Scale insects (Hemiptera: Coccoidea) of ornamental plants from Sao Carlos, Sao Paulo, Brazil

A list of 35 scale insects collected from 72 ornamental plant species in Sao Carlos, Sao Paulo, Brazil is provided. Regarding host specificity, 30 scale insects were polyphagous, 4 oligophagous, and 1 monophagous. A total of 102 coccoid/plant associations are recorded, 29 of which are new host records for the species; 60 are new host records for the species in Brazil. Pulvinaria urbicola Cockerell, 1893 (Coccidae), Phenacoccus similis Granara de Willink, 1983 (Pseudococcidae), and Orthezia molinarii (Morrison, 1952) (Ortheziidae) are recorded for the first time in Brazil. In addition, we describe the injury caused by scale insects on ornamental plants

Majocchi’s Granuloma by Trichophytum rubrum in a kidney transplant patient - A case report

Introduction: Trichophytum rubrum is a filamentous fungus, with worldwide distribution, that usually causes superficial infections of skin and nails, namely tinea pedis, tinea corporis, tinea cruris and onychomycosis. Rarely, severe dermatophytosis can occur, presenting as deep dermatophytosis, Majocchi’s Granuloma or extensive dermatophytosis. Objectives and Methods: Case report of Majocchi’s Granuloma in a kidney transplant patient. Results: A case of a 55-year-old woman who underwent a kidney transplant 7 months before, under immunosuppressive therapy with tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil. She attended a Dermatology consultation to clarify skin lesions that appeared 6 months earlier. The skin exam revealed hard and painful plaque lesions on both legs, with an ulcer on the left leg lesion, violaceous papular lesions on the dorsum of the left foot and toes and a hard consistency nodule on the left leg. Some of the toe nails presented dystrophy or onycholysis. The patient denied any previous trauma or contact with plants or soil. Biopsies of lesions of the left leg and foot dorsum where sent for histology and mycological culture and toe nails for mycological culture. The histological examinations showed, in the reticular dermis and reaching the hypodermis, suppurative granulomas with multinucleated giant cells and areas of necrosis. PAS (Periodic Acid- Schiff) and GMS (Grocott’s Methenamine Silver) staining revealed multiple spores and septate hypha within the granulomas but not in the stratum corneum. No remnants of hair follicles where found. Culture of skin biopsies were positive for Tricophytum rubrum but nails´ culture was negative. Identification was further confirmed by sequencing of ITS region of ribosomal DNA (GenBank accession number MK967277). Oral Itraconazole 100mg bid and topic Sertoconazole where initiated. The patient was observed one month after and reported general malaise, tiredness, exertional dyspnea, whitish stools and increased abdominal volume. The physician chose to discontinue itraconazole and initiate oral terbinafine 250mg id. After two months on oral terbinafine, there was regression of the legs´ and left foot lesions with ulcer healing and disappearance of the left leg nodule. Conclusion: Diagnosis of deeper dermatophytosis is difficult, in part because there is no specific clinical presentation and, in many cases, it is even polymorphic. However, especially in patients with immunodeficiency, this hypothesis should be weighed. Confirmation is achieved by finding hyphae compatible with dermatophytes in the dermis and a positive culture for a dermatophyte. Treatment should include systemic antifungal agents, to which topical medication may be associated. Multiple therapeutic regimens have been proposed, but randomized trials or large case series are lacking. Antifungal therapy should be continued until the lesions are completely resolved. Surgical treatment has been reported as an option for highly localized lesions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Radiative corrections in bumblebee electrodynamics

We investigate some quantum features of the bumblebee electrodynamics in flat spacetimes. The bumblebee field is a vector field that leads to a spontaneous Lorentz symmetry breaking. For a smooth quadratic potential, the massless excitation (Nambu-Goldstone boson) can be identified as the photon, transversal to the vacuum expectation value of the bumblebee field. Besides, there is a massive excitation associated with the longitudinal mode and whose presence leads to instability in the spectrum of the theory. By using the principal-value prescription, we show that no one-loop radiative corrections to the mass term is generated. Moreover, the bumblebee self-energy is not transverse, showing that the propagation of the longitudinal mode can not be excluded from the effective theory.Comment: Revised version: contains some more elaborated interpretation of the results. Conclusions improve

Wang-Landau sampling in three-dimensional polymers

Monte Carlo simulations using Wang-Landau sampling are performed to study three-dimensional chains of homopolymers on a lattice. We confirm the accuracy of the method by calculating the thermodynamic properties of this system. Our results are in good agreement with those obtained using Metropolis importance sampling. This algorithm enables one to accurately simulate the usually hardly accessible low-temperature regions since it determines the density of states in a single simulation.Comment: 5 pages, 9 figures arch-ive/Brazilian Journal of Physic

Characterizing Weak Chaos using Time Series of Lyapunov Exponents

We investigate chaos in mixed-phase-space Hamiltonian systems using time series of the finite- time Lyapunov exponents. The methodology we propose uses the number of Lyapunov exponents close to zero to define regimes of ordered (stickiness), semi-ordered (or semi-chaotic), and strongly chaotic motion. The dynamics is then investigated looking at the consecutive time spent in each regime, the transition between different regimes, and the regions in the phase-space associated to them. Applying our methodology to a chain of coupled standard maps we obtain: (i) that it allows for an improved numerical characterization of stickiness in high-dimensional Hamiltonian systems, when compared to the previous analyses based on the distribution of recurrence times; (ii) that the transition probabilities between different regimes are determined by the phase-space volume associated to the corresponding regions; (iii) the dependence of the Lyapunov exponents with the coupling strength.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure