Registros de arañas epigeas en Bahía Blanca, en la región templada de Argentina

Ecological surveys of diversity and seasonal patterns of spiders in relation with cadavers have rarely been conducted, despite the high potential species diversity and abundance of spiders. The composition, abundance, guilds and seasonality of the spiders of Bahía Blanca, in the temperate region of Argentina were analysed. The study was performed in a semi-rural area between 2010 and 2011, using pitfall traps that were checked daily during 168 ± 7 days in winter, 38 days in spring, 30 days in summer, and 71 days in autumn. A total of 972 spiders were recorded belonging to 22 families and 65 species/morphospecies. The most abundant families were: Lycosidae, Zodariidae, Thomisidae, Theridiidae and Salticidae. The guild with more specimens was represented by ground hunters followed by specialists and ambush hunters, and the guild with the greatest number of species corresponded also to the ground hunters. Considering all specimens, adults prevailed with respect to juveniles, and males were more abundant than females. The more abundant species were Leprolochus birabeni, Steatoda sp. 1, Thomisidae sp. 33, Thomisidae sp. 32, Ostearius melanopygius and Metaltella simoni.A pesar del alto potencial de la diversidad de especies y abundancia de arañas, raramente han sido conducidos censos ecológicos de la diversidad y de los patrones estacionales de arañas en relación con cadáveres. Se analizó la composición, abundancia, gremios y estacionalidad de las arañas de Bahía Blanca, en la región templada de Argentina. El estudio se realizó en un área semi-rural entre 2010 y 2011, usando trampas de caída que se revisaron diariamente durante 168 ± 7 días en invierno, 38 días en primavera, 30 días en verano, y 71 días en otoño. Se registraron un total de 972 arañas pertenecientes a 22 familias y 65 especies/morfo-especies. Las familias más abundantes fueron: Lycosidae, Zodariidae, Thomisidae, Theridiidae y Salticidae. El gremio con más especímenes estuvo representado por las cazadoras del suelo seguidas por las especialistas y por las cazadoras por emboscada, y el gremio con el mayor número de especies corresponde también al de las cazadoras del suelo. Considerando todos los especí- menes, los adultos prevalecieron respecto a los juveniles, y los machos fueron más abundantes que las hembras. Las especies más abundantes fueron Leprolochus birabeni, Steatoda sp. 1, Thomisidae sp. 33, Thomisidae sp. 32, Ostearius melanopygius y Metaltella simoni.Fil: Zanetti, Noelia Inés. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. Departamento de Ciencia y Tecnología. Laboratorio de Entomología Aplicada y Forense; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Biología, Bioquímica y Farmacia; Argentin

Awareness of treatment: a source of bias in subjective grading of ocular complications

Purpose: Bias has been described as one important obstacle in scientific research. The aim of this study was to explore “awareness of treatment” as a possible source of bias in subjective grading of ocular complications. Methods: Thirty subjects with similar, basic experience with grading scales participated in the study. The Efron grading scales were used to grade 24 images of three different ocular conditions (eight images each of bulbar hyperaemia, limbal vascularization and corneal staining). Three consecutive, two weeks apart, grading sessions were scheduled, in which the same images were graded, although in the third session images were deceptively labelled as either “treated” or “untreated”. Grading results from the first and second sessions were compared to determine grading reliability and discrepancies with the third session informed of grading bias originating from “awareness of treatment”. Results: Moderate to good test-retest reliability was found for all conditions, with median intraclass correlation values of 0.80 (0.62–0.84) for bulbar hyperaemia, 0.68 (0.65–0.77) for limbal vascularization and 0.68 (0.66–0.74) for corneal staining. Grading values from the first and third sessions evidenced negative and positive systematic errors (bias) for “treated” and “untreated” conditions, respectively. Statistically significant differences were found between the average grading discrepancies of session 1 and session 2 and those of session 1 and session 3 (all p<0.001). Conclusions: “Awareness of treatment” may be considered a source of bias of subjective grading of ocular complications, although the actual effect of bias is unlikely to be of clinical significance.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Supervised Land Use Inference from Mobility Patterns

This paper addresses the relationship between land use and mobility patterns. Since each particular zone directly feeds the global mobility once acting as origin of trips and others as destination, both roles are simultaneously used for predicting land uses. Specifically this investigation uses mobility data derived from mobile phones, a technology that emerges as a useful, quick data source on people's daily mobility, collected during two weeks over the urban area of Málaga (Spain). This allows exploring the relevance of integrating weekday-weekend trip information to better determine the category of land use. First, this work classifies patterns on trips originated and terminated in each zone into groups by means of a clustering approach. Based on identifiable relationships between activity and times when travel peaks appear, a preliminary categorization of uses is provided. Then, both grouping results are used as input variables in a K-nearest neighbors (KNN) classification model to determine the exact land use. The KNN method assumes that the category of an object must be similar to the category of the closest neighbors. After training the models, the findings reveal that this approach provides a precise land use categorization, yielding the best accuracy results for the major categories of land uses in the studied area. Moreover, as a result, the weekend data certainly contributes to finding more precise land uses as those obtained by just weekday data. In particular, the percentage of correctly predicted categories using both weekday and weekend is around 80%, while just weekday data reach 67%. The comparison with actual land uses also demonstrates that this approach is able to provide useful information, identifying zones with a specific clear dominant use (residential, industrial, and commercial), as well as multiactivity zones (mixed). This fact is especially useful in the context of urban environments where multiple activities coexist.Unión Europea Programa Operativo FEDER de Andalucía 2011–2015Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad PTQ-13-0642

Linking Induction and Transrepression of PPARβ/δ with Cellular Function

The copyrights of all papers published in this journal are retained by the respective authors as per the 'Creative Commons Attribution License' (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).Peroxisome proliferator activated receptors (PPARs) are ligand-activated transcription factors and members of the nuclear hormone receptor superfamily. PPARβ/δ is ubiquitously expressed and has a central role in homeostasis, and has been suggested as a therapeutic target for a number of metabolic and cardiovascular disorders. This important nuclear receptor controls transcription under different modes of molecular activity which directly control the cellular function and fate of tissues. This complex activity of induction and transrepression of gene expression (with and without exogenous ligands) is poorly understood and yet understanding this molecular control through novel drug development would led to control over a key molecular switch in all cells. This review outlines the main molecular mechanisms of PPARβ/δ, and links the modes of activity to the signalling pathways in inflammation, proliferation and senescence, with the goal to understand how this will translate into novel drug design to control the PPARβ/δ molecular switch.Peer reviewe

Progenitors of Supernovae Type Ia and Chemical Enrichment in Hydrodynamical Simulations -I. The Single Degenerate Scenario

The nature of the Type Ia supernovae (SNIa) progenitors remains still uncertain. This is a major issue for galaxy evolution models since both chemical and energetic feedback play a major role in the gas dynamics, star formation and therefore in the overall stellar evolution. The progenitor models for the SNIa available in the literature propose different distributions for regulating the explosion times of these events. These functions are known as the Delay Time Distributions (DTDs). This work is the first one in a series of papers aiming at studying five different DTDs for SNIa. Here, we implement and analyse the Single Degenerate scenario (SD) in galaxies dominated by a rapid quenching of the star formation, displaying the majority of the stars concentrated in the bulge component. We find a good fit to both the present observed SNIa rates in spheroidal dominated galaxies, and to the [O/Fe] ratios shown by the bulge of the Milky Way. Additionally, the SD scenario is found to reproduce a correlation between the specific SNIa rate and the specific star formation rate, which closely resembles the observational trend, at variance with previous works. Our results suggest that SNIa observations in galaxies with very low and very high specific star formation rates can help to impose more stringent constraints on the DTDs and therefore on SNIa progenitors.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in Ap

What determines large scale galaxy clustering: halo mass or local density?

Using dark matter simulations we show how halo bias is determined by local density and not by halo mass. This is not totally surprising, as according to the peak-background split model, local density is the property that constraints bias at large scales. Massive haloes have a high clustering because they reside in high density regions. Small haloes can be found in a wide range of environments which determine their clustering amplitudes differently. This contradicts the assumption of standard Halo Occupation Distribution (HOD) models that the bias and occupation of haloes is determined solely by their mass. We show that the bias of central galaxies from semi-analytic models of galaxy formation as a function of luminosity and colour is not correctly predicted by the standard HOD model. Using local density instead of halo mass the HOD model correctly predicts galaxy bias. These results indicate the need to include information about local density and not only mass in order to correctly apply HOD analysis in these galaxy samples. This new model can be readily applied to observations and has the advantage that the galaxy density can be directly observed, in contrast with the dark matter halo mass.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure

Rickettsias del grupo de las fiebres manchadas en garrapatas del género Amblyomma, capaces de infestar humanos, en áreas rurales del noroeste de Argentina

This work was performed to detect Rickettsia species of the spotted fever group in Amblyomma ticks likely to infest humans in rural areas from northwestern Argentina. Free-living ticks were collected and determined as Amblyomma tigrinum, Amblyomma neumanni and Amblyomma tonelliae. Rickettsia infection was determined by polymerase chain reactions which amplify fragments of the rickettsial genes gltA and ompA. A high frequency (35/44, 79.5%) of Candidatus “Rickettsia andeanae” was observed in A. tigrinum ticks, and Candidatus “Rickettsia amblyommii” was found in three out of 14 nymphs of A. neumanni. All 14 Amblyomma tonelliae ticks were negative for rikettsiae. The infection with spotted fever group rickettsiae in ticks aggressive for humans reveals the potential risk of exposure to tick-borne pathogens of people inhabiting rural areas of northwestern Argentina.Fil: Saracho Bottero, María Noelia. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Santa Fe. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Rafaela; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe; ArgentinaFil: Tarragona, Evelina Luisa. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe; Argentina. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Santa Fe. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Rafaela; ArgentinaFil: Nava, Santiago. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe; Argentina. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Santa Fe. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Rafaela; Argentin