The Ochodaeidae of Argentina (Coleoptera, Scarabaeoidea)

The Ochodaeidae (Coleoptera: Scarabaeoidea) of Argentina are revised. Previously, two species of Ochodaeinae were known from the country, both in the genus Parochodaeus Nikolajev: P. campsognathus (Arrow) and P. cornutus (Ohaus). An additional 7 species of Parochodaeus from Argentina are described here as new. In addition, Gauchodaeus patagonicus, new genus and new species in the subfamily Chaetocanthinae, is described. "is is the #rst record of the subfamily Chaetocanthinae in South America. Redescriptions, diagnoses, and maps are provided for each species. We also provide a key to genera and a key to species of Parochodaeus of Argentina. With this work, the number of ochodaeid species known from Argentina is increased from 2 to 10.Fil: Paulsen, M. J.. University of Nebraska; Estados UnidosFil: Ocampo, Federico Carlos. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas; Argentin

Kelley-Seegmiller Syndrome: Urolithiasis, Renal Uric Acid Deposits, and Gout: What is the Role of the Urologist?

Kelley-Seegmiller syndrome (KSS) is a disorder that occurs when there is a partial deficiency of the enzyme hypoxanthine guanine phosphoribosyl transferase. It is involved in the metabolism of purines, clinically manifesting as hyperuricemia, hyperuricosuria, gout arthritis, and urolithiasis. The aim of this article is to present the case of a 33-year-old male with KSS, with left ureteral colic, and a 5-mm, 323-HU ureteral calculi, successfully managed with conservative management. It is critical to recognize that most urologists are not familiar with this inborn metabolic error and 75% of these patients will be affected by urolithiasis, thus making it a very critical and significant disease in our practice. © 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel

Economic MPC for the management of drinking water networks

Trabajo presentado a la European Control Conference (ECC) celebrada en Estrasburgo (Francia) del 24 al 27 de junio de 2014.This paper addresses the management of drinking water networks (DWNs) regarding a multi-objective cost function by means of economically-oriented model predictive control (EMPC) strategies. Specifically, assuming the water demand and the energy price as periodically time-varying signals, this paper shows that the EMPC framework is flexible to enhance the control of DWNs without relying on hierarchical control schemes that require the use of real-time optimisers (RTO) or steady-state target optimisers (SSTO) in an upper layer. Four different MPC strategies are discussed in this paper: a hierarchical two-layer approach, a standard EMPC where the multi-objective cost function is optimised directly, and two different modifications of the latter, which are meant to overcome possible feasibility losses in the presence of changing operating patterns. The discussed schemes are tested andcompared by means of a case study taken from a part of the Barcelona DWN.This work has been partially funded by the EU Project EFFINET (FP7-ICT-2011-8-31855) and the DGR of Generalitat de Catalunya (SAC group Ref. 2009/SGR/1491).Peer Reviewe

Toward the Development of a Global Financial Safety Net or a Segmentation of the Global Financial Architecture?

This article examines the prospects for the development of a comprehensive global financial safety net (GFSN). It discusses the optimal layout of the GFSN, comprising the International Monetary Fund, regional financing arrangements (RFAs), as well as bilateral or multilateral central bank swap arrangements, and the relationship between these. It then briefly reviews and appraises the current structure and functioning of these different layers of the GFSN and discusses the need and scope for strengthening cooperation between RFAs and the IMF. It argues that the GFSN is still very patchy and there is little reason to expect significant progress in better collaboration between RFAs and the IMF as long as the latter’s governance structure is not significantly revamped. Indeed, risks are that the GFSN will become even more fragmented with the further development of the European Stability Mechanism and the emergence of the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement. To prevent a further fragmentation of the GFSN, substantial governance reform of the IMF is urgently needed

El diagnóstico por imagen de las hernias de la pared abdominal

Abdominal wall hernias in their different modalities form a group of commonly encountered surgical conditions. They vary in their presentation from asymptomatic to life threatening emergencies. Clinical history and physical examination are the primary methods for diagnosis, however in a significant percentage of patients, a normal physical examination can be found. Due to this, diagnostic imaging has been gaining attention in recent years, which in addition to identifying the cases of abdominal hernias with normal physical examination, provide additional relevant data. In this article we review available literature regarding the usefulness of diagnostic imaging such as herniography, ultrasound (US), computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the diagnosis of abdominal wall hernias. CT and ultrasound are the main modalities used for the diagnosis and characterization of the hernia defect. CT is recommended when there is uncertainty in the diagnosis after the physical examination or initial ultrasound, or as a first option if complications are suspected. Evaluation using imaging is important both as a diagnostic tool and for an adequate anatomical characterization in patients with suspected abdominal wall hernias. © 2019 Sociedad Hispanoamericana de Hernia. Publicado por Arán Ediciones, S.L. Todos los derechos reservados

