Revisión del género Cantabrogeus Salgado, 2000, con la descripción de tres nuevas especies hipogeas endémicas de la Cordillera Cantábrica (Coleoptera, Leiodidae, Cholevinae, Leptodirini)

Se revisan las dos especies previamente descritas del género Cantabrogeus (Coleoptera, Leiodidae, Cholevinae, Leptodirini), y se describen tres especies nuevas: Cantabrogeus antimachus sp. n., C. cultellus sp. n. y C. fresnedai sp. n. Una de ellas (C. antimachus sp. n.) es triploide (3n = 33) y la primera especie partenogenética conocida de Leiodidae. Se analizan y se discuten las relaciones existentes entre los diferentes taxones a partir de los caracteres morfológicos externos y las estructuras de los aparatos genitales masculino y femenino, así como las áreas cársticas que colonizan las diferentes especies en la zona cantábrica (NO ibérico). El análisis de datos moleculares (fragmentos de siete genes mitocondriales y nucleares) confirma la monofilia de Cantabrogeus y su proximidad filogenética con el género Fresnedaella, así como su inclusión dentro de la serie Quaestus, que es parafilética. La especie partenogenética (C. antimachus sp. n.) ocupa una posición derivada dentro del género Cantabrogeus, que, de acuerdo con estimas de la tasa de variación molecular basadas en estudios previos, probablemente se diversificó durante el Plioceno–Pleistoceno en las zonas cársticas cántabras, que son de una alta complejidad tectónica.The two previously known species of the genus Cantabrogeus (Coleoptera, Leiodidae, Cholevinae, Leptodirini) are redescribed, and three new species are described: Cantabrogeus antimachus n. sp., C. cultellus n. sp. and C. fresnedai n. sp. One of these (C. antimachus n. sp.) is tripliod (3n = 33) and the first known parthenogenetic species of Leiodidae. The relationships between the different taxa are discussed based on external morphological characters and the structure of male and female genitalia, as well as the distribution of the species in the different areas in the Cantabrian mountains (NW Iberia). Analyses of molecular data (fragments of seven mitochondrial and nuclear genes) confirms the monophyly of Cantabrogeus and its sister–group relationship with Fresnedaella, as well as its inclusion within the paraphyletic series Quaestus. The parthenogenetic species (C. antimachus n. sp.) has a derived position within Cantabrogeus, which, according to previous estimates of the molecular rate, probably diversified during the Pliocene–Pleistocene in the Cantabrian karst areas, of a high tectonic complexity.Se revisan las dos especies previamente descritas del género Cantabrogeus (Coleoptera, Leiodidae, Cholevinae, Leptodirini), y se describen tres especies nuevas: Cantabrogeus antimachus sp. n., C. cultellus sp. n. y C. fresnedai sp. n. Una de ellas (C. antimachus sp. n.) es triploide (3n = 33) y la primera especie partenogenética conocida de Leiodidae. Se analizan y se discuten las relaciones existentes entre los diferentes taxones a partir de los caracteres morfológicos externos y las estructuras de los aparatos genitales masculino y femenino, así como las áreas cársticas que colonizan las diferentes especies en la zona cantábrica (NO ibérico). El análisis de datos moleculares (fragmentos de siete genes mitocondriales y nucleares) confirma la monofilia de Cantabrogeus y su proximidad filogenética con el género Fresnedaella, así como su inclusión dentro de la serie Quaestus, que es parafilética. La especie partenogenética (C. antimachus sp. n.) ocupa una posición derivada dentro del género Cantabrogeus, que, de acuerdo con estimas de la tasa de variación molecular basadas en estudios previos, probablemente se diversificó durante el Plioceno–Pleistoceno en las zonas cársticas cántabras, que son de una alta complejidad tectónica

Preparation of a sepia melanin and poly(ethylene-alt-maleic anhydride) hybrid material as an adsorbent for water purification

Meeting the increasing demand of clean water requires the development of novel efficient adsorbent materials for the removal of organic pollutants. In this context the use of natural, renewable sources is of special relevance and sepia melanin, thanks to its ability to bind a variety of organic and inorganic species, has already attracted interest for water purification. Here we describe the synthesis of a material obtained by the combination of sepia melanin and poly(ethylene-alt-maleic anhydride) (P(E-alt-MA)). Compared to sepia melanin, the resulting hybrid displays a high and fast adsorption efficiency towards methylene blue (a common industrial dye) for a wide pH range (from pH 2 to 12) and under high ionic strength conditions. It is easily recovered after use and can be reused up to three times. Given the wide availability of sepia melanin and P(E-alt-MA), the synthesis of our hybrid is simple and affordable, making it suitable for industrial water purification purposes

PERSISTENCE OF IMMUNITY TO POLIOMYELITIS AMONG A SOUTHERN POPULATION THAT RECEIVED FOUR DOSES OF OPV 5 TO OVER 15 YEARS BEFORE

The immune status against polioviruses was investigated in a population of 545 students aged 11-20 years residing in the Neapolitan area, who had completed the vaccination cycle with four doses of OPV 5 to over 15 years before. Assuming as unprotected those individuals without detectable neutralizing antibodies at the dilution 1:2, nobody resulted without protection against all types of poliovirus; 0.7% lacked antibodies only against type 1, 0.6% only against type 3 and none against type 2. A very slight decreasing trend was observed for GMT values in function of the distance from the last dose of OPV for polio 1 and 2, but not for polio 3. As expected, GMT values for polio 2 resulted higher than those for polio 1 and both were higher than those for polio 3, when calculated by age groups as well as by distance groups. The last four Italian cases of autochthonous paralytic poliomyelitis, occurred in the period 1981/83, regarded unvaccinated children aged 6 months-2 years, residing in the same geographical area to which the study population belong. In the same area a delay of immunization practices was also ascertained in the recent past. Results of this study confirm that a priority for public health services is to devote their human and economic resources to reduce the vaccination delay more than administrate a further fifth dose of OPV at the age of twelve

Broadband distortion modeling in Lyman-α\alpha forest BAO fitting

In recent years, the Lyman-$\alpha$ absorption observed in the spectra of high-redshift quasars has been used as a tracer of large-scale structure by means of the three-dimensional Lyman-$\alpha$ forest auto-correlation function at redshift $z\simeq 2.3$, but the need to fit the quasar continuum in every absorption spectrum introduces a broadband distortion that is difficult to correct and causes a systematic error for measuring any broadband properties. We describe a $k$-space model for this broadband distortion based on a multiplicative correction to the power spectrum of the transmitted flux fraction that suppresses power on scales corresponding to the typical length of a Lyman-$\alpha$ forest spectrum. Implementing the distortion model in fits for the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) peak position in the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest auto-correlation, we find that the fitting method recovers the input values of the linear bias parameter $b_{F}$ and the redshift-space distortion parameter $\beta_{F}$ for mock data sets with a systematic error of less than 0.5\%. Applied to the auto-correlation measured for BOSS Data Release 11, our method improves on the previous treatment of broadband distortions in BAO fitting by providing a better fit to the data using fewer parameters and reducing the statistical errors on $\beta_{F}$ and the combination $b_{F}(1+\beta_{F})$ by more than a factor of seven. The measured values at redshift $z=2.3$ are $\beta_{F}=1.39^{+0.11\ +0.24\ +0.38}_{-0.10\ -0.19\ -0.28}$and$b_{F}(1+\beta_{F})=-0.374^{+0.007\ +0.013\ +0.020}_{-0.007\ -0.014\ -0.022}$(1$\sigma$, 2$\sigma$and 3$\sigma$ statistical errors). Our fitting software and the input files needed to reproduce our main results are publicly available.Comment: 28 pages, 15 figures, matches the published versio

Clinical and environmental distribution of legionella pneumophila in a university hospital in italy: efficacy of ultraviolet disinfection

