126 research outputs found
Tratamiento de las complicaciones vasculares tras aplicación del método de Ilizarov: Aportación de tres casos
Entre 1987 y 1991 fueron intervenidos 209 pacientes mediante el método de
Ilizarov en nuestra institución. Tres de los pacientes presentaron complicaciones vasculares durante
el tratamiento. Todos ellos eran adultos y habían sido tratados por pseudoartrosis de un
hueso largo. La lesión vascular ocurrió en la arteria femoral superficial en un caso, la arteria
poplítea en otro y la arteria tibial posterior en el último de ellos. El signo clínico del problema
vascular fue la presencia de la hemorragia en el punto de salida cutánea de las agujas de
Kirschner de transfixión. Se realizó exploración arteriográfica en todos los casos, pero su interpretación
fue difícil debido a la presencia del fijador externo. El tratamiento de la complicación
vascular fue: en el caso de la lesión de la arteria femoral fue retirado el fijador y realizado
un by-pass con un injerto invertido obtenido de la vena safena; en el caso de lesión de la arteria
poplítea, se realizó la misma técnica pero sin retirar el fijador. En el último caso la lesión
de la arteria tibial posterior se trató mediante ligadura de la misma. En todos los casos, la evolución
del tratamiento vascular fue excelente, siendo posible finalizar el tratamiento ortopédico.From 1987 to 1991, 209 patients were operated on by the Ilizarov method in
our institution. Among them, 3 patients presented vascular complications during the treatment.
All were adults and have been treated for long bone pseudoarthrosis. The vascular lesion ocurred
at the femoral superficial artery in one case, at the popliteal artery in other case, and at
the posterior tibial artery in the third case. The clinical sign of vascular damage was bleeding
through the cutaneous point of the Kirschnner transfixion wires in all cases. Arteriography was
done in all cases but its interpretation was very difficult because of the presence of the external
fixator. In the case of femoral artery, injury the external fixator was removed and a vascular
by-pass was performed with an inverted graft of the saphenous vein. The same procedure was
done in the case with a popliteal artery injury but without removal of the external fixator. The
case with lesion of the posterior tibial artery was treated by arterial hgature. In all cases, outcome
was satisfactory, allowing completion of the orthopaedic treatment
Semiclassical coherent state propagator for systems with spin
We derive the semiclassical limit of the coherent state propagator for
systems with two degrees of freedom of which one degree of freedom is canonical
and the other a spin. Systems in this category include those involving
spin-orbit interactions and the Jaynes-Cummings model in which a single
electromagnetic mode interacts with many independent two-level atoms. We
construct a path integral representation for the propagator of such systems and
derive its semiclassical limit. As special cases we consider separable systems,
the limit of very large spins and the case of spin 1/2.Comment: 19 pages, no figure
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Rarity of monodominance in hyperdiverse Amazonian forests.
Tropical forests are known for their high diversity. Yet, forest patches do occur in the tropics where a single tree species is dominant. Such "monodominant" forests are known from all of the main tropical regions. For Amazonia, we sampled the occurrence of monodominance in a massive, basin-wide database of forest-inventory plots from the Amazon Tree Diversity Network (ATDN). Utilizing a simple defining metric of at least half of the trees ≥ 10 cm diameter belonging to one species, we found only a few occurrences of monodominance in Amazonia, and the phenomenon was not significantly linked to previously hypothesized life history traits such wood density, seed mass, ectomycorrhizal associations, or Rhizobium nodulation. In our analysis, coppicing (the formation of sprouts at the base of the tree or on roots) was the only trait significantly linked to monodominance. While at specific locales coppicing or ectomycorrhizal associations may confer a considerable advantage to a tree species and lead to its monodominance, very few species have these traits. Mining of the ATDN dataset suggests that monodominance is quite rare in Amazonia, and may be linked primarily to edaphic factors
Elliptic flow from two- and four-particle correlations in Au + Au collisions at sqrt{s_{NN}} = 130 GeV
Elliptic flow holds much promise for studying the early-time thermalization
attained in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions. Flow measurements also
provide a means of distinguishing between hydrodynamic models and calculations
which approach the low density (dilute gas) limit. Among the effects that can
complicate the interpretation of elliptic flow measurements are azimuthal
correlations that are unrelated to the reaction plane (non-flow correlations).
Using data for Au + Au collisions at sqrt{s_{NN}} = 130 GeV from the STAR TPC,
it is found that four-particle correlation analyses can reliably separate flow
and non-flow correlation signals. The latter account for on average about 15%
of the observed second-harmonic azimuthal correlation, with the largest
relative contribution for the most peripheral and the most central collisions.
The results are also corrected for the effect of flow variations within
centrality bins. This effect is negligible for all but the most central bin,
where the correction to the elliptic flow is about a factor of two. A simple
new method for two-particle flow analysis based on scalar products is
described. An analysis based on the distribution of the magnitude of the flow
vector is also described.Comment: minor text change
The program for biodiversity research in Brazil: The role of regional networks for biodiversity knowledge, dissemination, and conservation
The Program for Biodiversity Research (PPBio) is an innovative program designed to integrate all biodiversity research stakeholders. Operating since 2004, it has installed long-term ecological research sites throughout Brazil and its logic has been applied in some other southern-hemisphere countries. The program supports all aspects of research necessary to understand biodiversity and the processes that affect it. There are presently 161 sampling sites (see some of them at Supplementary Appendix), most of which use a standardized methodology that allows comparisons across biomes and through time. To date, there are about 1200 publications associated with PPBio that cover topics ranging from natural history to genetics and species distributions. Most of the field data and metadata are available through PPBio web sites or DataONE. Metadata is available for researchers that intend to explore the different faces of Brazilian biodiversity spatio-temporal variation, as well as for managers intending to improve conservation strategies. The Program also fostered, directly and indirectly, local technical capacity building, and supported the training of hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students. The main challenge is maintaining the long-term funding necessary to understand biodiversity patterns and processes under pressure from global environmental changes
Biased-corrected richness estimates for the Amazonian tree flora
Amazonian forests are extraordinarily diverse, but the estimated species richness is very much debated. Here, we apply an ensemble of parametric estimators and a novel technique that includes conspecific spatial aggregation to an extended database of forest plots with up-to-date taxonomy. We show that the species abundance distribution of Amazonia is best approximated by a logseries with aggregated individuals, where aggregation increases with rarity. By averaging several methods to estimate total richness, we confirm that over 15,000 tree species are expected to occur in Amazonia. We also show that using ten times the number of plots would result in an increase to just ~50% of those 15,000 estimated species. To get a more complete sample of all tree species, rigorous field campaigns may be needed but the number of trees in Amazonia will remain an estimate for years to come
Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research
Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4
While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge
of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In
the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of
Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus
crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced
environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian
Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by
2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status,
much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Geography and ecology shape the phylogenetic composition of Amazonian tree communities
Aim: Amazonia hosts more tree species from numerous evolutionary lineages, both young and ancient, than any other biogeographic region. Previous studies have shown that tree lineages colonized multiple edaphic environments and dispersed widely across Amazonia, leading to a hypothesis, which we test, that lineages should not be strongly associated with either geographic regions or edaphic forest types.
Location: Amazonia.
Taxon: Angiosperms (Magnoliids; Monocots; Eudicots).
Methods: Data for the abundance of 5082 tree species in 1989 plots were combined with a mega-phylogeny. We applied evolutionary ordination to assess how phylogenetic composition varies across Amazonia. We used variation partitioning and Moran\u27s eigenvector maps (MEM) to test and quantify the separate and joint contributions of spatial and environmental variables to explain the phylogenetic composition of plots. We tested the indicator value of lineages for geographic regions and edaphic forest types and mapped associations onto the phylogeny.
Results: In the terra firme and várzea forest types, the phylogenetic composition varies by geographic region, but the igapó and white-sand forest types retain a unique evolutionary signature regardless of region. Overall, we find that soil chemistry, climate and topography explain 24% of the variation in phylogenetic composition, with 79% of that variation being spatially structured (R = 19% overall for combined spatial/environmental effects). The phylogenetic composition also shows substantial spatial patterns not related to the environmental variables we quantified (R = 28%). A greater number of lineages were significant indicators of geographic regions than forest types.
Main Conclusion: Numerous tree lineages, including some ancient ones (>66 Ma), show strong associations with geographic regions and edaphic forest types of Amazonia. This shows that specialization in specific edaphic environments has played a long-standing role in the evolutionary assembly of Amazonian forests. Furthermore, many lineages, even those that have dispersed across Amazonia, dominate within a specific region, likely because of phylogenetically conserved niches for environmental conditions that are prevalent within regions
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