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Cyrtopodium valebellae, a new species from northwestern Argentina and southwestern Bolivia, is described, illustrated, and compared with morphologically similar taxa. The species is similar to C. virescens in general morphology and flower colour but differs in floral morphology details, particularly in lip morphology and geographic distribution. All known records are from the Southern Andean Yungas and Chaco Serrano ecoregions, indicating that the species is endemic to these regions. Cyrtopodium valebellae has been known since 1965 but has been misidentified so far with C. paniculatum, C. punctatum or C. virescens. The new species was first noticed through photographs available on online biodiversity platforms, highlighting its usefulness as a complementary source of data for discovering new species.

A new putative natural hybrid of Cyrtopodium, C. × flavopunctatum, from sandy coastal plain vegetation, known as restinga, in the state of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil is described and illustrated. It was found growing among a population of C. flavum and is similar to that species in vegetative and overall floral morphology, but distinguished by the sepals and petals with brown spots, lateral lobes of lip and base of the central lobe orange or orange-spotted, very short isthmus (1–2 mm long), lip midlobe margins slightly verrucose and flowers slightly citrusy-scented. In the color of the flowers, it is intermediate between C. flavum, with completely yellow flowers, and C. gigas or C. palmifrons, epiphytic species with profusely dotted flowers that occur in the same region and bloom at the same time as C. flavum. Additional studies with genetic data are needed to confirm the possible hybrid origin and the identity of the second parental species.

This paper investigates the traffic flow characteristics of mixed stream of autonomous and human-driven vehicles. The proposed model aims at understanding the fundamental properties of mixed flow of human-driven (N) and autonomous vehicles (AV) such as headway, capacity, and delay at signalized intersections. This is challenging because of intrinsic differences between longitudinal driving characteristics of these two types of vehicles and the convoluted dynamics of car following situation within various combinations of AV and human-driven vehicles. The expected headway of the mixed flow is determined based on the penetration rate of AV and the headways between two successive AV-AV, AV-N, N-AV, and N-N. Furthermore, the upper and lower bounds of mixed flow headway is presented. The theoretical headway is validated by microsimulation data. The estimated headways are then incorporated to derive the delay of a mixed flow at a signalized 2-lane link. Four combination of (i) mixed lanes, (ii) dedicated lanes for AV and human-driven vehicles, (iii) one mixed lane and one AV dedicated lane, and (iv) one mixed lane and one human-driven vehicle dedicated lane are considered. The results demonstrate the performance of the four lane configurations for various stages of AV deployment penetration rate.

Additional file 2. Adverse events experienced by two subjects who received more than six immunizations.

The autonomy of battery-operated electronic systems directly depends on the energy conversion efficiency from the battery to the lower voltage levels required by nowadays CMOS technologies. One of the major contributions for power losses in buck dc-dc converters is explained and analyzed. The work presented in this paper focuses on optimizing buck converter efficiency (synchronous rectification) by minimizing body-diode conduction losses. A new control technique, and a drive system that regulates the dead-time to a minimum value of 2 ns, are presented. Converter losses decrease by 19 % to 32 % when compared to the fixed dead-time solution.

To gain insight on the significance of human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) indeterminate serological reactivities, we studied villagers of South Cameroon, focusing on a frequent and specific HTLV-1 Gag indeterminate profile (HGIP) pattern ( gag p19, p26, p28, and p30 without p24 or Env gp21 and gp46). Among the 102 sera studied, 29 from all age groups had a stable HGIP pattern over a period of 4 years. There was no epidemiological evidence for sexual or vertical transmission of HGIP. Seventy-five percent of HGIP sera reacted positively on MT2 HTLV-1-infected cells by immunofluorescence assay. However, we could not isolate any HTLV-1 virus or detect the presence of p19 Gag protein in cultures of peripheral blood mononuclear cells obtained from individuals with strong HGIP reactivity. PCR experiments conducted with primers for HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 (HTLV-1/2 primers) encompassing different regions of the virus did not yield HTLV-1/2 proviral sequences from individuals with HGIP. Using 11 peptides corresponding to HTLV-1 or HTLV-2 immunodominant B epitopes in an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, one epitope corresponding to the Gag p19 carboxyl terminus was identified in 75% of HGIP sera, while it was recognized by only 41% of confirmed HTLV-1-positive sera. A positive correlation between HTLV-1 optical density values and titers of antibody to Plasmodium falciparum was also demonstrated. Finally, passage of sera through a P. falciparum -infected erythrocyte-coupled column was shown to specifically abrogate HGIP reactivity but not the HTLV-1 pattern, suggesting the existence of cross-reactivity between HTLV-1 Gag proteins and malaria-derived antigens. These data suggest that in Central Africa, this frequent and specific Western blot is not caused by HTLV-1 infection but could instead be associated with P. falciparum infection.