Path Integral Approach to Strongly Nonlinear Composite

We study strongly nonlinear disordered media using a functional method. We solve exactly the problem of a nonlinear impurity in a linear host and we obtain a Bruggeman-like formula for the effective nonlinear susceptibility. This formula reduces to the usual Bruggeman effective medium approximation in the linear case and has the following features: (i) It reproduces the weak contrast expansion to the second order and (ii) the effective medium exponent near the percolation threshold are $s=1$, $t=1+\kappa$, where $\kappa$ is the nonlinearity exponent. Finally, we give analytical expressions for previously numerically calculated quantities.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Determinación del catabolismo de los anticuerpos maternos y su interacción con diferentes planes vacunales para la enfermedad de gumboro en pollos de engorde

Con el in de evaluar el catabolismo de los anticuerpos maternos y su interferencia con tres planes vacunales diferentes contra la enfermedad de Gumboro se realizó un estudio utilizando pollos de la estirpe Ross 308, divididos en cuatro grupos: grupo 1: control (sin vacuna); grupo 2: vacunado los días 1, 7 y 15; grupo 3: vacunados los días 1 y 12; y grupo 4: vacunado el día 12. En el primer experimento el biológico se suministró en el agua de bebida, y en el segundo se hizo en el pico. Se sacriicaron 15 aves de cada grupo a los 1, 12, 21 y 42 días de edad y se evaluó peso corporal, tamaño y peso de la bolsa de Fabricio, relación peso bolsa/peso corporal (PB/PC), grado de depleción linfoide, presencia de cepas estándar y/o variantes del virus y los títulos de anticuerpos para la enfermedad de Gumboro. El catabolismo de los anticuerpos maternos ocurrió entre los 21 y 28 días de edad. En los grupos vacunados no se evidenció una respuesta inmune activa frente a ningún plan vacunal. La relación PB/PC no indicó atroia de la bolsa en el experimento 1, aunque las lesiones histopatológicas en el último muestreo fueron grado 3; en el segundo experimento solamente el grupo 3 presentó una disminución en la relación PB/PC; las lesiones histopatológicas en el tercer y cuarto muestreos, en todos los grupos, fueron clasiicadas como grado 3 y 4. En los dos experimentos se detectó la presencia de cepas tanto clásicas como variantes y una baja respuesta humoral. Ninguno de los tres planes vacunales conirió adecuada protección a las aves

NGC 2579 and the carbon and oxygen abundance gradients beyond the solar circle

We present deep echelle spectrophotometry of the Galactic HII region NGC 2579. The data have been taken with the Very Large Telescope Ultraviolet-Visual Echelle Spectrograph in the 3550--10400 \AA\ range. This object, which has been largely neglected, shows however a rather high surface brightness, a high ionization degree and is located at a galactocentric distance of 12.4 $\pm$ 0.7 kpc. Therefore, NGC 2579 is an excellent probe for studying the behaviour of the gas phase radial abundance gradients in the outer disc of the Milky Way. We derive the physical conditions of the nebula using several emission line-intensity ratios as well as the abundances of several ionic species from the intensity of collisionally excited lines. We also determine the ionic abundances of C$^{2+}$, O$^+$ and O$^{2+}$ -- and therefore the total O abundance -- from faint pure recombination lines. The results for NGC 2579 permit to extend our previous determinations of the C, O and C/O gas phase radial gradients of the inner Galactic disc (Esteban etal. 2005) to larger galactocentric distances. We find that the chemical composition of NGC 2579 is consistent with flatten gradients at its galactocentric distance. In addition, we have built a tailored chemical evolution model that reproduces the observed radial abundance gradients of O, C and N and other observational constraints. We find that a levelling out of the star formation efficiency about and beyond the isophotal radius can explain the flattening of chemical gradients observed in the outer Galactic disc.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societ

A study of the neglected Galactic HII region NGC 2579 and its companion ESO 370-9

The Galactic HII region NGC 2579 has stayed undeservedly unexplored due to identification problems which persisted until recently. Both NGC 2579 and its companion ESO 370-9 have been misclassified as planetary or reflection nebula, confused with each other and with other objects. Due to its high surface brightness, high excitation, angular size of few arcminutes and relatively low interstellar extinction, NGC 2579 is an ideal object for investigations in the optical range. Located in the outer Galaxy, NGC 2579 is an excellent object for studying the Galactic chemical abundance gradients. In this paper we present the first comprehensive observational study on the nebular and stellar properties of NGC 2579 and ESO 370-9, including the determination of electron temperature, density structure, chemical composition, kinematics, distance, and the identification and spectral classification of the ionizing stars, and discuss the nature of ESO 370-9. Long slit spectrophotometric data in the optical range were used to derive the nebular electron temperature, density and chemical abundances and for the spectral classification of the ionizing star candidates. Halpha and UBV CCD photometry was carried out to derive stellar distances from spectroscopic parallax and to measure the ionizing photon flux.Comment: To be published in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Microcystin-lr detected in a low molecular weight fraction from a crude extract of Zoanthus sociatus

Cnidarian constitutes a great source of bioactive compounds. However, research involving peptides from organisms belonging to the order Zoanthidea has received very little attention, contrasting to the numerous studies of the order Actiniaria, from which hundreds of toxic peptides and proteins have been reported. In this work, we performed a mass spectrometry analysis of a low molecular weight (LMW) fraction previously reported as lethal to mice. The low molecular weight (LMW) fraction was obtained by gel filtration of a Zoanthus sociatus (order Zoanthidea) crude extract with a Sephadex G-50, and then analyzed by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight/time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF/TOF) mass spectrometry (MS) in positive ion reflector mode from m/z 700 to m/z 4000. Afterwards, some of the most intense and representative MS ions were fragmented by MS/MS with no significant results obtained by Protein Pilot protein identification software and the Mascot algorithm search. However, microcystin masses were detected by mass-matching against libraries of non-ribosomal peptide database (NORINE). Subsequent reversed-phase C18 HPLC (in isocratic elution mode) and mass spectrometry analyses corroborated the presence of the cyanotoxin Microcystin-LR (MC-LR). To the best of our knowledge, this finding constitutes the first report of MC-LR in Z. sociatus, and one of the few evidences of such cyanotoxin in cnidarians. © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Dany Dom?nguez P?rez was supported by a Ph.D. grant (SFRH/BD/80592/2011) from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT?Funda??o para a Ci?ncia e a Tecnologia, Portugal). Armando A Rodr?guez was supported by an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship (3.2-KUB/1153731 STP). We are grateful to Carlos Manlio Diaz-Garc?a (from Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA) for his useful comments and to Carlos Varela (Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University (FIU), FL, USA) for providing Z. sociatus specimens. This study was funded in part by the Strategic Funding UID/Multi/04423/2013 through national funds provided by FCT and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in the framework of the program PT2020, by the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) through the Competitiveness and Internationalization Operational Program?COMPETE 2020 and by National Funds through the FCT under the project PTDC/AAG-GLO/6887/2014 (POCI-01-0124-FEDER-016845), and by the Structured Programs of R&D&I INNOVMAR?Innovation and Sustainability in the Management and Exploitation of Marine Resources (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000035, Research Line NOVELMAR) and MarInfo?Integrated Platform for Marine Data Acquisition and Analysis (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000031), and funded by the Northern Regional Operational Program (NORTE2020) through the ERDF

Validación de la nasa hondureña para el fortalecimiento de la pesca artesanal

El presente trabajo es el resultado de un proceso articulado de investigación e innovación en el que se vincula la Universidad Simón Bolívar, el Sector Productivo a través de asociaciones de pescadores del departamento del Atlántico, y el Estado a través del Ministerio de Agricultura. Se fundamentó en la imperiosa necesidad del sector pesquero de diversificar su actividad y fortalecer sus procesos internos en aras de hacerse más competitivo y sostenible. En este sentido, se soportó en la generación de nuevo conocimiento, la transferencia de tecnologías, la capacitación, la asistencia técnica y la validación técnica y económica de un arte de pesca nuevo en la región como estrategias de fortalecimiento empresarial de organizaciones del sector primario.This work is a result from a research and innovation process jointly developed by the Universidad Simón Bolívar, the productive sector through fishermen partnerships of department Atlántico and the State with the Agriculture Ministry. It supported on the imperative need of the fishing industry to diversify its business and strengthen its internal processes in order to become more competitive and sustainable. In this sense, it endured in new knowledge creation, technology transfer, training, technical assistance and technical and economic validation of a new fishing art in the region as business strategies to strengthen communities in the economy primary sector

Identification and quantification of microplastics in wastewater using focal plane array-based reflectance micro-FT-IR imaging

Microplastics (<5 mm) have been documented in environmental samples on a global scale. While these pollutants may enter aquatic environments via wastewater treatment facilities, the abundance of microplastics in these matrices has not been investigated. Although efficient methods for the analysis of microplastics in sediment samples and marine organisms have been published, no methods have been developed for detecting these pollutants within organic-rich wastewater samples. In addition, there is no standardized method for analyzing microplastics isolated from environmental samples. In many cases, part of the identification protocol relies on visual selection before analysis, which is open to bias. In order to address this, a new method for the analysis of microplastics in wastewater was developed. A pretreatment step using 30% hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) was employed to remove biogenic material, and focal plane array (FPA)-based reflectance micro-Fourier-transform (FT-IR) imaging was shown to successfully image and identify different microplastic types (polyethylene, polypropylene, nylon-6, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene). Microplastic-spiked wastewater samples were used to validate the methodology, resulting in a robust protocol which was nonselective and reproducible (the overall success identification rate was 98.33%). The use of FPA-based micro-FT-IR spectroscopy also provides a considerable reduction in analysis time compared with previous methods, since samples that could take several days to be mapped using a single-element detector can now be imaged in less than 9 h (circular filter with a diameter of 47 mm). This method for identifying and quantifying microplastics in wastewater is likely to provide an essential tool for further research into the pathways by which microplastics enter the environment.This work is funded by a NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) CASE studentship (NE/K007521/1) with contribution from industrial partner Fera Science Ltd., United Kingdom. The authors would like to thank Peter Vale, from Severn Trent Water Ltd, for providing access to and additionally Ashley Howkins (Brunel University London) for providing travel and assistance with the sampling of the Severn Trent wastewater treatment plant in Derbyshire, UK. We are grateful to Emma Bradley and Chris Sinclair for providing helpful suggestions for our research