Ecological host fitting of Trypanosoma cruzi TcI in Bolivia: mosaic population structure, hybridization and a role for humans in Andean parasite dispersal.

An improved understanding of how a parasite species exploits its genetic repertoire to colonize novel hosts and environmental niches is crucial to establish the epidemiological risk associated with emergent pathogenic genotypes. Trypanosoma cruzi, a genetically heterogeneous, multi-host zoonosis, provides an ideal system to examine the sylvatic diversification of parasitic protozoa. In Bolivia, T. cruzi I, the oldest and most widespread genetic lineage, is pervasive across a range of ecological clines. High-resolution nuclear (26 loci) and mitochondrial (10 loci) genotyping of 199 contemporaneous sylvatic TcI clones was undertaken to provide insights into the biogeographical basis of T. cruzi evolution. Three distinct sylvatic parasite transmission cycles were identified: one highland population among terrestrial rodent and triatomine species, composed of genetically homogenous strains (Ar = 2.95; PA/L = 0.61; DAS = 0.151), and two highly diverse, parasite assemblages circulating among predominantly arboreal mammals and vectors in the lowlands (Ar = 3.40 and 3.93; PA/L = 1.12 and 0.60; DAS = 0.425 and 0.311, respectively). Very limited gene flow between neighbouring terrestrial highland and arboreal lowland areas (distance ~220 km; FST = 0.42 and 0.35) but strong connectivity between ecologically similar but geographically disparate terrestrial highland ecotopes (distance >465 km; FST = 0.016-0.084) strongly supports ecological host fitting as the predominant mechanism of parasite diversification. Dissimilar heterozygosity estimates (excess in highlands, deficit in lowlands) and mitochondrial introgression among lowland strains may indicate fundamental differences in mating strategies between populations. Finally, accelerated parasite dissemination between densely populated, highland areas, compared to uninhabited lowland foci, likely reflects passive, long-range anthroponotic dispersal. The impact of humans on the risk of epizootic Chagas disease transmission in Bolivia is discussed

Pairwise thermal entanglement in Ising-XYZ diamond chain structure in an external magnetic field

Quantum entanglement is one of the most fascinating types of correlation that can be shared only among quantum systems. The Heisenberg chain is one of the simplest quantum chains which exhibits a reach entanglement feature, due to the Heisenberg interaction is quantum coupling in the spin system. The two particles were coupled trough XYZ coupling or simply called as two-qubit XYZ spin, which are the responsible for the emergence of thermal entanglement. These two-qubit operators are bonded to two nodal Ising spins, and this process is repeated infinitely resulting in a diamond chain structure. We will discuss two-qubit thermal entanglement effect on Ising-XYZ diamond chain structure. The concurrence could be obtained straightforwardly in terms of two-qubit density operator elements, using this result, we study the thermal entanglement, as well as the threshold temperature where entangled state vanishes. The present model displays a quite unusual concurrence behavior, such as, the boundary of two entangled regions becomes a disentangled region, this is intrinsically related to the XY-anisotropy in the Heisenberg coupling. Despite a similar property had been found for only two-qubit, here we show in the case of a diamond chain structure, which reasonably represents real materials.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure

Effect of the Canting of Local Anisotropy Axes on Ground-State Properties of a Ferrimagnetic Chain with Regularly Alternating Ising and Heisenberg Spins

The effect of the canting of local anisotropy axes on the ground-state phase diagram and magnetization of a ferrimagnetic chain with regularly alternating Ising and Heisenberg spins is exactly examined in an arbitrarily oriented magnetic field. It is shown that individual contributions of Ising and Heisenberg spins to the total magnetization basically depend on the spatial orientation of the magnetic field and the canting angle between two different local anisotropy axes of the Ising spins.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure

Trypanosoma cruzi IIc: phylogenetic and phylogeographic insights from sequence and microsatellite analysis and potential impact on emergent Chagas disease.

Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas disease, is highly genetically diverse. Numerous lines of evidence point to the existence of six stable genetic lineages or DTUs: TcI, TcIIa, TcIIb, TcIIc, TcIId, and TcIIe. Molecular dating suggests that T. cruzi is likely to have been an endemic infection of neotropical mammalian fauna for many millions of years. Here we have applied a panel of 49 polymorphic microsatellite markers developed from the online T. cruzi genome to document genetic diversity among 53 isolates belonging to TcIIc, a lineage so far recorded almost exclusively in silvatic transmission cycles but increasingly a potential source of human infection. These data are complemented by parallel analysis of sequence variation in a fragment of the glucose-6-phosphate isomerase gene. New isolates confirm that TcIIc is associated with terrestrial transmission cycles and armadillo reservoir hosts, and demonstrate that TcIIc is far more widespread than previously thought, with a distribution at least from Western Venezuela to the Argentine Chaco. We show that TcIIc is truly a discrete T. cruzi lineage, that it could have an ancient origin and that diversity occurs within the terrestrial niche independently of the host species. We also show that spatial structure among TcIIc isolates from its principal host, the armadillo Dasypus novemcinctus, is greater than that among TcI from Didelphis spp. opossums and link this observation to differences in ecology of their respective niches. Homozygosity in TcIIc populations and some linkage indices indicate the possibility of recombination but cannot yet be effectively discriminated from a high genome-wide frequency of gene conversion. Finally, we suggest that the derived TcIIc population genetic data have a vital role in determining the origin of the epidemiologically important hybrid lineages TcIId and TcIIe

Modelling and control of manufacturing systems subject to context recognition and switching

Finite-State Automata (FSA) are foundations for modelling, synthesis, verification, and implementation of controllers for manufacturing systems. However, FSA are limited to represent emerging features in manufacturing, such as the ability to recognise and switch contexts. One option is to enrich FSA with parameters that carry details about the manufacturing, which may favour design and control. A parameter can be embedded either on transitions or states of an FSA, and each approach defines its own modelling framework, so that their comparison and integration are not straightforward, and they may lead to different control solutions, modelled, processed and implemented distinctly. In this paper, we show how to combine advantages from parameters in manufacturing the modelling and control. We initially present a background that allows to understand each parameterisation strategy. Then, we introduce a conversion method that translates a design-friendly model into a synthesis-efficient structure. Finally, we use the converted models is synthesis, highlighting their advantages. Examples are used throughout the paper to illustrate and compare our results and tooling support is also provided