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This study develops a long-term integrated planning approach to electricity and gas aiming at economically optimizing the 2030's investments of both networks while considering new policies towards future clean energy. A static stochastic cost minimization model is formulated, which takes into account the short-term uncertainties of renewable power, i.e. wind and utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) as well as the long-term uncertainties of load growth and gas price. The equivalent networks of both electricity and gas are driven to accurately capture their existing supplies and transmission networks. In addition, the integrated planning model allows determining the location of new power plants and gas supply facilities with their optimized capacities, as well as new transmission lines and pipelines. An extension of the proposed scheme is considered to accommodate higher penetrations of renewable energy and assess their impacts on both systems. The proposed model is applied to the state of Queensland in Australia, which is a prime example of a region actively integrating electricity and gas.

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Dogs are important hosts and reservoirs of leishmaniasis, a disease caused by protozoan parasites from the genus Leishmania, affecting ~12 million people worldwide. The detection of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) in dogs by real-time PCR (qPCR) may improve on diagnosis, but the different qPCR methods available for Leishmania DNA detection have not been established as routine in diagnostic tools and/or epidemiologic studies for canine VL. Here, we compared three qPCR assays (DNApol, Linj31, and LDON) in the detection of VL by Leishmania infantum in spleen (n = 48; 7), skin (n = 48; 7), and whole blood (n = 44; 7) samples from serologically positive and negative dogs, respectively. Overall, the DNApol performed better than the Linj31 and LDON assays in the detection of positive samples in all tissues tested, yielding from 66.7 to 100.0% of positivity for both skin and spleen samples. For spleen samples, we observed no statistically significant differences between positive detection by the LDON and DNApol assays. Whole blood samples yielded the lowest rates of positive detection, regardless of the qPCR assay used. In contrast, positive detection of Leishmania DNA was as efficient from skin samples using the DNApol assay as from spleen samples using either the DNApol or the LDON assay. Although qPCR assays from skin samples may not be practical for use in the field, our study suggests that the DNApol and LDON assays from skin samples could be used in future to evaluate canine VL treatment in veterinary clinics.

Leishmaniasis is a neglected pathology with a high incidence worldwide, and is a governmental health issue due to the increased morbidity and mortality associated with the disease and a scarce therapeutic arsenal. Cysteine proteases have been investigated as targets for new drugs because they are essential in the infectivity of the parasite during its interaction with the host and in its nutrition. This study aimed to identify compounds with leishmanicidal activity, by synthesis of compounds, in vitro evaluation of their biological activity and using molecular modeling and bioinformatics tools. The study of biological activity demonstrated that one compound showed inhibitory activity against the enzyme rCPB 2.8 at a concentration of 100 μmol L -1 . Activation of the enzyme rCPB 2.8 by other 4 compounds was also verified, which may be related to the interaction of these compounds with an allosteric site on the enzyme.

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