Genomics of Apicomplexa

Apicomplexa is a eukaryotic phylum of intracellular parasites with more than 6000 species. Some of these single-celled parasites are important pathogens of livestock. At present, 128 genomes of phylum Apicomplexa have been reported in the GenBank database, of which 17 genomes belong to five genera that are pathogens of farm animals: Babesia, Theileria, Eimeria, Neospora and Sarcocystis. These 17 genomes are Babesia bigemina (five chromosomes), Babesia divergens (514 contigs) and Babesia bovis (four chromosomes and one apicoplast); Theileria parva (four chromosomes and one apicoplast), Theileria annulata (four chromosomes), Theileria orientalis (four chromosomes and one apicoplast) and Theileria equi (four chromosomes and one apicoplast); Eimeria brunetti (24,647 contigs), Eimeria necatrix (4667 contigs), Eimeria tenella (12,727 contigs), Eimeria acervulina (4947 contigs), Eimeria maxima (4570 contigs), Eimeria mitis (65,610 contigs) and Eimeria praecox (53,359 contigs); Neospora caninum (14 chromosomes); and Sarcocystis neurona strains SN1 (2862 contigs) and SN3 (3191 contigs). The study of these genomes allows us to understand their mechanisms of pathogenicity and identify genes that encode proteins as a possible vaccine antigen

Experimental modelling and optimal torque vectoring control for 4WD vehicles

© 2022 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting /republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other worksThis paper addresses the design of a torque vectoring architecture to control the four electrical machines in a four wheel-drive (4WD) formula-type competition vehicle. The scheme includes a new yaw-rate controller and a novel optimal torque distribution algorithm. Two yaw-rate controllers are proposed: one based on H8 optimal control and another based on linear parameter varying (LPV) system concepts. Both controllers are designed using an extended bicycle model validated with experimental data. Simulation results shown the effectiveness of the proposed overall control scheme in terms of energy efficiency, cornering speed and stability no matter the high-demanding working conditions. Such an effectiveness is quantitatively demonstrated by means of several key performance indicators chosen to ease the comparison of the proposed approach with respect to other reported works.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Partitioning approach for large wind farms: active power control for optimizing power reserve

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Nowadays, large wind farms are expected to guarantee stability of the electrical grid contributing with ancillary services, such as frequency support. To this end, wind farm controllers must set the power generation of each turbine to compensate generation and demand imbalances. With the aim of optimizing primary frequency support, this paper proposes a partitioning approach to split large wind farms into several disjoint subsets of turbines according to the wake propagations through the wind farm. The partitioning problem is solved as a mixed-integer multi-objective optimization problem stated to maximize the strength of the coupling among the turbines due to the wake effect. Thus, no additional information sharing related to the wake propagations needs to be considered between the subsets. Different control tasks are assigned to the local controller of each subset, such that the total power generated meets the power demanded by the grid while the power reserve for enhancing primary frequency support is maximized. Finally, as an application of the proposed model, a decentralized wind farm control strategy is designed and compared with a centralized approach.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A gain-scheduled LPV control for oxygen stoichiometry regulation in PEM fuel cell systems

The article addresses the LPV control of a Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC). In order to optimize efficiency, PEMFCs require reliable control systems ensuring stability and performance, as well as robustness to model uncertainties and external perturbations. On the other hand, PEMFCs present a highly nonlinear behavior that demands nonlinear and/or adaptive control strategies to achieve high performance in the entire operating range. Here, a linear parameter varying (LPV) gain scheduled control is proposed. The control is based on a piecewise affine LPV representation of the PEMFC, a model that can be available in practice. In order to deal with the saturation of the control action, an LPV anti-windup compensation is also proposed. The complete control strategy is applied to several experimental practical situations in a laboratory fuel cell system to evaluate its performance and the reliability of the proposed algorithms.The research of F.D. Bianchi was supported by the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF, FEDER Programa Competitivitat de Catalunya 2007-2013). The research of C. Kunusch has been supported by the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community through the Marie Curie actions (GA: PCIG09-GA-2011-293876) and project Puma-Mind (GA: FCH-JU-2011-1-303419), as well as by the CICYT project DPI2011-25649 (MICINN-Spain). The research of C. Ocampo-Martinez has been supported by the project MACPERCON (Ref. 201250E027) of the CSIC. The research of R.S. Sánchez Peña has been supported by CONICET and grant PICT2008-290 from the PRH Program of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of Argentina.Peer Reviewe

Fault-tolerant unfalsified control for PEM fuel cell systems

The article addresses the implementation of a data-driven control strategy in a real test bench based on proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). The proposed control scheme is based on Unfalsified Control (UC), which allows adapting in real-time the control law by evaluating the performance specifications based only on measured input-output data. This approach is especially suitable to deal with non-linearity, model uncertainty and also possible faults that may occur in PEMFCs. The control strategy has been applied to several experimental practical situations in order to evaluate not only the system performance but also different fault scenarios. The experimental results have shown the effectiveness of the proposed approach to regulate the oxygen stoichiometry in real-time operation as well as to maintain a proper system performance under fault situations. Also, a start-up mass-flow controller is added in order to bring the system towards its normal operating conditions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft

Departamentos de práctica farmacéutica en el mundo, en 2006

Objetivos: Se realizó una búsqueda en la Web de los Departamentos de Práctica Farmacéutica, Farmacia Social o Farmacia Administrativa con página web que incluyera alguna de esas denominaciones en el link (DPF), en todas las Facultades de Farmacia del Mundo en 2006. Método: Se utilizó el listado de la Federación Internacional Farmacétuica (FIP) en el que figuran todas las Facultades de Farmacia del mundo. Palabras clave: Práctica Farmacéutica, Farmacia Social y F. Administrativa en español, inglés y portugués. Resultados: Se identificaron 718 Facultades de Farmacia de las que 192 cumplían los criterios de inclusión. En ellas había 83 DPF que incluían las palabras clave. En Oceanía se identificaron 9 DPF, en Europa 22 y en Asia 8. En América 43, todas ellas situadas en Norteamérica, mientras que en África tan solo se identificó un único DPF. Conclusiones: El mayor grado de implantación de DPF tiene lugar en países de gran desarrollo. Son departamentos autónomos, independientes de otros departamentos, y con una estructura multidisciplinar.Aims: A Web based research was desgined in 2006 to search for Pharmacy Practice, Social and Administrative Pharmacy departements in all Pharmacy Schools in the world. Material and Methods: The International Federation Pharmacy list of all Faculty of Pharmacy in the world was used. The key words used were: Pharmacy Practice, Social Pharmacy and Administrative Pharmacy in different languages: English, Spanish and Portuguese. Results: 718 Faculties of Pharmacy were identified, 192 reaching the inclusion criteria. 83 out of them had a PPD with a key word in their web site. In Oceania there were 9 PPD, in Asia 8 and in Europe 22. In America 43, all of them located in North America while in Africa there was only one university with a PPD. Conclusions: The biggest rate of implementation of PPD happens in well developed countries. They are autonomous, independent from other departments and with a multidisciplinary structure

H2 purity control for highpressure alkaline electrolyzers

This paper proposes a control strategy that mitigates the cross contamination of H2 and O2 in a high-pressure alkaline electrolyzer, which consequently increases the supplied gases purity. In order to reduce the diffusion of gases through the membrane, the controller establishes the opening of two outlet valves based on the pressure of the system and the difference in liquid level between both separation chambers. Therefore, a multiple input - multiple output optimal controller is designed here. For this purpose, an available high-fidelity model was simplified in order to obtain a control-oriented model. The proposed controller was evaluated in simulation using the high-fidelity nonlinear model in a wide operating range and was compared with a pair of decoupled PI controllers. The resulting impurity of gases was below 1% in all cases.This work has been partially funded by the DEOCS project (DPI2016-76493-C3-3R).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Unfalsified adaptive control for manipulators with parameter uncertainties

Trabajo presentado a la 2nd Colombian Conference on Automatic Control, celebrada en Manizales (Colombia) del 14 al 16 de octubre de 2015.This work evaluates by simulation the performance of the Unfalsified Adaptive Control (UAC) for Multiple Degree of Freedom (MDoF) serial manipulators. The UAC is a data-driven technique that addresses stability issues of model-based controllers for robot arms with inertial uncertainties. The unfalsified controller selects the most suitable controller from a set, based on performance, to decide whether the controller in the closed loop should be changed, using only system inputs and outputs, i.e., torques and joint variables of the robotic arm, respectively. In this work, performance and robustness is evaluated by simulation on a 5-DoF manipulator showing the ability of the UAC to accomplish tracking tasks in the presence of inertial parameters disturbances.Peer Reviewe

Aquifer Management in Hydrocarbon Exploitation Operations

The exploration and production of hydrocarbons require the management of associated aquifers not only because they must be intercepted and isolated during the drilling process, but also because they can be used as reservoirs for the final disposal of connate water, or as a source to maintain the energy of reservoirs and enhanced oil recovery operations. Despite the technological advances in the management of aquifers in the hydrocarbon industry, these kinds of operations have not been free of risks and opposition. Primary oil exploitation, improved oil recovery, and disposal of remaining water operations usually involve medium and deep aquifers that have physical, chemical, and geomechanical characteristics that may differ greatly from those known in shallow aquifers. Therefore, a detailed study of the porous media as well as the contained, produced, or reinjected fluids is an obligation for the regulation compliments and the safe handling of these operations. This chapter deals with issues associated with the chemical interaction of water, the problems that may arise from an incorrect evaluation or management, and the phenomena that can show a problem or evolution in injection operations. Finally, corrective, and preventive treatments and procedures that are commonly used in the hydrocarbon industry are specified.Fil: Escobar Martínez, John Fernando. Universidad de Antioquia; ColombiaFil: Naranjo Fernández, Darío. Universidad de Antioquia; ColombiaFil: Lopera, Sergio. Universidad de Antioquia; ColombiaFil: Quiroz Londoño, Orlando Mauricio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Geología de Costas y del Cuaternario. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Gobernación. Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Geología de Costas y del Cuaternario; ArgentinaFil: Ocampo, Alonso. Anh; ColombiaFil: Zarate, German. Agencia Nacional de Hidrocarburos; Colombi

Model-free control for wind farms using a gradient estimation-based algorithm

Wind turbines working close to other turbines experience interactions that affect the power production. These interactions arise as a consequence of wakes caused by upstream wind turbines. In order to achieve a more effective and precise control of the power generated by wind farms, the control strategy must consider these interactions. However, the phenomena involved in wake effects are complex especially in cases of large number of turbines. This paper presents the implementation of a gradient estimation-based algorithm as a model-free control for two different control schemes aimed to maximize the energy capture of a wind farm. One control is centralized, leaving to a supervisor the task of command computation and the other topology is decentralized, distributing the performing generation among wind turbines. This latter scheme aims to increase the reliability of the wind farm operation by reducing the communications needed to fulfill the objective of maximizing energy capture. Both control schemes are evaluated by simulation in the case of three-turbine wind farm.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft