Discrete typing units of Trypanosoma cruzi identified in rural dogs and cats in the humid Argentinean Chaco

The discrete typing units (DTUs) of Trypanosoma cruzi that infect domestic dogs and cats have rarely been studied. With this purpose we conducted a cross-sectional xenodiagnostic survey of dog and cat populations residing in 2 infested rural villages in Pampa del Indio, in the humid Argentine Chaco. Parasites were isolated by culture from 44 dogs and 12 cats with a positive xenodiagnosis. DTUs were identified from parasite culture samples using a strategy based on multiple polymerase-chain reactions. TcVI was identified in 37 of 44 dogs and in 10 of 12 cats, whereas TcV was identified in 5 dogs and in 2 cats -a new finding for cats. No mixed infections were detected. The occurrence of 2 dogs infected with TcIII -classically found in armadillos- suggests a probable link with the local sylvatic transmission cycle involving Dasypus novemcinctus armadillos and a potential risk of human infection with TcIII. Our study reinforces the importance of dogs and cats as domestic reservoir hosts and sources of various DTUs infecting humans, and suggests a link between dogs and the sylvatic transmission cycle of TcIII.Fil: Enriquez, Gustavo Fabián. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Ecología, Genética y Evolución; ArgentinaFil: Cardinal, Marta Victoria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Ecología, Genética y Evolución; ArgentinaFil: Orozco, Maria Marcela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Ecología, Genética y Evolución; ArgentinaFil: Lanati, L.. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Ecología, Genética y Evolución; ArgentinaFil: Schijman, Alejandro Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; ArgentinaFil: Gurtler, Ricardo Esteban. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Ecología, Genética y Evolución; Argentin

LP-based Covering Games with Low Price of Anarchy

We present a new class of vertex cover and set cover games. The price of anarchy bounds match the best known constant factor approximation guarantees for the centralized optimization problems for linear and also for submodular costs -- in contrast to all previously studied covering games, where the price of anarchy cannot be bounded by a constant (e.g. [6, 7, 11, 5, 2]). In particular, we describe a vertex cover game with a price of anarchy of 2. The rules of the games capture the structure of the linear programming relaxations of the underlying optimization problems, and our bounds are established by analyzing these relaxations. Furthermore, for linear costs we exhibit linear time best response dynamics that converge to these almost optimal Nash equilibria. These dynamics mimic the classical greedy approximation algorithm of Bar-Yehuda and Even [3]

Probabilistic Risk Assessment of Aging Layered Pressure Vessels

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) operates approximately 300 aging layered pressure vessels that were designed and manufactured prior to ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel (B&PV) code requirements. In order to make decisions regarding the continued fitness-for-service of these non-code carbon steel vessels, it is necessary to perform a relative risk of failure assessment for each vessel. However, risk assessment of these vessels is confounded by uncertainties and variabilities related to the use of proprietary materials in fabrication, missing construction records, geometric discontinuities, weld residual stresses, and complex service stress gradients in and around the welds. Therefore, a probabilistic framework that can capture these uncertainties and variabilities has been developed to assess the fracture risk of flaws in regions of interest, such as longitudinal and circumferential welds, using the NESSUS probabilistic modeling software and NASGRO fracture mechanics software. In this study, the probabilistic framework was used to predict variability in the stress intensity factor associated with different reference flaws located in the head-to-shell circumferential welds of a 4-layer and 14-layer pressure vessel. The probabilistic studies predict variability in flaw behavior and the important uncertain parameters for each reference flaw location

James Hutton’s geological tours of Scotland : romanticism, literary strategies, and the scientific quest

This article explores a somewhat neglected part of the story of the emergence of geology as a science and discourse in the late eighteenth century – James Hutton’s posthumously published accounts of the geological tours of Scotland that he undertook in the years 1785 to 1788 in search of empirical evidence in support of his theory of the Earth and that he intended to include in the projected third volume of his Theory of the Earth of 1795. The article brings some of the assumptions and techniques of literary criticism to bear on Hutton’s scientific travel writing in order to open up new connections between geology, Romantic aesthetics and eighteenth-century travel writing about Scotland. Close analysis of Hutton’s accounts of his field trips to Glen Tilt, Galloway and Arran, supplemented by later accounts of the discoveries at Jedburgh and Siccar Point, reveals the interplay between desire, travel and the scientific quest and foregrounds the textual strategies that Hutton uses to persuade his readers that they share in the experience of geological discovery and interpretation as ‘virtual witnesses’. As well as allowing us to revisit the interrelation between scientific theory and discovery, this article concludes that Hutton was a much better writer than he has been given credit for and suggests that if these geological tours had been published in 1795 they would have made it impossible for critics to dismiss him as an armchair geologist

Mycobacteriosis in Striped Bass, Morone saxatilis, from Virginia Waters of Chesapeake Bay

Virginia Institute of Marine ScienceMaster of Science (M.Sc.

Food Leftover Practices among Consumers in Selected Countries in Europe, South and North America

Citation: Koppel, K., Higa, F., Godwin, S., Gutierrez, N., Shalimov, R., Cardinal, P., . . . Chambers, E. (2016). Food Leftover Practices among Consumers in Selected Countries in Europe, South and North America. Foods, 5(3), 14. doi:10.3390/foods5030066Foodborne illnesses may be related to many food production factors with home practices of consumers playing an important role in food safety. Consumer behavior for handling food leftovers has been studied, however little work on comparisons among countries has been published. The objective of this study was to investigate home food leftover practices of people from North American, South American, and European countries. Surveys were conducted with approximately 100 or more consumers in Argentina, Colombia, the United States, Estonia, Italy, Russia, and Spain. The participants responded to questions related to the length of time different types of food leftovers; such as meat, fresh salads, or restaurant dishes would be kept refrigerated or would be left at room temperature before refrigeration. Researchers also investigated how consumers would determine if the food was still safe for consumption. Potentially risky behaviors were observed in all seven countries. For instance, 55.8% of Estonians, 25% of Russians and 25.8% of Argentinean participants left food out at room temperature for several hours before storing in the refrigerator. Furthermore, 25%-29% of Colombian, Estonian, and Spanish consumers would look, smell, and taste leftovers to determine its probable safety. Correct handling of leftovers is an important aspect of consumer food safety. Although the surveys cannot be representative of all consumers in each country, they do provide an initial overview of comparative practices for handling leftovers among different countries. This provides government and educators with information on potential universal and unique consumer food safety issues related to handling leftover foods among various countries

Optical Propagation and Communication

Contains reports on four research projects.National Science Foundation (Grant ENG78-21603)U.S. Army Research Office - Durham (Contract DAAG29-80-K-0022)U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research (Contract N00014-81-K-0662)U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research (Contract N00014-80-C-0941

Direct Observation of Propagating Gigahertz Coherent Guided Acoustic Phonons in Free Standing Single Copper Nanowires

We report on gigahertz acoustic phonon waveguiding in free-standing single copper nanowires studied by femtosecond transient reflectivity measurements. The results are discussed on the basis of the semianalytical resolution of the Pochhammer and Chree equation. The spreading of the generated Gaussian wave packet of two different modes is derived analytically and compared with the observed oscillations of the sample reflectivity. These experiments provide a unique way to independently obtain geometrical and material characterization. This direct observation of coherent guided acoustic phonons in a single nano-object is also the first step toward nanolateral size acoustic transducer and comprehensive studies of the thermal properties of nanowires

Rank-based model selection for multiple ions quantum tomography

The statistical analysis of measurement data has become a key component of many quantum engineering experiments. As standard full state tomography becomes unfeasible for large dimensional quantum systems, one needs to exploit prior information and the "sparsity" properties of the experimental state in order to reduce the dimensionality of the estimation problem. In this paper we propose model selection as a general principle for finding the simplest, or most parsimonious explanation of the data, by fitting different models and choosing the estimator with the best trade-off between likelihood fit and model complexity. We apply two well established model selection methods -- the Akaike information criterion (AIC) and the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) -- to models consising of states of fixed rank and datasets such as are currently produced in multiple ions experiments. We test the performance of AIC and BIC on randomly chosen low rank states of 4 ions, and study the dependence of the selected rank with the number of measurement repetitions for one ion states. We then apply the methods to real data from a 4 ions experiment aimed at creating a Smolin state of rank 4. The two methods indicate that the optimal model for describing the data lies between ranks 6 and 9, and the Pearson $\chi^{2}$ test is applied to validate this conclusion. Additionally we find that the mean square error of the maximum likelihood estimator for pure states is close to that of the optimal over all possible measurements.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures, 3 table