mortality rate due to NADC was 1.58 (95%CI 1.36, 1.83) × 1000 person-years and lung and liver were the most frequent cancer-related causes of death. PLWH had 79% excess NADC mortality risk compared to the general population with the highest SMR found for Hodgkin lymphoma, anal and liver cancers. The SMRs decreased with age and were the highest in age groups under 50 years. The most important prognostic factor was low CD4 count, followed by smoking, viral hepatitis and HIV transmission through heterosexual contact or injection drug use. Conclusion: Non-AIDS cancers are an important cause of death among PLWH. The excess mortality related to certain malignancies and the association with immunodeficiency, smoking, and coinfections highlights the need for early detection and treatment of cancer in this population.Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. This research was supported by CIBER -Consorcio Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red- (CB21/13/00091), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and Unión Europea – NextGenerationEU, the Gilead Scholarship Program for Biomedical Research (GLD19_00106) and the ISCIII- Miguel Servet CP19CIII—00002 contract.S

Guiding structures with multiply connected cross-sections: evolution of propagation in external fields at complex Robin parameters

Properties of the two-dimensional ring and three-dimensional infinitely long straight hollow waveguide with unit width and inner radius $\rho_0$ in the superposition of the longitudinal uniform magnetic field $\bf B$ and Aharonov-Bohm flux are analyzed within the framework of the scalar Helmholtz equation under the assumption that the Robin boundary conditions at the inner and outer confining walls contain extrapolation lengths $\Lambda_{in}$ and $\Lambda_{out}$, respectively, with nonzero imaginary parts. It is shown that, compared to the disk geometry, the annulus opens up additional possibilities of varying magnetization and currents by tuning imaginary components of the Robin parameters on each confining circumference; in particular, the possibility of restoring a lossless longitudinal flux by zeroing imaginary part $E_i$ of the total transverse energy $E$ is discussed. The energy $E$ turns real under special correlation between the imaginary parts of $\Lambda_{in}$ and $\Lambda_{out}$ with the opposite signs what physically corresponds to the equal transverse fluxes through the inner and outer interfaces of the annulus. In the asymptotic case of the very large radius, simple expressions are derived and applied to the analysis of the dependence of the real energy $E$ on $\Lambda_{in}$ and $\Lambda_{out}$. New features also emerge in the magnetic field influence; for example, if, for the quantum disk, the imaginary energy $E_i$ is quenched by the strong intensities $B$, then for the annulus this takes place only when the inner Robin distance $\Lambda_{in}$ is real; otherwise, it almost quadratically depends on $B$ with the corresponding enhancement of the reactive scattering. Closely related problem of the hole in the otherwise uniform medium is also addressed for real and complex extrapolation lengths with the emphasis on the comparative analysis with its dot counterpart.Comment: 37 pages, 9 figure

A barley cysteine-protease inhibitor reduces teh performance of two aphid species in artificial diets and transgenic arabidopsis plants

Cystatins from plants have been implicated in plant defense towards insects, based on their role as inhibitors of heterologous cysteine-proteinases. We have previously characterized thirteen genes encoding cystatins (HvCPI-1 to HvCPI-13) from barley (Hordeum vulgare), but only HvCPI-1 C68 → G, a variant generated by direct-mutagenesis, has been tested against insects. The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of the whole gene family members of barley cystatins against two aphids, Myzus persicae and Acyrthosiphon pisum. All the cystatins, except HvCPI-7, HvCPI-10 and HvCPI-12, inhibited in vitro the activity of cathepsin L- and/or B-like proteinases, with HvCPI-6 being the most effective inhibitor for both aphid species. When administered in artificial diets, HvCPI-6 was toxic to A. pisum nymphs (LC50 = 150 μg/ml), whereas no significant mortality was observed on M. persicae nymphs up to 1000 μg/ml. The effects of HvCPI-6 ingestion on A. pisum were correlated with a decrease of cathepsin B- and L-like proteinase activities. In the case of M. persicae, there was an increase of these proteolytic activities, but also of the aminopeptidase-like activity, suggesting that this species is regulating both target and insensitive enzymes to overcome the effects of the cystatin. To further analyze the potential of barley cystatins as insecticidal proteins against aphids, Arabidopsis plants expressing HvCPI-6 were tested against M. persicae. For A. pisum, which does not feed on Arabidopsis, a combined diet-Vicia faba plant bioassay was performed. A significant delay in the development time to reach the adult stage was observed in both species. The present study demonstrates the potential of barley cystatins to interfere with the performance of two aphid specie

The Incidence of AIDS-Defining Illnesses at a Current CD4 Count ≥200 Cells/µL in the Post-Combination Antiretroviral Therapy Era

The incidence of AIDS was higher in patients with a current CD4 count of 500-749 cells/µL compared to 750-999 cells/µL, but did not decrease further at higher CD4 levels. Results were similar in those virologically suppressed on combination antiretroviral therapy, suggesting immune reconstitution is incomplete until CD4 >750/µ