The molecular epidemiology of Legionella pneumophila in the 'V. Monaldi' University Hospital was studied. Seven cases of nosocomial Legionnaires' disease were diagnosed between 1999 and 2003. Two clinical legionella strains obtained from two patients in the adult cardiac surgery unit (CSU) and 30 environmental legionella strains from the paediatric and adult CSUs, neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and the cardiorespiratory intensive care unit (CR-ICU) were serotyped and genotyped. L. pneumophila serogroup 1/Philadelphia with an identical pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) profile A was isolated from two patients in the adult CSU, and from three and one water samples taken in the adult CSU and the paediatric CSU, respectively, from 2001 to 2002. Furthermore, L. pneumophila serogroup 3 with an identical PFGE profile B was identified in 20 environmental strains from all wards, L. pneumophila serogroup 3 with PFGE profile C was identified in a single environmental strain from the CR-ICU, and non-pneumophila Legionella with identical PFGE profile D was identified in five environmental strains from the adult CSU, paediatric CSU and NICU. Ultraviolet irradiation was effective in disinfection of the hospital water supplies in the adult and paediatric CSUs contaminated by L. pneumophila clone associated with nosocomial Legionnaires' disease. In conclusion, these data demonstrate that two cases of nosocomial legionellosis were caused by the persistence of a single clone of L. pneumophila serogroup 1/Philadelphia in the hospital environment, and that disinfection by ultraviolet irradiation may represent an effective measure to prevent nosocomial Legionnaires' disease. © 2005 The Hospital Infection Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Updated Bounds on Sum of Neutrino Masses in Various Cosmological Scenarios

We present strong bounds on the sum of three active neutrino masses ($\sum m_{\nu}$) in various cosmological models. We use the following baseline datasets: CMB temperature data from Planck 2015, BAO measurements from SDSS-III BOSS DR12, the newly released SNe Ia dataset from Pantheon Sample, and a prior on the optical depth to reionization from 2016 Planck Intermediate results. We constrain cosmological parameters in $\Lambda CDM$ model with 3 massive active neutrinos. For this $\Lambda CDM+\sum m_{\nu}$ model we find a upper bound of $\sum m_{\nu} <$ 0.152 eV at 95$\%$ C.L. Adding the high-$l$ polarization data from Planck strengthens this bound to $\sum m_{\nu} <$ 0.118 eV, which is very close to the minimum required mass of $\sum m_{\nu} \simeq$ 0.1 eV for inverted hierarchy. This bound is reduced to $\sum m_{\nu} <$ 0.110 eV when we also vary r, the tensor to scalar ratio ($\Lambda CDM+r+\sum m_{\nu}$ model), and add an additional dataset, BK14, the latest data released from the Bicep-Keck collaboration. This bound is further reduced to $\sum m_{\nu} <$ 0.101 eV in a cosmology with non-phantom dynamical dark energy ($w_0 w_a CDM+\sum m_{\nu}$ model with $w(z)\geq -1$ for all $z$). Considering the $w_0 w_a CDM+r+\sum m_{\nu}$ model and adding the BK14 data again, the bound can be even further reduced to $\sum m_{\nu} <$ 0.093 eV. For the $w_0 w_a CDM+\sum m_{\nu}$ model without any constraint on $w(z)$, the bounds however relax to $\sum m_{\nu} <$ 0.276 eV. Adding a prior on the Hubble constant ($H_0 = 73.24\pm 1.74$ km/sec/Mpc) from Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the above mentioned bounds further improve to $\sum m_{\nu} <$ 0.117 eV, 0.091 eV, 0.085 eV, 0.082 eV, 0.078 eV and 0.247 eV respectively. This substantial improvement is mostly driven by a more than 3$\sigma$ tension between Planck 2015 and HST measurements of $H_0$ and should be taken cautiously. (abstract abridged)Comment: 31 pages, 19 figures, matches published version in JCA

Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Ly{\alpha} forest of BOSS DR11 quasars

We report a detection of the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) feature in the flux-correlation function of the Ly{\alpha} forest of high-redshift quasars with a statistical significance of five standard deviations. The study uses 137,562 quasars in the redshift range $2.1\le z \le 3.5$ from the Data Release 11 (DR11) of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) of SDSS-III. This sample contains three times the number of quasars used in previous studies. The measured position of the BAO peak determines the angular distance, $D_A(z=2.34)$ and expansion rate, $H(z=2.34)$, both on a scale set by the sound horizon at the drag epoch, $r_d$. We find $D_A/r_d=11.28\pm0.65(1\sigma)^{+2.8}_{-1.2}(2\sigma)$ and $D_H/r_d=9.18\pm0.28(1\sigma)\pm0.6(2\sigma)$ where $D_H=c/H$. The optimal combination, $\sim D_H^{0.7}D_A^{0.3}/r_d$ is determined with a precision of $\sim2\%$. For the value $r_d=147.4~{\rm Mpc}$, consistent with the CMB power spectrum measured by Planck, we find $D_A(z=2.34)=1662\pm96(1\sigma)~{\rm Mpc}$ and $H(z=2.34)=222\pm7(1\sigma)~{\rm km\,s^{-1}Mpc^{-1}}$. Tests with mock catalogs and variations of our analysis procedure have revealed no systematic uncertainties comparable to our statistical errors. Our results agree with the previously reported BAO measurement at the same redshift using the quasar-Ly{\alpha} forest cross-correlation. The auto-correlation and cross-correlation approaches are complementary because of the quite different impact of redshift-space distortion on the two measurements. The combined constraints from the two correlation functions imply values of $D_A/r_d$ and $D_H/r_d$ that are, respectively, 7% low and 7% high compared to the predictions of a flat $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model with the best-fit Planck parameters. With our estimated statistical errors, the significance of this discrepancy is $\approx 2.5\sigma$.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. 17 pages, 18 figure

The Herschel Stripe 82 Survey (HerS): maps and early catalog

We present the first set of maps and band-merged catalog from the Herschel Stripe 82 Survey (HerS). Observations at 250, 350, and 500μm were taken with the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver instrument aboard the Herschel Space Observatory. HerS covers 79deg 2 along the SDSS Stripe 82 to an average depth of 13.0, 12.9, and 14.8mJybeam −1 (including confusion) at 250, 350, and 500μm, respectively. HerS was designed to measure correlations with external tracers of the dark matter density field—either point-like (i.e., galaxies selected from radio to X-ray) or extended (i.e., clusters and gravitational lensing)—in order to measure the bias and redshift distribution of intensities of infrared-emitting dusty star-forming galaxies and active galactic nuclei. By locating HerS in Stripe 82, we maximize the overlap with available and upcoming cosmological surveys. The band-merged catalog contains 3.3 × 10 4 sources detected at a significance of ?3σ (including confusion noise). The maps and catalog are available at http://www.astro.caltech.edu/hers/

The effect of geographical scale of sampling on DNA barcoding.

Eight years after DNA barcoding was formally proposed on a large scale, CO1 sequences are rapidly accumulating from around the world. While studies to date have mostly targeted local or regional species assemblages, the recent launch of the global iBOL project (International Barcode of Life), highlights the need to understand the effects of geographical scale on Barcoding's goals. Sampling has been central in the debate on DNA Barcoding, but the effect of the geographical scale of sampling has not yet been thoroughly and explicitly tested with empirical data. Here, we present a CO1 data set of aquatic predaceous diving beetles of the tribe Agabini, sampled throughout Europe, and use it to investigate how the geographic scale of sampling affects 1) the estimated intraspecific variation of species, 2) the genetic distance to the most closely related heterospecific, 3) the ratio of intraspecific and interspecific variation, 4) the frequency of taxonomically recognized species found to be monophyletic, and 5) query identification performance based on 6 different species assignment methods. Intraspecific variation was significantly correlated with the geographical scale of sampling (R-square = 0.7), and more than half of the species with 10 or more sampled individuals (N = 29) showed higher intraspecific variation than 1% sequence divergence. In contrast, the distance to the closest heterospecific showed a significant decrease with increasing geographical scale of sampling. The average genetic distance dropped from > 7% for samples within 1 km, to 6000 km apart. Over a third of the species were not monophyletic, and the proportion increased through locally, nationally, regionally, and continentally restricted subsets of the data. The success of identifying queries decreased with increasing spatial scale of sampling; liberal methods declined from 100% to around 90%, whereas strict methods dropped to below 50% at continental scales. The proportion of query identifications considered uncertain (more than one species < 1% distance from query) escalated from zero at local, to 50% at continental scale. Finally, by resampling the most widely sampled species we show that even if samples are collected to maximize the geographical coverage, up to 70 individuals are required to sample 95% of intraspecific variation. The results show that the geographical scale of sampling has a critical impact on the global application of DNA barcoding. Scale-effects result from the relative importance of different processes determining the composition of regional species assemblages (dispersal and ecological assembly) and global clades (demography, speciation, and extinction). The incorporation of geographical information, where available, will be required to obtain identification rates at global scales equivalent to those in regional barcoding studies. Our result hence provides an impetus for both smarter barcoding tools and sprouting national barcoding initiatives-smaller geographical scales deliver higher accuracy