Blue lines as chromospheric diagnostics: The Al I lines at 3944 and 3961 Å

We present a simple atomic model for the synthesis of the Al I resonance lines, near the Ca II H and K lines. We study whether the computed profiles are influenced by the choice of the atomic parameters and find that, although several cross sections are not known accurately, the line profiles do not depend on them and are therefore useful as diagnostics of the atmospheric structure. We study which transitions need not to be included in the model, in order to reduce as much as possible the computing time. We compare the profiles computed for a standard model of the quiet solar atmosphere with the observations and find very good agreement. We found that the inclusion of the proper line-blanketing opacity is fundamental for an accurate calculation of the ionization balance and that irradiation by UV lines originating in the transition region does not affect the AI I emission.Fil: Mauas, Pablo Jacobo David. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciónes Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio. - Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio; ArgentinaFil: Fernández Borda, Roberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciónes Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio. - Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio; ArgentinaFil: Luoni, Maria Luisa. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciónes Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio. - Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio; Argentin

Distribución actual y potencial de las poblaciones del género Latrodectus (Araneae: Theridiidae) en Ecuador

El género Latrodectus en el Ecuador ha sido poco estudiado en cuanto a las especies existentes y su distribución. Existen especies del género con mordidas de importancia médica, por lo que se pretende determinar que especies del género se encuentran en el país y su distribución. La identificación de las especies fue realizada utilizando caracteres morfológicos y análisis genéticos de las secuencias, extraídas de los especímenes recolectados, del gen mitocondrial citocromo oxidasa I (COI). La distribución de las especies del género Latrodectus fueron realizadas utilizando sistemas de información geográfica y modelamiento de nicho ecológico con el programa MAXENT que genera un modelo de distribución de las especies a partir de variables ambientales y datos de presencia para predecir la distribución potencial de las especies bajo condiciones ambientales actúales y futuras

The submarine canyons of the Argentine Continental Margin: a review of their formation and sedimentary dynamics

Los cañones submarinos son los mayores rasgos erosivos de los márgenes continentales tanto activos como pasivos. Desde los albores del siglo XX, representan un fructífero tema de debate e investigación por su gran relevancia como agentes de transferencia de sedimento y materia orgánica de continente a océano, por ser lugar de surgencia de aguas profundas, elevada producción primaria y riqueza en biodiversidad, y por ser potenciales factores de riesgo en las rupturas de infraestructuras submarinas. El presente trabajo comprende una revisión de las principales teorías de formación y evolución de los cañones submarinos así como de los procesos de interacción entre dinámica oceanográfica, flujos sedimentarios y morfologías asociadas a los cañones. El objetivo es presentar una síntesis del estado del conocimiento sobre los cañones del Margen Continental Argentino (MCA), discutir su formación y evolución en el marco de los modelos genéticos más aceptados en la actualidad así como proponer una hipótesis de trabajo vinculada a la dinámica sedimentaria del Cañón Mar del Plata (MdP), el más estudiado del margen. Este cañón, como la mayoría de los del MCA, por un lado se desarrolla exclusivamente en el talud (cañón ciego) y por el otro interrumpe un gran sistema depositacional contornítico relacionado con la circulación oceanográfica regional. De aquí que su génesis en principio se explicaría por el modelo de erosión retrogradante a partir de fenómenos de inestabilidad del talud, pero además podría funcionar como trampa de sedimento captando el material transportado por el Agua Antártica Intermedia a lo largo del talud medio. Se propone que en la Terraza Ewing, donde el cañón tiene su cabecera, podrían generarse corrientes turbidíticas que afectarían a la evolución y dinámica del cañón. Estas corrientes se encauzarían cañón abajo contribuyendo a profundizar su valle y a conformar su trazado en parte sinuoso. En los sistemas de cañones Patagonia otros factores podrían activar la génesis de los cañones submarinos. Se ha sugerido la posibilidad que irregularidades morfológicas provocadas por la acción erosiva de las corrientes contorníticas sobre el fondo puedan dar origen a los cañones de esta zona. Este mecanismo podría no limitarse exclusivamente al sistema Patagonia sino aplicarse a los demás sistemas de cañones argentinos ya que el MCA está intersectado por intensas corrientes de contorno que operan a diferentes profundidades.Submarine canyons are the most outstanding geomorphologic features of continental margins. They play a fundamental role in transferring sediment and organic matter from shallow to deep waters. Also, they influence oceanographic and sedimentary processes, interact with productivity and benthic ecosystems, and pose a serious threat to seafloor infrastructures. Submarine canyons have been described as steep-walled, sinuous valleys with V-shaped cross sections, axes sloping outward as continuously as river-cut land canyons and relief comparable to even the largest of land canyons. The understanding of the origin and evolution of submarine canyons has been matter of intense debate since the first geologists observed them characterizing both passive and active margins. Canyons have been interpreted as (1) the off-shore prolongation of river systems that during low sealevel stages migrated seaward; (2) the product of the erosion caused by gravity dense flows- called turbidity currents- produced at the shelf-slope transition; (3) the deepening of pre-existing tectonic structures (e.g. faults) and (4) the result of slope instability combined with headward erosion. The first model only explains the genesis of the breaching-shelf canyons that connect with river systems, but does not resolve the formation of those that are unrelated to fluvial input. Turbidity currents take place at the shelf break when sufficient amount of sediment is injected into the water column by (re) suspension, resulting in a flow with higher density than the surrounding waters. These high-density flows, moving down-slope under the effect of gravity, cut the valleys that finally evolve into submarine canyons. Turbidity currents, though effective agents of erosion, do not account for the formation of slopeconfined canyons. From the other side, tectonic control can apply for limited examples of canyons, which are located in specific geological contexts. Continental slopes often show scars that are left behind by instability events. Mass wasting processes may arise from fluid escape, sediment over pressure and steepening or be triggered by seismic shocks. These initial scars would evolve into rills and then into valleys by a process that combines localized slope failures, sediment funneling and headward erosion. According to this genetic model, slope-confined and shelf-breaching canyons are, respectively, the early and mature stages in the evolution of canyons, which starts with a pre-canyon rill that advances upslope by retrogressive failure and ends with the canyon cutting the shelf break. The objective of this contribution is to review the knowledge on the submarine canyons from the Argentine Continental Margin and to suggest a working hypothesis concerning the sedimentary dynamics of the Mar del Plata Canyon, by far the best known canyon of this margin. Four main systems have been described: La Plata River, Colorado-Negro (or Bahía Blanca), Ameghino (or Chubut) and Patagonia (or Deseado). Mar del Plata Canyon, belonging to the first of these systems, cuts the slope between ~1000 m (Ewing Terrace, middle slope) and ~3900 m (lower slope-continental rise transition) as a deep valley with steep walls. In its proximal sector, between 1100 and 3000 m, it shows a sinuous path whereas the thalweg is mostly linear between 3000 an 3900 m. Seismic profiles, obtained during the Meteor research cruise M78/3a, demonstrate no evidences of incisions that could suggest past fluvial connections with the canyon head. For this reason, the origin of this canyon has been explained as an example of headward erosion. During the Holocene, the sedimentation rate inside the canyon is much higher than outside. This occurs because the large amount of sediment mobilized by bottom currents along the Ewing Terrace is intercepted by the canyon. In contrast, during the Late Glacial and deglaciation phase, turbidite accumulation has been attributed to slope instability of the drift deposits at the southern flank of the canyon. In this study, we put forward the following working hypothesis: the canyon most probably generated from slope instability and retrogressive erosion. However, when the valley moved upslope and etched the Ewing Terrace (middle slope), turbidity currents might have been produced at this water depth (1000-1200 meters) by the peculiar oceanographic dynamics driven by the interaction between bottom currents and seafloor. If confirmed by future investigations, this hypothesis would account both for the turbidite deposition and the sinuous path of the canyon in its proximal sector, which is more typical, although not exclusive, for canyons routed by turbidity currents. The detailed morphological investigations, performed in the Patagonia Canyons system by a Spanish research group in 2011, add a stimulating source of discussion about canyon formation in the Argentine Margin. These authors have proposed that topographic irregularities shaped by scars resulting from the sea-floor erosion under strong contour currents and the step separating terraces located at different water depths, might be the precursors for a pre-canyon incision. This hypothesis, of great relevance in a continental margin where downslope and along-slope sedimentary processes often coexist and interact, probably apply not only to the Patagonia but also to the other, less investigated, canyons systems of the Argentine Margin.Fil: Bozzano, Graziella. Ministerio de Defensa. Armada Argentina. Servicio de Hidrografía Naval; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Martín de Nascimento, Jacobo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas; ArgentinaFil: Spoltore, Daniela V.. Ministerio de Defensa. Armada Argentina. Servicio de Hidrografía Naval; ArgentinaFil: Violante, Roberto Antonio. Ministerio de Defensa. Armada Argentina. Servicio de Hidrografía Naval; Argentin

HispaVeg: a new online vegetation plot database for Spain

We describe a new online database, named HispaVeg, which currently holds data from 2663 vegetation plots of Spanish woodlands, scrublands and grasslands. Unlike other similar databases, a detailed description of the structure is stored with the floristic data of each plot (i.e., number and physiognomy of the vertical layers, cover values for each layer).Most of the vegetation plots are large rectangles (400 to 2000 square meters) with an average of 34 species per plot. The survey dates range from 1956 to present, with most of the records between 1964 and 1994. The elevation of the plots ranges from 0 to 2880, with most of the plots between 300 and 1500 m. HispaVeg is freely available to the scientific community. Users can query the online database, view printable reports for each plot and download spreadsheet-like raw data for subsets of vegetation plots

Molecular Identification of Brucella Abortus Bv5 and Strain 19 in Water Buffaloes (Bubalus Bubalis) in Northeast Argentina

Buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) populations are spread across northern Argentina, and they share their habitat with bovines. Both species are susceptible to brucellosis, and they are under a National Plan of Control and Eradication. To characterize the Brucella spp. that infects buffaloes, the blood of 35 animals that tested positive to brucellosis by a complement fixation test was collected. DNA was obtained and analyzed by polymerase chain reaction using different molecular markers. The genera, species, and biovars of Brucella were established by analyzing specific regions of the genes omp31, eri, alkB, and omp2ab. Brucella spp. was identified in 15 of 35 tested buffaloes. The product of the omp31 gene identified the genera. The detection of two fragments of 297 bp and/or 1000 bp from the eri gene confirmed the presence of B. abortus S19 and wild-type B. abortus. The amplification of the alkB gene allowed the identification of B. abortus biovars characterized by fragments of 498 bp (bv1, bv2, or bv4). The simultaneous amplification of 498 bp (alkB) and 1000 bp (eri) products suggested the presence of B. abortus bv1, which is highly prevalent in the cattle of Argentina. Fragments of 827 bp and 857 bp were amplified from the omp2ab gene, and their sequences showed 100% identity with B. melitensis and B. abortus bv5 (GenBank). However, the 721 bp product (alkB) specific for B. melitensis could not be amplified. This is the first report indicating the presence of B. abortus bv5 in Latin America.Fil: Martinez, Diana. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste; ArgentinaFil: Thompson, Carolina. Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Santa Fe. Estacion Experimental Agropecuaria Rafaela; ArgentinaFil: Russo, Ana Maria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Centro de Investigaciones y Transferencia de Formosa; ArgentinaFil: Jacobo, Roberto. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste; ArgentinaFil: Torioni de Echaide, Susana. Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Santa Fe. Estacion Experimental Agropecuaria Rafaela; Argentin

Consideraciones al aplicar los principios de la Excelencia Operacional al innovar en el Diseño de Productos

[EN] Our article studies how initiatives oriented towards Quality and continuous improvement (e.g. Six Sigma, TPS-Lean, Operational Excellence) can support the development of systematic innovation, based on the hypothesis that the tools and good practices of Quality have reached their maturity after developing since the 40’s, which does not happen yet with Innovation and its principles. To obtain general trends first, we study the evolution of the publications associated with the terms "quality" and "innovation" from 1990 to 2016 and then focus on the compatibility between the principles of operational excellence (ExOp) and Product-design innovation (IDP.) Initially, we observed that Quality related studies development rate is decreasing through time, supporting the assumption of maturity. This does not happen with Innovation related studies which are growing over time, making reasonable to assume that Innovation related research will reach and eventually surpass in quantity the Quality related research. Although we could observe that the ExOp and IDP have compatible general objectives, we discovered that it is not advisable to apply directly the principles of ExOp to the IDP, both for empirical and conceptual reasons. Within the conceptual reasons, stand out the potential conflict between the efficiency-orientation of the ExOp and the novelty-orientation of the IDP. This makes the IDP prone to taking risks in search of novelty and disruptive anticipation, in circumstances that the ExOp promotes the optimization and propagation of what has been validated through experience, seeking incremental improvements in the processes. In order to deal with the incompatibilities between ExOp and IDP, the fundamental principles of both approaches are compared and classified into 3 categories: high compatibility probability, high incompatibility probability, and principles that require further investigation to be classified. Based on the previous, we propose a list of recommendable ExOp principles for those who focus on the IDP, in order to develop a robust process while avoiding future incompatibilities. Finally, possible research directions are suggested, seeking to strengthen the synchronization between ExOp and IDP[ES] Nuestro artículo estudia como las metodologías orientadas hacia la calidad y mejora continua (e.g. Lean, Six Sigma, Operational excellence) pueden apoyar el desarrollo de la innovación sistemática, basándonos en la hipótesis que las herramientas y buenas prácticas de la calidad han alcanzado su madurez luego de desarrollarse desde los años 40, situación que no sucede aún con la innovación y sus principios. Para obtener tendencias generales, estudiamos primero la evolución de las publicaciones asociadas a los términos "calidad” e “innovación” desde 1990 a 2016, para luego enfocar el estudio hacia la compatibilidad entre los principios de excelencia operacional (ExOp) e innovación en el diseño de productos (IDP). Inicialmente pudimos observar que los estudios acerca de calidad se desarrollan a un ritmo que disminuye su tasa de crecimiento en los últimos años, apoyando la suposición de maduración. Esto no ocurre con los estudios acerca de innovación, los cuales mantienen una tasa de crecimiento sostenida, lo que hace razonable suponer que la investigación relacionada a innovación alcanzará y eventualmente sobrepasará en cantidad a la investigación relacionada a calidad. Si bien pudimos observar que la ExOp e IDP tienen objetivos generales compatibles, descubrimos que no es recomendable aplicar directamente los principios de la ExOp a la IDP, tanto por motivos empíricos como conceptuales. Dentro de los motivos conceptuales, destacan los conflictos generados por la orientación hacia la eficacia de la ExOp y la orientación hacia la disrupción de la IDP. Esto hace que la IDP promueva la toma de riesgos en búsqueda de anticiparse a los mercados, en circunstancias que la ExOp promueve practicar y propagar lo validado a través de la experiencia, buscando mejoras incrementales en los procesos. Para poder lidiar con las incompatibilidades entre ExOp e IDP, se comparan principios fundamentales de ambos enfoques y se clasifican en 3 categorías: alta probabilidad de compatibilidad, alta probabilidad de incompatibilidad, y principios que requieren mayor investigación para ser aplicados. Basados en lo anterior, proponemos una lista de principios de ExOp recomendables para quienes se enfoquen en la IDP, de manera que puedan ser un apoyo para desarrollar un proceso robusto, evitando a la vez futuras incompatibilidades. Finalmente, posibles direcciones de investigación –tanto académicas como industriales- son sugeridas, buscando fortalecer la sincronización entre la ExOp y la IDP. Palabras clave: Calidad, excelencia operacional, innovación, diseño.Duran-Novoa, R.; Tijerina-Aguilera, J. (2017). Consideraciones al aplicar los principios de la Excelencia Operacional al innovar en el Diseño de Productos. En Systems & Design: From Theory to Product. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 335-349. https://doi.org/10.4995/SD2017.2017.6637OCS33534

S3Mining: A model-driven engineering approach for supporting novice data miners in selecting suitable classifiers

Data mining has proven to be very useful in order to extract information from data in many different contexts. However, due to the complexity of data mining techniques, it is required the know-how of an expert in this field to select and use them. Actually, adequately applying data mining is out of the reach of novice users which have expertise in their area of work, but lack skills to employ these techniques. In this paper, we use both model-driven engineering and scientific workflow standards and tools in order to develop named S3Mining framework, which supports novice users in the process of selecting the data mining classification algorithm that better fits with their data and goal. To this aim, this selection process uses the past experiences of expert data miners with the application of classification techniques over their own datasets. The contributions of our S3Mining framework are as follows: (i) an approach to create a knowledge base which stores the past experiences of experts users, (ii) a process that provides the expert users with utilities for the construction of classifiers? recommenders based on the existing knowledge base, (iii) a system that allows novice data miners to use these recommenders for discovering the classifiers that better fit for solving their problem at hand, and (iv) a public implementation of the framework?s workflows. Finally, an experimental evaluation has been conducted to shown the feasibility of our framework

Performance improvements of an atmospheric radiative transfer model on GPU-based platform using CUDA

Classical applications of Atmospheric Radiative Transfer Model (ARTM) for modelization of absorption coefficient line-by-line on the atmosphere consume large computational time since seconds up to a few minutes depending on the atmospheric characterization chosen. ARTM is used together with Ground- Based or Satellite measurements to retrieve atmospheric parameters such as ozone, water vapour and temperature profiles. Nowadays in the Atmospheric Observatory of Southern Patagonia (OAPA) at the Patagonian City of Río Gallegos have been deployed a Spectral Millimeter Wave Radiometer belonging Nagoya Univ. (Japan) with the aim of retrieve stratospheric ozone profiles between 20-80 Km. Around 2 GBytes of data are recorder by the instrument per day and the ozone profiles are retrieving using one hour integration spectral data, resulting at 24 profiles per day. Actually the data reduction is performed by Laser and Application Research Center (CEILAP) group using the Matlab package ARTS/QPACK2. Using the classical data reduction procedure, the computational time estimated per profile is between 4-5 minutes determined mainly by the computational time of the ARTM and matrix operations. We propose in this work first add a novel scheme to accelerate the processing speed of the ARTM using the powerful multi-threading setup of GPGPU based at Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) and compare it with the existing schemes. Performance of the ARTM has been calculated using various settings applied on a NVIDIA graphic Card GeForce GTX 560 Compute Capability 2.1. Comparison of the execution time between sequential mode, Open-MP and CUDA has been tested in this paper.XV Workshop de Procesamiento Distribuido y Paralelo (WPDP)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Performance improvements of an atmospheric radiative transfer model on GPU-based platform using CUDA

Classical applications of Atmospheric Radiative Transfer Model (ARTM) for modelization of absorption coefficient line-by-line on the atmosphere consume large computational time since seconds up to a few minutes depending on the atmospheric characterization chosen. ARTM is used together with Ground- Based or Satellite measurements to retrieve atmospheric parameters such as ozone, water vapour and temperature profiles. Nowadays in the Atmospheric Observatory of Southern Patagonia (OAPA) at the Patagonian City of Río Gallegos have been deployed a Spectral Millimeter Wave Radiometer belonging Nagoya Univ. (Japan) with the aim of retrieve stratospheric ozone profiles between 20-80 Km. Around 2 GBytes of data are recorder by the instrument per day and the ozone profiles are retrieving using one hour integration spectral data, resulting at 24 profiles per day. Actually the data reduction is performed by Laser and Application Research Center (CEILAP) group using the Matlab package ARTS/QPACK2. Using the classical data reduction procedure, the computational time estimated per profile is between 4-5 minutes determined mainly by the computational time of the ARTM and matrix operations. We propose in this work first add a novel scheme to accelerate the processing speed of the ARTM using the powerful multi-threading setup of GPGPU based at Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) and compare it with the existing schemes. Performance of the ARTM has been calculated using various settings applied on a NVIDIA graphic Card GeForce GTX 560 Compute Capability 2.1. Comparison of the execution time between sequential mode, Open-MP and CUDA has been tested in this paper.XV Workshop de Procesamiento Distribuido y Paralelo (WPDP)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Búsquedas por rango sobre plataformas GPU en espacios métricos

La búsqueda por similitud consiste en recuperar todos aquellos objetos dentro de una base de datos que sean parecidos o relevantes a una determinada consulta. Actualmente es un tema de gran interés para la comunidad científica debido a sus múltiples campos de aplicación, como reconocimiento de patrones, recuperación de la información, bases de datos multimedia, entre otros. La búsqueda por similitud o en proximidad se modela matemáticamente a través de un espacio métrico, en el cual un objeto es representado como una caja negra, donde la única información disponible es la función de distancia de este objeto a los otros. En general, el cálculo de la distancia es costoso, por ello el objetivo es reducir la cantidad de evaluaciones de distancia necesarias para resolver la consulta. Para esto se han desarrollado numerosas estructuras métricas, que realizan un preprocesamiento de los datos a fin de disminuir las evaluaciones de distancia al momento de la búsqueda. En la actualidad, la necesidad de procesar grandes volúmenes de datos hace poco factible la utilización de una estructura en aplicaciones reales si ésta no considera la utilización de sistemas de altas prestaciones en entornos de procesamiento paralelo. Existen una serie de tecnologías para realizar implementaciones paralelas, siendo una de las más nuevas, las plataformas basadas en GPU / Multi- GPU, que son interesantes debido a la cantidad de procesadores y los bajos costes involucrados.Eje: Procesamiento Distribuido y ParaleloRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI