Survival of Diaporthe phaseolorum var. caulivora (causal agent of soybean stem canker) artificially inoculated in different crop residues

271-274Stem canker caused by Diaporthe phaseolorum var. caulivora is an important disease of soybean in Argentina. The objective of this study was to determine its survival ability in artificially infested straw under laboratory and field conditions. In laboratory, stem pieces of soybean, maize, sorghum, sunflower, potato and wheat were autoclaved, placed in petri dishes on Potato Dextrose Agar and Water Agar, and inoculated with a 7-day-old pathogen culture. All crop residues were colonized and produced perithecia. Debris artificially infested with D. phaseolorum var. caulivora were placed in plastic net bags and transferred to an un-cropped area in a field plot at the University of Buenos Aires. Straws were left on the ground from winter to spring season in both 2007 and 2008 years. After 6 months abundant perithecia were developed in all straws. However, a higher number of perithecia on soybean and sunflower compared to maize, sorghum and potato was determined. These findings suggest that other crops, besides soybean, could maintain alive the inoculum of Diaporthe phaseolorum var. caulivora from soybean for at least 6-7 months

Augmented state Kalman filtering for AUV navigation

This paper addresses the problem of estimating the motion of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), while it constructs a visual map (“mosaic ” image) of the ocean floor. The vehicle is equipped with a down-looking camera which is used to compute its motion with respect to the seafloor. As the mosaic increases in size, a systematic bias is introduced in the alignment of the images which form the mosaic. Therefore, this accumulative error produces a drift in the estimation of the position of the vehicle. When the arbitrary trajectory of the AUV crosses over itself, it is possible to reduce this propagation of image alignment errors within the mosaic. A Kalman filter with augmented state is proposed to optimally estimate both the visual map and the vehicle position.

Reconfigurable AUV for Intervention Missions: A Case Study on Underwater Object Recovery

Starting in January 2009, the RAUVI (Reconfigurable Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for Intervention Missions) project is a 3-year coordinated research action funded by the Spanish Ministry of Research and Innovation. In this paper, the state of progress after 2 years of continuous research is reported. As a first experimental validation of the complete system, a search and recovery problem is addressed, consisting of finding and recovering a flight data recorder placed at an unknown position at the bottom of a water tank. An overview of the techniques used to successfully solve the problem in an autonomous way is provided. The obtained results are very promising and are the first step toward the final test in shallow water at the end of 2011

Salinity studies in Mar Menor coastal lagoon

An experiment with different AUVs was carried out in the Mar Menor Coastal Lagoon from October 31 to November 5 in order to measure and assess the influence of the water from the Mar Menor on the adjacent area of the Mediterranean. This was carried out as a result of the meeting held between several institutions from the Iberian Peninsula and EEUU (see Vilanova Marine Science/Robotics Meeting 2010). The experiment was to launch several AUVs at the same time in different zones of the Mediterranean and Mar Menor lagoon. AUVs took salinity data trying to do a coordinated mission during two operative days (November 3 and November 5). Others days of the experiment were used to the vehicle’s preparation and error correction (November 2 and November 4). This paper presents the steps followed in preparation and operative days with the set of AUVs. This paper presents also the salinity results obtained during these missions.Postprint (published version

Timing of surgery for hip fracture and in-hospital mortality: a retrospective population-based cohort study in the Spanish National Health System

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>While the benefits or otherwise of early hip fracture repair is a long-running controversy with studies showing contradictory results, this practice is being adopted as a quality indicator in several health care organizations. The aim of this study is to analyze the association between early hip fracture repair and in-hospital mortality in elderly people attending public hospitals in the Spanish National Health System and, additionally, to explore factors associated with the decision to perform early hip fracture repair.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cohort of 56,500 patients of 60-years-old and over, hospitalized for hip fracture during the period 2002 to 2005 in all the public hospitals in 8 Spanish regions, were followed up using administrative databases to identify the time to surgical repair and in-hospital mortality. We used a multivariate logistic regression model to analyze the relationship between the timing of surgery (< 2 days from admission) and in-hospital mortality, controlling for several confounding factors.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Early surgery was performed on 25% of the patients. In the unadjusted analysis early surgery showed an absolute difference in risk of mortality of 0.57 (from 4.42% to 3.85%). However, patients undergoing delayed surgery were older and had higher comorbidity and severity of illness. Timeliness for surgery was not found to be related to in-hospital mortality once confounding factors such as age, sex, chronic comorbidities as well as the severity of illness were controlled for in the multivariate analysis.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Older age, male gender, higher chronic comorbidity and higher severity measured by the Risk Mortality Index were associated with higher mortality, but the time to surgery was not.</p

Cardiovascular and renal outcomes of renin-angiotensin system blockade in adult patients with diabetes mellitus: a systematic review with network meta-analyses

Medications aimed at inhibiting the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) have been used extensively for preventing cardiovascular and renal complications in patients with diabetes, but data that compare their clinical effectiveness are limited. We aimed to compare the effects of classes of RAS blockers on cardiovascular and renal outcomes in adults with diabetes