Factores determinantes de las exportaciones agrícolas primarias y derivadas del Perú a los Estados Unidos. periodo: 2000-2017

La presente investigación tuvo como objetivo establecer los factores determinantes que incidieron en el comportamiento de las exportaciones agrícolas primarias y derivadas del Perú hacia los Estados Unidos, en el periodo 2000-2017, teniendo como base la teoría de la demanda marshalliana aplicada al comercio internacional. Se partió construyendo una nueva clasificación de exportaciones agrícolas de acuerdo a su nivel de transformación o valor agregado, a fin de buscar una alternativa a la actual clasificación que clasifica a las exportaciones en tradicionales y no tradicionales. Para ello, se estimaron tres modelos dinámicos de agroexportaciones del Perú a los Estados Unidos y se realizaron pronósticos para los próximos 16 trimestres. Además, se analizó las exportaciones agroindustriales del Perú a los Estados Unidos de acuerdo a la clasificación de exportaciones propuesta. Los resultados del modelo revelan que las variables proxy: Gasto de Consumo Personal (Personal Consumption Expenditure-PCE) de los Estados Unidos, el Tipo de Cambio Real Bilateral; y el componente autorregresivo influyen en la demanda de las agroexportaciones peruanas (sector industrial, primarias y derivadas) a los Estados Unidos, en el periodo evaluado.The present investigation aims to establish the determining factors that influenced the behavior of primary and derived agricultural exports from Peru to the United States, in the period 2000-2017, based on the theory of Marshallian demand, applied to international trade. It started by building a new classification of agricultural exports according to its level of transformation or added value, in order to find an alternative to the current classification that classifies exports into traditional and non-traditional. For this, three dynamic models of agro-exports from Peru to the United States were estimated and forecasts were made for the next 16 quarters. In addition, the agro-industrial exports from Peru to the United States were analyzed according to the proposed export classification. The results of the model reveal that the proxy variables: Personal Consumption Expenditure-PCE of the United States, the Bilateral Real Exchange Rate; and the autoregressive component influences the demand of Peruvian agro-exports (industrial, primary and derived sectors) to the United States, in the period evaluated.Tesi

Vitamin A deficiency impairs the immune response to intranasal vaccination and RSV infection in neonatal calves

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection is a leading cause of severe acute lower respiratory tract infection in infants and children worldwide. Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is one of the most prevalent nutrition-related health problems in the world and is a significant risk factor in the development of severe respiratory infections in infants and young children. Bovine RSV (BRSV) is a primary cause of lower respiratory tract disease in young cattle. The calf model of BRSV infection is useful to understand the immune response to human RSV infection. We have previously developed an amphiphilic polyanhydride nanoparticle (NP)-based vaccine (i.e., nanovaccine) encapsulating the fusion and attachment proteins from BRSV (BRSV-NP). Calves receiving a single, intranasal dose of the BRSV-NP vaccine are partially protected from BRSV challenge. Here, we evaluated the impact of VAD on the immune response to the BRSV-NP vaccine and subsequent challenge with BRSV. Our results show that VAD calves are unable to respond to the mucosal BRSV-NP vaccine, are afforded no protection from BRSV challenge and have significant abnormalities in the inflammatory response in the infected lung. We further show that acute BRSV infection negatively impacts serum and liver retinol, rendering even well-nourished individuals susceptible to VAD. Our results support the use of the calf model for elucidating the impact of nutritional status on mucosal immunity and respiratory viral infection in infants and underline the importance of VA in regulating immunity in the respiratory mucosa

Tropidacris cristata (L., 1758) (Orthoptera: Romaleidae): ampliación del rango de distribución en Panamá

Tropidacris cristata (L., 1758) (Orthoptera: Acridoidea: Romaleidae), is a species of large grasshopper, present from Mexico to South America. With polyphagous and gregarious habits, under certain conditions it can represent a problem as pest in forest, fruit and horticultural crops. In recent incursions carried out in the eastern and western regions of Panama, large grasshoppers have been found, so the aim of this work was to identify the species to which these insects corresponded and to update the known distribution of the species in Panama. The coordinates where the specimens were found were recorded and they were photographed and collected for preservation using 70% ethanol and subsequently analyzed in the laboratory. To confirm the species, specialized literature was consulted and three entomological collections were reviewed. To update the known distribution of the insect, specialized publications, institutional databases, and collection data from the reviewed collections were consulted. According to the results, in all cases the insect species corresponded to T. cristata; The locations of Burí (Ngäbe-Buglé Comarca), Santa Marta, Cordillera, Cuesta de Piedra, Celmira and Caisán (Chiriquí province) are new records for the western region of Panama; while the distribution in Veraguas province is expanded and it is recorded for the first time in the Guna Yala Comarca. In addition, a consolidated map with the expanded distribution of the insect was prepared. In conclusion, T. cristata has a distribution in almost all the national territory and there are eight new formal reports.Tropidacris cristata (L., 1758) (Orthoptera: Acridoidea: Romaleidae), es una especie de saltamontes grande, presente desde México hasta Suramérica. De hábitos polífagos y gregarios, en determinadas condiciones puede representar un problema como plaga en cultivos forestales, frutales y hortícolas. En recientes incursiones realizadas en las regiones oriental y occidental de Panamá, se han encontrado saltamontes de gran tamaño, por lo que el objetivo del presente trabajo fue identificar la especie a la que correspondían estos insectos y actualizar la distribución conocida de la especie para Panamá. Se registraron las coordenadas donde se encontraron los especímenes, los cuales fueron fotografiados y colectados para su preservación mediante etanol al 70% y posteriormente se analizaron en el laboratorio. Se consultó literatura especializada y se revisaron tres colecciones entomológicas para confirmar la especie. Para actualizar la distribución conocida del insecto, se consultaron publicaciones especializadas, bases de datos institucionales y datos de colecta de las colecciones revisadas. De acuerdo con los resultados, en todos los casos la especie de insecto correspondió a T. cristata; siendo las localidades de Burí (Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé), Santa Marta, Cordillera, Cuesta de Piedra, Celmira y Caisán (provinica de Chiriquí), nuevos registros para la región occidental de Panamá; mientras que se amplía la distribución para la provincia de Veraguas y se tiene un nuevo registro en la Comarca Guna Yala. Además, se elaboró un mapa consolidado con la distribución ampliada del insecto. En conclusión, T. cristata tiene distribución en prácticamente todo el territorio nacional y se cuenta con ocho nuevos registros formales

Assessing the safety, impact and effectiveness of RTS,S/AS01E malaria vaccine following its introduction in three sub-Saharan African countries: methodological approaches and study set-up

Background Following a 30-year development process, RTS,S/AS01E (GSK, Belgium) is the first malaria vaccine to reach Phase IV assessments. The World Health Organization-commissioned Malaria Vaccine Implementation Programme (MVIP) is coordinating the delivery of RTS,S/AS01E through routine national immunization programmes in areas of 3 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The first doses were given in the participating MVIP areas in Malawi on 23 April, Ghana on 30 April, and Kenya on 13 September 2019. The countries participating in the MVIP have little or no baseline incidence data on rare diseases, some of which may be associated with immunization, a deficit that could compromise the interpretation of possible adverse events reported following the introduction of a new vaccine in the paediatric population. Further, effects of vaccination on malaria transmission, existing malaria control strategies, and possible vaccine-mediated selective pressure on Plasmodium falciparum variants, could also impact long-term malaria control. To address this data gap and as part of its post-approval commitments, GSK has developed a post-approval plan comprising of 4 complementary Phase IV studies that will evaluate safety, effectiveness and impact of RTS,S/AS01E through active participant follow-up in the context of its real-life implementation. Methods EPI-MAL-002 (NCT02374450) is a pre-implementation safety surveillance study that is establishing the background incidence rates of protocol-defined adverse events of special interest. EPI-MAL-003 (NCT03855995) is an identically designed post-implementation safety and vaccine impact study. EPI-MAL-005 (NCT02251704) is a cross-sectional pre- and post-implementation study to measure malaria transmission intensity and monitor the use of other malaria control interventions in the study areas, and EPI-MAL-010 (EUPAS42948) will evaluate the P. falciparum genetic diversity in the periods before and after vaccine implementation. Conclusion GSK’s post-approval plan has been designed to address important knowledge gaps in RTS,S/AS01E vaccine safety, effectiveness and impact. The studies are currently being conducted in the MVIP areas. Their implementation has provided opportunities and posed challenges linked to conducting large studies in regions where healthcare infrastructure is limited. The results from these studies will support ongoing evaluation of RTS,S/AS01E’s benefit-risk and inform decision-making for its potential wider implementation across sub-Saharan Africa

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead