Potential of Geographic Information Systems to Create a Municipal Environmental Model

Geographic information systems are used internationally to acquire information about the characteristics of the global surface and digitalize it to facilitate georeferencing, statistical analysis, virtual scenarios and mitigation of disasters. In Cuba, they are inserted in the design of Environmental Models, along with other applications. The aim of this paper was to demonstrate the potential offered by Geographic Information Systems to establish an Environmental Model in the municipality of Camaguey, based on previous studies made in other municipalities of Cuba. Moreover, the main elements supporting this study were defined. This paper also deals with the different stages of Environmental Modeling, and how the Geographic Information Systems are included, based on the views from different researchers and specialists. 

Sustainable Landscape Management. An Analysis with a Scientific and Social Perspective. Review

Context: The negative effects of climate change and the food production systems, based on an ever-growing, intensive, and unsustainable manner, are threatening the stability of landscapes, and therefore, their components, including humans. The implementation of land sustainable management offers a set of social and ecological benefits. However, it is mostly applied to very small spaces, as an agroecosystem. Aim: To analyze the need for land sustainable management practice scaling of landscapes as a geographic space category, using a scientific approach. Method: Documentary review was used along with the integration of land sustainable management approaches, and the need for landscape scaling, including other sustainability approaches, such as agroecology. Results: The study found a theoretical gap in terms of land sustainable management practice scaling of landscapes as a geographic space category. The need for scaling is mainly explained by the fact that the extent of social and ecological problems goes beyond smaller spaces, such as a farm or an agroecosystem. Conclusions: Landscape is an intrinsic part of cultural identity and heritage with high natural and anthropic values that must be highly regarded. The scaling of land sustainable management practices into the landscape is a necessity. The natural, economic, and social problems associated with land use must be addressed beyond the boundaries of a single agroecosystem

Potential of Geographic Information Systems to Create a Municipal Environmental Model

Geographic information systems are used internationally to acquire information about the characteristics of the global surface and digitalize it to facilitate georeferencing, statistical analysis, virtual scenarios and mitigation of disasters. In Cuba, they are inserted in the design of Environmental Models, along with other applications. The aim of this paper was to demonstrate the potential offered by Geographic Information Systems to establish an Environmental Model in the municipality of Camaguey, based on previous studies made in other municipalities of Cuba. Moreover, the main elements supporting this study were defined. This paper also deals with the different stages of Environmental Modeling, and how the Geographic Information Systems are included, based on the views from different researchers and specialists

El manejo sostenible de tierras a escala de paisaje. Análisis desde una perspectiva científica y social. Revisión

Context: The negative effects of climate change and growing, intensive and unsustainable food production systems are threatening the stability of landscapes and therefore against their components, including human beings. The implementation of the principles of sustainable land management provide a group of social and ecological benefits. However, it is applied mostly in very small spaces as an agroecosystem. Objective: Analyze from a scientific and social approach the need to scale sustainable land management practices to the landscape as a category of geographic space. Methods: The documentary review and integration of sustainable land management approaches and the need for their scaling to the landscape are applied, together with other sustainability approaches such as agroecology. Results: A theoretical void is perceived regarding the scaling of sustainable land management to landscape as a category of geographic space. The need for scaling is fundamentally justified in that the magnitude of ecological and social problems transcends confined spaces such as a farm or agroecosystem. Conclusions: The landscape is an intrinsic part of the cultural identity, it constitutes a heritage of great natural and anthropic value that must be respected. Scaling up sustainable land management practices to the landscape is a necessity. Natural, economic and social problems related to land use go beyond the limits of an agroecosystem for their solution.Contexto: Los efectos negativos del cambio climático y los sistemas de producción de alimentos de forma creciente, intensiva e insostenible, están atentando contra la estabilidad de los paisajes y por tanto contra sus componentes, incluido el propio ser humano. La implementación de los principios del manejo sostenible de tierras, proveen un grupo de beneficios sociales y ecológicos. Sin embargo, este se aplica mayoritariamente en espacios muy reducidos como un agroecosistema. Objetivo: Analizar desde un enfoque científico y social la necesidad del escalado de prácticas de manejo sostenible de tierras al paisaje como categoría del espacio geográfico. Método: Se aplica la revisión documental e integración de los enfoques de manejo sostenible de tierras y la necesidad de su escalado al paisaje, junto a otros enfoques de sostenibilidad como la agroecología. Resultados: Se percibe un vacío teórico referido al escalado del manejo sostenible de tierras al paisaje como categoría del espacio geográfico. La necesidad del escalado se justifica fundamentalmente en que la envergadura de los problemas ecológicos y sociales trasciende los espacios reducidos como una finca o agroecosistema. Conclusiones: El paisaje forma parte intrínseca de la identidad cultural, constituye un patrimonio de gran valor natural y antrópico que se debe respetar. El escalado de prácticas de manejo sostenible de tierras al paisaje, constituye una necesidad. Los problemas naturales, económicos y sociales relacionados con el uso de la tierra, sobrepasan los límites de un agroecosistema para su solución

Potencialidades de los Sistemas de Información Geográfica en la construcción del Modelo de Ordenamiento Ambiental municipal

Los Sistemas de Información Geográficos, son utilizados en el mundo para conocer todo lo que existe en la superficie terrestre y convertirlo en datos digitalizados haciendo posible la georreferenciación, el análisis estadístico, la creación de escenarios virtuales y la prevención de desastres. Por otra parte en Cuba se insertan en la confección de los Modelos de Ordenamiento Ambientales, además de otras aplicaciones. Este artículo tiene como objetivo demostrar las potencialidades que ofrecen los Sistemas de Información Geográficos en la confección del Modelo de Ordenamiento Ambiental previsto para el municipio de Camagüey, tomando como base estudios anteriores desarrollados en otros municipios del país y mostrando algunos ejemplos de mapas que se pueden construir. Además se realizan algunas definiciones conceptuales de los principales elementos sobre los que se hacen mención en este trabajo. También el artículo se refiere a las diferentes etapas del Modelo de Ordenamiento Ambiental y cómo los Sistemas de Información Geográfico se insertan en él teniendo en cuenta los criterios de diferentes investigadores y especialista

Identificar cobertura vegetal de suelo clasificando pixeles en imágenes hiperepectrales con SVM (maquinas de soporte vectorial)

Se realizó un experimento para clasificar 4 clases de cobertura vegetal de suelo usando imágenes hiperespectrales, con 63 bandas. Se trabajó con un pixel representado por vector de 63 características (uno por banda). Se probaron nueve filtros y el análisis sin filtro. Para la clasificación se usó una máquina de soporte vectorial (SVM), con un kernel perceptor multicapa (MLP). Se obtienen precisiones aceptables, mejorando muchas encontradas en la literatura [1] [2]. Con este trabajo se demuestra que es mejor usar imágenes hiperespectrales que las comúnmente usadas. Los resultados sugieren que es necesario emplear otras técnicas o pre-proceso para mejorar las clasificaciones en este tipo de imágenes

Pre-diagnosis of Skin cancer with artificial neural network

The Skin cancer is increasing around of world; in México is not the exception. The Skin cancer is detected from melanomas in any body part principally face, arms and hands. Therefore, we started this work for to classify the melanomas on benign and malignant. For this purpose, we used an artificial neural network. From database of ISIC was download images and went be prepared for to train the neural networks. In this work, we applied a perceptron neural network. The goal is become a make a pre-diagnosis in the small clinics in México by physician. In México, there are thousands of clinics with only physician. An application can let a physician to use the application and to make a pre-diagnosis so if is positive the patient should have canalized to specialty clinic for apply other analysis. It is possible to make an earlier detection it could save lives

A retrospective study on the influence of siblings' relatedness in Bolivian patients with chronic Chagas disease

Brotherhood; Cardiomyopathy; Chagas diseaseGermandat; Cardiomiopatia; Malaltia de chagasHermandad; Cardiomiopatía; Enfermedad de chagasBACKGROUND: Chagas disease is a protozoan infection caused by Trypanosoma cruzi. The disease has a chronic course in which 20-30% of the patients would develop progressive damage to the cardiovascular system and the gastrointestinal tube. We are still unable to predict who will develop end-organ damage but there are some acquired and genetic risk factors already known. RESULTS: We reviewed data from 833 patients with serologically confirmed Chagas disease in this retrospective study. Patients were classified as siblings or non-siblings (controls) and the results of pre-treatment blood PCR assay, end-organ damage (cardiac and/or gastrointestinal), and the presence of delayed type hypersensitivity (DTH) skin involvement in patients treated with benznidazole were analyzed. Siblings were grouped by family and we randomly generated groups of 2 or 3 persons with the remaining controls. We classified the results of each variable as concordant or discordant and compared the concordance in these results among the sibling groups with that among control groups. We identified 71 groups of siblings and randomly generated 299 groups of non-related patients. Pre-treatment blood PCR concordance was significantly higher (19%) among siblings compared to controls (P = 0.02), probably due to a higher frequency in pre-treatment positive results. No other statistically significant differences were found. CONCLUSIONS: A significant difference was found in the concordance of pre-treatment blood PCR for T. cruzi among siblings compared to non-related controls

Risk of Trypanosoma cruzi infection among travellers visiting friends and relatives to continental Latin America

Factors de risc mèdic; Serologia; Malaltia de ChagasFactores de riesgo médicos; Serología; Enfermedad de ChagasMedical risk factors; Serology; Chagas diseaseBackground Chagas disease (CD) is regarded as a possible risk for travellers to endemic areas of continental Latin America (LA). The aim of the study is to determine the risk of Trypanosoma cruzi (TC) infection among travellers to CD endemic areas and to identify risk factors for acquiring TC infection. Methods/Principal finding We designed a multicenter cross-sectional study among travellers in Spain (Badalona, Barcelona and Madrid). All available adults with laboratory confirmed proof of absence of TC infection from January 2012 to December 2015 were contacted. Participants referring a trip to LA after the negative TC screening were offered to participate. We performed a standardized questionnaire of travel related factors and measurement of TC antibodies in serum. A total of 971 participants with baseline negative TC serology were selected from the microbiology records. After excluding participants not meeting inclusion criteria, eighty participants were selected. Sixty three (78.8%) were female, and the median age was 38 (IQR 34–47) years. The reason to travel was visiting friends and relatives in 98.8% of the participants. The median duration of travel was 40 (IQR 30–60) days, with 4911 participants-day of exposure. Seventy seven cases (96.25%) participants had two negative TC serology tests after the travel, two cases (2.5%) had discordant serology results (considered false positive results) and one case was infected before travelling to LA. According to our data, the upper limit of the 95% confidence interval of the incidence rate of TC acquisition in travellers is 0.8 per 1000 participant-days. Conclusions/Significance Among 79 non-CD travellers to TC endemic areas, we found no cases of newly acquired TC infection. The incidence rate of TC acquisition in travellers to endemic countries is less than or equal to 0.8 per 1000 traveller-days.ASM was supported by a postdoctoral grant “Juan Rodés” (JE18/00022) from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (www.isciii.es) through the Spanish Ministry of economy and competitiveness. The funders had no role in study design data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

R&D studies for the development of a compact transmitter able to mimic the acousticsignature of a UHE neutrino interaction

[EN] Calibration of acoustic neutrino telescopes with neutrino-like signals is essential to evaluate the feasibility of the technique and to know the efficiency of the detectors. However, it is not straightforward to have acoustic transmitters that, on one hand, are able to mimic the signature of a UHE neutrino interaction, that is, a bipolar acoustic pulse with the 'pancake' directivity, and on the other hand, fulfil practical issues such as ease of deployment and operation. This is a non-trivial problem since it requires directive transducer with cylindrical symmetry for a broadband frequency range. Classical solutions using linear arrays of acoustic transducers result in long arrays with many elements, which increase the cost and the complexity for deployment and operation. In this paper we present the extension of our previous R&D studies using the parametric acoustic source technique by dealing with the cylindrical symmetry and demonstrating that it is possible to use this technique for having a compact solution that could be much more easily included in neutrino telescope infrastructures or used in specific sea campaigns for calibration. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.This work has been supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacio´n (Spain Government), project references FPA2007- 63729, FPA2009-13983-C02-02, ACI2009-1067 and ConsoliderIngenio Multidark (CSD2009-00064). It has also being funded by Generalitat Valenciana, Prometeo/2009/26.Ardid Ramírez, M.; Adrián Martínez, S.; Bou Cabo, M.; Larosa, G.; Martínez Mora, JA.; Espinosa Roselló, V.; Camarena Femenia, F.... (2012). R&D studies for the development of a compact transmitter able to mimic the acousticsignature of a UHE neutrino interaction. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. 662:206-209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2010.11.139S20620966