Chance-constrained model predictive control for drinking water networks

This paper addresses a chance-constrained model predictive control (CC-MPC) strategy for the management of drinking water networks (DWNs) based on a finite horizon stochastic optimisation problem with joint probabilistic (chance) constraints. In this approach, water demands are considered additive stochastic disturbances with non-stationary uncertainty description, unbounded support and known (or approximated) quasi-concave probabilistic distribution. A deterministic equivalent of the stochastic problem is formulated using Boole's inequality to decompose joint chance constraints into single chance constraints and by considering a uniform allocation of risk to bound these later constraints. The resultant deterministic-equivalent optimisation problem is suitable to be solved with tractable quadratic programming (QP) or second order cone programming (SOCP) algorithms. The reformulation allows to explicitly and easily propagate uncertainty over the prediction horizon, and leads to a cost-efficient management of risk that consists in a dynamic back-off to avoid frequent violation of constraints. Results of applying the proposed approach to a real case study - the Barcelona DWN (Spain) - have shown that the network performance (in terms of operational costs) and the necessary back-off (to cope with stochastic disturbances) are optimised simultaneously within a single problem, keeping tractability of the solution, even in large-scale networks. The general formulation of the approach and the automatic computation of proper back-off within the MPC framework replace the need of experience-based heuristics or bi-level optimisation schemes that might compromise the trade-off between profits, reliability and computational burden.This work has been partially supported by the EU Project EFFINET (FP7-ICT-2011-8-31855) and the DGR of Generalitat de Catalunya (SAC group Ref. 2009/SGR/1491).Peer Reviewe

Water demand forecasting for the optimal operation of large-scale drinking water networks: The Barcelona case study

Trabajo presentado al 19th IFAC World Congress celebrado del 24 al 29 de agosto de 2014 en Cape Town (Sudafrica).Drinking Water Networks (DWN) are large-scale multiple-input multiple-output systems with uncertain disturbances (such as the water demand from the consumers) and involve components of linear, non-linear and switching nature. Operating, safety and quality constraints deem it important for the state and the input of such systems to be constrained into a given domain. Moreover, DWNs' operation is driven by time-varying demands and involves an considerable consumption of electric energy and the exploitation of limited water resources. Hence, the management of these networks must be carried out optimally with respect to the use of available resources and infrastructure, whilst satisfying high service levels for the drinking water supply. To accomplish this task, this paper explores various methods for demand forecasting, such as Seasonal ARIMA, BATS and Support Vector Machine, and presents a set of statistically validated time series models. These models, integrated with a Model Predictive Control (MPC) strategy addressed in this paper, allow to account for an accurate on-line forecasting and flow management of a DWN.This work was financially supported by the EU FP7 research project EFFINET “Efficient Integrated Real-time monitoring and Control of Drinking Water Networks,” grant agreement no. 318556.Peer Reviewe

Survey and analysis of microsatellites from transcript sequences in Phytophthora species: frequency, distribution, and potential as markers for the genus

BACKGROUND: Members of the genus Phytophthora are notorious pathogens with world-wide distribution. The most devastating species include P. infestans, P. ramorum and P. sojae. In order to develop molecular methods for routinely characterizing their populations and to gain a better insight into the organization and evolution of their genomes, we used an in silico approach to survey and compare simple sequence repeats (SSRs) in transcript sequences from these three species. We compared the occurrence, relative abundance, relative density and cross-species transferability of the SSRs in these oomycetes. RESULTS: The number of SSRs in oomycetes transcribed sequences is low and long SSRs are rare. The in silico transferability of SSRs among the Phytophthora species was analyzed for all sets generated, and primers were selected on the basis of similarity as possible candidates for transferability to other Phytophthora species. Sequences encoding putative pathogenicity factors from all three Phytophthora species were also surveyed for presence of SSRs. However, no correlation between gene function and SSR abundance was observed. The SSR survey results, and the primer pairs designed for all SSRs from the three species, were deposited in a public database. CONCLUSION: In all cases the most common SSRs were trinucleotide repeat units with low repeat numbers. A proportion (7.5%) of primers could be transferred with 90% similarity between at least two species of Phytophthora. This information represents a valuable source of molecular markers for use in population genetics, genetic mapping and strain fingerprinting studies of oomycetes, and illustrates how genomic databases can be exploited to generate data-mining filters for SSRs before experimental validation

Determinación de precursores de dioxinas y furanos de los gases procedentes de un incinerador en un reactor fotocatalítico

Se presenta un método cromatográfico para la determinación de dioxinas y furanos a partir de uno de sus precursores, tanto en estándares de medición como en muestras reales de gases tomadas en una empresa incineradora de Itagüí, Colombia. La técnica empleada permite realizar estudios que pueden dar aproximaciones acertadas de los contenidos de dioxinas y furanos antes de realizar un muestreo certificado en equipos de alta resolución. Además, se emplea la tecnología de fotocatálisis como método para lograr la eliminación de precursores de dioxinas y furanos de los gases emitidos por un incinerador, con lo cual se disminuye la cantidad de reactivos utilizados en el proceso de depuración.A chromatografic method for the determination of dioxins and furans from one of their precursors is shown from standards of measurements and from real samples of gases taken from an incineration plant in Itagüí, Colombia. This technique makes possible to do studies to obtain fair approximation of the dioxins and furans contained before doing determinations in high resolution equipments. Besides the photocatalytic technology is used as a method to get the elimination of dioxins and furans precursors from gases emitted by an incinerator, lowering the amount of reactive required in the depuration process